Odds are 1-in-3 that a huge quake will hit Northwest in next 50 years

The major earthquakes that devastated Chile earlier this year and which triggered the catastrophic Indonesian tsunami of 2004 are more than just a distinct possibility to strike the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, scientists say.

There is more than a one-in-three chance that it will happen within the next 50 years.

New analyses by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger and his colleagues have provided fresh insights into the Northwest’s turbulent seismic history – where magnitude 8.2 (or higher) earthquakes have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years. Those earthquakes were thought to generally occur every 500 years, but as scientists delve more deeply into the offshore sediments and other evidence, they have discovered a great deal more complexity to the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

“What we’ve found is that Cascadia isn’t one big subduction zone when it comes to major earthquakes,” Goldfinger said. “It actually has several segments – at least four – and the earthquake activity is different depending on where a quake originates. The largest earthquakes occur in the north and usually rupture the entire fault. These are quakes of about magnitude-9 and they are just huge – but they don’t happen as frequently.

“At the southern end of the fault, the earthquakes tend to be a bit smaller, but more frequent,” he added. “These are still magnitude-8 or greater events, which is similar to what took place in Chile, so the potential for damage is quite real.”

Based on historical averages, Goldfinger says the southern end of the fault – from about Newport, Ore., to northern California – has a 37 percent chance of producing a major earthquake in the next 50 years. The odds that a mega-quake will hit the northern segment, from Seaside, Ore., to Vancouver Island in British Columbia, are more like 10 to 15 percent.

“Perhaps more striking than the probability numbers is that we can now say that we have already gone longer without an earthquake than 75 percent of the known times between earthquakes in the last 10,000 years,” Goldfinger said. “And 50 years from now, that number will rise to 85 percent.”

via Odds are 1-in-3 that a huge quake will hit Northwest in next 50 years | News and Communication Services | Oregon State University.

Earthquake Preparedness Checklist (EPC)* - Use this earthquake preparation checklist to help prepare you and your families for an earthquake.
Eliminate potential hazards in classrooms and throughout the site:

____ Bolt bookcases in high traffic areas securely to wall studs

____ Move heavy books and items from high to low shelves

____ Secure and latch filing cabinets

____ Secure cabinets in high traffic areas with child safety latches

____ Secure aquariums, computers, typewriters, TV-VCR equipment to surfaces, such as by using Velcro tabs

____ Make provisions for securing rolling portable items such asTV-VCRs, pianos, refrigerators

____ Move children's activities and play areas away from windows, or protect windows with blinds or adhesive plastic sheeting

____ Secure water heater to wall using plumber's tape

____ Assess and determine possible escape routes
Establish a coordinated response plan involving all of the following:
Involving children:

____ Teach children about earthquakes and what to do (see resource list below)

____ Practice "duck, cover, and hold" earthquake drills under tables or desks no less than 4 times a year
Involving parents:

____ Post, or make available to parents copies of the school earthquake safety plan (including procedures for reuniting parents or alternate guardians with children, location of planned evacuation site, method for leaving messages and communicating)

____ Enlist parent and community resource assistance in securing emergency supplies or safeguarding the child day care site:

____ store a 3-day supply of nonperishable food (including juice, canned food items, snacks, and infant formula)

____ store a 3-day supply of water and juice

____ store food and water in an accessible location, such as portable plastic storage containers

____ store other emergency supplies such as flashlights, a radio with extra batteries, heavy gloves, trash bags, and tools

____ maintain a complete, up-to-date listing of children, emergency numbers, and contact people for each classroom stored with emergency supplies
Involving child day care personnel and local emergency agencies:

____ Identify and assign individual responsibilities for staff following an earthquake (including accounting for and evacuating children, injury control, damage assessment)

____ Involve and train all staff members about the earthquake safety plan, including location and procedure for turning off utilities and gas

____ Contact nearby agencies (including police, fire, Red Cross, and local government) for information and materials in developing the child day care center earthquake safety plan
*For more free resources contact: (1) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (2) Office of Emergency Services (OES) (3) Red Cross

- iprepare

Research on self-healing concrete yields cost-effective system to extend life of structures

Efforts to extend the life of structures and reduce repair costs have led engineers to develop "smart materials" that have self-healing properties, but many of these new materials are difficult to commercialize. A new self-healing concrete developed and tested by a graduate student at the University of Rhode Island, however, may prove to be cost-effective.

