In the last few years the world has experienced a "cooler period" since record high temperatures in summer 1998.

This has been used by global warming sceptics as proof that greenhouse gases are not causing a rise in temperatures.

However a new study by Nasa said the warming effect of greenhouse gases has been masked since 1998 because of a downward phase in the cycles of the sun that means there is less incoming sunlight and the El Nino weather pattern causing a cooling period over the Pacific.

But from this year solar activity will begin to pick up again and the El Nino phenomenon will cause storms and heat waves.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies the US Naval Research Laboratory.

It adds to existing data from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that predicted temperatures will rise because of an increase in greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Because greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere, temperatures are set to increase over the next few years because the world is producing more carbon dioxide.

The new study adds the effect of El Nino, which is entering a new warm phase and of the impact of the solar cycle.

Gareth Jones, a climate research scientist at the Met Office, said the effect of global warming is unlikely to be masked by shorter term weather patterns in the future.

He said that 50 per cent of the 10 years after 2011 will be warmer than 1998. After that any year cooler than 1998 will be considered unusual.

"The amount of warming we expect from human impacts is so huge that any natural phenomenon in the future is unlikely to counteract it in the long term," he said.

from Telegraph …

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An optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast light-based computers, say Swiss researchers.

Conventional computers are based on transistors, which allow one electrode to control the current moving through the device and are combined to form logic gates and processors. The new component achieves the same thing, but for laser beams, not electric currents.

A green laser beam is used to control the power of an orange laser beam passing through the device.

This offers another possible route to light-based rather than electronic, computing. Such "photonic" computing is desirable because components using optical fibres carrying light could be much faster than those using wires to carry electricity.

However, previous attempts to make optical transistors for such circuits only produced very weak effects. The new device could change that.

Crystal matrix

To make their device, Vahid Sandoghdar and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, suspended tetradecane, a hydrocarbon dye, in an organic liquid. They then froze the suspension to -272 °C using liquid helium – creating a crystalline matrix in which individual dye molecules could be targeted with lasers.

When a finely tuned orange laser beam is trained on a dye molecule, it efficiently soaks up most of it up – leaving a much weaker "output" beam to continue beyond the dye.

But when the molecule is also targeted with a green laser beam, it starts to produce strong orange light of its own and so boosts the power of the orange output beam.

This effect is down to the hydrocarbon molecule absorbing the green light, only to lose the equivalent energy in the form of orange light.

"That light constructively interferes with the incoming orange beam and makes it brighter," says Sandoghar's colleague Jaesuk Hwang.

Chilly problem

Using the green beam to switch the orange output beam from weak to strong is analogous to the way a transistor's control electrode switches a current between "on" and "off" voltages, and hence the 0s and 1s of digital data. And doing it with a single molecule means billions could be packed into future photonic chips.

It's a neat trick, but the Zurich team's work is a long way from commercially viable, says Malcolm Penn, CEO of UK electronics market researcher Future Horizons. The costs of operating at such low, cryogenic temperatures are high, he says.

But Moore's law, which describes how the number of components on a chip roughly doubles every two years, cannot go on forever while computing is based on silicon, he acknowledges, making any novel ideas of value.

"In research labs, silicon chips with features just 15 nanometres wide are already misbehaving as quantum randomness makes devices depart from the way they should work," he explains, "so we need new ideas like this for sure."

from NewScientist …

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There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own 'archive' of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years - such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

Modern research and historic records

"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate" explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century. They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.

By combining the curve of the climate with the actual historical records of the distribution of the ice, researchers have been able to reconstruct the extent of the sea ice all the way back to the 13th century. Even though the 13th century was a warm period, the calculations show that there has never been so little sea ice as in the 20th century.

In the middle of the 17th century there was also a sharp decline in sea ice, but it lastet only a very brief period. The greatest cover of sea ice was in a period around 1700-1800, which is also called the 'Little Ice Age'.

"There was a sharp change in the ice cover at the start of the 20th century," explains Aslak Grinsted. He explains, that the ice shrank by 300.000 km2 in the space of ten years from 1910-1920. So you can see that there have been sudden changes throughout time, but here during the last few years we have had some record years with very little ice extent.

"We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years", concludes Aslak Grinsted.

from sciencedaily …

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Researchers in Japan are reporting new evidence that the ordinary vinegar — a staple in oil-and-vinegar salad dressings, pickles, and other foods — may live up to its age-old reputation in folk medicine as a health promoter. They are reporting new evidence that vinegar can help prevent accumulation of body fat and weight gain.

Tomoo Kondo and colleagues note in the new study that vinegar has also been used as a folk medicine since ancient times. People have used it for a range of ills. Modern scientific research suggests that acetic acid, the main component of vinegar, may help control blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and fat accumulation.

Their new study showed that laboratory mice fed a high-fat diet and given acetic acid developed significantly less body fat (up to 10 percent less) than other mice.

