Heartbreaks

Japan's population to shrink two thirds by 2110

2012-01-30T22:46:00.001+07:00

Japan's population to shrink two thirds by 2110 - Japan's population is expected to shrink to a third of its current size over the next century, with the average woman living to over 90 within 50 years, a government report said Monday.

The population is forecast to decline from the current 127.7 million to 86.7 million by 2060 and to tumble again to 42.9 million by 2110 "if conditions remain unchanged", the health and welfare ministry said in the report.

The projections by the ministry's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast that Japanese women would on average have just 1.35 babies, well below the replacement rate, within 50 years.

This file photo shows elderly people working out with wooden dumb-bells at the grounds of a temple in Tokyo. Japan's population is expected to shrink to a third of its current size over the next century, with the average woman living to over 90 within 50 years, according to a government report. (AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)

The report said that last year's earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, which left more than 19,000 people dead or missing, hit average life expectancy but that the figure was expected to continue its upward trend.

Japan's life expectancy -- one of the highest in the world -- is expected to rise from 86.39 years in 2010 to 90.93 years in 2060 for women and from 79.64 years to 84.19 years for men.

In September the government announced that the number of people aged 100 or older hit a record high for the 41st consecutive year.

The health ministry said 37 out of every 100,000 people in the country are now centenarians -- a total of more than 47,700, with 87 percent of them women. The figure was more than 3,300 higher than in 2010.

More than 20 percent of Japan's population are aged 65 or over, one of the highest proportions in the world.

Japan's population has been declining as many young people have put off starting families, seeing it as a burden on their lifestyles and careers. A slow economy has also discouraged young people from having babies.

Analysts say having a smaller population is not in itself a problem, as demonstrated by the economic and diplomatic successes of many European nations with far fewer people than Japan.

But an ageing population causes all manner of difficulties, most notably for Japan's government finances, already hard pressed by two decades of economic stagnation.

More retirees inevitably means more spending on social security when Japan's public debt, at twice GDP, is already one of the industrialised world's worst. ( AFP )

Of men and muscles

2012-01-27T23:38:00.001+07:00

Of men and muscles - Men are more obsessed with their looks and physique than women, a study reveals - More men worry about their body shape and appearance — potbellies, "man boobs" or going bald — than women do about how they look, according to research.

More than four in five men (80.7 per cent) talk in ways that promote anxiety about their body image by referring to perceived flaws and imperfections, compared with 75 per cent of women. Similarly, 38 per cent of men would sacrifice at least a year of their life in exchange for a perfect body — again, a higher proportion than women.

"These findings show men are concerned about body image, just like women. We knew that ‘body talk' affected women and young people and now we know that it affects men too," said Dr Phillippa Diedrichs, from the centre of appearance research at the University of the West of England. She conducted the study, of 394 British men, which was commissioned by Central YMCA and the Succeed Foundation, an eating disorders charity.

The survey revealed that men have high levels of anxiety about their bodies. At least 80.7 per cent talked about their own or others' appearance in ways that draw attention to weight, lack of hair or slim frame; 30 per cent have heard someone refer to their potbelly; 19 per cent have overheard talk about their "man boobs" or "moobs".

Around 23 per cent said concerns about their appearance had deterred them from going to the gym; 63 per cent thought their arms or chests were not muscular enough; 29 per cent thought about their appearance at least five times a day. Interestingly, 18 per cent of the men were on a high-protein diet to increase muscle mass and 16 per cent were on a calorie-controlled diet to slim down.

Rosi Prescott, Central YMCA's chief executive, said: "Historically, conversation about your body has been perceived as something women do, but it is clear from this research that men are also guilty of commenting on one another's bodies and, in many cases, this is having a damaging effect." Men's high levels of body talk were symptomatic of a growing obsession with appearance, she added.

Three in five men (58.6 per cent) said body talk affected them negatively and 12 per cent said they would trade a year of life if they could have their ideal body weight and shape. Around 4 per cent said they had made themselves sick to control their weight, while 3.4 per cent used laxatives for the same purpose. Almost a third (31.9 per cent) had "exercised compulsively" in pursuit of that goal, although that might have been partly due to 52 per cent of the respondents being gym members, when the average is 12 per cent.

Respondents blamed the media for reinforcing unrealistic ideals of physical perfection. "Men want to be big and lean. It isn't a bad thing for people to want to look better, but it has become more like a competition, which has a bad effect on mental health", said one respondent.

Alan White, a professor of men's health at Leeds Metropolitan University, said: "There has been a rise in the number of men having cosmetic procedures such as a nose job or removal of breast tissue; that has gone from almost nothing to a significant industry over the past ten years. All this fuels the idea of the body beautiful and encourages a quick fix rather than appropriate diet and physical fitness levels." ( gulfnews.com )

Getting the most out of social media

2012-01-27T23:25:00.001+07:00

Getting the most out of social media - Dubai's top social media guru Akanksha Goel tells Carolina D'Souza how we're all just one click away from a global audience

Akanksha Goel ( @AkankshaGoel) has more than 16,000 twitter followers. But that isn't the only reason she is recognised as one of the top social media consultants in the Middle East. "Like you're told not to judge a book by its cover, don't judge someone by the number of twitter followers or Facebook fans," she says. "What's important is how well you understand social media platforms and how effectively you use these to drive business. The numbers should translate into something substantial - the company's bottom line. In other words, you have to take the online contacts offline, and connect in person."

Just how well she uses social media platforms is evident from her portfolio of clients - Sony, Samsung, Philips, Puma, Mall of the Emirates, Mashreq bank, Welcare Hospital and Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, to name a few. "I'm glad I work with brands that are at the forefront of using technology as a part of their business models," she says.

Akanksha Goel heads Socialize, one of Dubai's largest social media agencies.

Using technology for business is something Akanksha is familiar with, having started out with connecting to the 3D virtual world Second Life. Podcasts and wikis (web pages that can be created and edited collaboratively by different people) followed, and now she heads Socialize, one of Dubai's largest social media agencies. Along the way, she worked as editor of Stuff magazine in Singapore and organised Asia's first PodCamp (a real-time community gathering for new media enthusiasts). She is also a speaker at major digital media and marketing conferences around the world.

Although she self-deprecatingly says, "I didn't plan anything. To start with, I was lucky to be in Singapore in 2005 at the heart of the social media revolution…", it wasn't just a case of being in the right place at the right time for her, it was knowing what to do with the right tools. We take a look at the steps she climbed on her northward bound career trajectory.

Step 1. Wiki

In 2006, while a student of Corporate Communication and Reputation Management course at the Singapore Management University (SMU), Akanksha signed into Second Life, an online virtual world in which users create avatars to interact with other users and trade virtual property. "It was at this point that I realised how much technology was redefining culture and helping me transcend boundaries. This led me to create a wiki with one of my professors, about how different cultures consume social media." That wiki (bit.ly/uUJVtT) is now a case study at The New York Times on collaborative learning.

The wiki was read by Mitch Joel, marketing and communications blogger and author of Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. He was due to visit Singapore and contacted Akanksha. "I was interviewed for episode 62 of his podcast on the rise of digital media in Asia, and at the end of my interview, I happened to share on-air that I was looking for a job in marketing."

Step 2. Podcast

Glen Myles, a publisher in Australia who was due to purchase a publishing house in Singapore, heard the podcast. "He offered me the job of editor-in-chief of Stuff magazine [a consumer electronics magazine]. I accepted. That was in 2007. What is amazing is that in the bricks and mortar world, it would take me so much time to email resumes to multiple companies, but with a podcast, you can reach a global audience with the click of a button," says Akanksha.

Step 3. Networking

At Stuff, Akanksha built up a good industry network. "I kept strong online and offline connections," she says. One of her contacts, Nicholas Paillart, founder of the DineDubai network and director of the Singapore-based loyalty programme OneEmpower, asked her to help with sourcing a good PR company. "In a way, I was playing the role of a media consultant. I was also asked whether I would help their in-house marketing team in Dubai and this spiked my interest. The next day, I was offered a job as their marketing director."

Step 4. Google Profile

Akanksha landed in the UAE in 2008 and set up a Google Profile account - sort of a networking wing of Google's social media services, where you can create a public profile and manage your online identity. On the profile, she placed a link to an interview she had done with the publication Knowledge@Wharton on social media in Asia. "Around the same time, Dubai-based Murdoch University invited me to give a talk on social media to their MBA class, and after that the demand quickly grew. By 2009, I was one of the first few speakers in the UAE talking about social media. I created my twitter account, and several of those who attended the sessions followed me. I began to receive inquires from companies, and it quickly became obvious that there was a huge demand for training."

Step 5. Twitter

On the eve of Dubai Twestival (a global social media fundraising initiative that connects communities offline on a single day to highlight a cause) the following year, local radio station Dubai 92 announced a compilation of Dubai's 100 Most Compelling Tweeters. "I was part of that list, and the recognition that came with that got me even more excited in the vast potential that these new platforms held. I slowly realised that I had to truly interact with Dubai's new league of netizens and this is when I organised one of Dubai's first tweet-ups. Soon, they became commonplace and businesses started to question how they could harness the power of social media. Socialize was born in 2010 to train companies on leveraging online tools and has since expanded into a full service agency that has over 40 clients across the region."

Lessons you can learn

Akanksha says, "Social media tools allow everyone to create a personal brand. Today one can reach a global audience with the click of a button, a privilege that was reserved for superstars and media companies less than a decade ago. Grab the opportunity to have your voice heard. After all, most employers Google you before they hire you. What will your Google footprint say about you?" ( gulfnews.com )

*Next week, are you a treasure hunter or observer? Read Akanksha's take on the five common social media personalities.

Tech translations

Wiki: Wikipedia is the best example of these collaborative web pages.
Podcast: Downloadable digital audio files.
Google Profile: A public profile you can create via Google to display the information you want like your biography, contact details, and links to websites you have created.

Internet, It’s a Helluva Drug: Internet Addiction Has Same Effect as Cocaine on Brain

2012-01-26T19:30:00.003+07:00

Internet, It’s a Helluva Drug: Internet Addiction Has Same Effect as Cocaine on Brain - Internet is the new cocaine. A new brain scan study found that not only can the internet be addicting, but it can also cause similar brain changes that occur with alcoholics and drug addicts.

Researchers compared brain scans of 17 men and women who were diagnosed with internet addiction disorder with the brain scans of 17 people who were not addicted to surfing the web. CBS notes that participants in the study were between the ages of 14 and 21 and lived in China.

The report, which was published in the Jan. 11 issue of PLoS One, said that the researchers found more “abnormal white matter” in the internet addicted individuals. Previous studies have found similar changes in “white matter” in people who are addicted to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and meth.

According to the report, the abnormal white matter can disrupt pathways in the brain related to self control and decision making.

The report reads:

“The results suggest that IAD may share psychological and neural mechanisms with other types of substance addiction and impulse control disorders.”

Other studies have shown that people addicted to video games also suffer similar symptoms. Dr. Henrietta Bowden Jones, a psychiatric who runs a clinic for Internet addicts at the Imperial College in London, told CBS:

“The majority of people we see with serious Internet addiction are gamers – people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game.”

How long have you been on the internet today? Maybe it’s time you took a break. ( inquisitr.com )

Rare, once-royal turtle to be tracked in Cambodia

2012-01-24T17:51:00.001+07:00

Rare, once-royal turtle to be tracked in Cambodia — One of the world's most endangered turtles has been released into a Cambodian river with a satellite transmitter attached to its shell to track how it will navigate through commercial fishing grounds and other man-made hazards.

The 75-pound (34-kilogram) southern river terrapin — one of only about 200 adults remaining in the wild — waddled into the Sre Ambel river in southwestern Cambodia this past week to the cheers of local residents and conservationists.

The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society said the female terrapin was given to the group last year instead of being sold to traffickers who have decimated the country's population of turtles and other species to cater to demand for exotic wildlife in China.

The southern river terrapin, once considered the sole property of Cambodia's kings, only survives in the wilds of Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, the group said in a statement. The population in the Sre Ambel river is estimated at less than 10 nesting females.

In this photo taken Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, provided by The Wildlife Conservation Society, a 75-pound (34-kilogram) southern river terrapin, one of only some 200 adults remaining in the wild, waddles on sand as it is released near the Sre Ambel river in Cambodia. With a satellite transmitter embedded in its shell, one of the world's most endangered turtles was released to track how it will navigate through commercial fishing grounds and other man-made hazards. (AP Photo/ The Wildlife Conservation Society, Eleanor Briggs)

But it said the terrapins there have an excellent chance of recovery because coastal mangrove forests in the region are among the largest and most pristine in Southeast Asia, spanning some 175 square miles (45,000 hectares).

The first-ever satellite monitoring of the species hopes to determine how the turtle will fare among fisherman as well as in areas threatened by sand mining and conversion of mangrove forests into shrimp farms.

A small population of the species was found in 2000 in Sre Ambel after being considered locally extinct for many years.

Following the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s which left the country devastated, poor rural dwellers scoured the forests for wildlife, much of which was sold to traders connected to China, where many wild animals — from turtles to tigers — are believed to possess medicinal and sex-enhancing properties.

The turtle project is being run by the Wildlife Conservation Society in cooperation with the Cambodian government and Wildlife Reserves Singapore, a zoological enterprise. ( Associated Press )

Is Banking Bad?

2012-01-20T19:45:00.002+07:00

Is Banking Bad? - When I spoke at Swarthmore College recently, I was startled by one question: Is it immoral for students to seek banking jobs?

The corollary question, with Mitt Romney’s business career under attack even by staunch Republicans, is this: Is it unethical to make millions in private equity?

My answer to both questions: no.

I’ve been sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street movement, but, look, finance is not evil. Banking has contributed immensely to modern civilization. By allocating capital to more efficient uses, banking laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution and the information revolution.

Likewise, the attacks on private equity seem over the top. Private equity firms like Bain Capital, where Romney worked, aren’t about destroying companies and picking over the carcasses. Rather, the aim is to acquire poorly managed companies, make them more efficient (sometimes by firing people but often by rejiggering the business model) and then resell them at a profit. That’s the merciless, rugged nature of capitalism.

Liberals should also be wary of self-selecting out of certain occupations. After Vietnam and revelations of C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s, many university students avoided the military and the intelligence agencies. So slots were filled disproportionately by ideological conservatives in a way that undermined everyone’s interests. We would have been better off if more Swarthmore idealists had become generals and C.I.A. officers — and we may be better off if some idealists become bankers as well.

Now for my caveats.

When young people go into finance, I hope that they’ll show judgment, balance and principles instead of their elders’ penchant for greed and rigging the system. Just as Communists managed to destroy Communism, capitalists are discrediting capitalism.

A Pew Research Center poll in December found that only 50 percent of Americans reacted positively to the term “capitalism,” while 40 percent reacted negatively. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, more had a negative view of capitalism than a positive view, the survey found. Those young Americans actually viewed socialism more positively than capitalism. In other words, America’s grasping capitalists are turning young Americans into socialists.

The Financial Times recently published a series about “capitalism in crisis.” It noted that the Edelman Trust Barometer, a survey, found that only 46 percent of Americans had confidence in business to do the right thing (and only 25 percent trusted banks).

Public skepticism is warranted, in my view. Corporations have vastly overpaid C.E.O.’s, handsomely rewarding not only success but also failure. Banks that helped cause today’s financial mess lobbied successfully for bailouts for themselves; they privatized profits and socialized losses.

Meanwhile, more than four million families have lost their homes to foreclosure, according to Zillow.com, a real estate company. Bankers and shareholders found a safety net, but not working-class families. One reason is that the campaign finance system allows financiers to buy access and special favors. If you’re a tycoon, your best investment often is a lobbying firm in Washington to create a tax loophole for you. The last few years have been a showcase not of capitalism itself, but of crony capitalism.

Romney’s average tax rate, which he says is probably about 15 percent, exemplifies the problem. The Romneys benefit because capital gains tax rates have been slashed to just 15 percent, much lower than rates paid on labor income.

Then there’s the most egregious tax loophole of all, for “carried interest.” A triumph of lobbying, it allows private equity and hedge fund managers to pretend that their labor income is a capital gain. So they sometimes pay a tax rate of just 15 percent, compared with up to 35 percent for almost everyone else.

Granted, young people haven’t been pouring into finance in recent years out of eagerness to reform this rigged system but to milk it. In 2007, on the eve of the financial crisis, 47 percent of Harvard’s graduating class headed for consulting firms and the financial sector — a huge misallocation of human capital. However well-meaning these new graduates are initially, they often end up caught up in the scramble at the trough.

In the postwar years, labor unions became greedy and rewarded themselves with feather-bedding and rigid work rules — turning much of the public against them. Likewise, Wall Street feather-bedding is tarnishing the public image of banks and business and undermining confidence in capitalism itself.

When financiers rig the system, they should remember the warning of John Maynard Keynes: “The businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.”

So university students would be wrong to mock their classmates who choose Citigroup over CARE. Banking and private equity aren’t evil, and I would never urge college students to stay away. Maybe today’s young socialist sympathizers, along with healthy regulation and a loud public outcry, can help rescue capitalism from the crony capitalists. ( nytimes.com )

What if ET ever phones our home?

2012-01-20T16:04:00.003+07:00

What if ET ever phones our home? - For decades we've been sending signals - both deliberate and accidental - into space, and listening out for alien civilisations' broadcasts. But what is the plan if one day we were to hear something?

If we ever detect signs of intelligent alien life, the people likely to be on the receiving end of a cosmic signal are the scientists of Seti, aka Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

This loose band of a couple of dozen researchers around the world doggedly listens to the cosmos in the hope of catching alien communications. It's often in the face of scant funding and even ridicule.

“Start Quote

The protocol is simply to announce it”
Seth Shostak

They watch signals coming from the world's largest radio telescopes, looking for anything unusual, or even the flashes of laser "lighthouses" designed to catch our attention.

Seti started as one man using one telescope dish in 1959. Today computers are used to sift through the cosmic radio traffic, flagging up to astronomers any potential calls from extraterrestrial life.

But what might happen if one of those computers found a bona fide alien phone call?

Conspiracy theorists will argue there would be a government cover-up. Even more nervous types might say there would be global upheaval.

Inside Seti's Allen Telescope Array in northern California

Seth Shostak, the Seti Institute's principal astronomer, says both groups should calm down.

"The idea that governments would keep this quiet because otherwise the public would go nuts, is nuts. History shows that's not what happens.

"In the early 1900s, there were claims that there were canals on Mars - a vast hydraulic civilisation just 50m km from Earth. The average guy in the street said 'well, I guess there are Martians' - they didn't panic."

What have we already said to aliens?

Pioneer probes launched in 1970s depict location of the Earth and the human form (pictured above)
Arecibo message, sent to a distant star cluster in 1974, included information about DNA
Giant radio telescopes send messages to a nearby planetary system around red dwarf star Gliese 581
Earth's television broadcasts could also be picked up by aliens
I Love Lucy signals are more than 50 light years away, and our nearest stars have already received Simpsons broadcasts
The earliest we'll hear back from any beamed messages is 2049

The first job if the computers flag up an interesting signal is to get it confirmed by other telescopes around the world - this would take the better part of a week.

"In all that time, you can be sure people are emailing boyfriends and girlfriends, writing on their blogs... the word will be out there."

So news of alien contact may reach most people via a tweet from a Seti astronomer.

A 1997 "false alarm" signal showed the likely reaction - and the futility of any cover-up attempts.

