Global Warming & Terra Forming Terra

Lead Pollution Solved by Fungi

2012-01-21T00:01:00.004-08:00

This is certainly unexpected but should not have been. Lead is the one natural mineral that is immobile in soils and is a natural marker associated with mineralization generally. Metals like zinc and copper want to disperse throughout the environment and are never as strong as a comparable lead signal. It thus makes sense for the local fungi to find a way to neutralize the lead atoms as they are not going away.

It is also a reminder of just how amazing fungi and molds and their like are in soils. It is rarely noted but often the best solution for the recovery of polluted soils is to feed them well and blend them better and then let all those microorganisms go to work. Soon enough the soil will be largely repaired.

Of course it is never that simple, but a protocol something like this can often be worked out with careful preliminary testing.

The good news is that we can stop worrying all about all that lead shot delivered into the environment by duck hunters. In time it will also be broken down and made safe. We also now know were all that lead ended up when it was used in gasoline.

In tackling lead pollution, fungi may be our friends

by Staff Writers

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

While not all species of fungus are able to transform lead in this way, it appears that many of them can. It's not entirely clear why some fungi do this, but it might assist their survival in contaminated soils.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/In_tackling_lead_pollution_fungi_may_be_our_friends_999.html

Fungi may be unexpected allies in our efforts to keep hazardous lead under control. That's based on the unexpected discovery that fungi can transform lead into its most stable mineral form.

The findings reported online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that this interaction between fungi and lead may be occurring in nature anywhere the two are found together. It also suggests that the introduction or encouragement of fungi may be a useful treatment strategy for lead-polluted sites.

"Lead is usually regarded as a pretty stable substance," said Geoffrey Gadd of the University of Dundee. "The idea that fungi and other microbes may attack it and change its form is quite unexpected."

Lead is an important structural and industrial material and, as an unfortunate consequence of its popular use in everything from fire arms to paint, lead contamination is a serious problem worldwide.

There have been efforts to contain lead in contaminated soils through the addition of sources of phosphorus, an element that enables the incorporation of lead into a stable pyromorphite mineral. But that change had been considered a purely chemical and physical phenomenon, not a biological one. That is, until now.

In the new study, the researchers carefully examined lead shot after it had been incubated with and without fungi. In the presence of fungi, the lead shot began to show evidence of pyromorphite formation after one month's time.

That stable lead-containing mineral continued to increase in abundance with time. Minerals found on the surface of lead shot incubated without fungi represented less stable forms as a result of normal corrosion.

"It seems the ability of many fungi to produce organic acids or other substances may be very important in attacking the lead and releasing forms of free lead including lead complexes, which can then react with phosphorus sources to form pyromorphite," Gadd explained.

While not all species of fungus are able to transform lead in this way, it appears that many of them can, he added. It's not entirely clear why some fungi do this, but it might assist their survival in contaminated soils.

The discovery is yet another example of the "amazing things that fungi, and microbes more generally, can do in the environment," says Gadd. "Even metals can be subject to microbial colonization and attack."

New Chemistry Established Reduces Atmospheric Pollution

2012-01-21T00:01:00.003-08:00

This item reminds us that there is a lot of chemistry out there that is poorly understood because it cannot be accurately observed and measured. This technology will apparently allow us do that a lot better.

Here it has led to the understanding of reaction behavior of pollutants in the atmosphere which will be welcome.

Perhaps it will now become possible to investigate the ionic behavior of biologically active water. I have made a related conjecture that conforms to established empirical evidence, but otherwise quite unprovable. Been able to use this described technology to actually determine more detail would be a good start.

It could launch a lot of new science .

Researchers discover particle which could cool the planet

by Staff Writers

Manchester UK (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Researchers_discover_particle_which_could_cool_the_planet_999.html

In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals.

These invisible chemical intermediates are powerful oxidisers of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, produced by combustion, and can naturally clean up the atmosphere.

Although these chemical intermediates were hypothesised in the 1950s, it is only now that they have been detected. Scientists now believe that, with further research, these species could play a major role in off-setting climate change.

The detection of the Criegee biradical and measurement of how fast it reacts was made possible by a unique apparatus, designed by Sandia researchers, that uses light from a third-generation synchrotron facility, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source.

The intense, tunable light from the synchrotron allowed researchers to discern the formation and removal of different isomeric species - molecules that contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations.

The researchers found that the Criegee biradicals react more rapidly than first thought and will accelerate the formation of sulphate and nitrate in the atmosphere. These compounds will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet.

The formation of Criegee biradicals was first postulated by Rudolf Criegee in the 1950s. However, despite their importance, it has not been possible to directly study these important species in the laboratory.

In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about 0.8 degrees C with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades.

Most countries have agreed that drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are required, and that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 degrees C (3.6 degrees F).

Dr Carl Percival, Reader in Atmospheric Chemistry at The University of Manchester and one of the authors of the paper, believes there could be significant research possibilities arising from the discovery of the Criegee biradicals.

He said: "Criegee radicals have been impossible to measure until this work carried out at the Advanced Light Source. We have been able to quantify how fast Criegee radicals react for the first time.

"Our results will have a significant impact on our understanding of the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere and have wide ranging implications for pollution and climate change.

"The main source of these Criegee biradicals does not depend on sunlight and so these processes take place throughout the day and night."

Professor Dudley Shallcross, Professor in Atmospheric Chemistry at The University of Bristol, added: "A significant ingredient required for the production of these Criegee biradicals comes from chemicals released quite naturally by plants, so natural ecosystems could be playing a significant role in off-setting warming.'

Pyrolysis yield Jumps 40%

2012-01-21T00:01:00.002-08:00

What this means is that at some price point and not obviously a particularly high one, we can completely displace the petrochemical industry’s raw material with bio mass. In practice, this allows the wood chips produced from woodlot grooming to be collected and sold. Since we need to go there anyway, it was important to have an efficient process for producing feedstocks for the petrochemical industry.

This is a high temperature process as compared to biochar production which is best applied to dried plant waste and not wood chips.

It is good news although it will take a while to come into general usage, but that goes with the territory.

Making Building Blocks For Chemical Industry From Wood While Boosting Production 40 Percent

by Staff Writers

Amherst, MA (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

In this single-step catalytic fast pyrolysis process, either wood, agricultural wastes, fast growing energy crops or other non-food biomass is fed into a fluidized-bed reactor, where this feedstock pyrolysizes, or decomposes due to heating, to form vapors. These biomass vapors then enter the team's new gallium-zeolite (Ga-ZSM-5) catalyst, inside the same reactor, which converts vapors into the aromatics and olefins.

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Making_Building_Blocks_For_Chemical_Industry_From_Wood_While_Boosting_Production_40_Percent_999.html

Chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, using a catalytic fast pyrolysis process that transforms renewable non-food biomass into petrochemicals, have developed a new catalyst that boosts the yield for five key "building blocks of the chemical industry" by 40 percent compared to previous methods.

This sustainable production process, which holds the promise of being competitive and compatible with the current petroleum refinery infrastructure, has been tested and proven in a laboratory reactor, using wood as the feedstock, the research team says.

"We think that today we can be economically competitive with crude oil production," says research team leader George Huber, an associate professor of chemical engineering at UMass Amherst and one of the country's leading experts on catalytic pyrolysis.

Huber says his research team can take wood, grasses or other renewable biomass and create five of the six petrochemicals that serve as the building blocks for the chemical industry. They are benzene, toluene, and xylene, which are aromatics, and ethylene and propylene, which are olefins. Methanol is the only one of those six key petrochemicals not produced in that same single-step reaction.

"The ultimate significance of our research is that products of our green process can be used to make virtually all the petrochemical materials you can find. In addition, some of them can be blended into gasoline, diesel or jet fuel," says Huber.

The new process was outlined in a paper published in the German Chemical Society's journal Angewandte Chemie. It was written by Huber, Wei Fan, assistant professor of chemical engineering, and graduate students Yu-Ting Cheng, Jungho Jae and Jian Shi.

"The whole name of the game is yield," says Huber.

"The question is what amount of aromatics and olefins can be made from a given amount of biomass. Our paper demonstrates that with this new gallium-zeolite catalyst we can increase the yield of those products by 40 percent. This gets us much closer to the goal of catalytic fast pyrolysis being economically viable. And we can do it all in a renewable way."

The new production process has the potential to reduce or eliminate industry's reliance on fossil fuels to make industrial chemicals worth an estimated $400 billion annually, Huber says. The team's catalytic fast pyrolysis technology has been licensed to New York City's Anellotech, Inc., co-founded by Huber, which is scaling up the process to industrial size for introduction into the petrochemical industry.

The economic advantages of the new process are that the reaction chemistry occurs in one single reactor, the process uses an inexpensive catalyst and that aromatics and olefins are produced that can be used easily in the existing petrochemical infrastructure.

Olefins and aromatics are the building blocks for a wide range of materials. Olefins are used in plastics, resins, fibers, elastomers, lubricants, synthetic rubber, gels and other industrial chemicals. Aromatics are used for making dyes, polyurethanes, plastics, synthetic fibers and more.

Intermittent Diet Superior

2012-01-21T00:01:00.001-08:00

Weight control is a massive human health issue that needs to be successfully addressed. My own success during the past year involves a version of the diet discussed below. In my case, I effectively eliminated two separate days of eating. It turns out if one awakes and does not trigger the small intestine it will be happy to stay asleep. I do this on Tuesday and Thursday and sometime Sunday. My body decided to give up over a whole year around forty to forty five pounds that it was supporting.

Recall that I am taking advantage of the fact that every day we feel satiated only if we eat 125% of our actual needs. In my case and I am a sixty three year old man who was carrying a weight level of around 230 pounds on a frame that optimally should pack around 185 pounds which I never achieved even when I ran six miles every second day. I concluded that satiation forced my body to carry a preferred weight level of 230 which was very reasonable in terms of my experience.

Upon integrating this change into my regimen and that means not breaking my fast until no earlier that mid evening of the fast day which is about 24 hours since my last mouthful, I discovered no stress whatsoever on fast day and an expectation to enjoy my food otherwise. I have tested my share of regimes and this is simple and natural to sustain. The result to date is to see my weight drop below 200 pounds and it is presently shifting toward ridding me of the last ten to twenty pounds of unneeded fat.

Anyone using this diet approach is expected to be a knowledge individual who already knows to restrict carbs and garbage in their diet. Hopefully they have gone through a commercial program that at least taught them how to eat properly in the first place.

I am informed that this approach is common in India as well. In the final analysis, eliminating two days of food consumption means that you will receive enough food to properly support your body weight at its weight best level. Like everyone, I would love to lose the last ten and love to add the next ten in muscle. Unfortunately, that is a different problem altogether that most folks want to solve and it is not really about eating too much.

Intermittent, low-carbohydrate diets - more effective than standard diets

Monday, January 16, 2012 by: Michelle Bosmier

(NaturalNews) A new study coming from a team of scientists at the Genesis Prevention Center, University Hospital in South Manchester, England reveals that intermittent, low-carb diets are more efficient in reducing weight and insulin blood levels than regular diets. High levels of insulin are directly linked to the risk of developing cancer and other diseases. The results were presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which was held December 6-10, 2011.

Intermittent diets benefit long term health

The researchers explained that reducing carbohydrate intake for two days per week will produce better long term health results than reducing carbohydrate intake for every day of the week. Research dietitian Michelle Harvie, who presented the science team's findings at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, said that "weight loss and reduced insulin levels are required for breast cancer prevention, but (these levels) are difficult to achieve and maintain with conventional dietary approaches".

Intermittent fasting has previously been shown to have possible beneficial effects on both animal and human health, although there is currently no scientific consensus with regards to the extent of these effects. Research on the benefits of intermittent calorie restriction can be traced back to the 1940s, when scientists at the University of Chicago noted that rats subjected to intermittent fasting appeared to live longer than other rats.

In their 2011 study, Harvie and her team used a sample of 115 women who had some family history of breast cancer, over a four-month trial period. For research purposes, each participant was randomly assigned with one of three types of diets: a standard calorie-restrictive Mediterranean diet for 7 days per week, a low-carbohydrate diet for two days per week, or an "ad lib" calorie restrictive diet which allowed the women to eat as many proteins and healthy fats as they wanted (in the form of lean meat, nuts and olives), for two days per week.

Intermittent diets reduce weight and insulin resistance

The study results showed that the two intermittent, low-carbohydrate diets were superior to the calorie-restrictive Mediterranean diet in reducing overall weight, body fat and insulin resistance. The calorie-restrictive and "ad lib" low-carbohydrate diets scored an average of about 4 kilograms (9 pounds) in total body fat loss, as opposed to only 2.4 kilograms (5 pounds) for the standard Mediterranean diet.

Moreover, the intermittent low-carbohydrate diet was also able to reduce the participants' insulin resistance by a whopping 22%, with the "ab lib" diet reducing insulin resistance by 14%. The standard dietary approach managed to reduce insulin resistance by only 4% in study participants. "It is interesting that the diet that only restricts carbohydrates but allows protein and fats is as effective as the calorie-restricted, low-carbohydrate diet," commented Dr. Harvie.

While the science team believes that further investigation is necessary to determine the exact relation between intermittent diets and overall body health, Dr. Harvie and her colleagues are planning to look at the relationship between carbohydrate intake and breast cancer in their future studies.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238909.php

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111208184651.htm

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.short

About the author:

Raw Michelle is a natural health blogger and researcher, sharing her passions with others, using the Internet as her medium. She discusses topics in a straight forward way in hopes to help people from all walks of life achieve optimal health and well-being. She has authored and published hundreds of articles on topics such as the raw food diet and green living in general. In 2010, Michelle created RawFoodHealthWatch.com, to share with people her approach to the raw food diet and detoxification.

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034655_intermittent_fasting_low-carb_diet.html#ixzz1jbVrfzBT

Cleansing Land Titles With Ellen Brown

2012-01-20T00:01:00.003-08:00

This article by Ellen Brown covers the present machinations under way as local governments struggle to reestablish the integrity of their titles system which has clearly been massively compromised by outrageous fraud and general behavior.

The solutions listed are a patchwork ad hoc system confronting a endemic attack on the underlying integrity of title.

I would like to see a suspension of all interest against properties in which title has been so compromised. We have to start somewhere and this would motivate the perpetrators of this disaster to spend the resources needed to repair or even define the problem.

Rather importantly is would bring to a grinding halt the bookkeeping dance presently underway to push unrealized losses forward in time.

Occupy the Neighborhood: How Counties Can Use Land Banks and Eminent Domain

Saturday 14 January 2012

by: Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis

A foreclosed home in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo: Monica Almeida / The New York Times)

An electronic database called MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) has created defects in the chain of title to over half the homes in America. Counties have been cheated out of millions of dollars in recording fees, and their title records are in hopeless disarray. Meanwhile, foreclosed and abandoned homes are blighting neighborhoods. Straightening out the records and restoring the homes to occupancy is clearly in the public interest, and the burden is on local government to do it. But how? New legal developments are presenting some innovative alternatives.

John O'Brien is register of deeds for Southern Essex County, Massachusetts. He is mad as hell and he isn't going to take it anymore. He calls his land registry a "crime scene." A formal forensic audit of the properties for which he is responsible found that:

Only 16 percent of the mortgage assignments were valid.

Twenty-seven percent of the invalid assignments were fraudulent, 35 percent were "robo-signed" and 10 percent violated the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute.