Importantly, the new research adds evidence to the belief that acetic acid fights fat by turning on genes for fatty acid oxidation enzymes. The genes churn out proteins involved in breaking down fats, thus suppressing body fat accumulation in the body.

from ScienceDaily …

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It sounds different because it is different. "When you speak, the vocal folds in your throat vibrate, which causes your skin, skull and oral cavities to also vibrate, and we perceive this as sound," explains Ben Hornsby, a professor of audiology at Vanderbilt University. The vibrations mix with the sound waves traveling from your mouth to your eardrum, giving your voice a quality — generally a deeper, more dignified sound — that no one else hears.

Through a loudspeaker or recording device, you pick up sound only through air conduction. "The sound we're used to hearing has a lower frequency from the bone vibrations," Hornsby says. "We like that because it sounds rich and full." Many people cringe at the playback sound because our brain struggles to accept that this foreign voice is our own !!!

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A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, Latin for 112.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), confirmed the discovery of 112 by the team led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Helmholtz Center. IUPAC has asked for an official name for the element to be submitted.

John Jost, executive director of IUPAC in North Carolina, told Reuters that creating new elements helped researchers to understand how nuclear power plants and atomic bombs function.

The atomic number 112 refers to the sum of the atomic numbers of zinc, which has 30, and lead, which has 82. Atomic numbers denote how many protons are found in the atom's nucleus.

Scientists at the Helmholtz Center have discovered six chemical elements, numbered 107-112, since 1981. The remaining five elements have already been recognized and named.

In 1925, scientists discovered the last naturally occurring element on the periodic table. Since then researchers have sought to create new, heavier elements.

Proving the existence of atoms with such a high mass, the so-called superheavy elements, is a complex procedure because they exist for only tiny fractions of a second and then decay radioactively into other elements.

from Yahoo News …

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The map is the culmination of an assessment carried out by the US Geological Survey (USGS). An estimated 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil may be in the Arctic, according to a map published on Friday.

Writing in the journal Science, its authors say the findings are "important to the interests of Arctic countries".

But, they add, they are unlikely to substantially shift the geographic pattern of world oil production.

According to the new map, the majority of oil is likely to be found underwater, on continental shelves.

Surrounding nations, including Russia, United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway, have all already sought to assert their jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic.

In 2007, two Russian civilian mini-submarines descended to the seabed to collect geological and water samples and to drop a titanium canister containing the Russian flag.

And do i still need to write that , due to this finding … there might be ( for which we are sure ) “conflicts of interests” in surrounding countries … lets hope that it don’t start any active war !!!

Some parts are From , BBC …

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My daughter has a snake, a tiny 8-inch-long, innocuous corn snake, and I hate that thing.
I have seen it, and once, in the name of pretending to be a good mother, I actually touched it. But I hope to never see or touch it again as long as I live.
As an anthropologist, I know that most people around the globe hate snakes (and yes, I know there are people like my daughter who love these disgusting reptiles, but really, they are freaks, all of them except my daughter). The fear of snakes is called ophidiophobia, which is apparently a subset of herpetophobia, the more inclusive fear of reptiles. Although ophidiophobia might seem like a pathology — how often, really, do we encounter poisonous snakes? — anthropologist Lynn Isbell of the University of California, Davis, suggests in her new book "The Fruit, The Tree, and the Serpent: Why We See So Well" (Harvard University Press, 2009) that this fear is not only part of our nature, it's also a good thing.

( no , its not snake of my favorite Metal Gear Solid )

Isbell came to this conclusion while studying monkeys. One day she put a fake snake into the large outdoor cage of Rhesus macaques at the Davis Primate Center only to see a real snake slither into the cage. About half the 80 resident monkeys gathered around the real thing, mobbing it, calling out in alarm. The fear of snakes, Isbell reasoned, must be deeply embedded in our primate history.
More surprising, Isbell claims that the fear of snakes has driven the evolution of our excellent visual abilities. Primates, including humans, see really well. Sure, our vision is not as good as eagles, but still, we see in color and have very good 3-D perception. We also have a pit in each retina that gives us the ability to spot small objects, like little things in bushes. In general, Isbell explains, the neurology of vision, that is what we see and how we perceive it, is expanded in primates over other mammals.
Anthropologists have always assumed that this great vision was a necessary adaptation for life in the trees. Leaping around the canopy requires depth perception, and color vision comes in handy when looking for ripe fruits and leaves.
Going against the standard thinking, Isbell thinks that spotting snakes is the real reason we see well. Snakes, it seems, were the oldest known predator on primates, and they have been the most persistent predators over millions of years. Today, monkeys are scared of them and humans make horror films about them, like "Snakes on a Plane."
Isbell reasons that our vision co-evolved with venomous snakes having monkeys for dinner. As a result, humans have good vision too. But Isbell thinks there might be even more to the snake story for humans.
People are famous for pointing at things, especially things that scare us. And we usually say something like "Ahhh, snake" (or "spider" or "gun") when pointing at something that elicits fear. It may be that the neurological system that brought us good vision to deal with snakes also pushed for the evolution of human communication. And thank goodness for that development because it allows me, a human with naturally good vision and a highly evolved fear of snakes, to say to my snake loving daughter, "Get that thing away from me."

from Live Science …

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Men are on the road to extinction as their genes shrink and slowly fade away, a genetic expert warned today.

