Potentially hazardous asteroid might collide with the Earth in 2182

"The total impact probability of asteroid '(101955) 1999 RQ36' can be estimated in 0.00092 –approximately one-in-a-thousand chance-, but what is most surprising is that over half of this chance (0.00054) corresponds to 2182," explains to SINC María Eugenia Sansaturio, co-author of the study and researcher of Universidad de Valladolid (UVA). The research also involved scientists from the University of Pisa (Italy), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (USA) and INAF-IASF-Rome (Italy).

Scientists have estimated and monitored the potential impacts for this asteroid through 2200 by means of two mathematical models (Monte Carlo Method and line of variations sampling). Thus, the so called Virtual Impactors (VIs) have been searched. VIs are sets of statistical uncertainty leading to collisions with the Earth on different dates of the XXII century. Two VIs appear in 2182 with more than half the chance of impact.

Asteroid '(101955) 1999 RQ36' is part of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA), which have the possibility of hitting the Earth due to the closeness of their orbits, and they may cause damages. This PHA was discovered in 1999 and has around 560 meters in diameter.

The Yarkovsky effect

In practice, its orbit is well determined thanks to 290 optical observations and 13 radar measurements, but there is a significant "orbital uncertainty" because, besides gravity, its path is influenced by the Yarkovsky effect. Such disturbance slightly modifies the orbits of the Solar System's small objects because, when rotating, they radiate from one side the radiation they take from the sun through the other side.

The research, which has been published in Icarus journal, predicts what could happen in the upcoming years considering this effect. Up to 2060, divergence of the impacting orbits is moderate; between 2060 and 2080 it increases 4 orders of magnitude because the asteroid will approach the Earth in those years; then, it increases again on a slight basis until another approach in 2162, it then decreases, and 2182 is the most likely year for the collision.

"The consequence of this complex dynamic is not just the likelihood of a comparatively large impact, but also that a realistic deflection procedure (path deviation) could only be made before the impact in 2080, and more easily, before 2060," stands out Sansaturio.

The scientist concludes: "If this object had been discovered after 2080, the deflection would require a technology that is not currently available. Therefore, this example suggests that impact monitoring, which up to date does not cover more than 80 or 100 years, may need to encompass more than one century. Thus, the efforts to deviate this type of objects could be conducted with moderate resources, from a technological and financial point of view."

via Potentially hazardous asteroid might collide with the Earth in 2182.

Findings show promise for nuclear fusion test reactors

Researchers have discovered mechanisms critical to interactions between hot plasma and surfaces facing the plasma inside a thermonuclear fusion reactor, part of work aimed at developing coatings capable of withstanding the grueling conditions inside the reactors.

Fusion powers the stars and could lead to a limitless supply of clean energy. A fusion power plant would produce 10 times more energy than a conventional nuclear fission reactor, and because the deuterium fuel is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor's fuel supply would be virtually inexhaustible.

Research at Purdue University focuses on the "plasma-material interface," a crucial region where the inner lining of a fusion reactor comes into contact with the extreme heat of the plasma. Nuclear and materials engineers are harnessing nanotechnology to define tiny features in the coating in work aimed at creating new "plasma-facing" materials tolerant to radiation damage, said Jean Paul Allain, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering.

One lining being considered uses lithium, which is applied to the inner graphite wall of the reactor and diffuses into the graphite, creating an entirely new material called lithiated graphite. The lithiated graphite binds to deuterium atoms in fuel inside fusion reactors known as tokamaks. The machines house a magnetic field to confine a donut-shaped plasma of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.

During a fusion reaction, some of the deuterium atoms strike the inner walls of the reactor and are either "pumped," causing them to bind with the lithiated graphite, or returned to the core and recycled back to the plasma. This process can be "tuned" by these liners to control how much deuterium fuel is retained.

"We now have an understanding of how the lithiated graphite controls the recycling of hydrogen," Allain said. "This is the first time that anyone has looked systematically at the chemistry and physics of pumping by the lithiated graphite. We are learning, at the atomic level, exactly how it is pumped and what dictates the binding of deuterium in this lithiated graphite. So we now have improved insight on how to recondition the surfaces of the tokamak." ...

via Purdue Newsroom — Findings show promise for nuclear fusion test reactors.

