Scientists lay bare magic secret

Scientists have revealed one of magic's most closely guarded secrets - how a magician makes things disappear.

Researchers from Edinburgh University said illusions happen when blind spots prevent us from seeing change before our eyes.

When our eyes shift focus for just a few milliseconds, it is enough for us to lose our sight.

This is too short for us to notice, but long enough to miss changes in visual scenes.

The research team carried out experiments in which people looking at pictures often failed to detect deliberate alterations, such as objects becoming bigger or disappearing.

Prof John Henderson of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences said:  "We think our eyes show us the world in sharp detail all the time, but in fact this is not the case.

"Our studies show that our eyes do, in fact, miss a great deal.

"Our research gives us insight into how people see the world and ultimately how the brain processes information."

- via bbc

Schrodinger's Tardigrade may be first life form to prove multiple universe theory

One of the classical problems in quantum mechanics concerns a man and his feline companion. The man has placed his cat in an opaque tank and is slowing pumping it full of poison. Now until the man opens the tank and looks inside, he cannot be sure whether the cat is dead or alive. That is to say, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Impossible but such is the nature of the problem that faced this man. The man's name is Erwin Schrodinger and the problem is that of his Uncertainty Principle. // For nearly a century, his problem has remained a quixotic quest for physicists. Particle physics has always held that matter can only exist at one state in one time. That is why particles are classified as moving with an up or down spin but nothing in between. In recent years that rule has been bent with the superposition of atoms and other nonliving things. Superposition is the term for an object that is not being observed that exists as both possibilities: up and down, dead and alive. This allows physicists to observe the matter in two different states at the same time. However, thus far it has only been done with non-living things. A life-form has never been superimposed. Now, one physicist says he may have an answer.

Oriol Romero-Isart is at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Physics in Garching in Germany. Along with his team he is proposing a "Schrodinger's virus" experiment that would follow the same general principles of Schrodinger's Cat. Using an electromagnetic field created by a laser, the virus would be trapped in a vacuum. Then, using another laser, the virus will be slowed down until it lies motionless in its lowest possible energy state.

Now that the virus is fixed, a single photon is used to put the virus into a superposition of two states, moving and non-moving. Up until the point is measured it is in both states. Only after a measurement is it found to be in one state and one alone. The team has suggested that the tobacco mosaic virus be used. The virus is rod-shaped and measures 50 nanometers wide and approximately 1 micrometer long. There is debate however, whether the virus can truly be classified as "alive." However the scientists are confident that the treatment could be extended to tiny micro-organisms such as tardigrades who can survive in vacuum for days, making them suitable for the "Schrodinger treatment."

However, physicists are doubtful about the experiment's results. Martin Plenio of Imperial College in London says that there is little reason that a virus would behave any differently than a similarly-sized inanimate object. However, there are possibilities in testing large objects such as viruses and molecules. This is because quantum mechanics says that macroscopic objects can enter superposition however, it has never happened. Through these studies, Plenio believes that we will finally be able to bridge the divide between the quantum world and our own macroscopic world. - physorg

Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero ^[4], temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans^[5], nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space.^[6] - wikipedia

Beatle's essay found 50 years on

An essay written by Sir Paul McCartney as a 10-year-old has been found after lying undiscovered in Liverpool's Central Library for more than 50 years.

Years before the Beatles received their MBEs, he beat hundreds of other school children to win a prize for his 1953 essay marking the Queen's coronation.

In neat handwriting, he refers to "the lovely young Queen Elizabeth".

In 2013, the library will display the essay - found in a scrapbook - to mark the 60th anniversary of the coronation.

Thought to be one of the earliest surviving written works by Sir Paul, the essay gave him an early taste of appearing in public.

Liverpool's Lord Mayor presented him with the prize - despite the work having been marked down for grammatical errors.

McCartney's neat writing has the same curly ends on capital letters which he used later on the "B" of "Beatles" on the group's drum skin.

The schoolboy compares the happy scenes expected outside Buckingham Palace with the coronation of William the Conqueror nine centuries earlier, when a massacre of Saxons took place.

He declares that Britain's "present day royalty rules with affection rather than force".

via BBC NEWS | UK | Beatle's essay found 50 years on.

Paul has fantastic handwriting.  Follow the BBC news link above for the video.

John Was Right: Beatles Top Jesus, so does Pizza

The Beatles really became bigger than Jesus when more people searched for the band than the son of God on Google over the last month.

Graph showing the relative popularity of the search terms Beatles and Jesus on Google over the past 30 days

More than forty years after John Lennon invoked the ire of Christians by claiming his band were bigger than Jesus, he has been proved right by an analysis of search terms on the Google search engine.