"We were watching this signal all day and all night, waiting for somebody from 'officialdom', whatever officialdom is, to call up," Dr Shostak recalls. "Even local politicians didn't call up, let alone the federal government. The only people that were interested were the media."

Surely there's an action plan in a red binder somewhere, detailing which international bodies to inform?

Not so. "The protocol is simply to announce it," Dr Shostak says. And then the policies for a chain of information, or command over the situation? "There are no such policies, and I don't think you could enforce them anyway."

The United Nations has a small outfit in Vienna called the Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), and Seti scientists have tried down the years with little success to work with it to fill that notional red binder with plans. Asked what might happen if an alien message arrives, UNOOSA replies that their current mandate "does not include any issues regarding the question you pose".

So planning is left to people such as Paul Davies of the Beyond Center at Arizona State University, who heads up the the Seti Post-detection Taskgroup. But we don't know what kind of information - if any - an incoming signal might contain. And decoding the signal could take years, or decades.

But what might it say? It could just be a beacon, saying nothing more than "Hello, Earthlings, we are here," says Prof Davies.

“Start Quote

The only thing that we've got in common [with aliens] has got to be at a mathematics and physics level”
Paul Davies

"It could be something completely disruptive and transformative, something as simple as how to gain control over the nuclear fusion process... which could solve the world's energy crisis.

"Because of the enormous travel time from some source many, many light years away, we have plenty of time to reflect on what the consequences would be if we open up a dialogue on this slow time scale."

Ask anyone in the Seti community if we should reply, and the consensus is yes. But what to say, and how to say it is a thorny problem.

"When we're dealing with an alien mind - what they might appreciate, what they might regard as interesting or beautiful or ugly - will be so much tied to their neural architecture that we really couldn't guess," Davies says. "So the only thing that we've got in common has got to be at a mathematics and physics level."

Back in California's Seti Institute, director of interstellar message composition Doug Vakoch agrees.

"It seems a little hard to understand how you'd build a radio transmitter if you don't know that two plus two equals four.

"But how do we build upon that common understanding to communicate something that is more idiosyncratic to each species? How do we let them know what it's really like to be human?"

One possible reply could be animations showing human characteristics - Doug Vakoch prepared this to explain altruism

Some Seti scientists argue that, once we know where to send an interstellar email, we might as well just send the contents of the entire internet, streamed down a laser light beam. Aliens would then have plenty of information from which to draw patterns, disentangle languages, and see images - of all kinds - of what it is to be human.

Vakoch thinks to send such a "digital data dump" is an "ugly" approach. "There has to be something more elegant to say about ourselves than that."

We could instead express our idea of beauty - albeit crudely - by sending a signal representing the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the prior two: one, one, two, three, five, eight, 13 and so on. It's a sequence seen in spiral galaxies and the way nautilus shells grow, and is tied to the "golden ratio" - an aesthetically pleasing proportion seen in classical architecture.

The mathematical beauty of a nautilus shell

Dr Vakoch also hopes to show possibly idiosyncratic human characteristics, such as altruism, helping others at a cost to ourselves. To that end, he has prepared a simple animation of a person helping another up a cliff.

But any eventual message will be put together by international consensus - which will only be on the negotiating table if a signal actually shows up. In the meantime, he will keep coming up with ideas of what to say on the interstellar microphone.

"Perhaps more important than even communicating with extraterrestrials, this whole enterprise of composing messages is a chance to reflect on ourselves and what we care about and how we express what's important." ( bbc.co.uk )

Wacky But Serious Science Idea of 2011

2012-01-06T17:09:00.002+07:00

Wacky But Serious Science Idea of 2011 - Paleontologist Jack Horner has always been a bit of an iconoclast. In the 1970s, Horner, the curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., and his friend Bob Makela discovered a Maiasaura nesting site, painting the first picture of dinosaurs as doting moms and dads. He's also been at the forefront of research suggesting that dinosaurs were fast growing and warm-blooded.

But Horner's newest idea takes iconoclasm to a new level. He wants, in short, to hatch a dinosaur.

Or something very much like one, at least. Horner, who served as a technical advisor for the "Jurassic Park" movies, has no illusions that the technique in that movie — extracting dino DNA from mosquitoes in amber — would work. DNA degrades too quickly, for one thing. Dinosaur DNA has proved impossible to extract from actual dinosaur bones, never mind blood-sucking insects.

"If you actually had a piece of amber and it had an insect in it, and you drilled into it, and you got something out of that insect and you cloned it, and you did it over and over and over again, you'd have a room full of mosquitoes," Horner said in a February 2011 TED Talk in Long Beach, Calif. TED, or Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a nonprofit focusing on "ideas worth spreading."

So Horner has another idea: Use the living dinosaurs among us to recreate creatures dead for millions of years. Anyone who's seen "Jurassic Park" knows that birds are dinosaurs, part of the evolutionary line containing those toothy Velociraptors. What's less known is that organisms carry their evolutionary history with them. Human embryos, for example, have temporary tails, which are absorbed by the body during development. Rarely, babies are born with vestigial tails, the result of scrambled genetic processes that prevent the tail from getting re-absorbed. These evolutionary remnants are called atavisms.

Enough atavisms have been discovered in birds to make the idea of "reverse-engineering" a dinosaur out of, say, a chicken possible, Horner says. You wouldn't be adding anything to the bird to make it more dinosaurlike; all the ingredients are in its DNA. Horner's goal is to figure out how to wake up those ingredients.

LiveScience talked with Horner about his "chickenosaurus" plan and what sort of dinosaur he'd like to keep as a pet.

LiveScience: What was the genesis of this chickenosaurus idea?

Horner: Knowing that birds descended from dinosaurs and knowing the changes that occur from dinosaurs to birds, we know that the changes that did occur occurred because of genetics.

A friend of mine, Hans Larsson at McGill University, was studying some of these changes and looking into how it was that dinosaurs lost their tails in the transformation from dinosaurs to birds. They also transformed their arms from a hand and an arm to a wing. I got to thinking, if he discovered the genes that were responsible for both of those transformations, we could just simply reverse evolution and reactivate the tail, and possibly make a hand back out of the wing.

And then what we would have by doing those two things, you'd actually take a bird and turn it into an animal that looked a lot like one of the meat-eating dinosaurs. It seemed like a good idea.

LiveScience: What kind of animal would chickenosaurus be?

Horner: It's still a chicken. It's a modified chicken. You'd really have to mess with the DNA to make it something different.

The most important thing is that you cannot activate an ancestral characteristic unless the animal has ancestors. So if we can do this, it definitely shows that evolution works.

LiveScience: You've mentioned in the past that you see this dino-chicken as a teaching tool to help people understand evolution. Do you see that working?

Horner: Of course. You bet. There are people who are misinformed, and there are people who are uninformed [about the validity of evolution]. If people are uninformed, this will probably get through to them. If they've been misinformed and don't mind being misinformed, then they probably will continue to be misinformed.

LiveScience: Either way, it'd be a pretty awesome thing to take into a classroom.

Horner: Yes, it would. Exactly.

LiveScience: Starting with a chicken, how close could we really get to what a dinosaur looked like?

Horner: We're working with an animal that has all the right stuff. It's more about subtle changes, adding a tail or fixing a hand or possibly adding teeth, what we would think of as being relatively simple changes rather than messing with physiology or something like that.

A bird is really a dinosaur, so we're pretty sure that the breathing apparatus of a bird evolved from the breathing apparatus of a dinosaur, and is therefore completely different than a mammal. The physiology of a bird is evolved from a dinosaur and not from a mammal, so it's not like we're trying to take a mammal and turn it into a dinosaur.

LiveScience: Would chickenosaurus teach us anything about dinosaurs we can't learn from fossils?

Horner: It's not really about understanding dinosaurs at all. Once we learn what certain genes do and how to turn them on and turn them off, then we have great potential of solving some medical mysteries. There are a lot of ways to think about this, but it's not really about dinosaurs other than solving Hans Larsson's problem of figuring out how birds lost their tails.

LiveScience: What do you see as the biggest challenge of making chickenosaurus happen?

Horner: The biggest challenge, first off, is to find the genes. We know that in the development of a tail, there are a variety of things that have to happen, so there are a couple of ways to possibly go about this.

One, as we know, when a chicken embryo is developing in the egg, just like basically all animals, the embryo actually for a time has a tail and then the trail re-absorbs. So if we could find the gene that re-absorbs the tail and not allow that gene to turn on then we could potentially hatch a chicken with a tail.

The other method would be simply to go in and discover what Hox genes [the genes that determine the structure of an organism] might be responsible for actually adding tail vertebrae, and then to see if we could add some, either by manipulating the Hox genes or by using temperature. There have been some experiments done showing that adding heat will add a vertebra here or there.

LiveScience: Where are you in this process now?

Horner: Right now, mostly I'm looking for a postdoctoral researcher. An adventurous postdoc who knows a lot about developmental biology and a little bit about birds and has done some work about chickens to work in our lab here in Bozeman.

Me, I just go through the literature, looking for anything that might give me a clue as to what genes might be responsible for tail absorption or tail growth or something that might help me with hands.

LiveScience: The comparisons to "Jurassic Park" are easy to make, but have you ever seen the movie "The Birds?" Do we really want chickens with extra teeth and claws running around?

Horner: You can't really compare it to either movie. First off, you can go out in the Serengeti and there are all kinds of animals that will eat you, but if you're driving around in your Jeep, you're just fine. The lions and cheetahs and leopards are not going to try to get into your Jeep when there are plenty of plant-eaters out there to eat that aren't inside of a metal cage.

That's the funny thing about "Jurassic Park," right? All these dinosaurs want to eat people no matter how hard they are to get.

So we don't have to worry about "Jurassic Park," because that's just fiction. Animals don't act that way. They're not vengeful. And birds aren't vengeful either.

LiveScience: So if you could bring a dinosaur back — the real thing, not a modified chicken — what species would you choose?

Horner: A little one. A little plant-eater.

LiveScience: No T. rex for you?

Horner: Would you make something that would turn around and eat you? Sixth-graders would do that, but I'd just as soon make something that wouldn't eat me. And you could have it as a pet without worrying about it eating the rest of your pets. ( LiveScience.com )

Parasite turns honey bees into zombies

2012-01-06T16:58:00.002+07:00

Parasite turns honey bees into zombies - A fly parasite is being blamed for an epidemic that has struck the honey bee population around the world. The parasite nests in the stomach of the bees and causes them to walk in circles, sometimes pursuing bright lights, before eventually dying.

The Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis is responsible for the zombie transformation, laying its eggs inside the abdomen of the honey bee.

"When we observed the bees for some time, the ones that were alive, we found that they walked around in circles, often with no sense of direction," said San Francisco State University's Andrew Core lead author on the bee parasite study in the journal Plos One.

Bees usually just sit in one place, sometimes curling up before they die, said Core. But the parasitised bees were still alive, unable to stand up on their legs.

"They kept stretching them out and then falling over," he said. "It really painted a picture of something like a zombie."

A fly parasite may be responsible for wiping out half the world's honey bees

And while the parasite may be causing immense damage to the honey bees population, there is an upside to their discovery, according to the Mirror, "Scientists discovered the parasite by accident but they believe it may help them discover what is causing colony collapse disorder which is devastating honey bees in Europe and America cutting some populations in half."

The parasite is believed to be new and similar to one currently affecting the bumblebee population. Scientists are still figuring out exactly how the parasite works, but an early theory by San Francisco State Professor John Hafernik holds that the parasite changes the bees' "body clocks," which causes their erratic behavior and deaths. ( The Sideshow )

Will opposite-sex civil unions spell the end of traditional marriage?

2012-01-04T17:30:00.002+07:00

Will opposite-sex civil unions spell the end of traditional marriage? - While it’s true that marriage is in serious trouble in the United States, it’s not because of the gay and lesbian couples seeking to achieve it. If my own research telegraphs future marriage trends, the real peril may come from an increasing number of straight folks who have had their fill of traditional marriage. Instead of fretting about how gay couples are redefining marriage, maybe we should start talking about why straight couples are rejecting it.

At least that’s the conclusion I’m reaching in considering the fallout from Illinois’ first-in-the-nation experiment with civil unions for opposite-sex couples, which went into effect June 1 of last year. When asked during a long Skype interview why she and her partner, Justin Gates, chose to enter a civil union rather than marry, Leah Whitesel, who identifies as queer despite her current relationship, framed the question this way: “Gay marriage doesn’t seem like the right discussion to me. Because it should be: ‘What is this institution of marriage and does it still need to be defined the way it has been?’ ” For Whitesel and Gates, the answer is no.

Many of the other straight civil union pioneers have also said no to marriage—for themselves and as an institution. The evidence is in a report that the Cook County Clerk’s Office recently issued on the nation’s first opposite-sex couples who civilly united. It found dissatisfaction with the institution of marriage because of concerns with its historical assignment of roles, its connection to religion, and its unfairness to gay and lesbian couples. My own interviews with some of these same couples, who have rejected marriage and plunged into the shallower, murkier pool of the civil union, reflect a cohort prepared to take the wrecking ball to marriage itself.

Are straight couples destroying traditional marriage? Photograph by Andranik Makaryan/Hemera.

To be sure, the numbers of people entering opposite-sex civil unions in Illinois still represents a very small share of the total. As of Dec. 29, 2011, only 148 of the 1,993 civil union licenses had gone to opposite-sex couples. That’s not surprising, because—as is the case in the other states that have recognized civil unions—the Illinois measure was primarily intended to grant same-sex couples the benefits of marriage without the name. The law can’t achieve equality for them, so there’s very little about these clever creatures of compromise to attract opposite-sex couples. Civil unions aren’t recognized on the federal level, and hardly anyone understands what they are in the first place. For many same-sex couples, a civil-union law is much better than nothing. The expectation was that for opposite-sex couples, it would still be worse than the alternative. That’s why most states haven’t bothered extending the option to straight couples. And why it’s striking that some straight couples in Illinois have nevertheless opted in.

Those 148 couples might portend something big. The clerk’s office was able to survey one partner from more than half (46 of 87) of the opposite-sex couples who had civilly united as of Sept. 19. And their reasons for entering into civil unions rather than marriage should worry marriage traditionalists. For instance, by more than three-to-one, respondents cited “personal or religious convictions against marriage” as a reason for choosing the civil union. And when asked an open-ended question—“Why did you decide to obtain a civil union instead of getting married?” the most frequently proffered response fell into the political/ideological category. The report provides a few specifics behind that political objection to marriage, including statements of “solidarity with the gay community and/or support of equality, fairness, and inclusiveness.” Some respondents cited commitment/label issues, which included those who did not want a “husband” or a “wife,” or even the “marriage” label itself. And 9 percent of respondents cited religious issues. (Even though religion need not be a part of a marriage ceremony, for many the two are inextricably linked).

Almost half the respondents’ objections are loosely about their perceived objections to the institution of marriage. And only four of the 46 admitted choosing civil union status in order to preserve social security or other benefits from a previous spouse that would be lost through remarriage—but not through entering into a civil union, which isn’t federally recognized.

My own interviews were even more revealing. The couples who agreed to chat had clearly spent some time thinking about the meaning of marriage, and decided they wanted nothing to do with it. In most other ways they were fairly mainstream—even Whitesel, 32, the most politically radical of the group, isn’t exactly throwing fireballs. A non-practicing lawyer, she teaches high school civics. Gates, 30, is a computer guy and comes from what he described as a conservative religious background. The civil union status, he said, “keeps me from falling into any preconditioned behavior that I might have picked up. Calling [Leah] my partner, not my wife, helps me not to have any assumptions” or buy into traditional patterns.

Both supported the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, and their civil union was meant to express solidarity with their friends who can’t.

Toward the end of the conversation, Whitesel revealed that she’s pregnant. The same revelation came during my discussion with Alex Rifman, 32, and Jennifer Tweeton, 35. Rifman is an engineer with AT&T, who was born in Moscow and emigrated with his family to the U.S. at age 9. Tweeton, like Whitesel, has a law degree and works for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The couple is raising the 15-year-old son of Tweeton’s from an early marriage.

Their civil union ceremony, Tweeton said, “taught everyone there something” about the law, and the couple see themselves as involved in a teaching mission in other ways, too: “I feel like we don’t value the families that choose to be families without being married. The civil union was a way to honor that … a way to demonstrate to others” that these other family structures deserve respect, too. And Rifman, like Whitesel and Gates, thought that the civil union choice expressed solidarity with his gay and lesbian friends: “Until marriage is an option for everyone, it shouldn’t be an option for us.”

Pioneer status has its costs, though; costs familiar to many same-sex couples, who will see their own experiences reflected in the stories these couples tell. Tweeton said that her family, traditional Lutherans, didn’t see her union as “real”; they don’t treat it like a marriage. And no one’s yet mustered the courage to come out about the civil union to Tweeton’s grandmother, who’s 100 years old and “very conservative.” Even the clerk who processed their application tried to dissuade them, urging that they “should just get married,” and reminding them that “the license cost was the same.” She also insisted that Alex, as the male, be “Partner A,” even though nothing in the civil union license form contains any such requirement.

Jeff Moyers, 44, and Melissa Mizwa, 32, had a similar experience with the judge who performed the ceremony. (“Wait a minute. A civil union? This can’t be right.”) Jeff, who described himself as “the world’s worst wine salesman,” said he objected to what he perceived as the built-in religious aspect of marriage, but added, that “if push came to shove, solidarity with gays is the biggest reason” for his choosing civil union status.

Civil unions, once seen as a way station between nonrecognition of gay and lesbian relationships and full marriage equality, may turn out to be more interesting than their origin in compromise might have predicted. In the case of same-sex couples, civil unions end up underscoring the point that committed gay and lesbian relationships are less than straight ones. As the Massachusetts Supreme Court stated in a 2004 opinion, calling gay and lesbian unions civil unions rather than marriage is a “considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status.”

And now opposite-sex couples in Illinois (and soon Hawaii, where a similar law went into effect on Sunday) who choose civil union are furthering the project of marriage deconstruction. For now, their numbers will probably remain small. But their impact could be much greater, by expanding the already lively national conversation about what marriage really means and whether it’s something we need to be fighting to preserve. ( slate.com )

Who does a child need more, mother or father?

2012-01-04T17:00:00.000+07:00

Who does a child need more, mother or father? - The unanimous answer would be “both,” since the mother and the father have different influences on the child and both are essential to the overall emotional growth.

However, there are single women who do not wish to have a husband but wish to have children and are confident they can raise a child all by themselves. One of the popular methods of achieving this is the IVF or in vitro fertilization; wherein the ova (egg cells) are removed from the woman’s ovary and then fertilized with sperm, in a fluid. Once they are fertilized, the zygote (fertilized egg) is transferred to the woman’s uterus, and this establishes a pregnancy.

There are several sperm banks, where the sperm from volunteers is frozen and stored. There is no length of time that the sperm can be stored and people have even conceived from sperm frozen for more than 20 years.

This sperm supplied by the sperm banks is being increasingly used by women without a male partner and even by single or coupled lesbians. Until now, sperm banks had to abide by supportive parenting, before giving out the sperm, which means the sperm was not made available to most single women or lesbians.

The law makers were of the opinion that children without fathers are more likely to have behavioral problems, problems at school with drugs and drink.

However, in a recent landmark voting, MPs in UK voted that single women and lesbian couples be allowed to raise kids without dads. This vote was aimed at removing the requirement that fertility clinics need to consider a child’s need for a father. Although, the government was prepared for a defeat, it won the two votes with wide margins of 75 and 68.

