By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer Sun Jan 31, 2:12 pm ET
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The scientist in Dr. David Dosa was skeptical when first told that Oscar, an aloof cat kept by a nursing home, regularly predicted patients' deaths by snuggling alongside them in their final hours.
Dosa's doubts eroded after he and his colleagues tallied about 50 correct calls made by Oscar over five years, a process he explains in a book released this week, "Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat." (Hyperion, $23.99) The feline's bizarre talent astounds Dosa, but he finds Oscar's real worth in his fierce insistence on being present when others turn away from life's most uncomfortable topic: death.
"People actually were taking great comfort in this idea, that this animal was there and might be there when their loved ones eventually pass," Dosa said. "He was there when they couldn't be."
Dosa, 37, a geriatrician and professor at Brown University, works on the third floor of the Steere House, which treats patients with severe dementia. It's usually the last stop for people so ill they cannot speak, recognize their spouses and spend their days lost in fragments of memory.
He once feared that families would be horrified by the furry grim reaper, especially after Dosa made Oscar famous in a 2007 essay in the New England Journal of Medicine. Instead, he says many caregivers consider Oscar a comforting presence, and some have praised him in newspaper death notices and eulogies.
"Maybe they're seeing what they want to see," he said, "but what they're seeing is a comfort to them in a real difficult time in their lives."
The nursing home adopted Oscar, a medium-haired cat with a gray-and-brown back and white belly, in 2005 because its staff thinks pets make the Steere House a home. They play with visiting children and prove a welcome distraction for patients and doctors alike.
After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone — except when they had just hours to live.
He's accurate enough that the staff — including Dosa — know it's time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he'll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.
Nurses once placed Oscar in the bed of a patient they thought gravely ill. Oscar wouldn't stay put, and the staff thought his streak was broken. Turns out, the medical professionals were wrong, and the patient rallied for two days. But in the final hours, Oscar held his bedside vigil without prompting.
Dosa does not explain Oscar scientifically in his book, although he theorizes the cat imitates the nurses who raised him or smells odors given off by dying cells, perhaps like some dogs who scientists say can detect cancer using their sense of scent.
At its heart, Dosa's search is more about how people cope with death than Oscar's purported ability to predict it. Dosa suffers from inflammatory arthritis, which could render his joints useless. He worries about losing control of his life in old age, much as his patients have lost theirs.
Parts of his book are fictionalized. Dosa said several patients are composite characters, though the names and stories of the caregivers he interviews are real and many feel guilty. Donna Richards told Dosa that she felt guilty for putting her mother in a nursing home. She felt guilty for not visiting enough. When caring for her mother, Richards felt guilty about missing her teenage son's swimming meets.
Dosa learns to live for the moment, much like Oscar, who delights in naps and chin scratches or the patient who recovers enough to walk the hall holding the hand of the husband she'll eventually forget.
The doctor advises worried family members to simply be present for their loved ones.
Richards was at her mother's bedside nonstop as she died. After three days, a nurse persuaded her to go home for a brief rest. Despite her misgivings, Richards agreed. Her mother died a short while later.
But she didn't die alone. Oscar was there.
Monday, February 1, 2010
15 Things You Never Noticed on a Dollar
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/15-things-you-never-noticed-on-a-dollar-575113/
Pull a buck from your wallet now and prepare to be amazed.
We’re serious. Did you know a dollar bill has hidden pictures, flecks of color, and mysterious symbols? And that’s just the beginning. What do all those seemingly random letters and Latin phrases mean, anyway?
The Basics: How much is a dollar worth?
The question seems simple, but the answer is quite complex. Since 1973, the dollar bill has had no value tied to it. You cannot trade in a dollar to the government for gold, silver, or any other commodity. The value of the nation's currency is related to the decree by the government that a dollar is legal tender for all debts. This means if someone attempts to pay a debt using dollars, the person being paid must accept the money or the law no longer recognizes the debt. This is important enough that the phrase is printed on every bill the government creates.
It is also vital for the nation's citizens to agree that the bills have value. If the members of a society decided that they did not believe in the currency, it would quickly be worth no more than the paper it is printed on. For the record, each bill costs the government 6.4 cents to print.
What kind of paper are the bills made from?
Bills are made from a blend of linen and cotton, which is why they don't fall apart in the wash the way paper does. If you look closely, you can see red and blue silk fibers woven throughout the bill. The threads are thought to be an anti-counterfeit measure.
Hint: Look in the white spaces on the face of the bill for little bits of the colored thread. They look like lint but you can't scratch them off!
On the face of a dollar, what does the letter inside the circular seal mean?
The black seal with the big letter in the middle signifies the Federal Reserve bank that placed the order for the bill. A = Boston, B = New York City, C = Philadelphia, D = Cleveland, E = Richmond, Va., F = Atlanta, G = Chicago, H = St. Louis, I = Minneapolis, J = Kansas City, K = Dallas.
The letter also corresponds to the black number that is repeated four times on the face of the bill. For example, if you have a bill from Dallas with the letter K, then the number on the bill will be 11 because K is the eleventh letter in the alphabet.
Can you find any tiny owls or spiders hidden on the front of the bill?
Many people believe they can see a tiny owl (some say it is a spider) next to the large "1" on the upper right of the bill. If you look at the shield shape that surrounds that "1," the tiny owl rests on the top left corner.
More than likely, the markings are nothing, just a point where the webbed design of the border varies. That won't stop some people from associating the peculiar detail with Masonic symbols, or with more practical things, like anti-counterfeit measures.
The Great Seal of the United States
The green back of the dollar bill features the two sides of The Great Seal of the United States. The founding fathers approved its design in 1782. Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all had a hand in devising it. The seal provides great insight into the values of the newborn nation and, like the Constitution, provides a direct link to its formative days.
What does Annuit Coeptis mean?
The first of three Latin phrases on the back of the bill is translated as "God has favored our undertakings." Many founders, Franklin and George Washington among them, believed that God's will was behind the successful creation of the United States.
Beneath the pyramid, what does Novus Ordo Seclorum mean?
These Latin words mean "New order of the ages." Charles Thomson, a statesman involved in the design of The Great Seal of the United States, proposed the phrase to signify the beginning of what he called "the new American Era," which he said began in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Why is MDCCLXXVI on the bottom of the pyramid?
The letters are Roman numerals for 1776. M is 1,000, D is 500, CC is 200, L is 50, XX is 20, VI is 6. Add the numerals on the pyramid together and you get the year 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and when the Novus Ordo Seclorum began.
Why is there an unfinished pyramid with a glowing eye?
Thomson explained the sturdy pyramid as a symbol of "strength and duration". He did not explain its unfinished state, but many believe it signified that our nation remained unfinished. The pyramid also stops at 13 steps, the number of the original colonies.
The "Eye of Providence" is a visual representation of the words Annuit Coeptis, and reinforces the founders' notion that God looked upon the endeavor of the new nation with favor. Many theorists mistakenly believe the symbolism of the eye is related to the Freemasons (a secret society whose members believed they were under the careful scrutiny of God), but the symbolism of the glowing eye is far older than any Freemason thinking. Scholars have traced versions of the symbol as far back as the ancient Egyptians.
What does E Pluribus Unum mean?
"Out of many, one." The 13 disparate colonies came together to form one nation.