More accurate than Heisenberg allows?

A quantum particle is hard to grasp, because one cannot determine all its properties precisely at the same time. Measurements of certain parameter pairs such as position and momentum remain inaccurate to a degree given by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This is important for the security of quantum cryptography, where information is transmitted in the form of quantum states such as the polarization of particles of light. A group of scientists from LMU and the ETH in Zurich, including Professor Matthias Christandl, has now shown that position and momentum can be predicted more precisely than Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle would lead one to expect, if the recipient makes use of a quantum memory that employs ions or atoms. The results show that the magnitude of the uncertainty depends on the degree of correlation ("entanglement") between the quantum memory and the quantum particle. "The result not only enhances our understanding of quantum memories, it also provides us with a method for determining the degree of correlation between two quantum particles", says Christandl. "Moreover, the effect we have observed could yield a means of testing the security of quantum cryptographic systems." (Nature Physics online, July 25, 2010)

Unlike classical computers, quantum computers operate not with bits, but with quantum bits or qubits, quantum mechanical states of particles. The crucial feature of qubits is that they can exist in different states at once, not just 0 or 1, but also as a superposition of 0 and 1. The ability to exploit superposition states is what makes quantum computers potentially so powerful. "The goal of our research is to work out how quantum memories, i.e. memory systems for qubits, might be utilized in the future and how they affect the transmission of quantum bits", explains Christandl, who left LMU Munich in June 2010 to take up a position in the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the ETH in Zurich. ...

via More accurate than Heisenberg allows?.

In quantum computing, a qubit (pronounced /ˈkʲuːbɪt/) or quantum bit is a unit of quantum information —the quantum analogue of the classical bit —with additional dimensions associated to the quantum properties of a physical atom. The physical construction of a quantum computer is itself an arrangement of entangled atoms, and the qubit represents both the state memory and the state of entanglement in a system. A quantum computation is performed by initializing a system of qubits with a quantum algorithm —"initialization" here referring to some advanced physical process that puts the system into an entangled state.

The qubit is described by a state vector in a two-level quantum-mechanical system, which is formally equivalent to a two-dimensional vector space over the complex numbers. - wiki

Latest 'green' packing material? Mushrooms

A new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country.

The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material.

And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden.

The technology was the brainchild of two former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates, Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, who founded Ecovative Design of Green Island, N.Y., to bring their idea into production.

"We don't manufacture materials, we grow them," says McIntyre. "We're converting agricultural byproducts into a higher-value product."

Because the feedstock is based on renewable resources, he adds, the material has an economic benefit as well: it is not prone to the price fluctuations common to synthetic materials derived from such sources as petroleum. "All of our raw materials are inherently renewable and they are literally waste streams," says McIntyre. "It's an open system based on biological materials."

With support from NSF, McIntyre and Bayer are developing a new, less energy-intensive method to sterilize their agricultural-waste starter material--a necessary step for enabling the mushroom fibers, called mycelia, to grow. McIntyre and Bayer are replacing a steam-heat process with a treatment made from cinnamon-bark oil, thyme oil, oregano oil and lemongrass oil.

The sterilization process, which kills any spores that could compete with Ecovative's mushrooms, is almost as effective as the autoclaving process used to disinfect medical instruments and will allow the Mycobond™ products to grow in the open air, instead of their current clean-room environment.

"The biological disinfection process simply emulates nature," says McIntyre, "in that it uses compounds that plants have evolved over centuries to inhibit microbial growth. The unintended result is that our production floor smells like a pizza shop."

Much of the manufacturing process is nearly energy-free, with the mycelia growing around and digesting agricultural starter material--such as cotton seed or wood fiber--in an environment that is both room-temperature and dark. Because the growth occurs within a molded plastic structure (which the producers customize for each application), no energy is required for shaping the products.