The identity of financial institutions that are current owners of the mortgages could be determined for only 287 out of 473 (60 percent).

There were 683 missing assignments for the 287 traced mortgages, representing approximately $180,000 in lost recording fees per 1,000 mortgages whose current ownership could be traced.

At the root of the problem is that title has been recorded in the name of a private entity called MERS as a mere placeholder for the true owners. The owners are a faceless, changing pool of investors owning indeterminate portions of sliced and diced securitized properties. Their identities have been so well hidden that their claims to title are now in doubt. According to the auditor:

What this means is that ... the institutions - including many pension funds - that purchased these mortgages don't actually own them....

The March of the Attorneys General

John O'Brien was thrilled when Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley went to court in December against MERS and five major banks - Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and GMAC. Coakley says banks have "undermined our public land record system through the use of MERS."

Other attorneys general are also bringing lawsuits. Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden is going after MERS in a suit seeking $10,000 per violation. "Since at least the 1600s," he says, "real property rights have been a cornerstone of our society. MERS has raised serious questions about who owns what in America."

Biden's lawsuit alleges that MERS violated Delaware's Deceptive Trade Practices Act by:

Hiding the true mortgage owner and removing that information from the public land records.

Creating a systemically important, yet inherently unreliable, mortgage database that created confusion and inappropriate assignments and foreclosures of mortgages.

Operating MERS through its members' employees, whom MERS confusingly appoints as its corporate officers so that they may act on MERS' behalf.

Failing to ensure the proper transfer of mortgage loan documentation to the securitization trusts, which may have resulted in the failure of securitizations to own the loans upon which they claimed to foreclose.

This last allegation - that there are fatal defects in the loan documentation - may be even more conclusive than the MERS defect in establishing a break in the chain of title to securitized properties. Mortgage-backed securities are sold to investors in packages representing interests in trusts called REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits). REMICs are designed as tax shelters; but to qualify for that status, they must be "static." Mortgages can't be transferred in and out once the closing date has occurred. The REMIC Pooling and Servicing Agreement typically states that any transfer after the closing date is invalid. Yet few, if any, properties in foreclosure seem to have been assigned to these REMICs before the closing date, in blatant disregard of legal requirements. The whole business is quite complicated, but the bottom line is that title has been clouded not only by MERS, but because the trusts purporting to foreclose do not own the properties by the terms of their own documents.

Courts Are Taking Notice

The title issues are so complicated that judges themselves have been slow to catch on, but they are increasingly waking up and taking notice. In some cases, the judge is not even waiting for the borrowers to raise lack of standing as a defense. In two cases decided in New York in December, the banks lost although their motions were either unopposed or the homeowner did not show up, and in one, there was actually a default. No matter, said the court; the bank simply did not have standing to foreclose.

In Citigroup v. Smith, 2011 NY Slip Op 52236 (U) (December 13, 2011), the mortgage document acknowledged that MERS was not the lender, but was "a separate corporation that is acting solely as a nominee for Lender and Lender's successors and assigns." The court held that since MERS was not a party to the underlying note, when it assigned the mortgage to plaintiff Citigroup there was no assignment of the note; and "a transfer of [a] mortgage without the debt is a nullity and no interest is acquired by it."

Failure to comply with the terms of the loan documents can make an even stronger case for dismissal. In Horace v. LaSalle, Circuit Court of Russell County, Alabama, 57-CV-2008-000362.00 (March 30, 2011), the court permanently enjoined the bank (now part of Bank of America) from foreclosing on the plaintiff's home, stating:

[T]he court is surprised to the point of astonishment that the defendant trust (LaSalle Bank National Association) did not comply with New York Law in attempting to obtain assignment of plaintiff Horace's note and mortgage....

[P]laintiff's motion for summary judgment is granted to the extent that defendant trust ... is permanently enjoined from foreclosing on the property....

Relief for Counties: Land Banks and Eminent Domain

The legal tide is turning against MERS and the banks, giving rise to some interesting possibilities for relief at the county level. Local governments have the power of eminent domain: they can seize real or personal property if (a) they can show that doing so is in the public interest, and (b) the owner is compensated at fair market value.

The public interest part is easy to show. In a 20-page booklet titled "Revitalizing Foreclosed Properties with Land Banks," the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) observes:

The volume of foreclosures has become a significant problem, not only to local economies, but also to the aesthetics of neighborhoods and property values therein. At the same time, middle- to low-income families continue to be priced out of the housing market while suitable housing units remain vacant.

The booklet goes on to describe an alternative being pursued by some communities:

To ameliorate the negative effects of foreclosures, some communities are creating public entities - known as land banks - to return these properties to productive reuse while simultaneously addressing the need for affordable housing.

States named as adopting land bank legislation include Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Indiana, Texas, Kentucky and Maryland. HUD notes that the federal government encourages and supports these efforts. But states can still face obstacles to acquiring and restoring the properties, including a lack of funds and difficulties clearing title.

Both of these obstacles might be overcome by focusing on abandoned and foreclosed properties for which the chain of title has been broken, either by MERS or by failure to transfer the promissory note according to the terms of the trust indenture. These homes could be acquired by eminent domain both free of cost and free of adverse claims to title. The county would simply need to give notice in the local newspaper of an intent to exercise its right of eminent domain. The burden of proof would then transfer to the bank or trust claiming title. If the claimant could not prove title, the county would take the property, clear title and either work out a fair settlement with the occupants or restore the home for rent or sale.

Even if the properties were acquired without charge, counties might lack the funds to restore them. Additional funds could be had by establishing a public bank that serves more functions than just those of a land bank. In a series titled "A Solution to the Foreclosure Crisis," Michael Sauvante of the National Commonwealth Group suggests that properties obtained by eminent domain can be used as part of the capital base for a chartered, publicly owned bank, on the model of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota. The county could deposit its revenues into this bank and use its capital and deposits to generate credit, as all chartered banks are empowered to do. This credit could then be used not just to finance property redevelopment, but for other county needs, again on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. For a fuller discussion of publicly owned banks, see http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.

Sauvante adds that the use of eminent domain is often viewed negatively by homeowners. To overcome this prejudice, the county could exercise eminent domain on the mortgage contract rather than on title to the property. (The power of eminent domain applies both to real and to personal property rights.) Title would then remain with the homeowner. The county would just have a secured interest in the property, putting it in the shoes of the bank. It could renegotiate reasonable terms with the homeowner, something banks have been either unwilling or unable to do, since they have to get all the investor-owners to agree, a difficult task; and they have little incentive to negotiate when they can make more money on fees and credit-default-swaps on contracts that go into default.

Settling With the Investors

What about the rights of the investors who bought the securities allegedly backed by the foreclosed homes? The banks selling these collateralized debt obligations represented that they were protected with credit-default-swaps. The investors' remedy is against the counterparties to those bets - or against the banks that sold them a bill of goods.

Foreclosure defense attorney Neil Garfield says the investors are unlikely to recover on abandoned and foreclosed properties in any case. Banks and servicers can earn more when the homes are bulldozed - something that is happening in some counties - than from a sale or workout at a loss. Not only is more earned on credit-default-swaps and fees, but bulldozed homes tell no tales. Garfield maintains that fully a third of the investors' money has gone into middleman profits rather than into real estate purchases and "with a complete loss no one asks for an accounting."

Not only homes and neighborhoods, but 400 years of property law are being destroyed by banker and investor greed. As Barry Ritholtz observes, the ability of a property owner to confidently convey his property is a bedrock of our society. Bailing out reckless financiers and refusing to hold them accountable has led to a fundamental breakdown in the role of government and the court system. This can be righted only by holding the 1 percent to the same set of laws as are applied to the 99 percent. Those laws include that a contract for the sale of real estate must be in writing signed by seller and buyer, that an assignment must bear the signatures required by local law and that forging signatures gives rise to an actionable claim for fraud.

The neoliberal model that says banks can govern themselves has failed. It is up to county government to restore the rule of law and repair the economic distress wrought behind the smokescreen of MERS. New tools at the county's disposal - including eminent domain, land banks and publicly owned banks - can facilitate this local rebirth.

Ancient Mechanism For Mammalian Evolution

2012-01-20T00:01:00.002-08:00

It appears that we actively remodel our DNA and have been forever. So much for ideas of DNA conservation. It now looks way more dynamic than any of us ever imagined and surely this implies that the genome is conserved through the mating process in which excess modifications are plausibly dropped.

The article implies CTCF is exclusive to Mammals, but seems unlikely.

I posted a long time ago that the process of evolution was consciously influenced by the organism itself as it recognized be niches to take advantage of. The implied question was to determine a mechanism. We have gone a long ways down that road with this insight. I always thought that intelligent design was too good an idea to leave at the mercy of religious fundamentalists.

New insights into an ancient mechanism of mammalian evolution

by Staff Writers

London, UK (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/New_insights_into_an_ancient_mechanism_of_mammalian_evolution_999.html

A team of geneticists and computational biologists in the UK have revealed how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome evolution. The new study is published in the journal Cell.

To function properly, mammalian tissues require the protein CTCF, which has several key activities including the regulation of genes and interaction with proteins in the cell's nucleus to alter gene activity. CTCF acts by binding to DNA and plays a role in diseases such as HIV infection and cancer. However, very little is known about the origin of the DNA sequences that are bound by CTCF.

In this study, the researchers used samples from six mammals (human, macaque, mouse, rat, dog, and short-tailed opossum) to pinpoint where CTCF binds to each genome. They discovered around 5000 sites that are present in most cell types and tissues, and that have not changed over hundreds of millions of years of mammalian evolution. Because these CTCF binding sites are conserved throughout evolution, the researchers believe that many might play an important role in gene regulation.

The team found an even larger number of locations where CTCF binds DNA in only one lineage or a single species. These additional sites represent a signature of important evolutionary changes since our last common ancestor - legacies, in some cases, of the evolutionary path to humans. These newer CTCF sites are embedded inside virus-like stretches of DNA called 'retro-transposons'. Retro-transposons use a copy-paste mechanism to spread copies of themselves throughout the genome.

"We developed a new, integrated model of CTCF evolution, which explains the origin of these 5000 highly conserved CTCF binding events in mammals," said Paul Flicek of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

"Taken together, our findings provide fascinating insight into an ancient mechanism of evolution that is still actively changing our genome."

"CTCF is a key regulator involved in chromatin and gene expression remodelling, both of which are perturbed in the development of cancer. The gene expression and chromatin changes in cancer have also recently been relied on to predict the outcome of specific cancer treatments, which is why it is so important to have a detailed understanding of how particular parts of the genome are resistant or plastic to changes," said Duncan Odom of Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

The retro-transposon's copy-and-paste behaviour has long been considered totally self-serving. However, the study showed that when a retro-transposon containing a CTCF-binding sequence spreads around a mammal's genome, it can deposit functional CTCF binding sites in novel locations, altering the activity of distant genes.

"We looked at six mammalian species representing primates, marsupials, rodents and carnivores, and discovered a simple mechanism that they all use to remodel their DNA," explained Petra Schwalie of EMBL-EBI. "We also found that our distant ancestors also experienced the same complicated relationship between CTCF and retro-transposons."

Using molecular palaeontology techniques, the researchers were able to identify fossil traces of older retro-transposon expansions in the DNA around the shared CTCF binding locations, and showed that this process has been active for hundreds of millions of years.

The study combined the efforts of researchers at EMBL-EBI, the Wellcome Trust SangerInstitute, Cancer Research UK, and the Cambridge Hepatobiliary Service at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, UK.

Sasquatch Dines on Fast Food

2012-01-20T00:01:00.001-08:00

This encounter is actually useful. The sasquatch is noteworthy for a couple of reasons:

It was around six foot tall. There are plenty of observations of extra tall creatures and few noted as normal. I suspect that the height average in the South just happens to be smaller.

The impossibly broad shoulders are the real giveaway if one did not have a good look at the ape face. We are catching more frontal views and the ape appearance is characteristic.

The speed of the retreat is also noteworthy and is an impossibility for anything else. During early days, I wondered if the animal actually put on bursts of speed or merely long paced its way out. Since then we have had a few sprints observed.

And finally we catch one of them raiding our garbage. I suspect he will be back to catch some of that chicken. These animals are extremely shy, but burgeoning populations and public awareness making an accidental shooting unlikely has allowed them to be way more comfortable around us.

I am expecting to see interaction begin sooner or later as they learn to find trustworthy partners. This fishing around our garbage is a great start and yes setting out treats will slowly win their trust.

Jefferson Parish Bigfoot "Loves That Chicken From Popeye's"

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2012

I received this interesting anecdote a few days ago. I don't doubt the witness' account...but the situation is somewhat whimsical:

Hey - I wanted to tell you a story that happened to me this pass week. I walk my dog everyday on a nature trail. I'm located south of New Orleans. I'd like to be anonymous but here goes.

I was walking her a few nights ago probably around 7 at night and when we made the turn she started growling which for my dog is unusual. So I turned on my flash light and there digging in a trash can was this big dark brown colored thing. Now these trash cansare hooked above ground - about 4 and a half feet above ground - and they are wide enough that I can fit my whole body in. I'm 6'1" 260 pounds and this thing was about my height maybe slightly taller but was wide. His head and part of his shoulder was in but what freaked me out came next when my dog barked he looked at us and it had the face of what I can say was gorilla like. His eye shine was red in my mag lite and the smell was like a stinkbug and rotten eggs. He was probably no less than 20 - 30 feet from me and when he ran off his speed was incredible. No way anyone in a suit playing games can move like this. It was like once he wanted to leave he was gone, I mean I cant even try to estimate his speed even if I wanted. I had my pistol and I fired 2 rounds into the ground just to make noise because I was freaked at this point.

I have never heard of anyone claiming to see something like this before. I'm from a small town so I guess if they did they probably wont say anything so not to be made fun of or labeled as crazy. The next day I went back and seen the trash bag messed up and seen they had Popeye's biscuits and some other fast food in the can so I am going to go get some more fast food put it in the garbage cans and stake out with a bud of mine and see if I can get any evidence. I gotta see this again. It was life changing for me. I can't get the face and broadness of the shoulders of this thing out of my head since it happened but I have to say I seen a Bigfoot. But on TV I seen people say these things are 8 to 9 feet tall but the one I seen was probably and a half tops but wide broad line backer like.

If you ever heard of anyone from southern Louisiana report anything like this please write me back. I heard stories of the Honey Island Swamp Monster but that is in the Slidell area. Thanks.

Marriage Revival?

2012-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

I cringe of course to touch this topic, but a few things need to be said. Marriage exists in all societies to a greater or lesser degree and works to accommodate the biological needs of the human species first. A natural adjunct is that it also works to optimize the economic effectiveness of the two individuals. So far so good except for the unfortunate effect of individual variability in which it is also asked to somehow accommodate the full spectrum of human behavior.

There never has been a golden age for human marriage. As our present society transitions to a vastly different global society, it is hardly surprising that all the old ways are presently in serious turmoil. The hard part is to first emotionally let go of the past itself.

The future of marriage will reflect a completely new set of human compromises that allows society to fully support child rearing and adult development through a century long life. Once one accepts that the debate is about the shape of the future and how to manage and optimize that future, then progress is plausible.

My own thoughts are toward a radically different economic model that wraps a human community of around a natural one hundred and fifty individuals whose lifeway is integrated around a primary agricultural unit that retains a self contained internal currency regime that allows all members to readily optimize their contribution and supply them their financial anchor when pursuing a life outside of the home community. Such a system implies a deeper more woven community and a rethink of marriage as an institution. My instinct is to perfect the economic basis and allow the social institutions to sort themselves out.