This win is music to the ears of single women and lesbians who will be granted the right to raise kids by themselves. Sperm banks will no longer have to impose any restrictions on providing sperm to them, just because their children will not have a father or a male role model.

In case of lesbian couples, the new law will allow both partners to be recognized as parents when they conceive with the donor sperm or even when gay men use surrogacy. Currently, only the natural mother or father is considered a parent automatically when gay couples have fertility treatment.

This new law is not favored by all and many people believe it changes the whole concept of a traditional family setting. They say that it is like hammering a nail into the coffin of the traditional family and specifically the role of the father. Archbishop of York, John Sentamu said, “Is it not self-evident that the welfare and needs of a child are enhanced and met when there is a father present?”

The people who spoke on behalf of this law, said that this is not an issue in a country which, according to statistics, has almost three million children in single-parent heterosexual families and 91.2% of these families are headed by the mother. They also said that in reality, almost every lesbian couple who have children, work assiduously to ensure that there are male role models for their children, among the family members or good friends.

A poll was conducted last month, which revealed that while 32 percent of people were in favor of this proposal, 40 percent were against it. It is also interesting to note that this poll also shows that people aged 55 and over were strongly opposed while people in the age groups 18 to 34 were strongly in favor of reform. This should sum up the sentiments of people. ( dirjournal.com )

1 in 4 women attacked by intimate partner

2011-12-15T20:32:00.004+07:00

1 in 4 women attacked by intimate partner — It's a startling number: 1 in 4 women surveyed by the government say they were violently attacked by their husbands or boyfriends.

Experts in domestic violence don't find it too surprising, although some aspects of the survey may have led to higher numbers than are sometimes reported.

Even so, a government official who oversaw the research called the results "astounding."

"It's the first time we've had this kind of estimate" on the prevalence of intimate partner violence, said Linda Degutis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The survey, released by the CDC Wednesday, marks the beginning of a new annual project to look at how many women say they've been abused.

One expert called the new report's estimate on rape and attempted rape "extremely high" — with 1 in 5 women saying they were victims. About half of those cases involved intimate partners. No documentation was sought to verify the women's claims, which were made anonymously.

But advocates say the new rape numbers are plausible.

"It's a major problem that often is underestimated and overlooked," said Linda James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a San Francisco-based organization that advocates against domestic abuse.

The CDC report is based on a randomized telephone survey of about 9,000 women and 7,400 men.

Among the findings:

As many as 29 million women say they have suffered severe and frightening physical violence from a boyfriend, spouse or other intimate partner. That includes being choked, beaten, stabbed, shot, punched, slammed against something or hurt by hair-pulling.
That number grows to 36 million if slapping, pushing and shoving are counted.
Almost half of the women who reported rape or attempted rape said it happened when they were 17 or younger.
As many as 1 in 3 women have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, compared to about 1 in 10 men.
Both men and women who had been menaced or attacked in these ways reported more health problems. Female victims, in particular, had significantly higher rates of irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, frequent headaches and difficulty sleeping.
Certain states seemed to have higher reports of sexual violence than others. Alaska, Oregon and Nevada were among the highest in rapes and attempted rapes of women, and Virginia and Tennessee were among the lowest.

Several of the CDC numbers are higher than those of other sources. For example, the CDC study suggests that 1.3 million women have suffered rape, attempted rape or had sex forced on them in the previous year. That statistic is more than seven times greater than what was reported by a Department of Justice household survey conducted last year.

The CDC rape numbers seem "extremely high," but there may be several reasons for the differences, including how the surveys were done, who chose to participate and how "rape" and other types of assault were defined or interpreted, said Shannan Catalano, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

"It is an evolving field, and everyone is striving to get a handle on what's the best estimate," Catalano said.

The CDC's numbers don't seem surprising to people who work with abused women.

"I think that the awareness is growing," said Kim Frndak, community educator for the Women's Rescue Center to End Domestic Violence, which operates a shelter on the outskirts of Atlanta.

"More and more people are really saying, 'Oh, this is something that we need to pay attention to as well,' because it's your sister, it's your mother, it's your daughter, it's your son, it's your brother. Someone in your own circle is being affected by domestic violence, and the effects can be devastating," she said. ( Associated Press )

How Angelina Jolie disciplines her kids

2011-12-15T20:24:00.005+07:00

Angelina Jolie: How She'll Explain Her Wild Days to Her Kids - As a devoted humanitarian and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Angelina Jolie has made headlines traveling the world, bringing attention to global issues and providing aid to refugees, but she tells Anderson Cooper that her wild past that could be catching up with her soon.

“You were a little wilder when you were younger,” Anderson says to Angelina.

“I think we all thought that,” Angelina replied during an hour-long daytime exclusive interview.

During the intimate conversation, Jolie tells Anderson that she had concerns about being a mother. “I didn’t know even know if I’d ever be a mother, be a good mother... I was nervous.”

“You weren’t sure if you’d be a good mother?” asks Anderson.

“When I was younger I thought, oh god, I couldn't be somebody’s mother.”

Anderson asks the mother of six if she looks back on when she was younger and thinks to herself, “What was I doing?”

“I just know it’s going to come back at me very soon with my children.”

“Yeah, how will you explain when your kids are teenagers and you try to discipline them… and they’re like, ‘Uh... you used to wear blood around your neck.’”

Her response? “Yes I did.”

Anderson’s hour-long conversation with Angelina airs Monday, December 19, 2011. Jolie, who is joined by the cast of her new film “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” which she wrote and directed, discusses with Anderson why she was compelled to make a movie on such a heavy topic as the war in Bosnia. Angelina also explains how she balances her work life and humanitarian efforts with her home life and raising six kids.

“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is in select theaters beginning December 23rd, 2011. ( andersoncooper.com )

Is your girlfriend your mother?

2011-12-14T20:29:00.000+07:00

Is your girlfriend your mother? - Do men like being mothered by their girlfriends? We ask around.

Are you one of those guys who are caught off guard by the devoted and persistent mommying from your girlfriend? Love it or loathe it, you cannot ignore it.

Among the many intricacies in a relationship, the putative, protective and tender nature of women plays an important role in making or breaking a relationship. But in some cases, it crosses the fine boundaries of protectiveness into the precarious territory of possessiveness where concern or affection transforms into irksome nagging or control, barring that, who would not like tender care, love, affection and warmth?

Is your girlfriend your mother?(Getty Images)

Actor Mazhar Syed who is dating actress Moulli Ganguly, has no qualms being mommied by his girlfriend. In fact, he thinks it only strengthens their relationship. "All women have an innate quality of being caring and protective and guys do like to be pampered and taken care of. It is a sign of concern and love. My girlfriend is always there for me and takes care of me like a mother. I have no reason to mind it. It's like a cherry on the cake. A little mommying here and there keeps the relationship going and makes it strong, but it shouldn't be overdone," says Syed.

And he's not alone. Television actor Raj Singh Arora seconds that and feels that it is an essential element of any relationship. He shares his idea of being 'cared for'; "It is difficult to find people who care so much these days. A guy should be lucky to find someone who cares for him like family. That kind of thoughtfulness and affection becomes really important for people who stay away from their families especially at times when you are unwell or feeling low and it is important that the other partner reciprocates the feeling," he explains.

So did any of his girlfriends 'mommy' him around? "Well, in all the relationships I've had so far, I think I've been the more caring partner," he laughs.

But not all men take too kindly to their women acting like their mothers. Actor Ali Merchant feels that there is a 'certain extent' to which a guy would like to be 'extremely cared for' by his girl. Keeping in mind the practical considerations of the present lives, Merchant feels sometimes this behaviour could be uncalled for. "An over caring girlfriend is fine at times; it could even be cute. But I wouldn't like that everytime and definitely not in public. Being protective is fine, but over-protectiveness weighs down on personal space and individuality," he explains.

Well, that was for the guys. The question now is; do women like to be 'taken care of 'as well? "Of course they do, girls need a lot of loving and caring," says Mazhar, adding, "It's a part and parcel of a relationship. People care excessively for their partners, and then for their kids after a certain age." ( indiatimes.com )

Seven Things men are perfect at

2011-12-14T19:10:00.002+07:00

Seven Things men are perfect at - There are some things that men can do and women can't. There are many other things that women can do and men can't.

Like giving birth for instance. But, aside that, here's a compilation of seven things that men are so perfect at, that they can be really annoying. Enjoy!

The seven deadly sins

1. Sexy morning voices:

This one is definitely tops the list. Men have such seductive baritones when they wake up in the morning, while we women end up croaking like frogs. Although we are quite sure that the sexy 'morning voice' is directly proportional to the sexiness quotient of their normal voices, unofficial research has shown that men with reasonable voices end up with super sexy morning voices as well. Let's also imagine a George Clooney like face to go with that voice. Sigh.

2. Ability to give comforting hugs:

There's no denying it. Embracing a man is like hugging a life size teddy bear. Only warmer. And human. Not only does everything feel like it will be OK, the world seems so much safer in that embrace. Know what's even better? The hug comes with a surplus - don't you just love the way they smell your hair?

3. Their uncanny knack of pissing you off and making you feel good at the same time:

Alright, moving on. Only a man can achieve that impossible task of pissing you off and making you feel great at the same time. A classic example would be when a man watching a woman give birth says, "Does it really hurt that bad?" and then looks at your annoyed expression and immediately chirps, "But, I am sure you'll be brave honey." Well, at least he's thinking about having kids with you right?

4. Saying something completely inappropriate and still is charming :

This one is a classic. And no, we're not talking about the cheesy pick up lines that go something along the lines of "do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again." We're referring to the smooth talkers here.

5. Ability to eat like a pig and not feel guilty about it:

Ever seen a teenage boy wolf down an entire pizza by himself? Or a fully grown man helping himself onto a fourth helping of biryani? Heck, have you ever heard a man say he's "full"? Maybe they are blessed with excellent metabolism or maybe they are just built that way, they can eat gigantic quantities of food, and still work it off. We envy you for not having to worry about cellulite on your hips and thighs.

6. Their ability to fix things:

We're not just talking about your feelings here ladies, we're referring to everything from light bulbs and fuse wires to your personal computer and your mobile phone. Can you imagine what would have happened if they thought the 'chip' referred to Lays?

7. Gods of gaming:

This one is again a given. They can beat women hands down in most videogames (unless we're talking about something that involves too much pink and needless to say a Barbie). In the words of one very wise man, "Men can destroy women at video games. Destroy!" ( indiatimes.com )

Planet confirmed that could have water

2011-12-07T22:24:00.002+07:00

An artist's impression of the newly-discovered, Earth-like planet Kepler 22b

Planet confirmed that could have water -- Kepler-22b is the first confirmed planet in the "habitable zone," the area around a star where a planet could exist with liquid water on its surface, that has been discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.

The planet's radius is about 2.4 times that of the Earth. It is located about 600 light years away. Its orbital period is shorter than that of the Earth: a "year" on Kepler-22b is 290 days instead of 365.

There were two other planets confirmed this year by other projects in the habitable zone, but their stars are much cooler than our Sun, and their orbits are more like that of Venus or Mars, scientists say.

Kepler-22b is 15% closer to its star and we are to the Sun. But since Kepler-22b's star is dimmer, lower in temperature and smaller than our Sun, researchers' modeling suggests it is a similar temperature to the Earth, said Bill Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"If the greenhouse warming were similar on this planet and had a surface, its surface temperature would be something like 72 Fahrenheit, a very pleasant temperature here on Earth."

The warmer a planet, the more evaporation of water there would be, Borucki said. A planet can't have a surface temperature that's very hot without losing all of the surface water.

The Kepler mission reported in February that it had found 54 planet candidates in the habitable zone; Kepler-22b is the first of these to be confirmed, and those results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. There are still 48 potential planets from that batch.

Researchers find planets by examining the brightness of stars as a function of time; brightness drops when a potential planet crosses the star. Three transits are required for a planet confirmation. The period of the transit of Kepler 22-b was 7.4 hours. It did not appear to give off its own light, indicating it is a planet and not a star.

Scientists do not yet have a measurement of the mass of Kepler 22-b, which would tell them more about the composition of the planet. This summer, when the planet's star will be high in the sky, ground-based telescopes can attempt to get its mass.

The planet is even more mysterious because its radius is between that of Earth and Uranus and Neptune, both of which have radii about four times the size of Earth's. So we don't know what a planet in this size range typically looks like.

"We have no planet like this in our solar system," he said.

Is life restricted to Earth, or could it exist somewhere like Kepler 22-b? It may be that the characteristics of Earth, with its particular position in the solar system, particular magnetic field strength and presence of larger planets like Jupiter make Earth very rare in having life (this is called the "Rare Earth Hypothesis.") But it's also possible that life in the universe is common, and we're only one example.

"As soon as we find an independent example of life somewhere else, we'll know it's ubiquitous throughout the universe. We're all looking for No. 2," said Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute.

The Kepler mission has now identified a total of 2,326 planet candidates. ( cnn.com )

How to help your kids with homework

2011-12-07T22:18:00.001+07:00

You can help your child with homework without hovering or doing it for them

How to help your kids with homework -- The nagging, the battles, the lost papers -- do you dread school work as much as the kids do? Here's how to help them hit the books

Step 1: Ya gotta have a plan

Sit down with your kids and lay out expectations now, when the school year is starting, rather than waiting until problems arise. "Two or three goals is plenty, and you'll get better results if your child helps decide them," says Alexandra Mayzler, director of New York City-based Thinking Caps Tutoring and author of "Tutor in a Book: Better Grades as Easy as 1-2-3."

Ask: What were your child's stumbling blocks last year? Maybe homework time was running into bedtime, so agree on an earlier start time. Did your child resist reading? Work on ways to make it fun -- maybe set up a reading tent under your dining room table. Review your child's homework goals again in October, and perhaps once more in January, says Mayzler. Adjust your plan as you go, letting your child take as much ownership of the process as possible.

Step 2: Get in the groove

"All the research says the single best way to improve your child's homework performance -- and bring more peace to your home -- is to insist on a daily schedule or routine," says Ann Dolin, who is also the author of "Homework Made Simple: Tips, Tools, and Solutions for Stress-Free Homework." In some homes, that means doing it right after school; for others, it can mean waiting until after dinner if your child is the type who needs to expend some energy before he dives back into the books.

Dolin recommends giving all kids at least 30 minutes to have a snack and unwind, with one caveat: "That half-hour break really shouldn't involve anything with a screen -- television, e-mail, or video games -- or you may have trouble getting kids off," she adds.

Giving kids a half-hour break between after-school activities and homework is a smart idea, too. "Sports or after-school care isn't really a break. Kids need to let down a little at home before launching into homework," she says. If your child goes to a babysitter or aftercare program, make a deal that while he's there he'll work on one assignment -- something easy he can do even with distractions -- every day before he gets home so he has less work later.

The key is to be consistent about the routine. Take a few weeks before homework gets heavy to try different approaches and see what works best, then stick to it.

What about weekends? Everyone deserves a break on Fridays, of course. But pick a regular time during the weekend for homework. After some experimenting, D'nece Webster of Portland, Oregon, found that her son Alex, 7, is at his best on Sunday mornings. "He can finish in thirty minutes what might take him two hours on a weekend afternoon," says Webster.

Step 3: Know when to get your child extra help

If your kid is truly stuck on a homework assignment, don't make the common mistake of trying to reteach the information. Your goal is not to become your child's study buddy. Plus, your approach might be too different from the teacher's. "Imagine being a kid learning long division for the first time. You don't understand what your teacher is saying, and your parents teach you another method. When you get back to school, you're bound to be even more confused," says mom and former teacher Laura Laing of Baltimore.

Instead, send an e-mail or note to the teacher asking her to please explain the material to your child again. If your child is a fourth-grader or older, have him write the note or talk to the teacher. It's important that he learns how to speak up for himself. The teacher will likely have office hours earmarked for those who need help. Also ask her about specific websites (many school textbooks now have practice sites kids can use in conjunction with the material in the book) or check out an online tutoring site like growingstars.com or tutor.com, which also has apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

Step 4: Pick the right spot

Some kids do best with a desk set up in their bedroom so they can work independently; others want to be smack in the middle of the kitchen while you cook dinner. Mayzler recommends letting kids choose their preferred study spot. If your child focuses better lounging on a couch or the floor, "I say let them do it," she notes. Wherever your child does homework, keep it distraction-free -- no TV, video games, or loud siblings playing nearby. "It's ideal if you can set a quiet family work time, when younger kids color or do other 'homework-like' tasks and you do paperwork or reading of your own," Mayzler adds.

Step 5: Try not to be so freaking helpful!

Of course, it's okay -- and actually necessary -- to sit with 5- or 6-year-olds while they do homework. However, your goal should be to help less over time and move physically farther from where your child works. Laura Laing and her partner, Gina Foringer, make a point of staying out of the room where their daughter, Zoe, 11, does homework. That way, Zoe is encouraged to think through her work on her own before asking a parent for help. Even when Zoe asks a question, Laing often responds with more questions instead of answers. "I'll ask 'What do you think?' or 'How do you think you can come to the answer?'" says Laing. Zoe often works out her own solution by talking it through with her mom.

When it comes to proofing a homework assignment, less is definitely better. Check a few answers to ensure that your child understands what's she's doing, but don't go over the entire page. After all, your child's teacher needs an accurate measure of whether she really understands the work.

Step 6: Make 'em pay

Although you may feel guilty at first, it's smart to have a one-strike rule when it comes to forgetting homework. If your child leaves her assignment (or lunch, gym clothes, or other items, for that matter) at home and calls, begging you to bring it to school, bail her out, say, only once each grading period. For many kids, just one missed recess (or whatever the teacher's policy is for not turning in homework) usually improves their memory, says Cathy Vatterott, Ph.D., associate professor of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of "Rethinking Homework." But chronically disorganized kids may need more hand-holding. "Help your child figure out what part of his 'return homework' chain is broken," says Vatterott. "Does he routinely leave homework on the dining room table? Does he forget some assignments because they're in a different folder?" Create a "Homework Checklist" on the computer and post it near his usual study space.

Step 7: Push back on busywork

Vatterott and other educators are now advocating for changes in the way homework is assigned and used in the United States (requiring teachers to prove the usefulness of assignments, discouraging teachers from grading homework, and more). She encourages parents to do so, too. "Good homework helps kids cement what they've learned, but it isn't busywork, isn't given in extreme amounts, and definitely doesn't require parents to become substitute teachers at home," Vatterott says. A few caveats:

Mom and Dad shouldn't do homework. If work comes home with "directions for parents," Vatterott suggests letting the teacher and possibly the principal know that you, unfortunately, aren't in class this year (some gentle humor helps!), so you won't be building a replica of a human cell or a California mission, or whatever is required. A project can be a fun way for parents and kids to bond, but if you feel like it's taking up too much of your time, it probably is.
Watch for overload. If your third-grader is spending an hour and a half on just her math homework, for instance, that's way too much. "Keep track of her time for several days, then talk to the teacher," suggests Dolin. Sometimes teachers honestly underestimate how long an assignment will take. If your child routinely works long hours because she's struggling, also talk to the teacher. But if she seems to be slaving over homework because she's a perfectionist, you may need to discuss a reasonable amount of time to devote to an assignment and then clock her. (Parenting.com)

How far does a mosquito fly?

2011-12-02T14:59:00.002+07:00

Hungry mosquitoes fly farther than you think - How far does a mosquito fly? Harry Boerema wants to know.