The researcher in human sex chromosomes said the male Y chromosome was dying and could one day run out.

However readers shouldn't worry just yet - the change is not due to take place for another five million years.

Professor Jennifer Graves revealed the bleak future to medical students at a public lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) in Ireland.

But all is not lost. She said men may follow the path of a type of rodent which still manages to reproduce despite not having the vital genes that make up the Y chromosome.

'You need a Y chromosome to be male,' said Prof Graves.

'Three hundred million years ago the Y chromosome had about 1,400 genes on it, and now it's only got 45 left, so at this rate we're going to run out of genes on the Y chromosome in about five million years.

'The Y chromosome is dying and the big question is what happens then.'

The male Y chromosome has a gene (SRY) which switches on the development of testis and pumps out male hormones that determine maleness.

In her lecture, entitled The Decline and Fall of the Y Chromosome and the Future of Men, Prof Graves discussed the disappearance of the Y chromosome and the implications for humans.

She said it was not known what would happen once the Y chromosome disappeared.
'Humans can't become parthenogenetic (asexual), like some lizards, because several vital genes must come from the male,' she continued.

'But the good news is that certain rodent species - the mole voles of Eastern Europe and the country rats of Japan - have no Y chromosome and no SRY gene.

'Yet there are still plenty of healthy male mole voles and country rats running around. Some other gene must have taken over the job and we'd like to know what that gene is.'

The scientist said there were several candidate genes which could take over from SRY, adding whichever one did take over was sheer chance.

'It is even possible that two or more different sex-determination systems based on different genes could arise in different populations,' she added.

'These could no longer reproduce with each other, leading to two different species of humans.'

The work of Prof Graves, of the Australian National University, Canberra, on the evolution of sex determination has paved the way for developments in diagnosis of gender disorders and gender-related disease in humans.

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Anaconda, a giant rubber "snake" that floats offshore and converts wave energy to electricity, is a step closer to commercialization. An 8-meter long, 1/25th scale version is currently undergoing tests in a large wave tank in Gosport, UK, and a full-size working version could be a reality in five years.

Harnessing the power of waves is an attractive proposition because they are much more energy dense than wind. But wave power remains the poor relation of the renewable energy sector due to the difficulties of cheaply operating machinery in the harsh marine environment. The world's first commercial wave farm only began operating last year, off the northern coast of Portugal.

A variety of other designs are in testing around the world, but none are as unusual as the Anaconda. The rubber snake is filled with freshwater – to help deter sea creatures from setting up a home inside – and sealed at both ends to create a semi-rigid balloon that floats at the sea's surface.

Wave pulse

The tube is anchored at one end and as waves wash along its length they exert pressure on the snake that is transmitted by the water inside. This forces Anaconda's walls to expand outwards into the wave troughs where they are under less pressure, forming "bulge waves" that travel along the Anaconda's length.

These waves are similar to those that pass through the human circulatory system and can be felt as the pulse in the wrist and neck, says Rod Rainey of Atkins Global, co-inventor of the Anaconda. When each bulge wave reaches the end of the snake it keeps a turbine spinning to generate electricity.

The snake is made from a rubber-based material similar to that used to make dracones – flexible containers that are filled with diesel or water and towed behind ships for quick and cheap transportation.

Other than the turbine, Anaconda has no moving parts and unlike other wave power devices it needs only one tether to the ocean floor. That lowers construction costs and reduces the need for maintenance – an expensive undertaking in offshore settings where corrosion and accessibility are problems, explains Rainey.

Des Crampton, CEO of Checkmate Seaenergy, the firm commercializing the flexible wave harvester, says a full-size Anaconda 200 meters long could generate enough energy to power 1000 average homes. "Anaconda captures more energy than all existing wave energy devices," he says.

Rainey and retired physicist Francis Farley began work on the concept in 2007, and tested mini Anacondas last year. The first full-size Anacondas could become operational in 2014.

from New Scientist …

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The dinosaurs were wiped out by volcanoes that erupted in India about sixty five million years ago, according to new research.

For the last thirty years scientists have believed a giant meteorite that struck Chicxulub in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula was responsible for the mass extinction of species, including T Rex and its cousins.

But now Professor Gerta Keller says fossilized traces of plants and animals dug out of low lying hills at El Penon in northeastern Mexico show this event happened 300,000 years after the dinosaurs disappeared. Professor Keller said the meteorite, despite having a diameter spanning six miles, seems to have had no effect on any of the plant and animal life of the region whereas the volcano eruptions could have blocked sunlight, altered climate and caused acid rain. She said: 'Not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact.' research, which has taken twenty years, will stop the raging debate at the heart of the demise of the dinosaurs.

