tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91208914298068196492024-03-13T23:31:43.691+07:00Masaripp Environment | Health | Money Maker | Space | Technology | World News Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-45206557989588435172010-09-26T14:06:00.000+07:002010-10-09T15:44:51.374+07:00Greener The Earth by Decorating Your Walls<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/TJ7y8d43_sI/AAAAAAAAAX8/0YmMGGFy3M0/s1600/dn19444-1_300.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/TJ7y8d43_sI/AAAAAAAAAX8/0YmMGGFy3M0/s200/dn19444-1_300.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521117313832058562" border="0" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Verdana;font-size:12px;" ><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:monospace,Tahoma,Verdana;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br />Would you like to decorating your walls with those plants ?<br /><br />Green roofs help to reduce the heat island effect in towns and cities because plants absorb less heat than concrete and can also cool the air via the process of evapotranspiration. This can save energy by cutting the need for air conditioning on hot days. What's more, they reduce the risk of flooding by absorbing water and, of course, they absorb carbon dioxide.<br /><br />Most existing green roofs use various species of Sedum, because the plants can survive without rain for long periods, meaning they require little maintenance.<br /><br />But Tijana Blanusa, a Royal Horticultural Society researcher based at the University of Reading in the UK, wanted to know if Sedum really is the best plant for the job.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />She compared a variety of plants, including a Sedum mix, lamb's ear andelephant ear, to see if differences in leaf shape and structure would make a difference to the temperature of the air above them.<br /><br /> She found that lamb's ear, a silvery, hairy-leafed plant, had the consistently coolest leaves over a two-year period. "Even when it is really stressed, and the leaves of other plants get a few degrees warmer than when they are watered, the lamb's ear manages to keep its leaves cooler than those that don't have hairs," she says.<br /><br />What's more, when she measured the air temperature 20 centimetres above each plant, she found that on the hottest summer afternoons the air above lamb's ear was also cooler than above the other plants.<br /><br />Hope this article helps you out..... ^_^ </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;font-size:12px;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"></span></span></span></div><br /><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><code style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;color:red;" > </span> </code></ul></span><span class="fullpost"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-45998211331915727892010-01-31T17:15:00.000+07:002010-01-31T17:16:58.106+07:00What alien worlds orbit our nearest star?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/S2VX3ElkVcI/AAAAAAAAAXE/7vR9xKXrJvE/s1600-h/ufo.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/S2VX3ElkVcI/AAAAAAAAAXE/7vR9xKXrJvE/s320/ufo.jpeg" /></a></div>If we ever travel to the nearest solar system, it would be good to know the kind of planets to expect. Now we have the best hint yet.<br />
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The Alpha Centauri dual star system is thought to host rocky Earth-mass worlds, but this assumes they could form in the turbulent conditions associated with the opposing gravitational tugs of paired star systems.<br />
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Rocky planets are created from the merger of moon-sized planetary embryos which, in turn, form from the accretion of kilometre-sized planetesimals. However, there is no guarantee that such embryos could form in turbulent conditions.<br />
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To find out, Jian Ge of the University of Florida in Gainesville and colleagues built a computer simulation of Alpha Centauri, which showed that moon-sized protoplanets could indeed form after about a million years. No gas giants would be created though, as any gas would be dispersed by the turbulent conditions.<br />
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Phillipe Thebault of the Observatory of Paris in France describes the work as interesting, but says the issue is still far from settled. It is impossible to numerically study the planet accretion process in a turbulent system, such as Alpha Centauri, without some simplification, he says.<br />
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Source: arxiv.org/abs/1001.2614<br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-69847894863908601662010-01-31T16:54:00.000+07:002010-01-31T17:01:18.076+07:00Climate chief admits error over Himalayan glaciers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/S2VTMKlK7-I/AAAAAAAAAW8/vJJL-8X6YC8/s1600-h/index.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/S2VTMKlK7-I/AAAAAAAAAW8/vJJL-8X6YC8/s320/index.jpeg" /></a></div>The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been forced to apologise for including in its 2007 report the claim that there was a "very high" chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.<br />
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Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded yesterday that "the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly" when the claim was included in the 900-page assessment of the impacts of climate change.<br />
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The paragraph at issue reads: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."<br />
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Single source<br />
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The report's only cited source was a 2005 report by the environment group WWF, which in turn cited a 1999 article in New Scientist.<br />
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The New Scientist article quoted senior Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, the then vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who was writing a report on the Himalayas for the International Commission for Snow and Ice. It said, on the basis of an interview with Hasnain, that his report "indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035". The claim did not, however, appear in the commission's report, which was only made available late last year.<br />
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This week a group of geographers, headed by Graham Cogley of Trent University at Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, have written to the journal Science pointing out that the claim "requires a 25-fold greater loss rate from 1999 to 2035 than that estimated for 1960 to 1999. It conflicts with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, and is wrong."<br />
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The geographers add that the claim has "captured the global imagination and has been repeated in good faith often, including recently by the IPCC's chairman". The IPCC's errors "could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected", they say.<br />
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Several of those involved in the IPCC review process did try to question the 2035 date before it was published by the IPCC. Among them was Georg Kaser, a glaciologist from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a lead author of another section of the IPCC report. "I scanned the almost final draft at the end of 2006 and came across the 2035 reference." Kaser queried the reference but believes it was too late in the day for it to be reassessed.<br />
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Publicly available IPCC archives of the review process show that during the formal review, the Japanese government also questioned the 2035 claim. It commented: "This seems to be a very important statement. What is the confidence level/certainty?" Soon afterwards, a reference to the WWF report was added to the final draft. But the statement otherwise went unchanged.<br />
Grey literature<br />
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One of the IPCC authors, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, California, this week defended the use of so-called "grey" literature in IPCC reports. He told New Scientist that it was not possible to include only peer-reviewed research because, particularly in the chapters discussing the regional impacts of climate change, "most of the literature is not up to that gold standard".<br />
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The Himalaya claim appeared in the regional chapter on Asia. "There are only a few authors in each region, so it narrows the base of science," Schneider says.<br />
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Source : Many sources<br />