Why a bald eagle? The founders wanted an animal native to America to be the new nation's symbol. In its talons the eagle holds arrows and olive branches, signifying war and peace.
Fun activities you and the kids can do with a dollar bill
Track your bills. Go to the website Where's George? and enter the serial number of the bill. If the bill has been in circulation long enough, you might be able to see where your bill has been as it travels from wallets to registers and back. After you enter your bills, check back later to see where they have gone.
Play dollar-bill poker. Each of you takes a dollar bill and examines the green serial numbers as if they were a hand of playing cards. Make your best poker hand and see who wins.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Four-legged Creature's Footprints Force Evolution Rethink
Jeanna Bryner
Managing Editor
LiveScience.com jeanna Bryner
managing Editor
livescience.com Wed Jan 6, 1:16 pm ET
Four-legged creatures were mucking around a muddy basin in what is now Poland about 397 million years ago. And they left behind distinctive footprints, which have turned back the clock on the evolution of these landlubbers.
Scientists discovered the fossilized prints, which included various trackways and isolated prints, in the Holy Cross Mountains in southeastern Poland. Analyses suggest most if not all of them came from different tetrapod species - which are four-legged animals that had backbones, such as amphibians - with some possibly belonging to juveniles and adults of the same species.
The land creatures likely had bodies shaped somewhat like crocodiles, with fin-like tails and stumpy legs. And some of them were pretty big, reaching up to about 10 feet (3 meters) in length, the researchers said.
The discovery helps to refine the timing of the transition from our fishy ancestors to land creatures, which until now was thought to have occurred about 380 million years ago or so.
The new discoveries show the four-leggers were stomping around millions of years earlier than had been estimated based on fossils. Until now, the earliest complete evidence for a four-limbed animal with digits came from Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, which date back to between 374 million and 359 million years ago.
"We didn't know they existed at this point, and we would not have expected to have found them in this environment," study researcher Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden said in a telephone interview.
Since scientists have used modern amphibians and such as models for the earliest tetrapods, some have assumed the earliest four-limbed creatures emerged from a freshwater environment, Ahlberg said.
Not so, according to the new prints.
"It seems like it was a very extensive muddy basin, marine basin, that was very shallow and very wide, hundreds of kilometers wide," said study scientist Marek Narkiewicz of the Polish Geological Institute, adding that the basin likely dried out every few years or so.
That drying out may have been an evolutionary boost needed to get fishy animals up onto the land, he speculated. "When we have an animal that's adjusted to swim and then it's left stranded during desiccation, during drying out, and if it doesn't have the ability to walk then of course it's death," Narkiewicz told LiveScience.
The animals were likely adept swimmers and walkers, Ahlberg said. "They're trying their terrestrial skills out in the intertidal zone, and it's only later that we find they are moving onto the land proper," Ahlberg said.
The testing ground was likely intertidal, with ebbs and flows on a daily basis. So when the tide came in, the animals would have swam around and when the water receded to expose mud banks, like the one where the prints were found, the animals would have easily snagged any food that washed up, Ahlberg said.
• Fish Fingers: Your Digits Used to Be Fins
• Greatest Mysteries: What Drives Evolution?
• Top 10 Useless Limbs (and Other Vestigial Organs)
• Original Story: Four-legged Creature's Footprints Force Evolution Rethink
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style.
Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Managing Editor
LiveScience.com jeanna Bryner
managing Editor
livescience.com Wed Jan 6, 1:16 pm ET
Four-legged creatures were mucking around a muddy basin in what is now Poland about 397 million years ago. And they left behind distinctive footprints, which have turned back the clock on the evolution of these landlubbers.
Scientists discovered the fossilized prints, which included various trackways and isolated prints, in the Holy Cross Mountains in southeastern Poland. Analyses suggest most if not all of them came from different tetrapod species - which are four-legged animals that had backbones, such as amphibians - with some possibly belonging to juveniles and adults of the same species.
The land creatures likely had bodies shaped somewhat like crocodiles, with fin-like tails and stumpy legs. And some of them were pretty big, reaching up to about 10 feet (3 meters) in length, the researchers said.
The discovery helps to refine the timing of the transition from our fishy ancestors to land creatures, which until now was thought to have occurred about 380 million years ago or so.
The new discoveries show the four-leggers were stomping around millions of years earlier than had been estimated based on fossils. Until now, the earliest complete evidence for a four-limbed animal with digits came from Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, which date back to between 374 million and 359 million years ago.
"We didn't know they existed at this point, and we would not have expected to have found them in this environment," study researcher Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden said in a telephone interview.
Since scientists have used modern amphibians and such as models for the earliest tetrapods, some have assumed the earliest four-limbed creatures emerged from a freshwater environment, Ahlberg said.
Not so, according to the new prints.
"It seems like it was a very extensive muddy basin, marine basin, that was very shallow and very wide, hundreds of kilometers wide," said study scientist Marek Narkiewicz of the Polish Geological Institute, adding that the basin likely dried out every few years or so.
That drying out may have been an evolutionary boost needed to get fishy animals up onto the land, he speculated. "When we have an animal that's adjusted to swim and then it's left stranded during desiccation, during drying out, and if it doesn't have the ability to walk then of course it's death," Narkiewicz told LiveScience.
The animals were likely adept swimmers and walkers, Ahlberg said. "They're trying their terrestrial skills out in the intertidal zone, and it's only later that we find they are moving onto the land proper," Ahlberg said.
The testing ground was likely intertidal, with ebbs and flows on a daily basis. So when the tide came in, the animals would have swam around and when the water receded to expose mud banks, like the one where the prints were found, the animals would have easily snagged any food that washed up, Ahlberg said.
• Fish Fingers: Your Digits Used to Be Fins
• Greatest Mysteries: What Drives Evolution?
• Top 10 Useless Limbs (and Other Vestigial Organs)
• Original Story: Four-legged Creature's Footprints Force Evolution Rethink
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style.
Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Hubble telescope shows earliest photo of universe
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Tue Jan 5, 9:20 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the earliest image yet of the universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just a toddler.
Scientists released the photo Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It's the most complete picture of the early universe so far, showing galaxies with stars that are already hundreds of millions of years old, along with the unmistakable primordial signs of the first cluster of stars.
These young galaxies haven't yet formed their familiar spiral or elliptical shapes and are much smaller and quite blue in color. That's mostly because at this stage, they don't contain many heavy metals, said Garth Illingworth, a University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomy professor who was among those releasing the photo.
"We're seeing very small galaxies that are seeds of the great galaxies today," Illingworth said in a news conference.
Until NASA's Hubble telescope was repaired and upgraded last year, the farthest back in time that astronomers could see was about 900 million years after the Big Bang, Illingworth said. Hubble has been key in helping determine the age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years, ending a long scientific debate about a decade ago.
As far back as Hubble can see, it still doesn't see the first galaxies. For that, NASA will have to rely on a new observatory, the $4.5 billion James Webb telescope, which is set to launch in about four years.
"We are on the way to the beginning," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History. "Every step closer to the beginning tells you something you did not know before."
The new Hubble picture captures those distant simpler galaxies juxtaposed amid closer, newer and more evolved ones. The result is a cosmic family photo that portrays galaxies at different ages and stages of development over the course of more than 13 billion years.
Tyson, who was not involved in the Hubble image research, said most people only like their own baby pictures, but Hubble's photo is different: "These are the baby pictures for us all, hence the widespread interest."
