All About Science

New moon vistas revealed

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:13:00 +0000

Today's first images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter provide a fresh perspective on the moon, just weeks before the 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, was launched on June 18, along with another probe destined to crash into the moon's south pole - known as the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS.

LRO entered lunar orbit just last week, on the same day that LCROSS transmitted its own first imagery of the moon. Mission managers had figured it would take longer for LRO to send back higher-resolution images worth sharing. However, when they activated the orbiter's cameras for a test on Tuesday, they were surprised to find that the pictures they got back were real stunners.

This YouTube video provides a flyover of the region near Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds), and there's also a zoomable version of the imagery.

"Our first images were taken along the moon's terminator - the dividing line between day and night - making us initially unsure of how they would turn out," Arizona State University's Mark Robinson, the principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, said in today's image advisory.

"Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated, suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface," he said. "In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts safely explored in 1972. While these are magnificent in their own right, the main message is that LROC is nearly ready to begin its mission."

Later today, Robinson explained why the mission team had such low expectations for Tuesday's pictures. "The point of that test was not to take pictures of the lunar surface," he told me. "It was to collect engineering data to make sure that all of our settings are correct for Friday."

Starting Friday, LRO's cameras will be in operation for two and a half days, snapping pictures of some of the lesser-known areas of the moon's far side, Robinson said. Then the cameras will be shut off again for further commissioning. "We still are not completely finished baking out the moisture from the telescope," he said.

By next month, LRO will be in full picture-taking mode, acquiring much sharper views of the lunar surface. The orbiter's camera should be able to make out some of the traces left behind by the Apollo moon missions four decades ago, including lunar module leavings and rover tracks. "I promise you we will get spectacular images of all the Apollo landing sites before all is said and done," Robinson told me.

It's been a whole decade since the last U.S. moon probe smashed into the lunar surface, but it's not as if the moon has been terra incognita over the past few years. Several international spacecraft have been sending back pictures of our nearest celestial neighbor - including Europe's SMART-1, China's Chang'e 1, India's Chandrayaan 1 and Japan's Kaguya probe.

Nevertheless, LRO is a big deal: Its pictures and other data will be used to plan NASA's future push to the moon, designed to climax in a manned lunar landings sometime around 2020.

This month, the world will be remembering the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the explorations that followed between 1969 and 1972. The pictures coming from LRO should remind people that the best is yet to come.

Here's more about LRO's progress from the NASA news release issued today:

"... The satellite also has started to activate its six other instruments. The Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector will look for regions with enriched hydrogen that potentially could have water ice deposits. The Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation is designed to measure the moon's radiation environment. Both were activated on June 19 and are functioning normally.

"Instruments expected to be activated during the next week and calibrated are the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, designed to build 3-D topographic maps of the moon's landscape; the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, which will make temperature maps of the lunar surface; and the Miniature Radio Frequency, or Mini-RF, an experimental radar and radio transmitter that will search for subsurface ice and create detailed images of permanently shaded craters.

"The final instrument, the Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, will be activated after the other instruments have completed their calibrations, allowing more time for residual contaminants from the manufacture and launch of LRO to escape into the vacuum of space. This instrument is an ultraviolet-light imager that will use starlight to search for surface ice. It will take pictures of the permanently-shaded areas in deep craters at the lunar poles.

" 'Accomplishing these significant milestones moves us closer to our goals of preparing for safe human return to the moon, mapping the moon in unprecedented detail, and searching for resources,' said LRO Project Scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"While its instruments are being activated and tested, the spacecraft is in a special elliptical commissioning orbit around the moon. The orbit takes less fuel to maintain than the mission's primary orbit. The commissioning orbit's closest point to the lunar surface is about 19 miles over the moon's south pole, and its farthest point is approximately 124 miles over the lunar north pole.

"After the spacecraft and instruments have completed their initial calibrations, the spacecraft will be directed into its primary mission orbit in August, a nearly circular orbit about 31 miles above the lunar surface.

"Goddard built and manages LRO, a NASA mission with international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow. Russia provides the neutron detector aboard the spacecraft."

How Martian clouds create snowfall

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:01:00 +0000

The planet Mars conjures images of red rocks and arid, dusty plains, but as NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed last year, it snows on Mars.

The stationary robot observed ice crystals falling to the Martian surface near the end of its five-month mission in the arctic Vastitas Borealis plains last year. Scientists provided further details on this finding and others in a set of four papers in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The research could help shed light on the past and present action of water on the Martian surface and characterize the potential habitability of the Red Planet.

Phoenix landed on the Red Planet on May 25, 2008, with a mission to dig up and analyze samples of Martian dirt, confirm the existence of a subsurface layer of water ice and observe the weather at its far northern locale.

Cirrus clouds...
Spacecraft orbiting Mars had previously detected clouds high up in the Martian atmosphere and low-level ice fog, "but they've never seen precipitation," said James Whiteway of York University in Canada, the lead scientist for Phoenix's meteorological instruments.