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-64925540182238539752009-12-19T20:23:00.000+07:002010-01-31T17:01:05.450+07:00Did You Know That Our Atmosphere Come From Outer Space ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SyzVFrhGJcI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/yATHzte1LeI/s1600-h/dn18277-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SyzVFrhGJcI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/yATHzte1LeI/s200/dn18277-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416938745377465794" /></a><br />Comets from outer space may have created Earth's atmosphere – not volcanoes spewing out gases from deep within the planet.<br /><br />The origin of the gases in Earth's atmosphere has long been a puzzle. One of the main theories is that the gases bubbled up out of the mantle via volcanoes.<br /><br />Greg Holland of the University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues have arrived at a different theory after collecting samples of the noble gas krypton from several hundred metres beneath New Mexico.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />They found that the mantle's chemical fingerprint was rich in "heavy" isotopes of krypton such as krypton-86 and krypton-84, and poorer in "lighter" forms such as krypton-82. This is a composition that closely resembles meteorites –- support for the ideas that gas-rich meteorites colliding in the early solar system formed our planet.<br /><br />"The results confirm one of the basic ideas of planetary formation theory, that most of the Earth formed by collisions of smaller objects like carbonaceous chondrites," says Scott Kenyon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<br />Light atmosphere<br /><br />But where did the atmosphere come from –- it is rich in lighter isotopes so the mantle cannot be the source, says Holland. Earth's atmosphere cannot have gained a greater proportion of lighter isotopes since it formed. Because light isotopes of krypton escape into space more quickly than heavy isotopes, the atmosphere can only get "heavier"<br /><br />If not the mantle then what? Chris Ballentine, a co-author and colleague of Holland's suggests that comets could be the answer. At the outer edges of the solar system, in the Kuiper Belt, are millions of icy bodies that formed when the solar system was born. These comets have noble gas signatures that resemble that of our modern atmosphere.<br /><br />A shift in Jupiter's orbit around 4.5 billion years ago may have jarred the Kuiper Belt, flinging icy comets at the Earth. "Ancient Earth was strewn with huge volcanoes spewing out gas, but our research shows that the real source of Earth's first atmosphere was actually outer space," says Ballentine, a co-author of the paper and colleague of Holland's.<br /><br />Source: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1179518<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-43692170725614818492009-10-04T20:26:00.000+07:002009-10-04T20:44:06.507+07:00Devastating Indonesian Earthquake, It still to come !!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SsijnBtvg_I/AAAAAAAAAUI/AAn_an0H5tw/s1600-h/indonesiagd6.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 152px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SsijnBtvg_I/AAAAAAAAAUI/AAn_an0H5tw/s200/indonesiagd6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388736845019317234" /></a><br />The earthquake which devastated the city of Padang in Sumatra, Indonesia, this week, killing more than 1100 people, may have been only a hint of worse to come. Since 2004, geologists have been predicting a far nastier earthquake in the region – a shallow tremor that will rip the sea floor apart, trigger a devastating tsunami and kill far more people.<br /><br />"Another earthquake is on its way, and all it will take to trigger it is the pressure of a handshake," says John McCloskey, a seismologist at the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.<br /><br />Padang experienced a magnitude-7.6 earthquake on 30 September, just after 5 pm local time. Images of terrified relatives waiting to identify dead bodies, their T-shirts clutched over their noses to mask the stench, military officials stalking between bright yellow, zipped-up body bags and centuries-old Dutch colonial mansions obliterated in an instant have flooded around the world.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />At first, geologists assumed this was the earthquake they had predicting for many years. "Padang has bad geology," explains McCloskey. "It sits 40 kilometres above the most earthquake-prone stretch of the interface between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates."<br /><br />This interface has not experienced the stress relief of an earthquake for over 200 years, according to McCloskey's analysis of historical coral growth rings, which show no sign of seafloor uplift. GPS measurements of the rate of plate motion suggest that there has been around 13 metres of movement in this area over the same period. "A shallow earthquake at the plate interface off Padang is long, long overdue," says McCloskey.<br />Freak event<br /><br />Yet the earthquake which struck this week off Padang did not occur at the plate interface, which lies 500 kilometres offshore. The epicentre was just 45 kilometres from Padang, far away from the plate interface. What's more, it originated 80 kilometres underground, far deeper than the place at which the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates crunch together.<br /><br />Further evidence comes from the orientation of the rupture caused by this week's quake. "The rupture spread in a north-south orientation, rather than east-to-west, as we would expect along the plate interface," says McCloskey.<br /><br />All the clues add up to the earthquake being a freak rupture of an ancient stressed fracture zone embedded deep within the Indo-Australian plate rather than slippage at the plate interface. "What we're looking at is probably a vestigial crack left over from some distant spreading centre," says McCloskey.<br /><br />So, what kind of damage will the tsunami-triggering earthquake that the geologists have been predicting near Padang inflict? McCloskey has built computer models of over 125 scenarios in which shallow, powerful earthquakes at the interface off Padang jolt the sea floor, triggering tsunamis. In most, devastating tsunamis are generated. They will reach the city about 30 minutes after the earthquake hits.<br /><br />His simulations suggest that 25 per cent of tsunamis would be over 5 metres tall as they reached the coast; the highest waves would be 12 metres tall. "In reality, of course, waves will gather height and become more turbulent as they power inland, which means they could be far higher over the city," says McCloskey.<br />Escape routes<br /><br />If the people of Padang are well prepared, then most should survive, says McCloskey. Within 30 minutes, the young and the fit should be able to reach the 10-metre elevation contour that rises 2 kilometres back from the coast, he says, which would at least protect them from waves lower than 10 metres.<br /><br />However, over 100,000 people – a seventh of the city's population – are blocked from running directly to higher ground by the barbed wire-laced, 10-metre-high walls of a huge military airport.<br /><br />"Padang needs to build a tunnel under that airport, because if they don't these poor people will have to run parallel to the coast for several hundred metres while the tsunami is coming at them," says McCloskey. So far, no steps have been taken to build such an exit route. "Sometimes you despair," he says.<br /><br />Source : Journal references: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2007.09.034; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature07572<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-5644951459558409312009-10-04T20:01:00.001+07:002009-10-04T20:43:53.242+07:00Technologies for Better and Cleaner World<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SsiiWV1nLPI/AAAAAAAAAUA/GrIPTbo3G4M/s1600-h/green_world_icon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 145px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SsiiWV1nLPI/AAAAAAAAAUA/GrIPTbo3G4M/s200/green_world_icon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388735458851630322" /></a><br />As we know that, preservation to build a better world environment are necessary. For instance, we should consider on energy usage. Nowadays, many researchers invent new green technology. There's a lot more to green technology than renewable energy. <br /><br />From more efficient aircraft to thread made from chicken feathers, the world is awash with ingenious ideas. So we have scoured research labs and start-ups, and made some hard choices. Here you will find our pick of the best ideas to make our planet a more energy-efficient place.<br /><br />Pee-n-grow<br /><br />Manufacturing artificial fertiliser is a highly energy intensive process that consumes roughly 1 per cent of the world's energy supply. As odd as it sounds, using sterile, nitrogen-rich human urine instead could prevent the emission of more than 180 million tonnes of C02 each year. Urine collection systems with basement storage tanks have been built by the Stockholm Environmental Institute in more than 800 apartments in rural China, saving an estimated 20 tonnes of C02 emissions annually.<br /><br />China: available now<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Magnetic fridge<br /><br />The two biggest consumers of electricity in the home - air conditioners and refrigerators - may soon become much more energy efficient thanks to a new method of cooling. Magnetic refrigeration subjects metal alloys to a magnetic field, causing them to cool down. Camfridge, based in Cambridge, UK, says its fridges and air conditioners will cut energy usage by around 40 per cent in comparison with conventional models.<br /><br />Cambridge, UK: under development<br /><br />Green machine<br /><br />The world's first "virtually waterless" washing machine could soon slash the water and energy demands of dirty laundry. Prototypes developed by UK start-up Xeros rely on thousands of polarised nylon beads. These stick to dirt and gobble up stains, leaving clothes dry, and using 90 per cent less water and 40 per cent less energy than conventional washers and driers combined. If the estimated 300 million households worldwide with existing washers switched to these machines, annual C02 emissions would drop by 28 million tonnes.<br /><br />Leeds, UK: available 2010<br /><br />Better windows<br /><br />Increase the number of layers of glass or plastic in a window and you'll save big on heating and cooling. Visionwall of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, makes a quadruple-glazed window consisting of two layers of rigid polyethylene sandwiched between two glass layers which cuts heat loss by a factor of 4 compared with conventional double-glazed windows.<br /><br />Edmonton, Canada: available now<br /><br />The power of pond scum<br /><br />Green algae grow like mad when fed CO2, and if turned into biofuel can yield up to 100 times the biofuel per hectare as corn, soy or sugar cane crops. Petroalgae of Melbourne, Florida, plans to license their first 2000-hectare commercial alga biodiesel plant in China next year and says the green stuff can ingest C02 straight from the smokestacks of power plants. If emissions from all the world's power plants were harnessed for alga growing and recycled as biodiesel, C02 emissions would drop by roughly 9 billion tonnes per year.