In the last four weeks more computer users have typed in the search word "Beatles" on the Google website than "Jesus". The popularity of The Beatles has increased substantially during September thanks to the re-release of all of their albums digitally-remastered.

The last month also saw the release of the video game The Beatles Rock Band, which allows players to pretend to be Paul, John, George or Ringo by playing along to their songs on plastic instruments, while watching cartoon versions of the band on a screen.

In March 1966 Lennon caused uproar when he told the Evening Standard: "I do not know what will go first, rock'n'roll or Christianity … we're more popular than Jesus now".

Across America, angry Beatlemaniacs burned their Fab Four vinyl in protest and Lennon was forced to issue a rambling apology: "I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologise if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologise, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry."

Computer users can find out which topics people are searching for on Google by using the Google trends website, which allows you to analyse in detail the words people are typing in from different countries and different time periods.

Though the graph clearly shows that The Beatles caught the imagination of more people during September than Jesus did, video games experts point out that The Beatles Rock Band has not fared as well in the shops as expected with rival music game Guitar Hero 5 outselling the Fab Four's version.

- via telegraph

Also topping Jesus at least for a while in 2009: Michael Jackson.  For you South Park fans, Santa does not beat Jesus, even at his strongest time of year.

But people, you may want to sit down for this... I think you need to know the truth now ... Okay, I'm just going to say it....  pizza has been consistently more popular than Jesus Christ for the last five years in a row.

I am so sorry. I know this must be hard for you to accept. But, take heart! Xeno's First Virtual Pizza Church will be opening soon on a web browser near you.

Glaciers of the world synchronized

Results of a new study add evidence that climate swings in the northern hemisphere over the past 12,000 years have been tightly linked to changes in the tropics.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that a prolonged cold spell that caused glaciers in Europe and North America to creep forward several hundred years ago may have affected climate patterns as far south as Peru, causing tropical glaciers there to expand, too. ...

Most of the world's glaciers are now retreating, as manmade greenhouse gas levels rise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global temperatures may climb another 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by this century's end.

"If the current dramatic warming projections are correct, we have to face the possibility that the glaciers may soon disappear," said Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and co-author of the paper.

In a warmer world, regions that depend on glaciers for drinking water, farming and hydropower will need to come up with strategies to adapt....

Human civilization arose during fairly stable temperatures since the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago. But research shows that even during this time glaciers fluctuated in large and sometimes surprising ways.

Most of the world's glaciers are now retreating, as manmade greenhouse gas levels rise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global temperatures may climb another 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by this century's end.

"If the current dramatic warming projections are correct, we have to face the possibility that the glaciers may soon disappear," said Joerg Schaefer, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and co-author of the paper.

In a warmer world, regions that depend on glaciers for drinking water, farming and hydropower will need to come up with strategies to adapt.

Recent developments in a technique called surface exposure dating have allowed scientists to place far more precise dates on glacial fluctuations during recent times than was previously possible.

When glaciers advance, they drag rocks and dirt with them. When they recede, ridges of debris called moraines are left behind, and the newly exposed deposits are bombarded by cosmic rays passing through Earth's atmosphere.

The rays react with the rock and over time form tiny amounts of the rare chemical isotope beryllium-10. By measuring the buildup of this isotope in glacial rocks, scientists can calculate when the glaciers receded.

Using this technique, the authors showed that glaciers in southern Peru moved at times similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

- via Eureka Alert

Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of Stability

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

Heino Nitsche, head of the Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group in Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division (NSD) and a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, and Ken Gregorich, a senior staff scientist in NSD, led the team that independently confirmed the production of the new element, which was first published by the Dubna Gas Filled Recoil Separator group.

Using an instrument called the Berkeley Gas-filled Separator (BGS) at Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron, the researchers were able to confirm the creation of two individual nuclei of element 114, each a separate isotope having 114 protons but different numbers of neutrons, and each decaying...

The researchers identified the two isotopes as ²⁸⁶114 (114 protons and 172 neutrons) and ²⁸⁷114 (114 protons and 173 neutrons). The former, ²⁸⁶114, decayed in about a tenth of a second by emitting an alpha particle (2 protons and 2 neutrons, a helium nucleus) – thus becoming a “daughter” nucleus of element 112 – which subsequently spontaneously fissioned into smaller nuclei. The latter,²⁸⁷114, decayed in about half a second by emitting an alpha particle to form 112, which also then emitted an alpha particle to form daughter element 110, before spontaneously fissioning into smaller nuclei.