From its vantage point on the Martian surface, Phoenix used its LIDAR (light detection and ranging) instrument, supplied by the Canadian Space Agency, to emit laser pulses upward into the atmosphere. The instrument detected clouds and precipitation above Phoenix's landing site.

The clouds were low-level, wispy clouds made up of ice crystals, similar to the cirrus clouds that form over Earth's polar regions in the winter. Whiteway also likened them to the thin clouds jet planes fly through high in the Earth's atmosphere.

"The thin, wispy clouds up there have a similar water content," he told Space.com.

The clouds didn't begin forming until around the mission's 80th or 90th Martian day (or sol), when air temperatures were cool enough for water vapor in the atmosphere to condense out, Whiteway explained.

As the mission wore on, the clouds became thicker, lower to the ground and persisted for longer.

...And snow
The snow didn't come until close to the end of the mission. It too is similar to the snow that falls to the ground at Earth's poles, sometimes called "diamond dust." Whiteway describes it as "ice crystals sparkling in the air."

The snow wasn't enough to build a snowmartian with, however, amounting to only a couple micrometers (there are 1,000 micrometers in a millimeter) a day if it was melted on the surface, Whiteway said.

The observations show that "precipitation is a component of the hydrologic cycle" on Mars, which was not suspected before the Phoenix mission, Whiteway said.

How the finding might impact our understanding of the global Mars water cycle — both now and in the distant past, when the planet is suspected to have been warmer and wetter — is not yet known.

The new information can be used to modify Martian climate models, which currently don't feature these newly discovered clouds and precipitation, "and then we'll see what the implications are," Whiteway said.

World’s largest commercial satellite in orbit

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:42:00 +0000

The world's largest commercial satellite was launched into space Wednesday, with a mission to provide phone service to cellular "dead zones" in North America.

The satellite, owned by TerreStar Corp. of Reston, Va., blasted off from Kourou in the South American territory of French Guiana atop an Ariane 5 rocket shortly before 2 p.m. ET, carried through pink clouds.

Half an hour later, French satellite launcher Arianespace announced that the TerreStar-1 had separated successfully from the rocket, on its way to an orbit 22,000 miles (35,200 kilometers) above the Earth.

There, the satellite is designed to unfurl an umbrella-like antenna of gold mesh 60 feet (18 meters) across, so it can pick up and relay signals from phones that are not much larger than regular cell phones.

TerreStar has shown prototypes of the phones, which are similar to BlackBerrys. Like BlackBerrys, the phones would have access to data and e-mail. The phones aren't on sale yet. TerreStar plans to have the system running before the end of the year.

To connect to the satellite, the handsets will need a clear view of the southern sky, just like a satellite dish. When that's not available, the sets will be able to connect to regular ground-based cellular networks. TerreStar has a roaming agreement with AT&T Inc.

The TerreStar 1 satellite, built by Loral Space & Communications Ltd., was originally scheduled to launch in 2007, but was delayed several times because of manufacturing problems.

The satellite is due be followed next year by two similar, even larger ones from a competitor, SkyTerra Communications Inc.

TerreStar and SkyTerra are hoping to avoid the fate that met two pioneers in satellite telephony. Iridium and Globalstar filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of the decade, wiping out billions in investor capital after launching extensive satellite systems. They are still in operation, providing last-resort communications for the military, forest wardens and others who can afford to buy dedicated, bulky satellite handsets for $1,000 and up.

Dinosaur mummy yields organic molecules

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:52:00 +0000

The extremely well-preserved remains of a 66-million-year-old hadrosaur, known as a "dinosaur mummy," have just yielded soft-tissue skin structures and organic molecules, according to a new study.

While research on other dinosaurs has led to the identification of organic material linked to bones, co-author Roy Wogelius told Discovery News that "this is the first dinosaur to reveal intact skin structure and associated organic molecules."

Wogelius, a senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, added, "We (also) seem to have some original organic material within the tendon."

The existing "skin," as described in a Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper this week, consists of a mixture of the original cellular components mixed with mineralized material.

"Imagine putting a bunch of grapes into a runny cement," he said. "If you let the cement set, and cut a cross section years later, you'd see a beautiful cast of a bunch of grapes --whether the grapes survived the process or not. Based on our observations and analysis, we think a mineralizing fluid acted very quickly to make a solid mineral (calcium carbonate or calcite) cast of the skin cells."

Wogelius and his colleagues conducted infrared imaging, amino acid analysis and high-temperature breakdown studies that show the organic materials taken from the hadrosaur are "completely different from the organics present as background in the surrounding geological sediment."

Their remarkable preservation is due to the dinosaur's quick burial. Shortly after the hadrosaur's death near a sandy river channel, the researchers believe its body was covered in a waterlogged setting that prohibited contact with atmospheric oxygen. This led to rapid mineralization that appears to have outpaced tissue decay.