Once fully formed, each piece is heat-treated to stop the growth process and delivered to the customer--though with the new, easier, disinfection treatment, Bayer and McIntyre are hoping the entire process can be packaged as a kit, allowing shipping facilities, and even homeowners, to grow their own Mycobond™ materials.

Based on a preliminary assessment McIntyre and Bayer conducted under their Phase I NSF SBIR award, the improvements to the sterilization phase will reduce the energy of the entire manufacturing process to one fortieth of that required to create polymer foam. ...

via Latest 'green' packing material? Mushrooms.

Manhattan Eatery's $69 Hot Dog Is World's Most Expensive

A Manhattan eatery's $69 wiener was declared the world's most expensive hot dog, the New York Daily News reported Saturday.

Restaurant Serendipity 3, which also holds the record for the world's most expensive ice-cream sundae ($1,000) and the largest hot chocolate (four gallons, 15 liters), set its latest record Friday -- National Hot Dog Day.

Trudy Tant, 49, of South Carolina helped cement the record, forking out $69 for the foot-long designer dog.

Guinness World Records official Kimberly Patrick declared the record after watching Tant pay for the frankfurter, which came slathered in truffle oil, truffle butter, duck foie gras, Dijon mustard, Vidalia onions and ketchup on a salted pretzel bed.

"It was great. Great flavor," Tant said, who was approached to be part of the record attempt after wandering past the restaurant Friday.

via Manhattan Eatery's $69 Hot Dog Is World's Most Expensive.

Woman admits being an alien to a cop. 'Your laws don't apply to me',

A SELF-PROCLAIMED Geelong witch told a traffic cop she was not subject to earthly laws as she was "a being from another world".

"Your laws and penalties don't apply to me. I'm not accepting them, I'm sorry, I must go, thank you," Eilish De Avalon said, driving off with the officer's arm caught in her driver's side door.

Photo Gallery: Moorabool Street incident

The alien defence was played out in Geelong Magistrates' Court yesterday when De Avalon, who had also told police she "had a universal name that is not recognised here", pleaded guilty to recklessly causing serious injury, dangerous driving and driving while suspended, using a mobile phone while driving and failing to stop on police request on February 23.

"De Avalon was a suspended driver and that is why she took off," Leading Senior Constable Geoff Lamb said.

The court heard that the policeman had feared for his life when De Avalon drove off with his right arm pinned in her car window.

Senior Constable Geoff Lamb said De Avalon ignored repeated calls to stop and instead accelerated, reaching up to 60km/h as she dragged Leading Senior Constable Andrew Logan 190m along busy Moorabool St.

De Avalon had only stopped after being forced to slow in traffic and the officer grabbed the keys from her ignition.

De Avalon, 40, a marriage celebrant, of Victory Way, Highton, had initially been stopped after she was seen using a mobile phone while driving about 10.40am.

via 'Your laws don't apply to me' Weird News - The Mercury - The Voice of Tasmania.

'Hikikomori' bedroom hermits should be regarded as national crisis

There are approximately 230,000 people who almost constantly shut themselves in their rooms except to go to nearby convenience stores, according to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office. The number increases to about 700,000 if those who only go out to do something hobby-related are included.

Moreover, there are an estimated 1.55 million potential so-called 'hikikomori' who have felt like shutting themselves in their own rooms. Most of them are young people.

As the population of young people declines due to falling birthrates, the statistics have raised questions about the future of Japan.

Hikikomori are defined as those who shut themselves in their homes for at least six months but are not involved in child care or housework even though they are not sick.

Problems involving shut-ins have been pointed out over the past 15 years, but only experts and nonprofit organizations have worked on the issue, with little public support. The government has been late in responding to the situation and taken only stopgap measures. Numerous cases have ended in tragic incidents, and the situation was worsened as a result of treatment and education that lacked solid scientific foundations.

The problem had previously been regarded as an extension of truancy, but the results of the latest survey have shown that 44 percent of the hikikomori began to shut themselves in their rooms because of problems involving work or job-hunting, and 46 percent are in their 30s. Men account for nearly 70 percent of all shut-ins. They are aging while their parents are also growing old.