Any other approach will perpetuate present problems and fail to eliminate obvious shortcomings. At least we may reduce remaining problems to that solely related to human nature itself.

Let's revive marriage in America

By MIKE MCMANUS

Posted: 6:25 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/commentary/commentary-lets-revive-marriage-in-america-2080312.html

Only 51 percent of American adults are married - a record low - down from 72 percent in 1960, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. There are three major factors behind these trends.

First, the number of never-married Americans nearly doubled, from 15 percent to 28 percent, between 1960 and 2010. Pew said that many couples are cohabiting instead of marrying because "they fear divorce." Why? Many are adult children of divorce who do not want to live through such pain again.

Second, the number of divorced and un-remarried people has grown from 5 percent to 14 percent of the population.

Third, in the past 50 years, the median age at which people first marry has jumped six years - to 26 for women and to 29 for men. Today, only a fifth of adults ages 18 to 29 are married, vs. three times as many in 1960, 59 percent.

What's troubling is not the later age at which people marry, which is generally wise, but the fact that only 72 percent of today's adults have ever married, versus 85 percent in 1960.

What is behind this shift? Another recent Pew survey reported that four in 10 Americans think marriage is "becoming obsolete." Particularly interesting is that 47 percent of those who think marriage is becoming obsolete say they would like to marry; virtually the same share (45 percent) of unmarried adults who think marriage is not becoming obsolete say they want to wed.

Those numbers suggest a strategy for churches, which perform nine of 10 weddings: Make a case for marriage from the pulpit. True, there aren't many cohabiting couples in church, but millions of churchgoing parents of adult children do not know what to say to them. What arguments might pastors make about the value of marriage?

I recommend that clergy read "The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2011. " Its co-authors are W. Bradford Wilcox of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and Elizabeth Marquardt of the Institute for American Values' Center for Marriage and Families. Their report, "When Baby Makes Three," provides evidence of what every pastor has believed: "Couples who both agree that 'God is at the center of our marriage' are at least 26 percentage points more likely to report that they are 'very happy.' " While 50 percent of men and women report being very happy, of those who believe God is at the center of their marriage, 77 percent of women and 76 percent of men are very happy.

Similarly, mothers and fathers who see parenting as one of "life's greatest joys" are about twice as likely to report being very happy in their marriages. However, the report cautions that "parenthood is typically associated with lower levels of marital happiness." Having a baby requires sacrifices, such as a loss of sleep, less disposable income and often less quality time with one another, resulting in less sex.

And there is a sad paradox among young Americans. While most would like to have two or three children, "a growing share of young women and men believe that a good marriage is personally unattainable, and more are raising children outside of marriage."

However, the report provides new evidence that both husbands and wives (but wives especially) are "more likely than their childless peers to feel their lives have a sense of meaning and purpose." And a substantial minority of married couples do not experience parenthood as an obstacle to marital happiness.

What is their secret? Two answers are shared housework chores and sexual satisfaction. One surprise is that the happiest wives and husbands today "are those with no children and those with four or more children." Another factor is education. Americans without college degrees are three times as likely to divorce in the first 10 years of marriage compared with those with college education.

But most important is a shared faith that endows marriage "with transcendent significance." Attending services together is a top predictor of marital stability. Finally, "parenthood makes life meaningful and marriage makes parenthood bearable."

Mike McManus is president of Marriage Savers,www.marriagesavers.org. He wrote this for The Baltimore Sun

Quantum Critical Theory Wins Support

2012-01-19T00:01:00.003-08:00

It appears our knowledge of superconductance is reaching the point of been almost able to engineer them. This article has a good explanation of theory and is worth the effort to understand it.

I would really like to see related work underway with graphene acting as an important constituent. I suspect as our knowledge is perfected it will be possible to emulate all effects with carbon atoms.

In the meantime super conductance is now experimented at with temperatures near room temperature. Plenty of progress can be expected.

Rice's 'quantum critical' theory gets experimental boost

by Staff Writers

Houston TX (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

Materials at the border of magnetism and superconductivity - including heavy-fermion metals and high-temperature superconductors - are the prototype systems for quantum critical points.

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Rice_quantum_critical_theory_gets_experimental_boost_999.html

New evidence this week supports a theory developed five years ago at Rice University to explain the electrical properties of several classes of materials - including unconventional superconductors - that have long vexed physicists.

The findings in Nature Materials uphold a theory first offered in 2006 by physicist Qimiao Si, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy. They represent an important step toward the ultimate goal of creating a unified theoretical description of the quantum behavior of high-temperature superconductors and related materials.

"We now have a materials-based global phase diagram for heavy-fermion systems - a kind of road map that helps relate the predicted behavior of several different classes of materials," Si said. "This is an important step on the road to a unified theory."

High-temperature superconductivity is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of modern physics. In the mid-1980s, experimental physicists discovered several compounds that could conduct electricity with zero resistance. The effect happens only when the materials are very cold, but still far above the temperatures required for the conventional superconductors that were discovered and explained earlier in the 20th century.

In searching for a way to explain high-temperature superconductivity, physicists discovered that the phenomenon was one of a larger family of behaviors called "correlated electron effects."

In correlated electron processes, the electrons in a superconductor behave in lockstep, as if they were a single entity rather than a large collection of individuals. These processes bring about tipping points called "quantum critical points" at which materials change phases. These phase changes are similar to thermodynamic phase changes that occur when ice melts or water boils, except they are governed by quantum mechanics.

Materials at the border of magnetism and superconductivity - including heavy-fermion metals and high-temperature superconductors - are the prototype systems for quantum critical points.

In 2001, Si and colleagues proposed what has now become the dominant theory to explain correlated electron effects in heavy-fermion systems. Their "local quantum critical" theory concluded that both magnetism and charged electron excitations play a role in bringing about quantum critical points.

Experiments over the past decade have provided overwhelming evidence for the role of both effects. In addition, experiments have shown that quantum critical points fall into different classes for different types of materials, including several nonsuperconductors.

"In light of the experimental evidence, an important question arose as to whether a unifying principle might exist that could explain the behavior of all the classes of quantum critical points that had been observed in heavy-fermion materials," Si said.

In 2006, Si put forward a new theory aimed at doing just that. Experiments two years ago confirmed that the theoretical global phase diagram could explain the quantum critical behavior of YRS - composites of ytterbium, rhodium and silicon that are among the most-studied quantum critical materials.

In the new Nature Materials paper, a group led by experimental physicist Silke Paschen of Vienna University of Technology in Vienna examined a new material made of cerium, palladium and silicon (CPS). Both YRS and CPS are heavy-fermion compounds; however, YRS is a composite of stacked two-dimensional layers, and CPS has a three-dimensional crystalline structure.

"In YRS, the collapse of charged electronic excitations occurs at the onset of magnetic order," Paschen said. "In CPS, we established a similar collapse of the electronic excitations but inside an ordered phase."

To explain the difference between the observations in CPS and YRS, Si and co-author Rong Yu, a Rice postdoctoral researcher, invoked the effect of dimensionality.

"In systems like YRS, reduced dimensionality enhances the quantum fluctuations between the electrons, and that enhancement influences their collective behavior," Yu said. "In the three-dimensional material, we found that the quantum fluctuations were reduced, and this affected the quantum critical point and the correlated behavior in a way that was predicted by theory."

Si said the linkage between the quantum critical points of CPS and YRS is important for the ultimate question of how to classify and unify quantum criticality.

"Our study not only highlights a rich variety of quantum critical points but also indicates an underlying universality," he said.

Si said it is important to test the theory's ability to correctly predict the behavior of even more materials, and his group is working with Paschen and other experimentalists via the International Collaborative Center on Quantum Matter to carry out those tests.

3D mapping of Earth Well Underway

2012-01-19T00:01:00.002-08:00

It has taken a long time, but it appears we are successfully generating a high quality three dimensional map of the Earth’s surface. Integrating that image with other types of satellite data will be extremely valuable. A lot of that goes on all the time in resource management programs and this will bring it all a a huge step and make it efficient.

Sooner or later we will have a high resolution globe that will integrate with google maps and be many times clearer and more accurate.

Recent events have reminded us that sub surface rocks need to also be mapped in the shipping lanes. A simple outlier can sit and wait forever and knowing it is there prevents surprises.

A step closer to mapping the Earth in 3D

by Staff Writers

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 17, 2012

A year after the initial operational phase, TanDEM-X has mapped all land surfaces on earth except Antarctica completely. Elevation models have been generated with the data. According to the color scale, green tinted areas already comply with a the requirement of a two-metre accuracy. Yellow-coloured areas must be recorded a second time, reddish surfaces also require recording from a different angle. Gray-shaded strips have been recorded, but have yet to be processed. Full size image here

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A_step_closer_to_mapping_the_Earth_in_3D_999.html

After a year in service, the German Earth observation satellite TanDEM-X, together with its twin satellite, TerraSAR-X, have completely mapped the entire land surface of Earth for the first time. The data is being used to create the world's first single-source, high-precision, 3D digital elevation model of Earth. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) controls both radar satellites, generates the elevation model and is responsible for the scientific use of TanDEM-X data.

It is reminiscent of ballet on ice; throughout the last year, Germany's radar satellites, TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X, have been moving through space in close formation, at times just a few hundred metres apart. Strip by strip, they have recorded Earth from different angles and transmitted high-resolution radar data from their orbit at an altitude of 514 kilometres down to the three ground stations - Kiruna (Sweden), Inuvik (Canada) and O'Higgins (Antarctica).

"The mission is running better than expected and there have been no unscheduled interruptions in the programmed formation flight of the two satellites. All safety mechanisms are functioning robustly and in a stable manner," enthuses Manfred Zink, project manager for the TanDEM-X ground segment at DLR. Over the course of 2011, the distance between the satellites was progressively reduced down to the minimum permitted value of 150 metres.

'Radar eyes' working with millimetric accuracy

This satellite mission is the first of its kind; it remains unique and is highly complex, even for experienced engineers. "Following the launch of TanDEM-X on 21 June 2010, there was a six-month test phase, during which we subjected the satellite and its behaviour in near-Earth orbit to intense scrutiny and carried out our calibration work," Zink recalls.

During this time, TanDEM-X commenced formation flying with its identical partner satellite, TerraSAR-X, which was launched in 2007. On 14 December 2010, the operational part of its mission began, collecting data for the high-precision elevation model.

The radar system views the ground from two different points in space, achieving 'depth perception' in a manner similar to binocular vision in humans. "The generation of accurate elevation data calls for precise coordination of data from and between both satellites," explains Gerhard Krieger, systems engineer for the TanDEM-X mission.

Differences, for example in the cable lengths on the two radar instruments, as well as the distance between the two satellites, need to be calibrated very precisely. "This is a truly enormous challenge when you consider that a millimetre of variation can cause up to one metre of elevation error," says Krieger.

The strips of terrain recorded by the satellites are processed into elevation models measuring 50 by 30 kilometres. Due to the ultra-precise calibration, when this 'basic data' is compiled at the end of the process to generate a global 3D map, it is already of very high quality.

By mid-2013, TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X will have imaged the complete land surface area of Earth - roughly 150 million square kilometres - several times. The intention is to create an exceptionally accurate, global and homogeneous 3D elevation model that promises to be of equal interest for commercial and scientific purposes.

Data quality depends on ground reflectance

Initially, at least two complete coverage cycles of Earth's land surface were planned. Some parts, one example being the vast majority of Australia's landmass, were recorded by the satellite duo with sufficient quality during the first overflight.

"The level of precision depends on how well the ground reflects the radar pulses transmitted - and subsequently received - by the satellites," states Manfred Zink. For example, the Sahara is more difficult to image because the signal literally 'sinks into the sand' and is lost. For regions of dense vegetation, such as rain forests, additional imagery and careful adjustment of the distance between the satellites are necessary.

"We are going to be left with a few blank areas on the map, but we do of course seek to minimise these gaps," states Zink as he thinks about the coming months.

Better understanding Earth as a system

"We want to gain a better understanding of Earth as a system and to employ the data for climate and traffic research, for example," says Irena Hajnsek, scientific coordinator for the TanDEM-X mission. In 2011, she gave the 'green light' for 166 of the research applications submitted to DLR. "Most of these originated in the USA and Germany.

The TanDEM-X capabilities are to be used to address questions of land usage and vegetation, hydrology, geology and glaciology," explains Hajnsek. The two Earth observation satellites can also generate information about the height of the snowline or the change in ice masses of the two polar regions, as well as provide geological maps of regions subject to volcanic and/or earthquake activity. The speed of ships or road vehicles can be measured, as can changes in the natural world.

The work performed by these two radar satellites is also valuable for agriculture. "Based on the height and structure of a plant - such as rapeseed, for example - it is possible to draw conclusions about its quality and biomass," states Hajnsek.

One Third Fuel Consumption For Friction

2012-01-19T00:01:00.001-08:00

What this all means, and it is very well detailed, is that only one dollar out of five actually goes to moving the car. Considering that the car also weighs around ten times the weight of the load, one could just as easily say that a mere ten cents out of the original five dollars actually moves the individual. Getting rid of this wastage is difficult with the present protocols but the advent of electrics will slash deep into the cost structure.

I expect to see a small vehicle pull up to my doorstep to take me directly to my destination inside of this decade. These vehicles will be an utility and need merely to be requested for the best available option to appear. The target weight will be well under a thousand pounds and it will be completely computer operated. Because all available vehicles are on call 24/7 there will always be a flood of self aware robotic cars nearby. Cars will no longer by hanger queens although no owner will be able to dump material in the car as a defacto storage bin.

In the meantime there are and will continue to be plenty of internal combustion systems in place and cutting friction in half is valuable.

One-third of car fuel consumption is due to friction loss

by Staff Writers

Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

In 2009, a total of 208,000 million litres of fuel was burned in cars worldwide just to overcome friction.

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/One_third_of_car_fuel_consumption_is_due_to_friction_loss_999.html

No less than one third of a car's fuel consumption is spent in overcoming friction, and this friction loss has a direct impact on both fuel consumption and emissions.

However, new technology can reduce friction by anything from 10% to 80% in various components of a car, according to a joint study by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in USA. It should thus be possible to reduce car's fuel consumption and emissions by 18% within the next 5 to 10 years and up to 61% within 15 to 25 years.

There are 612 million cars in the world today. The average car clocks up about 13,000 km per year, and in the meantime burns 340 litres of fuel just to overcome friction, costing the driver EUR 510 per year.

Of the energy output of fuel in a car engine, 33% is spent in exhaust, 29% in cooling and 38% in mechanical energy, of which friction losses account for 33% and air resistance for 5%. By comparison, an electric car has only half the friction loss of that of a car with a conventional internal combustion engine.

Annual friction loss in an average car worldwide amounts to 11,860 MJ: of this, 35% is spent in overcoming rolling resistance in the wheels, 35% in the engine itself, 15% in the gearbox and 15% in braking. With current technology, only 21.5% of the energy output of the fuel is used to actually move the car; the rest is wasted.

Worldwide savings with new technology

A recent VTT and ANL study shows that friction in cars can be reduced with new technologies such as new surface coatings, surface textures, lubricant additives, low-viscosity lubricants, ionic liquids and low-friction tyres inflated to pressures higher than normal.

