Blue Haired Gal

13 SECRETS NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT DYEING YOUR HAIR A CRAZY COLOR

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 06 Dec 2017 16:00:00 +0000

by DEEPA LAKSHMIN2/9/2016f

Artists like Katy Perry and Kesha have flaunted a literal rainbowof hair colors, but don’t let their forever-changing styles (and team of personal stylists) fool you into thinking that dyeing your hair a similar hue will be easy. There are tons of glamorous, colorful locks on Instagram, Tumblr, and so on, but as this set of rainbow hair pics revealed, a lot goes on behind-the-scenes of a really great selfie.

HERE’S HOW YOU TRANSFORM BRUNETTE HAIR TO THIS MULTICOLOR TREND

So what’s it really like to have crazy colorful hair? It’s pretty cool, but it also comes with its own set of not-so-cool problems. I understand the struggle well, because I recently ombre’d my black hair into an evergreen-y, teal color. (Shout-out to Latayefrom New York City’s Fox & Jane Salon for tolerating my gazillion questions and nervousness about the bleaching and dyeing process.)

It looks awesome, doesn’t it? The streak of blue-green permanently splattered on the wall next to my shower disagrees. Here’s what you need to know before sitting in the salon chair or opening that box of hair dye:

THE COLOR FADES WITHIN DAYS.

That sassy color retains its original vibrancy for approximately four or five days — if you’re lucky, over a week — until it dulls thanks to the lethal combo of shampoo and conditioner. Even if you use color-safe products, the color won’t last nearly as long as you hope it will. If you’re lucky, it’ll fade to a still-awesome color. If you’re less than lucky, it’ll look like you spent all day soaking your ’do in chlorine.
THE COLOR STAINS EVERYTHING.

Your pillowcase and towels will never be the same again. When your hair is freshly dyed, it’ll bleed color for the next few washes. Keep your wet hair away from anything white, especially your favorite t-shirts.
IF YOU DYE YOUR HAIR RED, YOUR SHOWER WILL LOOK LIKE A CRIME SCENE.

So much ~~blood~~ red everywhere. Buy some bleach and get a’scrubbbing unless you want to lose your security deposit.
TO KEEP YOUR HAIR FROM FADING, YOU NEED TO WASH IT IN COLD WATER…

This is especially painful in the winter. Eventually you’ll give up and get touch-ups more often rather than face one more freezing shower.
…AND YOU CAN’T WASH IT AS OFTEN.

This is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you have more time to sleep in instead of showering in the morning. On the other hand, dry shampoo only goes so far.
GLOVES ARE A MUST.

These are especially important if you’re dyeing your hair at home. It takes an eternity to get dye off stained hands, and even styling your wet hair can leave tinges of color behind on your skin and nail beds.
YOUR NATURAL HAIR COLOR DICTATES HOW MUCH WORK YOUR CRAZY COLOR IS.

If you’re naturally blond, congratulations! You can dye your hair any color with the least amount of effort, because it’s always easier to dye hair darker rather than lighter. If you have dark hair, the color won’t show up without a generous dose of bleach. It may take multiple rounds of bleaching — in my case, it took three — before your hair is light enough for the color to adhere to.
BLEACH AND SPLIT ENDS ARE BFFS.

You probably already know bleach isn’t good for your hair, but you don’t realize how bad it actually is until you feel dead straw — OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration — where your hair used to be. Bleach makes your hair thinner, easier to break, and knottier. It’s difficult for me to find a strand that doesn’t end in a split end now, and it takes me double the time to brush out the knotty mess.
BECAUSE YOUR HAIR IS EXTRA-DELICATE NOW, YOU NEED TO TAKE EXTRA CARE OF IT.

Heat styling adds to whatever damage your hair is already dealing with. Proceed with caution.
CRAZY COLORS REQUIRE PATIENCE AND COMMITMENT.

If your hair requires multiple rounds of bleaching, you need to wait several weeks in between each one. Don’t expect to walk into a salon with a color in mind and walk out an hour later with bright blue hair.
PASTEL HAIR IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT LOOKS TO ACHIEVE.

Hairstylists are even warning their clients to stay away from DIY pastel hair dyes.
SOME COLORS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO GET OUT COMPLETELY.

My hairdresser told me that once I go green, my hair will stay some vague shade of green until I cut it off. It’s a good thing I really, really love green.
BUT IT’S ALL WORTH IT! WE PROMISE.

When you shake out your hair and it’s that perfect badass shade of purple, green, blue, pink, you name it, you’ll feel like angels came down and blessed your hair. Look out, world, nothing can stop you now.

Maine is ruined.. and it is all my fault!!!! AAAARRRUUGGGGHHH

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 12:40:00 +0000

I moved to Maine to enjoy the wonderful awesomeness that is the winter snow. I moved here in hopes to enjoy looking out my window and seeing snow falling and the calmness that it brings. Well it is Dec 12th 2015 and I'm sad to report that snow has yet to touch the ground that is Maine. WHY??? Now let me step back and explain something to you. I moved to Utah in the hopes that I could give my daughter a wonderful gift of snow. Well we lived there for over 7 years. And the snow came for a the first 4 years then after that something started to happen. It slowed to a halt. Ugh! I love snow!!!! This can't be happening.

WHY?? WHY?? WHY??

Well I have been laying in bed wondering if the earth is punishing me. I don't know for what reason it would be. But it made me leave Utah. Funny thing about Utah is, it is now snowing there. In fact it started to snow in September. It has been snowing ever since. So we move and Utah is released from it curse. Which is me. Well... you're welcome Utah. I hope I didn't put to much of a damper on the Sking industry for these past years. I didn't mean for that to happen. Maine now has to deal with me now.

I haven't been yelling from the roof top that I'm the reason Maine hasn't gotten any snow. In fact I have been hiding in the shadows. Hoping that what ever hates me will think that I moved and it will allow Maine to receive its wonderful bounty. I even went so far as to color my hair to black. Maybe I won't be seen easily. Maybe the powers that be will overlook me and move forward with winter. I really want to enjoy Christmas with snow as it falls to the ground. I don't think that is much to ask. I mean this is Maine. Snow is part of its culture. So come on, let it snow!!!

The best tearerking Craigslit "Missed Connetion" you will ever read... EVER! (Posted on Craigslist)

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 16:24:00 +0000

I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972 - m4w (Old State House)

Massachusett : Massachusetts

I met you in the rain on the last day of 1972, the same day I resolved to kill myself.

One week prior, at the behest of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, I'd flown four B-52 sorties over Hanoi. I dropped forty-eight bombs. How many homes I destroyed, how many lives I ended, I'll never know. But in the eyes of my superiors, I had served my country honorably, and I was thusly discharged with such distinction.

And so on the morning of that New Year's Eve, I found myself in a barren studio apartment on Beacon and Hereford with a fifth of Tennessee rye and the pang of shame permeating the recesses of my soul. When the bottle was empty, I made for the door and vowed, upon returning, that I would retrieve the Smith & Wesson Model 15 from the closet and give myself the discharge I deserved.

I walked for hours. I looped around the Fenway before snaking back past Symphony Hall and up to Trinity Church. Then I roamed through the Common, scaled the hill with its golden dome, and meandered into that charming labyrinth divided by Hanover Street. By the time I reached the waterfront, a charcoal sky had opened and a drizzle became a shower. That shower soon gave way to a deluge. While the other pedestrians darted for awnings and lobbies, I trudged into the rain. I suppose I thought, or rather hoped, that it might wash away the patina of guilt that had coagulated around my heart. It didn't, of course, so I started back to the apartment.

And then I saw you.

You'd taken shelter under the balcony of the Old State House. You were wearing a teal ball gown, which appeared to me both regal and ridiculous. Your brown hair was matted to the right side of your face, and a galaxy of freckles dusted your shoulders. I'd never seen anything so beautiful.