Boerema lives near a drainage project, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep (3-foot) basin in the northern rural landscape to head off floodwaters and protect towns and villages from disaster.

The project threatens to inflict hordes of mosquitoes on people living around the water retention area, so scientists set out to calculate how to keep the boundaries of the ditch far enough from human habitation to protect residents from pest infestation.

The question they needed to find out: How far does a common European human-biting mosquito fly?

What they found surprised them: A hungry female looking for a “host” will fly at least three times farther than previously thought, said Piet Verdonschot, who conducted the research.

IN this on Oct. 6, 2011 photo, project manager John Tukker is seen near the drainage project in Roderwolde, northern Netherlands, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep bowl in the northern rural landscape to head off flood waters and protect towns and villages from disaster. (AP)

The 1,700 hectare (4,200-acre) basin, begun in 2003, is designed to collect heavy rainwater that will slowly be channeled to the North Sea. But frequent wet-dry cycles will be perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Buzzing pests are nothing new for Boerema, a retired professor of architectural history who has lived for 36 years in his quiet cottage set amid dairy farms.

“I don’t mind them to a certain extent. But not in surplus,” he says. “I’m a nature lover, and mosquitoes are part of nature — although not the most likable ones.”

Not everyone took the prospect of living on water’s edge with such equanimity, and local complaints led authorities to commission the mosquito research, said project manager John Tukker.

At the outset, Verdonschot believed mosquitoes stay within 50 meters (165 feet) of their breeding ground. The biggest nuisance for humans often originates in flower pots, buckets of collected rainwater or any kind of water left stagnant in the back garden or barnyard.

“The assumption in the literature is that people who suffer bites have bred their own specimens in their own gardens,” he said.

Hundreds of mosquito species exist around the world — 36 in the Netherlands alone — but Verdonschot concentrated on the two species most common in the Dutch climate: the culex pipiens, which prefers birds to people but will still keep you awake at night during the summer, and the Culizeta annulata, larger, more aggressive insects active year-round. Neither normally carries dangerous diseases.

Verdonschot, an aquatic ecologist working for the private environmental research institute Alterra, hatched 40,000 mosquitoes in large tents in a grassy field. The tents were surrounded by concentric circles of traps set at 50 meters, 100 meters and 150 meters. Around the edges of the field were ditches with tall reeds and wild grasses on the banks.

The traps drew mosquitoes into smoke from dry ice then instantly froze them. At the end of each day researchers collected the corpses and counted them one by one, using tweezers under a microscope.

Verdonschot expected most mosquitoes to be caught in the closest traps. Instead, about 80 percent were found in the farthest, meaning most flew at least 150 meters from the tent where they were hatched.

Verdonschot then refined his experiment, placing evergreen shrubs within the inner circle of traps. The numbers caught in the closest ring of traps shot up by one-third. The bushes offered both shelter from predators and moisture evaporating from the leaves.

That discovery led Tukker, working in the north, to create small raised islands of vegetation in the middle of the retention area, which becomes a swamp after a heavy rain. Those islands deflect mosquitoes from nearby farms.

The experiments produced a few other surprises, too.

Mosquitoes are mostly quiet during the day, preferring to concentrate on the edge of a body of water. When females hunt for blood — necessary for reproduction — they move for about an hour at dusk or at dawn, staying close to the ground.

“They move differently than we thought, they move farther than we thought,” Verdonschot said.

Verdonschot believes his team’s research adds to scientific knowledge about mosquitoes. Tomes have been written about mosquito bites and the effects on human health, but little research has been done on their habits, he said.

Verdonschot’s simple experiments this summer have value for others building catchment areas around Europe and for housing developers.

“The whole northwestern European climate is becoming more dynamic because of climate change, because of wetter summers. And all this urban infrastructure has to be protected from water excess,” he said.

Boerema also has a mosquito trap in the hedge around his cottage, helping to keep track of the mosquito population during wet and dry periods. He is anxious to see the water storage project completed, recalling that he was ordered to evacuate his home during a 1998 flood.

“I think it will ease the danger,” he said, even though he’s likely to have more mosquitoes.

“We’ve always been bitten. I don’t react very much, but my wife hates them — but not to the extent that we find it unbearable to live here.” ( arabnews.com )

More 'climategate' emails leaked

2011-11-28T19:16:00.000+07:00

More 'climategate' emails leaked - The British university whose stolen emails caused a global climate science controversy in 2009 says there has been a second and potentially bigger release of old messages.

University of East Anglia spokesman Simon Dunford said that while academics didn’t have the chance yet to examine the roughly 5,000 emails apparently dumped into the public domain Tuesday, a small sample examined by the university “appears to be genuine.”

The university said in a statement that the emails did not appear to be the result of a new breach. Instead, the statement said that the emails appeared to have been stolen two years ago and held back until now “to cause maximum disruption” to the imminent U.N. climate talks next week in Durban, South Africa.

If that is confirmed, the timing and nature of the leak would follow the pattern set by the so-called “Climategate” emails, which caught prominent scientists stonewalling critics and discussing ways to keep opponents’ research out of peer-reviewed journals.

Those hostile to mainstream climate science claimed the exchanges proved that the threat of global warming was being hyped, and their publication helped destabilize the failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, which followed several weeks later.

Climategate also dealt a blow to the reputation of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which is one of the world’s leading centers for the study of how world temperatures have varied over time.

Although a host of reviews have since vindicated the unit’s science, some of its practices - in particular efforts to hide data from opponents - have come under strong criticism. The university says it is now much more open about what it does.

Excerpts quoted on climate denialist websites appeared to show climate scientists talking in conspiratorial tones about ways to promote their agenda and freeze out those they disagree with.

There are several mentions of “the cause” and discussions of ways to shield emails from freedom of information requests.

Penn State University professor Michael Mann - a prominent player in the earlier controversy whose name also appears in the latest leak - described Tuesday’s development as “a truly pathetic episode,” blaming agents of the fossil fuel industry for “smear, innuendo, criminal hacking of websites, and leaking out-of-context snippets of personal emails.”

In an email to the AP, he said that the real story behind the leak was “an attempt to dig out 2-year-old turkey from Thanksgiving ’09. That’s how desperate climate change deniers have become.”

Bob Ward, with the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said in an email that he wasn't surprised by the leak.

“The selective presentation of old email messages is clearly designed to mislead the public and politicians about the strength of the evidence for man-made climate change,” he said. “But the fact remains that there is very strong evidence that most the indisputable warming of the Earth over the past half century is due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities.”

The source of the latest leaked emails was unclear. The perpetrator of the original hack has yet to be unmasked, although British police have said their investigation is still active. ( timeslive.co.za )

Climate change hits Africa's farmers

2011-11-28T19:12:00.002+07:00

Climate change hits Africa's farmers - As she surveys her small, bare plot in Zimbabwe’s capital, farmer Janet Vambe knows something serious is happening, even if she has never heard of climate change.

“Long ago, I could set my calendar with the date the rains started,” the 72-year-old said. Nowadays, “we have to gamble with the rains. If you plant early you might lose and if you plant late you might win. We are at a loss of what to do.”

Paramu Mafongoya, a University of Zimbabwe agronomist, says Vambe’s worries and those of millions of other poor farmers — most of them women — across Africa are a clear sign of the impact of climate change on a continent already struggling to feed itself.

Changes have been noted in the timing and the distribution of rainfall on the continent. Zimbabweans say the rainy season has become shorter and more unpredictable, Mafongoya said.

Climate change “is a serious threat to human life,” Mafongoya said. “It affects agriculture and food security everywhere.”

Lobbying Durban

International climate change negotiators meet in the South African coastal city of Durban starting Monday. Their agenda includes how to get African and other developing countries the technology and knowledge to ensure that people like Vambe can keep feeding their families without looking for emergency food aid.

A Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help them fight climate change and its effects was agreed on at last year’s climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Durban negotiators hope to make progress on addressing questions such as where the money will come from and how will it be managed.

Climate change specialist Rashmi Mistry said her anti-hunger group Oxfam will be in Durban lobbying to ensure that women have a voice in managing the Green Fund, and that their needs are addressed when its money is spent. Most small-scale farmers in Africa are women, and they also are the ones shopping for the family’s food. But tradition often keeps them out of policymaking roles.

Mistry said when yields are low and market prices are high, women are the first to suffer.

“She’s the one usually who will feed her husband first and feed her children first, and she will go hungry,” Mistry said.

Right crop for the new climate

Across Africa, said Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s special envoy on climate change, farmers need to triple production by 2050 to meet growing needs.

“At the same time, you’ve got climate change lowering average yields by what’s expected to be 28%,” Steer said. He called for more investment in such areas as agricultural research and water management.

Experts already are working on solutions. For example, Africa Harvest, a think tank that uses science and technology to address poverty and improve livelihoods among some of the poorest people in Africa, is working with farmers in an arid stretch in eastern Kenya who were finding it harder and harder to grow their usual crops of corn and beans.

Africa Harvest got farmers to switch to sorghum.

They have seen bumper harvests as a result because they are focusing on the right crop and the right practises for the climate, said Moctar Toure, chairman of Africa Harvest, who will be in Durban for the talks.

“The way we do agricultural development has to change,” Toure told The Associated Press.

“We need to balance the need to increase farm productivity with environmental conservation. We will also work towards broad policy changes in our target countries in order to address endemic problems (affecting women) such as land right security, access to credit and knowledge.”

Famine and fighting

Experts worry that one consequence of resources becoming scarcer will be more frequent conflict. Already, Zimbabwe has seen aid used as a political weapon. Those who can prove their loyalty to longtime President Robert Mugabe’s party have been seen to be favoured when it comes time to hand out seeds or food.

Modern techniques of growing drought-resistant crops like sorghum and millet, staggering planting programs, irrigation and harvesting rain and river water in dams help minimise the risk to farmers. But Zimbabwe’s modern agricultural infrastructure has been disrupted by a decade of political and economic turmoil.

Acute food shortages eased after Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar to end world-record inflation in 2009, but local farm production continues to decline.

This month, the U.N. food agency said more than 1 million Zimbabweans needed food aid and poor families, especially households with orphans and vulnerable children, can’t afford much of the food that is available. Most of that food is imported.

Climate change, like the political problems linked to poverty in Zimbabwe, is man-made, though over a longer term.

Warm and dry

Scientists say the accumulation of carbon dioxide traps the Earth’s heat, and is causing dramatic changes in weather patterns, agricultural conditions and heightened risks of devastating sea-level rise. Industrialised nations bear the bulk of the blame, since they have been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for 200 years.

Africa emits only about 3% of the total greenhouse gases per year, but its fragile systems and impoverished people are hardest hit by the consequences.

Weather experts say Zimbabwe’s average rainfall has decreased over the decade and October temperatures this year soared to above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), the highest since 1962.

Harare meteorologist Jephias Mugumbate said rains in January and February — crucial for the ripening of crops — can no longer be relied on.

It was often said drought in southern Africa recurred every 10 years.

“But now it has become more frequent and intensified. Temperatures show an upward trend and instead of being cooler our nights are becoming hotter,” Mugumbate said.

Erratic weather

Like Vambe, tens of millions of Africans rely on rain-fed agriculture.

Vambe’s corn crop has supported her family for more than five decades. But her yields have been steadily falling.

She walks at daybreak to her nearly bare field 10 miles (15 kilometers) from her home in the impoverished western Harare township of Highfield. She has finished planting her seed with the help of her two grandchildren. The dusty brown soil beckons for rain.

Maize, the nation’s staple food, needs 60 days of moisture to reach maturity.

“The rains have become erratic. We can no longer rely on the seasons,” Vambe said.

She has had to replant on several occasions because of a “false start” to the rainy season.

“This is what has been affecting our yields since 2000. We are no longer getting good yields because the rain comes and goes away,” she said.

In the past, the growing season ended in March and harvests were gathered through April.

“Today, nothing is definite. You get rain in April then our maize rots in the fields,” Vambe said. “If we are not respecting our spirits and if they are angry, there will be no rain.” ( timeslive.co.za )

Dorothy Burlingham's Twins

2011-11-23T18:16:00.002+07:00

Dorothy Burlingham's Twins - The study that explained why it's not so wonderful to have a look-alike.

For a long time, it was common for society to treat twins, especially identical twins, not as two separate people but as a single unit. Literature, from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors to Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey, imagined twins as seamlessly interchangeable or as possessing a mysterious preternatural bond. Many people, of course, still treat twins this way. Outsiders delight in their uncanny physical similarities—from the Twinsburg, Ohio, festival that encourages participants to dress alike to the countless movies and TV shows that have fun with twins' resemblances. Think Marge Simpson's indistinguishable sisters, Patty and Selma.

But if laypeople still frequently perceive twins as carbon copies, psychologists no longer do. How-to manuals for raising twins stress the need to treat them as individuals, starting with not giving them rhyming names and not dressing them in matching outfits. These are basic steps, but important ones, and they have not been always widely followed. Indeed, any twin who has been spared such embarrassments probably owes a debt to a psychoanalyst who, writing nearly 60 years ago, helped revolutionize the way society thinks about twins: Dorothy Burlingham.

Twins dressed in matching outfits

Though little-known outside psychoanalytic circles, Burlingham authored the seminal Twins: A Study of Three Pairs of Identical Twins, With 30 Charts. At the time of its appearance in 1952, "the amount of material available on twinship that can be of practical help to parents of these double-featurettes," reported the New York Times, unable to resist the urge to cuteness, was "remarkably skimpy." Twins was immediately hailed by the British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott as "probably the most comprehensive work of its kind in existence."

Born in 1890, Burlingham was the daughter of Charles Tiffany, the famed jeweler. After a divorce, she moved with her children to Vienna, underwent psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud, and worked with his daughter Anna to establish a day care with psychoanalytically informed lectures and seminars for teachers. Then in 1938 the Nazis annexed Austria, and she traveled with the Freuds to England. During the Blitz she and Anna Freud set up the Hampstead Nurseries in a comparatively safe neighborhood in North London, where children stayed during the war, separated from but visited occasionally by their mothers. Freud and Burlingham observed the children in their care and collaborated on two influential works, Young Children in Wartimeand Infants Without Families.

A little while later Burlingham followed up with Twins. Over several years, she tracked the development of three sets of identical twins at Hampstead: Bill and Bert, Jessie and Bessie, and Mary and Madge. She carefully documented their growth—including important moments in their relationships with one another—in spare, lucid, unobtrusive, and highly descriptive writing, as well as in detailed color-coded charts in the back of the book.

Looked at one way, Twins is an exercise in debunking. Burlingham starts by discussing the widespread societal fascination with twins, which she suggested may stem from a fantasy that people develop when they're young and learning to cope with their separateness from their parents. People think it would be wonderful to have someone "just like" themselves—a perfect soul mate capable of deep, intuitive, empathetic understanding. But the truth is more prosaic. "In the fantasy," Burlingham wrote, "the relationship to the twin is imagined as an untroubled and unchanging one." In reality, twins struggle with their partners and often balk at being pigeonholed. When at nearly 4 years old Mary told Madge, "Madge, you're a twin," Madge replied: "No I'm not, I'm Madge."

Although Burlingham stressed twins' need for independence, her picture was anything but simple. She saw, too, that this need coexisted with a fear of separation, and she observed how the tension between those conflicting feelings surfaced at various stages of early life. When very young, each twin expressed (as all children do) a basic wish for self-gratification—for the mother's attention, or a particular toy, or a dessert. In the case of twins, this wish for gratification inevitably came at the expense of the other twin, since they had to compete with each other for maternal affection—and just about everything else. Slowly, however, this basic wish transformed into a desire to share, and by the age of 2, the twins felt it important to have the same thing at the same time. And yet this desire didn't erase the earlier competitiveness. A struggle remained, only now focused on the wish to have equal amounts, not more or less—so that Jessie would not have her cocoa with her nurse until she was assured that Bessie was having cocoa, too. "Sharing," Burlingham noted, "is the continuation of their former competition."

The portrait of twins' relationships wasn't all bleak. Burlingham also saw that functioning as a unit can be beneficial. When, at 2½ years, Bessie showed proficiency at making plasticine ducks, Jessie, rather than trying to learn the skill herself, was happy to ask Bessie to make "me ducky too." Similarly, when one of the pair was challenged by another child or reproached by an adult, the second twin put aside her rivalry to defend her sister. The protected twin, for her part, was glad to let the other temporarily assume a superior role in the relationship. At such times, feelings of unity overrode feelings of rivalry.

Overall, however, Burlingham saw that it was necessary for a twin to carve out some sense of individual identity . Bessie and Jessie at times supported each other and at other times criticized each other persistently. Each seemed to seek her partner's approval as a single child asks for praise from a parent; they also seemed to separate more easily from each other when they were happy and enjoying what they were doing. Bert and Bill, by contrast, were so invested in each other, so engaged in copying each other, that they didn't develop appropriate social skills or a sense of separateness. Years later, psychologists described their fusion as a severe maladaptation.

Despite its subtlety of observation, Twins did not go without criticism. Clearly, children brought up in a group setting at the Hampstead Nurseries—away from their parents all or most of the time—weren't being raised under typical circumstances. Their mothers' prolonged absences may have distorted the twin relationship. Burlingham's work also focused only on the early years of childhood, paying little attention to the stages of development after the child begins elementary school. And then there was the problem that, like other studies that rely on close observation, Burlingham's small sample size left her open to the charge that her conclusions could not be generally applied.

Nonetheless, her work encouraged others to observe twin development, giving rise to a host of new studies. We now understand better the particular challenges that twins face at critical junctures in their developmental trajectory—and parents, psychologists, and teachers, knowing more about how to treat twins, can better help them enjoy the pleasures of twinship as well.

Burlingham herself offered only two pages of practical advice for parents. It amounted to a plea against extremes: Parents shouldn't break up their twins completely, she said, but they shouldn't let them relate primarily to each other, either. Instead she called for "a normal development of the tie to parents." That advice may seem unremarkable coming from a Freudian psychoanalyst, but any twin who remembers being gussied up in matching sailor suits and put on display probably yearns to have been treated "normally" a little more often. ( slate.com )

The critical problem with new experiments in using genetically engineered insects to fight malaria and dengue

2011-11-23T16:44:00.002+07:00

GM Mosquitoes Bite - The critical problem with new experiments in using genetically engineered insects to fight malaria and dengue - In the Cayman Islands, genetically modified mosquitoes are on the prowl. The insects are all male, and they’ve been engineered so that all their offspring die before reaching adulthood. By having sex with local females, they could father a new generation that perishes prematurely, before it gets the chance to spread diseases like dengue fever.

These GM insects, engineered by Luke Alphey at the University of Oxford, are part of a growing number of initiatives designed to fight disease by pitting mosquitoes against mosquitoes. Alphey’s tactic of breeding mosquitoes that beget unfit larvae is just one approach. Some groups are trying to make the insects more resistant to the disease-causing parasites they carry. Others have loaded them with life-shortening bacteria that outcompete those parasites. While some scientists warn of the unintended consequences of releasing such insects into the wild, others acknowledge that we need innovative new strategies for tackling mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever, which affect hundreds of millions of people every year. (Figures for mosquito-borne illness are notoriously unreliable, but the World Health Organization estimates that each year there are 247 million cases of malaria, causing 881,000 deaths, and 50 million instances of dengue.)