Friction can be reduced by 10% to 50% using new surface technologies such as diamond-like carbon materials and nanocomposites. Laser texturing can be employed to etch a microtopography on the surface of the material to guide the lubricant flow and internal pressures so as to reduce friction by 25% to 50% and fuel consumption by 4%. Ionic liquids are made up of electrically charged molecules that repel one another, enabling a further 25% to 50% reduction in friction.

In 2009, a total of 208,000 million litres of fuel was burned in cars worldwide just to overcome friction; this amounts to 7.3 million TJ (terajoules) of energy.

Theoretically, introducing the best current technological solutions in all of the world's cars could save EUR 348,000 million per year; the best scientifically proven solutions known today could save EUR 576,000 million per year, and the best solutions to emerge over the next 10 years could save EUR 659,000 million per year.

Realistically, though, over a period of 5 to 10 years of enhanced action and product development measures could be expected to enable savings of 117,000 million litres in fuel consumption per year, representing an 18% reduction from the present level. Furthermore, in realistic terms, carbon dioxide emissions could be expected to decrease by 290 million tonnes per year and financial savings to amount to EUR 174,000 million per year in the short term.

Drivers can influence fuel consumption

A driver can significantly influence the fuel consumption of his or her car. A reduction of 10% in driving speed, e.g. from 110 km/h to 100 km/h, translates into a 16% saving in fuel consumption. Slower speeds also allow for higher tyre pressures; an increase from 2 bar to 2.5 bar can translate into a 3% saving in fuel consumption.

VTT and ANL calculated friction loss in cars worldwide using a method that incorporated total crude oil consumption and fuel consumption of cars, the energy consumption of an average car, and the energy that an average car uses to overcome friction.

Friction losses were accounted for in the subsystems of a car - tyres, engine, gearbox, brakes - and also in its components, such as gears, bearings, gaskets and pistons. The friction losses caused at friction points and lubrication points were also considered.

The study was conducted at the Metal Products and Mechanical Engineering strategic competence cluster in the DEMAPP programme, co-ordinated by FIMECC Oy, where practical solutions for minimising friction loss are also being developed. The study was funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), VTT and FIMECC Oy, and the Argonne National Laboratory, Department of Energy (Chicago, USA).

The recent research report on friction loss in cars and the potential for reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions was published in the Tribology International scientific journal. The article can be accessed here.

Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields

2012-01-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

What we are saying here is quite simple. Life’s software is self aware and naturally evolves to take advantage of opportunities. This neatly excuses us from the failing task of producing a mechanistic explanation for evolutionary process and I do agree that we certainly have to go this far as the mechanistic model has weak.

My reservation is trying to believe we are somehow further ahead.

In the meantime, the concept of a morphic field is easily folded into the Cosmology produced by the application of the metric I introduced to physics and mathematics in the middle of 2004. This Cosmology besides replacing the Big Bang Theory is able to instantly recognize the existence of every particle in existence and a similarity can be naturally understood across space.

A morphic field, for want of a better name is implied as a consequence of the metric itself. The existence of a new framework will encourage the same in similar frameworks.

MORPHIC RESONANCE AND MORPHIC FIELDS

An Introduction

by Rupert Sheldrake

http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html

In the hypothesis of formative causation, discussed in detail in my books A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE and THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST, I propose that memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

My interest in evolutionary habits arose when I was engaged in research in developmental biology, and was reinforced by reading Charles Darwin, for whom the habits of organisms were of central importance. As Francis Huxley has pointed out, Darwin’s most famous book could more appropriately have been entitled The Origin of Habits.

Morphic fields in biology

Over the course of fifteen years of research on plant development, I came to the conclusion that for understanding the development of plants, their morphogenesis, genes and gene products are not enough. Morphogenesis also depends on organizing fields. The same arguments apply to the development of animals. Since the 1920s many developmental biologists have proposed that biological organization depends on fields, variously called biological fields, or developmental fields, or positional fields, or morphogenetic fields.

All cells come from other cells, and all cells inherit fields of organization. Genes are part of this organization. They play an essential role. But they do not explain the organization itself. Why not?

Thanks to molecular biology, we know what genes do. They enable organisms to make particular proteins. Other genes are involved in the control of protein synthesis. Identifiable genes are switched on and particular proteins made at the beginning of new developmental processes. Some of these developmental switch genes, like the Hox genes in fruit flies, worms, fish and mammals, are very similar. In evolutionary terms, they are highly conserved. But switching on genes such as these cannot in itself determine form, otherwise fruit flies would not look different from us.

Many organisms live as free cells, including many yeasts, bacteria and amoebas. Some form complex mineral skeletons, as in diatoms and radiolarians, spectacularly pictured in the nineteenth century by Ernst Haeckel. Just making the right proteins at the right times cannot explain the complex skeletons of such structures without many other forces coming into play, including the organizing activity of cell membranes and microtubules.

Ernst Haeckel Tafel_06

Most developmental biologists accept the need for a holistic or integrative conception of living organization. Otherwise biology will go on floundering, even drowning, in oceans of data, as yet more genomes are sequenced, genes are cloned and proteins are characterized.

I suggest that morphogenetic fields work by imposing patterns on otherwise random or indeterminate patterns of activity. For example they cause microtubules to crystallize in one part of the cell rather than another, even though the subunits from which they are made are present throughout the cell.

Morphogenetic fields are not fixed forever, but evolve. The fields of Afghan hounds and poodles have become different from those of their common ancestors, wolves. How are these fields inherited? I propose that that they are transmitted from past members of the species through a kind of non-local resonance, called morphic resonance.

The fields organizing the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory. Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. For example, if rats of a particular breed learn a new trick in Harvard, then rats of that breed should be able to learn the same trick faster all over the world, say in Edinburgh and Melbourne. There is already evidence from laboratory experiments (discussed in A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE) that this actually happens

The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be “stored” inside the brain.

Social groups are likewise organized by fields, as in schools of fish and flocks of birds. Human societies have memories that are transmitted through the culture of the group, and are most explicitly communicated through the ritual re-enactment of a founding story or myth, as in the Jewish Passover celebration, the Christian Holy Communion and the American thanksgiving dinner, through which the past become present through a kind of resonance with those who have performed the same rituals before.

The memory of nature

From the point of view of the hypothesis of morphic resonance, there is no need to suppose that all the laws of nature sprang into being fully formed at the moment of the Big Bang, like a kind of cosmic Napoleonic code, or that they exist in a metaphysical realm beyond time and space.

Before the general acceptance of the Big Bang theory in the 1960s, eternal laws seemed to make sense. The universe itself was thought to be eternal and evolution was confined to the biological realm. But we now live in a radically evolutionary universe.

If we want to stick to the idea of natural laws, we could say that as nature itself evolves, the laws of nature also evolve, just as human laws evolve over time. But then how would natural laws be remembered or enforced? The law metaphor is embarrassingly anthropomorphic. Habits are less human-centred. Many kinds of organisms have habits, but only humans have laws. The habits of nature depend on non-local similarity reinforcement. Through morphic resonance, the patterns of activity in self-organizing systems are influenced by similar patterns in the past, giving each species and each kind of self-organizing system a collective memory.

I believe that the natural selection of habits will play an essential part in any integrated theory of evolution, including not just biological evolution, but also physical, chemical, cosmic, social, mental and cultural evolution (as discussed in THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST).

Habits are subject to natural selection; and the more often they are repeated, the more probable they become, other things being equal. Animals inherit the successful habits of their species as instincts. We inherit bodily, emotional, mental and cultural habits, including the habits of our languages.

Fields of the mind

Morphic fields underlie our mental activity and our perceptions, and lead to a new theory of vision, as discussed in THE SENSE OF BEING STARED AT. The existence of these fields is experimentally testable through the sense of being stared at itself. There is already much evidence that this sense really exists Papers on Staring

You can take part in a staring experiment yourself through this web site. Staring Experiments

The morphic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. They help provide an explanation for telepathy. There is now good evidence that many species of animals are telepathic, and telepathy seems to be a normal means of animal communication, as discussed in my book DOGS THAT KNOW WHEN THEIR OWNERS ARE COMING HOME. Telepathy is normal not paranormal, natural not supernatural, and is also common between people, especially people who know each other well.

In the modern world, the commonest kind of human telepathy occurs in connection with telephone calls. More than 80% of the population say they have thought of someone for no apparent reason, who then called; or that they have known who was calling before picking up the phone in a way that seems telepathic. Controlled experiments on telephone telepathy have given repeatable positive results that are highly significant statistically, as summarized in THE SENSE OF BEING STARED AT and described in detailed technical papers which you can read on this web site. Papers on Telepathy Telepathy also occurs in connection with emails, and anyone who is interested can now test how telepathic they are in the online telepathy test. Experiments Online

The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain though intention and attention. We are already familiar with the idea of fields extending beyond the material objects in which they are rooted: for example magnetic fields extend beyond the surfaces of magnets; the earth’s gravitational field extends far beyond the surface of the earth, keeping the moon in its orbit; and the fields of a cell phone stretch out far beyond the phone itself. Likewise the fields of our minds extend far beyond our brains.

Thunderbird Part II

2012-01-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

Lon’s recent reports on a thunder bird sighting has triggered additional reports to come forward and we now have enough good reports to reach a few conclusions regarding what we are dealing with. Google this blog for Mothman, thunderbird and also pterodactyl to get all the separate reports that we have seen so far. If it becomes better known that someone is collecting reports, I suspect that plenty of additional reports will surface.

First, I have posted on three separate possibilities regarding these huge creatures.

1 One possibility for which we have a few reports is most certainly a modern pterodactyl. The body is feathered and there is little evidence of the head crest shown in the fossil record.

2 The second possibility is some form of giant owl, possibly the Eurasian eagle owl.

3 The third possibility is an unknown American bird that is plausibly a giant eagle which is presently supported by these recent reports. This also fits native descriptions received in times past.

I can now make an extended conjecture regarding these birds.

A soaring large bird conforms nicely to the behavior of a raptor but could still be an owl with its special wing lift capability.

The natural food for such a bird would be deer. Just dropping from the sky would kill the deer and it is possible that the bird could carry the deer a short distance to a safe clearing to consume. Increasing deer herds are likely encouraging a population explosion of these birds.

The bird has fabulous eyesight and avoids humanity easily. It likely has decent eyesight for the night, but does not rely on that for hunting.

Most important we need to understand where the bird safely roosts. It is too large to roost in large trees high in the air and if they roosted in high points they would be spotted every day. The key comes from the reports themselves. They like the ground and become airborne easily from a standing start.

These birds actually roost on the ground itself. The moment one accepts that option other reports turn out to be about disturbing a roosting thunderbird at night. They roost in the thick conifer woods throughout the Eastern US at least.

A comment on this is due here. Large conifers standing alone by the edge of a clearing develop a full skirt around the tree’s base. It is impossible to see easily into that base and little sunlight penetrates. The base itself becomes covered with a thick mat of dry needles and the branches become quite bare. In winter, only a small amount of snow will actually penetrate this skirt canopy. It would provide a comfortable roost and nest for a huge bird as a human can also easily set up inside such a canopy. Importantly, it is possible to retain sightlines out into an open clearing from such a hide.

The point is that we have a secure residence, a constant food supply, and the capacity to possibly hunt day and night. Most important, the roost is never obvious to human hunters who could walk right by. Even better there are thousands of prospective roosts to choose from. The bird itself faces no threats whatsoever from other carnivores who it nicely out masses. That is why the ground is attractive. Particularly when it is kept fairly dry and consists of inches of pine needles.

Reader Submissions: Flying Cryptid Reports

MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2012

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2012/01/reader-submissions-flying-cryptid.html

This past weekend I posted two separate flying cryptid encounters by the same witness in two different locationsand within a two month period this past Summer - Reader Submission: Thunderbird Encounters - Illinois / Wisconsin - Since then I have received several reports of cryptid bird or bird-like sightings. Here are a few of those reports (NOTE: I have not edited these submissions except for some spelling...otherwise, posted 'as is'):

Dear Lon,

After reading your article I wanted to share our encounter with you.

Back in the Summer of 2002 during the late morning to early afternoon we were driving south on Highway 83 leaving Round Lake Beach, Illinois going towards Grayslake when we were startled something large and black crossing in front of the car and landing in small open area of brush to our left. One wing easily filled the entire view ahead of us.

We saw that one huge black bird had landed next to another one and that they were devouring what looked like a small deer or a large dog. It was just for an instant but they were prehistoric looking and larger than the local turkey buzzards. We watched the evening news thinking that some large vultures may have escaped the zoo but we saw no mention of any such creatures. We often wondered if anyone else had seen anything like these large black birds in northern Illinois.

Thank you for posting the article and letting me know that I wasn't the only one who saw this.

Sue R.

**********

During the late 1970s, as I and my brother Mark were late and racing to The Jazz Mobile jazz school in Harlem, I saw what I first thought was a ash on a spider web spiraling in the sky.I thought it was that for it made such smooth tight circles that it was unnatural on such a windless day.

Though I called Mark's attention to it, he continued to run for we did not have time to stop. Jazz Mobile was a weekend school and it's policy was if you were late you were marked absent and two absences you were out. So he was right in telling me to forget it and come on as he went racing toward the school.

At four o'clock when we were on our way home I remembered the ash and looked for it as we were heading back to the subway. As we neared the lot I saw the thing was still there and stopped to try and focus in on it. To my shock I saw what I was looking at was a big bird not too far away from us riding the heat thermals. I called Marks attention to it again and he stopped and his mouth dropped open. This bird was greyish brown and did not flap its wings like other birds did that I had seen do in the skies over New York. It would just barely move them and soar with out doing it again. It was not a seagull, eagle, hawk, osprey, buzzard, or condor. First I thought it was just a big bird until it started flying through thunder heads so it was way up there, and not as close to the ground as we first thought it was.

"How could it be so high up but still look so huge? " I asked aloud. "Do you realize how big that thing has to be, when it comes down?" Mark said his voice tensing up " We better get the hell to the subway."

Where we were standing, we were in an open space for they were renovating the area and most of the old tenements had been torn down and so we were surrounded by vacant lots and abandoned buildings. Mark was right if that thing got into it's mind to come down and grab one of us there was nothing there to hide under or hold on to. At that moment it flew in to a cloud and did not come out of it. We hurried to the subway and went home.

The next weekend as I was getting out of bed a news report came in over NEWS 1010 radio about a man and a woman somewhere upstate New York who had fought off a giant bird that had tried to carry either a child or one of them off. I called the news station with hopes to talk to someone and see if I could get in contact with the couple I had heard about, but I was told that the news I was hearing was on a tape and there was no one for me to talk to in the station. I was told however that the report had come in over the Reuters machine so maybe there is a record of it somewhere in their archives.

If you or anyone can get this report please email me a copy of it like that I will be able to pinpoint the year, month and date of my sighting because that happened a week after my sighting. We never returned to the area again I do not know if it was because of our sighting or not but we did not speak of it. - Posey Gilbert

**********

Near Wisconsin Dells, WI, many years ago a woman claimed that a huge giant bird grabbed up her young daughter and flew away. she reported this to local sheriff's dept. On radio heard that if anyone has seen such a bird to please contact sheriff's dept. Sounded as if the sheriff's dept. Did not believe her story. Outcome? I have no idea.