When I joined you under the balcony, you looked at me with your big green eyes, and I could tell that you'd been crying. I asked if you were okay. You said you'd been better. I asked if you'd like to have a cup of coffee. You said only if I would join you. Before I could smile, you snatched my hand and led me on a dash through Downtown Crossing and into Neisner's.

We sat at the counter of that five and dime and talked like old friends. We laughed as easily as we lamented, and you confessed over pecan pie that you were engaged to a man you didn't love, a banker from some line of Boston nobility. A Cabot, or maybe a Chaffee. Either way, his parents were hosting a soirée to ring in the New Year, hence the dress.

For my part, I shared more of myself than I could have imagined possible at that time. I didn't mention Vietnam, but I got the sense that you could see there was a war waging inside me. Still, your eyes offered no pity, and I loved you for it.

After an hour or so, I excused myself to use the restroom. I remember consulting my reflection in the mirror. Wondering if I should kiss you, if I should tell you what I'd done from the cockpit of that bomber a week before, if I should return to the Smith & Wesson that waited for me. I decided, ultimately, that I was unworthy of the resuscitation this stranger in the teal ball gown had given me, and to turn my back on such sweet serendipity would be the real disgrace.

On the way back to the counter, my heart thumped in my chest like an angry judge's gavel, and a future -- our future -- flickered in my mind. But when I reached the stools, you were gone. No phone number. No note. Nothing.

As strangely as our union had begun, so too had it ended. I was devastated. I went back to Neisner's every day for a year, but I never saw you again. Ironically, the torture of your abandonment seemed to swallow my self-loathing, and the prospect of suicide was suddenly less appealing than the prospect of discovering what had happened in that restaurant. The truth is I never really stopped wondering.

I'm an old man now, and only recently did I recount this story to someone for the first time, a friend from the VFW. He suggested I look for you on Facebook. I told him I didn't know anything about Facebook, and all I knew about you was your first name and that you had lived in Boston once. And even if by some miracle I happened upon your profile, I'm not sure I would recognize you. Time is cruel that way.

This same friend has a particularly sentimental daughter. She's the one who led me here to Craigslist and these Missed Connections. But as I cast this virtual coin into the wishing well of the cosmos, it occurs to me, after a million what-ifs and a lifetime of lost sleep, that our connection wasn't missed at all.

You see, in these intervening forty-two years I've lived a good life. I've loved a good woman. I've raised a good man. I've seen the world. And I've forgiven myself. And you were the source of all of it. You breathed your spirit into my lungs one rainy afternoon, and you can't possibly imagine my gratitude.

I have hard days, too. My wife passed four years ago. My son, the year after. I cry a lot. Sometimes from the loneliness, sometimes I don't know why. Sometimes I can still smell the smoke over Hanoi. And then, a few dozen times a year, I'll receive a gift. The sky will glower, and the clouds will hide the sun, and the rain will begin to fall. And I'll remember.

So wherever you've been, wherever you are, and wherever you're going, know this: you're with me still.

Parkinson's and the heat! Does anyone else have a problem with heat?

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 23:03:00 +0000

I have major heat intolerance. I haven't come across this symptom much in articles relating to Parkinson's. I was wondering if anyone else out there has big problems with heat? My walking gets worse, headache, brain fog and sensory nerves go bizerk. It doesn't take much temperature change for it to start so I watch the temperature real close and if I start to perspire I need to call it quits.

History's most famous athlete was as nimble with word play as he was fleet of foot. He dazzled opponents and global audiences alike with his athleticism in the ring and his unflappable verbosity outside of it.

Gradually these trademark characteristics began to fade. His lightening reflexes slowed. His speech became impaired. His mind was still sharp, but his rhymes failed to dance off his tongue as readily as they once had. Over the years his body co-operated with his mind less and less. Explosive footwork slowed to a deliberate shuffle. A flight of stairs or a car door became as daunting a physical challenge as 15 rounds with Joe Frazier. The famous Mississippi Mouth became barely audible. Ali had fallen victim to a merciless, cruel opponent- Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease attacks the central nervous system, reducing the brains ability to co-ordinate movement. The brain does its best to give instructions but the message gets lost in translation. This results in unimaginable frustration for the sufferer and ultimately renders the individual a prisoner in his or her own body.

SYMPTOMS

Tremors- the most noticeable early symptom. It often begins very localized, such as in a finger of one hand. Over time it spreads throughout the whole arm. Tremors often occur when the limb is at rest or when held in a stiff, unsupported position. Tremors also may occur in the lips, feet or tongue.

Bradykinesia- slowness of motion. The individual's movements become increasingly slow and over time muscles may randomly "freeze".

Akinesia- muscle rigidity. Often begins in the legs and neck. These muscles become very stiff. When it affects the muscles of the face the individual adopts a mask like stare.

Digestion problems- the ability to process food slows down, resulting in low energy and constipation.

Depression- Parkinson's causes chemical changes in the brain that may result in depression. This can be an early warning sign, but as depression becomes more common in older adults, it is not often associated with the disease.

Low Blood Pressure- can result in light headedness and fainting.

Temperature sensitivity- perception of temperature can be affected, and may result in hot flashes and excessive sweating.

Leg discomfort- some patients report burning sensations and cramp in the legs.

Balance- There is a progressive loss of coordination and sense of balance, putting the individual at risk of falls.

Over time, Parkinson's sufferers take on similar external characteristics. There is the continual tremor, the stooped posture, the slow shuffle and the blank stare. At the present time there is no cure and it is not completely understood as to what causes the disease. However, it is manageable through medication and lifestyle, especially when identified in the early stages. As Ali himself so famously proved, just because an opponent has you against the ropes, it doesn't mean the fight is over.

Sweating and intolerance to heat. These are also problems for people with Parkinson's disease. These symptoms are mostly related to changes to the nerves that control automatic body processes (like body heat).

Breaking News: Elder L. Tom Perry dies at age 92

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 30 May 2015 23:16:00 +0000

How Hot Did Earth Get in the Past? Team of Scientists Uncovers New Information

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

The question seems simple enough: What happens to Earth's temperature when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase? The answer is elusive. However, clues are hidden in the fossil record. A new study by researchers from Syracuse and Yale universities provides a much clearer picture of Earth's temperature approximately 50 million years ago when CO2 concentrations were higher than today. The results may shed light on what to expect in the future if CO2 levels keep rising.

The study, which for the first time compared multiple geochemical and temperature proxies to determine mean annual and seasonal temperatures, is published online in the journal Geology, published by the Geological Society of America, and is forthcoming in print Aug. 1.

SU Alumnus Caitlin Keating-Bitonti '09 is the corresponding author of the study. She conducted the research as an undergraduate student under the guidance of Linda Ivany, associate professor of earth sciences, and Scott Samson, professor of earth sciences, both in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. Early results led the team to bring in Hagit Affek, assistant professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University, and Yale Ph.D. candidate Peter Douglas for collaborative study. The National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society funded the research.

"The early Eocene Epoch (50 million years ago) was about as warm as the Earth has been over the past 65 million years, since the extinction of the dinosaurs," Ivany says. "There were crocodiles above the Arctic Circle and palm trees in Alaska. The questions we are trying to answer are how much warmer was it at different latitudes and how can that information be used to project future temperatures based on what we know about CO2 levels?"

Previous studies have suggested that the polar regions (high-latitude areas) during the Eocene were very hot -- greater than 30 degrees centigrade (86 degrees Fahrenheit). However, because the sun's rays are strongest at Earth's equator, tropical and subtropical areas (lower latitude) will always be at least as warm as polar areas, if not hotter. Until now, temperature data for subtropical regions were limited.