But all of these recent attempts to turn mosquitoes into malaria- and dengue-killing machines have something in common: The modified mosquitoes need to have lots of sex to spread their altered genes through the wild population. They must live long enough to become sexually active, and they have to compete successfully for mates with their wild peers. And that is a problem, because we still know surprisingly little about the behavior and ecology of mosquitoes, especially the males. How far do they travel? What separates the Casanovas from the sexual failures. What affects their odds of survival in the wild? How should you breed the growing mosquitoes to make them sexier? Big question marks hang over these seemingly straightforward questions.

Are genetically modified mosquitos the future of malaria-prevention?

Heather Ferguson from the University of Glasgow studies mosquito ecology. She views the knowledge gap in this field as a significant obstacle that stands in the way of the GM-mosquito initiatives. History tells us how dismally such initiatives can fare if they are not constructed on solid ecological foundations. In the 1970s and 1980s, several groups tried to control the mosquito population by releasing sterile males that would engage females in fruitless sex. The vast majority of the experiments failed.

Their poor performance is often blamed on the fact that the males were sterilized with damaging doses of radiation. But they had many other disadvantages. Lab-bred mosquitoes are frequently reared in large, dense groups, which produces smaller, less competitive individuals. The artificial lights of a lab could also entrain their body clocks to the wrong daily rhythms, driving them to search for mates at the wrong time of the day. And in several cases, the modified males ignored the wild mosquitoes and preferred to mate with their lab-reared kin instead. These problems went unnoticed in lab tests, where the modified mosquitoes were compared with unaltered ones that had been raised in the same conditions. They seemed to be perfectly competitive, but they proved to be feeble challengers to their wild peers.

Given that we ended up with puny, frail mosquitoes that looked for the wrong mates at the wrong times of the day, it is no wonder that most of these early experiments in modifying mosquitoes failed. Compare this example to the case of the citrus-eating medfly, a pest that scientists also tried to control by releasing sterile males in the early 2000s. Just like mosquitoes, mass-reared medflies initially lost out to their wild peers. But scientists realized they could improve the medflies’ reproductive chances by feeding them lots of protein, which gives them energy for mating hunts, or ginger root oil, which produces a female-attracting scent. These simple measures had a big impact on the programs, which have successfully controlled medfly outbreaks in North and South America.

The new generation of GM-mosquito researchers learned from the failed experiments of the ‘70s and ‘80s and is trying to assess the competitiveness of its modified insects in the wild. Alphey’s group found that the ones released in the Cayman Islands fathered about10 percent of the local eggs within a few weeks. They were about half as successful as wild mosquitoes, which sounds poor, but is actually better than a lot of other modified insects, including the successful sterile medflies. The team has suggested that it could compensate for the males’ shortcomings by simply releasing more of them.

Even if that works, it would still be better to make the GM mosquitoes as competitive as possible from the outset. The longer these programs run, the greater the odds that female mosquitoes will simply evolve to avoid the GM males. Again, there is historical precedent. In the 1970s, Japan tried to control the melon fly by releasing large numbers of sterile males. These efforts continued for many years before the females gained the ability to recognise and avoid the interlopers. The message is clear: We cannot afford a guerrilla war with disease-carrying insects. We need shock-and-awe tactics that have a big impact in a short period of time. And to achieve that, we need to plug the gap in our knowledge of mosquito ecology.

Unfortunately, Ferguson says, “A lot of the knowledge gaps that hindered previous attempts still remain.” In a recent review, she noted, “We have made substantially more headway in understanding the reproductive biology of species with no direct public health or economic importance, such as Drosophila, fur seals and blue tits, than we have done for this vector that kills millions.”

This crucial ecological research on mosquitoes is trapped in a financial no-man’s land. Organizations that fund basic research into issues like how insects behave assume that biomedical agencies will foot the bill, while these agencies are more likely to prioritize research with more obvious and immediate clinical impact. But the necessary ecological studies would not be expensive. Ferguson estimates that it would take just $500,000 to fund 10 students in the field, an act that “could easily quadruple our knowledge of this area within a few years.”

For example, in 2008, her student Kija Mg’Habi worked in an isolated, malarious part of Tanzania and discovered that among Anopheles gambiae (a species that carries malaria), the medium-sized males get the most sex. You might expect the biggest males to outcompete their smaller rivals, but they were actually six times less successful. This is exactly the type of information you need if you want your modified mosquitoes to outcompete their natural brethren.

Now, several scientists are trying to learn more about mosquitoes by setting up “semi-field studies.” These large outdoor spaces, enclosed by nets, are like mosquito aviaries. They should allow scientists like Ferguson to study large numbers of mosquitoes, both normal and modified, under natural but controllable conditions. These studies will not only be useful as testing grounds for GM strains; they should also start to provide some long-missing information about our mosquito adversaries. It may not be as sexy as modifying genes, but ecology is tantamount to knowing your enemy, and that surely is a cornerstone of victory ( slate.com )

Hungry mosquitoes fly farther than you think

2011-11-15T14:21:00.001+07:00

Hungry mosquitoes fly farther than you think — How far does a mosquito fly? Harry Boerema wants to know.

Boerema lives near a drainage project, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep (3-foot) basin in the northern rural landscape to head off flood waters and protect towns and villages from disaster.

The project threatens to inflict hordes of mosquitoes on people living around the water retention area, so scientists set out to calculate how to keep the boundaries of the ditch far enough from human habitation to protect residents from pest infestation.

The question they needed to find out: How far does a common European human-biting mosquito fly?

What they found surprised them: A hungry female looking for a "host" will fly at least 150 meters (yards), three times farther than previously thought, said Piet Verdonschot, who conducted the research.

Harry Boerema pointing to an antique map of the area surrounding his farm Thursday Oct. 6, 2011, lives on the edge of a drainage project, where Dutch authorities are dredging a huge meter-deep (3-foot) bowl in the northern rural landscape to head off flood waters and protect towns and villages from disaster.The project, begun in 2003, threatens to inflict hordes of mosquitoes on people bordering the 1,700 hectare (4,200-acre) water retention area, where heavy rainwater will collect and slowly be channeled to the North Sea. The frequent wet-dry cycles will be perfect breeding grounds. (AP Photo/Arthur Max)

The 1,700 hectare (4,200-acre) basin, begun in 2003, is designed to collect heavy rainwater that will slowly be channeled to the North Sea. But frequent wet-dry cycles will be perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Buzzing pests are nothing new for Boerema, a retired professor of architectural history who has lived for 36 years in his quiet cottage set amid dairy farms.

"I don't mind them to a certain extent. But not in surplus," he says. "I'm a nature lover, and mosquitoes are part of nature — although not the most likable ones."

Not everyone took the prospect of living on water's edge with such equanimity, and local complaints led authorities to commission the mosquito research, said project manager John Tukker.

At the outset, Verdonschot believed mosquitoes stay within about 50 meters (yards) of their breeding ground. The biggest nuisance for humans often originates in flower pots, buckets of collected rainwater or any kind of water left stagnant in the back garden or barnyard.

"The assumption in the literature is that people who suffer bites have bred their own specimens in their own gardens," he said.

Hundreds of mosquito species exist around the world — 36 in the Netherlands alone — but Verdonschot concentrated on the two species most common in the Dutch climate: the culex pipiens, which prefers birds to people but will still keep you awake at night during the summer, and the Culiseta annulata, larger, more aggressive insects active year-round. Neither normally carries dangerous diseases.

Verdonschot, an aquatic ecologist working for the private environmental research institute Alterra, hatched 40,000 mosquitoes in large tents in a grassy field. The tents were surrounded by concentric circles of traps set at 50 meters, 100 meters and 150 meters. Around the edges of the field were ditches with tall reeds and wild grasses on the banks.

The traps drew mosquitoes into smoke from dry ice then instantly froze them. At the end of each day researchers collected the corpses and counted them one-by-one, using tweezers under a microscope.

Verdonschot expected most mosquitoes to be caught in the closest traps. Instead, about 80 percent were found in the farthest, meaning most flew at least 150 meters from the tent where they were hatched.

Verdonschot then refined his experiment, placing evergreen shrubs within the inner circle of traps. The numbers caught in the closest ring of traps shot up by one-third. The bushes offered both shelter from predators and moisture evaporating from the leaves.

That discovery led Tukker, working in the north, to create small raised islands of vegetation in the middle of the retention area, which becomes a swamp after a heavy rain. Those islands deflect mosquitoes from nearby farms.

The experiments produced a few other surprises, too.

Mosquitoes are mostly quiet during the day, preferring to concentrate on the edge of a body of water. When females hunt for blood — necessary for reproduction — they move for about an hour at dusk or at dawn, staying close to the ground.

"They move differently than we thought, they move farther than we thought," Verdonschot said.

Verdonschot believes his team's research adds to scientific knowledge about mosquitoes. Tomes have been written about mosquito bites and the effects on human health, but little research has been done on their habits, he said.

Verdonschot's simple experiments this summer have value for others building catchment areas around Europe and for housing developers.

"The whole northwestern European climate is becoming more dynamic because of climate change, because of wetter summers. And all this urban infrastructure has to be protected from water excess," he said.

Boerema also has a mosquito trap in the hedge around his cottage, helping to keep track of the mosquito population during wet and dry periods. He is anxious to see the water storage project completed, recalling that he was ordered to evacuate his home during a 1998 flood.

"I think it will ease the danger," he said, even though he's likely to have more mosquitoes.

"We've always been bitten. I don't react very much, but my wife hates them — but not to the extent that we find it unbearable to live here." ( Associated Press )

Concerns Are Raised About Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes

2011-10-31T16:15:00.002+07:00

Concerns Are Raised About Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes - These mosquitoes are genetically engineered to kill — their own children.

Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood.

The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

But the research is arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled.

Authorities in the Florida Keys, which in 2009 experienced its first cases of dengue fever in decades, hope to conduct an open-air test of the modified mosquitoes as early as December, pending approval from the Agriculture Department.

“It’s a more ecologically friendly way to control mosquitoes than spraying insecticides,” said Coleen Fitzsimmons, a spokeswoman for the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District.

The Agriculture Department, meanwhile, is looking at using genetic engineering to help control farm pests like the Mediterranean fruit fly, or medfly, and the cotton-munching pink bollworm, according to an environmental impact statement it published in 2008. Millions of genetically engineered bollworms have been released over cotton fields in Yuma County, Ariz.

A female Aedes aegypti, the species that is the main transmitter of the dengue fever virus.

Yet even supporters of the research worry it could provoke a public reaction similar to the one that has limited the acceptance of genetically modified crops. In particular, critics say that Oxitec, the British biotechnology company that developed the dengue-fighting mosquito, has rushed into field testing without sufficient review and public consultation, sometimes in countries with weak regulations.

“Even if the harms don’t materialize, this will undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the research enterprise,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of international health law at Georgetown University.

The first release, which was discussed in a scientific paper published online on Sunday by the journal Nature Biotechnology, took place in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean in 2009 and caught the international scientific community by surprise. Oxitec has subsequently released the modified mosquitoes in Malaysia and Brazil.

Luke Alphey, the chief scientist at Oxitec, said the company had left the review and community outreach to authorities in the host countries.

“They know much better how to communicate with people in those communities than we do coming in from the U.K.” he said.

Dr. Alphey was a zoology researcher at Oxford before co-founding Oxitec in 2002. The company has raised about $24 million from investors, including Oxford, he said. A major backer is East Hill Advisors, which is run by the New England businessman Landon T. Clay, former chief executive of Eaton Vance, an investment management firm.

Oxitec says its approach is an extension of a technique used successfully for decades to suppress or even eradicate pests, which involves the release of millions of sterile insects that mate with wild ones, producing no offspring.

But the technique has not been successfully used for mosquitoes, in part because the radiation usually used to sterilize the insects also injures them, making it difficult for them to compete for mates against wild counterparts.

Oxitec has created Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the species that is the main transmitter of the dengue and yellow fever viruses, containing a gene that will kill them unless they are given tetracycline, a common antibiotic.

In the lab, with tetracycline provided, the mosquitoes can be bred for generations and multiplied. Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available. They live long enough to mate but their progeny will die before adulthood.

The study published on Sunday looked at how successfully the lab-reared, genetically modified insects could mate. About 19,000 engineered mosquitoes were released over four weeks in 2009 in a 25-acre area on Grand Cayman island.

Based on data from traps, the genetically engineered males accounted for 16 percent of the overall male population in the test zone, and the lethal gene was found in almost 10 percent of larvae. Those figures suggest the genetically engineered males were about half as successful in mating as wild ones, a rate sufficient to suppress the population.

Oxitec has already said a larger trial on Grand Cayman island in 2010 reduced the population of the targeted mosquito by 80 percent for three months. That work has not yet been published.

Dr. Alphey said the technique was safe because only males were released, while only females bite people and spread the disease, adding that it should have little environmental impact. “It’s exquisitely targeted to the specific organism you are trying to take out,” he said.

The company is focusing on dengue fever rather than malaria because a single mosquito species is responsible for most of its spread, while many species carry malaria. Also, unlike for malaria, there are no drugs to treat dengue, and bed nets do not help prevent the disease because the mosquito bites during the day.

There are 50 million to 100 million cases of dengue each year, with an estimated 25,000 deaths. The disease causes severe flulike symptoms and occasionally, hemorrhagic fever.

The Oxitec technique, however, is not foolproof.

Alfred M. Handler, a geneticist at the Agriculture Department in Gainesville, Fla., said the mosquitoes, while being bred for generations in the lab, can evolve resistance to the lethal gene and might then be released inadvertently.

Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, said in a commentary published on Sunday by Nature Biotechnology that 3.5 percent of the insects in a lab test survived to adulthood despite presumably carrying the lethal gene.

Also, the sorting of male and female mosquitoes, which is done by hand, can result in up to 0.5 percent of the released insects being female, the commentary said. If millions of mosquitoes were released, even that small percentage of females could lead to a temporary increase in disease spread.

Oxitec and a molecular biologist, Anthony A. James of the University of California, Irvine, say they have developed a solution — a genetic modification that makes female mosquitoes, but not males, unable to fly. The grounded females cannot mate or bite people, and separating males from females before release would be easier.

In a test in large cages in Mexico, however, male mosquitoes carrying this gene did not mate very successfully, said Stephanie James, director of science at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, which oversaw the project.

In Arizona, pink bollworms sterilized by radiation have already helped suppress the population of that pest. To monitor how well the program is working, the sterile bugs are fed a red dye. That way, researchers can tell if a trapped insect is sterile or wild.

But the dye does not always show up, leading to false alarms that wild bollworms are on the loose. Giving the sterilized bugs a coral gene that makes them glow with red fluorescence is a better way to identify them, said Bruce Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona. He is an author of a report on the field trial published in the journal PLoS One in September.

Experts assembled by the World Health Organization are preparing guidelines on how field tests of genetically modified insects should be conducted. Proponents hope the field will not face the same opposition as biotechnology crops.

“You don’t eat insects,” said Dr. James of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health. “This is being done for a good cause.” ( nytimes.com )

New Facebook App the 'Farmville' of Energy Conservation?

2011-10-26T20:57:00.001+07:00

New Facebook App the 'Farmville' of Energy Conservation? - By harnessing the power of social gaming, a new coalition hopes to become the Farmville of home energy conservation.

The average American spends just six minutes a year thinking about their energy consumption, a statistic that Facebook, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and energy management firm Opower hope to change through a new social energy app.

“Social networking represents the next frontier in delivering consumer energy savings,” Dan Yates, co-founder and chief executive officer of Opower, said in a statement. The group is hoping to reach a broader segment of the population, one that may have had little interest in energy efficiency to date.

The app will combine the competitiveness of a game with real-world data. Facebookers can benchmark their home’s energy usage against a national average of similar homes, compare their energy use with friends, enter energy-saving competitions, and share tips on how to become more energy efficient.

According to NRDC, improvements in energy efficiency have the potential to deliver more than $700 billion in cost savings in the United States.

The key to the new app is Opower’s network of more than 60 utility partners who will make customer data available for use in the app. Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), the City of Palo Alto (in California), and Glendale Water & Power (GWP) will be the first U.S. utilities to participate, representing around 4 million customers when the app launches in early 2012.

The power of peer pressure

The app is built around the idea of competition. People will be able to invite friends to compare their energy use against their own and show how energy efficient they are. In the absence of a network of energy-conscious friends, the app will provide national data as a substitute. Players can also manually upload data from their monthly bill if their utility is not participating.

Communities of people will be able to form teams to help each other achieve collective goals, as well as compete against other groups. Teams will be rewarded and incentivized by their utility or other network partners.

The new app is being promoted by Facebook on its Facebook Green page, a resource for people interested in learning more about Facebook's commitment to environmental stewardship. Currently, Green has garnered more than 95,000 "likes" by users. ( foxnews.com )

2,000-Year-Old Supernova Mystery Solved

2011-10-26T20:42:00.003+07:00

2,000-Year-Old Supernova Mystery Solved - Two NASA space telescopes have helped solve some of the most enduring mysteries of the first documented report of star explosion — an ancient supernova spotted nearly 2,000 years ago, scientists say.

In 185 A.D., Chinese astronomers witnessed what they called a mysterious "guest star" that appeared in the sky and lingered for about eight months. It wasn't until the 1960s that scientists determined that this cosmic object was the first documented observation of a supernova that signaled the violent death of a distant star.

Now, infrared views of the supernova from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal that the star explosion detonated inside a region of space that was relatively free of gas and dust. This allowed the star's explosion to travel out much farther and faster than expected, researchers said.

"This supernova remnant got really big, really fast," said Brian Williams, an astronomer at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, in a statement. "It's two to three times bigger than we would expect for a supernova that was witnessed exploding nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, we've been able to finally pinpoint the cause."

Williams is the lead author of the new study, which is detailed online in the Astrophysical Journal.

This image combines data from four different space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, called RCW 86. The Chinese witnessed the event in 185 A.D., documenting a mysterious "guest star" that remained in the sky for eight months.

Ancient supernova

The ancient supernova, called RCW 86, is located about 8,000 light-years from Earth. But while its location was known, much of its details were shrouded in mystery.

One enigma is the fact that the star's spherical remains are larger than expected. If the star's exploded guts could be seen in infrared light in the sky today, they ywould take up more space than the full moon, researchers said.

By combining the new data from Spitzer and WISE with existing information from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory, astronomers were able to grasp the missing pieces of the puzzle.

They found that RCW 86 is a so-called Type Ia supernova, triggered by the relatively peaceful death of a star similar to our sun. This star shrank into a dense star called a white dwarf before siphoning matter, or fuel, from a nearby companion star. The white dwarf is then thought to have exploded in a brilliant supernova explosion.

"A white dwarf is like a smoking cinder from a burnt-out fire," Williams said. "If you pour gasoline on it, it will explode."

The study showed for the first time that a white dwarf can create a cavitylike empty region of space around itself before exploding in a Type Ia supernova event. The presence of a cavity would explain why the remnants of RCW 86 are so big, researchers said.

When the explosion occurred, the cavity would have allowed the resulting ejected material to spew out unimpeded by gas and dust. This would also have allowed the star's remains to be cast out rapidly.

More cosmic clues

Using Spitzer and WISE, the researchers measured the temperature of the dust that makes up the RCW 86 remnant. They then calculated how much gas had to be present inside the supernova remnant to heat the dust to those temperatures.

They found that the supernova remnant existed in a low-density environment for much of its life, which points to the presence of a cavity.

Earlier, scientists suspected that RCW 86 formed from a so-called core-collapse supernova, which occurs when a star's core reaches a tipping point mass and implodes. Core-collapse supernovas are the most powerful type of supernova.