<br /><br />Melbourne, Florida, US: available 2010<br /><br />Methane harvesting<br /><br />Methane extracted from animal waste can be used as a fuel. The world's largest biogas plant in Penkun, Germany, was completed in 2008 and converts 84,000 tonnes of manure a year into usable fuel. The liquid manure, along with maize and grain, is fed into fermenters where the biomethane generates 20 megawatts of electricity and 22 megawatts of heat for the town's 50,000 inhabitants.<br /><br />Penkun, Germany: available now<br /><br />Superconducting grid<br /><br />Up to 10 per cent of all electricity produced is lost before it even reaches the intended user due to inefficiencies in the grid. American Superconductor based in Devens, Massachusetts, has developed a superconducting wire that cuts transmission line losses threefold when chilled to -196 ° C. In 2008, the company supplied the wire for the world's first superconducting transmission line, a 600-metre, 574-megawatt cable in New York state.<br /><br />US: available now<br /><br />Giant microwave ovens<br /><br />Known for their ability to warm food using little energy, microwaves could soon save the chemicals industry massive amounts of electricity by heating chemical reagents in much the same way. Each year, chemical manufacturers in the UK alone consume the equivalent of the electricity produced by 20 coal-fired power plants. Recent tests suggest that microwaves can cut energy requirements for heating in chemical production by as much as 90 per cent.<br /><br />UK: under development<br /><br />Pleasant light<br /><br />Light-emitting diodes can produce the same light as incandescent or even compact fluorescent lighting for only a tiny fraction of the energy. However, the light they produce is pale and cool, which means people are reluctant to use them. UK-based company Oxford Advanced Surfaces has the answer. It is developing phosphorescent screens that convert blue-tinged LED light into the warm white light we are used to from conventional bulbs. Worldwide adoption of LEDs could cut global energy consumption for lighting in half, the company says.<br /><br />UK: under development<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-89714664429304176562009-07-23T19:59:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:29.885+07:00Can Panda Saved By Building A Den ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Smhgzm4H0NI/AAAAAAAAAT4/T7_kMY8003g/s1600-h/mg20327175.100-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Smhgzm4H0NI/AAAAAAAAAT4/T7_kMY8003g/s200/mg20327175.100-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361641796110110930" /></a><br />Until recently, biologists believed that panda populations are limited mostly by the supply of their staple food, bamboo. But Ron Swaisgood of the San Diego Zoo in California and Zejun Zhang and Fuwen Wei of the Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology in Beijing, China, suspected that past logging might have deprived pandas of suitable family accommodation.<br /><br />Female pandas like to build dens in the cavities of ancient trees, where their cubs spend the first four months. But most of these old-growth trees have been cut down in many panda reserves. As a result, females in the Foping Nature Reserve in Shaanxi province in central China tend to resort to caves. These are in short supply and also liable to flood, Swaisgood told a meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Beijing, this week. "We think pandas are restricted by the quality and quantity of the dens available," he says.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Through painstaking video recording, the researchers have documented female pandas' struggles in this substandard housing - including one heart-rending incident from 2007 that has challenged conventional wisdom about panda breeding.<br /><br />About half the time pandas in captivity give birth to twins but seem to focus on only one cub, leading biologists to assume that abandoning one twin is the norm. Swaisgood and his colleagues aren't so sure, after observing a female who successfully raised twin cubs in a rocky cave for 16 days, until heavy rains lashed the study site. When the team returned, the mother and one of the cubs had gone. The other cub was found dead, 22 metres from the den, suggesting the mother had tried to remove both cubs but could save only one.<br /><br />The researchers believe that it may be possible to boost panda populations by building more suitable dens from wood or rocks on higher ground - and they are starting a pilot project to put that idea to the test.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-7053745793565040232009-06-26T21:18:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:29.885+07:00What We Don't Know About The Ozone Hole Now !<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SkTfGAP4yXI/AAAAAAAAATw/-8fWn8333qw/s1600-h/ozone+hole.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 119px; height: 114px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SkTfGAP4yXI/AAAAAAAAATw/-8fWn8333qw/s200/ozone+hole.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351647551461837170" /></a><br />The Southern Ocean has lost its appetite for carbon dioxide, and now it appears that the ozone hole could be to blame.<br /><br />In theory, oceans should absorb more CO2 as levels of the gas in the atmosphere rise. Measurements show that this is happening in most ocean regions, but strangely not in the Southern Ocean, where carbon absorption has flattened off. Climate models fail to reproduce this puzzling pattern.<br /><br />The Southern Ocean is a major carbon sink, guzzling around 15 per cent of CO2 emissions. However, between 1987 and 2004, carbon uptake in the region was reduced by nearly 2.5 billion tonnes – equivalent to the amount of carbon that all the world's oceans absorb in one year.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />To figure out what is going on, Andrew Lenton, from the University of Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France, and his colleagues created a coupled ocean and atmosphere climate model, to investigate carbon absorption in oceans. Crucially, they included changes in the concentration of stratospheric ozone since 1975.<br /><br />By running their model with and without the ozone depletion since 1975, Lenton and his colleagues were able to show that the ozone hole is responsible for the Southern Ocean's carbon saturation.<br /><br />The effect could be down to the way decreasing stratospheric ozone and rising greenhouse gases are altering the radiation balance of the Earth's atmosphere. This has been predicted to alter and strengthen the westerly winds that blow over the Southern Ocean.<br /><br />"We expected this transition to a windier regime, but it has occurred much earlier than we thought, seemingly because of the ozone hole," says Lenton.<br />'Unexpected effect'<br /><br />Stronger surface winds enhance circulation of ocean waters, encouraging carbon-rich waters to rise from the deep, limiting the capability of surface water to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Furthermore, the higher carbon levels in surface waters make them more acidic – bad news for many forms of ocean life, such as coral and squid.<br /><br />"This result illustrates how complex the chain of cause and effect can be in the Earth system. No one would ever have predicted from first principles that increasing CFCs would have the effect of decreasing uptake of ocean carbon dioxide," says Andrew Watson, from the University of East Anglia, UK.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-89340196308214189602009-06-14T21:06:00.001+07:002009-10-03T15:41:36.571+07:00More About Conficker Worm<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SjUEB_Nkg-I/AAAAAAAAATo/fqUdrEE3GB8/s1600-h/mg20227121.500-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SjUEB_Nkg-I/AAAAAAAAATo/fqUdrEE3GB8/s200/mg20227121.500-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5347184564767065058" /></a><br />No one knows the identity of Conficker's "patient zero" computer, or precisely when it was infected. It was probably a machine that the hackers already controlled. Once installed, the software set to work, surreptitiously scanning the internet for other vulnerable machines to send itself to.<br /><br />The new worm soon ran into a listening device, a "network telescope", housed by the San Diego Supercomputing Center at the University of California. The telescope is a collection of millions of dummy internet addresses, all of which route to a single computer. It is a useful monitor of the online underground: because there is no reason for legitimate users to reach out to these addresses, mostly only suspicious software is likely to get in touch.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The telescope's logs show the worm spreading in a flash flood. For most of 20 November, about 3000 infected computers attempted to infiltrate the telescope's vulnerable ports every hour - only slightly above the background noise generated by older malicious code still at large. At 6 pm, the number began to rise. By 9 am the following day, it was 115,000 an hour. Conficker was already out of control.<br /><br />That same day, the worm also appeared in "honeypots" - collections of computers connected to the internet and deliberately unprotected to attract criminal software for analysis. It was soon clear that this was an extremely sophisticated worm. After installing itself, for example, it placed its own patch over the vulnerable port so that other malicious code could not use it to sneak in. As Brandon Enright, a network security analyst at the University of California, San Diego, puts it, smart burglars close the window they enter by.<br /><br />Conficker also had an ingenious way of communicating with its creators. Every day, the worm came up with 250 meaningless strings of letters and attached a top-level domain name - a .com, .net, .org, .info or .biz - to the end of each to create a series of internet addresses, or URLs. Then the worm contacted these URLs. The worm's creators knew what each day's URLs would be, so they could register any one of them as a website at any time and leave new instructions for the worm there.