Who seldom was fit to be seen;
She wore a long shawl,
Over bonnet and all,
Which enveloped that person in green.
Friday, September 30, 2011
There Was a Young Person in Green,
Who seldom was fit to be seen;
She wore a long shawl,
Over bonnet and all,
Which enveloped that person in green.
Political Signs 'OK'd' for Apartment Renters
(09-30) 15:38 PDT Sacramento -- Just in time for campaign season, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday that will allow California apartment-dwellers to post political signs on their windows, doors and balconies, a measure his predecessor had vetoed.
SB337 by Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, effective in January, lets tenants display signs of up to 6 square feet that relate to an issue on the ballot or pending before a public agency.
Current state law allows residents of condominiums and mobile home parks to put up political signs, but authorizes landlords to prohibit sign-posting by apartment renters.
In a state Supreme Court opinion in 2001, then-Chief Justice Ronald George suggested that a tenant's display of political signs was protected by the right of free speech under the California Constitution. Unlike the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which applies only to the government, the California charter curbs limits that businesses place on free expression, like protests at shopping malls.
But a bill to let renters post signs was vetoed in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said it would cast a cloud over "the rights of property owners to control the appearance of their property and protect the environment for other tenants."
Kehoe's current measure was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and initially opposed by the California Apartment Association, which voiced concern about clutter and signs that might contain hate speech.
Eric Wiegers, spokesman for the apartment association, said Friday it withdrew its opposition after Kehoe added amendments specifying that the signs must refer to political issues and must be removed, at the landlord's request, no later than 15 days after the issue comes to a vote.
"During the election cycle, people should be able to express themselves," Weigers said.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/30/BAEU1LBVC8.DTL#ixzz1ZV1lhSpC
Current state law allows residents of condominiums and mobile home parks to put up political signs, but authorizes landlords to prohibit sign-posting by apartment renters.
In a state Supreme Court opinion in 2001, then-Chief Justice Ronald George suggested that a tenant's display of political signs was protected by the right of free speech under the California Constitution. Unlike the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which applies only to the government, the California charter curbs limits that businesses place on free expression, like protests at shopping malls.
But a bill to let renters post signs was vetoed in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said it would cast a cloud over "the rights of property owners to control the appearance of their property and protect the environment for other tenants."
Kehoe's current measure was sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union and initially opposed by the California Apartment Association, which voiced concern about clutter and signs that might contain hate speech.
Eric Wiegers, spokesman for the apartment association, said Friday it withdrew its opposition after Kehoe added amendments specifying that the signs must refer to political issues and must be removed, at the landlord's request, no later than 15 days after the issue comes to a vote.
"During the election cycle, people should be able to express themselves," Weigers said.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/30/BAEU1LBVC8.DTL#ixzz1ZV1lhSpC
Lemon Parfait
Nessa, your dessert is perfect after today's spectacular world events. Thank YOU!!
http://nessasfamilykitchen.blogspot.com/2011/08/lemon-meringue-parfait-with-berry-sauce.html
This is such an easy dessert to prepare made with just a few ingredients. I love lemon curd and have many uses for it in baking. Before making this I was unsure if it would freeze well or if it would crystallize but it remained smooth and added a lovely zestiness to what would otherwise be a frozen eton mess. Last Winter when I was devising my recipes for my Christmas Course I wanted to offer as many 'make ahead' dishes as possible and this was one dessert that I included. This is a perfect stress free dessert as it will happily sit in the freezer for a week or so before serving and then the addition of the coulis and raspberries makes it look that bit more impressive.
Ingredients
250ml cream, whipped
6 meringues, crushed into pieces
200g (18oz) raspberries, quartered
4 tablespoons lemon curd
To Serve
Raspberries
Raspberry coulis
Method
Line 6 ramekin with double cling film. Whip the cream till thick then fold in the remaining ingredients.
Freeze in the ramekins or a bowl/ an ice-cream container or a cling film lined loaf tin.
Take out of the freezer 10 minutes before serving. When serving drizzle with some coulis and serve with some fresh berries.
http://nessasfamilykitchen.blogspot.com/2011/08/lemon-meringue-parfait-with-berry-sauce.html
Ingredients
250ml cream, whipped
6 meringues, crushed into pieces
200g (18oz) raspberries, quartered
4 tablespoons lemon curd
To Serve
Raspberries
Raspberry coulis
Method
Line 6 ramekin with double cling film. Whip the cream till thick then fold in the remaining ingredients.
Freeze in the ramekins or a bowl/ an ice-cream container or a cling film lined loaf tin.
Take out of the freezer 10 minutes before serving. When serving drizzle with some coulis and serve with some fresh berries.
When Illustrators were once Famous
By Mark Frauenfelder
An advertisement from the good old days when illustrators were celebrities. See some examples of Jon Whitcomb's work. (Look at that big bowl of chicken broth, too!)
Drawn: Hard to believe illustrators once had enough celebrity clout to be advertising spokespeople
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/30/when-illustrators-were-almost-as-famous-as-the-kardashian-sisters.html
Drawn: Hard to believe illustrators once had enough celebrity clout to be advertising spokespeople
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/30/when-illustrators-were-almost-as-famous-as-the-kardashian-sisters.html
The Young Gallerists
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Published: September 30, 2011
Theodora Richards, the daughter of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, shimmied around the room in a second skin of stretchy black lace, while the billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman grazed past Alexa Chung and Karolina Kurkova. Around 9:20 p.m., Mr. Hambleton, the famously reclusive graffiti artist who descended into obscurity after the 1980s art gold rush went bust, arrived with a bandage on his nose, seemingly dazed by the crowd.
The real draw that night, though, was Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, 26, and his business partner, Andy Valmorbida, 31, the show’s young curators and art dealers, who are reviving interest in Mr. Hambleton’s paintings. Mr. Valmorbida, the Australian heir to a food and coffee fortune, bounced around the gallery, chatting with buyers. Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, the son of Carine Roitfeld, the former editor in chief of French Vogue, stayed mostly in place, his curious Kewpie-doll eyes scanning the crowd.
It was a different scene two evenings earlier on the Lower East Side, where art dealers were opening their galleries for the beginning of the fall art season. Young 20-somethings, not recognizably rich or famous, wandered past the small storefronts in fedoras and jeans. At the Rachel Uffner Gallery on Orchard Street, about 150 people packed into a space the size of a large one-bedroom apartment and drank from cans of Tsingtao beer. The artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty’s opening show included work made using photographs, Plexiglas and acetate. And she hugged well-wishers that night despite a faulty air-conditioner that left most sticky.
But Ms. Uffner, 33, has more in common with her uptown peers than appearances suggest. Though one gallery owner may show an artist whose work now sells for $25,000 or more and another may show unknown artists whose work still goes largely unnoticed by big-name collectors or established critics, both are part of a new generation of New York gallerists who are slowly transforming the city’s art scene.
“There are new galleries popping up all over,” Ms. Uffner said, taking a break from the evening’s festivities. “People are beginning to recognize we have legitimate places to show.”
When the stock market collapsed in fall 2008, many people feared the art market would be dragged down with it. But art auction houses, including Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are currently reporting healthy business. Individual prices are often strong: At Phillips de Pury in May, one of Warhol’s famous images of Elizabeth Taylor sold for $26.9 million: about $3 million more than a similar work at the height of the market at Christie’s in 2007. And while Larry Gagosian and other blue-chip dealers continue to dominate sales for the wealthiest collectors, gallery owners who have opened their doors in the past few years seem to be thriving despite the persistent recession.
The New Art Dealers Alliance, a national organization of art professionals or gallery owners in business less than 10 years, said that nearly one-third of its 300 members are based in New York City.
Choosing which up-and-coming gallerists to profile for this article involved considering art dealers who either opened New York galleries or began working together within the last three years. Then art critics, gallery owners and art collectors were interviewed to narrow the field of gallerists who represented promising artists or had an interesting take on contemporary art.
The final cut included Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, with that famous last name and the prized connections that come with it; two dealers positioning themselves as the angry young men of the art world; and a scrappy out-of-towner hoping to make it big in New York.
Despite their differences, all share the need to actually make a living at this. Owning an art gallery is an expensive proposition. That is why many new galleries are on the Lower East Side, where rent can range from $2,000 to $10,000 a month, compared with $25,000 or more for a gallery in Chelsea. (Ms. Uffner says she pays less than $4,000.) Many new gallerists, like Laurel Gitlen, find their art spaces after walking around the neighborhood. Some, like Mr. Valmorbida and Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, have forsaken the traditional gallery space, choosing instead to hold exhibitions when and where they choose. (Artists generally earn 50 percent of the sale price of their work at galleries, while the gallery owner might earn 30 percent to 50 percent of a sale, depending on discounts, or whether an art adviser of another dealer is involved.)
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/fashion/young-gallerists-are-transforming-new-yorks-art-scene.html
Published: September 30, 2011
Theodora Richards, the daughter of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, shimmied around the room in a second skin of stretchy black lace, while the billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman grazed past Alexa Chung and Karolina Kurkova. Around 9:20 p.m., Mr. Hambleton, the famously reclusive graffiti artist who descended into obscurity after the 1980s art gold rush went bust, arrived with a bandage on his nose, seemingly dazed by the crowd.
It was a different scene two evenings earlier on the Lower East Side, where art dealers were opening their galleries for the beginning of the fall art season. Young 20-somethings, not recognizably rich or famous, wandered past the small storefronts in fedoras and jeans. At the Rachel Uffner Gallery on Orchard Street, about 150 people packed into a space the size of a large one-bedroom apartment and drank from cans of Tsingtao beer. The artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty’s opening show included work made using photographs, Plexiglas and acetate. And she hugged well-wishers that night despite a faulty air-conditioner that left most sticky.