While there were hints of a cavity around RCW 86, at that time the phenomenon was only associated with core-collapse supernovas. In these cosmic blasts, massive stars blow material away from them before they explode, which carves out dust-free voids around them.

Yet, Williams and his colleagues were able to rule out the possibility of RCW 86 being a core-collapse supernova. X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton indicated that the object consisted of high amounts of iron, which is traditionally a clear indicator of a Type Ia supernova.

Combining these observations with infrared data, the astronomers were able to show that RCW 86 was a Type Ia explosion in a cavity.

"Modern astronomers unveiled one secret of a two-millennia-old cosmic mystery only to reveal another," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer and WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Now, with multiple observatories extending our senses in space, we can fully appreciate the remarkable physics behind this star's death throes, yet still be as in awe of the cosmos as the ancient astronomers. ( Space.com )

Has Moon's Legacy Been Altered?

2011-10-26T20:27:00.003+07:00

Has Moon's Legacy Been Altered? NASA Wants to Know - Has bacteria in astronaut poop left on the moon been genetically altered? Did solar wind and ultraviolet radiation destroy the flag at Tranquility Base, landing site for the first Apollo moon mission? Are the lunar rovers dented with micrometeoroid impacts?

These are among the science questions raised by a NASA team tasked to come up with guidelines to preserve lunar artifacts before contenders in a $30-million competition sponsored by Google arrive on the moon beginning in about two years.

About 28 teams are competing to send privately funded robotic spacecraft to photograph and explore the lunar surface. Winners can get bonuses if they visit lunar historic sites, a prospect that got NASA thinking about its property on the moon.

Buzz Aldrin deploys a seismometer in the Sea of Tranquillity area of the moon

Six crews landed on lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, leaving behind descent modules, communications antennas, rovers and yes, even bags with feces. The Apollo artifacts are part of a larger collection of relics that also include Soviet-era spacecraft and crashed NASA probes.

"The flag, footprints, the lunar rover ... all is there, and we really don't know exactly what's happened," said Rob Kelso, director of NASA's lunar commercial services program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"In a real sense, the hardware that still sits on the moon are ongoing experiments in scientific witness plates, of looking at environmental impacts over time, which can provide significant engineering data about how systems and structures survive," Kelso said during a presentation last week at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in Las Cruces, N.M.

Astrobiologists, for example, are interested in studying how bacteria in the astronauts' feces have fared after 40 years and if they have undergone gene mutation. Microbes also existed in clothes, food containers and other gear left behind on the moon.

"The crews put their feces bags, urine bags, food containers, their clothes, in a bag and would jettison that out of the hatch prior to liftoff as they tried to shed as much weight for ascent performance," Kelso said.

Scientists also are interested in studying the metals in the lunar rover and other gear, which has been subjected to temperatures that regularly and repeatedly cycle between minus-370 degrees and 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

To preserve the artifacts and prevent accidental damages, NASA wants visiting vehicles to keep their distance. The buffer zones vary depending on the particular relic and its historic significance, with the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 equipment and sites -- the first and last human expeditions to the moon -- garnering the most restricted access.

The buffers vary between 1 to 3 kilometers (0.62 to 1.2 miles) for each artifact, be it a hammer a drill or a lunar rover. Visiting spacecraft also are advised to descend and land at least 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) away from historic sites to avoid pelting hardware with lunar dust.

The Lunar Heritage Sites recommendations have been provided to the X-Prize Foundation and the Google Lunar X Prize teams, NASA spokesman J.D. Harrington told Discovery News.

With no way to enforce the rules, compliance is voluntary.

“Any future lunar landing vehicle teams can select the level of compliance within their mission design and adopt according to their team plans,” Harrington wrote in an email. ( foxnews.com )

Strange Form of Life Discovered in Ocean's Blackest Depths

2011-10-26T20:07:00.003+07:00

Strange Form of Life Discovered in Ocean's Blackest Depths - Scientists plumbing the depths of the Mariana Trench -- the deepest part of the ocean on the planet -- have identified gigantic amoebas lurking miles and miles beneath the waters.

The creatures are called xenophyophores, and scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego spotted them in the cold, crushing depths 6.6 miles beneath the white caps.

"They are fascinating giants that are highly adapted to extreme conditions but at the same time are very fragile and poorly studied,” said Lisa Levin, a deep-sea biologist and director of the Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.

Scripps scientists said xenophyophores are among the largest individual cells in existence, often growing longer than four inches. Recent studies indicate that by trapping particles from the water, xenophyophores can concentrate high levels of lead, uranium and mercury and are thus likely highly resistant to large doses of heavy metals. They also are well suited to a life of darkness, low temperature and high pressure in the deep sea.

A one-celled organism called a xenophyophore. This deep-sea-dwelling creature was found in the Galapagos in 2002; Scripps Institute researchers found similar ones dwelling at depths well past 6 miles.

“The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity … and extreme environment adaptation,” Levin said.

To reach the bottom of the ocean requires special equipment. Levin worked with Eric Berkenpas and Graham Wilhelm -- Remote Imaging engineers from the National Geographic Society -- to build and launch “dropcams."

“Dropcams are versatile autonomous underwater cameras containing an HD camera and lighting inside of a glass bubble,” Berkenpas explained.

By wrapping high-resolution cameras in a thick-walled glass sphere, scientists were able to drop cameras capable of withstanding the extreme pressure of all that ocean. At a depth of 6.6 miles, the water above can cause more than eight tons per square inch of pressure.

Life is surprisingly abundant at these extreme depths, despite the cold and pressure. According to Dhugal Lindsay of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the Dropcam movie also depicts the deepest jellyfish observed to date.( foxnews.com )

German satellite enters Earth's atmosphere

2011-10-24T18:48:00.001+07:00

German satellite enters Earth's atmosphere - A defunct satellite has entered the atmosphere, the German Aerospace Center reported Sunday morning. "There is currently no confirmation if pieces of debris have reached Earth's surface," it said.

Up to 30 pieces of space debris could hit land or water.

Europe, Africa and Australia appeared to be out of the path of the Roentgen Satellite, the agency said late Saturday. It was not immediately clear where the satellite entered the atmosphere.

"The largest single fragment will probably be the telescope's mirror, which is very heat resistant and may weigh up to 1.7 tons," according to the German Aerospace Center.

"The likelihood of a person getting injured as a result of the re-entry is extremely low," the agency said.

Tariq Malik, managing editor of space.com, told CNN Saturday night that "there is no serious contamination threat" from the satellite.

Fragments could fall to Earth in about a 50-mile-wide (80-kilometer-wide) path as the satellite enters the atmosphere at 17,398 mpg (28,000 kph) and breaks up under extreme heat, the agency said earlier.

The satellite's orbit extends to 53 degrees northern and southern latitude, officials said.

The satellite -- an X-ray observatory -- doesn't have a propulsion system, so officials couldn't perform a controlled re-entry at the end of the craft's mission in 1999, the space agency said.

The satellite had been in an elliptical orbit between 351 miles and 363 miles above the surface, but in June, it was only about 203 miles high, the space agency said.

Launched in June 1990, the ROSAT gave scientists for the first time an all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope and discovered that all astronomical objects emit X-ray radiation, including some objects that weren't expected to do so, the space agency said.

The satellite observed the moon, comets, stars, X-ray binary stars, neutron stars, supernovae and supernova remnants, the interstellar medium, galaxies, active galactic nuclei, black holes, nebulae and the cosmic X-ray background, the agency said.

The satellite's mission was supposed to last 18 months. But the ROSAT "proved to be such a great success in terms of the scientific benefits it provided that the mission was extended for as long as was technically feasible," the German agency said.

The mission finally came to an end in 1998 when a star tracker failed and the sun caused irreversible damage. The ROSAT was shut down on February 12, 1999, more than 8 1/2 years after its launch, the space agency said.

The U.S. Department of Defense said that more than 21,800 man-made objects have re-entered Earth's atmosphere since tracking began with Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite launched by the Soviets in 1957.

Last month, surviving remnants of a NASA satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere over a remote stretch of the southern Pacific Ocean and broke into pieces during re-entry, with 26 chunks weighing a total of 1,200 pounds considered likely to have reached the surface, NASA said. ( cnn.com )

You're Debt Free, Now What?

2011-10-12T21:32:00.002+07:00

You're Debt Free, Now What? - Your final payment has been made, and you've contacted your CareOne representative to let them know you will be finished with your plan.

Wow! You are officially debt free! It's so exciting that you can hardly contain yourself. That one payment you had been struggling to make for years is now yours - all yours. So now what?

Well, for me, I knew I needed to make some new financial goals.

I figured since I didn't use my monthly payment for four years, I wouldn't miss it, and should start to save it.

I watched my debt go down month by month, now it was time to watch my savings go up. The big question was: What should I do with my money?

Again, I'm not a financial advisor. However, I do work for a private club that has a few wealthy members.

They gave me a few suggestions; you can also do your own research on the internet or read some of the financial blogs on the CareOne website.

In the meantime, here are three basic things you can do once you've paid off your debt.

1. Increase Your Retirement Contribution or Start One:

I started a retirement fund at my job almost immediately, but wasn't putting much into it while trying to pay down my debt. Once it was paid off, I increased my 401k contribution from 4% to 10%, and increased it again to 12%. The great thing about a 401k is you don't really feel the deduction, as it's automatically taken from your paycheck, and most companies will match a percentage. This is a long-term investment you'll be glad you started and it certainly falls under the "pay yourself first" motto. Wouldn't it be great to be able to retire?

2. Add a Long-Term Savings Account:

Put at least 40% of your monthly payment into a savings account for the long term. Do a monthly automatic transfer from your checking to your savings so you're not tempted to spend it. Once you have a few thousand dollars, you can put it in a CD or a money market account to get a better interest rate. Imagine, a few thousand dollars that isn't debt? Although interest rates aren't great right now, you'll make some money on your savings and will have better investment opportunities once the economy gets better.

3. Increase Your Emergency Fund:

My emergency fund was approximately $500 while in the DMP. Since then, I have increased that fund. My goal is to have enough to live off of for six to eight months in case I ever lose my job or I'm prevented from working due to illness, etc. I use this same account for car repairs, unexpected bills, etc. I do an automatic transfer to this account every month. Although it fluctuates depending on what's going on in my life, it is growing at a steady rate.

These really are some basic suggestions to get you started. If you have children, you should speak to a financial advisor concerning their savings or college savings.

If you can continue to live without the monthly payment you made to CareOne, then invest it, save it, and watch your money grow!

You are starting a whole new chapter in your financial life - one without debt! What are your financial plans once you are debt free? ( careonecredit.com )

America Will Return to the Gold Standard within Five Years

2011-10-12T21:29:00.002+07:00

America Will Return to the Gold Standard within Five Years - The campaign for monetary reform is underway. “We will return to the gold standard within five years,” according to Lewis E. Lehrman during an interview with Judge Napolitano on FreedomWatch on August 18, 2011.

Mr. Lehrman should know. He is leading the charge, reminding his fellow Americans of our shared western history and the vision that our Founders set forth in the Constitution.

In a remarkably short period of time, the United States grew from thirteen ill-managed colonies into the most prosperous nation the world had ever seen. During most of this period, our monetary regime—the gold standard—inspired confidence and trust in market mechanisms, encouraging long-term savings and investment and heretofore unseen economic growth.

That is, until one hundred years ago.

With the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, the Bretton Woods system of the post-Second World War era, and Nixon’s rescission of the gold standard in 1971, a century of decline in the dollar’s value ensued. At the outset of the 1980s, President Reagan inherited a suite of economic problems. Although he seriously entertained the idea of a return to the gold standard in the 1980s—even requesting and reviewing a plan on how to restore convertibility of the dollar to gold—fiscal restructuring, in the form of an overhaul of the tax code, took center stage.

The monetary reform plan was never carried out.

The wild volatility over the last forty years, especially during the economic downturn of 2007-09, provides further evidence that only a dollar as good as gold will restore long-term price stability and lay the foundation for long run economic growth.

America and the world need a true gold standard more than ever. Is America still courageous enough to lead the world in reestablishing financial order? Let’s hope so—the true gold standard is our last best hope. ( thegoldstandardnow.org )

Single Moms Are Crazy!

2011-10-11T21:46:00.002+07:00

Single Moms Are Crazy! - Does everyone secretly think this? - When I was pregnant with my second child, I was aware that there were ways in which I was not prepared to take care of a baby on my own, but that awareness didn’t unduly influence or affect me. What I thought to myself was, “The universe will rearrange itself for this baby.”

I often hear people refer to other single mothers I know as “crazy,” and I assume that they refer to me that way, too. I have thought about this word, especially in relation to one single mother in particular who seems to me more sublimely functional and sane than anyone else I know. I began to realize that the quality people are referring to as crazy is actually what I would call “romantic.” They mean that she is not influenced by the practical news on the ground, is listening instead to another story that is in her head. She is drawn to things that are, according to the dictionary definition of romantic, “impractical in conception or plan” and is in thrall to the “heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.”

This is a common thread in the single mothers I know: They go for vividness over contentment, intensity over security. One was embedded with the Army in Afghanistan when she was six months pregnant, another somehow floats with her toddler between Los Angeles, Paris, and wherever her French rail pass will take her. Others with more pedestrian professional lives simply decided to have a baby while their romantic lives remained complicated or turbulent or a work in progress. I can see why this is “crazy” in relation to conventional, settled life, but is it crazy? And, more importantly, is the term crazy one of our few acceptable ways of passing judgment on something different or unusual or uncommon in a culture that is technically not supposed to be passing those judgments?

Are single mothers biting off more than they can chew?

To be clear, I am writing here about myself and the handful of other single mothers I know, specifically women who conceived children in some sort of relationship that they are no longer in and had the baby: a tiny, arguably privileged subset of single mothers. (It’s worth noting, though, that nearly four in 10 babies in this country are currently born to single mothers, and a rapidly growing percentage of those mothers are adults.)

A few months ago I came across a Pew Poll showing that a large majority of Americans still view single motherhood as unacceptable and, in the colorful words of the poll, "bad for society."* Which somehow doesn’t surprise me. Caitlin Flanagan wrote in Time, “Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father in the home,” which is perhaps a little unsubtle for progressive New Yorkers, and yet many of them think and recycle polite, modified versions of this same idea.

Someone who was trying to persuade me not have the baby said that I should wait and have a “regular baby.” His exact words were, “You should wait and have a regular baby!” What he meant, of course, was that I should wait and have a baby in more regular circumstances. But I had already seen the feet of the baby on a sonogram, and while he was pacing through my living room making his point, I was thinking: This is a regular baby. His comment stayed with me, though. It evoked the word bastard: “something that is spurious, irregular, inferior or of questionable origin.”

Someone said, similarly, to a single friend of mine who was pregnant that she should wait and have a “real baby.” As if her baby were unreal, a figment of her imagination, as if she could wish him away.

Such small word choices, you might say. How could they possibly matter to any halfway healthy person? But it is in these choices, these casual remarks, these throwaway comments, these accidental bursts of honesty and flashes of discomfort that we create a cultural climate; it’s in the offhand that the judgments persist and reproduce themselves. It is here that one feels the resistance, the static, the pent up, irrational, residual, pervasive conservatism that we do not generally own up to. Hawthorne called it “the alchemy of quiet malice by which [we] concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.”

A novelist I know is sitting on the bench in the park with his wife and two sons. He peers into the stroller at my 5-pound newborn, Leo, and says, “How did that happen?” He smiles radiantly: It’s a joke! But my 6-year-old, Violet, is standing next to me, and I feel her stiffen because she senses something in his tone, something not quite nice. I say, “The usual way,” but I have a feeling that if I were married, he would have said something more along the lines of “congratulations.”

It’s around this time that I begin to see that The Scarlet Letter is in fact a fresh, modern commentary. One might be under the impression that tolerant liberal New York bears no resemblance to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s windy Puritan New England town, but one would be wrong. Our judgments are more polite, more subtle, more psychologically nuanced; latter-day critics of the state are thinking, of course, of what is best for the child, what is the healthiest environment; they are not opposed to extramarital philandering per se, but there is still underlying everything the same unimaginative approach to family, the same impulse to judge, the same sexual conservatism, and herd mentality. The single mother traipsing down the subway steps in heels with her Maclaren in New York (as opposed to, say, Paris or Berlin) is not as many worlds away as you’d think from Hester Prynne.

One day one of my colleagues, noticing that I was pregnant with my second child, ducked into my office and said, “You really do whatever you want.” He meant it as some variety of compliment, and I took it as such, but I was beginning to get the sense that other people were looking at me and thinking the same thing; it seemed to some as if I were getting away with something, as if I were not paying the usual price, and if the usual price was take-out Thai food and a video with your husband on a Saturday night, then I was not, in fact, paying that price. James Baldwin once wrote, “He can face in your life only what he can face in his own.” And I imagine if you are feeling restless or thwarted in your marriage, if you have created an orderly warm home for your child at a certain slight cost to your own freedom or momentum, you might look at me or someone else like me and think that I am not making the usual sacrifices. (I may be making other sacrifices, but that is not part of this sort of calculation or judgment.)

Before I have the baby, one of my friends politely suggests that it may be “hubris” to think that I can make up for the fact that the baby’s father would not be in the house, and not even in the city most of the time. He tells me that I am too confident in my own powers. This worries me, sometimes late at night, because I wonder if it’s not true, and there are times during the baby’s first year when I wish the earth would stop spinning so that I can get off for a moment and rest. But maybe this is the good and useful kind of hubris.

The submerged premise here is that there is something greedy, selfish, narcissistic, or anti-social about having a baby on your own. But is there? It seems to me that if anything a baby born in these conditions is extra-wanted. The fact that having that baby is not necessarily the obvious or predictable or easy thing to do at this particular juncture in life makes it all the more of a deep and consuming commitment.

At lunch I mention to an editor that I am thinking of writing about single mothers and the subtle and not so subtle forms our moralism toward them takes. He says: “That’s a good idea. And I say that as a guy who looks at single women and thinks, ‘What’s wrong with her? How did she screw up?’ ”

In spite of our exquisite tolerance for and fascination with all kinds of alternative lifestyles, we have a wildly outdated but strangely pervasive idea that single motherhood is worse for children, somehow a compromise, a flawed venture, a grave psychological blow to be overcome, our enlightened modern version of shame. It malingers, this idea; it affects us still.

The power of this view is that it very easily gets inside your head, it resonates with every children’s book you have ever read about little bear families, with all the archaic visions of family that cohere in the furthest reaches of your imagination: It’s hard to free yourself.

I notice the tendency in myself is toward jokes, toward a kind of protective mockery. I find that I am very deliberately not apologizing for the baby by embracing the most ridiculous, tabloidy words for him like love child. I hear myself spinning a caricature of my semi-bohemian household when I run into someone at a party I haven’t seen in a while: “Yeah, two babies, two different dads. I somehow ended up with the family structure Pat Moynihan was complaining about.”

In fact, by now I have spent so long outside of conventional family life that sometimes when I spend an afternoon with married friends and their children, their way of life seems exotic. The best way I can describe this is the feeling of being in a foreign country where you notice the bread is good and the coffee excellent but you are not exactly thinking of giving it all up and living there.