I did see one that almost took my boyfriend away. It was in a farm field that I saw this huge winged creature. Which reminded me of those dinosaur birds. The ones that its head came to sort of a peak. It came swooping down out of the tree tops; it was flying above from. I was shouting to my boyfriend to run away. he could not understand what I was shouting. Then as he turned his head around and saw this huge bird which was just getting ready to grab him in its claws. He ran and the bird decided to just keep on flying away. My boyfriend was about six feet tall. One wing span on the bird was three times that and more.

It was something we could not believe our eyes. Even so, it did happen and I am the only one alive now, to remember our hearts in horror that one day. Least to think that something had missed a meal.

**********

Lon - I used to live ten miles North of Lake Geneva in the East Troy WI area, and I investigated several reports of UFOs sailing over the rolling farmland and hovering low enough overhead to "hit with a rock", but never ran into any BigBlackBird (BBB) reports there.

However, my brother has had several strange encounters with weird things near his home in Providence, R.I., and one event that affected him the most was a sighting of two giant birds during a dawn fishing trip in Providence's famed Roger Williams Park.

As he was approaching one of the Park's larger interconnected lakes, walking across a tree-studded lawn surrounding a marble music temple, a pair of huge black "crows", with bodies as large as VW bugs, came swooping out of the early morning lake mist, flapping their enormous wings slowly as they swept between the treetops, curving past him thru the swirling fog, then twisting between the large shoreline oaks' intertwining branches and vanishing out over the lake!

They made no sound except the soft whoosh of air over their beating wings; their feathers were jet black, as were what he could see of their eyes; there was no odor. He froze in place as the apparitions flew past, then he rushed down thru the trees to the water's edge and scanned the lake's surface, but the creatures were nowhere to be seen, and never seen there again.

There are many other reports of paranormal activities in and around that Park over the years, including several experienced by my brother.

Thanks - Wayne

A Taste of Islam With Bill Warner

2012-01-18T00:01:00.002-08:00

Is it possible to construct your life around logic while attesting the faith of Islam?

The discussion below reveals a roadmap to ignorance and it was no mistake that a Taliban ascendency in Afghanistan hurled that society backwards into barbarism.

I really want to say that Islam can be redeemed, yet how can a society or a person be redeemed who is taught that his every action needs to be a betrayal of every human relationship.

Islamic societies have emerged only to the extent that the population is in ignorance of or ignores the Islamic Scriptures. Natural instincts take control and it become possible to enter the modern world. Shedding those scriptures is a monumental challenge and it may truly need to be done as an act of self preservation.

The book(s) can be acquired at this link

http://www.politicalislam.com

A Taste of Islam: An Interview with Bill Warner

Posted by Mark Tapson Bio ↓ on Jan 16th, 2012

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/16/a-taste-of-islam-an-interview-with-bill-warner/

In the years after the 9/11 attacks, more non-Muslims than ever before have studied Islam to understand the religious motives of those who had declared war on us. And yet non-believers who are alarmed at what they have found in the foundational texts of Islam are always told by apologists that we don’t understand the true Koran, that we labor under misconceptions about the Religion of Peace, that we don’t understand the complexities of sharia, that our objections and criticisms stem from racism (even though Islam is not a race) and an irrational fear of Islam and its adherents. The problem always seems to lie with us. What is the truth and how can we get to it behind the contradictions and the mystification?

Bill Warner has the answer. The founder and director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI), he holds a PhD in physics and math. He has been a university professor, a businessman, and an applied physicist. But Dr. Warner has also had a lifelong interest in religion and its impact on history, and so the day after 9/11 he decided to make the source texts of Islam available for the average person who wants to know more.

As part of that effort, Mr. Warner has produced a dozen books, including a Koran, a biography of Mohammed and a summary of the political traditions of Mohammed. He writes articles and produces news bulletins that record the suffering of the victims of political Islam. And he has spoken nationally and internationally about Islamic political doctrine.

This Tuesday in Los Angeles, Mr. Warner will present “A Taste of Islam.” See here for information about attending.

Mark Tapson: Mr. Warner, your background is in physics and mathematics. How did you come to devote yourself to the study of religion and to feel compelled to share your insights on political Islam? How did the field of statistics shape your perspective on Islam?

Bill Warner: I was raised in a very religious family and read the Bible a great deal. I studied physics and math, but my interest in religion expanded to the effects of religion on history. After graduate school I was attracted to mysticism and Eastern religions. So, forty years ago, I looked into Sufism, mystical Islam. I went to Sufi dances, learned zikr (a Sufi devotional practice), met Sufi masters and read Sufi literature. But, there was always this jarring background noise of the history of Islam. So, I left my study of Sufism.

Twenty years later as a professor I had Muslims in my classes and they sparked my interest in the Koran. It was a tough read, but I read it cover to cover. The text was literally a puzzle, but I set it aside until 9/11.

On 9/11 as soon as the second plane hit the second tower, I knew it was an act of jihad. I stood up, turned off the TV and I haven’t watched it since. In that moment it came to me that the rest of my life would be spent explaining the meaning of Islamic texts.

I sat down and reread the Koran, read the Sira (Ishaq and Al Tabari), read the Hadith (Bukhari and Muslim). These are the absolute foundational texts of Islam, the source code, the DNA. I was following Sun Tzu’s advice; know your enemy and attack your enemy’s strategy.

My attack was to reveal the Koran, Sira and Hadith in a rational form that was easy to read. This became the Trilogy Project. I assembled a team of volunteers and paid writers and editors. From the beginning, I knew that it was the political aspect of Islam that offered the only chance of success. The religious aspect has too much misunderstood protection of the First Amendment.

MT: What is the Trilogy Project?

BW: The approach to the Trilogy was new and unorthodox, and its only chance of success lay in a scientific approach to the texts. Every paragraph can be verified by going back to the source texts. These books are not opinion, but give us the facts of the sources. For this reason, nearly every paragraph has an index number that allows it to be verified.

The greatest fun was solving the Koran puzzle. The Koran must be the most famous book that is not read or understood. The first step, which is not unique to me, is to lay out the Koran in the correct time sequence. The bookstore Koran is arranged by chapter length, and is not in the right time order. It was created by Uthman, the third caliph. The bookstore Koran is Uthman’s Koran.

If you take the life of Mohammed, the Sira, and lay it out alongside the Koran in the right time order, it is like matching a key to a lock. What is happening to Mohammed is reflected directly in the Koran. So if you integrate the life of Mohammed into the same text as the Koran and use separate fonts, so there is no confusion, you get a recreation of the Koran of Mohammed, the historical Koran. The Koran becomes an epic story that begins with a hymn to god and ends with the triumph over the world—the annihilation of all other civilization.

In 2006, I published the complete foundational doctrine of political Islam in three volumes. The Trilogy Project was finished. Now anyone can read and understand the Koran, Sira and Hadith. You can know Allah and Mohammed from the source texts.

This system of knowledge integrates the entire body of Islam into one view. If it is in the Trilogy, it is Islam. If it is Islam, it must be in the Trilogy.

Once the Trilogy was assembled, there was a bonus prize. Part of making the texts readable included sorting and reordering of the ideas. Once the work was all correlated, concepts leapt off the page. The ideas of Islamic ideology stood out. The simple statistical method of counting the words devoted to ideas clearly showed the themes of the doctrine.

The biggest statistical surprise was the dualistic nature of Islamic doctrine. Islam holds contradictory ideas that are simultaneously true. Now this confounds all Western logic, but this gives Islam its great strength. Islam is peace. Islam is jihad. Islam is a brother to Christianity and Judaism. Islam annihilates Christianity and Judaism.

I find it revealing that 64% of the Koran deals with Kafirs (non-Muslims), not Muslims.

The Trilogy has a greater textual devotion to Jew hatred, 9%, than Mein Kampf. We are led to believe that there are a few verses about jihad in the Koran, but 24% of the Koran written in Medina is about jihad.

My work is from the view point of the Kafir, the non-Muslim. The Kafir is the victim in nearly every verse by Allah and most actions by Mohammed. The grandest lie of Islam is that Muslims have the correct view of Islam. But dualism demands that there are two correct views that contradict each other and cannot be logically aligned. Hence, there is the Kafir-centric view of Islam that is equally valid as the Muslim-centric view. Islam, the universities, and the apologists all insist that only the Muslim view is the true view. This is an error that is not supported by facts.

We can now hold fact-based discussions about Islam. There is no longer any need for “experts”, since we have the supreme experts in our hand — Mohammed and Allah.

MT: You’re speaking in Los Angeles on “A Taste of Islam.” Why is it necessary to appreciate “the full menu” of Islam in order to understand it?

BW: It is impossible to understand Islam based on just the Koran, but it is simple to understand when you look at the entire picture, both of Allah and Mohammed.

Muslims and their apologists want us to look at Islam one verse at a time. But this is like trying to understand a jigsaw puzzle by looking at it one piece at a time. If we put all the pieces together, as a system, the picture is obvious.

MT: Pointing out the theological motivation of Islamic fundamentalists always brings the politically correct objection that they constitute a “tiny minority of extremists” who have “hijacked” a religion of peace and interfaith tolerance. How are we to answer that objection?

BW: The use of the term “extreme” implies that something is being measured, and it is off the chart. There is one and only one measure of Islam and that is its doctrine as found in the Trilogy. For example, Mohammed preached the religion of Islam for thirteen years and made only 150 converts. But when he turned to jihad, ten years later he died, he was the ruler of Arabia and every Arab was a Muslim. Conclusion: jihad is normal, not extreme. But notice that since Islam is dualistic, Muslims can claim that it is peaceful.

As to the claim that the jihadists are few in number, look at war statistics. During WW II only 10% of our population was in the military. Did that mean we were not at war? No.

In war only a few are doing the actual work, the rest of the country backs them with labor, money and morale.

There are four ways to be a jihadist – sword, pen, speech and money. Jihad is incumbent on ALL Muslims; therefore, it is the sixth pillar of Islam.

MT: Especially in the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration wants us to draw a distinction between the terrorists and the “moderate” Islamists we can work with. How do you respond to that?

BW: First, a terrorist is a jihadist, modeled after Mohammed, the supreme jihadist. A moderate Muslim can be one who is not observant or it can be a Muslim who is following the Koran of Mecca, the religious Koran.

The apologists always want to talk about people, Muslims, not doctrine. Remember: when a Muslim is talking to a Kafir, there are twelve verses of the Koran that state that a Muslim is not the friend of a Kafir. Also, Mohammed repeatedly told Muslims to deceive the Kafir if it would advance Islam. There is one Muslim who will tell us the complete truth about Islam and that man is Mohammed.

The iron rule of Islamic doctrine is: if someone is talking about Islam and does not mention Mohammed or Allah (Koran) they are only building castles in the air.

An Islamist wants Sharia. Sharia destroys human rights and Kafir civilization. Why would we want to cooperate with someone who wants Sharia?

We don’t need politicians, religious leaders or academics to explain about Islam, we now have Mohammed and Allah. Forget the opinions of experts. For the first time in history, the common man can read the facts of the Trilogy and find out all of the answers without the “experts.”

Albatross Follows Faster Winds

2012-01-18T00:01:00.001-08:00

This article is stuffed with a lot of conclusions that are really assumptions and surely cannot be properly tested from the data. However, the bird is surviving and will easily expand once our fishing technology is improved and we figure out how to rid ourselves of non biodegradable plastic. Actually, if there were ever a cause that deserves the attention of the UN it is the plastics problem.

It is noted that climate change has been working in the favor of the albatross. The changes themselves appear to be part of normal variation in the Southern Hemisphere. Beyond that we simply do not have much data yet and the picture will certainly look a lot different in another twenty years whatever happens.

I must admit I am getting testy when every report on natural science blames everything on effectively the weather.

Largest bird alters its foraging due to climate change

by Staff Writers

Leipzig, Germany (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

Researchers on Crozet fit a transmitter on a wandering albatross. Credit: David Gremillet/CNRS.

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Largest_bird_alters_its_foraging_due_to_climate_change_999.html

Wandering albatrosses have altered their foraging due to changes in wind fields in the southern hemisphere during the last decades. Since winds have increased in intensity and moved to the south, the flight speed of albatrosses increased and they spend less time foraging. As a consequence, breeding success has improved and birds have gained 1 kilogram.

These are the results of the study of an international research team published in the latest issue of the Science journal. However, these positive consequences of climate change may last short if future wind fields follow predictions of climate change scenarios, researchers warn.

For this study, biologists had combined data on the duration of foraging trips and breeding success over the last 40 years, as well as foraging and body mass over the last 20 years of wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) breeding in Crozet Islands. This archipelago lies approximately in the heart of the southern Indian Ocean (halfway between Madagascar and Antarctica).

It belongs to the French Southern Territories and it is located in the windiest part of the Southern Ocean. The new findings are the result of an international research team from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-CEBC) and the German Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).

Thanks to miniaturised tracking devices, researchers were able to track the foraging movement of albatrosses at a distance of 3500 kilometers from the colony. They found that albatross have altered their search patterns following changes in wind conditions over the past two decades. Females used increasingly more poleward and windy areas for foraging. As a consequence their travel speed increased while the total distance covered during foraging flights did not change.

"This means that they spend less time at sea while incubating the egg and thus the breeding success increases" explains Dr. Henri Weimerskirch of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-CEBC).

Researchers were surprised that both females and males have increased their body mass in one kilogram, which corresponds approximately to one tenth of their total body weight. This could be not only a result of shorter incubation periods on the nest, but also an adaptation to windier conditions.

"The wandering albatross Crozet population has decreased as a result of adult mortality on longline fishing in subtropical waters, especially females since they favour warmer subtropical waters in the north compared to the more southerly distribution of males" says Dr. Maite Louzao Arsuaga, who has been modelling albatross movement from 2009 to 2011 at the UFZ.

"Due to the changing wind conditions, females are now foraging in more southward areas where such fishing is not that widespread". However, the positive effects of changing environmental conditions of the last decades will not last in the future. Climate scenarios predict that westerly winds will move even further south by 2080 and wandering albatrosses might have to fly further to find optimal conditions for flying.

The total population of the wandering albatross is currently estimated at around 8,000 breeding pairs. All populations have shown a decrease at some stage over the last 25 years. This endangered species is threatened primarily by incidental catch in fisheries, especially longline fishing at sea, whereas the introduction of alien species (such as rats or cats) are a key conservation threat for the species on breeding colonies.

Additionally, the accumulation of anthropogenic debris such as plastic and fishing hooks on albatrosses have negative effects on their populations.

Thus, it is important to continue with monitoring programs of population trends and distribution at sea, as well as to undertake effective conservation measures. The foraging habitat of wandering albatrosses is managed by more than one Regional Fisheries Management Organisations, which makes it difficult to implement conservation measures for the species.

The wandering albatross has fascinated people for centuries. With a wingspan of over three meters and a half, it is the largest seabird in the world, surpassing just the Andean condor (Vultur fulvus). This elegant sailor, which spends most of its life flying, breeds on remote subantarctic islands over the Southern Ocean. They travel thousand of kilometers searching for fish and cephalopods like squids, often following ships and feeding on offal.

The plumage of wandering albatrosses is variable, whitening with age. The maximum known age is 55 years old. Since the rearing of chicks takes a whole year, they breed only every second year

Apart from the study published in the latest Science issue, the research team has identified the key marine areas for the conservation of wandering albatrosses in the southern Indian Ocean published in 2011 in the Journal of Applied Ecology. This study provided the first map to support the future development of a network of priority protected areas in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, which are based on habitat predictions.