But Ms. Uffner, 33, has more in common with her uptown peers than appearances suggest. Though one gallery owner may show an artist whose work now sells for $25,000 or more and another may show unknown artists whose work still goes largely unnoticed by big-name collectors or established critics, both are part of a new generation of New York gallerists who are slowly transforming the city’s art scene.
“There are new galleries popping up all over,” Ms. Uffner said, taking a break from the evening’s festivities. “People are beginning to recognize we have legitimate places to show.”
When the stock market collapsed in fall 2008, many people feared the art market would be dragged down with it. But art auction houses, including Christie’s and Sotheby’s, are currently reporting healthy business. Individual prices are often strong: At Phillips de Pury in May, one of Warhol’s famous images of Elizabeth Taylor sold for $26.9 million: about $3 million more than a similar work at the height of the market at Christie’s in 2007. And while Larry Gagosian and other blue-chip dealers continue to dominate sales for the wealthiest collectors, gallery owners who have opened their doors in the past few years seem to be thriving despite the persistent recession.
The New Art Dealers Alliance, a national organization of art professionals or gallery owners in business less than 10 years, said that nearly one-third of its 300 members are based in New York City.
Choosing which up-and-coming gallerists to profile for this article involved considering art dealers who either opened New York galleries or began working together within the last three years. Then art critics, gallery owners and art collectors were interviewed to narrow the field of gallerists who represented promising artists or had an interesting take on contemporary art.
The final cut included Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, with that famous last name and the prized connections that come with it; two dealers positioning themselves as the angry young men of the art world; and a scrappy out-of-towner hoping to make it big in New York.
Despite their differences, all share the need to actually make a living at this. Owning an art gallery is an expensive proposition. That is why many new galleries are on the Lower East Side, where rent can range from $2,000 to $10,000 a month, compared with $25,000 or more for a gallery in Chelsea. (Ms. Uffner says she pays less than $4,000.) Many new gallerists, like Laurel Gitlen, find their art spaces after walking around the neighborhood. Some, like Mr. Valmorbida and Mr. Restoin Roitfeld, have forsaken the traditional gallery space, choosing instead to hold exhibitions when and where they choose. (Artists generally earn 50 percent of the sale price of their work at galleries, while the gallery owner might earn 30 percent to 50 percent of a sale, depending on discounts, or whether an art adviser of another dealer is involved.)
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/fashion/young-gallerists-are-transforming-new-yorks-art-scene.html
'Sacred Music' around Glendale
By Daniel Siegal, daniel.siegal@latimes.com
The fifth World Festival of Sacred Music is coming to Los Angeles, and Glendale is hosting part of the celebration of life-affirming performances.
Held every three years, the World Festival of Sacred Music was born 14 years ago, when founder Judy Mitorna was inspired by a statement issued by the Dalai Lama encouraging the creation of music festivals to honor the millennium.
Her first festival was in 1999, and this year’s festival has grown to include 32 performances featuring 52 artists and groups, stretched out over the first 16 days of October.
Glendale will host three performances, and one will be held in Eagle Rock.
Classical Persian singer Mamak Khadem, a Tehran native who grew up in Los Angeles, will perform with her ensemble at the First Baptist Church of Glendale on Sunday, Oct. 9. Tickets are $25. Khadem said that she was honored to participate in the festival.
“I’ve had the pleasure to know the director and people who are in involved, and I see how much dedication goes in there,” said Khadem. “This [performance] has a lot of meaning for me, given that a part of my music does have some spiritual messages, and it comes from the poetry of ancient poets of Iran, like Hafez and Rumi.”
At a vacant lot at 175 Brand Blvd. in Glendale, the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre will perform their work “Expulsion,” a modern interpretation of the universal story of Cain and Abel. Set atop a tower of scaffolding, the dance piece makes the environment part of its context.
Duckler, who has led her company for 26 years, said that she was happy the festival found a way to incorporate her work into its line-up of sacred music.
“I love the way that they sort of expand the definition of what is sacred, because our performance was kind an unusual fit,” said Duckler. “The kind of dance that we do, we animate public spaces, wherever we go the location becomes the context for the dance, it’s very fresh and inspiring.”
A performance of the South Indian classical music-jazz fusion group Sapurna at Glendale’s Brand Library has already filled up its RSVP list, as has a Tibetan, Song, Dance and Opera performance at the Eagle Rock Center for the Performing Arts.
Ultimately, these performances are more special than any normal concert, said Khadem.
“This one is really about reaching out to the community and bringing the message of peace and togetherness,” said Khadem. “It’s like being part of being a family.”
For more information on show times, tickets or RSVPs, and directions, go to www.festivalofsacredmusic.org
DANIEL SIEGAL is a staff writer for Times Community News.
http://www.glendalenewspress.com/entertainment/tn-gnp-1002-festival,0,400316.story
The fifth World Festival of Sacred Music is coming to Los Angeles, and Glendale is hosting part of the celebration of life-affirming performances.
Her first festival was in 1999, and this year’s festival has grown to include 32 performances featuring 52 artists and groups, stretched out over the first 16 days of October.
Glendale will host three performances, and one will be held in Eagle Rock.
Classical Persian singer Mamak Khadem, a Tehran native who grew up in Los Angeles, will perform with her ensemble at the First Baptist Church of Glendale on Sunday, Oct. 9. Tickets are $25. Khadem said that she was honored to participate in the festival.
“I’ve had the pleasure to know the director and people who are in involved, and I see how much dedication goes in there,” said Khadem. “This [performance] has a lot of meaning for me, given that a part of my music does have some spiritual messages, and it comes from the poetry of ancient poets of Iran, like Hafez and Rumi.”
At a vacant lot at 175 Brand Blvd. in Glendale, the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre will perform their work “Expulsion,” a modern interpretation of the universal story of Cain and Abel. Set atop a tower of scaffolding, the dance piece makes the environment part of its context.
Duckler, who has led her company for 26 years, said that she was happy the festival found a way to incorporate her work into its line-up of sacred music.
“I love the way that they sort of expand the definition of what is sacred, because our performance was kind an unusual fit,” said Duckler. “The kind of dance that we do, we animate public spaces, wherever we go the location becomes the context for the dance, it’s very fresh and inspiring.”
A performance of the South Indian classical music-jazz fusion group Sapurna at Glendale’s Brand Library has already filled up its RSVP list, as has a Tibetan, Song, Dance and Opera performance at the Eagle Rock Center for the Performing Arts.
Ultimately, these performances are more special than any normal concert, said Khadem.
“This one is really about reaching out to the community and bringing the message of peace and togetherness,” said Khadem. “It’s like being part of being a family.”
For more information on show times, tickets or RSVPs, and directions, go to www.festivalofsacredmusic.org
DANIEL SIEGAL is a staff writer for Times Community News.
http://www.glendalenewspress.com/entertainment/tn-gnp-1002-festival,0,400316.story
LA Explodes with Art Events This Weekend
LA Explodes with Art Events This Weekend
Pasadena Museum of California Art participates in PST (Image: 'My Lai,' 1968, Hans Burkhardt. Oil assemblage with skulls on canvas. 77 x 115 in. Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles. © Hans G and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation.)
Art abounds in LA this first weekend in October. There are so many events going on that it's enough to make your head spin. But we've come up with a short list to help you navigate the artsy waters. No one can say that LA's a cultural wasteland, devoid of artistic merit—at least this weekend!
It's been hard to escape all the publicity surrounding the behemoth Pacific Standard Time, but the collaborative project from more than 60 cultural institutions and museums throughout Southern California officially launches this weekend. PST celebrates the LA art scene and major art movements from 1945 to 1980.
On Sunday, as part of Pacific Standard Time festivities, major SoCal museums will be offering free admission including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. There will also be free shuttle service between various participating institutions.
SoundWalk is an ear-oriented art event takes place in the LBC on Saturday from 5-10 pm. Produced by the artist group, FLOOD, SoundWalk is described as a "five-hour audioscopic experience" with sound art installations in both indoor and outdoor spaces as in Downtown Long Beach. The artwork combines, in multiple ways, a wide range of media as well as other interplayful sensory elements. There are sculptures, environments, installations, both interactive and passive, as well as scheduled performances.
Art Platform-Los Angeles opens today and runs through Monday. The art fair will feature approximately 75 galleries taking over 50,000 square feet of the L.A. Mart building in DTLA. The art fair will demonstrate LA's position of influence within the contemporary art world. The fair is capitalizing on PST's opening weekend and also emphasizing art made in LA. Tickets: $10-$20 with weekend passes available.
Pulse Los Angeles makes its debut this weekend, beginning today and running through Monday. Held at the Event Deck at L.A. LIVE, the LA edition adds to the Pulse roster of cities (Miami and New York), bringing together 60 exhibitors from Asia, Europe and the Americas in both indoor and outdoor spaces. Galleries expected include: Tel Aviv’s Zemack Contemporary Art, Mexico City’s ANTENA ESTUDIO, Habana’s Factoría, and Tokyo’s MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY; along with leading New York galleries such as Mixed Greens, P•P•O•W, SCHROEDER ROMERO & SHREDDER and Von Lintel Gallery will bring the works of pioneering artists to Los Angeles.
Admission: $15-$20.
Pasadena Museum of California Art participates in PST (Image: 'My Lai,' 1968, Hans Burkhardt. Oil assemblage with skulls on canvas. 77 x 115 in. Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles. © Hans G and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation.)
Art abounds in LA this first weekend in October. There are so many events going on that it's enough to make your head spin. But we've come up with a short list to help you navigate the artsy waters. No one can say that LA's a cultural wasteland, devoid of artistic merit—at least this weekend!
It's been hard to escape all the publicity surrounding the behemoth Pacific Standard Time, but the collaborative project from more than 60 cultural institutions and museums throughout Southern California officially launches this weekend. PST celebrates the LA art scene and major art movements from 1945 to 1980.
On Sunday, as part of Pacific Standard Time festivities, major SoCal museums will be offering free admission including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. There will also be free shuttle service between various participating institutions.