<br /><br />It was a smart trick. The worm hunters would only ever spot the illicit address when the infected computers were making contact and the update was being downloaded - too late to do anything. For the next day's set of instructions, the creators would have a different list of 250 to work with. The security community had no way of keeping up.<br /><br />No way, that is, until Phil Porras got involved. He and his computer security team at SRI International in Menlo Park, California, began to tease apart the Conficker code. It was slow going: the worm was hidden within two shells of encryption that defeated the tools that Porras usually applied. By about a week before Christmas, however, his team and others - including the Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs, based in Moscow - had exposed the worm's inner workings, and had found a list of all the URLs it would contact.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-56364097469834246302009-06-10T20:51:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:16.800+07:00The Clearest Earth Sky !<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si--qjtgjWI/AAAAAAAAATg/OI1ZTN4alLc/s1600-h/clea.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si--qjtgjWI/AAAAAAAAATg/OI1ZTN4alLc/s200/clea.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345700921061969250" /></a><br />POSSIBLY the clearest skies on Earth have been found - but to exploit them, astronomers will have to set up a telescope in one of the planet's harshest climates.<br /><br />Michael Ashley of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues wanted to find the best sites for astronomy on the Antarctic plateau. Combining observations from satellites and ground stations with climate models, they evaluated different factors that affect telescope vision, such as the amount of water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The team found that the plateau offers world-beating atmospheric conditions - as long as telescopes are raised above its frozen surface. The ice makes the lowest layers of air on the plateau much colder than those above, forming an "inversion layer" that, together with the strong local winds, can lead to severe turbulence. This would blur a telescope's images.<br /><br />The team's analysis showed the inversion layer is only about 20 metres thick, however. If a telescope was mounted above it, its view would be affected by far less turbulence than at other world-class observatory sites, says Ashley. "It's drier than Mauna Kea [in Hawaii] by a long way and drier than the Atacama desert [in Chile]," he says.<br /><br />Such conditions would be good for studying star birth. Normally, water vapour in the atmosphere blocks telltale emissions from molecular clouds in star-forming regions of the Milky Way. But the air above the high area known as Dome A is so dry that a ground-based telescope there could observe stellar nurseries - something that's impossible anywhere else on Earth.<br /><br />So far as Ashley's team know, Dome A seems the best site for astronomy (see map). China has already built a summer station there, with a small robotic observatory. Next best is Dome F, the site of a Japanese station.<br /><br />But conditions may prove much better about 150 kilometres south-west of Dome A, at Ridge A (www.arxiv.org/abs/0905.4156). "We won't know until we make measurements there," says Ashley.<br /><br />Life on the plateau isn't easy for telescopes, though. One problem is that ice can form on lenses and mirrors. Marc Sarazin of the European Southern Observatory's offices in Munich, Germany, says the harsh conditions demand the kind of approach used for space missions: "They will be single-purpose, short-lifetime instruments answering a precise scientific question," he says. General-purpose telescopes are best built in temperate latitudes like Chile's, he adds.<br /><br />Ashley thinks the biggest difficulty lies elsewhere. "The main problems in Antarctica aren't so much the engineering," he says. "It's more convincing people that it is not as scary as it sounds."<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-39739580638105726942009-06-10T20:36:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:43.136+07:00Swine Flu in Europe Countries<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si-5XSRMEXI/AAAAAAAAATY/ArTx7uczKCQ/s1600-h/swine.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si-5XSRMEXI/AAAAAAAAATY/ArTx7uczKCQ/s200/swine.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345695092404130162" /></a><br />Hospitals in Greece have identified H1N1 swine flu in two students who had no contact with known cases of the virus and had not been in countries with widespread infection. The infections were discovered even though the students should not have been tested for swine flu under European rules. The Greek authorities say this shows the rules must change.<br /><br />Indeed, an investigation by New Scientist earlier this month showed that the EU rules would exclude exactly such cases and could make H1N1 appear much less widespread in Europe than it is.<br /><br />Takis Panagiotopoulos of the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Athens and colleagues reported on 28 May in Eurosurveillance, a weekly bulletin published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden, that two Greek men returning home from Scotland had tested positive this week for H1N1 swine flu.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The two go to university in Edinburgh and had attended term-end parties at the end of last week. Both developed coughs and fevers at the weekend before flying back to Greece, where one went to hospital in Athens on Tuesday.<br /><br />"The examining physician decided to take a pharyngeal swab, which was tested at the National Influenza Reference Laboratory for Southern Greece, although the patient did not meet the European Union and national criteria for the new influenza A (H1N1) testing," the team reports.<br /><br />The swab was tested with a kit for H1N1 distributed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and was positive for swine flu. The student in Athens warned the second student, who was now in Thesaloniki. He also tested positive. Both cases were mild.<br /><br />Contacts of the two in Greece and Scotland and on the flights are being traced.<br /><br />The Greek cases are "community acquired", meaning they have no contacts with known cases or countries with swine flu. The ECDC guidelines adopted by most EU countries, including Greece, recommend testing for H1N1 only when people have such contacts, excluding community acquired cases.<br /><br />"It is of concern that with the present EU [testing criteria] we are by definition going to miss cases infected locally in the event of established community transmission," the Greek team warns. "It is probably necessary to modify the present EU definition … to also include clusters of patients with influenza-like illness, irrespective of travel history," they say, especially as the tourist season is getting under way.<br /><br />Officially, swine flu has increased very slowly in Britain, even though the virus appears to be as contagious as ordinary flu. John Oxford of the University of London says the UK may have tens of thousands of mild, untested cases. The US CDC says there could be 100,000 cases in the US, even though only a few thousand, mostly severe, cases have been tested.<br /><br />Finding community acquired cases outside the Americas is a requirement for declaring H1N1 swine flu an official pandemic, which the WHO has not yet done.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-74320615605140662082009-06-10T20:17:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:16.801+07:00Have You Heard Betelgeuse The Shinking Star<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si-2a6juX5I/AAAAAAAAATQ/I2vQM1xx5ho/s1600-h/dn17282-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Si-2a6juX5I/AAAAAAAAATQ/I2vQM1xx5ho/s200/dn17282-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5345691856224018322" /></a><br />Pinned prominently on Orion's shoulder, the bright red star Betelgeuse hardly seems like a wallflower. But a new study suggests the giant star has been shrinking for more than a decade.<br /><br />Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life as a red supergiant. The bright, bloated star is 15 to 20 times more massive than the sun. If it were placed at the centre of the solar system, the star would extend out to the orbit of Jupiter.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />But the star's reach seems to be waning. New observations indicate the giant star has shrunk by more than 15 per cent since 1993. This could be a sign of a long-term oscillation in its size or the star's first death knells. Or it may just be an artefact of the star's bumpy surface, which may appear to change in size as the star rotates.<br /><br />Betelgeuse is enshrouded by vast clouds of gas and dust, so measuring its size is difficult. To cut through this cocoon, Charles Townes of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues used a set of telescopes that are sensitive to a particular wavelength of the star's infrared light.<br /><br />The team used these instruments to measure the size of Betelgeuse's disc on the sky. Over a span of 15 years, the star's diameter seems to have declined from 11.2 to 9.6 AU (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from the Earth to the sun).<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-46634868205218650472009-05-19T22:39:00.000+07:002009-10-03T15:41:16.801+07:00Space shuttle releases upgraded Hubble<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/ShLTKwvquII/AAAAAAAAATA/j5YrzKoS7E0/s1600-h/dn17161-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/ShLTKwvquII/AAAAAAAAATA/j5YrzKoS7E0/s200/dn17161-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5337560690224445570" /></a><br />A spruced-up Hubble Space Telescope has been released back into space after five days of spacewalks to repair and upgrade the ageing observatory.<br /><br />The space shuttle Atlantis will now make its way back to Earth, ending the $1.1 billion mission, which aimed to extend Hubble's life to at least 2014 and vastly improve its vision.<br /><br />Six days after grabbing hold of the telescope with the shuttle's 15-metre-long robotic arm, astronaut Megan McArthur lifted the telescope from the shuttle's payload bay and placed it back in its own orbit at 1257 GMT.