___
On the Net:
Hubble Space Telescope: http://hubblesite.org/
WASHINGTON – The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the earliest image yet of the universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just a toddler.
Scientists released the photo Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It's the most complete picture of the early universe so far, showing galaxies with stars that are already hundreds of millions of years old, along with the unmistakable primordial signs of the first cluster of stars.
These young galaxies haven't yet formed their familiar spiral or elliptical shapes and are much smaller and quite blue in color. That's mostly because at this stage, they don't contain many heavy metals, said Garth Illingworth, a University of California, Santa Cruz, astronomy professor who was among those releasing the photo.
"We're seeing very small galaxies that are seeds of the great galaxies today," Illingworth said in a news conference.
Until NASA's Hubble telescope was repaired and upgraded last year, the farthest back in time that astronomers could see was about 900 million years after the Big Bang, Illingworth said. Hubble has been key in helping determine the age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years, ending a long scientific debate about a decade ago.
As far back as Hubble can see, it still doesn't see the first galaxies. For that, NASA will have to rely on a new observatory, the $4.5 billion James Webb telescope, which is set to launch in about four years.
"We are on the way to the beginning," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of the American Museum of Natural History. "Every step closer to the beginning tells you something you did not know before."
The new Hubble picture captures those distant simpler galaxies juxtaposed amid closer, newer and more evolved ones. The result is a cosmic family photo that portrays galaxies at different ages and stages of development over the course of more than 13 billion years.
Tyson, who was not involved in the Hubble image research, said most people only like their own baby pictures, but Hubble's photo is different: "These are the baby pictures for us all, hence the widespread interest."
___
On the Net:
Hubble Space Telescope: http://hubblesite.org/
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Big Bang atom smasher starts speeding proton beams
Someday, someone will prove what god is made of...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 24, 11:56 am ET
GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher used its accelerator Tuesday to speed up proton beams for the first time as scientists moved ahead in efforts to learn more about the universe.
The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider showed it could raise the energy of the proton beams whizzing around the massive machine by an initial 20 percent.
"It was just a preliminary test," said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN. "It's all going very well."
Tuesday's step indicated further good news for the collider since months of repairs following its spectacular collapse last year. The latest phase began Friday night when the first proton beams circulated each way around the 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The operators then got the beams to run simultaneously in opposite directions through fire-hose-sized pipes 11,000 times a second around the ring, zooming by at nearly the speed of light through temperatures colder than outer space.
Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang — which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
On Monday, the collider's four massive detectors saw the first collisions between protons as the beams crossed each other at set points in rooms the size of cathedrals 100 meters (300 feet) underground.
Physicists say the beam is of superb quality, with the protons tightly packed into hairlike lines and guided by 1,600 superconducting magnets — some of them 15 meters (50 feet) long — around the ring.
While the initial collisions were a side effect, intentional hits could begin within the next 10 days, mainly to check how the machine is working, Gillies said. The initial collisions are needed to calibrate the machine.
Gillies said Tuesday the energy of the proton beam was increased to 540 from 450 billion electron volts, still a long way from the power that will be needed for new discoveries in the makeup of the universe and matter. Those discoveries might start happening in the first half of next year.
"They set in process the procedure to ramp the machine up to the 1.2 TeV (trillion electron volts) that we want to get to this year," Gillies said.
That level would make the Geneva machine the world's most powerful collider, overtaking the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago, which operates at 1 trillion electron volts.
The Geneva accelerator automatically stopped when it rose to about 540 billion electron volts, about 90 billion electron volts higher than it had been operating so far, Gillies said.
After that, the proton beam was halted Tuesday for maintenance checks on the machine, he said.
The collider's first science test will take place in January or early February, when scientists plan to start deliberately crashing protons into each other to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles.
Physicists said the discoveries could begin after the collider reaches 3.5 TeV in each direction.
The collider was started with great fanfare Sept. 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It took 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted. The overall price of repairs and improvements is expected to cost $40 million, according to CERN.
The long-term goal, after more modifications, will be to run the proton beams at 7 TeV in each direction — with seven times the energy for collisions that is available at Fermilab.
The higher the energy and the greater the number of protons in the beam, the more likely it will be that the scientists will discover particles and forces.
"It depends on how kind nature is to us," said CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer.
Still, it could take several years before the collider discovers the elusive Higgs boson, a particle that theoretically gives mass to other subatomic particles — and thus everything in the universe, said physicist Tejinder S. Virdee.
That is because the Higgs boson is believed to be hard to see and needs powerful energy to be revealed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Tue Nov 24, 11:56 am ET
GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher used its accelerator Tuesday to speed up proton beams for the first time as scientists moved ahead in efforts to learn more about the universe.
The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider showed it could raise the energy of the proton beams whizzing around the massive machine by an initial 20 percent.
"It was just a preliminary test," said James Gillies, spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN. "It's all going very well."
Tuesday's step indicated further good news for the collider since months of repairs following its spectacular collapse last year. The latest phase began Friday night when the first proton beams circulated each way around the 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The operators then got the beams to run simultaneously in opposite directions through fire-hose-sized pipes 11,000 times a second around the ring, zooming by at nearly the speed of light through temperatures colder than outer space.
Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were 1 trillionth to 2 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang — which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.
On Monday, the collider's four massive detectors saw the first collisions between protons as the beams crossed each other at set points in rooms the size of cathedrals 100 meters (300 feet) underground.
Physicists say the beam is of superb quality, with the protons tightly packed into hairlike lines and guided by 1,600 superconducting magnets — some of them 15 meters (50 feet) long — around the ring.
While the initial collisions were a side effect, intentional hits could begin within the next 10 days, mainly to check how the machine is working, Gillies said. The initial collisions are needed to calibrate the machine.
Gillies said Tuesday the energy of the proton beam was increased to 540 from 450 billion electron volts, still a long way from the power that will be needed for new discoveries in the makeup of the universe and matter. Those discoveries might start happening in the first half of next year.
"They set in process the procedure to ramp the machine up to the 1.2 TeV (trillion electron volts) that we want to get to this year," Gillies said.
That level would make the Geneva machine the world's most powerful collider, overtaking the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago, which operates at 1 trillion electron volts.
The Geneva accelerator automatically stopped when it rose to about 540 billion electron volts, about 90 billion electron volts higher than it had been operating so far, Gillies said.
After that, the proton beam was halted Tuesday for maintenance checks on the machine, he said.
The collider's first science test will take place in January or early February, when scientists plan to start deliberately crashing protons into each other to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and its tiniest particles.
Physicists said the discoveries could begin after the collider reaches 3.5 TeV in each direction.
The collider was started with great fanfare Sept. 10, 2008, only to be heavily damaged by an electrical fault nine days later. It took 14 months to repair and add protection systems to the machine before it was restarted. The overall price of repairs and improvements is expected to cost $40 million, according to CERN.
The long-term goal, after more modifications, will be to run the proton beams at 7 TeV in each direction — with seven times the energy for collisions that is available at Fermilab.
The higher the energy and the greater the number of protons in the beam, the more likely it will be that the scientists will discover particles and forces.
"It depends on how kind nature is to us," said CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer.
Still, it could take several years before the collider discovers the elusive Higgs boson, a particle that theoretically gives mass to other subatomic particles — and thus everything in the universe, said physicist Tejinder S. Virdee.