The SU and Yale research team found that average Eocene water temperature along the subtropical U.S. Gulf Coast hovered around 27 degrees centigrade (80 degrees Fahrenheit), slightly cooler than earlier studies predicted. Modern temperatures in the study area average 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, the scientists discovered that, during the Eocene, temperatures in the study area did not change more than 3 to 5 degrees centigrade across seasons, whereas today, the area's seasonal temperatures fluctuate by 12 degrees centigrade. The new results indicate that the polar and sub-polar regions, while still very warm, could not have been quite as hot as previously suggested.

The findings are based on a chemical analysis of the growth rings of the shells of fossilized bivalve mollusks and on the organic materials trapped in the sediment packed inside the shells, which was conducted by Keating-Bitonti and her colleagues. Ivany collected the fossils from sediment layers exposed along the Tombigbee River in Alabama. The mollusks lived in a near-shore marine environment during a time when the sea level was higher and the ocean flooded much of southern Alabama. The sediments that accumulated there contain one of the richest and best-preserved fossil records in the country.

"Our study shows that previous estimates of temperatures during the early Eocene were likely overestimated, especially at higher latitudes near the poles," Keating-Bitonti says. "The study does not mean elevated atmospheric CO2 levels did not produce a greenhouse effect -- the Earth was clearly hotter during the early Eocene. Our results support predictions that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 will result in a warmer climate with less seasonality across the globe."

To determine the average seasonal temperatures in the study area, Keating-Bitonti sampled the mollusk shells for high-resolution oxygen and strontium isotope analyses, which were done at SU. The Yale team analyzed shells and sediments for clumped-isotope and tetraether-lipid analysis. The results were consistent across all of the independent analytic methods. The scientists believe the multiple methods of analysis have yielded a more complete and accurate picture of ancient climate than previously possible.

The study also marks the first time clumped-isotope analysis has been used alongside traditional oxygen isotope and organic geochemical analyses in paleoclimate work. The research team is currently using the same analytical process to determine Eocene Epoch mean annual and seasonal temperatures in polar-regions.

"Clumped isotopes is a new way to measure past temperatures that offers a distinct advantage over other approaches because the technique requires fewer assumptions; it's based on well understood physics," Affek says. "The agreement among different methods gives us confidence in the results and enables us to use these methods in other locations, such as Antarctica."

Keating-Bitonti recently completed a master's degree in geology at the University of Wisconsin and will be continuing her studies at Stanford University as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, School of Earth Sciences.

Sleep Switch Found in Fruit Flies

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Rather than count sheep, drink warm milk or listen to soothing music, many insomniacs probably wish for a switch they could flick to put themselves to sleep.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered such a switch in the brains of fruit flies. In a study appearing June 24 in Science, the researchers show that a group of approximately 20 cells in the brains of fruit flies controls when and how long the flies sleep. Slumber induced through this sleep switch was essential to the creation of long-term memory, directly proving a connection between memory and sleep that scientists have long suspected.

"This is exciting because this induced sleep state so far appears to be very similar to spontaneous sleep," says Paul Shaw, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology. "That means we can manipulate these cells to explore a whole new realm of questions about the purposes of sleep. Such studies might one day lead us to more natural ways of inducing sleep in humans."

The key cells are found in an area of the fly brain known as the dorsal fan-shaped body. Scientists in Shaw's lab genetically modified the cells to increase their activity. One effect of making these cells more active was that adult flies slept for an additional seven hours a day.

When scientists added a gene that increases the cells' activity only at warmer temperatures, they could determine when and how long flies would sleep by simply adjusting the temperature in the flies' habitats.

To analyze the similarity of induced sleep to spontaneous sleep, scientists tested whether induced slumber was essential to the formation of long-term memories. In a process called courtship conditioning, male flies were exposed to other males genetically modified to make female sex pheromones.

"The subject fly will initiate courtship because of the female pheromones, but the modified male making those pheromones inevitably rejects him," says first author Jeff Donlea, PhD, now a postdoctoral research assistant at Oxford University. "This is an ecologically relevant way to test memory because a male fly in the wild needs to quickly assess whether a particular female is interested in mating so that he doesn't waste time making unproductive advances."

The researchers used a training protocol that normally only creates a memory that lasts a few hours in fruit flies. After being "rejected" multiple times over three hours, the fly learns not to make advances when he encounters the altered male again at a later time. But when scientists used the cells in the dorsal fan-shaped body to put the fly to sleep immediately after training, the fly formed a long-term memory of his experience that lasted for at least several days.

To rule out the possibility that the increased excitability of the cells could be directly responsible for the long-term memory, scientists activated the sleep-regulating cells following training but prevented the flies from sleeping. The flies did not remember the training, indicating that sleep itself was important for the consolidation of memory.

Scientists have yet to determine whether a counterpart for the dorsal fan-shaped body exists in human brains. Shaw's lab is currently working to see if the cells they singled out can be matched to other brain cell types based on the chemical messengers they produce.

Funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported this research.

Clocking Neptune's Spin by Tracking Atmospheric Features

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

A day on Neptune lasts precisely 15 hours, 57 minutes and 59 seconds, according to the first accurate measurement of its rotational period made by University of Arizona planetary scientist Erich Karkoschka.

His result is one of the largest improvements in determining the rotational period of a gas planet in almost 350 years since Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini made the first observations of Jupiter's Red Spot.

"The rotational period of a planet is one of its fundamental properties," said Karkoschka, a senior staff scientist at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. "Neptune has two features observable with the Hubble Space Telescope that seem to track the interior rotation of the planet. Nothing similar has been seen before on any of the four giant planets."

The discovery is published in Icarus, the official scientific publication of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.

Unlike the rocky planets -- Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars -- which behave like solid balls spinning in a rather straightforward manner, the giant gas planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- rotate more like giant blobs of liquid. Since they are believed to consist of mainly ice and gas around a relatively small solid core, their rotation involves a lot of sloshing, swirling and roiling, which has made it difficult for astronomers to get an accurate grip on exactly how fast they spin around.

"If you looked at Earth from space, you'd see mountains and other features on the ground rotating with great regularity, but if you looked at the clouds, they wouldn't because the winds change all the time," Karkoschka explained. "If you look at the giant planets, you don't see a surface, just a thick cloudy atmosphere."

"On Neptune, all you see is moving clouds and features in the planet's atmosphere. Some move faster, some move slower, some accelerate, but you really don't know what the rotational period is, if there even is some solid inner core that is rotating."

In the 1950s, when astronomers built the first radio telescopes, they discovered that Jupiter sends out pulsating radio beams, like a lighthouse in space. Those signals originate from a magnetic field generated by the rotation of the planet's inner core.

No clues about the rotation of the other gas giants, however, were available because any radio signals they may emit are being swept out into space by the solar wind and never reach Earth.

"The only way to measure radio waves is to send spacecraft to those planets," Karkoschka said. "When Voyager 1 and 2 flew past Saturn, they found radio signals and clocked them at exactly 10.66 hours, and they found radio signals for Uranus and Neptune as well. So based on those radio signals, we thought we knew the rotation periods of those planets."

But when the Cassini probe arrived at Saturn 15 years later, its sensors detected its radio period had changed by about 1 percent. Karkoschka explained that because of its large mass, it was impossible for Saturn to incur that much change in its rotation over such a short time.

"Because the gas planets are so big, they have enough angular momentum to keep them spinning at pretty much the same rate for billions of years," he said. "So something strange was going on."

Even more puzzling was Cassini's later discovery that Saturn's northern and southern hemispheres appear to be rotating at different speeds.

"That's when we realized the magnetic field is not like clockwork but slipping," Karkoschka said. "The interior is rotating and drags the magnetic field along, but because of the solar wind or other, unknown influences, the magnetic field cannot keep up with respect to the planet's core and lags behind."

Instead of spacecraft powered by billions of dollars, Karkoschka took advantage of what one might call the scraps of space science: publicly available images of Neptune from the Hubble Space Telescope archive. With unwavering determination and unmatched patience, he then pored over hundreds of images, recording every detail and tracking distinctive features over long periods of time.