The scientists can also tell that the dinosaur's skin was probably very thick.

Wogelius said it was "at least 3.55 mm (.14 inches) thick at the base of the tail — much more than twice as thick as human skin, and that's at a place where the skin was probably quite thin anyway."

He therefore thinks the dinosaur's skin would have been much thicker, perhaps like that of an elephant.

The study further determined the organic skin molecules are consistent with molecules found in crocodile claws and bird feathers and strengthens the evolutionary link between the dinosaurs and those animals.

The hadrosaur, nicknamed "Dakota," was found in southwestern North Dakota in 2004. It was removed from its "rock tomb" just last year.

In addition to its intact skin structures, the dinosaur possesses an exceptionally well-preserved tendon, which even shows small canals that once conducted blood and other substances into the hadrosaur's bones.

Yet another specimen in surprisingly good condition is "Leonardo," a 77-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur, whose remains first came to public light in 2002.

Cory Coverdell, a field instructor at Montana's Two Medicine Dinosaur Center, told Discovery News, "Leonardo is very special, because 70 percent of the body is covered with mineralized skin and possible fossilized organs are within the remains."

Organic molecules have not yet been found in Leonardo, however, and Coverdell is "skeptical that organic molecules could have been identified in Dakota, since these usually are due to contamination."

Despite these advancements, Wogelius concedes that it is "not likely" that DNA could be extracted from a dinosaur, mummified or not.

Looking for the building blocks of protein "is hard enough," he explained. "Finding intact DNA is so unlikely that we are not focusing on that as a concept."

Stone Age flutes found in Germany

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:30:00 +0000

The hills may be alive with the sound of music, but so were vulture bones and mammoth tusks for ancient Europeans. Researchers working at two Stone Age German sites have unearthed a nearly complete flute made from a vulture’s forearm as well as sections of three mammoth-ivory flutes.

These 35,000- to 40,000-year-old finds are the oldest known musical instruments in the world, says archaeologist and project director Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Bone flutes previously unearthed at Stone Age sites occupied by humans in France and Austria date to between 19,000 and 30,000 years ago. And many researchers now consider the spaced holes in a controversial 43,000-year-old find, dubbed a Neandertal bone flute in 1995, as the products of chewing by cave bears.

The bone flute, which excavators found in 12 pieces, and the ivory flutes were discovered in the summer of 2008 at Hohle Fels cave. The team reports in an upcoming Nature that the finds are from the time of the Aurignacian culture, when modern humans first migrated to Europe from Africa. Scientists estimate that the culture existed from about 40,000 to 29,000 years ago.

Conard’s group found no human bones near the ancient flutes. But since human remains accompany later Aurignacian finds at other sites, the scientists assume that Homo sapiens, not Neandertals, made the musical instruments.

“Our finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe, more than 35,000 years ago,” Conard says.

Pieces of three other bone and ivory flutes, found earlier in another German cave, date to approximately 30,000 years ago, he notes.

In Conard’s view, musical practices and other cultural developments allowed Aurignacian people to establish social networks more extensive than any formed by Neandertals. Excavators found the Hohle Fels bone flute near a female figurine with exaggerated sexual features (SN: 6/20/09, p. 11). Some researchers, however, regard artifacts from this sediment layer as no more than 32,000 years old.

Conard’s age estimate for the newly discovered flutes appears reasonable, remarks archaeologist April Nowell of the University of Victoria in Canada. “The finger holes on the Hohle Fels bone flute are clearly human produced and are so different from the carnivore puncture holes on the Neandertal ‘flute,’” Nowell says.

The preserved portion of the bone flute is about 8.5 inches long and one-third of an inch wide. Finely incised lines near four finger holes probably indicated where to carve these openings using stone tools, Conard suggests. A partial fifth finger hole lacks such markings.

Musicians presumably blew into an end of the bone flute that contains two V-shaped notches. The researchers plan to make a replica of the ancient flute to investigate how it was played and what type of sounds it made.

Hohle Fels excavators also recovered two pieces from what were probably two ivory flutes, Conard says. Examination of material unearthed nearby, at Vogelherd Cave, identified part of another ivory flute.

Ivory flutes required especially complex construction techniques, Conard says. Flute makers carved a rough shape for the instrument along a piece of tusk, split the ivory open lengthwise, hollowed out the halves, carved finger holes and reattached the halves with an airtight seal.

T. rex analysis supports dino-bird link

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:41:00 +0000

For the first time, researchers have read what they say is the biological signature of a tyrannosaur — a signature that confirms the increasingly accepted view that modern birds are the descendants of dinosaurs.

The signature doesn't come from studying the shape of the 68 million-year-old dinosaur's fossilized bones, but from analyzing the organic material found inside those bones. It's not DNA — despite what you've seen in movies like "Jurassic Park," that genetic material couldn't be recovered. But researchers say it's the next-best thing: collagen proteins that were isolated using techniques on the very edge of what's possible today.