The Berkeley Group’s success in finding these two 114 nuclei and tracking their decay depended on sophisticated methods of detection, data collection, and concurrent data analysis. After passing through the BGS, the candidate nucleus enters a detector chamber. If a candidate element 114 atom is detected, and is subsequently seen to decay by alpha-particle emission, the cyclotron beam instantly shuts off so further decay events can be recorded without background interference. ...

“One surprise was that the 114 nuclei had much smaller cross sections – were much less likely to form – than the Dubna group reported,” Nitsche says. “We expected to get about six in our eight-day experiment but only got two. Nevertheless, the decay modes, lifetimes, and energies were all consistent with the Dubna reports and amply confirm their achievement.”

Says Gregorich, “Based on the ideas of the 1960s, we thought when we got to element 114 we would have reached the Island of Stability. More recent theories suggest enhanced stability at other proton numbers, perhaps 120, perhaps 126. The work we’re doing now will help us decide which theories are correct and how we should modify our models.”

Nitsche adds, “During the last 20 years, many relatively stable isotopes have been discovered that lie between the known heavy element isotopes and the Island of Stability – essentially they can be considered as ‘stepping stones’ to this island. The question is, how far does the Island extend – from 114 to perhaps 120 or 126? And how high does it rise out the Sea of Instability.”...
via Superheavy Element 114 Confirmed: A Stepping Stone to the Island of Stability « Berkeley Lab News Center.

Surprising element 114 results eh?  I wonder if Bob Lazar was right about element 115. ;-)

The reactor is a closed system which uses the Element 115 as its fuel. The element is also the source of the gravity-A wave which is amplified for space/time distortion and travel.

Don't understand "Island of Stability"? Quick review:

An isotope is a variant on a basic element, a substance made of atoms with a different number of neutrons than is typical. Except for hydrogen, every atomic nucleus in normal matter is made of both protons and neutrons; the only question is how many of each there are. Typically, the number of protons and neutrons is the same. In an isotope, this balance is frequently broken. For example, ²³⁸U, the most common state of uranium, has three more neutrons than ²³⁵U, the form used in nuclear weapons.

A lack of necessary neutrons makes a nucleus unstable. Protons in the nucleus are positively charged, meaning they repel each other. The presence of neutrons is necessary to separate these protons slightly, making the configuration stable. When the configuration is unstable, nuclear decay can result, turning the atoms into showers of radioactive particles.

The rate at which the isotope decays is given by its half-life, the interval after which half of the material breaks down. Half-life varies between a fraction of a second and many times longer than the age of the universe. Some isotopes, like Helium-3, are not radioactive. - wizegeek

Wikipedia says it nicely:

Isotopes are different types of atoms (nuclides) of the same chemical element, each having a different atomic mass (mass number).^[1] Isotopes of an element have nuclei with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons. Therefore, isotopes of the same element have different mass numbers (number of nucleons). For example, carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14 are three isotopes of the element carbon with mass numbers 12, 13 and 14. Carbon has atomic number 6 so each of its isotopes has 6 protons. The neutron numbers in these isotopes are therefore 12-6 = 6, 13-6 = 7, and 14-6 = 8 respectively. - wiki

Carbon is element 6, because six protons are what make carbon carbon. Copy?  Element 114 has 114 protons in its nucleus. With 114 protons and 173 neutrons, element 114 decayed to element 112 in about half a second by emitting an alpha-particle (two protons and two neutrons).

Something like gold is made up of the same protons and neutrons as lead or any other element. What makes gold have the properties of gold is just the number of protons.  If an element's number of protons changes, it becomes another element. Therefore, lead can become gold.

Transmutation of lead into gold isn't just theoretically possible - it has been achieved! There are reports that Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead (possibly en route from bismuth, in 1980) into gold. There is an earlier report (1972) in which Soviet physicists at a nuclear research facility near Lake Baikal in Siberia accidentally discovered a reaction for turning lead into gold when they found the lead shielding of an experimental reactor had changed to gold. Today particle accelerators routinely transmute elements. - about.com

Tip: If you want to spend the tremendous amount of money and energy it takes to make gold, remember this:

Since there is only one stable gold isotope, ¹⁹⁷Au, nuclear reactions must create this isotope in order to produce usable gold. - wiki

Gesundheit? Sneezing fetish lands man in jail

The Commerce Police Department has taken an elderly Hopkins County man into custody and are preparing to charge him with aggravated assault, after he allegedly attacked a female store clerk by blowing a powdery substance in her face, twice.

The reason why the man did it is truly unusual, according to Commerce Police Chief Kerry Crews.

“In my entire career I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Crews said. “I’ve checked with my detectives and they haven’t heard of anything like it either.”