Michelle Pelletier, a URI master's degree candidate from Woonsocket, embedded a microencapsulated sodium silicate healing agent directly into a concrete matrix. When tiny stress cracks begin to form in the concrete, the capsules rupture and release the healing agent into the adjacent areas.

The sodium silicate reacts with the calcium hydroxide naturally present in the concrete to form a calcium-silica-hydrate product to heal the cracks and block the pores in the concrete. The chemical reaction creates a gel-like material that hardens in about one week.

"Smart materials usually have an environmental trigger that causes the healing to occur," explained Pelletier, who is collaborating on the project with URI Chemical Engineering Professor Arijit Bose. "What's special about our material is that it can have a localized and targeted release of the healing agent only in the areas that really need it."

In tests comparing a standard concrete mix to concrete containing two percent sodium silicate healing agent, Pelletier's healing mix recovered 26 percent of its original strength (after being stressed to near breaking) versus just 10 percent recovery by the standard mix. The URI student said that an increase in the quantity of healing agent would likely further improve the recovered strength of the concrete.

"Self-healing concrete is a big research field right now," she said. "But many of the approaches being taken by other researchers have not ended up being economically feasible for commercial production."

Pelletier noted that some researchers have laced the concrete with bacteria spores that secrete calcium carbonate to fill the cracks and pores, while others embedded glass capillaries with a healing agent, but the process of filling the capillaries with the agent is long and tedious.

Next up for Pelletier is a study to see if her sodium silicate healing agent could also act as a corrosion inhibitor.

"Building concrete is routinely fixed with steel reinforcement bars to compensate for low tensile strength, but they are extremely susceptible to corrosion," Pelletier said. "We are exploring if the release of the agent will result in corrosion inhibition by two mechanisms. First, the reduced water transport due to the filled pores and reduced interconnectivity within the matrix may result in less moisture reaching the metal and ultimately less corrosion. Also, silicates can deposit on the surface to form a protective film which may also help with reducing the corrosion rate of the steel rebars."

One additional advantage to the use of self-healing concrete is that it could reduce the significant CO2 emissions that result from concrete production. Because the production of concrete is very energy intensive – when mining, transportation and concrete plants are considered – the industry is responsible for about 10 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States.

"If self-healing concrete can lengthen the life of the concrete and reduce maintenance and repairs, it will ultimately reduce the production of excess amounts of concrete and result in a decrease in CO2 emissions," she said.

via Research on self-healing concrete yields cost-effective system to extend life of structures.

Medicine's secret archives

No one knows how many mothers' and babies' lives have been saved by the obstetrical forceps. This device has been part of the standard equipment of every maternity room for about 250 years. However, a shadow lies over the success story: after the Chamberlen brothers developed the device at the beginning of the 17th century, the brothers and their descendants used it for 3 generations, but kept it a secret from other obstetricians. While thanks to the forceps the Chamberlen family became rich and famous, at the same time women and babies were still dying elsewhere because the device was not available.

The story of the obstetrical forceps is one of the oldest documented examples showing what consequences secrecy in medicine can have. In an article published in the journal Trials, researchers at the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) compiled over 60 examples illustrating how the dissemination of medical knowledge has been impeded. For this purpose, they assessed hundreds of articles from journals and other sources, which covered areas including treatment for psychiatric disorders, pain, heart and circulatory disease, skin disease, cancer, and infectious diseases. A wide range of interventions was affected: from drugs and vaccines to medical devices such as ultrasound or devices for wound care. The collection reads like the script for a crime series.

Concealment is common



In science the phenomenon is called "publication bias", i.e. bias through selective publication. This occurs on two levels: On the first level complete studies remain unpublished. For example, an analysis of 90 drugs that had been newly approved in the US showed that they had been tested in a total of 900 trials. However, even 5 years after approval, 60% of these studies were unpublished. On the second level only selected outcomes from studies are published. Nowadays researchers have to specify in a study protocol which outcomes they want to measure and how they are going to analyse them. Comparisons of protocols and journal articles of studies showed that in 40% to 60% of studies, results had either been completely omitted or analyses changed. "In this way study results are often presented in a more positive way than is actually the case," says Beate Wieseler, Deputy Head of IQWiG's Drug Assessment Department.