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Now, the 19-year-old telescope will undergo an intensive testing period, in which astronomers and engineers will calibrate and assess the health of the newly-installed and repaired instruments. NASA hopes Hubble science operations will reach "full stride" by September, Hubble programme manager Preston Burch told reporters on Monday.<br />Two-day trip<br /><br />It took Atlantis two days to rendezvous with Hubble after a morning launch last week. A series of five back-to-back spacewalks began the next day.<br /><br />Day one: Spacewalk virgin Andrew Feustel and veteran Hubble mechanic John Grunsfeld battled a stuck bolt to replace Hubble's "workhorse" camera, which since 1993 has taken some of the scope's most iconic images. In its place, the duo installed a modern set of eyes – the $132 million Wide Field Camera 3. The team also replaced a faulty data router. The Hubble upgrade mission was delayed six months to prepare the spare.<br /><br />Day 2: New gyros, needed to stabilise the telescope, were the top priority of the mission. Rookie spacewalker Michael Good and Hubble veteran Mike Massimino installed the gyros and replaced three of Hubble's six batteries.<br /><br />Day 3: Astronauts Grunsfeld and Feustel took their second spacewalk on Saturday to install a new instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, and repair Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The delicate repair job was mostly successful, restoring the camera's wide-field channel, which is responsible for some stunning images, including the Ultra Deep Field, the deepest visible light image of the universe yet taken. However, the camera's high-resolution channel, which can block the bright light from a star to image fainter objects around it, could not be restored.<br /><br />Day 4: The second day of camera repair work became the longest spacewalk of the mission, at 8 hours 2 minutes. A handrail with one recalcitrant fastener stood between astronaut Massimino and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which can be used to measure the composition and motion of celestial objects. Massimino eventually used brute force to remove the handrail, then removed more than 100 screws to access the camera. Burch says initial tests suggest the camera, which was downed by power problems in 2004, has been restored.<br /><br />Day 5: Eager to get the most out of the last day of spacewalks, Grunsfeld and Feustel started Monday's work an hour early. The astronauts exceeded expectations for the spacewalk, replacing the remainder of Hubble's old batteries and some degraded insulation, as well as replacing a sensor used to hold the telescope steady.<br />Museum pieces<br /><br />Atlantis is set to land at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida on Friday.<br /><br />It will touch down with two Hubble relics – the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and COSTAR, a corrective optics box that was used to blurring caused by a flaw in Hubble's primary mirror. All Hubble instruments now have built-in corrective optics, so the box is no longer needed. Both devices are destined to become museum specimens at the Smithsonian Institution.<br /><br />By : <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Rachel+Courtland">Rachel Courtland</a><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-38204942710196341202009-05-07T21:27:00.000+07:002009-05-07T21:46:08.226+07:00What is Stonehenge For ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SgLx6n0YbnI/AAAAAAAAAS4/4wLVb91KExQ/s1600-h/stonehenge.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SgLx6n0YbnI/AAAAAAAAAS4/4wLVb91KExQ/s200/stonehenge.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333090898183482994" /></a><br />Stonehenge is one of the world ancient mistery. Archaeologists who carried out a dig in April say new radiocarbon dating evidence suggests the first stones brought to Stonehenge were erected around 2300BC - around 300 years earlier than previously believed.<br /><br />The findings will be featured in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/timewatch/">Timewatch</a> documentary Stonehenge Deciphered to be broadcast on both BBC2 in the UK and the Smithsonian Channel in the US on Saturday.<br /><br />Previous Stonehenge theories include it having been a prehistoric observatory, a temple, a giant calendar or a royal burial ground. <br /><span class="fullpost"><br />What is known is that the monument was built in stages between 3000BC and 1600BC. Prior to the erection of a double circle of bluestones brought 140 miles from south Wales and the subsequent placing of the larger famous Sarsen stones, was the building of a circular earthwork and placing of timber posts within the enclosure.<br /><br />Darvill and Wainwright's team inferred the arrival of the bluestones as between 2400BC and 2200BC, from the positions of 14 samples of organic material such as carbonised plant remains and bone in their trench. This is precisely the date range for the Amesbury Archer, a man believed to have originated in the Alps, who was buried five miles from Stonehenge, and whose remains show evidence of an infected kneecap and a serious tooth abscess - potentially backing their healing hypothesis.<br /><br />The new bluestone dates could undermine the main rival theory proposed by Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, namely that the monument was primarily a burial ground for a Neolithic elite and a place at which people paid their respects to their ancestors.<br /><br />Darvill says the monument was an important place of burial but only up until 2500BC or 2400BC - before the erection of the stones.<br /><br />Archaeologists are split on the issue and dismiss each other's explanations. Asked about the elite cemetery theory, Wainwright said people must back up their ideas with "hard evidence", adding "the time has passed for mysticism to play a large role".<br /><br />On the other side of the debate, Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology, describes the healing centre theory as "a fairy story".<br /><br />Radiocarbon dating in the 1990s on samples from earlier digs places the erection of the Sarsens at 2500 - 2400BC, yet Darvill places them at 2100BC. Pitts said: "There is no evidence for that at all. These dates are completely baffling. They have to say that because we know from archaeological evidence that the first bluestones in the centre were there before the Sarsens were put up. I'm suspicious as to why this dating comes out so fortunately as fitting their theory."<br /><br />Still, the stonehenge remains as a mistery...<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-36615113935253860312009-05-07T20:28:00.000+07:002009-05-07T21:46:13.986+07:00No Stress, Great Life !<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SgLuniKnm1I/AAAAAAAAASw/3eOs6Rioa5Y/s1600-h/img21_03.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 127px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SgLuniKnm1I/AAAAAAAAASw/3eOs6Rioa5Y/s200/img21_03.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333087271713741650" /></a><br />It can't be denied that stress can easily occurs in this globalization era. It is important to move away the stress from our daily activity.<br /><br />For decades, medical researches are strenuously working to sum up the ways, to protect our health .Few of the suggestions being concluded by the practitioners are to control weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar levels, etc. <br /><br />Scientists believe that stress is a fundamental issue which leads to death of maximum people around the globe. They believe that stress releases or leaves a bad effect in the body's Endocrine system. This process starts in the hypothalamus (a part of the brain), which sends a message to the body's master gland which is known as the pituitary gland. It signals the adrenal glands to release abnormally high amounts of the stress hormone cortisone. This will result in abdominal fat storage and raised insulin levels (which have been linked to heart attacks, diabetes and stroke), high sugar level and blood pressure and other problems. <br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Tips to live a healthier life<br /><br />Living a healthier life is a wish of every one. But it can only be achieved when we follow certain guidelines strictly.<br /><br />1 LIMIT YOUR EATABLES:<br /><br />Scientists have suggested that people with an uncontrollable diet are the victims of stress. Due to the excess in eatables, the metabolism rate of the person decreases. Nutritionists recommend a diet rich in whole grains, fruit land vegetables and low in saturated fat, cholesterol, salt and refined sugar. This proper diet is the basic way to live a healthy life.<br /><br />2) REGULAR EXERCISE:<br /><br />For year, depression is linked to an increased risk of heart attack. Exercise is an often overlooked antidepressant and helps the stressed person to live a free and healthier life. 30 minutes of brisk walk at least three times w week help person to be fit and fine.<br /><br />3) CONTROL YOUR BAD HABITS:<br /><br />Heavy drinking will lead the person to complete dizziness and then the fat body will lead to death. Smoking is very dangerous for many reasons besides lung cancer and emphysema. The study showed that after sixty minutes smoking, smokers still showed increased levels of cortisone, promotes abdominal fat storage.<br /><br />Moderate caffeine consumers don't seem to be harmed. But the recent studies suggest that the person who has high blood pressure and the family history of hypertension and drinks a lot of caffeinated coffee while under stress, he may experience a dangerous rise in the blood pressure.<br /><br />4) SLEEP WELL:<br /><br />Sleeping for about seven hours will help the person to stay fit and fine and the stress will be released.<br /><br />If you follow a better lifer style, then doubtless, you will be able to reduce the risk of your life. Be happy and follow good diet is the secret to healthier life style. <br /><br />Hope this article helps you .....<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-75403391759592513712009-05-03T21:40:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:53:12.375+07:00Get Windows 7 More Than A Year For Free !