Officers were called to Commerce Hardware and Feed on Monday regarding a customer that blew a white powdery substance in an employees face. The employee was checking the suspect out and when he handed his check to her, he blew the substance in her face. She turned away to process his check and when she turned back to him, he did it a second time, waited in the store for a few minutes then left.

Crews said Investigator Steve Scott was able to identify the suspect and subsequently interview him regarding this offense. The substance in the incident turned out to be white pepper.

“We found out he’s got a problem,” Crews said. “He becomes aroused by females sneezing.”

Crews said the nature of the incident could not be considered as a sexual assault. However, as the employee was taken to Hunt Regional Hospital in Commerce for an irritated throat and arm, the suspect was arrested for aggravated assault causing serious bodily Injury.

via The Herald Banner, Greenville, TX - Gesundheit? Sneezing fetish lands man in jail.

Okay son, just relax now. I want you to look at these photos and tell me how they make you feel. Do you feel you are witnessing a simple sneeze? Or do you, rather, feel you are getting an illicit peek at how the particular woman's face would appear as she reaches the height of passion?

Robbers in Dinant destroy building and kill themselves using too much dynamite trying to open ATM

In Dinant two men tried to rob a bank Friday night using dynamite. They used far too much and part of the building was blown up. One of the men was taken to hospital but died of his injuries. The other man was found dead under the rubble hours later.The two gangsters went to work about 3 am Saturday morning.

It looks like they wanted to blow up an automated teller machine but the force of the dynamite caused much of the building to collapse. One of the men was killed. The police were still searching the wreckage to see if there was a second body through the afternoon. The second body was finally recovered Saturday evening..

A delousing squad is also at the scene to make sure there is no dynamite left that did not explode. The bank safe and the money machine were undamaged by the blast.

via flandersnews.be: Body recovered from wreckage in Dinant.

Do not use antibacterial soap

If you only have the time to follow one link to information on this subject, I would recommend the Beyond Pesticides fact sheet, available as a PDF file .

... why do so many people keep using antimicrobial soap even with all the publicity stating that we should not? I think there are several reasons for this, but first and foremost is effective marketing by the makers of “antibacterial” soap. People are understandably concerned about the health and safety of themselves and their families and easily believe the hype that products containing antibiotics are better. In reality, the opposite may be the case. The antibiotic used in all these products has been claimed by the EPA to be contaminated by dioxins. The dioxins are formed during the antibiotic manufacturing process so can not be avoided in the final product. Additionally when triclosan, the antibiotic used in these products, combines with chlorinated tap water, a super dioxin is formed.

Another reason is availability. A recent study concluded that approximately 75% of the liquid soaps on the market are antibacterial. Until recently some large retailers only carried this type of liquid soap. In a previous post, I showed the text of a letter to Costco asking them to discontinue selling antibacterial soap. I believe they must have had others write them also because Costco is now offering liquid soap that is antibiotic free.

There has been an explosion of triclosan antibiotic use in all kinds of products. Take a look at this list to see some of its uses. Another problem caused by the explosion of antibacterial products is environmental. The antibiotic used, triclosan, causes all kinds of problems when washed down the drain. Even when this drain water is treated at whitewater treatment plants, triclosan is not removed. It is highly toxic to algae and is thought to have detrimental endocrine effects on fish .

It is obvious to me from my reading that using antibiotic soap does not make you any safer from dangerous germs. In fact the opposite is likely true. The products themselves possibly pose health dangers to you and the environment. Plus, as more and more germs breed resistance to antibiotics, the risk from untreatable infections rises. I urge everyone again… Please do not use antibacterial soap.

Palau pioneers 'shark sanctuary'

Palau is to create the world's first "shark sanctuary", banning all commercial shark fishing in its waters.

The President of the tiny Pacific republic, Johnson Toribiong, announced the sanctuary during Friday's session of the UN General Assembly.

With half of the world's oceanic sharks at risk of extinction, conservationists regard the move as "game-changing".

It will protect about 600,000 sq km (230,000 sq miles) of ocean, an area about the size of France.

President Toribiong also called for a global ban on shark-finning, the practice of removing the fins at sea.

As many as 100 million sharks are killed each year around the world.

"These creatures are being slaughtered and are perhaps at the brink of extinction unless we take positive action to protect them," said President Toribiong.

"Their physical beauty and strength, in my opinion, reflects the health of the oceans; they stand out," he told BBC News from UN headquarters in New York.

The president also called for an end to bottom-trawling, a fishing method that can destroy valuable seafloor ecosystems such as coral reefs.

Local benefits

A number of developed nations have implemented catch limits and restrictions on shark finning.