SoundWalk is an ear-oriented art event takes place in the LBC on Saturday from 5-10 pm. Produced by the artist group, FLOOD, SoundWalk is described as a "five-hour audioscopic experience" with sound art installations in both indoor and outdoor spaces as in Downtown Long Beach. The artwork combines, in multiple ways, a wide range of media as well as other interplayful sensory elements. There are sculptures, environments, installations, both interactive and passive, as well as scheduled performances.
Art Platform-Los Angeles opens today and runs through Monday. The art fair will feature approximately 75 galleries taking over 50,000 square feet of the L.A. Mart building in DTLA. The art fair will demonstrate LA's position of influence within the contemporary art world. The fair is capitalizing on PST's opening weekend and also emphasizing art made in LA. Tickets: $10-$20 with weekend passes available.
Pulse Los Angeles makes its debut this weekend, beginning today and running through Monday. Held at the Event Deck at L.A. LIVE, the LA edition adds to the Pulse roster of cities (Miami and New York), bringing together 60 exhibitors from Asia, Europe and the Americas in both indoor and outdoor spaces. Galleries expected include: Tel Aviv’s Zemack Contemporary Art, Mexico City’s ANTENA ESTUDIO, Habana’s Factoría, and Tokyo’s MEGUMI OGITA GALLERY; along with leading New York galleries such as Mixed Greens, P•P•O•W, SCHROEDER ROMERO & SHREDDER and Von Lintel Gallery will bring the works of pioneering artists to Los Angeles.
Admission: $15-$20.
Long Beach Names First Woman Deputy Police Chief
Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell and Deputy Chief Laura FarinellaA 21-year veteran of the Long Beach Police Department made history Thursday evening when she was promoted to become the department's first female deputy chief.
Laura Farinella, along with five other police employees, was appointed to her new post during a ceremony at the Long Beach City Council chambers, according to a department statement.
Farinella began her career in Long Beach as a patrol officer in 1990 and was promoted to corporal, sergeant and then lieutenant.
She supervised the North Patrol Division, then the Communications Division before rising to commander, according to the statement.
Farinella holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Chapman University and a master's degree from Cal State Long Beach University. She is a 2004 graduate of the Leadership Long Beach Program.
Farinella currently serves as liaison for the Chief's Gay & Lesbian Advisory Group.
She is a member of the Command Officers Assn., the National Assn. of Women in Law Enforcement and the Long Beach Police Officers Assn., among other groups.
Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/long-beachs-first-female-deputy-chief.html
Laura Farinella, along with five other police employees, was appointed to her new post during a ceremony at the Long Beach City Council chambers, according to a department statement.
Farinella began her career in Long Beach as a patrol officer in 1990 and was promoted to corporal, sergeant and then lieutenant.
She supervised the North Patrol Division, then the Communications Division before rising to commander, according to the statement.
Farinella holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Chapman University and a master's degree from Cal State Long Beach University. She is a 2004 graduate of the Leadership Long Beach Program.
Farinella currently serves as liaison for the Chief's Gay & Lesbian Advisory Group.
She is a member of the Command Officers Assn., the National Assn. of Women in Law Enforcement and the Long Beach Police Officers Assn., among other groups.
Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/09/long-beachs-first-female-deputy-chief.html
Ig Nobels Honor study of Horny Beetles and Beer Bottles
By: Elinor Mills September 30, 2011 3:32 PM PDT
Winners of the Ig Nobel prize for biology studied why certain beetles try to mate with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle, as depicted in these images from the paper.
(Credit: David Rentz,Darryl Gwynne)
Papers on sexually confused beetles, why people sigh, and a patent for a wasabi emergency alarm were among the scientific research projects receiving Ig Nobel prizes last night in a ceremony at Harvard University.
Presented by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," the awards have been given out for the past two decades to honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to a statement from the organizers.
The biology prize was given to a team or researchers for discovering that certain types of beetles try to mate with particular types of short, dark beer bottles in Australia called "stubbies," which they confuse for female beetles.
In a paper titled "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females" they write: "Lastly, a comment should be made about the fact that improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and 'visual' hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species."
Japanese researchers who have applied for a patent for an odor-generation alarm based on the pungent sushi condiment wasabi received the chemistry prize. Another group of researchers got the medicine prize for demonstrating (PDF) something that most of us already know--that how badly one needs to urinate can affect decision-making and impulse control.
Other winners had research looking at why we sigh [hint: : ( ], whether yawning is contagious in the Red-Footed Tortoise, why discuss throwers become dizzy and hammer throwers don't, and a topic that would be useful to many people: "How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done."
And of course there are the tongue-in-cheek awards, including the public safety prize for experiments in which someone tries to drive on a highway with the sun visor flapping down over his face, blinding him. The mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, Arturas Zuokas, got the peace prize for "demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored truck," according to the Ig Nobel statement.
Meanwhile, a handful of people whose end-of-the-world predictions have proved false--including Pat Robertson who called it for 1982--received the mathematics prize for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations."
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20114134-245/ig-nobels-honor-study-of-horny-beetles-why-we-sigh
Winners of the Ig Nobel prize for biology studied why certain beetles try to mate with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle, as depicted in these images from the paper.
(Credit: David Rentz,Darryl Gwynne)
Papers on sexually confused beetles, why people sigh, and a patent for a wasabi emergency alarm were among the scientific research projects receiving Ig Nobel prizes last night in a ceremony at Harvard University.
Presented by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research," the awards have been given out for the past two decades to honor achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," according to a statement from the organizers.
The biology prize was given to a team or researchers for discovering that certain types of beetles try to mate with particular types of short, dark beer bottles in Australia called "stubbies," which they confuse for female beetles.
In a paper titled "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females" they write: "Lastly, a comment should be made about the fact that improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and 'visual' hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species."
Japanese researchers who have applied for a patent for an odor-generation alarm based on the pungent sushi condiment wasabi received the chemistry prize. Another group of researchers got the medicine prize for demonstrating (PDF) something that most of us already know--that how badly one needs to urinate can affect decision-making and impulse control.
Other winners had research looking at why we sigh [hint: : ( ], whether yawning is contagious in the Red-Footed Tortoise, why discuss throwers become dizzy and hammer throwers don't, and a topic that would be useful to many people: "How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done."
And of course there are the tongue-in-cheek awards, including the public safety prize for experiments in which someone tries to drive on a highway with the sun visor flapping down over his face, blinding him. The mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, Arturas Zuokas, got the peace prize for "demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored truck," according to the Ig Nobel statement.
Meanwhile, a handful of people whose end-of-the-world predictions have proved false--including Pat Robertson who called it for 1982--received the mathematics prize for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations."
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20114134-245/ig-nobels-honor-study-of-horny-beetles-why-we-sigh
Accelerator Finds New Gear
By JOE BARRETT
BATAVIA, Ill.—Scientists on Friday powered down the nation's largest particle accelerator that for nearly three decades has been revealing insights into the building blocks of matter.
"For many here it is a sad day, because they have spent many years making this machine sing," said Pier Oddone, Fermilab's director. But now, "it is time to move on." Fermilab will likely take a back seat to the Large Hadron Collider for a number of years, but American scientists are already playing a big role at that facility as well as laying the groundwork for new research in the U.S."As you move on to the next generation of machines, they have to become international projects" because they are so complex and expensive, said Fred Vylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, an umbrella of 10 different physical-science societies.
BATAVIA, Ill.—Scientists on Friday powered down the nation's largest particle accelerator that for nearly three decades has been revealing insights into the building blocks of matter.
The Tevatron particle accelerator a four-mile-long circular track outside Batavia, Ill. was closed Friday after nearly three decades in use. But closing the Tevatron accelerator a four-mile-long circular track that fires particles at dizzying speeds won't mean the end of cutting-edge research at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. While the Tevatron has been surpassed in size and speed by the 17-mile track at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, Fermilab has a full plate of experiments ahead, both at its existing facility and at those yet to be built.
"For many here it is a sad day, because they have spent many years making this machine sing," said Pier Oddone, Fermilab's director. But now, "it is time to move on." Fermilab will likely take a back seat to the Large Hadron Collider for a number of years, but American scientists are already playing a big role at that facility as well as laying the groundwork for new research in the U.S."As you move on to the next generation of machines, they have to become international projects" because they are so complex and expensive, said Fred Vylla, executive director of the American Institute of Physics, an umbrella of 10 different physical-science societies.
The Tevatron, which has operated since 1983 and is the largest of seven accelerators at the facility, has led to the discovery of a host of fundamental subatomic particles, including the tau neutrino and the top quark. Its construction led to the industrial production of superconducting magnets, which made MRI machines widely available. And it has generated more than a thousand Ph.D. dissertations.
In its early days, the Tevatron was used to shoot particles at a target. More recently, scientists have studied the collision of proton and antiproton particles.While the accelerator will stop generating new information, scientists say they have thoroughly mined only about half the data it spat out in the last 10 years, and that it will be two to three years before all the data are gone through. That means some particles could still be hiding—such as the Higgs boson, or so-called God particle.
"The accelerator has been turned off, but the physics goes on," said Dmitri Denisov, co-spokesman for DZero, one of the experiments on the Tevatron.Fermilab employs about 1,900 people, including 300 to 400 scientists. Another 2,100 scientists are visiting researchers. Officials expect these numbers to dip for a few years in the wake of the Tevatron shutdown, but to bounce back to current levels by 2015 as other projects ramp up.Fermilab's other accelerators will continue to operate. Scientist plan to use one to repeat an experiment performed here that might confirm recent research from the Large Hadron
Collider showing neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light—a result that apparently contradicts Einstein's theories.Fermilab scientists are also installing in Chile a device they created called the Dark Energy Camera, which will conduct the largest galaxy survey ever.Down the road, Fermilab will focus on what scientists call "high intensity physics," in a new facility dubbed Project X that could be under construction by the end of the decade. Instead of accelerating particles faster and with more power, it will aim to pack more particles into the smallest possible stream.