The government has worked out a vision for children and youths in an effort to help reintegrate hikikomori into society, but just talking about their philosophy and conducting public relations and awareness-raising campaigns are far from sufficient. Even though some people think the shut-ins merely lack self-reliance and independence, there are deep-rooted and grave problems behind the phenomenon -- such as child abuse, insufficient child care as a result of poverty, schoolyard bullying, corporal punishment and insecure employment as a result of an increase in the number of temporary and part-time workers.

It has been widely known that mental and sexual abuse leaves the victims with long-standing mental trauma. Some other surveys demonstrate that many of the withdrawals suffer from a developmental disorder. Many of them have suffered mental distress as a result of the public's prejudice and lack of understanding. ...

via 'Hikikomori' bedroom hermits should be regarded as national crisis - The Mainichi Daily News.

Briton given permission to look for legendary treasure of Lima

Mike Munroe believes he has pinpointed the site where the hoard - rumoured to be worth £100 million - is buried.

He is convinced he can succeed where the likes of film star Errol Flynn and British racing driver Sir Malcolm Campbell have failed.

Mr Munroe has spent more than a decade pawing over battered maps and documents to pinpoint the exact site of the legendary hoard.

Now the 54-year-old, from Melton Mowbray, Leics, is putting the finishing touches to an expedition to unearth the treasure of gold, silver and jewellery which was hidden 190 years ago off the coast of Costa Rica.

The treasure was shipped out of the Peruvian capital of Lima during the last days of Spanish control in 1823.

An original inventory showed 113 gold religious statues, including a life size gold statue of the Virgin Mary, 200 chests of jewels, 273 swords with jewelled hilts, 1,000 diamonds, solid gold crowns,150 chalices and hundreds of gold and silver bars.

The Spanish loaded the treasure onto the ship Mary Dear, under the command of Captain William Thompson who set sail for Mexico, then still under Spanish control.

But Thompson turned pirate and killed the dignatories aboard, including a bishop. He then sailed to Cocos Island, 350 miles off Costa Rica, where he buried the loot.

Numerous expeditions have failed to uncover it, but Mr Munroe believes he knows the whereabouts. ...

"Since the 1930s, there have been at least 26 expeditions, but nobody has based a search on the soil and sand locations. I have the exact location of the treasure, which is backed up by descriptions of it being buried.

"I will use a special metal detecting mat, like a nylon mesh, which gives a three dimensional scan of the ground.

"If we locate an anomaly under the ground we use a little probe bar to see what it is."

"We have got to work in liaison with the Costa Rican government." ..

via Briton given permission to look for legendary treasure of Lima - Telegraph.

Woman finds very clean snake in her washing machine.

A TERRIFIED mother of two spent a sleepless night in her Exeter home — after finding a large snake in her washing machine.Wendy Foley made desperate calls to the police and RSPCA— but was told she would have to wait before someone could come and take it away.Mrs Foley, 51, who lives at Farm Hill, Exwick, with her sons Tom, 18, and Ed, 21, discovered the snake curled up on her wet washing inside the machine. She thinks it probably crawled in when the door was open and survived a wash.She said: "The washing had been through a full cycle and was ended, so I was going to take it out and put more washing in."I opened the glass door at the front and I saw something. I took it to be part of a pair of jeans and then I wondered if it was a toy snake that children use."But then it poked its tongue out at me. It was horrible and quite big. It was just sitting there on the washing. I don't know if it had been through the complete cycle or not. I screamed and screamed — I was terrified."

via A TERRIFIED mother of two spent a sleepless night in her Exeter home — after finding a large snake in her washing machine..

Archaeologists discover biggest rat that ever lived: Weight of about 6 kilograms (over 13 lb)

Archaeological research in East Timor has unearthed the bones of the biggest rat that ever lived, with a body weight around six kilograms.

The cave excavations also yielded a total of 13 species of rodents, 11 of which are new to science. Eight of the rats weighed a kilogram or more.

"East Indonesia is a hot spot for rodent evolution. We want international attention on conservation in the area," CSIRO's Dr Ken Aplin says.