The baby refers to his sister’s father, Harry, as “My Harry” as in, “My Harry is coming!” It seems to me the exuberant, unorthodox use of preposition kind of gets at the conjuring, the act of creation, the interesting magic trick at the center of the whole venture: His family will be what he makes it. He is 2, but he chooses his own people. He picks fatherish figures, including his own father. I notice people often find little ways of telling me that it’s not the same thing. And of course it’s not, but it seems a bit narrow minded or old fashioned or overly literal to think that love has to come from two parents, like water from hot and cold faucets.

But is it more stable or secure to grow up in a house with two parents? There is arguably an absence of what people like to call borders in my house. For instance the baby seems to have caught my insomnia. Before going to bed he howls like a wolf, then says, “I am a wolf,” then says: “Where is my bottle? Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?” then very deliberately climbs out of his bed and walks through the halls saying, “I am lost, Mama, I am lost.” It occurs to me that in this unfiltered, unmediated environment I am passing everything along to him. In any event, that’s exactly how I feel at 2 in the morning—somewhere in the middle of “I am lost” and “Where is my mango? Where is my ketchup?”

I am prepared to believe that in a household with two adults, there is often a little more balance, a healthy dilution of affection, a diffused focus that makes everyone feel comfortable. One morning I overhear Violet saying to the baby: “You can’t marry anyone. You are going to live with me.” When I first separated from her father five years ago, she said, “Mommy, it’s like you and I are married.” And this would pretty accurately reflect the atmospherics of our house: a little too much love, you might tactfully say.

Quentin Bell once wrote about growing up with his single-ish mother, the painter Vanessa Bell: “We had to balance the comforts of being so well loved against the pain of being so fearfully adored.” And that seems like a fair assessment of what goes on in my house. (The grown son of one of the single mothers I know refers to this same thing as “the unparalleled intimacy.”) But if I am being honest I like the fearful adoration, the too-muchness of it, the intensity, the fierceness. I don’t actually believe “healthy” is better.

I also can’t help noticing that the people talking about a “healthy” environment are often the same people talking about “working” on their relationships. They are often the denizens of couples therapy and date nights in restaurants with hand-cured pancetta and organic local fennel. I have no doubt that they do create a healthy, balanced environment, but I like to think there are some rogue advantages to the unbalanced and unhealthy environment: to the other way of doing things.

Here someone is bound to say, “Studies have shown …” But as far as I am concerned the studies can continue to show whatever they feel like showing. There are things that can’t be measured and quantified in studies, and I imagine the multitudinous varieties of family peace are among them. Not to mention what these stern studies fail to measure: which is what happens when there is anger or conflict in the home, or unhappy or airless marriages, relationships wilting or faltering, subterranean tensions, what happens when everyone is bored.

One day at dinner, Violet is playing a game where she is listing impossible things. Like it’s impossible to talk when you are dead, when she suddenly comes out with, “It’s impossible to be normal.” The family member in attendance shoots me a look that eloquently points out that Violet might not think it was so impossible to be normal if instead of piles of books on the floor I had a little financial security, if I had a man around the house. If I stopped running around like I do, in other words.

It’s near dawn when I finish the Scarlet Letter and I had forgotten the ending. Hawthorne is careful to tell us that Pearl, wild, radiant, spritelike Pearl, grows up and leaves for Europe, where she flourishes; the suggestion is that she is perhaps a bit happier than the children of the drab Puritan town she has left behind.

It’s getting dark and I am stepping into a taxi, the parlor window is lit, the children at home in their pajamas, smelling of Johnson & Johnson, domestic peace descending, and I go off in the taxi to meet a man at a hotel bar. This will seem to many people like the wrong structure; they will tell me how unhealthy it is, how unsustainable, how unstable, and they may be right, but there I am speeding nonetheless over the bridge. There are other possible ways I could conduct my life, other forms and structures. But I remember hearing somewhere: “You have one life, if that.” And one sometimes feels like mentioning that to some of the more blinkered, respectable couples, to those purveyors of wholesome and healthy environments, to those who truly believe the child of a single mother is not whole or happy in his room playing with his dinosaurs: You have one life, if that. ( slate.com )

A paradise on earth

2011-10-06T19:56:00.002+07:00

A paradise on earth - "Live and let live” is a pseudonym for life, as we know it, and Goa renders that true. A fine slice of heaven served in waves of stimulating beliefs, Goa is where the magic happens. Throw on some insatiable dust that sparks life and an exuberant mood, and Goa is what you get.

Goa, a former Portuguese territory, was described by a Sunday Times writer as "South Asia’s Latin Quarter: Indulgent, tolerant, capricious, steeped in a tropical lassitude and wedded to the sea." Words cannot do justice. They can try and dwell on the sanctity of Goa, which leaves you in a state of trance.

Trance music, along with its intoxicating nature, habitually transforms you to utopia. It is the haven of free spirited bliss, beaches, soaking in the sun, water sports, scrumptious seafood and nightlife. The most popular destination for Russians, Europeans, Arabs and all the hippies, Goa is utopia.

With a population of 1.5 million, Goans speak Konkani, as it is located in South West India in a region called Konkan. On May 30, 1987, Goa was born as an independent India's 25th state.

Goa’s capital is Panaji, and you will be amazed how you can cover this state in only 3,702 sq km. It is India's smallest state, but like they say, the best things come in small packages. The familiarity of the place and its philosophy help you subside into the weather and its empowering allure. There is a sub Mediterranean and Caribbean feel surrounding the hub of ecstasy. Goa is always full of tourists — people who deem it home and who promise to return, no matter how many times they have been there before.

There is an irrevocable dreamy quality in the air, and with a party of foreigners from across the globe, you only feel at home. Smiles, passivity, grandeur for life, food and music envelop the evening of Goa channels. To be in Goa, you have to be “Susegad,” or in other words, go with the flow as you sit back and relax.

The architecture is low-rise and Latinate with plenty of green patches, trees laden with coconuts, papayas and fresh guavas. The coastal setting with lakes, rivers and beaches set a pleasant and breezy appeal to Goa’s skyline and natural outlook.

Picturesque buildings from the Portuguese give Goa its character. A city proud of its heritage, it continues to hold its ground and reveal its character. Panjim in the 1820s became the administrative center of the Portuguese Estado da India.

With an 87 percent literary rate, it will be of no surprise to hear the locals conversing in English. Most buildings, cathedrals and common architecture is Portuguese reigning since their regime. Goa has kept its heritage preserved for the masses and in accommodating its feel, the towns remain embellished in history. Small roads, palm trees, ocean blue beaches with birds flying free in the breeze implore on the sanctity of the Goa.

Old colonial-era houses are scrupulously maintained, and locals retain the gracious culture that makes Goa an exuberant and warm escape. Culture is not only maintained in historic monuments but can also be seen in the business and agricultural facets. Farmers and their generations have worked the same fields that tradition has tended to for centuries.

Beaches, ship cruises, cultural archetype, monumental remains, cathedrals, flea markets, food shacks and irresistible memories under the deep blue skies are spread across the imperial state of Goa.

North Goa

With over 36 beaches, North Goa starts with its hippie front that embeds color and fervor into Goan culture. In fact, the more commercialized and happening episodes take place on the shores of North Goa.

The novelty of Northern Goa is spread across tourist attractions Tiracol Fort, Chapora Fort, Fort Aguada, the Chapel of St Anthony and the beaches of Candolim, Morjim and Miramar. Spreading from Aguada Plateau to Tiracol Fort, it is the place to let go of inhibitions. The beaches of Candolim, Calangute and Miramar are more subdued and open to families. The party central for India’s party people and wild brunches are the hotspots Baga and Anjuna beach. Baga offers its entertainment capital factor, whereas the extensive extravagance of villas and affairs of India’s rich and famous can be found in Sinquerim.

In an international vibe that is edgy and contemporary to modern classic, you can energize your soul and senses by the beach or with the wonderful spread in restaurants like Britos, Mambos, Chapora and Vagator where cafés are jammed with eager tourists and exultant locals. The other appetizing global tallying the food markets are a variety of Italian, Burmese, French, Turkish and mostly homemade, local establishments. The vibe of Goa is rich, in both splendor and gratitude. Many homes are habitually breakfast places, cafes and guest homes.

Morjim, owns Olive Ridley sea turtles that thrive on the beach with a potent Russian subculture subsiding in its bead. Beyond living in shacks and thatched huts under coconut palm trees, Goa offers great flea markets that are bliss for tourists from all across the world. Dolphin sightseeing, tai chi, reiki, cruises that offer the ultimate dining and entertainment package with dances and karaoke, along with yoga, and ayurvedic massage therapies trap you into Goan purpose.

Dudh Sagar waterfalls (called an ocean of milk), cashew plantations that blanket much of Pernem taluka of Goa, a spice plantation, and intriguingly, amalgam Hindu temples of Ponda are a treat to discover. The Savoi Spice Plantation is located 10 km from Ponda. Their main cultivation consists of ginger, basil, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, turmeric and peppers.

South Goa

South Goa is less developed and a perfect place for tranquility. Be it for a getaway or honeymoon, it imposes a tranquil margin of stillness for you to unwind uninterrupted.

White sands and crystal beaches stretch from Cansaulim to Mobor with dramatic ruins of the Cabo de Rama Fort. Astonishing Mesolithic carvings at Pansaimol, resident tigers in the jungle of Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary and the lush agricultural bounty of the hinterland of Quepem are integrated within the sphere, leading to a further stretching coastline.

Bogmalo, Consaulim, Majorda and Utorda, Agonda and Palolem are considered to be one of the most stunning beaches clustered with sparkling white sand and clear waters with myriads of blue hues and coconut palms. Some villages encase some of these beaches. The mix of urban and retro feel gives Goa its exotic flavors.

Old Goa

Old Goa is one of the world’s most prized cities home to legends, aristocrats, and adventurers. Goa’s churches and convents were chosen as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

When to Visit

New year is the best time to be in Goa. Filled with a mesmerizing exotic crowd, it is laden with submerged, sunburn and other trance parties alike. The who’s who of anywhere will be just about near. People make Goa home and even book a quarter year room in a hotel suite or book three months in advance to get the best spots in town.

India’s conglomerate of Vegas and Miami, all you need to take with you is the frame of mind they deem “Susegad.” In the romanticism and myth of Goa’s history, it is the chance you want to take, and the place you want to visit with your loved ones. A destination of happiness (remember even in Utopia, you can never be alone), the spirit of Goa is mystic and will be the wonder you are looking for.

Weather

In November through April, tropical climate ranges from 25 C to 30 C and may go up to 40 C in October and May. The monsoon lasts from June to late September with the heaviest rains in July.

Where to Stay

Leela Hotels and Resorts for excellent and superlative composure of Goa, along with Taj Hotels. Marriott Hotel and resorts offer a majestic outlook and make a convincingly attractive deal.

Wildernest (www.wildernest-Goa.com) occupies a stunning location at the coastline of the Mhadei Valley in North Goa.

Visas

Foreigners require a visa for Goa except for citizens of Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives. This can be granted by your Indian Embassy, as there is no modus operandi of visa upon arrival.

Fly Air Arabia

The best and safest route by far is Air Arabia. They offer a flight from Jeddah through Sharjah directly to Goa — the first of its kind in the Kingdom. A three-night holiday package to Goa starts at AED2,705. Flight fares depends on the season; however, one way in October is around AED280, excluding taxes and surcharges. ( arabnews.com )

Saturn at Night

2011-09-29T20:23:00.002+07:00

Saturn at Night - I don’t know about you, but amid all the news of terror threats, unemployment, the western power outage and the like, I could stand a little mental health break. If you’d like one too, it helps put our problems in perspective. Here goes.

It’s a wonderful image of the planet Saturn, shot in 2006 by the Cassini spacecraft as it passed through Saturn’s shadow in orbit around the planet. If you want to get into real detail, you can find a very large version (more in a minute on why you’ll want to)

(It’s gone viral on the web today. NASA made it its “Astronomy Picture of the Day” on Sept. 4, and it accidentally wound up on other sites as if it were new.)

What’s worth noting about this image? A few things:

First, Saturn’s not all dark at night. It’s lit by sunlight reflected from its rings. The Earth, in a comparable picture, would be black, perhaps with lights from some of the larger cities. If you could stand on Saturn (it may not be possible; nobody knows what’s beneath those murky layers of ammonia and methane gas), the nights would be something to behold.

Second, look how bright the rings are in this view, even when completely back-lit. Sunlight is bouncing among the pieces of ice that make up the rings.

Finally (and this is why you may want to go to the large version), do you see the tiny dotto the left of Saturn, just above the edge of its brightest rings? That’s us. ( abcnews.go.com )

Jewelry industry to self-regulate on toxic cadmium

2011-09-26T18:34:00.002+07:00

Jewelry industry to self-regulate on toxic cadmium — Hammered by more than a year of recalls and legal setbacks, the U.S. jewelry industry has agreed to voluntarily limit the toxic metal cadmium in children's trinkets — and, in the process, has helped write what amounts to new federal regulations of its products.

The rules join a patchwork of mandatory limits that already deter use of the heavy metal, which over time can cause cancer and other diseases, though there have been no documented deaths or serious injuries. While the voluntary standards don't trump stricter limits from states and legal settlements, they do create a consensus national standard that jewelry manufacturers and importers endorse.

Because the limits are voluntary, there is no automatic penalty for jewelry sold with cadmium levels exceeding them. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission will, however, use the limits in deciding whether to pursue product recalls.

The agency has argued that voluntary limits were the appropriate — and fastest — way to create a common understanding of what would constitute a problem piece of jewelry. The agency said that unless it finds widespread failure to comply, it will not seek mandatory rules.

Several states have passed laws to deal with cadmium over the past year. Like the states, the private sector is helping fill a void left by the lack of clear federal limits.

In response to an Associated Press investigation, the CPSC last year helped recall about 300,000 pieces of high-cadmium necklaces, bracelet and rings. The AP reported that some jewelry was more than 90 percent cadmium and would release alarmingly high levels of the metal into stomach acid if swallowed.

Problem jewelry, typically made in China, was available across the marketplace, from Walmarts to chain stores specializing in jewelry to dollar-type shops.

Five recalls were done before the agency decided how to handle the emerging problem. By last fall, staff scientists had developed guidelines for how to identify a hazardous piece of jewelry based on lab testing that mimicked how much cadmium would enter a child's body from jewelry that was licked or swallowed. In that process, the agency more than tripled its estimate of how much cadmium a child could safely ingest.

Jewelry test results above those levels may — or may not — trigger the agency to ask businesses to yank an item from their shelves.

It wasn't just fuzzy federal guidelines that drove the jewelry industry to seek predictable rules. Importers and manufacturers had to comply with new testing demands from retailers, the varying limits imposed by states such as California and Illinois — and still another limit that was established when major retailers recently settled a lawsuit with environmentalists.

A compromise approach was overwhelmingly endorsed by a panel led by a jewelry industry veteran and including consumer advocates and representatives of testing labs.

This children's jewelry subcommittee convened under the banner of the independent group ASTM International, a respected organization that sets voluntary standards for a range of goods. In results announced last week, the full ASTM committee on consumer products approved the standard, which also addresses other potential jewelry hazards such as lead and magnets.

Under the ASTM approach, children's jewelry — defined as items "primarily intended" for kids 12 and under — would first be lab tested to see whether it contains more than 0.03 percent cadmium.

Items that failed the "total content" test could be scrapped or sent for further analysis. For smaller pieces, a second test gauges how much cadmium would dissolve into the stomach a day after the jewelry was swallowed; for larger pieces, an additional test measures how much cadmium escapes under conditions that simulate licking.

The CPSC supports this approach — indeed, the ASTM standard borrows heavily from the agency's safety levels and test methods.

Industry had wanted the stomach acid test to last just two hours, but eventually agreed to the 24 hours that CPSC staff advocated. On the other side, the CPSC rejected the approach preferred by environmentalists and consumer advocates, who favor a much more conservative standard based solely on how much cadmium jewelry contains, not how much it might release.

A total content approach is how the CPSC currently regulates lead, the metal that some jewelry makers abandoned in favor of cadmium after Congress passed strict lead limits in 2008.

The new voluntary standard "limits potential exposure to cadmium in children's jewelry in a manner that assures safety without resulting in bans on safe products," according to Brent Cleaveland, head of the ASTM subcommittee that wrote the rules and executive director of the Fashion Jewelry and Accessories Trade Association. He described it as "way more conservative than necessary."

Not to Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health and the lone dissenting voter against the voluntary standard. Her Oakland-based organization found cadmium in jewelry at dozens of stores, and earlier this month settled legal cases against chains including Target Corp. and Gap Inc., which agreed they wouldn't sell jewelry with more than 0.03 percent cadmium, even if very little leached out.

Cox argued during the ASTM process that pieces of new jewelry that might fare fine in an initial stomach acid test would fare much worse if swallowed following months of wear and tear. Testing has shown that as electroplating wears down, or if a piece of jewelry's surface is punctured, cadmium inside can leach out at much greater levels.

If the standard were based solely on a limit of 0.03 percent cadmium, "We don't want to have to worry about all that," Cox said. "Let's just set a total content standard from the beginning that takes care of the problem."

The head of the CPSC sounded an optimistic note.

"ASTM's approval of a new cadmium standard for children's jewelry is a positive step forward," CPSC Chairman Inez Tenebaum said in a written statement. "It is very important for ASTM to also complete their work and publish the new cadmium standard for toys as soon as possible." ( Associated Press )

Do hospitals' freebies undermine breast-feeding?

2011-09-26T18:29:00.003+07:00

Do hospitals' freebies undermine breast-feeding? — Jessica Ewald brought more than a new baby boy home when she gave birth earlier this year. Like many new moms, she got a hospital goody bag, with supplies including free infant formula and formula coupons.

"We gave it away the moment we came home because I said I'm not having that in our house," Ewald said.

Ewald, 32, of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., is the daughter of a breast-feeding activist who fought to get those goody bags out of hospitals. Ewald was taught early on that "breast is best," and even though as a teen she rolled her eyes when her mom asked pregnant women about nursing, Ewald knew she'd choose breast over bottle when her own time came.

Borrowing a line from a blogger, Ewald says hospitals sending newborns home with formula "is like giving somebody divorce papers at their wedding." It can really undermine a woman's determination to breast-feed, she said.

The head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shares her concern.

"Hospitals need to greatly improve practices to support mothers who want to breast-feed," Dr. Thomas Frieden said last month in releasing a CDC report card on breast-feeding. It showed that less than 5 percent of U.S. infants are born in "baby-friendly" hospitals that fully support breast-feeding, and that 1 in 4 infants receive formula within hours of birth.

Routinely offering new moms free formula is among practices the CDC would like to end. In some cases, hospitals agree to give out those freebies in exchange for getting free supplies for special-needs infants, Frieden said.

Exactly how many U.S. hospitals hand out formula is unclear. The American Hospital Association and the International Formula Council, a trade group for formula makers, do not keep statistics and formula companies contacted for this story declined to comment.

A nationwide study of more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals and maternity centers published last year in the Journal of Human Lactation found that 91 percent sent new moms home with free formula in 2006-07. A smaller 2010 study of 1,239 hospitals suggests that the practice has decreased, although most — 72 percent — still offered formula. That study is being released Monday in October's Pediatrics.

"I don't think hospitals are the right place to market anything and I don't think hospitals should be marketing a product that is nutritionally inferior to breast milk," said study author Anne Merewood, an associate pediatrics professor at Boston University medical school and editor of the Journal of Human Lactation.

"People do think if a doctor gives something it must be good for you," Merewood said.