"You can't keep getting a bigger hammer," said Roger Dixon, head of Fermilab's accelerator division. "We have to find new ways to open the physics window."
Write to Joe Barrett at joseph.barrett@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203405504576603183266013812.html
In its early days, the Tevatron was used to shoot particles at a target. More recently, scientists have studied the collision of proton and antiproton particles.While the accelerator will stop generating new information, scientists say they have thoroughly mined only about half the data it spat out in the last 10 years, and that it will be two to three years before all the data are gone through. That means some particles could still be hiding—such as the Higgs boson, or so-called God particle.
"The accelerator has been turned off, but the physics goes on," said Dmitri Denisov, co-spokesman for DZero, one of the experiments on the Tevatron.Fermilab employs about 1,900 people, including 300 to 400 scientists. Another 2,100 scientists are visiting researchers. Officials expect these numbers to dip for a few years in the wake of the Tevatron shutdown, but to bounce back to current levels by 2015 as other projects ramp up.Fermilab's other accelerators will continue to operate. Scientist plan to use one to repeat an experiment performed here that might confirm recent research from the Large Hadron
Collider showing neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light—a result that apparently contradicts Einstein's theories.Fermilab scientists are also installing in Chile a device they created called the Dark Energy Camera, which will conduct the largest galaxy survey ever.Down the road, Fermilab will focus on what scientists call "high intensity physics," in a new facility dubbed Project X that could be under construction by the end of the decade. Instead of accelerating particles faster and with more power, it will aim to pack more particles into the smallest possible stream.
"You can't keep getting a bigger hammer," said Roger Dixon, head of Fermilab's accelerator division. "We have to find new ways to open the physics window."
Write to Joe Barrett at joseph.barrett@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203405504576603183266013812.html
Giant Panda Cubs lie in a Crib at Chengdu Research Base
...of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan Province September 26, 2011. (REUTERS/China Daily)
Just adorable...babies and animals will always make us happy....baby animals will send us straight to heaven happy.....
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/28/baby-pandas-need-a-nap-photo.html
History Class: Paul Ryan Interviews for Grey Room
“Cybernetic Guerrilla Warfare Revisited: From Klein Worms to Relational Circuits” In an interview by Felicity D. Scott and Mark Wasiuta for the Summer 2011 issue of GreyRoom, artist and writer Paul Ryan talks about the time he spent working with Marshall McLuhan, the early days of video art, and his work.
“At that moment [1967] I thought of myself as a writer. I was holed up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with my typewriter, trying to write, and I heard McLuhan on the raso saying, ‘of course, in this electronic age of computers, satellites, radio, and television, the writer is no longer somebody holed up in his garret pounding a typewriter!’ It stopped me cold. I had to find out what this guy was about.”
Ryan gives a fascinating account of video art in the 1960s, from the Howard Wise Gallery, to securing money from the New York State Council for the Arts for video art at a time when no such funding was readily available, and tells the story of meeting the heir to the IBM fortune who admired McLuhan and wanted to give him two Sony Portapaks that both ended in Ryan’s hands to “experiment” with.
Artist book based on the Triadic Tapes, 1976 (via the Smithsonian Archives of American Art)
Ryan wrote extensively about video art, cybernetics, and technology; his work was then featured in some seminal exhibitions, such as “TV as a Creative Medium” at the Howard Wise Gallery (1969) and “Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art” at MoMA (1984). (Here's a 1969 letter by Ryan to Howard Wise.)
“I would avoid the term visual to describe video. You can see a bottle of perfume, but sight is not the sense it really affects. You can see video images but their effect is primarily kinesthetic or proprioceptive when you see yourself. Video is about perceiving events with the nervous system, not visualizing in a pictorial way.”
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/sep/28/recent-history-class-paul-ryan-interviews-grey-roo/
“At that moment [1967] I thought of myself as a writer. I was holed up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with my typewriter, trying to write, and I heard McLuhan on the raso saying, ‘of course, in this electronic age of computers, satellites, radio, and television, the writer is no longer somebody holed up in his garret pounding a typewriter!’ It stopped me cold. I had to find out what this guy was about.”
Ryan gives a fascinating account of video art in the 1960s, from the Howard Wise Gallery, to securing money from the New York State Council for the Arts for video art at a time when no such funding was readily available, and tells the story of meeting the heir to the IBM fortune who admired McLuhan and wanted to give him two Sony Portapaks that both ended in Ryan’s hands to “experiment” with.
Artist book based on the Triadic Tapes, 1976 (via the Smithsonian Archives of American Art)
Ryan wrote extensively about video art, cybernetics, and technology; his work was then featured in some seminal exhibitions, such as “TV as a Creative Medium” at the Howard Wise Gallery (1969) and “Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art” at MoMA (1984). (Here's a 1969 letter by Ryan to Howard Wise.)
“I would avoid the term visual to describe video. You can see a bottle of perfume, but sight is not the sense it really affects. You can see video images but their effect is primarily kinesthetic or proprioceptive when you see yourself. Video is about perceiving events with the nervous system, not visualizing in a pictorial way.”
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/sep/28/recent-history-class-paul-ryan-interviews-grey-roo/
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Saudi King Overturns Verdict Against Woman Driver
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 28, 2011 at 4:38 PM ET
RIYADH, Saudi Arab (AP) — Saudi King Abdullah has overturned a court ruling sentencing a Saudi woman to be lashed 10 times for defying the kingdom's ban on female drivers, a government official said Wednesday.
The official declined to elaborate on the monarch's decision, and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
A Saudi court on Tuesday found Shaima Jastaina guilty of violating the driving ban, and sentenced her to 10 lashes. The verdict took Saudi women by surprise, coming just a day after King Abdullah promised to protect women's rights and decreed that women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015. Abdullah also promised to appoint women to a currently all-male advisory body known as the Shura Council.
The harsh sentence marked the first time a legal punishment had been handed down since female activists began their campaign in June to break the taboo in this ultraconservative Muslim nation.
There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins.
Normally, police just stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/28/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Saudi-Women-Driving
Published: September 28, 2011 at 4:38 PM ET
RIYADH, Saudi Arab (AP) — Saudi King Abdullah has overturned a court ruling sentencing a Saudi woman to be lashed 10 times for defying the kingdom's ban on female drivers, a government official said Wednesday.
A Saudi court on Tuesday found Shaima Jastaina guilty of violating the driving ban, and sentenced her to 10 lashes. The verdict took Saudi women by surprise, coming just a day after King Abdullah promised to protect women's rights and decreed that women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015. Abdullah also promised to appoint women to a currently all-male advisory body known as the Shura Council.
The harsh sentence marked the first time a legal punishment had been handed down since female activists began their campaign in June to break the taboo in this ultraconservative Muslim nation.
There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins.
Normally, police just stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo.
Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women — both Saudi and foreign — from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/28/world/middleeast/AP-ML-Saudi-Women-Driving
Bryanna’s Peruvian Tri-Color Potato Salad Terrine
By bryanna clark grogan · On Sep 29, 2011
My father was Peruvian, so I have “veganized” some dishes from this colorful cuisine. This Causa (kow-sah) recipe is a very beautiful and delicious vegan version of a traditional Peruvian dish. It can be made ahead, and makes a great addition to the holiday table, utilizing seasonal vegetables and providing a stunning and unusual centerpiece. The salad is usually full of oil and stuffed with seafood, but this version is low in fat AND it is vegan. If you prefer, you can make small round molds for individual servings. Contributed by Bryanna Clark Grogan, Author of Nonna’s Italian Kitchen, The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook, and others (reprinted by permission of the author) Visit Bryanna’s Vegan Feast.
Serves: 6 to 8
Lemon dressing:
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 small cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1/2 cup Oil Substitute for Salad Dressings (see recipe following)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Potato layers:
1 pound russet potatoes
1 pound yellow potatoes, such as Yukon Gold (or pink-fleshed potatoes)
1 pound purple or blue potatoes
1/2 cup plus 2 1/2 tablespoons) Lemon Dressing (save the rest for the Filling)
6 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise (such as Vegenaise®)
1/2 tablespoon salt
Filling:
1 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 medium bell peppers (yellow, orange, and/or red), cut into thin strips
10 large sun-dried tomato halves in oil,
squeezed to eliminate as much oil as possible, and thinly sliced
1 cup marinated artichoke hearts, drained and sliced thinly
2 tablespoons pickled jalapeños, minced
Remaining Lemon Dressing
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Garnishes:
2 large cobs corn, cooked and cut into 1 1/2” rounds
(these are used cold or at room temperature)
1 large steamed or baked orange sweet potato,
peeled and sliced in 6-8 pieces (these are used cold or at room temperature)
18 to 24 Peruvian Alfonso olives (or Kalamata olives)
More additional garnishes:
Avocado cubes, tossed in lemon juice
Roasted, pickled, or raw red bell peppers
Pickled hot peppers
Pretty lettuce leaves
To make the Dressing:
With the back of a teaspoon in a small round-bottomed bowl (or use a medium- sized mortar and pestle), mash together the salt and garlic until it is like a paste.
The salt grains will help mash the garlic to a paste and the garlic juice will dissolve the salt. Whisk in the Oil Substitute, olive oil, and lemon juice with a fork, or small wire whisk. This method of mixing is easy and convenient for small amounts made just before dressing the salad.
To make the Potato layers:
Cook the three varieties of potatoes separately. You can peel and simmer the russet and the yellow potatoes (cut into even-sized chunks) in water to cover until just tender, but the purple or blue potatoes fall apart easily, so I steam or micro-steam them with the skins on. I cut them into about 2-inch pieces first. I micro-steam them for about 10 minutes.
To remove the skins of the blue or purple potatoes, hold them under gently-running cold water and the skins should slip off easily. Be careful not to saturate the potatoes with water.