She said: 'The decades old controversy over the cause of the mass extinction will never achieve consensus.' Understanding what caused the dinosaurs to disappear remains a great mystery. Theories attempting to explain it include asteroid or cometary impacts, volcanoes, global climate change, rising sea levels and supernova explosions. Scientists know that at a point about 65 million years ago, some phenomenon triggered mass extinctions on the land and oceans.

Dr Richard Lane, of the US National Science Foundation's division of earth sciences which funded the research, said Prof Keller may be onto something. He said: 'Keller and colleagues continue to amass detailed stratigraphic information supporting new thinking about the Chicxulub impact and the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. The two may not be linked after all.'

This has been always point of world wide debate … many people have spent years … sometimes their whole life just to find one single answer … HOW DID DINOSOURS REALLY DIED ?? … and , many scientists have their theories … asteroid hit … global warming … disease  … ice age … climate change … evolution … and now … the volcano … but nobody has never ever got confidence or say 100% reliable proof that their conclusion is correct … all theories are just based on assumptions … well , lets hope that someday … we will really able to know how those dinos disappeared suddenly all over the planet … because it can give us idea of future of mankind …

from DailyMail …

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With more than 1.5 billion people online around the round, scientists estimate the carbon footprint of the internet is growing by more than 10 per cent each year.

Many internet companies are struggling to manage the costs as energy bills soar, while their advertising revenues come under pressure from the recession.

It is thought one site facing problems is video website YouTube. Although now the world's third-biggest website, it requires a heavy subsidy from Google, its owner.

Recent analysis by Credit Suisse suggest it could lose as much as £317m this year.

As the demand for electricity grows, the computer industry's carbon footprint is also increasing, although tracking the growth of its energy use is difficult, as internal company estimates of power consumption are rarely made public.

A study by Rich Brown, an energy analyst at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in California, commissioned by the US environmental protection agency, suggested US data centers used 61bn kW of power in 2006 - enough to supply the UK for two months.

"Efficiency is being more than overwhelmed by continued growth and demand for new services," he said. "It's a common story... technical improvements are often taken back by increased demand."

Urs Hölzle, Google's vice-president of operations, said it was struggling to contain energy costs despite developing its own data centers.

"You have exponential growth in demand from users, and many of these services are free so you don't have exponential growth of revenue to go with it," he told The Guardian

"With good engineering we're trying to make those two even out … but the power bill is going up."

Mr Hölzle dismissed concerns about the environmental impact of using the internet as "overblown".

"One mile of driving completely dwarfs the cost of a search," he said. "Internet usage is part of our consumption, just like TV is, or driving."

To avoid future scenarios such as possible website failures and power cuts, the industry is attempting to combat the problem - introducing new designs for data centres, innovative cooling methods and more investment in renewable energy.

Researchers at Microsoft's £50m research lab in Cambridge are replacing energy-consuming new machines with the systems used in older, less powerful laptops.

Andrew Herbert, the director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, said: "We found we can build more energy-efficient data centers with those than with the kind of high performance processors you find in a typical server."

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There will be about 1,700 U.S. cases of the new H1N1 flu, aka "swine flu," in the next four weeks under a worst-case scenario, according to a research team's new simulations.
And a second team working independently, about 200 miles away, on exactly the same question came up with a similar forecast.

As of Thursday, there were 109 lab-confirmed U.S. cases of the new influenza, according to the World Health Organization, which earlier this week raised the risk level of the influenza to one stage below pandemic because the virus is being transmitted within at least two countries in one region of the world. A full pandemic— the virus is also being transmitted within a third country in a different region — is considered imminent.

It is not clear, however, how virulent or deadly this flu strain will become. Flu viruses are unpredictable, and while some in history have proven incredibly deadly, many would-be-pandemics turned out to be quite mild. Also, medicine and public health are more sophisticated today, in terms of treatments and educational campaigns, than they were during the nation's last pandemic flu in 1968, let alone during the Spanish flu of 1918.

Still, researchers are eager to predict what might happen and Dirk Brockmann has identified the hotspots.

California, Texas and Florida will have most of the cases by late May if Brockmann's large-scale computer simulations are right. His group at Northwestern University came up with the figure of 1,700 cases by late May, and also projected more than 100 cases for the Chicago area.

"Remember — that's exponential growth, which means slow at the beginning and then very fast," Brockmann said. "If you run the worst-case scenario for four months, we're at a very different number."

Brockmann's computer clusters can be used to simulate an infectious disease that spreads among 300 million people. The approach was based on human mobility patterns — daily commuting, intermediate trips and long-distance ones — which helps determine how a disease could potentially spread, and he modeled those on data from a dollar-bill tracking project called WheresGeorge.com. You can track people's movements, to a certain extent, if you know where they spend cash.

"These networks play an important role in the spread of infectious disease," he said. "So we're looking at how people travel in the United States and Europe and trying to find a theory behind human traffic. Then we can unravel the structures within these networks and explain them."