This does not only affect studies sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. In their paper, the IQWiG authors also cite an analysis in which 2000 studies on cancer topics were analysed according to sponsorship. The proportion of published studies was extremely low: of the industry-sponsored studies, 94% were unpublished; however, even 86% of university-sponsored studies were also unpublished. "Due to legal regulations, regulatory authorities are also sometimes obliged to withhold data," says Thomas Kaiser, Head of the Drug Assessment Department.

Patients are harmed



The concealment of knowledge often has consequences for patients. On the one hand, it can result in delays to the implementation and dissemination of beneficial interventions (as was the case with the obstetrical forceps). However, it is more common that bad news and reports of failure remain unpublished. "As a result, physicians and patients use treatments that are actually futile or even harmful," says Beate Wieseler. For example, researchers estimate that drugs prescribed in the 1980s to prevent irregular heart beat cost tens of thousands of lives, because early signs of dangerous adverse effects were not published.

Appeals are insufficient



IQWiG's search for documented examples of publication bias was triggered by the Institute's own experience in its daily work, as was recently the case, for example, in the assessment of reboxetine, a drug used to treat depression: the pharmaceutical company Pfizer only provided previously concealed studies to IQWiG after subjection to public pressure. In the previously unpublished studies, the results for reboxetine were considerably worse than appeared to be the case in published studies. "For many years, not only patients but also physicians have been deceived," says Beate Wieseler.

The collection of examples published in Trials shows that the tendency to conceal unfavourable results or results that do not fulfil one's own expectations is so widespread that appeals and proposals for voluntary solutions will not be able to solve the problem effectively. "The increasing registration of studies in public registries is an important first step," says Thomas Kaiser. "However, in order to protect patients, we need legal regulations, so that results of all clinical trials are published swiftly and completely."

via Medicine's secret archives.

Newly Discovered Gene Variants Lead to Autism and Mental Retardation

Researchers working with Professor Gudrun Rappold, Director of the Department of Molecular Human Genetics at Heidelberg University Hospital, have discovered previously unknown mutations in autistic and mentally impaired patients in what is known as the SHANK2 gene, a gene that is partially responsible for linking nerve cells. However, a single gene mutation is not always enough to trigger the illness. In some cases, a certain threshold of mutation must be exceeded. The researchers conclude from their results that a correct inner structure of the nerve cell synapses is necessary to enable the normal development of language, social competence, and cognitive capacity. Essential for the success of the project were the studies by the Heidelberg research team with the doctoral student Simone Berkel and collaboration with a Canadian research team headed by Steve Scherer. The study has already been published online in the leading scientific journal “Nature Genetics”.

Autism is a congenital perception and information-processing disorder of the brain that is often associated with low intelligence, but also with above-average intelligence. The disease is characterized by limited social communication and stereotypical or ritualized behavior. Men are affected much more frequently than women. Autism and mental retardation can occur together but also independently of one another and are determined to a great extent by hereditary factors. Some of the responsible genes have already been identified but the precise genetic mechanisms have not yet been explained.

via UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg: Newly Discovered Gene Variants Lead to Autism and Mental Retardation.

Amityville Horror house for sale

The house made famous in the 1979 film The Amityville Horror is up for sale in New York - ghosts not included.

The five-bedroom Dutch Colonial went on the market yesterday for $1.15 million (£800,000).

In 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were shot dead as they slept in the house. The eldest son, Ronald DeFeo, called police to report the slayings. He was convicted of the murders aged 23.

When he confessed, he told detectives:  'Once I started, I just couldn’t stop. It went so fast.'

George and Kathleen Lutz purchased the house after the murders, thinking it would be their dream home.

But the dream quickly turned to nightmare as a supernatural horror appeared to haunt the house. After just 28 terrifying days they fled for their lives.


According to Jay Anson's book the house at 112 Ocean Avenue remained empty for thirteen months after the DeFeo murders.