Some developing countries such as The Maldives have also taken measures to protect the creatures; but Palau's initiative takes things to a new level, according to conservationists close to the project.

...

"Palau has recognised how important sharks are to healthy marine environments," said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group.

"And they've decided to do what no other nation has done and declare their entire Exclusive Economic Zone a shark sanctuary.

"They are leading the world in shark conservation."

Mr Rand said that about 130 threatened species of shark frequented waters close to Palau and would be likely to gain from the initiative.

Although the country has only 20,000 inhabitants, its territory encompasses 200 scattered islands, which means that its territorial waters are much bigger than many nations a thousand times more populous....

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Palau pioneers 'shark sanctuary'.

New tunnel in Istanbul inadvertently unearths 1,000 year-old Byzantine ships

It's a common sight in the traffic-clogged streets of Istanbul, a city that straddles two continents.

... The "radical system" city planners embarked on five years ago involved construction of a new subway tunnel beneath the Bosphorus Strait, the spectacular body of water that cuts this city in two. By the year 2025, engineers predict more than one million people a day will use the tunnel to travel between Istanbul's Asian and European shores."We will connect two continents, Asia and Europe," said Nusret Ilbay, one of the many engineers working on the $3 billion Marmaray Tunnel Project. He was standing on scaffolding, overlooking a gaping 30-meter deep hole that will one day be a subway station on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. A concrete wall is all that holds back a churning river of sea water.

Watch video of the tunnel being constructed

"As you can see, some leakage on the wall face has been observed," Ilbay explained on a tour of the construction site. "In order to overcome these leakages, we have applied chemical grouting."

Legend has it, thousands of years ago Jason and the Argonauts narrowly escaped death sailing up the Bosphorus in search of the mythological Golden Fleece.

Today, engineers face equally daunting challenges building a tunnel beneath one of the world's busiest shipping channels, at depths of up to 55 meters, in an active earthquake zone. ...

First they dredged a trench on the bottom of the Bosphorus. Then, using divers and undersea cameras, they submerged and buried 11 massive pre-fabricated tunnel segments, almost all of them longer than a football field.

To enter the unfinished tunnel, visitors must climb down a steep staircase in a construction tower surrounded by water in the middle of the strait. During the descent, the temperature plummets and humidity rises.

Construction workers toil here in the gloom of this 1.4 kilometer long tube on the bottom of the sea, their welding torches spraying showers of sparks in the darkness.

One worker claimed that during the lunch break, when the machinery came to a stop, he could hear the sound of oil tanker and cargo ships' engines as they motored past in the waters overhead.

As a precaution in the event of a catastrophic flood in the tunnel, engineers constructed an emergency bunker on the bottom of the sea. Stocked with food and water and equipped with a heavy water-proof door, the "emergency room" is supposed to protect survivors for up to 10 days, until they can be rescued.

But, in their rush to modernize Istanbul's transport system, city planners ran into an unforeseen obstacle: history.

In Yenikapi, a neighborhood of textile factories and seedy hotels where one of the main transit stations for Istanbul's new subway and commuter rail system was to be built, archaeologists discovered the lost Byzantine port of Theodosius.

It was originally built at the end of the 4th century AD by Emperor Theodosius I when Istanbul -- then known as Constantinople -- was the capital of the eastern Roman Empire. The port's harbor silted over centuries ago, and eventually disappeared beneath subsequent layers of civilization. Until its rediscovery in 2004, archaeologists said they only knew about the port from ancient books.

"This was a big moment of joy and happiness for us, an unexplainable feeling," recalls Professor Zeynep Kiziltan, the acting director of Istanbul's Archaeology Museum

"At around one meter below sea level, we started finding the remains of ropes. As we continued [digging] a bit more, the remains of a boat surfaced."

Since that discovery, armies of hundreds of laborers and archaeologists have been working in a giant pit, three shifts a day, seven days a week. The scale of the excavation is unusual in modern-day archaeology, says Cemal Pulak, an anthropologist from Texas A&M University's nautical archaeology program.

"Its mind-boggling ... it really looks like an Indiana Jones-type operation," says Pulak, who has worked as a consultant on the excavation of the lost port.

The Yenikapi dig has uncovered an ancient armada: 34 Byzantine ships ranging from dating between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. In one tent, two workers carefully uncover the ancient wooden beams of a 40-meter long merchant vessel. A third man preserves the wood by keeping it moist, sprinkling the relics with water from a hose.

... Plans to travel beneath the Bosphorus have been delayed at least four years by the excavation of the Theodosious Port. The postponement has added untold millions of dollars have also been added to the cost of the entire project.