That is because the Higgs boson is believed to be hard to see and needs powerful energy to be revealed.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Yale criticized for nixing Muslim cartoons in book
Are we being sensitive? Or bowing to the threat?
by JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Yale University has removed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from an upcoming book about how they caused outrage across the Muslim world, drawing criticism from prominent alumni and a national group of university professors.
Yale cited fears of violence.
Yale University Press, which the university owns, removed the 12 caricatures from the book "The Cartoons That Shook the World" by Brandeis University professor Jytte Klausen. The book is scheduled to be released next week.
A Danish newspaper originally published the cartoons — including one depicting Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban — in 2005. Other Western publications reprinted them.
The following year, the cartoons triggered massive protests from Morocco to Indonesia. Rioters torched Danish and other Western diplomatic missions. Some Muslim countries boycotted Danish products.
Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
"I think it's horrifying that the campus of Nathan Hale has become the first place where America surrenders to this kind of fear because of what extremists might possibly do," said Michael Steinberg, an attorney and Yale graduate.
Steinberg was among 25 alumni who signed a protest letter sent Friday to Yale Alumni Magazine that urged the university to restore the drawings to the book. Other signers included John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum and Seth Corey, a liberal doctor.
"I think it's intellectual cowardice," Bolton said Thursday. "I think it's very self defeating on Yale's part. To me it's just inexplicable."
Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, wrote in a recent letter that Yale's decision effectively means: "We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands."
In a statement explaining the decision, Yale University Press said it decided to exclude a Danish newspaper page of the cartoons and other depictions of Muhammad after asking the university for help on the issue. It said the university consulted counterterrorism officials, diplomats and the top Muslim official at the United Nations.
"The decision rested solely on the experts' assessment that there existed a substantial likelihood of violence that might take the lives of innocent victims," the statement said.
Republication of the cartoons has repeatedly resulted in violence around the world, leading to more than 200 deaths and hundreds of injuries, the statement said. It also noted that major newspapers in the United states and Britain have declined to print the cartoons.
"Yale and Yale University Press are deeply committed to freedom of speech and expression, so the issues raised here were difficult," the statement said. "The press would never have reached the decision it did on the grounds that some might be offended by portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad."
John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, said the critics are "grandstanding." He said it was not a case of censorship because the university did not suppress original content that was not available in other places.
"I would never have agreed to censor original content," Donatich said.
Klausen was surprised by the decision when she learned of it in July. She said scholarly reviewers and Yale's publication committee comprised of faculty recommended the cartoons be included.
"I'm extremely upset about that," Klausen said.
The experts Yale consulted did not read the manuscript, Klausen said. She said she consulted Muslim leaders and did not believe including the cartoons in a scholarly debate would spark violence.
Klausen said she reluctantly agreed to have the book published without the images because she did not believe any other university press would publish them, and she hopes Yale will include them in later editions. She argues in the book that there is a misperception that Muslims spontaneously arose in anger over the cartoons when they really were symbols manipulated by those already involved in violence.
Donatich said there wasn't time for the experts to read the book, but they were told of the context. He said reviewers and the publications committee did not object, but were not asked about the security risk.
Many Muslim nations want to restrict speech to prevent insults to Islam they claim have proliferated since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, a world affairs columnist and CNN host who serves on Yale's governing board, said he told Yale that he believed publishing the images would have provoked violence.
"As a journalist and public commentator, I believe deeply in the First Amendment and academic freedom," Zakaria said. "But in this instance Yale Press was confronted with a clear threat of violence and loss of life."
(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 17 to correct that author learned of decision in July, sted last week. Moving on general news and entertainment services.)
B
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Molecular Decay Of Enamel-specific Gene In Toothless Mammals Supports Theory Of Evolution
Extinct baleen whales, such as Aetiocetus weltoni (top; ~25 million years old) possessed teeth with enamel. Living baleen whales (bottom) lack teeth and feed on minute organisms with their brush-like baleen filters. Despite the absence of teeth, modern baleen whales retain copies of tooth-specific genes, such as enamelin, in their genomes; these unnecessary genes, which were inherited from toothed ancestors, show evidence of mutational decay, as predicted by evolutionary theory.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2009) — Biologists at the University of California, Riverside report new evidence for evolutionary change recorded in both the fossil record and the genomes (or genetic blueprints) of living organisms, providing fresh support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The researchers were able to correlate the progressive loss of enamel in the fossil record with a simultaneous molecular decay of a gene, called the enamelin gene, that is involved in enamel formation in mammals.
Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body, and most mammals have teeth capped with it.
Examples exist, however, of mammals without mineralized teeth (e.g., baleen whales, anteaters, pangolins) and of mammals with teeth that lack enamel (e.g., sloths, aardvarks, and pygmy sperm whales). Further, the fossil record documents when enamel was lost in these lineages.
"The fossil record is almost entirely limited to hard tissues such as bones and teeth," said Mark Springer, a professor of biology, who led the study. "Given this limitation, there are very few opportunities to examine the co-evolution of genes in the genome of living organisms and morphological features preserved in the fossil record."
In 2007, Springer, along with Robert Meredith and John Gatesy in the Department of Biology at UC Riverside, initiated a study of enamelless mammals in which the researchers focused on the enamelin gene. They predicted that these species would have copies of the gene that codes for the tooth-specific enamelin protein, but this gene would show evidence of molecular decay in these species.
"Mammals without enamel are descended from ancestral forms that had teeth with enamel," Springer said. "We predicted that enamel-specific genes such as enamelin would show evidence in living organisms of molecular decay because these genes are vestigial and no longer necessary for survival."
Now his lab has found evidence of such molecular "cavities" in the genomes of living organisms. Using modern gene sequencing technology, Meredith discovered mutations in the enamelin gene that disrupt how the enamelin protein is coded, resulting in obliteration of the genetic blueprint for the enamelin protein.
Results of the study appear in the Sept. 4 issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
Darwin argued that all organisms are descended from one or a few organisms and that natural selection drives evolutionary change. The fossil record demonstrates that the first mammals had teeth with enamel. Mammals without enamel therefore must have descended from mammals with enamel-covered teeth.
"We could therefore predict that nonfunctional vestiges of the genes that code for enamel should be found in mammals that lack enamel," Springer said. "When we made our predictions, however, we did not have sequences for the enamelin gene in toothless and enamelless mammals. Since then my lab worked on obtaining these sequences so we could test our prediction."
Previous studies in evolutionary biology have provided only limited evidence linking morphological degeneration in the fossil record to molecular decay in the genome. The study led by Springer takes advantage of the hardness of enamel and teeth to provide more robust evidence for the linkage.
"The molecular counterpart to vestigial organs is pseudogenes that are descended from formerly functional genes," Springer explained. "In our research we clearly see the parallel evolution of enamel loss in the fossil record and the molecular decay of the enamelin gene into a pseudogene in representatives of four different orders of mammals that have lost enamel."
Broadly, the research involved the following steps: First, Meredith collected the DNA sequences for the enamelin gene in different mammals. Next, the researchers analyzed sequences using a variety of molecular evolutionary methods, including new approaches developed by Springer's group. Finally, the group used the results of their analyses to test previous hypotheses and generate new ones.
"Currently, we are actively engaged in deciphering the evolutionary history of other genes that are involved in enamel formation," Springer said.