Brockmann says his forecast is off by a little bit, and that's a good thing. His team's worst-case scenario assumes that no measures have been taken by officials and public health agencies to combat the spread of disease. Most likely, the case count will be lower than his estimate as a result of such things as stronger public health campaigns for hand washing and social distancing (stand far away from people who are coughing and sneezing), school closures where children are found to be symptomatic and the federal travel advisory against non-essential trips to Mexico.
Brockmann and his team's swine flu results match up well with those of a research group at Indiana University in Bloomington led by computer scientist Alex Vespignani. The teams were aware of each other's work but intentionally worked independently and remained ignorant of each other's methodology to see if they arrived at the same results. When scientists independently arrive at the same result, it suggests they have a finding that is "robust," that is it will stand the test of time.

"When we look at the numbers, they are in stunning agreement," Vespignani told LiveScience. "That is very comforting in the sense that it's a sign of robustness. Also it suggests that the results we are getting are probably correct."

The two teams know each other from conferences, but have never specifically collaborated on a published research report, he said. (Brockmann's team includes graduate students Christian Theimann, Rafael Brune and Alejandro Morales Gallardo. Vespignani said there are 20 members of his research team.)

Of course, the H1N1 flu outbreak is still evolving, Brockmann said.

"We have to buy time for the development and distribution of a vaccine, so that is the point, the main issue," Vespignani said.

Vespignani said his team's forecast for the number of cases on May 17 is 1,200 (a public version of his results are at www.gleamviz.org). If you project that rate forward to Brockmann's calculation for late May, when the virus will have spread to even more people, you get a decent alignment, with rounding.

Most recently on 29th of april, influenza pandemic alert level raised from phase 4 to phase 5 …. which means , the pandemic is imminent .. and virus has been spread in two countries in one region !!! …. the last phase is 6 … that is pandemic phase …

from Live Science …

Njoy !!!

Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border.

The largest study of African genetics ever undertaken also found that nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa. The new analysis published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.

"Given the fact that modern humans arose in Africa, they have had time to accumulate dramatic changes" in their genes, explained lead researcher Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania.

People have been adapting to very diverse environmental niches in Africa, she explained in a briefing.

Over 10 years, Tishkoff and an international team of researchers trekked across Africa collecting samples to compare the genes of various peoples. Often working in primitive conditions, the researchers sometimes had to resort to using a car battery to power their equipment, Tishkoff explained.

The reason for their work? Very little was known about the genetic variation in Africans, knowledge that is vital to understanding why diseases have a greater impact in some groups than others and in designing ways to counter those illnesses.

Scott M. Williams of Vanderbilt University noted that constructing patterns of disease variations can help determine which genes predispose a group to a particular illness.

This study "provides a critical piece in the puzzle," he said. For example, there are clear differences in prevalence of diseases such as hypertension and prostate cancer across populations, Williams said.

"The human genome describes the complexity of our species," added Muntaser Ibrahim of the department of molecular biology at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. "Now we have spectacular insight into the history of the African population ... the oldest history of mankind.

"Everybody's history is part of African history because everybody came out of Africa," Ibrahim said.

Christopher Ehret of the department of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, compared genetic variation among people to variations in language.

There are an estimated 2,000 distinct language groups in Africa broken into a few broad categories, often but not always following gene flow.

Movement of a language usually involves arrival of new people, Ehret noted, bringing along their genes. But sometimes language is brought by a small "but advantaged" group which can impose their language without significant gene flow.

Overall, the researchers were able to study and compare the genetics of 121 African groups, 60 non-African populations and four African-American groups.

The so-called "Cape-colored" population of South Africa has highest levels of mixed ancestry on the globe, a blend of African, European, East Asian and South Indian, Tishkoff said.

"This will be a great population for study of diseases" that are more common in one group than another, she said.

The study also found that about 71 percent of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to western African origins. They also have between 13 percent and 15 percent European ancestry and a smaller amount of other African origins. There was "very little" evidence for American Indian genes among African-Americans, Tishkoff said.

Ehret added that only about 20 percent of the Africans brought to North America made the trip directly, while most of the rest went first to the West Indies.

And, he added, some local African-American populations, such as the residents of the sea islands off Georgia and South Carolina, can trace their origins to specific regions such as Sierra Leone and Guinea.

from Yahoo! …

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There’s a wonderful article in the current issue of Insight, the energy journal published by Platts, called “The Unbearable Lightness of Wind.”

  The author, Ross McCracken, tackles the question that nobody has posed yet – what are the economic consequences going to be of putting up all these wind turbines with government subsidies, mandates and “feed-in tariffs” that tell the utilities, “Buy it whatever it costs”?

“The conundrum,” McCracken writes, “lies in the fact that wind does not directly displace fossil fuel generating capacity, but will make this capacity less profitable to maintain.”