Those techniques, detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science, could open up "a new window into an entirely new approach" for paleontology, one expert told MSNBC.com. What's more, researchers say the methods are already being incorporated into improved tools for detecting present-day diseases.

“We don’t know what the possibilities are,” said Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences who was one of the principal authors behind the studies. “We’re starting right now with a particular goal in mind, but the spin-offs … how this might apply to human health and our understanding of disease … all of that is yet to be seen.”

Schweitzer and her colleagues emphasized that the protein analysis was just the first step in what could become a worldwide effort to categorize extinct species according to their molecular makeup. Famed paleontologist Jack Horner, another member of the research team, said he would embark on a world-girdling series of expeditions this summer to see if further samples could be found.

“All of our morphological hypotheses based on fossils need to be tested. Every one of them,” said Horner, a paleontologist at Montana State University and the Museum of the Rockies.

Tale of a T. rex

The tale of the T. rex began with Horner, back in 2003: He and his team found the tyrannosaur's massive leg bone beneath 1,000 cubic yards of rock at the Hell Creek fossil site in Montana, but had trouble fitting the bone inside their helicopter for the airlift back to the lab.
When they broke the bone into pieces for transport, they were amazed to find that some of the dinosaur's soft tissues appeared to be preserved within. Previously, paleontologists had thought all the tissues of a fossil turned to minerals over the course of millions of years.

After analyzing the tissues under a microscope, Schweitzer reported in 2005 that they looked similar to the cells and blood vessels found in ostrich bones. But at that time, "we could not directly address what that material was made of," she said during a teleconference with journalists this week.

Schweitzer suspected that some of the material was preserved collagen protein — which is the main organic constituent of bone, left behind when the minerals are removed. She said the material looked like collagen, and it reacted like collagen when chicken antibodies were applied to a sample.

But to confirm her suspicions, Schweitzer turned to John Asara, a specialist in mass spectrometry at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Mass spectrometry is a technique for identifying minute quantities of a substance by measuring its atomic properties, molecule by molecule. Asara and Schweitzer had worked together previously to isolate protein sequences from mammoth remains that dated back 100,000 to 300,000 years.

The T. rex task was much more challenging: After removing the minerals and impurities from the bone samples that Schweitzer provided, Asara had less than a billionth of a gram of protein to work with. Nevertheless, he and his colleagues were able to decode seven strings of protein molecules. Those sequences were compared with a large database of collagen data — including sequences that Asara and his team isolated from a modern ostrich and from mastodon bone fragments that were 160,000 to 400,000 years old.

Lasers to seek, but not destroy, subs

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:31:00 +0000

Shooting laser beams at a submarine won't destroy it, but new technology being tested by the U.S. Navy could help find enemy subs.

"Instead of dumping hardware (into the ocean) you could shoot a light pulse into the water and generate acoustic signals," said Ted Jones of the Naval Research Laboratory, who presented his results at a recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

"With this, you could do communications, acoustic navigation beacons or sonar."

The Navy scientists induce sound waves with lasers using two distinct, but similar techniques. Both techniques employ machines to create pulsed green lasers.

Both techniques penetrate the water anywhere from a few millimeters to about 66 feet deep. Once the laser reaches the desired depth, both techniques flash boil a tiny area of water, which expands to the size of a BB.

The manner in which this reaction is created is what separates the two techniques. The first technique spreads energy over time. The second spreads energy over space.

The first method blasts several different wavelengths of light. Each wavelength travels at a slightly different speed through air and water. When all of the wavelengths catch up with one another, the concentrated energy boils the water.

The second methods shoots the same wavelength of light, but over a wide area. The water acts like a lens, focusing the laser beams onto one specific area, which then boils.

The shock wave created by either method can travel several miles and can be used for several purposes. One would be for one-way communication with underwater vessels. Triggering pressure waves in a specific order could allow a plane to communicate with underwater vessels via basic Morse code, or, more likely, says Jones, with a complex, encoded pattern of pulses.

Another use for laser-induced sound waves would be for mapping the ocean floor. When they hit a submerged object, the pressure waves bounce back. A nearby submarine or buoy could detect the pattern of those waves and create a map of the ocean floor, or the location of other submarines in the area.

All of this could be possible with laser-triggered sonar, if it is ever used in the field. For now though, Jones' experiments are limited to the laboratory.

Although Vogel thinks there are still several issues that would need to be resolved before the technique could be used in the field, "this may be a unique approach that could achieve something that you cannot achieve by other means."

Superbots are the real-life Transformers

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:25:00 +0000

NASA wanted a robot that could start as 100 blocky modules dropped from an airplane to a desert, reconfigure into a rover that could drive to a sand dune, and then change again to "grow" legs and climb up it. Once the blocky robot reached the top, it would transform into a greenhouse that could protect a group of seeds for two weeks.