Some women and activists, though, say the move to end formula freebies is part of a breast-feeding movement that has gone too far, overstating the benefits and guilt-tripping new moms who have difficulty nursing or just choose not to. And even some breast-feeding moms don't have a problem with the free formula.

"I think it's fine to offer freebies to any mom, especially those who are undecided or have already made up their mind not to breast-feed. We are always free to refuse," said the Rev. Camille Lebron Powell, an associate Presbyterian pastor in Little Rock, Ark.

Breast milk contains antibodies that strengthen babies' immune systems and help them fight infections. Research has shown that breast-fed babies have reduced chances of becoming obese or developing diabetes in childhood, and sudden infant death syndrome is less common in breast-fed infants.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups recommend that infants receive only breast milk for their first six months. The new CDC report shows that only 15 percent of new mothers achieve that goal, and only 44 percent of new moms breast-feed at all for six months.

Lebron Powell doesn't dispute the benefits and chose to breast-feed her children, aged 9 months and 4 years old. But she says those who choose to use formula shouldn't be demonized.

"Breast-feeding is free. It's good for the baby and it's good for the mom. But it's hard and if you work and the employer doesn't support your pumping needs, you are in trouble," she said.

Hospitals have been offering formula freebies for decades, but they have a new incentive to abandon the practice.

The Joint Commission hospital accrediting group last year added "exclusive breast milk feeding" during newborns' hospital stays as a measure that hospitals can be evaluated on. While formula giveaways won't be evaluated, the commission mentions monitoring that practice when it educates hospitals on how to improve their performance, said Celeste Milton, an associate project director at the commission.

The goal is to discourage hospitals from giving infants formula when it's not medically necessary, said commission spokeswoman Elizabeth Zhani.

Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, Ill., the suburban Chicago hospital where Ewald had her baby last March, boasts that 93 percent of its new mothers are breast-feeding when they're sent home. It also supplies lactation consultants to new moms — a service Ewald said she appreciated. But Ewald said she got a mixed message about breast-feeding, because nurses there wanted to give her baby formula to help him gain weight, and because of those free samples in her goody bag.

Hospital spokeswoman Amy Jo Steinbruecker said the gift bags contain "literature and samples of common items newborns may need, including a small sample of formula," and are meant to support healthy parenting and baby care.

But she said the hospital is examining the formula freebies as it seeks to be designated "baby-friendly."

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund established that designation to encourage breast-feeding, with 10 criteria hospitals must meet. These include allowing new moms and infants to remain together throughout the hospital stay and not giving newborns any pacifiers or formula.

Jennifer Smoter, a spokeswoman for Abbott Nutrition, makers of Similac formula, declined to disclose how many hospitals Abbott provides with formula samples and would not comment on the practice. Representatives of Mead Johnson, makers of Enfamil formula, did not respond to several email and telephone requests for comment.

Haley Stevens, a scientific affairs specialist for the International Formula Council trade group, said not offering new moms formula samples "is really irresponsible."

New moms should have formula available, along with information on how to use it so they don't water it down or make other mistakes that could endanger their babies' health, Stevens said.

"We agree breast-feeding is the best, when you can do it," she said. "There's no question. But if one size doesn't fit all, it's good to have a backup." ( Associated Press )

Why Is the Harvest Moon Big and Red?

2011-09-14T18:17:00.002+07:00

Why Is the Harvest Moon Big and Red? - The Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest the date of the Autumnal Equinox. Orbiting Earth at a shallow angle to the horizon this time of year, the moon rises at around sunset for several days in a row. Over the course of these days, the seamless transition from sunlight to moonlight provides farmers with additional time to bring crops in — and at just the right time of year for the harvest.

But the Harvest Moon provides a treat for non-farmers, too: Hanging low in the sky, it sometimes appears deep yellow or orange or even a vibrant red.

Shortly after the Harvest Moon rises, light from it passes sideways through more atmosphere than does moonlight coming from overhead. Atmospheric particles tend to scatter moonlight's bluish components more than its reddish components, which are allowed to penetrate through to your eyes. The moon thus appears redder the more atmosphere it passes through. Its color is most dramatic on nights when the atmosphere is especially muggy or hazy.

A low-hanging moon also appears larger than a high-flying one. This is a trick of the brain known variously as the moon illusion, or Ponzo illusion, which has been observed since ancient times but still has no generally accepted explanation. One possible cause of the moon illusion is that we're used to seeing clouds just a few miles above us, while we know that clouds on the horizon can be hundreds of miles distant. We might therefore perceive an object on the horizon as farther away no matter what it is, and because the moon on the horizon is the same size as it normally is overhead, we perceive it as being much larger. ( space.com )

Mississippi man who said he was abducted by aliens dies

2011-09-14T17:34:00.002+07:00

Mississippi man who said he was abducted by aliens dies - Charles Hickson, the Mississippi man who claimed he was abducted and probed by aliens while he was fishing with a friend in 1973 and never backed off the story despite the ridicule he endured, has died.

Hickson, 80, died last Friday of a heart attack, his family said on Tuesday.

Hickson, then 42, was fishing with 19-year-old Calvin Parker Jr. on a pier near Pascagoula, Mississippi in October 1973 when they said a cigar-shaped UFO with flashing blue lights suddenly appeared above them.

A door opened up, the two men later told authorities, and they were pulled into the craft by aliens, who paralyzed them, examined them on a table and then let them go.

Although Hickson was reluctant to share the story -- he said all he and Parker wanted to do "was go fishing" and he feared people would "laugh me out of Jackson County" -- he and Parker eventually went to local police and reported the incident.

"They weren't lying," the chief investigator for the Jackson County Sheriff's Department told reporters at the time. "Whatever it was, it was real to them."

As word of their claims leaked out, Hickson and Parker became minor celebrities, celebrated by believers in extraterrestrial life but derided by skeptics.

In 1974, after wire services picked up the story, Hickson appeared on a number of national TV programs, including The Dick Cavett Show.

In 1983, Hickson wrote a book about the incident called "UFO Contact at Pascagoula" with William Mendez. ( Reuters )

Fame of killer bull named 'Mouse' spreads in Spain

2011-09-13T21:30:00.003+07:00

Fame of killer bull named 'Mouse' spreads in Spain — With more than 3,000 fans cheering, a hulking, black-and-white fighting bull named "Mouse" chased one daredevil runner after another, trying to flip them airborne and skewer them as he did a month ago in a fatal goring that enshrined his reputation as Spain's most feared and famous beast.

Mouse was greeted in the southeastern farm town of Sueca like a rock star: Everyone stood up at 2 a.m. Sunday in the bull ring's grandstands as he charged across the sand after loudspeakers introduced him with the eerie strains of the soundtrack to "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," the 1960s spaghetti western film starring a young Clint Eastwood.

The 550-kilogram (1,213-pound) bull didn't claim any more victims this time, but tried his hardest to gore runners. And he captured intense media coverage in what could be his last appearance before retirement amid the controversy he has generated about Spain's summertime tradition of bull versus human runs, a pastime that plays out in rings, narrow streets and plazas across the nation.

After running with Mouse, a breathless Julian Herroja said the bull is so dangerous that "if you make a mistake, he won't. You'll be a victim for sure."

In this Sept. 9, 2011 photo, a reveler runs away from a bull with flaming horns during a festivity in Sueca,near Valencia, Spain. The fiesta is a prelude to en event featuring a hulking black and white bull whose name is 'Raton' (Mouse), a 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) beast, who has killed two people in the arena and injured five others over the years at pueblo (village) parties. Mouse is released in a ring and amateur daredevils provoke him so he'll chase them around to the cheers of thousands. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

More than 30 journalists were on hand to cover the event in Sueca, population 28,000, near the beach destination of Valencia. Though Mouse will make one more appearance before the end of his season this year, he will run around the ring without runners.

Mouse's owner now fends off as many as 60 cell phone calls daily from reporters. Facebook pages dedicated to him include comments from some people praising him for taking revenge against humans in a country where slews of bulls are slain every year in bullfights by matadors.

But Gregorio de Jesus is angry that Mouse has been nicknamed "Killer Bull," saying he gets blame for doing what comes naturally: Defending himself against perceived threats.

"We go to entertain people so they'll have fun, but unfortunately they are fighting bulls, and there is always a percentage of risk," said de Jesus, 42, a former bull fighter who raises 70 specially bred bulls and 300 cows.

The hype about Mouse has grown so much in Spain that de Jesus is forced to deny reports that the 11-year-old Mouse has killed as many as five runners during his career. But in addition to the 29-year-old victim Aug. 14 in the town of Xativa, he killed a 56-year-old man in 2006 and has seriously injured five more people over the years.

Mouse got his name because no one ever expected him to turn into such a raging bull, de Jesus said. As a calf, he was tormented by several youths who broke into his pen and exhausted him almost to death. Then he was nearly fatally gored by another bull at de Jesus' ranch.

Critics and bull run aficionados alike agree that security is lax at many small town bull runs, meaning almost anyone can participate — even if they're drunk, have taken drugs or aren't physically fit enough to sprint away from enraged bulls. Sueca's mayor beefed up security Sunday, and the extra contingent of police took away some suspected drunks during Mouse's run.

After the bull's last deadly goring, Valencia's regional government announced plans to study how police can be given more authority to detain runners who shouldn't be in the ring, while stressing that the overall number of bull run injuries in the region where they run dropped to 486 in 2010 from 676 in 2008.

Hector Benet, an insurance agent for the bull run industry, said the number of deaths each year in the region averages four, with dozens of serious injuries annually. While bulls in the runs aren't killed or bloodied like their counterparts in bullfights, animal rights groups say the events are a form of animal torture, with bulls terrified by the hundreds of people who taunt the animals by yelling at them, poking them with long sticks and tossing sand from the plaza at them.

"Mouse is the proof that the bull runs are barbaric and medieval," said Leonardo Anselmi of PROU, the animal rights group whose signature-collecting campaign led to a bullfighting ban in Catalonia, which neighbors Valencia. "It's excessive and cruel violence. The culprits are the politicians who allow the bull runs."

But after Catalonia banned bullfighting, politicians there put in protections for other bull-related traditions, including "correbous" — when metal rods with flaming balls of wax or fireworks are attached to bulls' horns before they are let loose to run around bull rings or plazas and chase people.

It's all part of Spain's centuries-old fascination with bulls, with animals used in public as a test of bravery and part of the national identity. Spaniards also run with bulls in northern Pamplona every year, spear them to death from horseback in a town called Tordesillas and cordon off town squares to let children dodge feisty calves bred to become top-fighter bulls.

Sueca's mayor, Salvador Campillo, was torn on whether to let Mouse perform in his small city after this year's fatal goring by the bull. In the end, he decided to go ahead because he's a bull run fan.

"Raton is a bull that gives a great show, he never stops," Campillo said with a smile.

The town's annual end of summer party also features an international paella cooking competition in place since 1961. The contest attracted chefs this year from top restaurants from Spain and France, plus one from Chicago.

Campillo said de Jesus told him that the Sueca event would be Mouse's last real run before retirement, but de Jesus insisted he won't decide until next year whether Mouse will be put to pasture to breed "some little Mouses" with a chance of inheriting the bull's agility, aggression, intelligence and speed.

Mouse's eventual retirement will probably prove lucrative for his owner, Campillo said, because cow owners who want mating privileges with the bull may have to pay as much as euro3,000 ($4,145) for each use of his services. ( Associated Press )

Did UFO cause power failure at nuclear missile base? Missile technicians claim sightings coincided with October outage

2011-07-08T22:57:00.002+07:00

Did UFO cause power failure at nuclear missile base? Missile technicians claim sightings coincided with October outage - 50 nuclear weapons lost touch with control centre - Blackout lasted almost an hour says Air Force - President Obama told of power supply interruption

When Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming lost control of 50 nuclear, inter-continental missiles last October, officials said a communication failure between the control centre and the weapons was to blame.

However, three missile technicians stationed at the base have raised fresh questions in the case, amid reports UFO sightings coincided with the incident.

UFO researcher Robert Hastings says eyewitnesses claim the interruption to the power supply also lasted much longer than the Air Force admits.

Cover-up claims: Missile technicians stationed at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming have reported UFO sightings coinciding with October's power outage

A power failure on October 23, 2010 meant that one-ninth of America’s nuclear arsenal went offline for almost an hour.

A U.S. Air Force spokesman said there had been a 'hardware issue' relating to an underground cable linking the command centre with the missiles.

This disrupted ‘communication between the control centre and the missiles, but during that time they were still able to monitor the security of the affected missiles’.

Defence officials insisted there was never any danger of an accidental launch. But the incident was deemed serious enough for Barack Obama to be briefed on it later.

Speaking out: UFO researcher Robert Hastings says three eyewitnesses have come forward to him on the condition of anonymity

There was no evidence of foul play and the U.S. never lost the capability to launch the missiles, although it could only have done so from an airborne command and control centre, he said.

Another official said there had been similar breakdowns on other bases in the past.

But Robert Hastings says more was involved.

According to Hastings, three missile maintenance technicians have agreed to speak to him on the condition of anonymity, revealing the military has kept UFO sightings that occurred during the power outage under wraps.

The witnesses, he said, reported sightings of 'a large cigar-shaped object high above the missile field'.

Minuteman missile: Computer breakdown meant the U.S. Air Force lost control for 59 minutes, officials say

Hastings told AOL: 'They said the object was seen in the sky above the field, throughout the weekend, both during the (missile) disruption and the following day.'

His witnesses claim the power outage lasted several hours longer than officials reported.

'I have detailed information about the events. The Air Force said this (missile) disruption lasted 59 minutes. It actually lasted the better part of 26 hours,' he said.

'It was intermittent and involved a very specific sequence of these five missile alert facilities going on and offline. I have all of that down to the most minute detail.'

Blast: A Minuteman nuclear-tipped missile takes off from its launch facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida

The eyewitnesses agreed that what they saw 'was not a commercial blimp.'

'It had no passenger gondola and no advertising on its hull,' Hastings said.

'Further, its aspect ratio (length to width) was very similar to a WWI Zeppelin: long and thin, and not at all like the squat shape of a corporate blimp.'

The witnesses did not, however, claim the alleged UFO was connected with the outage.

It is not the first time Hastings has reported UFO sightings at nuclear missile sites.

Going public: Captain Robert Salas accused the U.S. Air Force of lying in September

He organised a press conference last September, when six former Air Force officers stepped forward to reveal they had seen or had been involved with sightings at missile sites.

They claim that since 1948, aliens have been hovering over UK and U.S. nuclear missile sites and deactivating the weapons - once even landing in a British base.

The men said they were encouraged not to speak to the media about their sightings.

Captain Robert Salas, who was among the six, confirmed: ‘We’re talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that.'

However, Lieutenant Colonel John Thomas, director of public affairs for Air Force Global Strike Command headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, denies there is a policy to silence eyewitnesses to unexplained phenomena at Air Force bases.

'I have no reason to dispute anybody's claims of anything they may seen historically, because those occurrences and reports took place decades into the past and probably will decades into the future,' he told AOL.

'This incident is separate from all of that. We took it very seriously and we're very confident that we understand fully what happened.'

'If people see things that are unusual, they are encouraged to report them,' he said, adding: 'When people join the military, they don't give up their First Amendment rights.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

Fang-tastic! Viking remains reveal warriors filed their teeth to appear more ferocious to enemies

2011-07-07T22:21:00.003+07:00

Fang-tastic! Viking remains reveal warriors filed their teeth to appear more ferocious to enemies - The teeth were among bones and decapitated heads found in a mass grave in Dorset

An axe-swinging 'rape and pillage' fighter found in a Viking burial pit had filed his teeth to look more ferocious in battle.

The pain without anaesthetic would have been excruciating - but it would have proved his status as a great warrior, archaeologists said.

The warrior, found in Weymouth, Dorset, had grooves filed into his two front teeth.

Status symbols: Remains found in a mass grave in Weymouth, Dorset have revealed that Viking warriors filed 'stripes' into their teeth to show their fighting ability

Scientists also found other bones and decapitated heads in the pit where a new relief road is being built.

They think the bodies were young Viking warriors who were executed without mercy after being captured in a fierce battle with the Anglo-Saxons.

During analysis of the remains, the pair of front teeth was found to have distinct incisions.

Lead scientist David Score, of Oxford Archaeology, said: 'It's difficult to say how painful the process of filing teeth may have been, but it wouldn't have been a pleasant experience.

'The incisions have been very carefully made and it is most likely that they were filed by a skilled craftsman.

Looking sharp: The warrior had grooves filed into his two front teeth

Scientists think the bodies were young Viking warriors who were executed without mercy after being captured in a fierce battle with Anglo-Saxons

'The purpose behind filed teeth remains unclear but, as we know these men were warriors, it may have been to frighten opponents in battle or to show their status as a great fighter.'

The burial pit contained 51 skulls and 54 bodies.

Many of the executed men had been decapitated and suffered multiple wounds inflicted by a sharp blade, including one skeleton with six cut marks to the back of the neck, possibly because his captors had tried over and over again to hack off his head.

Steve Wallis, an archaeologist at Dorset County Council, said radio carbon dating showed the remains come from about 970 to 1025.

He said those dates fell within the period of Viking raids and atrocities on the Anglo-Saxons in Britain.

Isotope analysis of teeth found in a severed jaw suggests they were from the Nordic countries.

Mr Wallis said: 'It's great that the burial pit is surprising us and teaching us more about who these men may have been and what they may have been like.

'It is very rare that this kind of deliberate dental modification is found in European remains, although it is often found in cultures from around the world, so that it was found in an excavation in Dorset is fantastic.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

Distant nucleus of a young galaxy powered by a black hole is 12.9billion light years away

2011-06-30T21:59:00.001+07:00

Distant nucleus of a young galaxy powered by a black hole is 12.9billion light years away - A bright beacon in space believed to be powered by a black hole may shed light on a hidden era of the early universe.

The object, named ULAS J1120+0641, is the most distant quasar known.

Quasars are incredibly bright sources of energy thought to be the hot centres of young galaxies swirling around supermassive black holes.

Stunning: This is how the newly discovered quasar, a bright beacon in space is believed to look. Powered by a black hole, scientists say its discovery may shed light on a hidden era of the early universe. ULAS J1120+0641 is the most distant quasar known

They can emit thousands of times more radiation than our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The new quasar is 12.9 billion light years away, meaning its light began travelling across space when the universe was just 770 million years old.

Light rays from such distant objects are stretched by the expanding cosmos, making them redder.

Astronomers use this 'redshift' to estimate the distance of very far away objects.

ULAS J1120+0641 is the first quasar discovered in the infrared part of the spectrum. It was identified by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope based at Hilo in Hawaii.

Luminous: This is an artist's impression of a closeup of the new quasar 12.9 billion light years away. Its light began travelling across space when the universe was only 770 million years old

The next most distant quasar appeared 870 million years after the Big Bang which gave birth to the universe.

Studying ULAS J1120+0641 may help astronomers learn more about the reionisation era, a little-understood period when the first stars and galaxies were forming.

Dr Bram Venemans, from the European Southern Observatory at Garching, Germany, a member of the team that reported the discovery today in the journal Nature, said:

'By peering deep into the reionisation era, this quasar provides a unique opportunity to explore a 100 million-year window in the history of the cosmos that was previously out of reach.'

Colleague Dr Daniel Mortlock, from Imperial College London, said: 'Finding this object required a painstaking search, but it was worth the effort to be able to unravel some of the mysteries of the early universe.' ( dailymail.co.uk )