What’s likely to happen, McCracken argues, is that windmills – which generate electricity only 30 percent of the time – will replace some peaking power and some base-load power:

As wind provides neither baseload nor peaking plant it has no impact on reserve capacity. . . [I]t increases redundancy in peaking plants and reduces the profits of baseload generation; potentially good for consumers but bad for investment in non-intermittent sources of power, and presenting the risk of a decline in reserve capacity. . . . [P]eaking plants would be used much less and baseload plant would see sustained period of potential below cost prices – a particular nightmare for the nuclear industry.

So without contributing any reliable capacity, wind will nonetheless make nuclear, by far our most practical and reliable form of zero carbon energy, less profitable. Existing plants will be caught in a trap and new construction will be discouraged entirely. Already the British Nuclear Group is complaining that it can’t build any new reactors if they have to compete against subsidized wind farms. Anti-nuclear activists are turning handsprings, claiming joyously that wind is finally replacing nuclear. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, nothing will be replacing existing capacity–namely, the coal burning plants that are one of the largest sources of carbon emissions–as demand increases in years ahead. That means carbon emissions won’t be meaningfully reduced, since coal plants will have to stay on line to provide backup.

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When I was kid, this question had always puzzled me … why why why clock hands always show 10 10 ( almost )  …. or in cases with seconds hand , they all position at 10 9 6 …  ???

No wonder, i was not the only genius to note this positions … so just like me , many people had already tried to figure out what’s the reason …

There are many Myths laying around this 10 10 mystery …

• First and most common , ( for Western countries of course ) America’s first president Abraham Lincoln was shot / died at that time , but fact is , he was shot at 10.15 PM , and died next morning at 7.22 … so its not true .. right ??
• Second and Third Myth was same , but for John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … that they died at this time … which isn’t true ..
• Fourth and popular in asian countries … is … it is time when America dumped their first nuclear bomb, “ Little Boy “ on Hiroshima, Japan …
• Fifth and silly reason is , it displays name of manufacture without interrupting clock hands …

But the fact is … the only reason why this hands are placed in this manner is , the official statement is something like this …

Timex says -- The hands on a clock are placed at10:10 because it’s a creative standard industry. The hands on timepieces are placed at 10:10 so that the company’s logo on the face gets framed and not blocked by the hands. The industry standard used to be 8:20 but that looked too much like a frown and created an unhappy look.
In its ads' , the clock hands are placed at 10:09:36, exactly below 12 o’ clock .

The practice started in the 1920s, and its stuck since then.

Darn … finally mystery solved … its nothing but just a marketing analogy ??? no fancy reason … too bad …

anyways … this is the story why clock hands are at 10 10 …

Njoy …

It's 2009 -- several decades after health officials began urging Americans to cut down on salt.

Do you know how much you're consuming?

If you're a typical American, it's about 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day. That's well beyond the 2,300 mg recommended by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. And it's 15 times as much as the human body requires.

Average sodium intake has increased about 50% since the 1970s. That's largely because we're eating more convenience foods. And, as makers of processed food have cut fat and sugar from their products, they've often added more salt to restore flavor.

How bad is all this sodium for your health?

Excess salt has been linked to osteoporosis, kidney damage and stomach cancer. Worse, it raises blood pressure, a key factor in heart attacks and strokes, which kill about 850,000 Americans a year.

"After smoking, high blood pressure is the leading cause of preventable illness and death," says New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, who is urging makers of packaged foods and restaurants nationwide to gradually reduce their sodium content by 50% over the next 10 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that such a reduction could save 150,000 lives and $10 billion in health-care expenditures a year. Some 50 million Americans have hypertension (that is, blood pressure readings consistently at or above 140/90 mm/Hg). Another 20 million are prehypertensive (with blood pressure from 120/80 to 139/ 89 mm/Hg). Hypertension is more common among African-Americans than whites, and nearly 90% of Americans eventually develop it as they age.

With that in mind, the CDC is urging anyone who has hypertension, is African-American or over age 40 -- nearly 70% of the U.S. population -- to follow a stricter guideline of just 1,500 mgs a day. Even people with normal blood pressure can cut their risk of developing hypertension later by lowering their salt intake. "We think of hypertension as being a normal part of the aging process and it's not," says Commissioner Frieden.

About 80% of Americans' salt intake comes from processed foods and restaurant meals; only 20% comes from salt used in home cooking and added at the table. But cutting salt from processed food isn't easy. Besides enhancing taste, salt helps provide texture to many foods and acts as a preservative. And Americans have become accustomed to the taste. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents food makers, says many of its members have cut sodium in their products and introduced lower-salt items in recent years. But it believes that any government effort needs to include consumer education and scientific research as well. "It's not as collaborative as it should be," says Robert Earl, the group's vice president for science policy, nutrition and health.

In the U.K., which started a similar salt-reduction effort in 2003, many food makers and restaurant chains have already cut salt by 20% to 30%. The average consumption there is down to 8.6 grams from 9.5 grams a day.