In December 1975, the Mr and Mrs Lutz bought the house for what was considered to be a bargain price of $80,000.

The six-bedroom house was built in Dutch Colonial style, and had a distinctive gambrel roof.

It also had a swimming pool and a boathouse, as it was located on a canal.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1281233/Amityville-Horror-house-sale.html#ixzz0oxbItyEo

Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?

The rapid decline of mammoths and other megafauna after humans spread across the New World may explain a bone-chilling plunge in global temperatures some 12,800 years ago, researchers reported Sunday.

The 100-odd species of grass-eating giants that once crowded the North American landscape released huge quantities of methane -- from both ends of their digestive tracks.

As a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).

It was not enough to trigger runaway global warming. But when all that gaseous output suddenly tapered off, it caused or at least contributed to a prolonged freeze known as the Younger Dryas cold event, they argue.

If so, the "Anthropocene epoch" -- the era of major human impacts on Earth's climate system -- began not with the industrial revolution in the 1800s, but the large-scale influx of two-legged predators to the Americas more than 13,000 years earlier.

Calculations by a trio of researchers led by Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico, published in Nature, show how all the pieces of this previously unsolved puzzle might fit together.

Extrapolating from data on cows and other modern-day ruminants, the scientists estimated the total methane output of pre-historic megafauna at nearly 10 trillion grams per year.

At the same time, ice-core samples reveal that an abrupt drop in atmospheric methane levels of 180 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) coincides with both the virtual extinction of these gas-gushing herbivores and the onset of the deep chill that followed.

Greenland ice cores from other periods show that a reduction in methane levels of 20 ppbv corresponds to a reduction in temperature of roughly 1.0 degrees Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

That would add up to a decrease of 9.0 to 12.0 C (16 to 22 F), a near-perfect match with the Younger Dryas cold snap.

"We find that the loss of megafauna could explain 12.5 to 100 percent of the atmospheric decrease in methane observed," the researchers said. ...

via Did megafauna extinction cool the planet?.

NYC Sidewalk Gag

The old phrase "What goes around comes around" is a fairly accepted axiom, but it doesn't always work for pranks -- or for the pranksters.

Recently, an anonymous prankster in New York City decided to express distaste for slow tourists who dawdle on sidewalks by painting a line down the middle of a Fifth Avenue sidewalk between East 22nd and 23rd streets.The result was two lanes of traffic, one marked specifically for locals who need to get somewhere in a New York minute and the other for slowpoke tourists obviously overwhelmed by the bright lights and tall buildings of the Big Apple.

If the pedestrian prank's purpose was to get publicity, it did the trick. Local and national publications ran photos of the sidewalk, and, presumably, readers got a good chuckle.

But one person isn't laughing: a man who came up with a similar prank back in 1984 and feels credit should be given where it's due -- to him.

He's media satirist and conceptual artist Joey Skaggs, who has a 40-year career creating media pranks that are designed to satirize the culture and the laziness of the media at covering big issues of the day.

via Joey Skaggs Unimpressed by NYC Sidewalk Gag - AOL News.

Mystery of the constantly-draining jacuzzi solved as elephant is caught on camera DRINKING it

Staff at the safari park were baffled by the mystery of the disappearing whirlpool bath.

Every morning they filled the open-air bath outside one of the guest lodges, and every night it was empty - even though no leak could be found.

It was only when a guest heard a mighty slurping and went outside with a camera that the culprit was discovered in the shape of Troublesome the elephant.

The elephant - nicknamed 'Troublesome' - is well known to rangers at the reserve for her inquisitive nature.

But no-one realised she was behind the 'leak' at the Jacuzzi-style hot tub outside one of the £400-a-night lodges.

Susan Potgieter, owner of Etali Safari Lodge, in North West Province, South Africa, said elephants could drink more than 200 litres of water a day so drinking a whole whirlpool bath was no problem.

She said: 'When I first saw the photograph of her drinking I couldn't believe it. And then it dawned on me of course an elephant was drinking it.

'It was something of a relief because we had been trying to work out why the pool had been draining so quickly for weeks but couldn't find a leak anywhere.

via Mystery of the constantly-draining jacuzzi solved as elephant is caught on camera DRINKING it | Mail Online.