<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sf2ua8uE36I/AAAAAAAAASo/V0onlZ05FG8/s1600-h/windows_7_preview.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sf2ua8uE36I/AAAAAAAAASo/V0onlZ05FG8/s200/windows_7_preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331609311875751842" /></a><br />We already knew that Windows 7 is almost certain to be with us in all its finished, Microsoft-saving glory in the summer, but had you cottoned on to the fact that you can get the release candidate next week and run it for free for a year anyway?<br /><br />Microsoft has confirmed that the 5 May RC of the new OS will not expire until 1 June 2010, which means more than a year of free play for anyone installing it next week. It hasn't explained why.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Previously, Windows Vista's candidate releases remained fully functional only for around eight months, nominally for testing purposes, but there was no shortage of cracks available online to keep them going indefinitely.<br /><br />So far, the Windows 7 RC has been available to professional subscribers to Microsoft's MSDN and TechNet sites, although both have been reporting early hitches as download requests overwhelmed their servers.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-76275675557799778522009-05-03T20:29:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:53:03.866+07:00Can We Make A Clean Fuel From Greenhouse's Gas ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sf2hyrV2F_I/AAAAAAAAASg/lfyYpnHfkm4/s1600-h/greenhouse.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sf2hyrV2F_I/AAAAAAAAASg/lfyYpnHfkm4/s200/greenhouse.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331595425876416498" /></a><br />Molecules of CO2 are very stable, so processes that convert the gas to methanol normally require high temperatures and pressure. They also use catalysts containing toxic metal ions. "Our catalyst isn't toxic, and the reaction happens rapidly at room temperature," says team leader Jackie Ying.<br /><br />The catalyst used by Ying's team is a type of chemical called an N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC). The mechanism by which the NHC speeds up the conversion is uncertain, but it appears to change the shape of the CO2 molecule, "activating" it in a way that makes it easier for hydrogen to bond with its carbon atom, says team member Yugen Zhang.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The catalyst may also help to release hydrogen from hydrosilane molecules, which are the source of hydrogen in the new process. Hydrosilane is an expensive chemical usually used to make computer chips, so the team wants to find a cheaper source.<br /><br />"Potentially, it's a means for taking carbon dioxide out of the air and making it into something useful," says Dongke Zhang, director of the Centre for Petroleum, Fuels and Energy at the University of Western Australia in Perth. As well as being a fuel, methanol can be used as a feedstock for the chemical industry.Zhang's team is developing a technique for converting CO2 into methanol using high-frequency electromagnetic fields or plasmas to activate the gas.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-16936590834508809192009-04-25T13:44:00.000+07:002009-04-25T14:06:17.508+07:00Increasing Male Sex Drive and Libido Naturally !<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfK0U4SYGhI/AAAAAAAAARI/hf51aGErL2Q/s1600-h/body+building.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfK0U4SYGhI/AAAAAAAAARI/hf51aGErL2Q/s200/body+building.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328519579932563986" /></a><br />In order to determine ways to increase male sex drive and libido it is imperative for you to understand what causes a decline in sex drive and male libido. There could be a variety of reasons ranging from emotional and psychological reasons to physical factors playing with your libido. Emotional and psychological factors have a deep impact on your sexual health. Stress is perhaps the major cause of concern among men facing low libido or erectile dysfunction. Living in a fast pace world extracts it' s price by affecting your sex drive. Depression, anxiety other negative feelings could also be behind your sagging libido.<br /><br />As far as physical aspect is concerned it is scientifically established that men lose testosterone at 10% a decade after the age of 30 and by the time you are 40 you start feeling the effects of low testosterone.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The key to increasing your sex drive and libido is to increase testosterone levels that get depleted with age. Testosterone enhancement is possible through natural means which include :<br /><br />A good diet that is rich in proteins and limited in carbohydrates and moderate in essential fats. (Carbohydrates specially those that consist of simple sugars such as potatoes increase insulin and cortisol levels in your blood which affects testosterone production negatively.)<br /><br />Regular exercise - You must understand that both lack of physical activity and over training can lead to low testosterone levels. The ideal period to workout is 45-60 minutes in a single routine. Any more than that and your body starts producing Cortisol which inhibits and diminishes testosterone production in your body.<br /><br />Reduced Stress - Stress is one of the major psychological factor affecting your sex drive and testosterone levels besides negative feelings like guilt, anxiety and depression. A relaxed state of mind is highly important for elevating your sex drive.<br /><br />Good Sleep - A good sleep is going to help you raise your sex drive substantially.<br /><br />Natural Supplements - Natural supplements like PROVACYL can help you raise your testosterone and sex drive without any side effects. Provacyl is a supplement made from quality ingredients, made to promote your body's natural testosterone production. Because it's a supplement and not a medication, you don't need a prescription and it's free of any side effects. You've undoubtedly heard of how good ginkgo biloba is for you, rejuvenating your blood flow and improving sexual function, or that Brazil's acai fruit is a great antioxidant. These are just a few of the herbal ingredients. On top of these though, Provacyl also combines Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which converts into testosterone and other sex hormones, and Growth Hormone (GH), which has been applauded by medical researchers as the fountain of youth.<br /><br />So don't just sit back and let old age happen to you. By following a regimen, you can slow down and even reverse aging. <br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-47205416005420739552009-04-25T13:42:00.000+07:002009-04-25T14:06:17.508+07:00237 Reasons People Want to Have Sex<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfKxF7wqSAI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/acntT9k-6a8/s1600-h/bride.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfKxF7wqSAI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/acntT9k-6a8/s200/bride.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328516024631969794" /></a><br />"I wanted to get rid of a headache."<br /><br />"I wanted to be nice."<br /><br />"I wanted to feel closer to God."<br /><br />"I wanted to change the topic of conversation"<br /><br />These are some of the reasons researchers found that people engage in sex. Two clinical psychology professors at the University of Texas conducted a study, published in the August issue of the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, to find out people’s top reasons for having sex.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Professors Cindy Meston and David Buss performed their study in two parts. First they asked 444 people, from age 17 to 52, to give "all the reasons you can think of why you, or someone you have known, has engaged in sexual intercourse in the past." This netted them 715 reasons, which they narrowed down (after removing duplicate answers) to 237.<br /><br />The second part of their study involved surveying about 1,500 undergraduate students to rank the reasons from a scale of 1 to 5 according to how often they had done the deed for that reason. This gave them their ranking system.<br /><br />Meston told reporters that she and Buss performed the study to challenge existing assumptions and to provide answers for professionals treating people with sexual disorders, or to improve programs for safe sex.<br /><br />"You need to know why people are having sex if you’re trying to put into place a safe-sex program," said Meston to the press. "If you assume people have sex because they’re in the heat of the moment, then you tell them to carry condoms. But if they’re doing it for revenge or because they want to enhance their social status, that will require a different strategy."<br /><br />Meston said that she was surprised at the high number of various reasons people gave. Most people, she said, would guess that there are a relatively small number of standard reasons given, i.e. they are in love, want to create a child, are attracted to the other person. But "…we found that people are having sex for lots of other reasons."<br /><br />Some of them were expected: "I wanted to please my partner," "To celebrate a special occasion," or, "I realized I was in love." And some of the reasons were really strange. Among the more unusual reasons listed in the study were "Because of a bet," "The person offered me drugs," "It was an initiation rite," and the very unpleasant, "To give someone a sexually transmitted disease."<br /><br />The study’s co-author David Buss, author of the well known "The Evolution of Desire," said to the The New York Times, "I was truly astonished by this richness of sexual psychology."<br /><br />Keep in mind that the rankings were created by 1,500 college undergraduates. Meston agrees that the subject group may skew the results, and she’d expect different rankings from older people. However, the students only came up with the ranking; the reasons were derived from the first phase of the study, in which the ages of the test group was ranged from 17 to 52.