In the rush to move forward, the residents of Istanbul have accidentally uncovered a valuable piece of their city's ancient past.via Tunnel links continents, uncovers ancient history - CNN.com.

NASA's Spitzer Spots Clump Of Swirling Planetary Material

Image: This artist's conception shows a lump of material in a swirling, planet-forming disk. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Astronomers have witnessed odd behavior around a young star. Something, perhaps another star or a planet, appears to be pushing a clump of planet-forming material around. The observations, made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, offer a rare look into the early stages of planet formation.

Planets form out of swirling disks of gas and dust. Spitzer observed infrared light coming from one such disk around a young star, called LRLL 31, over a period of five months. To the astronomers' surprise, the light varied in unexpected ways, and in as little time as one week. Planets take millions of years to form, so it's rare to see anything change on time scales we humans can perceive.

One possible explanation is that a close companion to the star -- either a star or a developing planet -- could be shoving planet-forming material together, causing its thickness to vary as it spins around the star.

"We don't know if planets have formed, or will form, but we are gaining a better understanding of the properties and dynamics of the fine dust that could either become, or indirectly shape, a planet," said James Muzerolle of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Muzerolle is first author of a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This is a unique, real-time glimpse into the lengthy process of building planets."

via NASA's Spitzer Spots Clump Of Swirling Planetary Material.

Body's immune system response to dental plaque varies by gender and race

Will neglecting to brush your teeth damage more than just your smile? Can failing to attack dental plaque increase your risk of heart damage?

The answer to both questions may be yes if you are male and black, an Indiana University School of Dentistry study published in the current issue of the Journal of Dental Research reports.

The researchers, led by Michael Kowolik, B.D.S., Ph.D., professor of periodontics and associate dean for graduate education at the IU School of Dentistry on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, studied 128 black and white men and women and found that dental plaque accumulation did not result in a change in total white blood count, a known risk factor for adverse cardiac events. However, in black males the researchers noted a significant increase in the activity of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell and an essential part of the immune system.

Unlike most other studies that attempt to understand the link between oral inflammatory disease and heart disease risk, these study participants did not have periodontal disease. They were healthy individuals who by the study design were asked to neglect oral hygiene.

"We are talking about healthy people who simply neglect oral hygiene and if they were male and black, we found a response from their white blood cells, or neutrophils, that might be a cause for concern," said Dr. Kowolik.

"If you get a bacterial infection anywhere in the body, billions of neutrophils come flooding out of your bone marrow to defend against the intruder. Our observation that with poor dental hygiene white blood cell activity increased in black men but not black women or whites of either sex suggests both gender and racial differences in the inflammatory response to dental plaque. This finding could help us identify individuals at greater risk for infections anywhere in the body including those affecting the heart," he said.

Physicians have known for about a quarter of a century that one of the principal risk factors for a heart attack is an elevated white blood cell count. "While we did not observe higher white blood cell counts as the result of dental plaque accumulation, the increased activity of white blood cells, which we did find, may also carry a higher risk for heart disease," he added.

via Body's immune system response to dental plaque varies by gender and race.

I am filled with rage

I need some anger management.

As I clear out of my home, I find myself surprisingly angry.  Oh, I'm calm and  pleasant enough when talking to people, but rage is my true mental state this weekend.

There is something about selling all my stuff for pennies on the dollar on Craigslist, so I can fit into a small apartment after my failed home owning experiment, that is really pissing me off.

What do you do when you are incredibly angry?

I'm angry at the bank for talking me into a loan I could not afford, at the housing market for taking the biggest dive in history right after I bought my first home, and I'm angry at myself for biting off more loan than I could handle based on an overly optimistic view of the future.

Anger compounds.

Moving is hard. I fell down my stairs carrying a cabinet and damaged my knee.

Later I tore a muscle in my back and broke the desk that my ex got me in the process.

Damage to physical things sucks. Pain sucks.

Damage to my reputation hurts even more: I am incredibly ticked off at myself for screwing up something important that was totally unrelated to housing or relationships that I tried my best to get right ... which I had screwed up two times previously ... over the course of six months. My best effort was inadequate, and as a perfectionist, this REALLY gets my goat.

Then there is the leaking bleach container that just burned a nice  spot into my old dining room carpet. I hope the new owners like purple. Just an accident, I didn't know it was leaking! Damn. They already bought it, why should I care? Why should I spend so much time cleaning it? Because it is the right thing to do.

On top of all of this, the short sale, I'm told, could still fall through 4 days before the close of escrow because the 2nd loan was sold to another holder who is not aware that they hold the loan, thus, they can't acknowledge that they accept the short pay off.  Last little trick by the bank?