Only 20 of the modules were built during an ambitious project more than two years ago. But together, they are known as Superbot.

"You could build a lot of different robots where each does different things, but that would be too expensive," said Wei-Min Shen, director of the Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory at the University of Southern California.

Superbot cannot transform into trucks or F-22 fighter jets, like the gargantuan robots in the new "Transformers" movie. Yet researchers hope that modular robots similar to Superbot could one day decide when and where to shape-shift and adapt to their environments, depending on the job at hand.

Walk and roll
So far, Superbot has managed to form combinations with two, four or six legs, move like a robotic snake using a slithering or sidewinding motion, and even inch along like a caterpillar. Six of its modules can form a rolling track, and some combinations can even shimmy up ropes.

"If it needs to climb things, it can grow literally legs," Shen told LiveScience. "If it needs to go downhill, it can turn into a ball and simply roll."

Such self-configuring robots have existed in the world of academic labs for some years now. Last year, a research group at the University of Pennsylvania caught attention with their walking modular robot that slowly reassembled itself after being kicked apart.

USC's Superbot can also demonstrate similar types of self-repair and self-assembly, because each module represents an independent robot that "talks" to other modules using infrared and radio communication. The modules constantly assess the situation see what other modules are nearby, and whether they should act as an arm or a leg for the combined Superbot.

"One of our demonstrations is that you can have a robot and cut it in half, so it becomes two independent snakes," Shen said. "There's no fixed central brain."

Four-legged Superbot may instantly become a pair of two-legged robots when cut in half. The two-legged robots sometimes use a "butterfly stroke" move similar to what swimmers use, Shen noted.

To build a 'living' robot
Several U.S. military branches and government agencies besides NASA have also shown interest in the idea of shape-shifting, self-repairing robots. Shen's work has received funding from the military's DARPA research branch, not to mention the U.S. Air Force, Army, and National Science Foundation.

However, a number of steps remain before Superbot can act as a fully autonomous being that makes decisions on its own. Creating artificial intelligence (AI) that can make higher-level decisions in traditional robots has already proved challenging, and modular robots have the added complexity of deciding what represents the best shape or size in any given environment.

"You have to tell the modules what shape to become," Shen noted. "The next step is let them decide, 'OK, I need three more legs.'"

One solution may involve looking to biology. Shen's lab has put forth the idea of "digital hormones" that would simulate the way in which hormones affect the mind and body. Some modules could flood certain signals to all the others, in order to communicate instructions such as whether to transform into a walking or rolling Superbot.

The biology analogy has come up before. Shen and his colleagues sometimes refer to Superbot's modules as "robotic stem cells," capable of morphing into a variety of roles.

Robots on the future frontier
A Superbot descendant might even achieve NASA's wildest dreams by forming a fully self-assembling space station, and help eliminate the need for expensive, time-consuming spacewalks conducted by human astronauts.

Shen and USC colleague Peter Will demonstrated such a concept on an air hockey table to simulate microgravity in space, with two robot modules that could use cable lines to grab other pieces, reel them in and dock.

Self-assembling space stations or Transformers may still be a long ways off, but Shen remains confident about building a better robot — or perhaps better robots that can build themselves.

"I have a strong belief in these things," Shen said. "Of course one person does not make much difference, but I do believe this is the future."

Are you getting enough? Nutrients, that is

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:18:00 +0000

In the '70s dystopian film "Soylent Green," a megacorporation solves a starving world's need for nutritious food by turning the dead into dinner. This is complete science fiction, of course: Most of us are so short on key nutrients we couldn't possibly be someone's square meal.

In fact, studies show that 77 percent of men don't take in enough magnesium, that many of us are deficient in vitamin D, and that the vitamin B12 in our diets may be undermined by a common heartburn medication. And we haven't even mentioned our problems with potassium and iodine.

It's time to play catch-up. Follow our advice, and a cannibal will never call you junk food.

Vitamin D
This vitamin's biggest claim to fame is its role in strengthening your skeleton. But vitamin D isn't a one-trick nutrient: A study in Circulation found that people deficient in D were up to 80 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. The reason? D may reduce inflammation in your arteries.

The shortfall: Vitamin D is created in your body when the sun's ultraviolet B rays penetrate your skin. Problem is, the vitamin D you stockpile during sunnier months is often depleted by winter, especially if you live in the northern half of the United States, where UVB rays are less intense from November through February. Case in point: When Boston University researchers measured the vitamin D status of young adults at the end of winter, 36 percent of them were found to be deficient.

Hit the mark: First, ask your doctor to test your blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. "You need to be above 30 nanograms per milliliter," says Michael Holick, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine at Boston University. Come up short? Take 1,400 IU of vitamin D daily from a supplement and a multivitamin. That's about seven times the recommended daily intake for men, but it takes that much to boost blood levels of D, says Dr. Holick.