Mash EACH separate batch of potatoes in its cooking pot or a bowl. When mashed, add to EACH batch of potatoes 3 1/2 tablespoons of the Lemon Dressing, 2 tablespoons of the mayonnaise, and 1/2 tsp. of salt, and mash again until smooth. Reserve the remaining lemon dressing for the Filling. Set the mashed potatoes aside, covered.
To make the Filling:
Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, and peppers and sauté until they soften. Add the sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, jalapeños, remaining Lemon Dressing, mix well, and then taste for salt and pepper.
To assemble:
Line a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, or a 10-inch round casserole with oiled plastic wrap, with an overlap. Press the one of the mashed potato mixtures onto the bottom of the pan. Add half of the filling, then another one of the potato mixtures, then the remaining filling, then the remaining potato mixture. Smooth the top, fold the overlapping plastic wrap over and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
To serve:
Fold back the plastic wrap covering the top of the terrine. Unmold the terrine onto a platter and garnish as desired.
http://www.vegkitchen.com/recipes/vegetables-all-year-round/bryanna%e2%80%99s-peruvian-tri-color-potato-salad-terrine/
My father was Peruvian, so I have “veganized” some dishes from this colorful cuisine. This Causa (kow-sah) recipe is a very beautiful and delicious vegan version of a traditional Peruvian dish. It can be made ahead, and makes a great addition to the holiday table, utilizing seasonal vegetables and providing a stunning and unusual centerpiece. The salad is usually full of oil and stuffed with seafood, but this version is low in fat AND it is vegan. If you prefer, you can make small round molds for individual servings. Contributed by Bryanna Clark Grogan, Author of Nonna’s Italian Kitchen, The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook, and others (reprinted by permission of the author) Visit Bryanna’s Vegan Feast.
Serves: 6 to 8Lemon dressing:
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 small cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1/2 cup Oil Substitute for Salad Dressings (see recipe following)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Potato layers:
1 pound russet potatoes
1 pound yellow potatoes, such as Yukon Gold (or pink-fleshed potatoes)
1 pound purple or blue potatoes
1/2 cup plus 2 1/2 tablespoons) Lemon Dressing (save the rest for the Filling)
6 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise (such as Vegenaise®)
1/2 tablespoon salt
Filling:
1 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 medium bell peppers (yellow, orange, and/or red), cut into thin strips
10 large sun-dried tomato halves in oil,
squeezed to eliminate as much oil as possible, and thinly sliced
1 cup marinated artichoke hearts, drained and sliced thinly
2 tablespoons pickled jalapeños, minced
Remaining Lemon Dressing
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Garnishes:
2 large cobs corn, cooked and cut into 1 1/2” rounds
(these are used cold or at room temperature)
1 large steamed or baked orange sweet potato,
peeled and sliced in 6-8 pieces (these are used cold or at room temperature)
18 to 24 Peruvian Alfonso olives (or Kalamata olives)
More additional garnishes:
Avocado cubes, tossed in lemon juice
Roasted, pickled, or raw red bell peppers
Pickled hot peppers
Pretty lettuce leaves
To make the Dressing:
With the back of a teaspoon in a small round-bottomed bowl (or use a medium- sized mortar and pestle), mash together the salt and garlic until it is like a paste.
The salt grains will help mash the garlic to a paste and the garlic juice will dissolve the salt. Whisk in the Oil Substitute, olive oil, and lemon juice with a fork, or small wire whisk. This method of mixing is easy and convenient for small amounts made just before dressing the salad.
To make the Potato layers:
Cook the three varieties of potatoes separately. You can peel and simmer the russet and the yellow potatoes (cut into even-sized chunks) in water to cover until just tender, but the purple or blue potatoes fall apart easily, so I steam or micro-steam them with the skins on. I cut them into about 2-inch pieces first. I micro-steam them for about 10 minutes.
To remove the skins of the blue or purple potatoes, hold them under gently-running cold water and the skins should slip off easily. Be careful not to saturate the potatoes with water.
Mash EACH separate batch of potatoes in its cooking pot or a bowl. When mashed, add to EACH batch of potatoes 3 1/2 tablespoons of the Lemon Dressing, 2 tablespoons of the mayonnaise, and 1/2 tsp. of salt, and mash again until smooth. Reserve the remaining lemon dressing for the Filling. Set the mashed potatoes aside, covered.
To make the Filling:
Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, and peppers and sauté until they soften. Add the sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, jalapeños, remaining Lemon Dressing, mix well, and then taste for salt and pepper.
To assemble:
Line a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, or a 10-inch round casserole with oiled plastic wrap, with an overlap. Press the one of the mashed potato mixtures onto the bottom of the pan. Add half of the filling, then another one of the potato mixtures, then the remaining filling, then the remaining potato mixture. Smooth the top, fold the overlapping plastic wrap over and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
To serve:
Fold back the plastic wrap covering the top of the terrine. Unmold the terrine onto a platter and garnish as desired.
http://www.vegkitchen.com/recipes/vegetables-all-year-round/bryanna%e2%80%99s-peruvian-tri-color-potato-salad-terrine/
On the Shoulders of Eastern Giants: The Forgotten Contributions of Medieval Physicists Free Webinar
On the Shoulders of Eastern Giants: The Forgotten Contributions of Medieval Physicists Free Webinar
Event Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 4:00 PM BST
We learn at school that Newton is the father of modern optics, Copernicus heralded the birth of astronomy, and Snell deduced the law of refraction. But what debt do these men owe to the physicists and astronomers of the medieval Islamic Empire? What about Ibn al-Haytham, the greatest physicist in the 2000-year span between Archimedes and Newton, whose Book of Optics was just as influential as Newton’s seven centuries later? Or Ibn Sahl, who came up with the correct law of refraction many centuries before Snell? What of the astronomers al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir, without whom Copernicus would not have been able to formulate his heliocentric model of the solar system? In this lecture, Jim Al-Khalili recounts the stories of these characters and more from his new book Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science.
The webinar will run for approximately 45 minutes with time for a Q&A at the end.
Speaker: Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics and Professor of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, UK.
Jim Al-Khalili is a physicist, author and broadcaster. As well as his work on radio and television, he has written a number of popular-science books, the most recent of which is Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science. His awards include the Royal Society Faraday Prize (2008), the IOP Kelvin Medal (2011), an OBE in 2008 and a Bafta nomination.
Moderator: Dr Margaret Harris
Reviews and Careers Editor, Physics World
Attendance is free. Registrants for this webinar should be aware that data that they submit as part of their participation in the webinar will be accessible by the company hosting the webcast. While we will do all that we reasonably can to safeguard your data, this company is not part of the IOP group and therefore their data-protection practices are outside of our control.
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=353264&sessionid=1&key
Event Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 4:00 PM BST
The webinar will run for approximately 45 minutes with time for a Q&A at the end.
Speaker: Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics and Professor of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, UK.Jim Al-Khalili is a physicist, author and broadcaster. As well as his work on radio and television, he has written a number of popular-science books, the most recent of which is Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science. His awards include the Royal Society Faraday Prize (2008), the IOP Kelvin Medal (2011), an OBE in 2008 and a Bafta nomination.
Moderator: Dr Margaret HarrisReviews and Careers Editor, Physics World
Attendance is free. Registrants for this webinar should be aware that data that they submit as part of their participation in the webinar will be accessible by the company hosting the webcast. While we will do all that we reasonably can to safeguard your data, this company is not part of the IOP group and therefore their data-protection practices are outside of our control.
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=353264&sessionid=1&key
Planet Mercury Full of Strange Surprises, NASA Spacecraft Reveals
By Charles Q. Choi
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
NASA's Mercury Messenger probe captured this historic image of Mercury, the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the solar system's innermost planet. The photo was taken on Tuesday (March 29) at 5:20 am EDT.
Mercury is not just hellishly hot but apparently covered in brimstone. A vast part of the planet is covered with dried lava -- enough to bury the state of Texas under 4 miles of the stuff, scientists say.
These and other strange discoveries about Mercury were announced in seven papers released in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal Science, a trove of knowledge from NASA's Messenger probe, covering everything from odd landscape to the planet's magnetic core.
Messenger, which stands for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging," marks humankind's first-ever orbiter around the solar system's smallest and innermost planet. It is only the second probe even to just visit, following the Mariner 10 flyby in the mid-1970s. Launched in 2004, the $446 million Messenger spacecraft began orbiting Mercury in March.
"Messenger is revealing that, contrary to many people's preconceptions, Mercury is a fascinating world with a complex history," study author Patrick Peplowski, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told SPACE.com. [Messenger's latest photos of Mercury]
Volcanic history
For instance, high-resolutionimages of Mercury's surface reveal that epic lava flows helped create the planet's smooth northern plains. This once-molten rock filled craters more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep and covers 6 percent of Mercury's surface, an area equal to nearly 60 percent of the continental United States, explained planetary geoscientist James Head at Brown University.
Early in the planet's history, some 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago, these gigantic volumes of lava poured from cracks in the surface as far as 125 miles (200 kilometers) outside the volcanic zone, flooding the surrounding, low-lying plains "like a bathtub," Head said. [Infographic: Inside Planet Mercury]
Based on the way this lava apparently eroded the underlying surface, the researchers suggest it rushed out rapidly. "We can't say if it took 2.7 days or 15 years or any exact time from orbit, but it wasn't hundreds of millions of years," Head added.
Mercury's northern high latitudes had largely escaped view until now.
"When we flew by Mercury the first time with Mariner 10, we weren't really sure if volcanism caused these smooth plains," Head told SPACE.com. "Now we're in orbit with Messenger, we're up close and personal, just going around and around and really building up our picture of Mercury."
Head and his colleagues expect that other parts of Mercury also experienced volcanism. "This one deposit is so huge, volcanism has got to be important elsewhere," Head said.