"Rodents make up 40 per cent of mammalian diversity worldwide and are a key element of ecosystems, important for processes like soil maintenance and seed dispersal. Maintaining biodiversity among rats is just as important as protecting whales or birds."

Carbon dating shows that the biggest rat that ever lived survived until around 1000 to 2000 years ago, along with most of the other Timorese rodents found during the excavation. Only one of the smaller species found is known to survive on Timor today.

"People have lived on the island of Timor for over 40,000 years and hunted and ate rats throughout this period, yet extinctions did not occur until quite recently," Dr Aplin says.

"We think this shows people used to live sustainably on Timor until around 1000 to 2000 years ago. This means extinctions aren't inevitable when people arrive on an island. Large scale clearing of forest for agriculture probably caused the extinctions, and this may have only been possible following the introduction of metal tools." ...

via Archaeologists discover biggest rat that ever lived: Weight of about 6 kilograms (over 13 lb).

'Meteorite' lands on cricket pitch during county match

When two spectators standing on the boundary at a cricket match saw an object hurtling down from the sky, their first instinct might have been to applaud.

However Jan Marszel, 51, and Richard Haynes, 52, were not witnessing a six, but an extremely rare meteor strike.

The rock, a few inches long and believed to be up to 4.5 billion years old, broke in two when it hit the ground in front of them close to the pitch.

The pair – both Sussex members – were sitting square of the wicket watching the England player Luke Wright bat with Monty Panesar when they spotted the black, five-inch rock hurtling towards them.

Mr Marszel, an IT consultant, said: “We were sitting at the boundary edge when all of a sudden, out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us.

“It landed five yards inside the boundary and split into two pieces.

“One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board.

“It came across at quite a speed – if it had hit me full on it could have been very interesting."

The pair have kept the seemingly extraterrestrial pieces of rock for posterity and said they would be happy for experts to examine them.

Retired Mr Haynes, said: “We were quietly supping our pints, both looked up at the same time and saw a black object coming towards us – we didn’t know what it was.

“If it had come from the other direction we might have suspected someone had thrown it, but we saw it come in straight over the ground from quite a way out – it was definitely a meteorite.” ...

via 'Meteorite' lands on cricket pitch during county match - Telegraph.

'Pristine' Earth impact crater discovered

Scientists say a meteoric impact crater found in the remote Egyptian desert may be the best-preserved ever found on Earth.

The Kamil crater is pristine, unlike most Earth impact sites that are partially or severely eroded, and maintains much of its structure, including the rays of ejected material thrown from the crater when the space rock hit, SPACE.com reported Thursday.

"This crater is really a kind of beauty because it's so well preserved that it will tell us a lot about small-scale meteorite impacts on the Earth's crust," Luigi Folco, meteorite curator at the Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide in Siena, Italy, said. "It's so nice. It's so neat. There is something extraordinary about it."

Craters this well preserved are usually only seen on the moon or Mars, where there are fewer environmental and atmospheric processes to erode and eventually destroy them, he said.

The 148-foot-wide crater was first spotted in Google Earth satellite photos by Italian researchers.

Scientists think it was caused by the impact of an iron meteorite about 4.3 feet in diameter traveling at 7,920 mph, SPACE.com reported.

via 'Pristine' Earth impact crater discovered.

Cow gives birth to triplets of different breeds

Holstein Friesian cow Coco delivered three healthy calves without any assistance, which is a one-in-105,000 chance.

Even more rarely, two of the calves are from the Belgian Blue Cross breed and the third is a Charolais Cross.

Owner Anthony Gothard, 37, who runs a dairy farm at Stoke St Gregory, Somerset, said this is because Coco was inseminated using a ''concoction'' of different bulls.

He said: ''We were really surprised because we'd never seen it.

''There's three generations on the farm now and my grandfather came out to see them because he's never experienced it before.

''But what's quite uncanny as well as they're two different breeds of calf.

''Because we artificially inseminate our cattle we sometimes use a concoction of different bulls in the insemination.

''On rare occasions you might get a pare of twins where one is one breed and one another.