Magnesium
This lightweight mineral is a tireless multitasker: It's involved in more than 300 bodily processes. Plus, a study in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that low levels of magnesium may increase your blood levels of C-reactive protein, a key marker of heart disease.

The shortfall: Nutrition surveys reveal that men consume only about 80 percent of the recommended 400 milligrams of magnesium a day. "We're just barely getting by," says Dana King, M.D., a professor of family medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. "Without enough magnesium, every cell in your body has to struggle to generate energy."

Hit the mark: Fortify your diet with more magnesium-rich foods, such as halibut and navy beans. Then hit the supplement aisle: Few men can reach 400 mg through diet alone, so Dr. King recommends ingesting some insurance in the form of a 250 mg supplement. One caveat: Scrutinize the ingredients list. You want a product that uses magnesium citrate, the form best absorbed by your body.

Vitamin B12
Consider B12 the guardian of your gray matter: In a British study, older people with the lowest levels of B12 lost brain volume at a faster rate over a span of 5 years than those with the highest levels.

The shortfall: Even though most men do consume the daily quota of 2.4 micrograms, the stats don't tell the whole story. "We're seeing an increase in B12 deficiencies due to interactions with medications," says Katherine Tucker, Ph.D., director of a USDA program at Tufts University. The culprits: acid-blocking drugs, such as Prilosec, and the diabetes medication metformin.

Hit the mark: You'll find B12 in lamb and salmon, but the most accessible source may be fortified cereals. That's because the B12 in meat is bound to proteins, and your stomach must produce acid to release and absorb it. Eat a bowl of 100 percent B12-boosted cereal and milk every morning and you'll be covered, even if you take the occasional acid-blocking med. However, if you pop Prilosec on a regular basis or are on metformin, talk to your doctor about tracking your B12 levels and possibly taking an additional supplement.

Potassium
Without this essential mineral, your heart couldn't beat, your muscles wouldn't contract, and your brain couldn't comprehend this sentence. Why? Potassium helps your cells use glucose for energy.

The shortfall: Despite potassium's can't-live-without-it importance, nutrition surveys indicate that young men consume just 60 percent to 70 percent of the recommended 4,700 mg a day. To make matters worse, most guys load up on sodium: High sodium can boost blood pressure, while normal potassium levels work to lower it, says Lydia A. L. Bazzano, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of epidemiology at Tulane University.

Hit the mark: Half an avocado contains nearly 500 mg potassium, while one banana boasts roughly 400 mg. Not a fan of either fruit? Pick up some potatoes — a single large spud is packed with 1,600 mg.

Iodine
Your thyroid gland requires iodine to produce the hormones T3 and T4, both of which help control how efficiently you burn calories. That means insufficient iodine may cause you to gain weight and feel fatigued.

The shortfall: Since iodized salt is an important source of the element, you might assume you're swimming in the stuff. But when University of Texas at Arlington researchers tested 88 samples of table salt, they found that half contained less than the FDA-recommended amount of iodine. And you're not making up the difference with all the salt hiding in processed foods — U.S. manufacturers aren't required to use iodized salt. The result is that we've been sliding toward iodine deficiency since the 1970s.

Hit the mark: Sprinkling more salt on top of an already sodium-packed diet isn't a great idea, but iodine can also be found in a nearly sodium-free source: milk. Animal feed is fortified with the element, meaning it travels from cows to your cereal bowl. Not a milk man? Eat at least one serving of eggs or yogurt a day; both are good sources of iodine.

Evolving with our stomachs : We no longer have to hunt our food; is that a good thing?

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Sometimes progress really does appear in the numbers. Consider what we spend to fill our tables.

Since 1929, the percentage of disposable income that the typical American spends on food has been steadily dropping from about one-quarter of our available cash to just 10 percent. Quite simply, it takes less for us to feed ourselves than virtually any other people on Earth.

Technology has been revolutionary in its ability to help us obtain and store food. But essential tools like refrigeration and long-haul transit have only been feasible for the past 150 years, barely a speck in the long view of human history.

Even the advent of organized agriculture and the domestication of food animals, which took place about 10,000 years ago by most estimates, was just a tick on the evolutionary clock. Most modern sources of calories simply weren't available to prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

In other words, we, meaning most residents in highly technological nations like the United States, are truly among the first handful of generations never to worry about where to get our food.

"This is the first time in human history that's been the case for large numbers of people," says George Mason University professor Peter Stearns, author of "Fat History."

Built for famine
Modern life may have solved most of our food-gathering problems, but human evolution has not kept up. Our bodies are still wired for hunter-gatherer biology: Eat all the food you can and store it — in body fat — in case your supply of food runs out, as in the case of famine. A dangerous configuration for a society with all-you-can-eat buffets.