Authors of the study are Springer; Meredith, a postdoctoral scholar in Springer's lab; Gatesy, an associate professor of biology; William Murphy of Texas A&M University; and Oliver Ryder of the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research, Calif. Meredith, the first author of the research paper, performed all the lab work and, under guidance from Springer and Gatesy, ran most of the computer analyses.
The research was supported in part by an Assembling the Tree of Life grant to Springer and Gatesy from the National Science Foundation.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Death Calculator Predicts Your Odds of Kicking the Bucket
Death Calculator Predicts Your Odds of Kicking the Bucket
LiveScience Staff
LiveScience.comWed Aug 26, 4:51 pm ET
A new web site claims to give the odds on you dying next year, or for whatever period you select, based on a few simple questions.
The site, DeathRiskRankings.com, is the brainchild of researchers and students at Carnegie Mellon University. It provides answers based on publicly available data from the United States and Europe, comparing mortality risks by gender, age, cause of death and geographic region. Put your info in, and it produces the probable causes of your demise and provides insight on the timing of that unfortunate event.
The site can compare such things as the odds of death next year by breast cancer for, say, a 54-year-old Pennsylvania woman or her counterpart in the United Kingdom.
Of course the results produced by the web site speak to groups of people and cannot predict with accuracy when you might actually kick the bucket. The timing of your own end is based on many uncharted factors, from heredity to lifestyle to untimely accidents.
But noodling around with the interface can be enlightening, if not frightening.
"It turns out that the British woman has a 33 percent higher risk of breast cancer death. But for lung/throat cancer, the results are almost reversed, and the Pennsylvania woman has a 29 percent higher risk," explained Paul Fischbeck, site developer and professor of social and decision sciences and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon.
"Most Americans don't have a particularly good understanding of their own mortality risks, let alone ranking of their relevant risks," said David Gerard, a former professor at Carnegie Mellon who is now an associate professor of economics at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
The researchers found that beyond infancy, the risk of dying increases annually at an exponential rate.
A 20-year-old U.S. woman has a 1 in 2,000 (or 0.05 percent) chance of dying in the next year, for example. By age 40, the risk is three times greater; by age 60, it is 16 times greater; and by age 80, it is 100 times greater (around 1 in 20 or 5 percent).
"The risks are higher, but still not that bad," Gerard said. "At 80, the average U.S. woman still has a 95 percent chance of making it to her 81st birthday."
Other results for queries about dying within the year:
For every age group, men have a much higher annual death risk than women. For 20-year-olds, the risk is 2.5 to three times greater for men. Men are much more prone to accidents, homicides and suicides, and the risk of dying from heart disease is always higher for men than women, peaking in the 50s when men are 2.5 times at greater risk of dying.
Women's cancer risks are higher than men's in their 30s and 40s.
For heart disease and cancer, U.S. blacks have a much higher death risk than U.S. whites. Overall, blacks in their 30s and 40s are twice as likely to die within the year as their white counterparts. Only for suicides, do whites consistently exceed blacks, where whites typically have two to three times greater chances of dying.
For 20-year-old males, 80 percent of their death risks are from accidents, homicides and suicides. By age 50, however, these causes make up less than 10 percent and heart disease is No. 1, accounting for more than 30 percent of all deaths.
Obesity-related death risks are much higher in the United States than in Europe. For example, the annual diabetes death risk in the United States is three times that found in northern Europe for 60 year olds.
Fischbeck and Gerard hope the site will add information to the U.S. healtchcare debate.
"We believe that this tool, which allows anyone to assess their own risk of dying and to compare their risks with counterparts in the United States and Europe, could help inform the public and constructively engage them in the debate," Fischbeck said.
· 10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction
· Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years
· Health Care Debate Based on Lack of Logic
· Original Story: Death Calculator Predicts Your Odds of Kicking the Bucket
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our communityto debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Monday, August 3, 2009
What is evolution?
by Michael Crichton (excerpt from PREY)
Most people imagined evolution to be a one-time-only process, a confluence of chance events. If plants hadn’t started making oxygen, animal life would never have evolved. If an asteroid hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs, mammals would never have taken over. If some fish hadn’t come onto land, we’d all still be in the water. And so on.
All that was true enough, but there was another side of evolution, too. Certain forms, and certain ways of life, kept appearing again and again. For example, parasitism-one animal living off another-had evolved independently many times in the course of evolution. Parasitism was a reliable way for life-forms to interact; and it kept reemerging.
A similar phenomenon occurred with genetic programs. They tended to move toward certain tried-and-true solutions. The programmers talked about it in terms of peaks on a fitness landscape; they could model it as three-dimensional false-color mountain range. But the fact was that evolution had its stable side, too.
And one thing you could count on was that any big, hot broth of bacteria was likely to get contaminated by a virus, and if that virus couldn’t infect the bacteria, it would mutate to a form that could. You could count on that the way you could count on finding ants in your sugar bowl if you left it out on the counter too long.
Considering that evolution has been studied for a hundred and fifty years, it was surprising how little we knew about it. The old ideas about survival of the fittest had gone out of fashion long ago. Those views were too simpleminded. Nineteenth-century thinkers saw evolution as “nature red in tooth and claw,” envisioning a world where strong animals killed weaker ones. They didn’t take into account that the weaker ones would inevitably get stronger, or fight back in some other way. Which of course they always do.
The new ideas emphasized interactions among continuously evolving forms. Some people talked of evolution as an arms race, by which they meant an ever-escalating interaction. A plant attacked by a pest evolves a pesticide in its leaves. The pest evolves to tolerate the pesticide, so the plant evolves a stronger pesticide. And so on.
Others talked about this pattern as coevolution, in which two or more life-forms evolved simultaneously to tolerate each other. Thus a plant attacked by ants evolves to tolerate the ants, and even begins to make special food for them on the surface of its leaves. In return the resident ants protect the plant, stinging any animal that tries to eat the leaves. Pretty soon neither the plant nor the ant species can survive without the other.
This pattern was so fundamental that many people thought it was the real core of evolution. Parasitism and symbiosis were the true basis for evolutionary change. These processes lay at the heart of all evolution, and had been present from the very beginning. Lynn Margulies was famous for demonstrating that bacteria had originally developed nuclei by swallowing other bacteria.
By the twenty-first century, it was clear that coevolution wasn’t limited to paired creatures in some isolated spinning dance. There were coevolutionary patterns with three, ten, or n life-forms, where n could be any number at all. A cornfield contained many kinds of plants, was attacked by many pests, and evolved many defenses. The plants competed with weeds; the pests competed with other pests; larger animals ate both the plants and the pests. The outcome of this complex interaction was always changing, always evolving.
And it was inherently unpredictable.
Most people imagined evolution to be a one-time-only process, a confluence of chance events. If plants hadn’t started making oxygen, animal life would never have evolved. If an asteroid hadn’t wiped out the dinosaurs, mammals would never have taken over. If some fish hadn’t come onto land, we’d all still be in the water. And so on.
All that was true enough, but there was another side of evolution, too. Certain forms, and certain ways of life, kept appearing again and again. For example, parasitism-one animal living off another-had evolved independently many times in the course of evolution. Parasitism was a reliable way for life-forms to interact; and it kept reemerging.