"Because the species has no natural enemies and is at the top of the food web, it is particularly well suited as an indicator of the health of marine ecosystems," says Dr. Thorsten Wiegand from the UFZ, who supervised thework of Dr. Maite Louzao.

"This could help not only a single species, but the underlying biodiversity associated with pelagic key habitats to protect Southern Ocean. Moreover, we have developed methods of habitat modelling broadly applicable and can be used to assess changes in species distribution within the current global change scenario."

Henri Weimerskirch, Maite Louzao, Sophie de Grissac, Karine Delord (2012): Changes in Wind Pattern Alter Albatross Distribution and Life-History Traits. Science. 335: 221. 13 January 2012; DOI: 10.1126/science.1210270; Louzao, M., Pinaud, D., Peron, C., Delord, K., Wiegand, T., Weimerskirch, H. (2011): Conserving pelagic habitats: seascape modelling of an oceanic top predator. J. Appl. Ecol. 48 (1), 121 - 132.

Post Office Banking

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

What is poorly understood is that a banker really does not want the small deposit business because it is the principal source of costs while if someone merely funded the other side of every loan it gets nice and easy. I think it is called investment banking.

Retail banking is a burden but it is also the price paid to hang out your shingle. Needless to say a tug of war ensues that is worked out over the generations between regulators and bankers to push the envelope. Our present situation is derived completely from that natural push.

Governments who created all this money in the first place need badly to pull it back and the post office is long proven to be an excellent place to do it at the federal level. It needs to also be done at the State level but that is a different story.

The rules were clear after 1933. Investment banking, brokering and retail banking were three separate businesses that stood alone and did not tinker with each others capital. That separation alone prevents human nature from doing what it does best. Speculate!

Until the 1933 – 1998 regime is put back into play and the post office and the States participate in the retail banking business, the US economy will be terrible vulnerable

Saving the Post Office and Postal Banking : The Models of Kiwibank and Japan Post

by Ellen Brown

Global Research, January 9, 2012

Web of Debt - 2011-12-31

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation’s oldest and second largest employer is now under attack. Claiming the Postal Service is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by breaking the backs of the postal workers’ unions and mandating widespread layoffs. But the “crisis” is an artificial one, created by Congress itself.

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which forced the USPS to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees, many of whom hadn’t even been hired yet. Over a mere 10 year period, the USPS was required to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, something no other government or private corporation is required to do. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed, if PAEA had never been enacted, USPS would now be facing a $1.5 billion surplus.

The USPS is a profitable, self-funded venture that is not supported by the taxpayers. It is funded with postage stamps—one of the last vestiges of government-issued money. Stamps are fungible and can be traded at par; and they are backed, not by mere government “fiat,” but by labor. One stamp will buy the labor to transport your letter 3000 miles.

The USPS is one of the few businesses the government is allowed to operate in competition with private companies; it is the only U.S. agency that services all its citizens six days per week; and it is perhaps the last form of communication that protects privacy, since tampering with it is against federal law. In 1999, it employed nearly a million people; and today, it employs over 600,000. Where are those workers to go, when the post office is no more?

To Downsize or Diversify?

Whatever caused the financial woes of the USPS, there is another way to mitigate the crisis than slashing employee benefits and customer services. In a December 21st article in Reader Supported News, Tim Fernholz suggested that instead of focusing on cuts, the post office should approach the problem from a business perspective and find a new way to make money. One way to keep the USPS alive, he says, is for it to include basic banking services in its product line, providing a “public option” in banking:

[R]oughly 9 million Americans don't have a bank account and 21 million rely largely on fringe financial services like usurious check cashers rather than traditional financial institutions. Giving low-income people access to a safe banking system will firm up their economic futures.

The Proud, Forgotten History of Postal Banking

Banking in post offices is not new. Many countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand, have a long and successful history of it; and so does the United States.

From 1911 to 1967, the U.S. Postal Savings System provided a safe and efficient place for customers to save and transfer funds. It issued U.S. Postal Savings Bonds in various denominations that paid annual interest, as well as Postal Savings Certificates and domestic money orders. The U.S. Postal Savings System was set up early in the 20th century to attract the savings of immigrants accustomed to saving at post offices in their native countries, provide safe depositories for people who had lost confidence in private banks, and furnish more convenient depositories for working people than were provided by private banks. (Post offices were then open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week, substantially longer than bankers’ hours.) The postal system paid two percent interest on deposits annually. The minimum deposit was $1 and the maximum was $2,500. Savings in the system spurted to $1.2 billion during the 1930s and jumped again during World War II, peaking in 1947 at almost $3.4 billion.

The U.S. Postal Savings System was shut down in 1967, not because it was inefficient but because it was considered unnecessary after private banks raised their interest rates and offered the same governmental guarantees that the postal savings system had.

The Kiwibank Model: Postal Banks to Serve Local Communities

Postal banks are now thriving in New Zealand, not as a historical artifact but as a popular new innovation. When they were instituted in 2002, it was not to save the post office but to save New Zealand families and small businesses from big-bank predators. By 2001, Australian mega-banks controlled some 80% of New Zealand’s retail banking. Profits went abroad and were maximized by closing less profitable branches, especially in rural areas. The result was to place hardships on many New Zealand families and small businesses.

The New Zealand government decided to launch a state-owned bank that would compete with the Aussies. They called their new bank Kiwibank after their national symbol, the kiwi bird. But the government team planning the new bank faced major challenges. How could they keep costs low while still providing services in communities throughout New Zealand?

Their solution was to open bank branches in post offices. Kiwibank was established as a subsidiary of the government-owned New Zealand Post. The Kiwibank website states:

Back in 2002, we launched with a thought: New Zealand needs a better banking alternative—a bank that provides real value for money, that has Kiwi values at heart, and that keeps Kiwi money where it belongs—right here, in New Zealand.

So we set up shop in PostShops throughout the country, putting us in more locations than any other bank in New Zealand literally overnight (without wasting millions on new premises!).

Suddenly, New Zealanders had a choice in banking. In an early “move your money” campaign, they voted with their feet. In an island nation of only 4 million people, in its first five years Kiwibank attracted 500,000 customers away from the big banks. It consistently earns the nation’s highest customer satisfaction ratings, forcing the Australia-owned banks to improve their service in order to compete.

Postal Banking Japan-style: Funding the Government’s Debt with Its Own Bank

Another interesting model is Japan Post Bank, now the largest publicly-owned bank in the world. Japan Post is also the largest holder of personal savings, making it the world’s largest credit engine. Most money today originates as bank loans, and deposits are the magic pool from which this credit-money is generated. Japan Post uses its excess credit power to buy government bonds. By 2007, it was the holder of one-fifth of the nation’s debt. As noted by Joe Weisenthal, writing in Business Insider in February 2010: Because Japan's enormous public debt is largely held by its own citizens, the country doesn't have to worry about foreign investors losing confidence. If the U.S. Postal Service were to add commercial banking to its product line, it too could use its own bank-generated credit to help relieve its debt problems. The USPS is being forced to fund the health care costs of its employees for 75 years into the future, and a large portion of this unreasonable burden is composed of interest charges. According to German researcher Margrit Kennedy, interest composes on average about 40% of the cost of all goods and services. That suggests that eliminating interest could reduce the USPS debt by about 40%. If the USPS became a bank, it could use the credit generated from customer deposits either to service its own debt directly—something that would effectively be interest-free, since it would own the bank and would get the profits back—or by buying interest-bearing government bonds. The interest earned on the bonds could then be used to pay the interest on the USPS debt.

Other government agencies and local governments could improve their balance sheets in the same way. Public institutions with sizeable capital and revenues can cut their infrastructure costs by about 40% by establishing their own banks, allowing them to avoid a massive toll in interest to private banker middlemen.

The Post Office Deserves to Be Preserved

The U.S. Postal Service is a venerable institution that is older than the Constitution. It should be saved, and it can be saved. One way is to support HR 1351, a bill introduced by Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts to repeal the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act.

Another way is for the post office to combine mail services with teller services, restoring the Postal Savings System of an earlier era. The result could be not only to save the Post Office but to establish a competitive alternative to a runaway Wall Street banking monopoly that even Congress seems unable to control. ______________

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

Did TNA Predate RNA?

2012-01-17T00:01:00.003-08:00

It is suggested that the simpler TNA may have led the development of RNA and DNA. I do not think that this particularly makes the problem of discovering the pathway to manufacturing life any easier except to confirm the value of general principals with the related molecules.

The problem itself is huge although the good news is that it is clear that the living foundational cells are readily shipped across space itself implying that we have had all of the age of the universe to both solve the problem and then distribute the solution into every nook and cranny. The mere fact that living cells exist deep in the Earth’s crust informs of this.

Terra almost certainly began with a full palette of beginning organisms to kick it all off. Proving it of course is the problem until we land on our more live forgiving planets and check them out. I am sure that even Mars will have ample surprises in this regard.

I also think that a concerted effort can wring out a fairly decent protocol for the formation of complex molecules in general and from which the useful selection could emerge and continue on. One needs to recall that we are buried in the mass produced by the successful version and that others were subsumed long ago.

Did an earlier genetic molecule predate DNA and RNA

by Richard Harth for the Biodesign Institute

Tempe AZ (SPX) Jan 16, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Did_an_earlier_genetic_molecule_predate_DNA_and_RNA_999.html

In the chemistry of the living world, a pair of nucleic acids-DNA and RNA-reign supreme. As carrier molecules of the genetic code, they provide all organisms with a mechanism for faithfully reproducing themselves as well as generating the myriad proteins vital to living systems.

Yet according to John Chaput, a researcher at the Center for Evolutionary Medicine and Informatics, at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, it may not always have been so.

Chaput and other researchers studying the first tentative flickering of life on earth have investigated various alternatives to familiar genetic molecules. These chemical candidates are attractive to those seeking to unlock the still-elusive secret of how the first life began, as primitive molecular forms may have more readily emerged during the planet's prebiotic era.

One approach to identifying molecules that may have acted as genetic precursors to RNA and DNA is to examine other nucleic acids that differ slightly in their chemical composition, yet still possess critical properties of self-assembly and replication as well as the ability to fold into shapes useful for biological function.

According to Chaput, one interesting contender for the role of early genetic carrier is a molecule known as TNA, whose arrival on the primordial scene may have predated its more familiar kin. A nucleic acid similar in form to both DNA and RNA, TNA differs in the sugar component of its structure, using threose rather than deoxyribose (as in DNA) or ribose (as in RNA) to compose its backbone.

In an article released online in the journal Nature Chemistry, Chaput and his group describe the Darwinian evolution of functional TNA molecules from a large pool of random sequences. This is the first case where such methods have been applied to molecules other than DNA and RNA, or very close structural analogues thereof.

Chaput says "the most important finding to come from this work is that TNA can fold into complex shapes that can bind to a desired target with high affinity and specificity". This feature suggests that in the future it may be possible to evolve TNA enzymes with functions required to sustain early life forms.

Nearly every organism on earth uses DNA to encode chunks of genetic information in genes, which are then copied into RNA. With the aid of specialized enzymes known as polymerases, RNA assembles amino acids to form essential proteins.

Remarkably, the basic functioning of the genetic code remains the same, whether the organism is a snail or a senator, pointing to a common ancestor in the DNA-based microbial life already flourishing some 3.5 billion years ago.

Nevertheless, such ancestors were by this time quite complex, leading some scientists to speculate about still earlier forms of self-replication. Before DNA emerged to play its dominant role as the design blueprint for life, a simpler genetic world dominated by RNA may have prevailed.

The RNA world hypothesis as it's known alleges that ribonucleic acid (RNA) acted to store genetic information and catalyze chemical reactions much like a protein enzyme, in an epoch before DNA, RNA and proteins formed the integrated system prevalent today throughout the living world.

While the iconic double helix of DNA is formed from two complimentary strands of nucleotides, attached to each other by base pairing in a helical staircase, RNA is single-stranded. The two nucleic acids DNA and RNA are named for the type of sugar complex that forms each molecule's sugar-phosphate backbone-a kind of molecular thread holding the nucleotide beads together.

Could a simpler, self-replicating molecule have existed as a precursor to RNA, perhaps providing genetic material for earth's earliest organisms? Chaput's experiments with the nucleic acid TNA provide an attractive case.

To begin with, TNA uses tetrose sugars, named for the four-carbon ring portion of their structure. They are simpler than the five-carbon pentose sugars found in both DNA and RNA and could assemble more easily in a prebiotic world, from two identical two-carbon fragments.

This advantage in structural simplicity was originally thought to be an Achilles' heel for TNA, making its binding behavior incompatible with DNA and RNA. Surprisingly, however, research has now shown that a single strand of TNA can indeed bind with both DNA and RNA by Watson-Crick base pairing-a fact of critical importance if TNA truly existed as a transitional molecule capable of sharing information with more familiar nucleic acids that would eventually come to dominate life.

In the current study, Chaput and his group use an approach known as molecular evolution to explore TNA's potential as a genetic biomolecule. Such work draws on the startling realization that fundamental Darwinian properties-self-replication, mutation and selection-can operate on non-living chemicals.

Extending this technique to TNA requires polymerase enzymes that are capable of translating a library of random DNA sequences into TNA. Once such a pool of TNA strands has been generated, a process of selection must successfully identify members that can perform a given function, excluding the rest.

As a test case, the team hoped to produce through molecular evolution, a TNA strand capable of acting as a high-specificity, high-affinity binding receptor for the human protein thrombin.

They first attempted to demonstrate that TNA nucleotides could attach by complementary base pairing to a random sequence of DNA, forming a hybrid DNA-TNA strand. A DNA polymerase enzyme assisted the process.

Many of the random sequences, however, contained repeated sections of the guanine nucleotide, which had the effect of pausing the transcription of DNA into TNA. Once random DNA libraries were built excluding guanine, a high yield of DNA-TNA hybrid strands was produced.

The sequences obtained were 70 nucleotides in length, long enough Chaput says, to permit them to fold into shapes with defined binding sites. The DNA-TNA hybrids were then incubated with the target molecule thrombin.

Sequences that bound with the target were recovered and amplified through PCR. The DNA portion was removed and used as a template for further amplification, while the TNA molecules displaying high-affinity, high specificity binding properties were retained.

Additionally, the binding affinity of the evolved and selected TNA molecules was tested against two other common proteins, for which they displayed no affinity, strengthening the case that a highly specific binding molecule had resulted from the group's directed evolution procedure.

Chaput suggests that issues concerning the prebiotic synthesis of ribose sugars and the non-enzymatic replication of RNA may provide circumstantial evidence of an earlier genetic system more readily produced under primitive earth conditions.

Although solid proof that TNA acted as an RNA precursor in the prebiotic world may be tricky to obtain, Chaput points to the allure of this molecule as a strong candidate, capable of storing information, undergoing selectionprocesses and folding into tertiary structures that can perform complex functions. This result provides the motivation to explore TNA as an early genetic system.

Chaput is optimistic that major questions about the prebiotic synthesis of TNA, its role in the origin and early evolution of life on earth, and eventual genetic takeover by RNA will, over time, be answered.

Bee Colony Destruction Continues

2012-01-17T00:01:00.002-08:00

I posted on this topic four years ago and we had plenty of evidence then that is why these insecticides were withdrawn in

France

and actually I believe from much of the EU. It obviously has not gotten better and losing a third of the apiaries per year is no longer a short term or sporadic effect. It is the natural result of toxin accumulation.