''What we've got here is two Belgian Blue Cross calves, and one Charolais Cross, which makes it even more amazing.'' ...

via Cow gives birth to triplets of different breeds - Telegraph.

World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few

A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world's finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system's vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic crisis.

A pair of physicists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich did a physics-based analysis of the world economy as it looked in early 2007. Stefano Battiston and James Glattfelder extracted the information from the tangled yarn that links 24,877 stocks and 106,141 shareholding entities in 48 countries, revealing what they called the "backbone" of each country's financial market. These backbones represented the owners of 80 percent of a country's market capital, yet consisted of remarkably few shareholders.

"You start off with these huge national networks that are really big, quite dense," Glattfelder said. “From that you're able to ... unveil the important structure in this original big network. You then realize most of the network isn't at all important."

The most pared-down backbones exist in Anglo-Saxon countries, including the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. Paradoxically; these same countries are considered by economists to have the most widely-held stocks in the world, with ownership of companies tending to be spread out among many investors. But while each American company may link to many owners, Glattfelder and Battiston's analysis found that the owners varied little from stock to stock, meaning that comparatively few hands are holding the reins of the entire market.

“If you would look at this locally, it's always distributed,” Glattfelder said. “If you then look at who is at the end of these links, you find that it's the same guys, [which] is not something you'd expect from the local view.”

Matthew Jackson, an economist from Stanford University in Calif. who studies social and economic networks, said that Glattfelder and Battiston's approach could be used to answer more pointed questions about corporate control and how companies interact.

"It's clear, looking at financial contagion and recent crises, that understanding interrelations between companies and holdings is very important in the future,” he said. "Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there's some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there's a big difference between having an impression and actually having ... more explicit numbers to put behind it."

Based on their analysis, Glattfelder and Battiston identified the ten investment entities who are “big fish” in the most countries. The biggest fish was the Capital Group Companies, with major stakes in 36 of the 48 countries studied. In identifying these major players, the physicists accounted for secondary ownership -- owning stock in companies who then owned stock in another company -- in an attempt to quantify the potential control a given agent might have in a market. ...

via World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few | LiveScience.

I'd be willing to bet that most people have never heard of Capital Group Companies.

The Capital Group Companies is one of the world’s largest investment management organizations with assets of around one trillion USD under management. It comprises a group of investment management companies, including Capital Research and Management, American Funds, Capital Bank and Trust, Capital Guardian, and Capital International. As measured by assets under management, Capital rivals Fidelity Investments, a figure the company will not confirm because it eschews publicity.^[1] The firm was founded in 1931 by Jonathan Bell Lovelace. - CGC

People Begin Living Without Electricity and Water in California

YouTube - People Begin Living Without Electricity and Water in California.

KGB did bug Profumo and Keeler pillow talk to steal nuclear secrets

The KGB planted bugs to eavesdrop on John Profumo’s pillow talk with Christine Keeler, according to newly released top-secret files.

The topless showgirl and model’s KGB lover also persuaded her to question Profumo, Britain’s Minister of War, about Britain’s nuclear arsenal, the files reveal.

The reports claim that the Russians obtained ‘a lot of information’ which threatened to undermine Western security, contradicting the long-term view that the affair did not damage UK security and that no secrets were leaked to Russia.

And the files also reveal details of society dinner parties descending into debauched orgies, with, on one occasion, a naked Government Minister acting as a waiter.

Unknown to Profumo, his lover Keeler was also involved with the spy Yevgeni Ivanov, a naval attache at the Soviet embassy in London.

The affair’s exposure in 1963 led to Profumo’s resignation and rocked Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Government.

The FBI files, declassified under the US Freedom of Information Act, reveal Keeler confessed Ivanov asked her to obtain information about the movement of Britain’s nuclear warheads and that the operation led to Profumo being a ‘blackmail victim’.

The files suggest the US, during delicate negotiations between Macmillan and President John F. Kennedy on the sale of the Polaris missile to the UK, feared defence secrets had been compromised.