Photo may show moose not seen in 50 years

Is this a moose on the loose?

Otago moose hunter Ken Tustin thinks he may have snapped a photograph of a juvenile moose in southwestern Fiordland.

The hulking animals have not been officially spotted in New Zealand for more than 50 years.

The photograph was taken on March 7 in an area of Fiordland known as Herrick creek, Mr Tustin said.

It was snapped automatically by one of 13 cameras he had set up in the area.

When he retrieved the images a few days ago, he waded through thousands that showed only deer.

"But there was one photo that was strikingly different and it had me sitting back with my hair on end."

The first sign it was different was the "horse-shaped face", which contrasted with the dog-shaped face of a deer, he said.

But the photo did not show enough detail to be sure, and he suspected it might actually be a deer, he said.

"I think this will always be a 'maybe'."

It could not be a half-moose, half-deer because the two species did not interbreed, he said.

Most people regarded the last official sighting of a moose to have been from 1952, but he had documented several more sightings since then in his history of the species in New Zealand, he said.

Mr Tustin said his "absorbing, compelling interest" in all things moose had begun during a stint working as a scientist in Fiordland.

He estimated a population of 20 moose could be wandering around the area – though that was a "total guess".

via Photo may show moose not seen in 50 years | Stuff.co.nz.

Upside-Down Crops Are Growing in Popularity

IF pests and blight are wrecking your plants, it might be time to turn your garden on its head.

Growing crops that dangle upside down from homemade or commercially available planters is growing more popular, and its adherents swear they’ll never come back down to earth.

“I’m totally converted,” said Mark McAlpine, a body piercer in Guelph, Ontario, who began growing tomatoes upside down two years ago because cutworms were ravaging the ones he planted in the ground. He made six planters out of five-gallon plastic buckets, some bought at the Home Depot and some salvaged from the trash of a local winemaker. He cut a two-inch hole in the bottom of each bucket and threaded a tomato seedling down through the opening, packing strips of newspaper around the root ball to keep it in place and to prevent dirt from falling out.

He then filled the buckets with soil mixed with compost and hung them on sturdy steel hooks bolted to the railing of his backyard deck. “Last summer was really hot so it wasn’t the best crop, but I still was able to jar enough whole tomatoes, half tomatoes, salsa and tomato sauce to last me through the winter,” said Mr. McAlpine, who plans an additional six upside-down planters this year.

via In the Garden - Upside-Down Crops Are Growing in Popularity - NYTimes.com.

Seven atom transistor sets the pace for future PCs

Researchers have shown off a transistor made from just seven atoms that could be used to create smaller, more powerful computers.

Transistors are tiny switches used as the building blocks of silicon chips.

If the new atomic transistor can be made in large numbers it could mean chips with components up to 100 times smaller than on existing processors.

The Australian creators of the transistor hope it is also a step towards a solid-state quantum computer.

The transistor is not the smallest ever created as two research groups have previously managed to produce working single-atom transistors.

However, the device is many times smaller than the components found in chips in contemporary computers. On chips where components are 22 nanometres in size, transistor gates are about 42 atoms across.

The working transistor was created by replacing seven atoms in a silicon crystal with phosphorus atoms.

"Now we have just demonstrated the world's first electronic device in silicon systematically created on the scale of individual atoms," said Professor Michelle Simmons, lead researcher on the project at the University of New South Wales.

Moore's Law predicts that the amount of memory that can fit on a given area of silicon, for a fixed cost doubles every 12-18 months. The limit of this prediction is being tested as components get ever smaller and their computationally useful properties become less reliable.

If an entire chip could be made with every one of its billions of transistors made from the silicon crystals, it could mean an "exponential" leap in processing power, said Professor Simmons.

The researchers are a long way from a commercial process because the tiny transistor they created was handmade. The team used a scanning tunnelling microscope to move the phosphorus atoms into place.

The work on the tiny transistor is being carried out as part of a larger project to create a quantum computer.

The research team revealed their results in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

via BBC News - Seven atom transistor sets the pace for future PCs.

Crop circle contains encoded math formula

When I saw the Wilton Windmill crop circle, reported on 22nd May, I was immediately struck by the possibility of a message encoded in 8-bit binary.