Other scientists before him had observed Neptune and analyzed images, but nobody had sleuthed through 500 of them.

"When I looked at the images, I found Neptune's rotation to be faster than what Voyager observed," Karkoschka said. "I think the accuracy of my data is about 1,000 times better than what we had based on the Voyager measurements -- a huge improvement in determining the exact rotational period of Neptune, which hasn't happened for any of the giant planets for the last three centuries."

Two features in Neptune's atmosphere, Karkoschka discovered, stand out in that they rotate about five times more steadily than even Saturn's hexagon, the most regularly rotating feature known on any of the gas giants.

Named the South Polar Feature and the South Polar Wave, the features are likely vortices swirling in the atmosphere, similar to Jupiter's famous Red Spot, which can last for a long time due to negligible friction. Karkoschka was able to track them over the course of more than 20 years.

An observer watching the massive planet turn from a fixed spot in space would see both features appear exactly every 15.9663 hours, with less than a few seconds of variation.

"The regularity suggests those features are connected to Neptune's interior in some way," Karkoschka said. "How they are connected is up to speculation."

One possible scenario involves convection driven by warmer and cooler areas within the planet's thick atmosphere, analogous to hot spots within the Earth's mantle, giant circular flows of molten material that stay in the same location over millions of years.

"I thought the extraordinary regularity of Neptune's rotation indicated by the two features was something really special," Karkoschka said.

"So I dug up the images of Neptune that Voyager took in 1989, which have better resolution than the Hubble images, to see whether I could find anything else in the vicinity of those two features. I discovered six more features that rotate with the same speed, but they were too faint to be visible with the Hubble Space Telescope, and visible to Voyager only for a few months, so we wouldn't know if the rotational period was accurate to the six digits. But they were really connected. So now we have eight features that are locked together on one planet, and that is really exciting."

In addition to getting a better grip on Neptune's rotational period, the study could lead to a better understanding of the giant gas planets in general.

"We know Neptune's total mass but we don't know how it is distributed," Karkoschka explained. "If the planet rotates faster than we thought, it means the mass has to be closer to the center than we thought. These results might change the models of the planets' interior and could have many other implications."

Flooding of Ancient Salton Sea Linked to San Andreas Earthquakes

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 19:49:00 +0000

Southern California's Salton Sea, once a large natural lake fed by the Colorado River, may play an important role in the earthquake cycle of the southern San Andreas Fault and may have triggered large earthquakes in the past.

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Nevada, Reno, discovered new faults in the Salton Sea near the southern end of the San Andreas Fault. By examining displacement indicators preserved in pristine sedimentary deposits, the team reconstructed their earthquake history and found evidence for coincident timing between flooding of the ancient Salton Sea and fault rupture. Rupture on these newly discovered "stepover" faults has the potential to trigger large earthquakes on the southern San Andreas Fault.

The report appears in the online version of the journal Nature Geoscience on June 26.

The Salton Sea covers a structural boundary at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault where it takes a southwestward step to the Imperial Fault. The region is closely monitored because the last large earthquake on this section of the San Andreas occurred approximately 300 years ago and the fault is considered by many experts to be overdue for another.

By imaging beneath the Salton Sea, the study identified the key role of stepover faults that run at an angle to the San Andreas Fault. The smaller faults rupture relatively frequently and, at times, they ruptured in concert with Colorado River flooding of the Salton Trough. Report lead author Danny Brothers said that this research does not improve the ability to predict such a quake but suggests that heightened preparedness for a major quake immediately following smaller quakes in the stepover zone is warranted.

"To fully understand the hazards and rupture scenarios associated with the southern San Andreas Fault, we can't limit our study to the San Andreas Fault itself," said Brothers, a researcher now at the USGS who conducted most of the research while a graduate student at Scripps. "These stepover zones really need to be considered when assessing earthquake hazards and need to be examined as potential triggers for destructive earthquakes on the larger faults."

The current dimensions of the Salton Sea located in California's Imperial Valley are but a fraction of the natural lake that preceded it. Through cycles of flooding and evaporation, the historical Lake Cahuilla was once one and a half times the size of Lake Tahoe at its maximum. What is left since the beginning of the 20th Century -- when local authorities redirected the Colorado River away from the lake -- is less than 1/25th that size.

When its natural dimensions were in place, Lake Cahuilla and its surrounding region experienced in a 1,000-year period five earthquakes on the Southern San Andreas that are believed to have been larger than magnitude 7. The temblors occurred about 180 years apart. It's been more than 300 years since the last one. Diversion of the Colorado River and the lack of flooding events in the local basin known as the Salton Trough may be one possible explanation.

The researchers studied the sediments deposited over several millennia on the lake floor and found coincident timing between several flooding events and rupture of step-over faults, which in turn, may have loaded the San Andreas. Stress models showed that the predominantly normal faults with vertical displacement in the Salton Sea are more vulnerable to sudden increases in vertical loads caused by lake filling. Those failures may have triggered the movement of California's primary fault in several instances, the researchers said. No such sequence has taken place since the lake assumed its current dimensions.

"We've been baffled as to why the Southern San Andreas hasn't gone. It's been compared to a woman who is 15 months pregnant," said Scripps seismologist Debi Kilb, a report co-author. "Now this paper offers one explanation why."

The researchers cautioned that failure of the stepover faults is ultimately driven by tectonic forces and could still set off a major rupture of the San Andreas Fault independently of any lake level fluctuations. Other research teams have estimated that stress buildup in the area is still great enough to produce a quake between magnitude 7 and 8. The idea that the San Andreas is triggered by stress loading in the Salton Sea supports the assumption by many scientists that a future quake sequence could propagate northward and potentially cause significant damage in the Los Angeles area.

"Earthquake simulations reveal that shaking of large metropolitan areas such as Riverside and Los Angeles will be larger if the earthquake propagates from south to north -- our research suggests that the Salton Sea stepover zone may provide a trigger for such a propagation direction," said Scripps geologist Neal Driscoll, a report co-author.

Brothers said that one of the most immediate applications of the research is as a guide to development in the Salton Sea region, which has been the subject of environmental restoration efforts in recent years.

"Large earthquakes on the southern San Andreas most likely will be accompanied by liquefaction in the Imperial Valley. In addition to ground shaking, the liquefaction will cause damage to water conveyance systems and existing infrastructure in the region and is likely to affect Salton Sea restoration efforts," he said.

"Not only were we able to address seismic hazards issues along the San Andreas Fault, but this research also highlights the broader use and capabilities of new techniques and technologies to study hazards under bodies of water," added Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno and a co-author of the report. "This can have application for other regions where the presence of water has left problems undetected."

'Odd Couple' Binary Star System Makes Dual Gamma-Ray Flares

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

In December 2010, a pair of mismatched stars in the southern constellation Crux whisked past each other at a distance closer than Venus orbits the sun. The system possesses a so-far unique blend of a hot and massive star with a compact fast-spinning pulsar. The pair's closest encounters occur every 3.4 years and each is marked by a sharp increase in gamma rays, the most extreme form of light.

The unique combination of stars, the long wait between close approaches, and periods of intense gamma-ray emission make this system irresistible to astrophysicists. Now, a team using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to observe the 2010 encounter reports that the system displayed fascinating and unanticipated activity.

"Even though we were waiting for this event, it still surprised us," said Aous Abdo, a Research Assistant Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a leader of the research team.

Few pairings in astronomy are as peculiar as high-mass binaries, where a hot blue-white star many times the sun's mass and temperature is joined by a compact companion no bigger than Earth -- and likely much smaller. Depending on the system, this companion may be a burned-out star known as a white dwarf, a city-sized remnant called a neutron star (also known as a pulsar) or, most exotically, a black hole.