Ego. It must all be the fault of ego. Humility must be the answer.

Perhaps I would feel more humble if I took an old laptop out into the hills and shot it all to hell with an assortment of firearms while screaming, "DIE, DAMN YOU!! DIE!!!

Hmm.  This thought seems to help:

"No one can change the past. What did you learn? What will you do differently?"

That's it. Make the changes and drop it. Let it be.

More help for the angry over at the Angry People of America  (APA) dot org.

Mutations Make Evolution Irreversible

A University of Oregon research team has found that evolution can never go backwards, because the paths to the genes once present in our ancestors are forever blocked. The findings -- the result of the first rigorous study of reverse evolution at the molecular level -- appear in the Sept. 24 issue of Nature.

The team used computational reconstruction of ancestral gene sequences, DNA synthesis, protein engineering and X-ray crystallography to resurrect and manipulate the gene for a key hormone receptor as it existed in our earliest vertebrate ancestors more than 400 million years ago. They found that over a rapid period of time, five random mutations made subtle modifications in the protein's structure that were utterly incompatible with the receptor's primordial form.

The discovery of evolutionary bridge burning implies that today's versions of life on Earth may be neither ideal nor inevitable, said Joe Thornton, a professor in the UO's Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"Evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated by whether evolution can go backwards," Thornton said, "but the issue has remained unresolved because we seldom know exactly what features our ancestors had, or the mechanisms by which they evolved into their modern forms. We solved those problems by studying the problem at the molecular level, where we can resurrect ancestral proteins as they existed long ago and use molecular manipulations to dissect the evolutionary process in both forward and reverse directions."

via Mutations Make Evolution Irreversible: By Resurrecting Ancient Proteins, Researchers Find That Evolution Can Only Go Forward.

There is no such thing as "de-evolution" but traits that once existed to cope with a past environment can and will evolve again if the Earth's environment changes back to what it once was (low oxygen, for example.)

French find prehistoric animal worship site

French archaeologists have discovered the oldest known place of worship dedicated to the dugong, or sea cow, on an island just north of Dubai, two research centres said Thursday.

The sanctuary believed to date back to 3,500 to 3,200 years BC was discovered on Akab island in the United Arab Emirates, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Dubai.

The French archaeological mission in the Emirates and the Umm al-Quwain museum there said in the specialist magazine Antiquity that the sanctuary on the deserted island provided key details "on the rituals of prehistoric coastal societies in the Gulf."

Akab was a tuna fisherman's village more than 6,500 years ago with circular buildings and a pile of dugong bones detected in the 1990s.

The scientifically named "Dugong dugon" still exists in the Gulf, with adults growing up to four metres (12 feet) long and weighing up to 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds).

The sanctuary was first thought to be an abattoir but on analysis was found to be a carefully constructed platform on two levels containing the remains of around 40 dugongs as well as tools, stones and ornaments.

The archeologists said the Akab monument was used for rituals celebrating the giant mammal and "has no parallel in neolithic times in other parts of the world."

Similar structures have been found off the Australian coast but are only several hundred years old.

via French find prehistoric animal worship site - Yahoo! News.

How is it determined that the humans of that time were "worshiping" these animals?

White buck at home in the Forest

This buck could be the offspring of the white stag killed in 2007

I was saddened by the loss of our white stag in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, in 2007 and I thought I would never have the opportunity to see and photograph one of these magnificent beasts in our forest again.

However, this was until Tuesday, 22 September, 2009, when I found and photographed a young pure white buck, probably around four years old which could well be the offspring of our fallen giant.

In Pictures: Fallow deer in the Forest of Dean

Although not native to Britain, the fallow deer have been present since the Normans introduced them to our forests during the 11th Century.

via BBC - Gloucestershire - White buck at home in the Forest.

Four-winged dino may be missing link in bird debate

The stunning remains of a "four-winged" dinosaur have confirmed that birds owe their ancestry to two-footed dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago, the world's most famous fossil-hunter said.

Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing is staking the claim thanks to an astonishingly-preserved fossil of a bird-like dinosaur called Anchiornis huxleyi.

Until now, A. huxleyi was thought to be a primitive bird. It was presumed to have been a near-contemporary of Archaeopteryx, the first recognised bird, which flew around 150 million years ago.

But these opinions were based on an incomplete fossil.

The new, nearly-complete specimen gives a different picture, suggesting that A. huxleyi is millions of years older than Archaeopteryx and has both dinosaur and avian features.

It is the long-sought evidence that proves birds descended from theropod dinosaurs, argues Xu.

His team, whose work was announced late Thursday by the British journal Nature, describe a dinosaur with long feathers covering its arms, tail as well as its feet.