Our ancient ancestors, especially those on the African plains, hunted far leaner animals than we now eat — species closer to modern deer and elk than the typical meat cow. Processed grains and sugars have no counterparts in ancient foods.

And modern taste combinations like concentrated fat (butter) and concentrated sweetness (sugar) rarely co-exist in nature, notes Loren Cordain, professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University.

"You get fat on the types of foods that have been introduced since the agricultural revolution," says Cordain, author of "The Paleo Diet," which advocates emulating prehistoric eaters. Think South Beach without any grains, salt or sugar, and lots of fish and broccoli.

Outpacing biology
Cordain argues that when it comes to food, evolutionary mechanisms simply can't match the fast pace of human innovation. The result in the United States, he suggests, is heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, to say nothing of obesity.

Not every anthropologist goes so far, but most acknowledge that rich nations are all but drowning in food. And as developing nations grow, people once threatened by famine are quickly facing the opposite problem.

Mysterious Space Blobs 'Tween' Galaxies

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:33:00 +0000

Mysterious space blobs aren't infant galaxies as astronomers once thought. Scientists say they mostly consist of galaxies going through puberty, all hot and bothered.

A new study using NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other space and ground telescopes comes up with an explanation for these high-energy glowing blobs that have been observed for about a decade. Astronomers looked at 29 of these gaseous blobs in one distant area of the universe, dating back to more than 11 billion years ago.

One theory was that they were young galaxies cooling off. But the new research says they are hot and chaotic with gas halos, growing supermassive black holes and about to stabilize. The blobs are the adolescent galaxies and the hydrogen gas, leftover from their creation.

Study lead author James Geach of Durham University in England said in an e-mail that the reason chaos is occurring in the blobs "is due to the violent processes occurring in the galaxies, black hole growth, starbursts, mergers. They're having a final 'tantrum' before they're done growing and then 'passively' evolve to the present day.

Milky Way Galaxy

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:23:00 +0000

The Milky Way, sometimes called simply the Galaxy, is the galaxy in which the Solar System is located. It is a barred spiral galaxy that is part of the Local Group of galaxies. It is one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

Its name is a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn translated from the Greek Γαλαξίας (Galaxias), referring to the pale band of light formed by the galactic plane as seen from Earth (see etymology of galaxy). Some sources hold that, strictly speaking, the term Milky Way should refer exclusively to the band of light that the galaxy forms in the night sky, while the galaxy should receive the full name Milky Way Galaxy, or alternatively the Galaxy.However, it is unclear how widespread this convention is, and the term Milky Way is routinely used in either context.

NASA sets schedule for handling asteroid threat

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:01:00 +0000

NASA has outlined what it could do, and in what time frame, in case a quarter-mile-wide asteroid named Apophis is on a course to slam into Earth in the year 2036. The timetable was released by the B612 Foundation, a group that is pressing NASA and other government agencies to do more to head off threats from near-Earth objects.

The plan runs like this: Eight years from now, if there's still a chance of a collision in 2036, NASA would start drawing up plans to put a probe on the space rock or in orbit around it in 2019. Measurements sent back from the probe would characterize Apophis' course to an accuracy of mere yards (meters) by the year 2020.

If those readings still could not rule out a strike in 2036, NASA would try to deflect the asteroid into a non-threatening course in the 2024-2028 time frame by firing an impactor at it — using this year's Deep Impact comet-blasting probe as a model. Experts would start planning for the "Son of Deep Impact" mission even before they knew whether or not it was needed.

Nibiru Planet

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:55:00 +0000

Nibiru, to the Babylonians, was the celestial body associated with the god Marduk. The name is Akkadian and means 'crossing place' or 'place of transition'. In most Babylonian texts it is identified with the planet Jupiter. In Tablet 5 of the Enuma Elish it may be the pole star, which at the time was Thuban or possibly Kochab (Ursa Minor).

The term "Nibiru" comes from the Sumerian cuneiform tablets and writings dating 5,000 years old. The term Nibiru means "Planet of the crossing", and it's cuneiform sign was often a cross, or various winged disc. The Sumerian culture was located in the fertile lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, at the southern part of today's Iraq.

Due to its use in opposition to the phrase itebbiru "who used to cross," Landsberger and Kinnier Wilson suggest that it refers to a stationary point in the heavens.1 In a reconstruction of Tablet V of the Enûma Elish by Landsberger and Kinnier Wilson, the word ni-bi-ri (variant: ni-bi-ru and ni-bi-a-na) is translated as "pole star."1 The authors add in the footnotes that "Applied to Marduk, there is no question that in the late periods neberu is a planet, whether Jupiter or Mercury" however for the referenced translation of Tablet V, "pole star" is used.

Theory

Some authors believe that the observations of ancient astronomers provide proof that Nibiru is an actual planet or brown dwarf in our solar system. These claims are for the most part dismissed as fringe science or pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific communities of archaeology and astronomy.