After transcribing the binary digits from Lucy Pringle's photo (the photo here is by Steve Alexander), I duly translated each byte into its corresponding ASCII character, starting from the windmill and working clockwise.

The result was this:

e^(hi)pi)1=0

It looked like some kind of equation, and when I looked it up, Google asked if I meant: e^(i)pi)1=0, for which the top result was Euler's identity: e^iπ+1=0. This has been called "the most beautiful theorem in mathematics". No surprise that it should turn up in a crop circle then!

Now, I'm not much of a mathematician, so I don't know anything about the odd way of writing the formula as expressed in the crop circle, and in Google, but I assumed that, for the circle-maker, it was a handy way to get around the limitations of ASCII text.

One thing bothered me though, and that was the inclusion of the anomalous 'h' in the message/formula. Certainly it made up the number of characters to twelve, which would make the crop circle easier to produce on the ground and more windmill-like, as well as referencing a highly symbolic number. Also, with the adjacent 'i', it makes 'hi' - an embedded message from the maker?

It was only when James Gilliland suggested in this Facebook thread that 'h' could be a reference to the Planck constant, that I realised what could be the full meaning of the embedded message.

Could it be a subtle joke on all the croppies who might pronounce this a 'genuine' crop circle as opposed to a circle made with a plank?!

This animated explanation of the 2010 Wilton Windmill crop circle design that I put together should make everything clear!

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

Do you "leave your body" under stress?

In times of stress, and embarrassingly, when I am supposed so speak in public, I sometimes have a strange problem.  I used to think that I get "self conscious", but today I discovered that this is not the right word for what happens.  I dissociate. From what I've read, mine is a fairly mild case... but still disturbing.  Once you do it once, fear of it happening again makes it worse.

What happens is I flip into observer mode and can't speak. Like everyone else, I'm looking at and listening to myself from the outside expecting me to speak, but my brain is observing, not doing. This causes a panic experience because I realize I need to get in there and think and speak, but you can't panic and think at the same time. I can't be in that mode and also thinking and interacting like a normal person. Annoying.

I don't recall any childhood abuse and have no reason to suspect it, but I was in a horrible car accident as a teenager and I did have a traumatic blank out while acting in a high school play.

Is there a doctor in the house? Is there a cure for this?

Dissociation is a partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning. Dissociation can be a response to trauma or drugs and perhaps allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time. Dissociative disruptions can affect any aspect of a person’s functioning. ...

The DSM-IV considers symptoms such as depersonalization, derealization and psychogenic amnesia to be core features of dissociative disorders. However, in the normal population dissociative experiences that are not clinically significant are highly prevalent, with 60% to 65% of the respondents indicating that they have had some dissociative experiences. ...

Symptoms of dissociation resulting from trauma may include depersonalization, psychological numbing, disengagement, or amnesia regarding the events of the abuse. It has been hypothesized that dissociation may provide a temporarily effective defense mechanism in cases of severe trauma; however, in the long term, dissociation is associated with decreased psychological functioning and adjustment.

Child abuse, especially chronic abuse starting at early ages, has been related to high levels of dissociative symptoms in a clinical sample, including amnesia for abuse memories. ... - wikipedia

Here is somewhat good news from alt.support.dissociation:

Treatment has two goals: firstly, to allow the normal functioning of 
a highly dissociative person, and secondly, to treat the underlying cause 
of dissociation.  These goals are generally interconnected and are dealt
with simultaneously.

Since most dissociative disorders result from extreme stress and/or
trauma, and are also exacerbated for that stress, teaching the highly
dissociative person to deal with stress is one method of treatment.
Learning to work around one's stress would seem to be essential in
reaching a plateau of functionality.

For deep-rooted trauma, hypnosis is often used to aid in the recall,
examination of, and transcendence of the past trauma.  Dealing with the
memories of abuse, for instance, is vital in the recovery process.

Regardless of the course of treatment, it is usually long-term, taking
several years to achieve what the therapist considers normality.
However, once the dissociative person enters treatment for their
dissociation (as opposed to any associated disorders they may have),
treatment is almost always successful.