A few critics don't think a broad reduction in sodium is warranted. Michael Alderman, a professor of medicine and public health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y., says it hasn't been conclusively shown that cutting salt intake across the population would save lives, and it could have unintended consequences. Lowering salt can cause kidney problems and contribute to insulin resistance in some cases, says Dr. Alderman, who is an unpaid consultant to the Salt Institute, an industry group. Darwin Labarthe, director of the CDC's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, counters that there's a very broad consensus that reducing salt would cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and there is little evidence of harmful effects. The American Heart Association, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization all urge lower salt consumption.

Besides, says Commissioner Frieden, "We aren't taking choice away from people. We are giving them choice. We want to let them determine how much salt they want to add." What can you do about your own salt intake? It's impossible to know for sure how much you're consuming. Even raw chicken in the grocery store is sometimes "enhanced" with salt water to make it plumper (and heavier, and thus more costly). But you can get some idea by checking the Nutrition Facts labels on products you buy and keeping a running tally. Some bakery goods and breakfast cereals have far more sodium than you'd expect. There's often a wide range of sodium among brands of the same product. Be sure to check the serving size indicated on the label. A bag of chips that looks individual may be listed as multiple servings.

Even low-sodium labels have different meanings: "Sodium free" means less than 5 mg per serving; "very low" has less than 35 mg; "low" is less than 140. "Reduced sodium" just means that it's down 25% from what an earlier formulation was -- but could still be high in sodium, just like "No added salt" doesn't mean salt free.

Ask restaurants to use less salt when you order. Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says many people feel bloated after they eat out. "It's actually a sodium load, and it takes a few days to get rid of it," he says. When you cook at home, experts counsel to use only half the salt the recipe calls for; experiment with herbs and spices, or go with the natural flavor. Kids who grow up with less salt may never develop a "salt tooth." It may take a while to get accustomed to less salt, but once your tastes adjust, you may not want to go back. Commissioner Frieden likens reducing salt to switching from whole milk to skim milk. "If you go back, whole milk tastes like heavy cream," he says.

from The WSJ …

Njoy …

If you don’t know about The Blue Book … then you must be from Kashyyyk … ( err… sorry for being starwars fan … ) … but still if you didn’t get it .. then let me make your life easier by explaining about the Blue Book … its Standardization Book / Website for Autos .. whenever you go for car ( new or used ),and if you have referred the KBB , then it makes your life easies when it comes to final price … in general its Bible for cars … … and the prices are standard based on various factors, which even car dealers can’t disallow …

Recently KBB announced its 2009 picks for the Top 10 Green Cars. Hybrid gas-electric cars top the list that also includes two small cars and two diesel engine vehicles.

The top three “greenest” models are new models. The 2010 Toyota Prius, offering a combined 50-mpg, has more power, a slicker design, and more features than its predecessor. The 2010 Honda Insight, rated at 41 mpg, has a price advantage over all other hybrids. And the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, with city mileage at 41 mpg, arrives with new exterior styling.

The editors not only considered fuel economy and price, but also characteristics like comfort, performance, utility and technology. The winners represent a range of vehicle sizes from small cars like the Honda Fit to the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid, a gas-electric pickup truck.

Other winners include the Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen TDI and BMW 335d, both diesels; the 2009 Mini Cooper; and two hybrid SUVS, the Ford Escape Hybrid and Toyota Highlander Hybrid.

"Despite the decline in auto sales and the stabilization of gas prices in recent months, we still think many new-car shoppers are interested in buying vehicles that are more fuel-efficient and better for the environment," said Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book. In a press release, KBB notes, “2009 is shaping up to be a banner year for fuel efficiency." Unfortunately, the economic downturn that has affected all auto sales has also hurt sales of green models. Yet, , many consumers expect the current reprieve from last year's high gas prices to be short-lived.

I liked that at least these cars are affordable …

from ..  Hybrid Cars ..

Njoy …

Streetlights were the first big users of electricity. Now, they are being re-engineered to improve efficiency, but at a cost that today's municipalities might have a tough time covering.  

San Jose, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, is testing a concept called "adaptive lighting," in which streets can be made brighter, darker or even be illuminated with flashing strobes upon command. By summer, the city will have installed 125 streetlamps using LED technology, in one of the biggest urban tests of the science so far in the U.S. The city hopes to cut down on energy use, and, hopefully, lower its utility costs, by tapping LED lighting's greater flexibility.

The test in San Jose coincides with a broad push by federal and state agencies to modernize the nation's lighting infrastructure. Many homes and businesses have replaced incandescent bulbs with more efficient compact fluorescent lights. Now cities, faced with tighter budgets, are looking for ways to cut street-lighting costs and to reduce emissions from power plants.

Raley's supermarket in West Sacramento, Calif., recently had LED lights installed with funding from the Department of Energy.

But the cost savings will take time to materialize. Street and highway lights use about 2% of the nation's electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Many cities have LED traffic signals, but because of the high cost of producing white light with LED, local governments have been reluctant to install them in streetlights. The effort is further complicated not only by strapped municipal coffers, but resistance from star-gazers and others who object to LEDs brighter glare.