Just four of these "odd couple" binaries were known to produce gamma rays, but in only one of them did astronomers know the nature of the compact object. That binary consists of a pulsar designated PSR B1259-63 and a 10th-magnitude Be-type star known as LS 2883. The pair lies 8,000 light-years away.

The pulsar is a fast-spinning neutron star with a strong magnetic field. This combination powers a lighthouse-like beam of energy, which astronomers can easily locate if the beam happens to sweep toward Earth. The beam from PSR B1259-63 was discovered in 1989 by the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The neutron star is about the size of Washington, D.C., weighs about twice the sun's mass, and spins almost 21 times a second.

The pulsar follows an eccentric and steeply inclined orbit around LS 2883, which weighs roughly 24 solar masses and spans about nine times its size. This hot blue star sits embedded in a disk of gas that flows out from its equatorial region.

At closest approach, the pulsar passes less than 63 million miles from its star -- so close that it skirts the gas disk around the star's middle. The pulsar punches through the disk on the inbound leg of its orbit. Then it swings around the star at closest approach and plunges through the disk again on the way out.

"During these disk passages, energetic particles emitted by the pulsar can interact with the disk, and this can lead to processes that accelerate particles and produce radiation at different energies," said study co-author Simon Johnston of the Australia Telescope National Facility in Epping, New South Wales. "The frustrating thing for astronomers is that the pulsar follows such an eccentric orbit that these events only happen every 3.4 years."

In anticipation of the Dec. 15, 2010, closest approach, astronomers around the world mounted a multiwavelength campaign to observe the system over a broad energy range, from radio wavelengths to the most energetic gamma rays detectable. The observatories included Fermi and NASA's Swift spacecraft; the European space telescopes XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL; the Japan-U.S. Suzaku satellite; the Australia Telescope Compact Array; optical and infrared telescopes in Chile and South Africa; and the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), a ground-based observatory in Namibia that can detect gamma rays with energies of trillions of electron volts, beyond Fermi's range. (For comparison, the energy of visible light is between two and three electron volts.)

"When you know you have a chance of observing this system only once every few years, you try to arrange for as much coverage as you can," said Abdo, the principal investigator of the NASA-funded international campaign. "Understanding this system, where we know the nature of the compact object, may help us understand the nature of the compact objects in other, similar systems."

Despite monitoring of the system with the EGRET telescope aboard NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory in the 1990s, gamma-ray emission in the billion-electron-volt (GeV) energy range had never been seen from the binary.

Late last year, as the pulsar headed toward its massive companion, the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard Fermi discovered faint gamma-ray emission.

"During the first disk passage, which lasted from mid-November to mid-December, the LAT recorded faint yet detectable emission from the binary. We assumed that the second passage would be similar, but in mid-January 2011, as the pulsar began its second passage through the disk, we started seeing surprising flares that were many times stronger than those we saw before," Abdo said.

Stranger still, the system's output at radio and X-ray energies showed nothing unusual as the gamma-ray flares raged.

"The most intense days of the flare were Jan. 20 and 21 and Feb. 2, 2011," said Abdo. "What really surprised us is that on any of these days, the source was more than 15 times brighter than it was during the entire month-and-a-half-long first passage."

The study will appear in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available online.

"One great advantage of the Fermi LAT observations is the continuous monitoring of the source, which gives us the most complete gamma-ray observations of this system," said Julie McEnery, the Fermi project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Astronomers are continuing to analyze their bounty of data and working to understand the surprising flares. And in May 2014, when the pulsar once again approaches its giant companion, they'll be watching.

NASA's Spitzer Finds Distant Galaxies Grazed On Gas

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Galaxies once thought of as voracious tigers are more like grazing cows, according to a new study using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Astronomers have discovered that galaxies in the distant, early universe continuously ingested their star-making fuel over long periods of time. This goes against previous theories that the galaxies devoured their fuel in quick bursts after run-ins with other galaxies.

"Our study shows the merging of massive galaxies was not the dominant method of galaxy growth in the distant universe," said Ranga-Ram Chary of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "We're finding this type of galactic cannibalism was rare. Instead, we are seeing evidence for a mechanism of galaxy growth in which a typical galaxy fed itself through a steady stream of gas, making stars at a much faster rate than previously thought."

Chary is the principal investigator of the research, appearing in the Aug. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. According to his findings, these grazing galaxies fed steadily over periods of hundreds of millions of years and created an unusual amount of plump stars, up to 100 times the mass of our sun.

"This is the first time that we have identified galaxies that supersized themselves by grazing," said Hyunjin Shim, also of the Spitzer Science Center and lead author of the paper. "They have many more massive stars than our Milky Way galaxy."

Galaxies like our Milky Way are giant collections of stars, gas and dust. They grow in size by feeding off gas and converting it to new stars. A long-standing question in astronomy is: Where did distant galaxies that formed billions of years ago acquire this stellar fuel? The most favored theory was that galaxies grew by merging with other galaxies, feeding off gas stirred up in the collisions.

Chary and his team addressed this question by using Spitzer to survey more than 70 remote galaxies that existed 1 to 2 billion years after the Big Bang (our universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old). To their surprise, these galaxies were blazing with what is called H alpha, which is radiation from hydrogen gas that has been hit with ultraviolet light from stars. High levels of H alpha indicate stars are forming vigorously. Seventy percent of the surveyed galaxies show strong signs of H alpha. By contrast, only 0.1 percent of galaxies in our local universe possess this signature.

Previous studies using ultraviolet-light telescopes found about six times less star formation than Spitzer, which sees infrared light. Scientists think this may be due to large amounts of obscuring dust, through which infrared light can sneak. Spitzer opened a new window onto the galaxies by taking very long-exposure infrared images of a patch of sky called the GOODS fields, for Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.

Further analyses showed that these galaxies furiously formed stars up to 100 times faster than the current star-formation rate of our Milky Way. What's more, the star formation took place over a long period of time, hundreds of millions of years. This tells astronomers that the galaxies did not grow due to mergers, or collisions, which happen on shorter timescales. While such smash-ups are common in the universe -- for example, our Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in about 5 billion years -- the new study shows that large mergers were not the main cause of galaxy growth. Instead, the results show that distant, giant galaxies bulked up by feeding off a steady supply of gas that probably streamed in from filaments of dark matter.

Chary said, "If you could visit a planet in one of these galaxies, the sky would be a crazy place, with tons of bright stars, and fairly frequent supernova explosions."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Discovery of Natural Antibody Brings a Universal Flu Vaccine a Step Closer

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 19:25:00 +0000

Annually changing flu vaccines with their hit-and-miss effectiveness may soon give way to a single, near-universal flu vaccine, according to a new report from scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell. They describe an antibody that, in animal tests, can prevent or cure infections with a broad variety of influenza viruses, including seasonal and potentially pandemic strains.

The finding, published in the journal Science Express on July 7, 2011, shows the influenza subtypes neutralized with the new antibody include H3N2, strains of which killed an estimated one million people in Asia in the late 1960s.

"Together this antibody and the one we reported in 2009 have the potential to protect people against most influenza viruses," said Ian Wilson, who is the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research, as well as senior author of the new paper with Crucell's chief scientific officer Jaap Goudsmit.

Tackling a Major Shortcoming

Wilson's laboratory has been working with Crucell scientists since 2008 to help them overcome the major shortcoming of current influenza vaccines: They work only against the narrow set of flu strains that the vaccine makers predict will dominate in a given year, so their effectiveness is temporary. In addition, current influenza vaccines provide little or no protection against unforeseen strains.

These shortcomings reflect a basic flu-virus defense mechanism. The viruses come packaged in spherical or filamentous envelopes that are studded with mushroom-shaped hemagglutinin (HA) proteins, whose more accessible outer structures effectively serve as decoys for a normal antibody response. "The outer loops on the HA head seem to draw most of the antibodies, but in a given strain these loops can mutate to evade an antibody response within months," said Wilson. Antiviral drugs aimed at these and other viral targets also lose effectiveness as flu virus populations evolve.