This is an arrangement that Xu says is "four-winged", although no guarantee that the creature had aerial ability. In contrast, its elongated lower legs suggest it was a good runner.

Some evolutionary biologists have suggested that a four-winged condition played a role in the origin of flight, but the idea is opposed by others.

The plumage attachment is especially important because it shows how bird-like dinosaurs developed skeletal and other features enabling them to have feathers, the paper says.

via Four-winged dino may be missing link in bird debate - Yahoo! News.

Exceptionally well preserved dinosaur fossils uncovered in north-eastern China display the earliest known feathers.

The creatures are all more than 150 million years old.

The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the "oldest bird" recognised by science.

Professor Xu Xing and colleagues tell the journal Nature that this represents the final proof that dinosaurs were ancestral to birds.

The theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs has always been troubled by the absence of feathers more ancient than those on the famous Archaeopteryx.

This has given critics room to question the idea.

But the new fossils, which come from two separate locations, are in most cases about 10 million years older than the primitive Archaeopteryx discovered in the late 19th Century.

One of the new dinosaur specimens, named Anchiornis huxleyi, is spectacular in its preservation.

It has extensive plumage covering its arms and tail, and also its feet - a "four-winged" arrangement, says Professor Xu from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing. ...

- via bbc

Bus CCTV could predict assaults

CCTV security systems could soon spot an assault on a bus before it happens, according to a major research project.

The system, part of which has already been tested in laboratory conditions, looks for suspicious behaviour associated with crime.

It would be able to send live CCTV pictures to operation rooms, from where controllers would be able to intervene.

The Queens University Belfast team say the software could make a significant impact on crime on transport.

Although much of the work is currently at the theoretical stage, the team from the university's newly-founded Centre for Secure Information Technologies predict that within five years their software will be able to profile people as they board a bus.

The system would then compare who it thinks these people are, and what they are doing, with more general data on the bus's location, time of day and historic crime rates.

Once it has sifted this data, it could be able to conclude whether someone is about to commit an assault and send live pictures to controllers.

Dr Paul Miller, head of the research project, said there were millions of CCTV cameras in the UK doing very little to fight crime.

"Their impact on anti-social behaviour and criminal behaviour is negligible - assaults on buses are a major problem and very little CCTV material is analysed in real-time," he said.

Dr Miller said the 15-strong team were still developing initial databases to identify an individual's gender and body shape.

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Bus CCTV could predict assaults.

Brilliant. And if the computer deems the person a sufficient threat, built in stun guns could zap them unconscious when they sit in the seat. If they do not sit, or if the person of a particular ethnicity reaches into his or her pocket to get some "gum", for example, the computer could decide to shoot them in the head, killing them instantly with swivel mounted guns which would be built in to several locations on the bus.  I feel so much safer.

G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon

US police spark outrage by using wartime acoustic weapon to disperse G20 protesters in Pittsburgh

Friday, 25 September 2009

Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.

Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents.

But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens yesterday to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time "sound cannon" had been used publicly.

The sonic weapon appear to be more effective than the Metropolitan police's highly contentious kettling tactics used against G20 protesters in London. But it is equally controversial.

It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

via UTV News - G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon.

Pittsburgh police on Thursday used an audio cannon manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATCO), a San Diego-based company, to disperse protesters outside the G-20 Summit -- the first time its LRAD series device has been used on civilians in the U.S.

An ATC sales representative confirms to DailyFinance that Pittsburgh police used ATC's Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). "Yes, we sold one LRAD unit to a government agency -- I don't know which one -- which was used in Pittsburgh," the representative said. American Technology Corp.'s stock was trading up over 15 percent in heavy activity late Friday.
ATC calls itself "a leading innovator of commercial, government, and military directed acoustics product offers" that offers "sound solutions for the commercial, government, and military markets."

Pittsburgh officials said yesterday they believe this to be the first use of a LRAD "sonic cannon" against civilians in U.S. history.

"The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up," The New York Times reported. For years, similar "non-lethal" products designed by ATC have been used at sea by cruise ships to ward off pirates.

"LRAD creates increased stand off and safety zones, supports resolution of uncertain situations, and potentially prevents the use of deadly force," ATC spokesperson Robert Putnam told DailyFinance. "We believe this is highly preferable to the real instances that happen almost every day around the world where officials use guns and other lethal and non-lethal weapons to disperse protesters."

Still, Putnam acknowledged the potential for physical harm. "If you stand right next to it for several minutes, you could have hearing damage," he said. "But it's your choice." He added that heavy-duty ear-phones can render the weapon less effective. - dailyfinance