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dissoc-faq/part2/#ixzz0otwUm9lU

24 Miles Of Louisiana Is Destroyed: “Everything In It Is Dead”

After the BP oil spill last month, BP speculated that the damage was minimal, relatively speaking.

via FreakOutNation » 24 Miles Of Louisiana Is Destroyed: “Everything In It Is Dead”.

Well Hello, Cynthia. First Man-Made Cell!

Today’s Wall St. Journal carries an amazing piece about what can almost be termed “the creation of life”. Craig Venter, whose work greatly accelerated the human genome project, and his Center have come up with the following remarkable breakthrough: a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions. Scientists call the cell “Cynthia” (Synthetic Cell), following the nickname Dolly given to the first cloned sheep.

Here is what the Venter scientists discovered:

“We call it the first synthetic cell,” said genomics pioneer Craig Venter, who oversaw the project. “These are very much real cells.” Created at a cost of $40 million, this experimental one-cell organism, which can reproduce, opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said. Scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for a generation, producing a menagerie of genetically engineered plants and animals. But the ability to craft an entire organism offers a new power over life, they said. The new cell, a bacterium, was conceived solely as a demonstration project. But several biologists said they believed that the laboratory technique used to birth it would soon be applied to other strains of bacteria with commercial potential. ”I think this quickly will be applied to all the most important industrial bacteria,” said biologist Christopher Voigt at the University of California, San Francisco, who is developing microbes that help make gasoline. Several companies are already seeking to take advantage of the new field, called synthetic biology, which combines chemistry, computer science, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology to breed industrial life forms that can secrete fuels, vaccines or other commercial products.

Venter said he intends to patent the device, because “it is a human invention”. His Center funded the research, with a private investment of $30 m.

via Hello, Cynthia! First Man-Made Cell! « TIMnovate.

Builder fends off Komodo dragon by punching it in nose

An Indonesian worker freed himself from an attacking Komodo dragon by punching the reptile's snout until it released him and ran away, a national park official.

Agustinus Jenaru, 20, was working inside an unfinished wooden bungalow on Rinca island when the 6ft 5ins (2m) lizard entered and bit onto his left hand on Saturday, said Komodo National Park official Daniel Bolu Ngongo.

Jenaru hit the jaws of the giant lizard for several seconds until it freed him. Jenaru was taken to a clinic for treatment of lacerations and a puncture wound.

Komodo dragons can be found in the wild only on the eastern Indonesian islands of Komodo, Padar and Rinca. The lizards - thought to number fewer than 4,000 - can grow longer than 10ft (3m) and weigh 150lbs (70kg).

Jenaru was the second victim bit by a giant lizard this year.

In 2007, an eight-year-old boy was killed by one of the lizards on Komodo Island.

via Builder fends off Komodo dragon by punching it in nose - Telegraph.

Hubble spots a planet-eating star

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured evidence of a Sun-like star "eating" a nearby planet.

Astronomers knew that stars were capable of swallowing planets in orbit around them, but this is the first time the event has been "seen" so clearly.

Although the planet was too far away for Hubble to photograph, scientists have created an image of it, based on analysis of the telescope's data.

The discovery was published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers say the planet, which is called Wasp-12b, may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

It is so close to its star that it completes an orbit in 1.1 Earth days and is superheated to more than 1,500C.

Because of this proximity, the planet's atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times the radius of Jupiter and is spilling material on to the star.

Carole Haswell from the UK's Open University led the research team. She explained: "We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star."

Hubble's detection of the cloud enabled scientists to draw conclusions about how it was generated.

Dr Haswell said: "We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own Solar System."

Wasp-12 is a dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga.

The exoplanet was first discovered by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (Wasp) in 2008.

via BBC News - Hubble spots a planet-eating star.

The sun is a giant eye, the sun is a giant mouth.

After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all

Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.

The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language
left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.

That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.

Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends.

One thing's for sure: by delaying publication, the author, who was fond of his celebrity status, has ensured that he'll be gossiped about during the 21st century. A section of the memoir
will detail his little-known but scandalous relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife Olivia in 1904. Twain was so close to Lyon that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy. But she was abruptly sacked in 1909, after the author claimed she had "hypnotised" him into giving her power of attorney over his estate.