LED, or light-emitting diodes, are electronic lights based on semiconductor technology. They use less energy and last longer than the sodium vapor-powered lights typically used in urban street lighting. LED technology has been around for decades, and is often found in electronic gadgets. It is used in streetlamps in some European cities.

Unlike regular streetlamps, LED lights can be programmed to respond to specific commands. For example, a city could dim the lighting on commercial strips after business hours, or turn up the lights after bars close, says Jim Helmer, director of San Jose's transportation department. Streets around Little League baseball diamonds could be made brighter as people walk to their cars, and then turned down afterward. By regulating the lights based on activity, the city hopes to cut down on "light spillage" -- city planners' term for light that shines where it isn't wanted, creating an urban nuisance.

San Jose expects to spend $150,000 to $200,000 on a pilot project in its Hillview North neighborhood, and it is seeking an additional $2 million in federal stimulus funds to enlarge the test.

The LED streetlights being tested in San Jose could save anywhere from 10% to 60% on energy use, depending on their brightness. The white LEDs will have a range of between one and 82 watts and will replace 55-watt, yellowish sodium-vapor lamps. The lights will be controlled under a system developed by energy-software company Echelon Corp. of San Jose, the general contractor in the pilot program. But for now, many cities see little financial advantage to switching their lighting systems.

It can cost $600 to install a single LED streetlight, compared with $200 for a sodium-vapor lamp. What's more, utilities often charge cities a flat rate based on the number of streetlamps they operate, regardless of use.

Currently, San Jose pays Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp., a flat rate for electricity, about $300,000 a month. The utility has proposed a new rate program that would lower costs for LED streetlights; the plan is awaiting review by state utility regulators. The Department of Energy has been funding lighting tests, such as a recent retrofit of a Raley's supermarket parking lot in West Sacramento, Calif., with 16 LED lamps and motion sensors. They run at 49 watts, unless they sense activity, when they power up to 149 watts. They could pay for themselves in energy savings in four to five years.

Fourteen miles east of San Jose on Mount Hamilton, the astronomers at the Lick Observatory have another concern: The bright white light of LEDs illuminate the night sky and obscure views of planets and stars. The scientists helped San Jose select its sodium lamps in the 1980s because the observatory can filter out yellow light. "Going to any other kind of lighting is detrimental," says Burt Jones, the observatory's assistant director.

But Dr. Jones says scientists are working with city officials to make LEDs benign, suggesting they dim after midnight or eliminate near-infrared and ultraviolet light from the LED color spectrum. "In those colors, the sky would still look dark to us," explains Dr. Jones.

from The WallStreet Journal

Njoy …

today in the morning , when i was searching for news on internet … i opened google … and just like always , they had changed their search page to EARTH page …

so can’t resist to take a snapshot …

Njoy …

And here comes again … 22nd Day of April … some intellects ( or say paranoia  ) celebrates this day as an EARTH DAY … its kind of appreciation and awareness program in general …

Now you would ask … why the hell should we celebrate this day , right ?? … why should we care for something that is not alive … or something that never do anything for us … … but thing is , being human we should know that we are the only intellectual species present in the whole universe made of trillions and trillions of galaxies ( as on dated 04/22/09 on its true ) … just because of this blue planet , that gave us something that no other planet have … the atmosphere that supports life !!! …

But in thanks to that gift , what we have done ??? … well … we have contaminated its land , water and air from our toxic wastes , fuels and garbage … experimented and even used weapons of mass destructions … and raised the global warmth level at such a level that now ICE is melting at both north and south poles .. and might be resulting in global sea level raise !!! … we have even made our space a junk yard …

( Gaylord Nelson …. Founder of Earth day … )

But there were some people who originally thought and worried about this condition and tried to celebrate a day to bring general awareness in public for earth … ( that’s characteristic of HUMAN nature, we never remember things unless we have a day to celebrate … best example … we need a mother’s day or father’s day .. to remind us that we are not test tube babies .. right ??   soooooooooooooooooooo pathetic ) … anyways , wikipedia says first idea for celebration came in mind of a good senator of Wisconsin … Gaylord Nelson … and he said that something must be done for it .. it was year of 1970 ( the decades of social system revolutions )… he really tried and take initiative for making it the earth day … since then it has been celebrated every year … recycling , global warming , clean energy are some of thoughts derived from this movement during all these years of celebration …

Being citizen of 3rd rock … i really respect earth … and i do all i can do to make it less polluted ( because of me ) … by recycling things that can be recycled … by using renewable energy … by minimizing overall energy usage … by using good avg. car    !!! … by never keeping my pc ON for all night when i am not using it ???  … using natural fertilizer and pesticides for our little farm … and by all other means …

BTW … for people who don’t know , April 22nd is Birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin … chairman of U.S.S.R. … ( and a person who have highly influenced RUSSIA and whole WORLD ) … and coincidently , year 1970 was his 100th B’day … so If you would have joined demonstration in 1970 , you might have been considered as a communist !!!

So finally on this Earth Day … i just wish that you too do something that can really help our environment … our earth … our home … and our children ( i’m still single ) …

Njoy …