The US took the affair so seriously, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover hand-delivered a note to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, JFK’s brother, warning of the risks.

via KGB did bug Profumo and Keeler pillow talk to steal nuclear secrets | Mail Online.

The healing effects of forests

"Many people," says Dr. Eeva Karjalainen, of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, Metla, "feel relaxed and good when they are out in nature. But not many of us know that there is also scientific evidence about the healing effects of nature."

Forests - and other natural, green settings - can reduce stress, improve moods, reduce anger and aggressiveness and increase overall happiness. Forest visits may also strengthen our immune system by increasing the activity and number of natural killer cells that destroy cancer cells.

Many studies show that after stressful or concentration-demanding situations, people recover faster and better in natural environments than in urban settings. Blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and the level of "stress hormones" all decrease faster in natural settings. Depression, anger and aggressiveness are reduced in green environments and ADHD symptoms in children reduce when they play in green settings.

In addition to mental and emotional well-being, more than half of the most commonly prescribed drugs include compounds derived from nature - for example Taxol, used against ovarian and breast cancer, is derived from yew trees, while Xylitol, which can inhibit caries, is produced from hardwood bark.

Dr. Karjalainen will coordinate a session on the health benefits of forests at the 2010 IUFRO World Forestry Congress in Seoul. "Preserving green areas and trees in cities is very important to help people recover from stress, maintain health and cure diseases. There is also monetary value in improving people's working ability and reducing health care costs." she says.

via The healing effects of forests.

Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog

Every dog has its day, but that day took more than 14,000 years to dawn for one canine. A jaw fragment found in a Swiss cave comes from the earliest known dog, according to scientists who analyzed and radiocarbon-dated the fossil.

Dog origins remain poorly understood, however, and some researchers say that dog fossils much older than the Swiss find have already been excavated.

An upper-right jaw unearthed in 1873 in Kesslerloch Cave, located near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, shows that domestic dogs lived there between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago, say archaeology graduate student Hannes Napierala and archaeozoologist Hans-Peter Uerpmann, study coauthors at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

“The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe,” Napierala says.



Researchers have also found roughly 14,000-year-old dog fossils among the remains of prehistoric people buried at Germany’s Bonn-Oberkassel site.

Older fossil skulls recently identified by other teams as dogs were probably Ice Age wolves, Napierala and Uerpmann argue in a paper published online July 19 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. That includes a 31,700-year-old specimen discovered more than a century ago in Belgium’s Goyet Cave and reported in 2009 to be the oldest known dog.

Paleontologist Mietje Germonpré of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who directed the analysis of the Goyet fossil, stands by his conclusions. “The Kesslerloch dog is not the oldest evidence of dog domestication,” he says.

Numerous wolf fossils lie near alleged dog remains at Kesslerloch Cave and Goyet Cave, raising doubts about whether either site hosted completely domesticated animals, remarks archaeologist Susan Crockford of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. She regards the Swiss jaw as an “incipient dog” in the early stages of domestication from wolves.

via Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog | Wired Science | Wired.com.

X files, seasons 7 & 8

I picked up the x-files seasons seven and eight at the Green Apple Bookstore in SF for $24 each tonight. I'm starting to watch them. Okay, you can't translate ancient Navaho letter for letter into English, that's absurd... (see The Sixth Extinction) but good weird fun, nevertheless.

Whats your impression?

I'm about to see this show. Only $25 for adults. Truthfully, I'm not into Impressionism, more into surrealism, but it may be interesting. While we wait, the Japanese tea garden is a few feet away. $7 for non sf residents.

I'm seeing ads when I'm in the Wordpress app on my iPhone looking at my blog, but I think now that I'm the only one seeing these, which is fine. I just don't want you to be spammed at all when visiting this blog. If you see any banner ads, tell me. I used to run this blog on my own server and I'll go back to doing that if wordpress.com posts ads here. I'm keep xenophilia.com and a few other sites alive for that purpose, just in case. I believe in having many redundant backups at all times in different places of anything important. I definitely learned from the time my computer crashed and I had to recreate a ten page paper from memory the night before it was due! Ugh.