Odd landforms
These images of Mercury's surface also revealed an odd feature — shallow, rimless hollows of irregular shapes. These hollows, ranging in diameter from tens of yards to a few miles, occur across Mercury and are commonly seen in clusters. Many of them appear relatively fresh. [Most Enduring Mysteries of Mercury]
Planetary scientist David Blewett at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues suspect these hollows were created when volatile materials — perhaps sulfur-bearing compounds — were liberated from the surface through some combination of heating, outgassing, explosive volcanism, micrometeoroid bombardment or solar radiation. This would suggest Mercury is loaded with higher levels of volatile materials than most scenarios of its formation predict.
"Analysis of the images and estimates of the rate at which the hollows may be growing leads to the exciting possibility that they are actively forming today," Blewett told SPACE.com. "It is exactly this kind of unexpected discovery that makes planetary exploration such an adventure."
Brimstone surface
The composition of Mercury's surface is substantially different from that of other terrestrial planets, according to Messenger's scans of the X-rays emanating from the planet. For instance, Mercury's surface possesses at least 10 times more sulfur, or brimstone, than Earth or the moon.
"These are the first measurements of the composition of the planet Mercury," study author Larry Nittler, a cosmochemist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told SPACE.com.
Altogether, this surface chemistry suggests the planet formed from material now seen in certain stony chondritic meteorites and cometary dust particles.
"It's thought that the terrestrial planets accreted from smaller bodies that were probably similar to or the same as the asteroids that give us chondritic meteorites as well as the dust that makes up comets," Nittler said. "Our work is showing that at some level, Mercury formed from a different mix of these building blocks than did the other terrestrial planets."
Measurements of gamma rays emanating from the planet's surface also support theories that Mercury originated from material comparable to that of stony chondritic meteorites.
These scans determined the abundances of the radioactive elements potassium, thorium and uranium. The measured ratio of potassium, a volatile element, to the non-volatile elements thorium and uranium revealed levels of volatile materials comparable to the other terrestrial planets. [Related: The Greatest Mysteries of Mercury]
"Our discovery of higher-than-expected volatiles on the surface is one of many results indicating that Mercury has more in common with Venus, Earth and Mars than was expected," Peplowski said. "These findings shed light on planetary formation processes in the early solar system, and by extension tell us about the formation of the other terrestrial planets as well. These results can even be extended to our understanding of extra-solar planets, particularly to large, rocky planets orbiting close to their host stars."
These findings also suggest that Mercury did not get as extremely hot as some models of the world's formation have suggested, because extreme heat would have baked out these volatiles. The findings also suggest Mercury's internal heat declined substantially since its formation, consistent with widespread volcanism about 3.8 billion years ago and isolated, limited volcanic activity ever since.
"As we continue to collect data from orbit, data from the Messenger Gamma-Ray Spectrometer will be used to measure global abundances of stable elements, like iron, silicon, and oxygen," Peplowski said. "We'll also start mapping the abundances of elements on the surface, which can tell us about regional geologic processes occurring on the surface."
Magnetic details revealed
Messenger also investigated the magnetic field of Mercury, the only terrestrial planet besides Earth to possess a global magnetic field. These fields come from the dynamos of these planets: electrically conducting fluids flowing in their liquid metallic cores.
"It is Earth's magnetosphere that keeps our atmosphere from being stripped away, and that makes it vital to the existence of life on our planet," said study co-author Jim Raines at the University of Michigan.
Magnetometer data found that Mercury's magnetic poles are lined up almost exactly with its rotation axis, off by no more than 3 degrees. At the same time, its magnetic equator is north of its geographical equator by about 300 miles (484 kilometers).
"The offset implies that the surface field in the north is three to four times stronger near the pole than it is near the southern magnetic pole," study author Brian Anderson, a space physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told SPACE.com. This in turn can affect how space radiation impacts the different hemispheres.
The magnetic field of Mercury is much weaker than Earth's. This is likely because Mercury's dynamo comes from just a thin shell of molten metal in its outer core.
"Now we have to understand how the circulation of the outer portion of the core, the part that is still molten, can generate a field that is both aligned with the spin axis of the planet and yet be so strongly skewed to the north," Anderson said. "My own hunch is that there are some subtle differences in the history of the dynamo in the north and south and that the thin shell dynamo at Mercury may allow the circulation in the north and south to evolve somewhat differently."
This weak magnetosphere also "provides very little protection of the planet from the solar wind," said study author Thomas Zurbuchen at the University of Michigan.
Earth's magnetosphere is strong enough to deflect most of the solar wind, but on Mercury, the solar wind apparently sandblasts the surface at the poles, knocking sodium particles off the planet, Zurbuchen and his colleagues said. Those particles become part of the "exosphere," the extraordinarily tenuous layer of molecules that makes up the closest thing Mercury has to an atmosphere.
Mercury, a magnetic weakling
Messenger also found that, unlike Earth and the other planets in the solar system with internal magnetic fields, Mercury is not surrounded by rings of charged particles. (Earth's rings are the Van Allen radiation belts.) Mercury's field is apparently too weak to support them. Instead, the spacecraft detected energetic bursts of electrons lasting from seconds to hours erupting from the planet.
"We have seen both proton and electron bursts in our own Earth's magnetosphere, but what really set these observations apart is the time scale and recurrent nature of these electron bursts at Mercury," study author George Ho, a space scientist at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, told SPACE.com. "On Earth, such bursts happen irregularly and last for minutes, but at Mercury, those events last for few seconds, and we only detected electrons, not protons — still a puzzle to me."
On Earth, these bursts are due to the planet's magnetic field interacting with the interplanetary magnetic field. This might be going on at Mercury as well, or the bursts could be the result of Mercury's interaction with the solar wind. Ho said he hopes this data will help theorists better explain the bursts.
"All these findings are what exploration is all about," Head noted. "You can say you think you know what a place is like, but then you go there and orbit up close and personal, and you learn what's really going on. You challenge all your knowledge and come up with new ideas."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/29/planet-mercury-full-strange-surprises-nasa-spacecraft-reveals/
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Mercury is not just hellishly hot but apparently covered in brimstone. A vast part of the planet is covered with dried lava -- enough to bury the state of Texas under 4 miles of the stuff, scientists say.
These and other strange discoveries about Mercury were announced in seven papers released in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal Science, a trove of knowledge from NASA's Messenger probe, covering everything from odd landscape to the planet's magnetic core.
Messenger, which stands for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging," marks humankind's first-ever orbiter around the solar system's smallest and innermost planet. It is only the second probe even to just visit, following the Mariner 10 flyby in the mid-1970s. Launched in 2004, the $446 million Messenger spacecraft began orbiting Mercury in March.
"Messenger is revealing that, contrary to many people's preconceptions, Mercury is a fascinating world with a complex history," study author Patrick Peplowski, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told SPACE.com. [Messenger's latest photos of Mercury]
Volcanic history
For instance, high-resolutionimages of Mercury's surface reveal that epic lava flows helped create the planet's smooth northern plains. This once-molten rock filled craters more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep and covers 6 percent of Mercury's surface, an area equal to nearly 60 percent of the continental United States, explained planetary geoscientist James Head at Brown University.
fantastic imaginative illustration
Early in the planet's history, some 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago, these gigantic volumes of lava poured from cracks in the surface as far as 125 miles (200 kilometers) outside the volcanic zone, flooding the surrounding, low-lying plains "like a bathtub," Head said. [Infographic: Inside Planet Mercury]
Based on the way this lava apparently eroded the underlying surface, the researchers suggest it rushed out rapidly. "We can't say if it took 2.7 days or 15 years or any exact time from orbit, but it wasn't hundreds of millions of years," Head added.
Mercury's northern high latitudes had largely escaped view until now.
"When we flew by Mercury the first time with Mariner 10, we weren't really sure if volcanism caused these smooth plains," Head told SPACE.com. "Now we're in orbit with Messenger, we're up close and personal, just going around and around and really building up our picture of Mercury."
Head and his colleagues expect that other parts of Mercury also experienced volcanism. "This one deposit is so huge, volcanism has got to be important elsewhere," Head said.
Odd landforms
These images of Mercury's surface also revealed an odd feature — shallow, rimless hollows of irregular shapes. These hollows, ranging in diameter from tens of yards to a few miles, occur across Mercury and are commonly seen in clusters. Many of them appear relatively fresh. [Most Enduring Mysteries of Mercury]
Planetary scientist David Blewett at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues suspect these hollows were created when volatile materials — perhaps sulfur-bearing compounds — were liberated from the surface through some combination of heating, outgassing, explosive volcanism, micrometeoroid bombardment or solar radiation. This would suggest Mercury is loaded with higher levels of volatile materials than most scenarios of its formation predict.
"Analysis of the images and estimates of the rate at which the hollows may be growing leads to the exciting possibility that they are actively forming today," Blewett told SPACE.com. "It is exactly this kind of unexpected discovery that makes planetary exploration such an adventure."
Brimstone surface
The composition of Mercury's surface is substantially different from that of other terrestrial planets, according to Messenger's scans of the X-rays emanating from the planet. For instance, Mercury's surface possesses at least 10 times more sulfur, or brimstone, than Earth or the moon.
"These are the first measurements of the composition of the planet Mercury," study author Larry Nittler, a cosmochemist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told SPACE.com.
Altogether, this surface chemistry suggests the planet formed from material now seen in certain stony chondritic meteorites and cometary dust particles.
"It's thought that the terrestrial planets accreted from smaller bodies that were probably similar to or the same as the asteroids that give us chondritic meteorites as well as the dust that makes up comets," Nittler said. "Our work is showing that at some level, Mercury formed from a different mix of these building blocks than did the other terrestrial planets."
Measurements of gamma rays emanating from the planet's surface also support theories that Mercury originated from material comparable to that of stony chondritic meteorites.