<br /><br />One aspect of the study that has been surprising (other than some of the reasons themselves) is the fact that there were not many differences in the responses from men and women. Both the top 10 and the bottom 10 reasons given my men and women were very similar. The number one reason given by both sexes was "I was attracted to the person," and eight of the top ten were the same, including, "It’s fun," "To express my love for the person," and "I was horny."<br /><br />"It refuted a lot of gender stereotypes…that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love," said Meston to reporters. "That’s not what I came up with in my findings." Meston added that there were only slight differences; for example, men were more likely "to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it," (so to speak), "…somewhat more so than women."<br /><br />Yes, that is actually what she said.<br /><br />Reaction to the results of the study have been overwhelming—apparently people are very interested in reading about the reasons we have sex. Online bloggers have offered several suggestions for reason #238, including, "To make my husband stop whining," "It keeps my face out of the refrigerator," and my personal favorite, "Uh, you need a reason?"<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-12378013624553441892009-04-25T13:21:00.000+07:002009-04-25T14:06:30.890+07:00Earthquakes As A Quick Tsunami Warning ??<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfKtePHVT8I/AAAAAAAAAQ0/Z8gaB8Jf9Kk/s1600-h/big-wave-poster-l.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/SfKtePHVT8I/AAAAAAAAAQ0/Z8gaB8Jf9Kk/s200/big-wave-poster-l.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328512044097687490" /></a><br />Tsunami warnings could reach vulnerable coastlines within minutes, thanks to an early-warning system that gauges how long an earthquake rumbles.<br /><br />Most tsunami-warning systems work by measuring an undersea earthquake's magnitude, because those above magnitude 7.5 are considered highly likely to generate a tsunami. However, it takes at least 30 minutes to measure this accurately.<br /><br />Previous studies have shown that quakes that shake for a long time are more likely to produce a tsunami. Now Anthony Lomax, a consultant seismologist based in Mouans-Sartoux, France, and Alberto Michelini of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, Italy, have developed a way to spot this signature quickly.<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />The pair studied the seismic waves from 76 underwater earthquakes. Sure enough, rumbles that produced high-frequency waves for more than 50 seconds had a high probability of generating a damaging tsunami wave. Using this information, they developed an algorithm to filter out quake duration from seismic data. If adopted in an early-warning system, "it could provide a warning within 10 to 15 minutes", says Lomax. The work will appear in Geophysical Research Letters.<br /><br />"Used alongside other methods it could be promising," says Emile Okal, a seismologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.<br /><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-85946135767648821082009-04-10T22:46:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:54:07.690+07:00How to save the world from an asteroid impact ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9qGPFndII/AAAAAAAAAQk/-f_2VXBWyCU/s1600-h/mg20127015.600-2_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 146px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9qGPFndII/AAAAAAAAAQk/-f_2VXBWyCU/s200/mg20127015.600-2_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323089939937064066" /></a><br />Year 2036. A large asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Unless it is stopped, it will crash into the Pacific Ocean, creating a devastating tsunami. What should we do?<br /><br />We could blast the asteroid with a nuclear bomb, but that would risk shattering it into smaller pieces that could still threaten Earth. Or maybe we should try to force it off course by slamming into it with a heavy object - an unproven and therefore risky technique. Now there may be a third option: gently nudging the asteroid away from Earth without breaking it apart, either by exploding a nuclear device at a distance or zapping it with high-powered lasers.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Astronomers have found thousands of asteroids that pass near Earth's orbit, and a few of these are on trajectories that give them a small chance of hitting Earth. The most worrying is a 270-metre-wide asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting us in 2036.<br /><br />To investigate the best way to deflect this and other asteroids onto a harmless path, a team led by David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has modelled the impact of a nuclear explosion on an object's trajectory. Their virtual asteroid was 1 kilometre in diameter and made of rocky rubble loosely bound together by gravity, which is considered by many planetary scientists to be the most likely composition for small asteroids.<br /><br />Thirty years before the asteroid was set to collide with Earth, a nuclear blast, equivalent to 100 kilotonnes of TNT, was set off 250 metres behind it. The nudge from the explosion increased its velocity by 6.5 millimetres per second, a slight change but enough for it to miss us.<br /><br />The technique also reduced the risk of a break-up - just 1 per cent of the asteroid's material was dislodged by the blast, and of that only about 1 part in a million remained on a collision course with Earth. Dearborn adds that the technology for this method is already established, unlike for the use of a heavy object to shove the asteroid onto a different path - the "kinetic impactor" strategy. "Should an emergency arise, we should know that [the technology] is available, and we should have some idea of how to properly use it," he says.<br /><br />He has now begun simulating the effect of nudging an asteroid with a smaller nuclear explosion - less than 1 kilotonne - 1 metre below its surface. This would reduce the device's weight, making it easier and quicker to launch. He will discuss the work next month at the 1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Granada, Spain.<br /><br />A less established and gentler approach would be to nudge the asteroid away from Earth using lasers. In this theory, being investigated by Massimiliano Vasile of the University of Glasgow in the UK and colleagues with funding from the European Space Agency, a fleet of eight or more spacecraft, each carrying a laser, would be sent to rendezvous with the asteroid. Hovering a few kilometres away, each craft would unfurl a 20-metre-wide mirror made of a flexible material such as Mylar. The mirror would focus the sun's rays onto the spacecraft's solar panels, powering the laser.<br /><br />All eight lasers would then be simultaneously fired at a single spot on the asteroid's surface, vaporising that region and creating a plume of gas that should provide enough thrust to push the asteroid off course (see diagram). This relatively gentle nudging, over a period of months or years, would not break the asteroid up into any smaller pieces, the team say.<br /><br />Vasile, who will also be presenting his idea at the conference, touts the flexibility and reliability of the approach. "You have a formation of satellites and if one breaks you have the others [for back-up]," he says. "And it's scalable, so if you have a bigger asteroid or you want to have a faster deflection then you add more spacecraft."<br /><br />Whichever option is ultimately chosen, reliability will be essential for a task as critical as asteroid deflection, says Bill Ailor of the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, who is chairing next month's conference. "Launch vehicles fail at a rate of about 1 in 100, and new spacecraft might fail at the rate of 1 in 3, [which] has to be factored into the overall design of your deflection," he says. "We're in a sense betting the planet that we're going to make this work."<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-38885920140269189512009-04-10T21:49:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:53:59.879+07:00DNA analysis may be done on Mars for first time<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9dBSDS4JI/AAAAAAAAAQc/74cw9iPNvps/s1600-h/dn16933-1_300.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9dBSDS4JI/AAAAAAAAAQc/74cw9iPNvps/s200/dn16933-1_300.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323075561182126226" /></a><br />In August 1996, molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun was about to reveal one of the biggest discoveries of his scientific career. His lab at Harvard Medical School had recently found a gene called age-1 that determines lifespan in roundworms. Their work offered the tantalising possibility that tinkering with molecular pathways might extend the lifespan of other organisms – and perhaps even humans.<br /><br />Harvard sent out a press release and Ruvkun prepared for an onslaught of media attention. But it never came. Two days before his team's paper came out, scientists analysing a meteorite from Mars called ALH84001 made headlines worldwide. Then-US president Bill Clinton even got in on the announcement.<br /><br />"My grad student leans in the door and says, 'They've just announced life on Mars,'" recalls Ruvkun. "That would really f--- us," Ruvkun replied, thinking his student was joking.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Scientists have since raised serious doubts about the existence of the purported fossilised microbes in the meteorite (see image).<br /><br />But now, more than a decade after his work was overshadowed by news of possible life on Mars, Ruvkun has joined the hunt to find it. Moreover, he and his colleagues want to sequence its DNA.<br />Toehold for life<br /><br />Today, Mars is a frozen, barren world. Ultraviolet light and energetic space particles stream in through its thin atmosphere, sterilising any life – at least as we know it – on its bone-dry surface.<br /><br />But recent research suggests life might find a niche just below the surface, where liquid water could be widespread. The discovery of plumes of methane in the planet's atmosphere also hints at subsurface life, since some terrestrial microbes produce the gas.