A similar phenomenon occurred with genetic programs. They tended to move toward certain tried-and-true solutions. The programmers talked about it in terms of peaks on a fitness landscape; they could model it as three-dimensional false-color mountain range. But the fact was that evolution had its stable side, too.
And one thing you could count on was that any big, hot broth of bacteria was likely to get contaminated by a virus, and if that virus couldn’t infect the bacteria, it would mutate to a form that could. You could count on that the way you could count on finding ants in your sugar bowl if you left it out on the counter too long.
Considering that evolution has been studied for a hundred and fifty years, it was surprising how little we knew about it. The old ideas about survival of the fittest had gone out of fashion long ago. Those views were too simpleminded. Nineteenth-century thinkers saw evolution as “nature red in tooth and claw,” envisioning a world where strong animals killed weaker ones. They didn’t take into account that the weaker ones would inevitably get stronger, or fight back in some other way. Which of course they always do.
The new ideas emphasized interactions among continuously evolving forms. Some people talked of evolution as an arms race, by which they meant an ever-escalating interaction. A plant attacked by a pest evolves a pesticide in its leaves. The pest evolves to tolerate the pesticide, so the plant evolves a stronger pesticide. And so on.
Others talked about this pattern as coevolution, in which two or more life-forms evolved simultaneously to tolerate each other. Thus a plant attacked by ants evolves to tolerate the ants, and even begins to make special food for them on the surface of its leaves. In return the resident ants protect the plant, stinging any animal that tries to eat the leaves. Pretty soon neither the plant nor the ant species can survive without the other.
This pattern was so fundamental that many people thought it was the real core of evolution. Parasitism and symbiosis were the true basis for evolutionary change. These processes lay at the heart of all evolution, and had been present from the very beginning. Lynn Margulies was famous for demonstrating that bacteria had originally developed nuclei by swallowing other bacteria.
By the twenty-first century, it was clear that coevolution wasn’t limited to paired creatures in some isolated spinning dance. There were coevolutionary patterns with three, ten, or n life-forms, where n could be any number at all. A cornfield contained many kinds of plants, was attacked by many pests, and evolved many defenses. The plants competed with weeds; the pests competed with other pests; larger animals ate both the plants and the pests. The outcome of this complex interaction was always changing, always evolving.
And it was inherently unpredictable.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Oldest Animal Fossils Found in Lakes, Not Oceans
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090727/sc_livescience/oldestanimalfossilsfoundinlakesnotoceans
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.comMon Jul 27, 5:12 pm ET
Conventional wisdom has it that the first animals evolved in the ocean.
Now researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China have found that the first animal fossils are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not in marine sediments as commonly assumed.
These new findings not only raise questions as to where the earliest animals were living, but what factorsdrove animals to evolve in the first place.
For some 3 billion years, single-celled life forms such as bacteria dominated the planet. Then, roughly 600 million years ago, the first multi-cellular animals appeared on the scene, diversifying rapidly.
The oldest known animal fossils in the world are preserved in South China's Doushantuo Formation. These fossil beds have no adult specimens - instead, many of the fossils appear to be microscopic embryos.
"Our first unusual finding in this region was the abundance of a clay mineral called smectite," said researcher Tom Bristow, now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In rocks of this age, smectite is normally transformed into other types of clay. The smectite in these South China rocks, however, underwent no such transformation and have a special chemistry that, for the smectite to form, requires specific conditions in the water - conditions commonly found in salty, alkaline lakes."
The researchers collected hundreds of rock samples from several locations in South China. All their analyses suggest these rocks were not marine sediments.
"Moreover, we found smectite in only some locations in South China, and not uniformly as one would expect for marine deposits," Bristow said. "Taken together, several lines of evidence indicated to us that these early animals lived in a lake environment."
This discovery raises questions as to how and why animals appeared when they did.
"It is most unexpected that these first fossils do not come from marine sediments," said researcher Martin Kennedy, a geologist at the University of California at Riverside.
"Lakes are typically short-lived features on the Earth's surface, and they are not nearly as consistent environments as oceans are," he explained. "So it's surprising that the first evidence of animals we find is associated with lakes, which are far more variable environments than the ocean. You'd expect the first appearance of animals to be in the most conservative, stable environments we could imagine."
It remains possible, Kennedy noted, that animal fossils of similar or older age exist that remain to be found that are marine in origin. However, at the very least, this work suggests "that animals had already taken on the ability to deal with the environmental fluctuations one sees in lake environments," he said. "That suggests that their evolutionary response is much more rapid that I would have supposed, and that the earliest animals were far more diverse than imagined."
If animals did first develop in lakes, one aspect of lake environments that could have spurred on their evolution is how much easier it is for air to percolate through them, given how much shallower they typically are than the ocean.
"The most popular explanation for the evolution of animals has to do with the increase in oxygen in Earth's atmosphere at that time," Kennedy told LiveScience. "It's possible that lakes were the first to benefit from that increase in oxygen."
The scientists detailed their findings online July 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
· Greatest Mysteries: How Did Life Arise on Earth?
· Image Gallery: Dinosaur Fossils
· Image Gallery Darwin on Display
· Original Story: Oldest Animal Fossils Found in Lakes, Not Oceans
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our communityto debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Man in the Mirror -
By James Howard Kunstler
on June 29, 2009 6:01 AM
As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.
Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program -- another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy's bilges -- since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.
Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.
He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.
More than once the authorities tried to pin charges of child molestation on him for suspicious activities at his boy-trap, Neverland Ranch, with its carnival rides, private zoo, video game galleries, and inexhaustible supplies of sugary treats. The first time he settled with the alleged victim's family for $22-million. They just walked away with the loot and happily shut up. The second time, he moonwalked out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors mysteriously went on TV to say, well, they did kind of think after-the-fact that he really did those things he was accused of, but, you know.... The defendant himself behaved as though his trial were a TV celebrity challenge show on another planet, arriving on one occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas with some lame excuse about a backache. He spent the last years of his life wandering a few steps ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters into "comeback" schemes (with walking-around money up front), and with three bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for consolation.
When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Argentine glacier advances despite global warming
Global warming? What global warming?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By JEANNETTE NEUMANN, Associated Press Writer Jeannette Neumann, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 38 mins ago
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier is one of only a few ice fields worldwide that have withstood rising global temperatures.
Nourished by Andean snowmelt, the glacier constantly grows even as it spawns icebergs the size of apartment buildings into a frigid lake, maintaining a nearly perfect equilibrium since measurements began more than a century ago.
"We're not sure why this happens," said Andres Rivera, a glacialist with the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. "But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change."
Viewed at a safe distance on cruise boats or the wooden observation deck just beyond the glacier's leading edge, Perito Moreno's jagged surface radiates a brilliant white in the strong Patagonian sun. Submerged sections glow deep blue.
And when the wind blows in a cloud cover, the 3-mile-wide (5 kilometer) glacier seems to glow from within as the surrounding mountains and water turn a meditative gray.
Every few years, Perito Moreno expands enough to touch a point of land across Lake Argentina, cutting the nation's largest freshwater lake in half and forming an ice dam as it presses against the shore.
The water on one side of the dam surges against the glacier, up to 200 feet (60 meters) above lake level, until it breaks the ice wall with a thunderous crash, drowning the applause of hundreds of tourists.
"It's like a massive building falling all of the sudden," said park ranger Javier D'Angelo, who experienced the rupture in 2008 and 1998.