"The major goal of this research has been to find and attack relatively unvarying and functionally important structures on flu viruses," said Damian Ekiert, a graduate student in the Scripps Research Kellogg School of Science and Technology who is working in the Wilson laboratory. Ekiert and Crucell's Vice President for Antibody Discovery Robert H. E. Friesen are co-first authors of the Science Express report.

By sifting through the blood of people who had been immunized with flu vaccines, Goudsmit and his colleagues several years ago discovered an antibody that bound to one such vulnerable structure. In mice, an injection of the antibody, CR6261, could prevent or cure an otherwise-lethal infection by about half of flu viruses, including H1 viruses such as H1N1, strains of which caused deadly global pandemics in 1918 and 2009.

The Crucell researchers approached Wilson, whose structural biology lab has world-class expertise at characterizing antibodies and their viral targets. Ekiert, Wilson, and their colleagues soon determined the three-dimensional molecular structure of CR6261 and its binding site on HA, as they reported in Science in 2009. That binding site, or "epitope," turned out to be on HA's lower, less-accessible stalk portion. The binding of CR6261 to that region apparently interferes with flu viruses' ability to deliver their genetic material into host cells and start a new infection. That antibody is about to begin tests in human volunteers.

The Missing Piece

Crucell researchers subsequently searched for an antibody that could neutralize some or all of the remaining flu viruses unaffected by CR6261, and recently found one, CR8020, that fits this description. As the team now reports in the Science Express paper, CR8020 powerfully neutralizes a range of human-affecting flu viruses in lab-dish tests and in mice. The affected viruses include H3 and H7, two subtypes of great concern for human health that have already caused a pandemic (H3) or sporadic human infections (H7).

As with the CR6261 project, Ekiert and colleagues were able to grow crystals of the new antibody bound to an HA protein from a deadly strain of H3N2, and to use X-ray crystallography techniques to determine the antibody's structure and its precise epitope on the viral HA protein.

"It's even lower on the HA stalk than the CR6261 epitope; in fact it's closer to the viral envelope than any other influenza antibody epitope we've ever seen," said Ekiert.

Crucell is about to begin initial clinical trials of CR6261 in human volunteers, and the company expects eventually to begin similar trials of CR8020. If those trials succeed, aside from a vaccine the two antibodies could be combined and used in a "passive immunotherapy" approach. "This would mainly be useful as a fast-acting therapy against epidemic or pandemic influenza viruses," said Wilson. "The ultimate goal is an active vaccine that elicits a robust, long-term antibody response against those vulnerable epitopes; but developing that is going to be a challenging task."

The research was supported by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; the US Department of Energy; and by Crucell Holland BV.

New Force Driving Earth's Tectonic Plates

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

Bringing fresh insight into long-standing debates about how powerful geological forces shape the planet, from earthquake ruptures to mountain formations, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have identified a new mechanism driving Earth's massive tectonic plates.

Scientists who study tectonic motions have known for decades that the ongoing "pull" and "push" movements of the plates are responsible for sculpting continental features around the planet. Volcanoes, for example, are generally located at areas where plates are moving apart or coming together. Scripps scientists Steve Cande and Dave Stegman have now discovered a new force that drives plate tectonics: Plumes of hot magma pushing up from Earth's deep interior. Their research is published in the July 7 issue of the journal Nature.

Using analytical methods to track plate motions through Earth's history, Cande and Stegman's research provides evidence that such mantle plume "hot spots," which can last for tens of millions of years and are active today at locations such as Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos, may work as an additional tectonic driver, along with push-pull forces.

Their new results describe a clear connection between the arrival of a powerful mantle plume head around 70 million years ago and the rapid motion of the Indian plate that was pushed as a consequence of overlying the plume's location. The arrival of the plume also created immense formations of volcanic rock now called the "Deccan flood basalts" in western India, which erupted just prior to the mass extinction of dinosaurs. The Indian continent has since drifted north and collided with Asia, but the original location of the plume's arrival has remained volcanically active to this day, most recently having formed Réunion island near Madagascar.

The team also recognized that this "plume-push" force acted on other tectonic plates, and pushed on Africa as well but in the opposite direction.

"Prior to the plume's arrival, the African plate was slowly drifting but then stops altogether, at the same time the Indian speeds up," explains Stegman, an assistant professor of geophysics in Scripps' Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. "It became clear the motion of the Indian and African plates were synchronized and the Réunion hotspot was the common link."

After the force of the plume had waned, the African plate's motion gradually returned to its previous speed while India slowed down.

"There is a dramatic slow down in the northwards motion of the Indian plate around 50 million years ago that has long been attributed to the initial collision of India with the Eurasian plate," said Cande, a professor of marine geophysics in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps. "An implication of our study is that the slow down might just reflect the waning of the mantle plume-the actual collision might have occurred a little later."

Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation.

Universe's Most Distant Quasar Found, Powered by Massive Black Hole

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 15:00:00 +0000

A team of European astronomers has used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and a host of other telescopes to discover and study the most distant quasar found to date. This brilliant beacon, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, is by far the brightest object yet discovered in the early Universe.

"This quasar is a vital probe of the early Universe. It is a very rare object that will help us to understand how supermassive black holes grew a few hundred million years after the Big Bang," says Stephen Warren, the study's team leader.

Quasars are very bright, distant galaxies that are believed to be powered by supermassive black holes at their centres. Their brilliance makes them powerful beacons that may help to probe the era when the first stars and galaxies were forming. The newly discovered quasar is so far away that its light probes the last part of the reionisation era

The quasar that has just been found, named ULAS J1120+0641, is seen as it was only 770 million years after the Big Bang (redshift 7.1). It took 12.9 billion years for its light to reach us.

Although more distant objects have been confirmed (such as a gamma-ray burst at redshift 8.2 and a galaxy at redshift 8.6), the newly discovered quasar is hundreds of times brighter than these. Amongst objects bright enough to be studied in detail, this is the most distant by a large margin.

The next most-distant quasar is seen as it was 870 million years after the Big Bang (redshift 6.4). Similar objects further away cannot be found in visible-light surveys because their light, stretched by the expansion of the Universe, falls mostly in the infrared part of the spectrum by the time it gets to Earth. The European UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) which uses the UK's dedicated infrared telescope in Hawaii was designed to solve this problem. The team of astronomers hunted through millions of objects in the UKIDSS database to find those that could be the long-sought distant quasars, and eventually struck gold.

"It took us five years to find this object," explains Bram Venemans, one of the authors of the study. "We were looking for a quasar with redshift higher than 6.5. Finding one that is this far away, at a redshift higher than 7, was an exciting surprise. 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."

The distance to the quasar was determined from observations made with the FORS2 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and instruments on the Gemini North Telescope [5]. Because the object is comparatively bright it is possible to take a spectrum of it (which involves splitting the light from the object into its component colours). This technique allowed the astronomers to find out quite a lot about the quasar.

These observations showed that the mass of the black hole at the centre of ULAS J1120+0641 is about two billion times that of the Sun. This very high mass is hard to explain so early on after the Big Bang. Current theories for the growth of supermassive black holes predict a slow build-up in mass as the compact object pulls in matter from its surroundings.

"We think there are only about 100 bright quasars with redshift higher than 7 over the whole sky," concludes Daniel Mortlock, the leading author of the paper. "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."

Artificial Pancreas Being Developed to Ease Diabetes Burden

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 17:37:00 +0000

The 25.8 million Americans who have diabetes may soon be free of finger pricks and daily insulin dosing. Mayo Clinic endocrinologists Yogish Kudva, M.B.B.S., and Ananda Basu, M.B.B.S., M.D., are developing an artificial pancreas that will deliver insulin automatically and with an individualized precision never before possible.