These scans determined the abundances of the radioactive elements potassium, thorium and uranium. The measured ratio of potassium, a volatile element, to the non-volatile elements thorium and uranium revealed levels of volatile materials comparable to the other terrestrial planets. [Related: The Greatest Mysteries of Mercury]
"Our discovery of higher-than-expected volatiles on the surface is one of many results indicating that Mercury has more in common with Venus, Earth and Mars than was expected," Peplowski said. "These findings shed light on planetary formation processes in the early solar system, and by extension tell us about the formation of the other terrestrial planets as well. These results can even be extended to our understanding of extra-solar planets, particularly to large, rocky planets orbiting close to their host stars."
These findings also suggest that Mercury did not get as extremely hot as some models of the world's formation have suggested, because extreme heat would have baked out these volatiles. The findings also suggest Mercury's internal heat declined substantially since its formation, consistent with widespread volcanism about 3.8 billion years ago and isolated, limited volcanic activity ever since.
"As we continue to collect data from orbit, data from the Messenger Gamma-Ray Spectrometer will be used to measure global abundances of stable elements, like iron, silicon, and oxygen," Peplowski said. "We'll also start mapping the abundances of elements on the surface, which can tell us about regional geologic processes occurring on the surface."
Magnetic details revealed
Messenger also investigated the magnetic field of Mercury, the only terrestrial planet besides Earth to possess a global magnetic field. These fields come from the dynamos of these planets: electrically conducting fluids flowing in their liquid metallic cores.
"It is Earth's magnetosphere that keeps our atmosphere from being stripped away, and that makes it vital to the existence of life on our planet," said study co-author Jim Raines at the University of Michigan.
Magnetometer data found that Mercury's magnetic poles are lined up almost exactly with its rotation axis, off by no more than 3 degrees. At the same time, its magnetic equator is north of its geographical equator by about 300 miles (484 kilometers).
"The offset implies that the surface field in the north is three to four times stronger near the pole than it is near the southern magnetic pole," study author Brian Anderson, a space physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told SPACE.com. This in turn can affect how space radiation impacts the different hemispheres.
The magnetic field of Mercury is much weaker than Earth's. This is likely because Mercury's dynamo comes from just a thin shell of molten metal in its outer core.
"Now we have to understand how the circulation of the outer portion of the core, the part that is still molten, can generate a field that is both aligned with the spin axis of the planet and yet be so strongly skewed to the north," Anderson said. "My own hunch is that there are some subtle differences in the history of the dynamo in the north and south and that the thin shell dynamo at Mercury may allow the circulation in the north and south to evolve somewhat differently."
This weak magnetosphere also "provides very little protection of the planet from the solar wind," said study author Thomas Zurbuchen at the University of Michigan.
Earth's magnetosphere is strong enough to deflect most of the solar wind, but on Mercury, the solar wind apparently sandblasts the surface at the poles, knocking sodium particles off the planet, Zurbuchen and his colleagues said. Those particles become part of the "exosphere," the extraordinarily tenuous layer of molecules that makes up the closest thing Mercury has to an atmosphere.
Mercury, a magnetic weakling
Messenger also found that, unlike Earth and the other planets in the solar system with internal magnetic fields, Mercury is not surrounded by rings of charged particles. (Earth's rings are the Van Allen radiation belts.) Mercury's field is apparently too weak to support them. Instead, the spacecraft detected energetic bursts of electrons lasting from seconds to hours erupting from the planet.
"We have seen both proton and electron bursts in our own Earth's magnetosphere, but what really set these observations apart is the time scale and recurrent nature of these electron bursts at Mercury," study author George Ho, a space scientist at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory, told SPACE.com. "On Earth, such bursts happen irregularly and last for minutes, but at Mercury, those events last for few seconds, and we only detected electrons, not protons — still a puzzle to me."
On Earth, these bursts are due to the planet's magnetic field interacting with the interplanetary magnetic field. This might be going on at Mercury as well, or the bursts could be the result of Mercury's interaction with the solar wind. Ho said he hopes this data will help theorists better explain the bursts.
"All these findings are what exploration is all about," Head noted. "You can say you think you know what a place is like, but then you go there and orbit up close and personal, and you learn what's really going on. You challenge all your knowledge and come up with new ideas."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/29/planet-mercury-full-strange-surprises-nasa-spacecraft-reveals/
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Amelia Mulder and Hercules Bring Home Four Ribbons
Wednesday, September 28,2011
During the last weekend, Amelia Mulder and Hercules of San Luis Obispo County brought home four ribbons for a showing horse competition.
Amelia, a rising equestrian star, was poised in her saddle while Hercules, who had been dressed for the occasion, braided mane and tail showed gracefully (two ribbons in the photo, two more to come)
They dazzled the judges with their team style and charm.
During the last weekend, Amelia Mulder and Hercules of San Luis Obispo County brought home four ribbons for a showing horse competition.
Amelia, a rising equestrian star, was poised in her saddle while Hercules, who had been dressed for the occasion, braided mane and tail showed gracefully (two ribbons in the photo, two more to come)
They dazzled the judges with their team style and charm.
Paris: Altered Fashion States
By CATHY HORYN
ochas spring 2012.
Tonight I met Stella McCartney for a drink at the Hemingway bar at the Ritz and a waiter chattily expressed the view that the buildup for the Paris collections had been begun days before the actual shows. I’m inclined to agree, though I’m not sure what accounts for the buildup or even if there is anything to it.
Ms. McCartney, dressed in a houndstooth top and black stretch pants, immediately drew attention from a group of American women, one of whom said she had been a fan of her dad’s since she was three. The daughter of the cute Beatle must hear that a lot. Anyway, she happily agreed to join them for a picture. Ms. McCartney, the mother of four, certainly had a fan club in the bar, with several other American women saying how much they liked her clothes. “I’m half American,” she reminded them with a laugh.
There have been only a handful of shows but the past two days have been packed with previews (Lanvin, Balenciaga) and meetings with designers (Alessandra Facchinetti, formerly at Gucci and Valentino, who is doing a new inexpensive line, Uniqueness, that will be offered for sale immediately on the Web and has no seasons). On Tuesday night, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler were here to show a short film by Harmony Korine and then attend a small dinner party at Vanessa and Victoria Traina’s apartment on Avenue Foch.
Dries Van Noten spring 2012.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesDries Van Noten spring 2012.
I loved the Korine film, though I had a feeling the humor wouldn’t make sense to anyone not familiar with the American south. Filmed in Nashville, it featured two girls dressed in some of Proenza’s fall clothes, with surreal masks and Indian headdresses, and a big-bellied good old boy who kept up a stream of talk. I kept thinking how completely un-self-conscious he was, and also how isolated people are in their worlds.
Dries Van Noten used photo prints of cities—Los Angeles at night, the Las Vegas strip—to somewhat mysterious effect. On black cotton dresses and full skirts, the images had a displaced quality, and really didn’t resemble prints. Mixed into this strong, romantic collection were nature prints, skirts with a fit-and-flare shape, toreador jackets in black and navy cotton with black embroidery, and loose silk dresses.
At Rochas, Marco Zanini evoked a sugary 1950s glamour with pale green and taupe dresses in pristine layers of organza with kerchiefs, French twists and cat-eye glasses. While the mood wasn’t “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” despite the scarves and a few severely chic black dresses, the clothes projected a type of woman indifferent to small concerns, like paying the rent. The bags, worn on straps across the body, were about the size of thin coin purses.
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/
ochas spring 2012.
Tonight I met Stella McCartney for a drink at the Hemingway bar at the Ritz and a waiter chattily expressed the view that the buildup for the Paris collections had been begun days before the actual shows. I’m inclined to agree, though I’m not sure what accounts for the buildup or even if there is anything to it.
There have been only a handful of shows but the past two days have been packed with previews (Lanvin, Balenciaga) and meetings with designers (Alessandra Facchinetti, formerly at Gucci and Valentino, who is doing a new inexpensive line, Uniqueness, that will be offered for sale immediately on the Web and has no seasons). On Tuesday night, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler were here to show a short film by Harmony Korine and then attend a small dinner party at Vanessa and Victoria Traina’s apartment on Avenue Foch.
Dries Van Noten spring 2012.Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York TimesDries Van Noten spring 2012.
I loved the Korine film, though I had a feeling the humor wouldn’t make sense to anyone not familiar with the American south. Filmed in Nashville, it featured two girls dressed in some of Proenza’s fall clothes, with surreal masks and Indian headdresses, and a big-bellied good old boy who kept up a stream of talk. I kept thinking how completely un-self-conscious he was, and also how isolated people are in their worlds.
Dries Van Noten used photo prints of cities—Los Angeles at night, the Las Vegas strip—to somewhat mysterious effect. On black cotton dresses and full skirts, the images had a displaced quality, and really didn’t resemble prints. Mixed into this strong, romantic collection were nature prints, skirts with a fit-and-flare shape, toreador jackets in black and navy cotton with black embroidery, and loose silk dresses.
At Rochas, Marco Zanini evoked a sugary 1950s glamour with pale green and taupe dresses in pristine layers of organza with kerchiefs, French twists and cat-eye glasses. While the mood wasn’t “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” despite the scarves and a few severely chic black dresses, the clothes projected a type of woman indifferent to small concerns, like paying the rent. The bags, worn on straps across the body, were about the size of thin coin purses.
Lessons in Guerilla Gardening and place making Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Traffic median corn field
By Becky Koppenhaver
Offended by ecological ruin? Feel trapped by the urban grid? Ready to creatively engage with community and the landscape? Then come out to Lincoln Heights on Thursday, Sept. 29 to explore ways to repair and transform your community by making public spaces into community- oriented environments.
Permaculturists (folks who interested in sustainable agriculture and gardening) and local activists Marisha Auerbach and Mark Lakeman will hold a “Community Place Making Workshop-An Intro to Place-Making, Natural Building and Guerilla Gardening” at HM157 in Lincoln Heights.