<br /><br />Chemical signs of life can be ambiguous, but Ruvkun and his team hope to find its unequivocal signature by sending a DNA amplifier and sequencer to Mars in the next decade. They're betting that any life on the Red Planet shares an evolutionary heritage with life on Earth, and therefore contains a similar genetic code – a requirement that other scientists say is too narrowly focused, since Martian life may have evolved independently and therefore may have very different chemistry.<br /><br />"This is a pure jackpot scheme. You either discover the most important thing for a long time, or you discover nothing," says Ruvkun, who in 2008 won the Lasker Award, an honour shared by 75 scientists who later went on to nab a Nobel.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-65131896060784231952009-04-10T21:37:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:53:51.937+07:00Hurricane Pacifier ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9bkD2imqI/AAAAAAAAAQU/eE7dj2mISSg/s1600-h/dn14988-1_250.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 138px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sd9bkD2imqI/AAAAAAAAAQU/eE7dj2mISSg/s200/dn14988-1_250.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323073959642700450" /></a><br />Interest in hurricane mitigation has peaked since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, and any means of limiting the damage wrought by these huge storms would be welcomed by governments and vulnerable populations alike.<br /><br />Now an Israeli team says it has developed a way to take the sting out of the storms. Their new patent application says seeding hurricanes with smoke particles could lower wind speeds enough to mitigate their destructive potential.<br /><br />A hurricane's destructive potential is proportionally related to the strongest winds inside it, and only a small reduction in wind speed is needed to dramatically reduce the damage it causes.<br /><br />Hurricanes derive their immense power from warm waters on the surface of the sea. As the water evaporates, it rises into the hurricane and eventually condenses and falls as rain, releasing its latent heat energy as it does so - a process known as "heat cycling".<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Daniel Rosenfeld and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem say injecting smoke into the lower parts of a hurricane causes water vapour to condense at a lower altitude than usual, and form droplets that are too small to fall as rain.<br /><br />Instead these are swept into higher and more peripheral regions of the storm, eventually reaching a point where they freeze. This provides an injection of energy on the edges of the storm that destabilises its destructive centre and causes a lowering of windspeeds.<br /><br />At least, it works that way in Rosenfeld's computer-simulated hurricanes. The team has not tried the idea in the wild yet.<br /><br />They have, though, calculated how much smoke might be needed to pull off their trick: about 10 cargo aircraft could carry enough material to generate the smoke particles needed to seed a single hurricane.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-78560588731077456182009-04-10T21:31:00.000+07:002009-05-03T21:53:44.101+07:00Aliens share our genetic code ?What similarities will alien life forms have to living things here on Earth? We won't know until we find some, but now there is evidence that at least the basic building blocks will be the same.<br /><br />All terrestrial life forms share the same 20 amino acids. Biochemists have managed to synthesise 10 of them in experiments that simulate lifeless prebiotic environments, using proxies for lightning, ionising radiation from space, or hydrothermal vents to provide the necessary energy. Amino acids are also found inside meteorites formed before Earth was born.<br /><br />Paul Higgs and Ralph Pudritz at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, point out that all these experiments produced a subset of the same 10 amino acids and calculate that these 10 require the least amount of energy to form.<span class="fullpost"><br />This, they argue, suggests that if alien life exists it probably has the same 10 amino acids at its core.<br /><br />Universal code?<br /><br />They show how the other 10 may have been added one by one as early life on Earth became more sophisticated. More controversially, they go on to argue that this process dictated the evolution of the genetic code, suggesting it too is universal.<br /><br />Darren Griffin, a geneticist at the University of Kent, UK, suggests Higgs and Pudritz are pushing their conclusions too far.<br /><br />"Laws of physics govern the universe, and it seems reasonable to suggest that there are laws of molecular biology that may also be universal," he says. "But it seems unlikely that the very same genetic code would arise on another planet, even if there are similarities in the fundamental molecules such as amino acids."<br /><br />Journal reference : <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0402">Physics arXiv preprint</a><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120891429806819649.post-23937785938842202652009-03-17T22:07:00.000+07:002009-03-19T13:11:48.223+07:00Mind over body?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sb-9M--JpyI/AAAAAAAAAM0/fO_B9XHI3YA/s1600-h/girl.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 153px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qydKAJWpmFs/Sb-9M--JpyI/AAAAAAAAAM0/fO_B9XHI3YA/s200/girl.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314174116080232226" /></a><br />Can people think themselves sick? This is what psychiatrist Simon Wessely explores. His research into the causes of conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf war syndrome has led to hate mail, yet far from dismissing these illnesses as imaginary, Wessely has spent his career developing treatments for them. Clare Wilson asks what it's like to be disliked by people you're trying to help<br /><br />How might most of us experience the effects of the mind on the body?<br /><br />In an average week you probably experience numerous examples of how what's going on around you affects your subjective health. Most people instinctively know that when bad things happen, they affect your body. You can't sleep, you feel anxious, you've got butterflies in your stomach... you feel awful.<span class="fullpost"><br /><br />When does that turn into an illness?<br /><br />Such symptoms only become a problem when people get trapped in excessively narrow explanations for illness - when they exclude any broader consideration of the many reasons why we feel the way we do. This is where the internet can do real harm. And sometimes people fall into the hands of charlatans who give them bogus explanations.<br /><br />Is that how chronic fatigue syndrome can start?<br /><br />Often there is an organic trigger like glandular fever. That's the start, and usually most people get over it, albeit after some weeks or months. But others can get trapped in vicious circles of monitoring their symptoms, restricting their activities beyond what is necessary and getting frustrated or demoralised. This causes more symptoms, more concerns and more physical changes, so much so that what started it all off is no longer what is keeping it going.<br /><br />One of the enigmas is why certain infections, like glandular fever, have an increased likelihood of triggering chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), while others, such as influenza, do not. We also don't know why people who have had depression are twice as likely to develop CFS. I get cross with people who want to explain one and not the other. Some people take too psychiatric a view of CFS and ignore the infective trigger, whereas others want to think only about the infection.<br /><br />So how do you treat CFS?<br /><br />The first thing you have to do is engage people. I see them for 2 hours, which enables me to take a proper history to ensure I understand their symptoms and how the illness is affecting them. This helps people to open up, as they can see I am interested in their problems and taking them seriously.<br /><br />With many people I genuinely do not know why they are ill. Or if I do, if they had glandular fever five years ago, say, I tell them there is nothing I can do about the original trigger. What makes a difference is what happens next. Then we get on to the practical stuff, such as finding out how people deal with the condition. Are there things they are doing that may not be the best for recovery? Then I recommend cognitive behavioural therapy and tailored programmes of gradually increasing activity levels.<br /><br />How successful is your treatment of CFS?<br /><br />Roughly a third of people completely recover and a third show good improvement. About a third we can't do much for.<br /><br />What about those people who have such severe CFS they are bedridden?<br /><br />In that kind of disability, psychological factors are important and I don't care how unpopular that statement makes me. We also have to consider what those years of inactivity have done to their muscles. People know that if you break your leg, when you take the plaster off there's nothing much left. If you've been in a wheelchair for some years, the laws of physiology haven't stopped.<br /><br />Your most cited paper claims that conditions such as CFS, irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia are all the same illness.<br /><br />If you ask people with irritable bowel syndrome whether they suffer from fatigue, they all say yes. It's just gastroenterologists don't ask that question. Likewise, if you talk to someone with CFS, you find that nearly all of them have gut problems. If you systematically interview people with these illnesses, you find that a big proportion of these so-called discrete syndromes have a large overlap with the others. You have to think that we have got the classifications wrong.<br /><br />So do you think these syndrome labels are arbitrary?<br /><br />Each country has different syndromes. They don't have CFS in France; they have a strange one, spasmophilia, where a person has unexplained convulsions. In Sweden they have dental amalgam syndrome, which hasn't really caught on here. In Germany they believe low blood pressure is bad.<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0