The rupture is a reminder that while Perito Moreno appears to be a vast, 19-mile-long (30 kilometer) frozen river, it's a dynamic icescape that moves and cracks unexpectedly.
"The glacier has a lot of life," said Luli Gavina, who leads mini-treks across the glacier's snow fields.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By JEANNETTE NEUMANN, Associated Press Writer Jeannette Neumann, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 38 mins ago
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier is one of only a few ice fields worldwide that have withstood rising global temperatures.
Nourished by Andean snowmelt, the glacier constantly grows even as it spawns icebergs the size of apartment buildings into a frigid lake, maintaining a nearly perfect equilibrium since measurements began more than a century ago.
"We're not sure why this happens," said Andres Rivera, a glacialist with the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. "But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change."
Viewed at a safe distance on cruise boats or the wooden observation deck just beyond the glacier's leading edge, Perito Moreno's jagged surface radiates a brilliant white in the strong Patagonian sun. Submerged sections glow deep blue.
And when the wind blows in a cloud cover, the 3-mile-wide (5 kilometer) glacier seems to glow from within as the surrounding mountains and water turn a meditative gray.
Every few years, Perito Moreno expands enough to touch a point of land across Lake Argentina, cutting the nation's largest freshwater lake in half and forming an ice dam as it presses against the shore.
The water on one side of the dam surges against the glacier, up to 200 feet (60 meters) above lake level, until it breaks the ice wall with a thunderous crash, drowning the applause of hundreds of tourists.
"It's like a massive building falling all of the sudden," said park ranger Javier D'Angelo, who experienced the rupture in 2008 and 1998.
The rupture is a reminder that while Perito Moreno appears to be a vast, 19-mile-long (30 kilometer) frozen river, it's a dynamic icescape that moves and cracks unexpectedly.
"The glacier has a lot of life," said Luli Gavina, who leads mini-treks across the glacier's snow fields.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Are You Suffering From Affluenza?
By Alexander Green
In his 1997 film Affluenza, producer John de Graaf claims there is a virus loose in society that threatens our wallets, our friendships, our families, our communities and our environment.
Each year it costs us hundreds of billions of dollars, wastes our precious time, ruins our health and adversely affects our quality of life.
What is affluenza, exactly?
De Graaf defines it as “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”
He argues that too many of us are working ourselves to death to accumulate an endless array of goods and services we don’t really need.
This creates stress. Stress, in turn, creates health problems, including headaches, stomachaches, ulcers, depression, even heart attacks.
Medical research shows that people in industrial nations lose more years from disability and premature death due to stress-related illnesses than other ailments.
Affluenza drives up health care costs, tears at the fabric of families, and shortens our stay on the right side of the daisies.
Before you mistake me for the national scold, however, let me make a couple of confessions.
First off, I’m a libertarian. I realize that personal consumption – roughly two-thirds of all economic
activity – drives the economy. Moreover, if someone really wants to devote his life to accumulating
more, more, more, that’s his right.
As John Maynard Keynes put it, “It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.”
(Personally, though, I’ve never met anyone who obtained lasting satisfaction with a Visa or MasterCard.)
Secondly, I’m not immune to the occasional bout of affluenza myself.
I rarely pass a bookstore or record shop, for example, without poking my head inside. And whenever I leave Barnes & Noble, the clerk at the register always asks the same thing:
“Would you like us to double-bag that for you?”
We all have to consume to survive, of course. But Madison Avenue is right there beside us, aiding us, abetting us... giving us a not-so-subtle push.
Marketers want to convince us that our lives would be so much better if we would only just drive this car, drink this light beer, use this antiwrinkle cream or fly these friendly skies.
Every day we are bombarded: billboards, Internet banners, TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads. Go to a busy public beach and single-engine planes criss-cross the sky trailing banners, “Joe’s Crab Shack: All You Can Eat $17.99” or “2-for-1 Drinks All Day at Bennigan’s.”
Advertisers are getting more sophisticated, too. The new science of neuromarketing is designed to help retailers unlock the subconscious thoughts, feelings and desires that drive our purchasing decisions.
Marketers now strive to create products that actually stimulate the production of dopamine.
Today psychologists routinely talk about “retail therapy,” where consumers shop just to get a shortterm
high to ward off boredom or the blues.
How do we resist?
First by recognizing our limits, both financial and material. After all, it doesn’t really take a lot of money to meet our needs.
Many of the other things we covet don’t hold our attention long. Recognize that and you may conclude that they aren’t worth the time and trouble it takes to acquire them.
As the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness ... He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
A well-lived life cannot just be about competing against others for resources. He who dies with the most toys doesn’t win.
As Laurence G. Boldt writes in “The Tao of Abundance”:
“The psychology of plenty differs fundamentally from the psychology of scarcity. If I view my life as a struggle to sustain my existence in an unfriendly world, then intimidation, competitiveness, and greed make sense. If I view life itself as a gift, attitudes of praise, thanksgiving and responsibility naturally follow.”
It’s only human to want to better our material conditions, of course. But the relentless quest for more often undermines our quality of life. Successful lives are built not bought. And an overconsumptive
lifestyle only limits our choices.
As Russell said, “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
Curing affluenza means dropping the chains of mindless consumption. It means recognizing that lives based on having are less free than those based on doing or being. Wise men and women have known this for millennia.
In 400 B.C., the Greek philosopher Diogenes taught that no man needed much – and that we shouldn’t complain of material loss. When he went to Athens with a slave named Manes, Manes ran off. Diogenes shrugged off his ill fortune saying, “If Manes can live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without Manes?”
In “It’s All in Your Head,” Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine relate another story about the
famous ascetic:
“Diogenes is sitting on the side of the road eating his simple meal of porridge. A court philosopher sees him and comes over to chat. ‘You know, Diogenes, if you learned to play up to the king like the rest of us, you wouldn’t have to live on porridge.’ Diogenes doesn’t even glance up from his bowl; he just says, ‘If you learned to live on porridge, you wouldn’t have to play up to the king.’”
Reasonable, affordable consumption means less struggle, less debt, less hassles, less stress. It also grants us more time – and with it the opportunity for new experiences, better relationships
and greater personal freedom.
As Oscar Wilde said, “The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man
is.”
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
What Matters Most
by Alexander Green
Thanksgiving, Anne, a family friend, looked and sounded great.
Today she is dying of cancer. In the last few weeks she has lost her eyesight. Half her face is paralyzed. And she has refused more chemo, describing the results of last week’s MRI as “just horrible.”
When I walked into Hallmark, I told the clerk I was looking for a special kind of card.
“It’s for someone who isn’t well,” I said. “And she knows she isn’t going to get better.”
The clerk nodded, said she knew just what I needed and led me to a special section with headings like “Hope,” “Strength,” and “Serious Illness.”
Standing there reading the messages in those cards, thinking of all the grief-stricken people out there selecting them – or (worse) receiving them – is enough to make you want to sob.
I finally settled on, “May you gather strength from the love of those around you,” scrawled a note about how I’d love to stop in if she felt like visitors, and dropped it in the mailbox.
When he began teaching at Cornell, the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov said he knew just two things: One, life is beautiful, and two, life is sad. The reason life is sad, he said, is because it’s going to end.
Yet death, our most unwelcome visitor, can also do us a favor. It can remind us, the mourners, what’s most important.