The insanity is that Bayer is not making enough with this product line that withdrawing it matters much. The real cost is that it would immediately give credence to the resultant class action suit and generate billions in claims.

The government made a mistake and the government needs to suspend the product to get everyone off the pointy end.

Operators are now pretty well onto the source of the problem and were they can they are avoiding areas of usage. Unfortunately, that is not good enough if we are losing a third of our colonies every year.

In the meantime an army of well rewarded researchers chirp in with claims that the science is not certain. This is an insult to the least informed individual and a mere coverup.

Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure

by Brian Wallheimer for Purdue News

West Lafayette, IN (SPX) Jan 13, 2012

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Honeybee_deaths_linked_to_seed_insecticide_exposure_999.html

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil - up to two years after treated seed was planted - on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, according to Greg Hunt, a Purdue professor of behavioral genetics, honeybee specialist and co-author of the findings. Hunt said no one factor is to blame, though scientists believe that others such as mites and insecticides are all working against the bees, which are important for pollinating food crops and wild plants.

"It's like death by a thousand cuts for these bees," Hunt said.

Krupke and Hunt received reports that bee deaths in 2010 and 2011 were occurring at planting time in hives near agricultural fields. Toxicological screenings performed by Brian Eitzer, a co-author of the study from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, for an array of pesticides showed that the neonicotinoids used to treat corn and soybean seed were present in each sample of affected bees. Krupke said other bees at those hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

Seeds of most annual crops are coated in neonicotinoid insecticides for protection after planting. All corn seed and about half of all soybean seed is treated. The coatings are sticky, and in order to keep seeds flowing freely in the vacuum systems used in planters, they are mixed with talc. Excess talc used in the process is released during planting and routine planter cleaning procedures.

"Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment. The dust is quite light and appears to be quite mobile," Krupke said.

Krupke said the corn pollen that bees were bringing back to hives later in the year tested positive for neonicotinoids at levels roughly below 100 parts per billion.

"That's enough to kill bees if sufficient amounts are consumed, but it is not acutely toxic," he said.

On the other hand, the exhausted talc showed extremely high levels of the insecticides - up to about 700,000 times the lethal contact dose for a bee.

"Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment," Krupke said.

"This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen. This might be why we found these insecticides in pollen that the bees had collected and brought back to their hives."

Krupke suggested that efforts could be made to limit or eliminate talc emissions during planting.

"That's the first target for corrective action," he said. "It stands out as being an enormous source of potential environmental contamination, not just for honeybees, but for any insects living in or near these fields. The fact that these compounds can persist for months or years means that plants growing in these soils can take up these compounds in leaf tissue or pollen."

Although corn and soybean production does not require insect pollinators, that is not the case for most plants that provide food. Krupke said protecting bees benefits agriculture since most fruit, nut and vegetable crop plants depend upon honeybees for pollination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the value of honeybees to commercial agriculture at $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

Hunt said he would continue to study the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids. He said for bees that do not die from the insecticide there could be other effects, such as loss of homing ability or less resistance to disease or mites.

"I think we need to stop and try to understand the risks associated with these insecticides," Hunt said.

The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative funded the research.

Saudi Oil Maxed Out

2012-01-17T00:01:00.001-08:00

The problem is that it appears that Saudi Arabia is producing flat out to sustain supply and it will not be able to add 500,000 bpd on demand which it has been able to do for forty years. This means that an additional supply shock will actually disrupt markets hugely.

This also why

Iran

has suddenly become bellicose in order to maximize their advantage which is certainly short-term as new production is now starting to climb quickly. The real window is small and perhaps Iran thinks to play the card they have now.

The next two years will settle this threat once and for all as both new oil and new energy begin to bite and as the new US pipeline system allows the US to back out of the oil import business.

Present pricing allows full out production investment while yet not curtailing demand. That would happen quickly with only a small upward adjustment.

Saudi oil output 'stretched to the limit'

by Staff Writers

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (UPI) Jan 13, 2012

http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Saudi_oil_output_stretched_to_the_limit_999.html

Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil exporter, has for decades used spare production capacity to cover shortfalls in output by other oil states and prevent prices spiraling in times of crisis.

But questions are being asked now whether the kingdom will be able to come to the rescue if Iran blocks Persian Gulf exports -- at least one fifth of the world total -- in its current confrontation with the West.

On paper, Saudi Arabia has spare capacity totaling around 2 million barrels per day.

Earlier this year, it raised its output to 10 million bpd, in part to pick up the slack from the drop in output by Libya because of its seven-month civil war and other drops in strife-torn Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

That's the highest level for the kingdom in 30 years.

On Dec. 14, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which includes Saudi Arabia, increased its production ceiling from 24.84 million bpd to 30 million bpd.

But apart from Saudi Arabia and possibly the United Arab Emirates, no OPEC member has any spare production capability to act as a cushion in the event of a major supply crisis.

So the kingdom, as it has so often in the past, will be expected to play a crucial role if the global oil supply is heavily disrupted, as it would be if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

In November, Khalid al-Falihj, chief executive of state-owned Saudi Aramco, disclosed that Riyadh has halted a planned $100 billion expansion after the kingdom had reached 12 million bpd capacity.

He said the pressure on Saudi Arabia to raise its output capacity had "substantially reduced."

The kingdom launched the expansion program in the early 2000s, when production was pegged at 8.5 million bpd. The target was 15 million bpd.

Energy analysts said the decision to curtail the drive to boost production capacity may have stemmed from pressing budgetary problems as the ruling House of Saud grapples with the pro-democracy uprisings that have convulsed Arab republics for the last year.

"The current focus of Saudi Arabia is on domestic social spending on the back of the Arab Spring," observed Amrita Sen, an oil industry analyst with Barclays capital in London.

King Abdallah announced a social welfare and public spending package worth $130 billion earlier this year in a bid to stifle any demand for political reform by the kingdom's 12 million citizens.

Industry sources say Saudi Arabia would have difficulty sustaining production rates higher than its declared capacity for lengthy periods.

It has declared reserves of 262 billion barrels of oil, the highest in the world. But these are what the Saudis say they are, and there have been suspicions for some time that Riyadh's reserves may not be what they seem.

In February 2011, diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to the State Department, released by WikiLeaks, cited Aramco's senior vice president for exploration, Abdallah al-Saif, as claiming Saudi Arabia had 716 billion barrels of total reserves, of which 51 percent was recoverable.

He further claimed that in 20 years Aramco would have reserves of 900 billion barrels.

That's roughly the combined reserves of the seven other leading producers, including Venezuela, Canada, Iran, Iraq and Russia.

But the U.S. diplomats quoted Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and Aramco's former head of exploration, as warning in November 2007 that the kingdom's production capacity target of 12.5 million bpd, needed to keep a lid on prices, could not be achieved.

This, he said, was because the kingdom's reserves may have been over-estimated by as much as 300 billion barrels, nearly 40 percent.

One cable said that in al-Husseini's view, "once 50 percent of original proven reserves had been reached Â… a steady output in decline will ensue and no amount of effort will be able to stop it."

The U.S. consul in Riyadh observed that al-Husseini "is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."

Al-Husseini, who had publicly questioned Saudi Arabia's state reserves before his encounter with the U.S. diplomats, later claimed he had been misrepresented in the cables.

It's possible he was pressured into doing that. But even so, gulf-based sources believe Riyadh could have a tough time covering shortages stemming from a serious confrontation in the gulf.

China

oil firm slams 'puzzling' US sanctions

Beijing (AFP) Jan 14, 2012 - A Chinese oil firm which the US placed sanctions on saying it was the largest seller of refined petroleum products to Iran has denied the claim as "fiction", state media said Saturday.

Washington Thursday said Zhuhai Zhenrong brokered delivery of more than $500 million in gasoline to Iran from July 2010 to January 2011 and put in place sanctions barring the Beijing-based company from doing business in the US.

The sanctions came a day after US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met Premier Wen Jiabao and other Chinese leaders to ask for help squeezing Iran's key oil revenues and pushing Tehran to halt its nuclear ambitions.

"The accusations that we export refined oil to Iran is complete fiction. We have never done that. The sanctions are truly puzzling," a representative for Zhuhai Zhenrong was quoted as saying in The Global Times newspaper.

Calls to the company went unanswered on Saturday and China's ministry of foreign affairs could not be reached for comment.

Zhuhai Zhenrong defended itself as Wen left Saturday for the Middle East to visit key oil-producing nations as rising tensions over Iran's nuclear programme spark fears of major oil supply disruptions.

Energy-hungry China relies on Iran for 11 percent of its oil imports.

Vice foreign minister Cui Tiankai this week warned against making any links between China's trade relations with Iran and pressure on Tehran's nuclear programme.

The US sanctions, also placed on companies from Singapore and the United Arab Emirates -- where Wen will make a stop -- bar the three firms from receiving US export licences, trade support from the US Export Import Bank and loans over $10 million from US financial institutions.

Zhuhai Zhenrong's website said the company, founded in 1994, had imported a total of 150 million tonnes of crude oil by the end of 2010 and has a long-term contract to import fuel oil from the National Iranian Oil Company.

"The sanctions don't make any difference to our company's business because we have never had any business cooperation with any United States companies," a representative, Zheng Mei, told the Legal Mirror newspaper on Friday.

Wen, on his Middle East trip, will first spend the weekend in Saudi Arabia -- the largest provider of oil to China -- before going to the UAE on Monday and then on to Qatar on January 19.

More Thunderbirds

2012-01-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here is another eyewitness report of a large black bird. It also noticeably makes little of the bird’s beak.

The observations themselves support the existence of a nearby nesting pair, with the larger one showing aggression to fend of the noisy motorcycles. I have posted the only creditable photo from the late nineteenth century that claims to be this bird. I also have posted another photo that surfaced this past year of what is obviously a pterodactyl which has also been observed in the USA. These are two separate creatures as one cannot mistake close up the one from the other.

The pterodactyl photo provides us with valuable new information also. The body is fully feathered while the wings are not. The observations made also confirmed exactly this but it was unexpected. Now we have a clear understanding of the creature’s appearance unless this was truly faked, except that would require a small group of cooperative loiers. Of course, I would like to see someone come forward, except this certainly was in someone’s photo collection and everyone involved is now dead.

I am certain that the pterodactyl is a nocturnal fisher that dives into the lake or sea in search of prey. The problem with the other creature is that its beak is so small. What does it actually eat?

That is the main problem here. It is not a carrion eater or we would be seeing it by the side of the road every day. Nocturnal habits are also likely but that makes eating nuts and insects pretty difficult.

That leaves me with a couple of ideas. Firstly, I am ruling out game hunting for rabbits in particular. It can be done at night, but the owl is designed for it and I still do not think we are looking at a giant owl here or are we? We this bird cannot grab rabbits then can it eat conifer cones? That food supply is also continuous and is ample. It can also be accessed at night. Otherwise every woodsman would see this creature about.

We are really back to our Mothman conjecture in which we proposed a giant owl. Owls also have a small beak that is not obvious.

Reader Submission: Thunderbird Encounters - Illinois / Wisconsin

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2012

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2012/01/reader-submission-thunderbird.html

I recently received the following email that references 2 separate flying cryptid encounters in two different locations, within a two month period this past Summer and by the same witness! Has anyone else seen something similar recently?

This summer (June 19, 2011) I had two encounters with giant black birds; when I say giant I mean I saw (at two separate times) birds that were all black in color with wing spans as big as a small plane 14 feet or bigger.

My first encounter was early one summer morning when I was returning from the Quad Cities. I was traveling on my motorcycleon Route 30 just past I-88 when I noticed a big black object in the distance sitting in the middle of the road. I slowed my motorcycle down as I got closer to the object. At first I thought it was a black bear sitting in the road but as I drove closer to the object I soon learned it wasn’t a bear at all. The black object was a giant BLACK BIRD which stood at least 4 to 5 feet tall. I was in awe and a little bit scared at the sight of the GIANT BIRD. I stopped my motorcycle immediately hoping that the beast would not attack me. I then looked behind me in hopes of seeing anyone else who might be witnessing this amazing sight, but of course just like in the movies there was no one else on the road. Realizing it was just me and the GIANT BIRD, my heart began to race with thoughts of being attacked; I slowly pulled in the clutch and put the motorcycle in gear just in case I had to make a quick getaway. The GIANT BIRD heard the noise of the gear shifting. It then looked directly at me for a brief moment, swung open its massive wings (which were at least 14 feet long), stood up right, then leaped off the ground and took off in flight. The bird looked like a small black plane and when it flew by the trees the branches were swaying back and forth. I sat on my motorcycle watching the bird fly out of sight.

I still do not know what kind of creature it was that I encountered. I have been looking on line at several different kind of birds but have yet to find the bird that I saw. The only bird that comes even close to what I saw was a condor but the bird I saw did not have a head like a condor nor did it look like that of a turkey buzzard or vulture plus this creature was much larger than a condor. I almost wonder if this was just a freak of nature; or possibly a prehistoric bird. Could it be possible that there are still some type of prehistoric birds still in existence? Trust me I am not crazy. I have recently seen pictures of the legendary Thunder Birds and that is exactly what this bird looked like.

My second encounter with a giant black bird was in August of 2011. My friends and I were traveling on our motorcycles near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on some back road when all of a sudden a giant black bird appeared out of nowhere. The bird was obliviously mad at the noise of all of our motorcycles or something because it took a dive at the couple who were traveling in front of my wife and I. The giant bird actually dove at them causing them to swerve on their motorcycle. The bird then circled around them and tried to poop on them; yes I said poop on them! I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Luckily the poop missed them. I am not exaggerating when I say the stuff that came out of the creature was much larger than that of a humans. It was disgusting! On a positive note there was ten of us who witnessed this giant bird. Once again none of us knew exactly what kind of bird it was that we encountered. Just like I had described before the giant bird was all black with a massive wing span and its head was not like that of a condor.

I couldn’t believe that I was so fortunate to witness this massive bird again and I was so happy that my friends were with me to see it as well. I had told my friends about the bird that I had seen in June but I don’t think that any of them really believed me. Now they know that I am not crazy and are obviously convinced that the Giant Black Bird does exist.

What is really kind of scary is that I do not believe that I saw the same bird twice; I truly believe that I saw two different birds that are of the same species. How I came to this conclusion is simple the first bird was bigger than the second bird.

I only hope that anyone who reads this takes this as a real encounter and just not as another fish story. I have ten witnesses to confirm one of my sightings. I only wish I had a picture too but obviously I can’t take pictures while I am driving a motorcycle.

Oh well, believe it or not that is my story and I am sticking to it.

Please let me know if anyone else has encountered one of these Giant Black Birds.

Extended connectivity Key to IQ

2012-01-16T00:01:00.005-08:00

This is an important finding in a field that has been mostly confused. It also puts my own observations on the topic on a sound physical basis. I have always had a keen interest in my own talents and their limitations and where they prosper.

For the record I do not have a photo graphic memory which would have made life simpler to say the least. What I do have is a profoundly connective memory which I have assiduously spent my life feeding data to while constantly searching for connections at the same time.

This has led to a whole range of discovery over my lifetime.

One of my best stories there is a discovery I made in which I recalled a statement made by my grade eleven chemistry teacher forty years before, a pattern of conflicting claims regarding the nature of waters sourced from different locales, other discussions on spectroscopy, additional intuitions all leading to a conjecture able to prevent the loss of life caused by third degree burns and many other medical benefits as well as solving a forgotten problem first posed in the early nineteenth century.