Their ill-fated relationship will be recounted in full in a 400-page addendum, which Twain wrote during the last year of his life. It provides a remarkable account of how the dying novelist's final months were overshadowed by personal upheavals.

"Most people think Mark Twain was a sort of genteel Victorian. Well, in this document he calls her a slut and says she tried to seduce him. It's completely at odds with the impression most people have of him," says the historian Laura Trombley, who this year published a book about Lyon called Mark Twain's Other Woman.

"There is a perception that Twain spent his final years basking in the adoration of fans. The autobiography will perhaps show that it wasn't such a happy time. He spent six months of the last year of his life writing a manuscript full of vitriol, saying things that he'd never said about anyone in print before. It really is 400 pages of bile."

Twain, who was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, had made several attempts to start work on autobiography, beginning in 1870, but only really hit his stride with the work in 1906, when he appointed a stenographer to transcribe his dictated reminiscences.

Another potential motivation for leaving the book to be posthumously published concerns Twain's legacy as a Great American. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image.

"He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel.  ...

via After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all - News, Books - The Independent.

Sex-mad OAP placed under house arrest by family

AN 81-year-old granddad has been put under house arrest by his family after a bizarre accident turned him into a sex addict.

Frail Angelo De Luca was in a coma for four days after he fell out of a plum tree at the family home in Biasca, Switzerland.

But coming round from an operation his family were horrified to watch their devoted widower dad turn into a randy teenager again.

Sex mad Angelo blew £3,000 of his savings in one session at a local brothel after falling head over heels for a hooker young enough to be his granddaughter.

"Since my wife died a year ago, Leona has been there for me. It's not only that she's good in bed. She gives me new life force and courage. She is my friend, my only confidant," he said.

But his son Daniele has taken control of his dad's two houses and bank accounts after judges ruled that his sex addiction made him unfit to govern his own affairs.

"That woman preyed upon my father like he was a Christmas goose," he said.

Now the family are suing the hospital for medical negligence.

"My father broke seven ribs and his lungs were pierced in the fall. He had to wait for three weeks for surgery.

"He had severe pain and the nurse gave him morphine, maybe too much. My father fell into a coma for four days. That must have wiped out a brain function. The one that inhibits the sex drive," he added.

But hospital chiefs deny any medical blunder. Director Michele Morisoli said:"Our staff acted to the best of their knowledge and conscience."

via Sex-mad OAP placed under house arrest by family | The Sun |News.

Columbia's Antanas Mockus hopes his Super Citizen past will help make him president

Just like Superman, he swore to use his powers to vanquish wrong-doing and benefit humanity. Yet when Antanas Mockus was elected mayor of Colombia's crime-ridden capital, Bogota, he took the comparison literally - appearing in a spandex suit and cloak with his chest emblazoned with a giant "S" for Supercitizen.

His intention, he said, was to inspire the city's residents to fight to improve their lives and environment. And, much like Ken Livingstone with his newts and Boris Johnson with his bicycling, bumbling ways, Mr Mockus has proved that eccentricity need not be a barrier to the higher echelons of politics.

The former maths professor, 58, is now running for president - and has emerged as the front-running candidate ahead of the first round of the Columbian election on May 30.

In an electoral campaign that has electrified the South American nation, last week he surged in the polls to overtake his staider rivals - most notably the former defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who had been viewed as the shoo-in heir to Alvaro Uribe, the pro-Washington incumbent who is about to step down. "Prepare for success, but prepare for the problems," Mr Mockus told an election rally on Friday afternoon.

While both Mr Uribe and Mr Santos have earned credit for standing up to the country's Marxist rebel movements, drug producers and kidnap gangs, they have also been tarred by alleged human rights abuses, links between lawmakers and right-wing militia gangs, and illegal wiretaps of opposition leaders.

Mr Mockus, who is running for the Colombian Green Party, has capitalised on growing disquiet about some of Mr Uribe's tactics, promising to clean up the country's notoriously dirty politics and provide a refreshing, if unorthodox, break from the political cliques that have prevailed for decades.

via Columbia's Antanas Mockus hopes his Super Citizen past will help make him president - Telegraph.