As part of this effort, Drs. Kudva and Basu will present their latest findings on how the mundane movements of everyday life affect blood sugar to the American Diabetes Association meeting this month in San Diego.

"The effects of low-intensity physical activity, mimicking activities of daily living, measured with precise accelerometers on glucose variability in type 1 diabetes had not been examined," says Dr. Kudva.

Among his newest findings is that even basic physical activity after meals has a profound impact on blood sugar levels for people with type 1 diabetes. "You would expect this result, but we wanted to know to what extent this phenomena would happen in people with type 1 diabetes," Dr. Kudva says.

Diabetics who engaged in low-grade physical activity after eating had blood sugar levels close to those of people with fully functioning pancreases. Those who remained sedentary after their meal, however, had elevated blood sugars.

The researchers plan to incorporate these findings into an artificial pancreas being developed at Mayo Clinic. The "Closed Loop System" under development includes a blood sugar monitor, an automatic insulin pump, a set of activity monitors that attach to the body and a central processing unit.

Clinical trials of the artificial pancreases are likely to begin in November with a handful of inpatient volunteers. Study participants will follow strict diet, exercise and insulin-delivery regimens in Mayo's Clinical Research Unit. Data will then be fed into an insulin-delivery algorithm, which mimics the body's natural process of monitoring and responding to glucose levels in the bloodstream.

"Physical activity enhances insulin action, hence lowering blood glucose concentration," Dr. Kudva says. "Real-time detection of physical activity -- and modeling of its effect on glucose dynamics -- is vital to design an automatic insulin delivery system."

Dr. Kudva and other Mayo researchers have spent nearly 15 years working on various aspects of diabetes and obesity. They are collaborating on the artificial pancreas and developing an algorithm that will afford patients the peace of mind to eliminate their daily routine of diabetes maintenance.

Dr. Basu will present findings that blood sugar levels decrease faster in the mornings in healthy adults than at dinner time, suggesting a diurnal pattern to natural insulin action. He proposes further study of this phenomenon and possible incorporation into the algorithm that drives the Closed Loop System.

The research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

My Personality is True

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 16:59:00 +0000

Shy Blue-Haired Girl

While blondes are foolish or innocent and redheads tend to be aggressive and evil, blue hair depicts a person being either shy or nervous, or even both. Either way, blue hair is very common in fiction, particularly in anime, and if the character has special powers, they are usually associated with water/ice. Because of this, they are often paired with, or contrasted with, a redhead or someone with fire powers or a very strong and passionate personality.
Interestingly, these people also tend to be the most rational or intelligent in the group, perhaps because being socially timid is associated with bookworms. Sometimes, they seem very aloof and stoic, tending not to make any friends of their own. If they are, they are usually revealed as having a kind, friendly nature. In this way, they are the direct opposite of a Fiery Redhead. A Red Oni, Blue Oni pairing can be made with them by making the redhead brash, strong, and passionate, and the blue one calm, quiet, and down-to-earth.

James is wide awake

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 08:13:00 +0000

I think this is the real story

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:47:00 +0000

Go Home Cat, You're Drunk

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:46:00 +0000

His eyes says "bedroom", but his hands say "hospital"

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:45:00 +0000

Personal Blog:: I know I haven't been posting for some years - 12/15/12

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:21:00 +0000

I know I haven't been posting for about a year. I have been getting healthy and getting back into society. I couldn't go to bed; I had somethings on my mind. When I heard about the shooting in Connecticut, I had an instant yank on my heart. I cried for a good bit. I felt so much pain and anger for the man that did this horrific tragedy. I don't understand why people that are feeling depressed, lonely, or upset have to take such drastic measure for their pain to be felt by others. I know so many families that have kids and I can't imagine them be here one day then taken the next. It is so selfish and dumb to strike at the heart of a community. Kids shouldn't have to have terror befall them at such a young age. Even now, I keep breaking into tears. When my daughter came home, I felt so privileged to have her just walk in the front door. I think I'm a person that sees the many blessings I have. Yes, I do get depressed but don't think or do bad things. Families need to realize that kids are the gooey center of our families. Sure, they can be sometimes frustrating to deal with. Sure, they can be annoying, but enjoy these simple thinks they do, you never know when it would be there. Hug your kids every day and tell them how you feel. When they go to school pull them aside and tell them without a doubt that they are loved. Make sure when you do hug them, they feel that. Don't ever feel like they know. Cause I can guarantee that they need that little extra something before going out into the world. Try and do something with them. My daughter and I will choose a day where we wear animal eared headbands. (mouse, bunny, or cat) Remember to tell yourself, "The heck with what people think" I'm bonding with my kid. Live it up and enjoy life. Your kids will think you are weird, but they will have that memory with them always. I implore you to let your kids know you love them. I am going to keep the families of this tragic day in my heart and prayers. Pass this message on to your friends and families. Share the message of love. Charly

Personal Blog:: Laugh and Get RIch Day - 2/8/12

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Laugh and Get Rich Day (Get Rich or Laugh Trying)

Today, February the 8th, we're taking time out of our very busy and serious schedules to recognize some of the more humorous aspects of life. For example, lets all remember how great and funny it was to watch the Patriots lose their perfect undefeated season. I am sure whoever bet on the Giants was laughing and getting rich at the same time then! In honor of hilarious moments and making money, today has been officially deemed Laugh and Get Rich Day!

Could you possibly think of a better way to spend a day then by laughing and getting rich?
No, neither could I.

So go find something to laugh at, and profit from it, because as far as I am concerned Laugh and Get Rich is more then just a day, its the American Dream. It will never really work in the long run so atleast you've got today to give it a shot!

Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day - 02/07/12

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:28:00 +0000

Wave All Your Fingers at Your Neighbors Day

Neighbors don't always get along. Maybe it's a disagreement about loose animals, junk in the yard or loud music. If you've been on less than good terms with one or more neighbors, swallow you pride, put differences aside and Wave All Your fingers at your Neighbors Day, suggests Wellcat. It's better than waving just one.

Need some help with your neighbors?

* How to deal with nuisance neighbors.

* Be a good virtual neighbor on Farmville, Cityville or The Sims.

Anniversary: Ballet Introduced to the U.S.

Who knew ballet could be so risque? "Every lady in the lower tier of boxes" at the Bowery Theater in New York "immediately left" when Francisquy Hutin and her dance troupe appeared on stage in a costume that was "too brief," according to the book, "Ballet in America." "La Bergere Coquette" premiered on Feb. 7, 1827. For subsequent performances Hutin "wore Turkish trousers under her ballet dress." Turkish trousers were wide-legged pants cuffed at the knee that were usually reserved for gymnastics, cycling or leisure activities, according to Maggie May Fashions. Over time traditional ballet costumes became more acceptable.

Fettuccine Alfredo Day

Fettuccine Alfredo would be on the top of the list of foods made with love. Alfred Di Lelio of Alfredo's restaurant in Rome is credited with the dish, according to Foodtimeline. "The dish supposedly helped restore the appetite of his wife after she gave birth to their son. The original dish was made with a very rich triple butter Di Lelio made himself ... and only the heart of the best parmigiano. Fettuccini all'Alfredo became famous after Hollywood movie actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford ate the dish at Alfredo's restaurant while on their honeymoon in 1927."

What makes Fettuccine Alfredo so divine? The combination of cheese, butter, garlic and long, wide noodles is rich and delicious. It can also serve as the vehicle for serving other proteins including chicken or seafood. Try it with sausage and kale or chicken.

Charles Dickens 200th Birth Anniversary

"Please, sir, I want some more" is what Oliver might have said about the Fettuccine Alfredo. Oliver Twist is only one of Charles Dickens' memorable characters. The novelist was born on Feb. 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England.