Yet if you asked me to remember the name of my grade eleven teacher or a specific reference to the facts just stated, I would be hard pressed. If it was not important it appears that the connection is not particularly strong.

I have noted a long time ago the simple memory no matter how good is often weak on derivative logic. I think this is because the mind needs to overcome emotional loading as the information is been absorbed and a super efficient memory often makes this unnecessary.

Now we know that extended connectivity is what actually matters and we will possibly learn how to encourage this particular trait. I do not think we will be quick at it, but it would be nice to know how to encourage it a little.

What if humans could be made twice as intelligent?

Neuroscientist foresees more solutions to global ills, but little change in social skills

Mauricio Lima / AFP - Getty Images file

An actual human brain is displayed inside a glass box as part of an interactive exhbition titled "Brain: A World Inside Your Head."

By Natalie Wolchover

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45998325/ns/technology_and_science-science/

You might someday be much, much smarter than you are now. At least that's the hope of neuroscientists focused on understanding the basis of intelligence.

They have discovered that the brains of people with high IQs tend to be highly integrated, with neural paths connecting distant brain regions, while less intelligent people's brains build simpler, shorter routes. But no one knows why some brains construct much longer-range connections than others.

"When the brain mechanisms that underlie intelligence are understood, it is theoretically possible that those mechanisms can be tweaked to increase IQ," said Richard Haier, a neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California at Irvine who studies intelligence. For the first time in human history, he said, "the concept that intelligence can be increased is reasonable."

It's a titillating thought but, considering the aphorism "ignorance is bliss," one might wonder: Would it really be better to be brainier? What would life and society be like if we all suddenly became, say, twice as intelligent?

For simplicity, imagine that instead of our current mean IQ score of 100, humans had an average score of 200. (Experts say this isn't a true "doubling" of intelligence because the IQ scale doesn't start at zero — and furthermore, the test isn't actually designed to yield a score as high as 200 — but we will set aside these qualifications for the purpose of argument.)

According to Earl Hunt, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington and president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, approximately one person in 10 billion would have an IQ of 200. With a current world population of 7 billion, there may or may not be one such person alive today, and in any case, his or her identity is unknown. However, the 17th-century genius Isaac Newton, discoverer of gravity, calculus and more, is sometimes estimated to have had an IQ of 200 (though he never took an IQ test).

Using him as an archetype, what if we were all a bunch of Newtons? Would the world be much more advanced than it is today?

Self-actualization

Haier believes greater intelligence, which he defines as the ability to learn faster and remember more, would be highly advantageous on an individual scale.

"Experiencing the world with a higher IQ might be more interesting for most people. They might enjoy reading more, might have a greater depth of appreciation for certain things and more insight into life," he told Life's Little Mysteries.

Furthermore, IQs of 200 would allow us to pursue activities and careers that most interest us, not just those we're mentally capable of, Haier said. We could master new languages in a few weeks, for example, or become brain surgeons.

Smarter humans would also be healthier and longer-living, the scientists said, because they'd have a better grasp of what behavior leads to these attributes.

"Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and even more, managing a chronic illness such as diabetes, can be quite cognitively challenging. That's the sort of challenge intelligent people can meet… by definition," Hunt wrote in an email.

Social skills

Society would not benefit quite as much as individuals from a mass intelligence boost. Although people like to blame social problems on human ignorance and stupidity, the scientists say removing these factors would not lead to the emergence of a harmonious Utopia. Greater intelligence does not come hand-in-hand with a greater ability to cooperate.

"Intelligence is independent of personality and emotion, so you can have very intelligent people who are also just kind ofcrazy people," Haier said. "Even if everyone had an IQ of 200, you'd have exactly the same range of personalities as you have now, and because that's a determining factor in how good your society is, you won't necessarily have a better society."

Again, consider Isaac Newton: Along with his off-the-charts smarts, he was also a notorious misanthrope.

While petty-crime rates would fall in a society of Newtons, Hunt speculated that white-collar crimes, such as banking scams and cover-ups by pharmaceutical companies, might increase and even grow more sophisticated. On the other hand, so would crime-fighting. "The evil corporate villains would be smarter than ever, but so would the government officials who were writing and enforcing the safety regulations! Who would win? Who knows?" he wrote.

Despite these issues, there's a very good chance that higher-functioning brains would help us invent technologies to fix some of our bigger problems. Haier explained that just as a team of 100 engineers is more likely to come up with a remarkable innovation than a team of 10 engineers (because there's more total brainpower working on the job), having 7 billion "geniuses" on Earth would likely lead to solutions to some currently intractable issues. We might figure out a hyper-efficient way to desalinate saltwater, for example, or tap into a limitless alternative-energy source.

Because both those advances would produce a greater abundance of resources, they would likely minimize societal conflict — despite some humans being just as nasty as ever.

Loss of faith

According to Hunt, there's evidence to suggest that many humans, if significantly smarter, would lose their belief in God

"There is a small tendency for people with high scores to be more liberal in their social attitudes andless likely to accept strong religious beliefs. This makes sense; we can know things by reasoning or we can accept something on faith. If we all became very good reasoners, there would probably be a small shift to preferring reasoned over faith-based explanations of the phenomenon of life," he wrote.

Some people would undoubtedly continue to accept faith-based cosmologies, however, as there have been many examples in history of highly intelligent andreligious people, Hunt noted.

Looking smart

Confounding the stereotype of the nerdy brainiac with suspenders and thick glasses, Hunt mentioned one other change that would be expected to occur if we all became smarter. "People would be better looking!" he wrote. A study from Harvard University found a significant correlation between peoples' test scores and how physically attractive other people rate them to be, he explained, and extrapolating the finding up to people with IQs of 200 implies that, in our world of super geniuses, an "average-looking person" would move up to the top 15th percentile on our current scale of looks.

Even if the extrapolation isn't quite accurate — if the correlation between intelligence and attractiveness breaks down past a certain range — humanity might at least be better at things like exercising and grooming.

"I think what would happen is that there would be fewer homely-looking people; especially people who are unattractive because they are slovenly," he explained. "Intelligent people are aware that looking badly is a handicap in getting jobs, being invited to parties, etc."

One final thought: Even when scientists finally do discover the mechanism for ramping up intelligence, it is highly improbable that everyone would be given an immediate IQ boost. The "haves" would surely benefit from the neuroscience research more than the "have-nots," and this invites a further line of inquiry. As Hunt put it, "Suppose that in some future society, part of the population, say 10 percent, became hugely intelligent, while the rest stayed where we are now or even dropped behind a bit. What would that do to society?"

Barley Grass Indicated for Type II Diabetes

2012-01-16T00:01:00.004-08:00

This is a short survey on barley grass and the quick take home is that it is the one specific thing that you can consume with the expectation of a significant improvement independent of the usual protocols used by diabetics. The obvious implication is to fold it into your treatment plan.

Of course, I would like to see a range of grass products tested and discover how the nutrient profile stands up generally. A malnourished grass can hardly be much of a solution. All of them will supply plenty of chlorophyll at least.

This is all a fairly new product in the health care world so expect to see more science develop on all this.

In fact the wide present range of prospective food stuffs is beyond anyone’s ability to make best choices easily and we are sent heying after the new fashion put up while our ancestors got by on a rather plain selection.

Barley grass improves health in type 2 diabetics and reduces cholesterol

Friday, January 13, 2012 by: Donna Earnest Pravel

NaturalNews) Barley grass (Hordeum vulgare) has been a favorite among health enthusiasts for centuries. It is usually consumed as a powder or liquid, but is also used to make barley malt. Barley grass is considered a superfood, because of its incredibly dense nutritional profile. It contains a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and amino acids. Barley grass contains an abundance of chlorophyll, and is rich in Vitamins A, B, C, iron and calcium. It also contains high amounts of the electrolyte minerals potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus. Barley grass is rich in plant enzymes and antioxidants.

Clinical studies involving the ingestion of barley grass powder show that it improves the health of diabetic patients. Barley grass has been proven to reduce cholesterol and can be used as a weight loss supplement.

Barley grass powder improves the health of type 2 diabetes patients

Type 2 diabetes mellitis is by far the most prevalent type of diabetes among adults. In a 2010 medical study, it was suggested that medicinal plants might have therapeutic effects on complex diseases such as diabetes. Barley grass powder was selected because of its reported benefits. The experimental group of diabetics took 1.2 g of barley grass capsules every day for sixty days. The control group took no supplementation. No other changes were made, and no other alternative measures were taken. The patients' fasting blood sugar and lipid profiles were taken at the beginning and end of the study.

Supplementing with barley grass powder caused a significant fall in the fasting blood sugar level of the experimental group. No change was noted in the control group. There was a 5.1% reduction in overall cholesterol levels after two months. The researchers also noted that the risk of coronary heart disease was significantly reduced in the diabetics who took barley grass supplements.

Barley grass extract reduces cholesterol and scavenges free radicals

In a clinical study involving men with high LDL and total blood cholesterol levels, taking 15 grams of barley grass extract daily significantly lowered cholesterol levels. In addition, HDL, which is commonly referred to as "happy" or "good" cholesterol, was increased by taking barley grass extract.

In-vitro demonstration shows that barley grass extract scavenges free radicals. Scientists think this is due to an exchange of hydrogen ions which makes the free radicals weaker. Laboratory studies using the blood and spinal fluid of rheumatoid arthritis patients noted that barley grass extract does exhibit antioxidant properties.

Sources for this article include:

Greenpharmacy.info. Management of diabetic dyslipidemia with subatmospheric dehydrated barley grass powder International Journal of Green Pharmacy 2010: 4(4); 251-256

http://www.greenpharmacy.info/article.asp?issn=0973-8258;year=2010;volume=4;issue=4;spage=251;epage=256;aulast=Venugopal

Drugs.com. "Barley Grass"

http://www.drugs.com/npp/barley-grass.html

US National Library of Medicine.gov. Dietary Supplements Labels Database, "Active Ingredient: Barley Grass"

http://dietarysupplements.nlm.nih.gov/dietary/ingredDetail.jsp?fulltext=&contain=Barley+Grass&id=1016

About the author:

Donna Earnest Pravel is a SEO copy writer and copy editor, blogger, and herbalist. She owns (ANCHOR TEXT). Donna's blog, Bluebonnet Natural Healing Therapy ANCHOR TEXT, is dedicated to "healing lives one step at a time" using herbs and natural methods.

Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/034637_barley_grass_diabetes_cholesterol.html#ixzz1jK5e0vPu

Tucson Chupacabra

2012-01-16T00:01:00.003-08:00

As I have posted extensively on this subject and have drawn one specific conclusion it is worthy to also discuss what are alternative sightings that fail to match our core conjecture.

My specific conclusion is that we are dealing with nocturnal gargoyles or evolved large vampire bats in particular. The sightings are consistent even globally as we have the sculptures in Europe. It nicely fits the evidence of drained corpses as well which is the core criteria. If the creature cannot drain a corpse it is hardly our suspect.

The notoriety of the few sightings and more importantly the huge number of blood drained corpses of even large animals has led to a lot more eye balls out there looking and reporting.

Other nocturnal creatures have been showing up that are plausibly coincidental to the core hunt. We have had a number of surprises that meet other legends as well.

This article tells of the sighting of a particular version of a naked creature around the size of a large coyote. That the head looked like a bat leaves me to suspect the witness did see a gargoyle that was not opening its wings.

Of course, the existence of bodies of furless creatures not quite a coyote may well put us back at the possibility of two different creatures instead of just one. The bodies have a coyote’s head rather than a bat’s head so they are certainly different animals.

So far in this item we have a canine head, a buffalo head and a bat head. It is hard not to be skeptical.

I will make one short comment that I have made before. The strange species of coyote, and I think that is a valid proposition, is adapted to run after jack rabbits. It could exist and be merely confused for the killer rather than the scavenger. Its tracks would be identified as coyote and unless captured and carefully studied by experts. We need those experts to get the blood sucking part out of their minds and to focus instead on the possibility of as yet unidentified coyote species.

In the meantime, until we see a lot more real reports on the buffalo heads, that tale at best was a set up.

Chupacabra Sighting in Tucson and the Beauty of an Open Mind

POSTED BY RYN GARGULINSKI ON FRI, JAN 6, 2012 AT 9:00 AM

Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

One rendition of a Chupacabra

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2012/01/06/chupacabra-sighting-in-tucson-and-the-beauty-of-an-open-mind

Hide the children and secure the goats — a Chupacabra was spotted in Tucson. Although this creepy creature was originally born of Puerto Rican myth, it has since materialized and made its way across several continents.

The coyote-like critter has enjoyed sightings throughout the 1980s in South America, spent a bulk of the 1990s in Mexico and has been currently roaming through parts of the Southwestern United States.

Carcasses thought to be Chupacabras have actually been DNA tested after they were brought to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The results only proved the dead things were “some type of coyote,” although their snout and back legs exceeded the length of those found on a coyote. They also reportedly had large fangs jutting up from their bottom jaws.

The fangs surely helped give them their name, which translates from the Spanish as “goat sucker.” In addition to sucking goat blood, they are also known to attack small livestock like chicken and ducks and larger animals like cattle and horses but have never gone for a human.

KGUN9’s Chief Meterologist Erin Christiansen didn’t see fangs on the beast that was caught like, well, a chupacabra in the headlights in front of her car, but she did get a pretty good glimpse of the critter as it skittered across Speedway, west of Camino Seco, earlier this month.

“Seriously,” she wrote in an email, “I don’t know if what I saw was really a Chupacabra, but I can say that I’ve never seen anything like this animal before.

“What I saw was just a very strange looking animal. It was slightly larger than a coyote, no fur, leathery looking skin. It was mostly black with gray and brown splotches. It had a long rat-looking tail. Its face looked like a bat with disproportionately large ears, which also reminded me of a bat.”

[Could the wings have been tightly folded onto the back? arclein]

Christiansen’s sighting is not the only time an inexplicable creature reared its creepy head in Old Pueblo. About 20 years back, my fiancé and a pal were sitting in their truck along South Houghton near an old corral.

“A thing came walking out of the desert,” he says. “It looked like a bear walking on two feet and had kind of like a cow’s head. We called him buffalo man. I don’t know what it was. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

[This is of course completely new and at this point makes scant sense. Do we really need a Minotaur walking around? It could well have been local pranksters at work because this is easy to fake up. arclein ]

While the buffalo man does not share some of the traits as the beast seen by Christiansen, variations on the Chupacabra do exist. It’s been described as having the body of a bat, the body of a kangaroo or sprouting thick wings.

Creepy? You bet.

Crazy? No way.

It takes a lot of guts to admit seeing a Chupacabra, or even a strange beast that may have been a Chupacabra. Kudos to Christiansen and Mr. fiancé for being so bold — and illustrating the beauty of an open mind.

When people close off their minds, horrible things can happen. They get stuck in a rut of the mundane, dismissing or attacking all that cannot be explained. They eradicate the mystery and fun from life and replace it with the banal — then wonder why they’re so cranky.

Lighten up, keep an open mind and enjoy life’s possibilities. And don’t forget to hide the children and secure the goats.

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Ryn Gargulinski, aka Rynski, is a writer, artist, performer and poet. Her column runs in the “Tucson Weekly” print edition monthly and weekly on Friday on “The Range.” See more writing and art from RYNdustries at ryngargulinski.com and rynski.etsy.com.