According to proponents such as renowned historian, Hebrew scholar, author, speaker and archaeologist Zecharia Sitchin and Burak Eldem the Nibiru appearing in Sumerian records correctly refers to a large planetary body. Their research proposes that it possesses a highly elliptical, 3630-year orbit. Such a planet would be approximately in the same orbit as 2000 CR105.

According to these theories of Sumerian cosmology, Nibiru was the twelfth member in the solar system family of planets (which includes 10 planets, the Sun, and the Moon). Its catastrophic collision with Tiamat, a planet that was between Mars and Jupiter, would have formed the planet Earth, the asteroid belt, and the Moon.

This was the result of one of Nibiru's host satellites colliding with Tiamat, appropriately leaving half a planet, comparable to our Pangea (our current knowledge of all the continents as one land mass), and leaving deeps rifts in the crust beneath the Pacific ocean. It was until recently thought impossible for such large celestial bodies to collide due to intense magnetic force, however, this concept has been given a new life since the introduction of the Orpheus Theory, and the simulation of a collision between objects such as our own earth, and an object half it's size.

It was the home of a technologically advanced human-like alien race, the Anunnaki of Sumerian myth, who, Sitchin claims, survived and later came to Earth. Sitchin has also transcribed that their travelling to earth was the result of their failing atmosphere (having since been drawn into our solar system from its cosmic passing, the atmosphere of Nibiru was subjected to intense external stress from our sun).

They came in search of gold particles used for their reflective properties (recognized even today by Nasa who plate various objects including astronaut helmet eyeshields) to place in their atmosphere. According to Sitchin, they subsequently genetically engineered our species, originally as slave workers to work in their gold mines, by crossing their genes with those of Homo erectus.

The Anunnaki ("those who from heaven came to earth" in Sumerian) came upon evolution on earth as it had been progressing for billions of years however, they desired to create a worker who could communicate and learn from them. After a slew of failed prototypes an Anunnaki goddess engineered a perfect specimen- the Adam. This was done using 80% of the Inferior specimen and 20% of the superior Anunnaki specimen. It is only recently that we understand DNA as having a double-helix nature, The Sumerians depicted their goddess creator along with snakes in a double helix form with thin bars connecting between them in a spiral fashion. The intertwined snakes are also modern day representatives for the field of medicine.

Sitchin says some sources speak about the same planet, possibly being a brown dwarf star and still in a highly elliptic orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion passage some 3,600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3,600 to 3,760 years or 3,741 years.

Sitchin attributes these figures to astronomers of the Maya civilization. Many involved in research of this kind predict a return date of Nibiru passing Earth coinciding with the Winter Solstice of 2012; specifically at 11.11 UT, 21st December 12, 2012.

This also coincides with a rare alignment of the Earth, Sun and centre of the Milky Way , and is asserted to be likely to cause a pole shift. However, scientists argue that a planet with such an orbit would eventually either develop a circular orbit or fly off into space and overwhelmingly consider Sitchin's claims to be pseudoscience.

The similar orbit of 2000 CR105, however, is accepted by scientists. A brown dwarf with a period of 3,760 years would be clearly evident through infrared and gravitational observations. And it has been. In 1993 Nasa launched the IRAS telescope which picked up the faint image of a large celestial body 3 times the distance of Pluto in our own solar system. In the press conference, the two scientists one named Gerry Neugebauer said that these objects could be "almost anything, from a tenth planet in our solar system to distant galaxies".

Later much deeper images were taken, and some of the objects were found to be dense gas clouds in our own Galaxy, while others turned out to be very distant galaxies. In fact, these observations heralded the discovery of a new type of object: Ultra-luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs).

These are galaxies in which there is a burst of stars being born. The cocoons of dust in which the stars are enshrouded generates copious infrared, which is what was detected by IRAS. They published these results in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal.

Another interesting discovery also brought Nibiru into light recently. Eris, the largest known dwarf planet has been discovered on the 21st of October 2003, announced in July 2005 and officially named from 2003 UB313 to "136199 Eris" in 2006.

Originally it was considered as the tenth planet of our Solar System, but in April 2006, according to the new, more precise definition of the term "planet", it has been designated as a "dwarf planet" along with Pluto and Ceres. Eris has an orbital period of 556.7 years, and currently lies at almost its maximum possible distance from the Sun (aphelion) and will enter Pisces in 2036.

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:46:00 +0000

Paket Untuk 1 Bulan Adalah :

Iklan 150X112 Harga Rp. 5.500

Aturannya adalah Bukan Konten Pornografi. Setiap Bulan Bisa Ganti iklan 1 kali. Pemesanan Bisa dilakukan melalui Email rizwanpurwanta@yahoo.co.id

Note: Hanya menerima transfer via BCA

Space Pilot 3D

noreply@blogger.com (All About Japan) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:36:00 +0000

Make a game | Space Pilot 3D | Free games | Pictogame