Happy G.I Joe Day - 2/1/12

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Rhode Island Governor Proclaims "G.I. JOE Day" in the Iconic Action Brand's Home State

Revered Hasbro Property is Honored at State Capital, Kicking Off Start of Annual G.I. JOE Convention

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Apr 30, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) --The world's first action figure comes home to Rhode Island for the 17th annual G.I. JOE Convention, hosted by the G.I. JOE Collectors' Club and Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS). To celebrate the homegrown hero and its fans, Rhode Island Governor, Donald L. Carcieri, proclaimed today as "G.I. JOE Day" as Rhode Island schoolchildren were on hand for the celebration in the State House rotunda. The Governor was also joined by Hasbro's President and CEO, Brian Goldner, as well as 250 parachuting G.I. JOE action figures that descended from the upper level of the domed structure, kicking off the official and largest convention of G.I. JOE enthusiasts.

Thousands of G.I. JOE fans will converge on the Rhode Island Convention Center on May 1^st and 2^nd to participate in events and activities that surround the brand's 45-plus year history that includes action figures, comic books, animated series and a blockbuster movie.

"We are excited to have the G.I. JOE brand and its many legions of fans come to Providence for its annual convention this year," said Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri. "We are proud to have such an internationally iconic hero call Rhode Island home."

This year's convention will feature some of the original G.I. JOE vs. COBRA creators, industry guests, artists, and the Hasbro G.I. JOE brand and design team. The convention will celebrate G.I. JOE, the original action figure, and its journey through the decades from the 1960s, all the way through last summer's blockbuster, G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra, and beyond.

"Hasbro is thrilled to celebrate the G.I. JOE brand in Rhode Island" said Brian Goldner, President and CEO of Hasbro, Inc. "G.I. JOE is a property that was created and developed here at Hasbro in Rhode Island over 45 years ago and is now known around the world. This year's convention will showcase the full history of the G.I. JOE brand, with special emphasis on the future of the iconic action and adventure property. We're thrilled that Governor Carcieri has bestowed such an honor to the world's first action figure hero and we're excited to celebrate 'G.I. JOE Day' with our employees, fans and fellow Rhode Island residents."

The convention is being held at the Rhode Island Convention Center located at 1 Sabin Street in Providence, Rhode Island. General admission tickets are available at the door, $12 for adults and $8 for children ages 5-12 (free child's admission with a paid adult). And, as always, admission is free for those 4 years old and under. General Admission tickets provide access to the showroom on Saturday, May 1^st from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., or on Sunday, May 2^nd from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Additional details and pre-registration information can be found at gijoecon.com, or by calling (817) 448-9863.

Hasbro inaugurated the G.I. JOE Collectors' Convention in 1994 to bring collectors, fans and the G.I. JOE team together to share in the history of the brand. The annual event attracts thousands of people for G.I. JOE-related presentations and activities, along with buying, selling and trading rare and vintage G.I. JOE action figures.

About HASBRO

Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS) is a worldwide leader in children's and family leisure time products and services with a rich portfolio of brands and entertainment properties that provides some of the highest quality and most recognizable play and recreational experiences in the world. As a brand-driven, consumer-focused global company, Hasbro brings to market a range of toys, games and licensed products, from traditional to high-tech and digital, under such powerful brand names as TRANSFORMERS, PLAYSKOOL, TONKA, MILTON BRADLEY, PARKER BROTHERS, CRANIUM and WIZARDS OF THE COAST. Come see how we inspire play through our brands at http://www.hasbro.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6272661&lang=en

SOURCE: Hasbro, Inc.

Hunter Public Relations
Mike Surabian, 212-679-6600
msurabian@hunterpr.com
or
Hasbro, Inc.
Daniel Benkwitt, 401-727-5318
dbenkwitt@hasbro.com

National Chocolate Cake Day - 01/27/12

noreply@blogger.com (Fractured but still Blue) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:37:00 +0000

January 27 is National Chocolate Cake Day in the United States. To be honest, I thought every day was chocolate cake day. This warm (and flourless) chocolate lava cake is delicious enough to declare a national celebration. But to help keep us all focused, there are several national food day lists floating around like this one to make sure all kinds of decadent delights get their day. I’m a little curious, though, how National Pie Day, National Peanut Butter Day, and National Chocolate Cake Day all fall in the same week. I have a sneaking suspicion that the final week of January is right about the time that most folks have felt pretty good about the three weeks of intense dieting and exercise they have done after the holidays. Admit it. Your thinking has probably come close to this at some point: “I’ve been to the gym twice this week. Of course I deserve pie/peanut butter/chocolate cake!”

Molten lava cakes are the perfect little cakes to celebrate National Chocolate Cake Day. They require relatively little effort and bake in less than 15 minutes. Even if the cakes collapse into a quivering pool of warm chocolate, I promise you that your guests will not complain. Cover them with enough ice cream and in one, two, three, swoops of their spoons the cake will be gone.

But if you do want to impress a loved one, you might want a practice run or two to figure out the best results with your oven. If you underbake it, you will end up with a puddle of chocolate (there are worse things). If you overbake, by even a minute, no molten center – and you’ll end up with more of a brownie cake (again, not a travesty).

Now get celebrating. And keep this recipe handy for Valentine's Day.

Molten Lava Cake
Adapted from Bon Appétit
Serves 4

6-1/2 ounces bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate, chopped (Note: good-quality chocolate chips are an easy shortcut)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pinch of salt

4 large egg yolks
4 tablespoons sugar, separated
2 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Butter four 3/4 cup custard cups. Dust with flour, shaking out excess, and set aside.

In a double boiler over simmering water, combine chocolate, butter, and salt and heat. Stir until chocolate and butter have melted and mixture is smooth. Remove upper pot from water and let cool 10 minutes.

Beat egg yolks and 3 tablespoons sugar in large bowl until thick and light, about 2 minutes. Fold in chocolate mixture. In a separate bowl beat egg whites and 1 tablespoon sugar using electric mixer with clean, dry beaters, until whites are stiff but not dry. Gently fold whites into chocolate mixture in 3 additions. Divide batter among prepared cups.

Place custard cups on a baking sheet. Bake until cakes are puffed but still soft in center, about 11 minutes. Transfer baking sheet to rack; cool cakes 1 minute.

Using a small knife, cut around sides of cakes to loosen. Place plates on top of cups. Using an oven mitt or tea towel (the cups will be hot) invert cakes onto plates; remove cups. Serve immediately with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

By Kendra Nordin

Blue Haired Gal

13 SECRETS NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT DYEING YOUR HAIR A CRAZY COLOR

13 SECRETS NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT DYEING YOUR HAIR A CRAZY COLOR

THE COLOR FADES WITHIN DAYS.

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IF YOU DYE YOUR HAIR RED, YOUR SHOWER WILL LOOK LIKE A CRIME SCENE.

TO KEEP YOUR HAIR FROM FADING, YOU NEED TO WASH IT IN COLD WATER…

…AND YOU CAN’T WASH IT AS OFTEN.

GLOVES ARE A MUST.

YOUR NATURAL HAIR COLOR DICTATES HOW MUCH WORK YOUR CRAZY COLOR IS.

BLEACH AND SPLIT ENDS ARE BFFS.

BECAUSE YOUR HAIR IS EXTRA-DELICATE NOW, YOU NEED TO TAKE EXTRA CARE OF IT.

CRAZY COLORS REQUIRE PATIENCE AND COMMITMENT.

PASTEL HAIR IS ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT LOOKS TO ACHIEVE.

SOME COLORS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO GET OUT COMPLETELY.

BUT IT’S ALL WORTH IT! WE PROMISE.

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Rhode Island Governor Proclaims "G.I. JOE Day" in the Iconic Action Brand's Home State

Revered Hasbro Property is Honored at State Capital, Kicking Off Start of Annual G.I. JOE Convention

National Chocolate Cake Day - 01/27/12