As Jack Kerouac observed, “Pondering on death, with or without wine – brings enlightenment.”
Too many of us spend our days moving with the hustling crowd, mindlessly doing more or less what everyone else is doing, acting like we have all the time in the world. That is, until we get a wake-up call and learn that someone close to us has had a bad accident or is suddenly very ill.
Increased awareness of our own mortality needn’t lead to fear and anxiety, however. We can use it as an opportunity to answer the question posed by poet Mary Oliver, “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Do you know? Or are you so consumed with projects, deadlines and responsibilities that you haven’t given it much thought lately?
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. And this realization is a good thing.
Viewed from the prospect of eternity, we are really no more durable than the mayfly. Many spend their time just as frivolously. Others are bored. As author Susan Ertz quipped, Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Greek mythology, on the other hand, gives us the story of Tithonus, a Trojan who was granted immortality by the gods but grew to hate his life.
Whatever path he chose, he could always take it later. Whatever options he faced, ultimately he could have them all. Time became meaningless, oppressive even. He lost his ardor for life. In the end, he petitions Zeus to release him from eternity. He begs for mortality so that, once again, his choices might matter.
Each of us has been granted an incomparable gift, a brief stay on this little blue ball. How will you spend it? To what end will you use it?
These are the most important questions we can ask ourselves. And the answers can be read in the way we live our lives.
“Death is not the greatest loss,” Norman Cousins warned. “The greatest loss is what dies
inside us while we live.”
Doctors generally observe that terminal patients who have truly lived their lives – who
have strived and loved and taken risks – generally have an easier time with their dying.
Patients in nursing homes routinely express more regret for the chances they never took than the ones that worked out poorly.
Singer Bono, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and granted numerous awards for his
activism for world poverty, said in a recent interview, “I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at
the moment.”
He is someone who has chosen to live life on his own terms and in service to the values that
matter to him most. It is unlikely that you or I will ever accomplish as much. But that’s okay.
For most of us, born without the immense talents of a da Vinci or Beethoven or Lincoln, the
true measure of our lives is not what we achieve – and certainly not what we accumulate – but rather who we are, the number of people we touch, and what is grieved in our absence.
As the novelist E.M. Forster observed, “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves
him.”
Thanksgiving, Anne, a family friend, looked and sounded great.
Today she is dying of cancer. In the last few weeks she has lost her eyesight. Half her face is paralyzed. And she has refused more chemo, describing the results of last week’s MRI as “just horrible.”
When I walked into Hallmark, I told the clerk I was looking for a special kind of card.
“It’s for someone who isn’t well,” I said. “And she knows she isn’t going to get better.”
The clerk nodded, said she knew just what I needed and led me to a special section with headings like “Hope,” “Strength,” and “Serious Illness.”
Standing there reading the messages in those cards, thinking of all the grief-stricken people out there selecting them – or (worse) receiving them – is enough to make you want to sob.
I finally settled on, “May you gather strength from the love of those around you,” scrawled a note about how I’d love to stop in if she felt like visitors, and dropped it in the mailbox.
When he began teaching at Cornell, the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov said he knew just two things: One, life is beautiful, and two, life is sad. The reason life is sad, he said, is because it’s going to end.
Yet death, our most unwelcome visitor, can also do us a favor. It can remind us, the mourners, what’s most important.
As Jack Kerouac observed, “Pondering on death, with or without wine – brings enlightenment.”
Too many of us spend our days moving with the hustling crowd, mindlessly doing more or less what everyone else is doing, acting like we have all the time in the world. That is, until we get a wake-up call and learn that someone close to us has had a bad accident or is suddenly very ill.
Increased awareness of our own mortality needn’t lead to fear and anxiety, however. We can use it as an opportunity to answer the question posed by poet Mary Oliver, “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Do you know? Or are you so consumed with projects, deadlines and responsibilities that you haven’t given it much thought lately?
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. And this realization is a good thing.
Viewed from the prospect of eternity, we are really no more durable than the mayfly. Many spend their time just as frivolously. Others are bored. As author Susan Ertz quipped, Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Greek mythology, on the other hand, gives us the story of Tithonus, a Trojan who was granted immortality by the gods but grew to hate his life.
Whatever path he chose, he could always take it later. Whatever options he faced, ultimately he could have them all. Time became meaningless, oppressive even. He lost his ardor for life. In the end, he petitions Zeus to release him from eternity. He begs for mortality so that, once again, his choices might matter.
Each of us has been granted an incomparable gift, a brief stay on this little blue ball. How will you spend it? To what end will you use it?
These are the most important questions we can ask ourselves. And the answers can be read in the way we live our lives.
“Death is not the greatest loss,” Norman Cousins warned. “The greatest loss is what dies
inside us while we live.”
Doctors generally observe that terminal patients who have truly lived their lives – who
have strived and loved and taken risks – generally have an easier time with their dying.
Patients in nursing homes routinely express more regret for the chances they never took than the ones that worked out poorly.
Singer Bono, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and granted numerous awards for his
activism for world poverty, said in a recent interview, “I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at
the moment.”
He is someone who has chosen to live life on his own terms and in service to the values that
matter to him most. It is unlikely that you or I will ever accomplish as much. But that’s okay.
For most of us, born without the immense talents of a da Vinci or Beethoven or Lincoln, the
true measure of our lives is not what we achieve – and certainly not what we accumulate – but rather who we are, the number of people we touch, and what is grieved in our absence.
As the novelist E.M. Forster observed, “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves
him.”
Friday, April 3, 2009
Robot scientists can think for themselves
Looks like Isaac Asimov is a true visionary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~By Ben Hirschler Ben Hirschler – Thu Apr 2, 2:30 pm ET
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LONDON (Reuters) – Watch out scientists -- you may be replaced by a robot.
Two teams of researchers said on Thursday they had created machines that could reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on their own, marking a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence.
Such robo-scientists could be put to work unraveling complex biological systems, designing new drugs, modeling the world's climate or understanding the cosmos.
For the moment, though, they are performing more humble tasks.
At Aberystwyth University in Wales, Ross King and colleagues have created a robot called Adam that can not only carry out experiments on yeast metabolism but also reason about the results and plan the next experiment.
It is the world's first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery -- in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker's yeast.
"On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we've checked that it's got the results correct," King said in an interview.
"People have been working on this since the 1960s. When we first sent robots to Mars, they really dreamt of the robots doing their own experiments on Mars. After 40 or 50 years, we've now got the capability to do that."
Their next robot, Eve, will have much more brain power and will be put to work searching for new medicines.
King hopes the application of intelligent robotic thinking to the process of sifting tens of thousands of compounds for potential new drugs will be particularly valuable in the hunt for treatments for neglected tropical diseases like malaria.
King published his findings in the journal Science, alongside a second paper from Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt of Cornell University in New York, who have developed a computer program capable of working out the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum.
Just by crunching the numbers -- and without any prior instruction in physics -- the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton's laws of motion and other properties.
Lipson does not think robots will make scientists obsolete any day soon, but believes they could take over much of the routine work in research laboratories.
"One of the biggest problems in science today is finding the underlying principles in areas where there are lots and lots of data," he told reporters in a conference call. "This can help in accelerating the rate at which we can discover scientific principles behind the data."
(Additional reporting by Stuart McDill; editing by Maggie Fox and Tim Pearce)
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