A little about what to expect:
Breaking the rules and reclaiming city property to put community first, City Repair builds spaces that provide a community meeting point for all to enjoy. Now City Repair is taking its show on the road to multicultural communities like LA’s own Lincoln Heights. Ambassadors of change, Mark Lakeman & Marisha Auerbach, will teach first about the theoretical side of natural building and place making from 10-Noon, breaking for a one hour lunch at El Huarachito, a block away, then come back for implementation, building, cobbing and guerilla gardening for 2 hours.
Together, the group will build a two-sided bench along the street, one side facing a large community bulletin board, and the other facing the N Broadway, to watch parades go by and for locals to congregate in comfort and harmony with nature in the urban setting. Attendees will learn how to transform any piece of dirt or pavement into a Community-Destination-Connection Station.
Several examples of City Repair’s accomplishments can be seen throughout Portland Oregon, where among other projects, the groups many dedicated community volunteers have created several large scale street intersection murals throughout the city, and a T-Horse Mobile Tea House, which travels to different Portland neighborhoods, serving up tea while providing a comfortable space where neighbors can congregate and bond.
The workshop will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, . at the Historical Monument #157, a cool, eclectic Victorian on North Broadway that has become a center of the Lincoln Heights art community.
Workshop fee $15 sliding scale suggested donation RSVP: (562)895-9399 or mailto:mailtohmonefiftyseven@gmail.com
http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2011/09/
By Becky Koppenhaver
Offended by ecological ruin? Feel trapped by the urban grid? Ready to creatively engage with community and the landscape? Then come out to Lincoln Heights on Thursday, Sept. 29 to explore ways to repair and transform your community by making public spaces into community- oriented environments.
A little about what to expect:
Breaking the rules and reclaiming city property to put community first, City Repair builds spaces that provide a community meeting point for all to enjoy. Now City Repair is taking its show on the road to multicultural communities like LA’s own Lincoln Heights. Ambassadors of change, Mark Lakeman & Marisha Auerbach, will teach first about the theoretical side of natural building and place making from 10-Noon, breaking for a one hour lunch at El Huarachito, a block away, then come back for implementation, building, cobbing and guerilla gardening for 2 hours.
Together, the group will build a two-sided bench along the street, one side facing a large community bulletin board, and the other facing the N Broadway, to watch parades go by and for locals to congregate in comfort and harmony with nature in the urban setting. Attendees will learn how to transform any piece of dirt or pavement into a Community-Destination-Connection Station.
Several examples of City Repair’s accomplishments can be seen throughout Portland Oregon, where among other projects, the groups many dedicated community volunteers have created several large scale street intersection murals throughout the city, and a T-Horse Mobile Tea House, which travels to different Portland neighborhoods, serving up tea while providing a comfortable space where neighbors can congregate and bond.
The workshop will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, . at the Historical Monument #157, a cool, eclectic Victorian on North Broadway that has become a center of the Lincoln Heights art community.
Workshop fee $15 sliding scale suggested donation RSVP: (562)895-9399 or mailto:mailtohmonefiftyseven@gmail.com
http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2011/09/
One-Third of Sun-Like Stars Have Earth-Like Planets In Habitable Zone
Astronomers have calculated the likelihood of finding Earth-like planets around other stars using the latest data from the Kepler mission.
The Kepler orbiting observatory is specifically designed to find Earth-like planets around nearby stars.
Earlier this year, the Kepler team released the mission's first 136 days of data and it has turned out to be a veritable jackpot. In that time Kepler looked at some 150,000 target stars and found evidence for 1,235 potential exoplanets. That's quite a haul.
Since then, most of the work on this database has been to identify the characteristics of all these exoplanets. But such a large dataset also allows for statistical analyses too, from which various projections can be made.
Today, Wesley Traub at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, reveals the results of just such a study. Traub has looked only at the stars that are most similar to the Sun, namely those with the classification F, G or K and worked out often various types of planets occur.
The results are straightforward to state. Traub says that mid-size planets are just as likely to be found around faint stars and bright ones. By contrast, far fewer small planets show up around faint stars. That's almost certainly because small planets are more difficult for Kepler to see.
It's also easier for Kepler to see planets that are closer to their stars because it looks for the tiny changes in brightness that these transits cause. That's why almost a third of all Kepler's detections orbit their star in less than 42 days. For the most part, these planets orbit too closely to be in the habitable zone.
What interests most astronomers is how many exoplanets orbit at a greater distance, inside the habitable zone. Most of these planets are too far away from their stars to have been picked up by Kepler yet. But Traub says his data analysis provides a way to work out how many their ought to be.
That's because he's found a power law that describes how the number of stars with a given orbital period. So all he has to do is assume a longer orbital period equivalent to being in the habitable zone to work out how many planets there ought to be at this distance.
Here's the answer: "About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet," he says.
So by this measure, there are plenty of other Earths out there.
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/earth-like-planets-are-very-likely.html
The Kepler orbiting observatory is specifically designed to find Earth-like planets around nearby stars.
Earlier this year, the Kepler team released the mission's first 136 days of data and it has turned out to be a veritable jackpot. In that time Kepler looked at some 150,000 target stars and found evidence for 1,235 potential exoplanets. That's quite a haul.
Since then, most of the work on this database has been to identify the characteristics of all these exoplanets. But such a large dataset also allows for statistical analyses too, from which various projections can be made.
Today, Wesley Traub at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, reveals the results of just such a study. Traub has looked only at the stars that are most similar to the Sun, namely those with the classification F, G or K and worked out often various types of planets occur.
The results are straightforward to state. Traub says that mid-size planets are just as likely to be found around faint stars and bright ones. By contrast, far fewer small planets show up around faint stars. That's almost certainly because small planets are more difficult for Kepler to see.
It's also easier for Kepler to see planets that are closer to their stars because it looks for the tiny changes in brightness that these transits cause. That's why almost a third of all Kepler's detections orbit their star in less than 42 days. For the most part, these planets orbit too closely to be in the habitable zone.
What interests most astronomers is how many exoplanets orbit at a greater distance, inside the habitable zone. Most of these planets are too far away from their stars to have been picked up by Kepler yet. But Traub says his data analysis provides a way to work out how many their ought to be.
That's because he's found a power law that describes how the number of stars with a given orbital period. So all he has to do is assume a longer orbital period equivalent to being in the habitable zone to work out how many planets there ought to be at this distance.
Here's the answer: "About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet," he says.
So by this measure, there are plenty of other Earths out there.
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/27/earth-like-planets-are-very-likely.html
Prehistoric Colors Preserved in Near-Perfect Beetle Fossils
By Brandon Keim
Leaf Beetle, Messel
Despite being tens of millions of years old, some beetle fossils appear almost as they did in life. Not only are their shape and structure preserved, but so are the actual colors of their shells, which have changed only slightly in the intervening eons.
Though relatively little-known, these fossils represent the purest of biological colors retrieved from deep time, far richer than much-celebrated pigment traces of dinosaur plumage and more varied than the hues of a few ancient plants.
In a study published Sept. 27 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers led by Yale University paleogeologist Maria McNamara analyzed 10 of these spectacular beetle fossils, ranging from 15 million to 47 million years old, which owe their enduring shades to the phenomenon of structural coloration. Unlike pigments, which generate color from light bouncing off a chemical, structural colors are produced by the interaction of light with nanometer-scale surface geometries.
If especially fine-grained sediments replace a dead beetle’s decomposing body, the resulting fossil should replicate its hues, too. “Structural colors don’t need chemicals at all,” said McNamara. “What we wanted to find out was, what kind of structures in the fossils make the color? And are the colors we’re seeing today in the fossils the same as when beetles were alive millions of year ago?”
McNamara’s team took .00008 millimeter-wide samples of the fossils’ surfaces, too small to see unaided but enough to determine surface shape when viewed under an electron microscope. From that shape, they used models derived from modern beetle shells to calculate how the fossils ought to look. Prediction and reality didn’t quite match: According to their calculations, the fossils now appear just slightly more reddish than they ought to. The fossils don’t perfectly replicate the beetle’s original carapaces, and subtly change how light refracts as it passes through shell layers.
“You need to mentally redshift the color. If it’s green, it’s actually a little more on the yellow side. If it’s blue, it’s a little greener,” said McNamara, who next plans to analyze the colors of moth fossils.
“Holding these fossils is amazing,” she said. “But what I really get a kick out of is investigating the details that are preserved on such a tiny scale. It’s one thing to look at a colored fossil beetle, but quite another to realize the level of preservation extends right down to the level of structures that are smaller than a cell.”
On the following pages are examples of the fossils and their structures.
Images: McNamara et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Brandon is a Wired Science reporter and freelance journalist. Based in Brooklyn, New York and Bangor, Maine, he's fascinated with science, culture, history and nature.
Follow @9brandon on Twitter.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/beetle-fossil-colors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign
Leaf Beetle, Messel
Despite being tens of millions of years old, some beetle fossils appear almost as they did in life. Not only are their shape and structure preserved, but so are the actual colors of their shells, which have changed only slightly in the intervening eons.
Though relatively little-known, these fossils represent the purest of biological colors retrieved from deep time, far richer than much-celebrated pigment traces of dinosaur plumage and more varied than the hues of a few ancient plants.
In a study published Sept. 27 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers led by Yale University paleogeologist Maria McNamara analyzed 10 of these spectacular beetle fossils, ranging from 15 million to 47 million years old, which owe their enduring shades to the phenomenon of structural coloration. Unlike pigments, which generate color from light bouncing off a chemical, structural colors are produced by the interaction of light with nanometer-scale surface geometries.
If especially fine-grained sediments replace a dead beetle’s decomposing body, the resulting fossil should replicate its hues, too. “Structural colors don’t need chemicals at all,” said McNamara. “What we wanted to find out was, what kind of structures in the fossils make the color? And are the colors we’re seeing today in the fossils the same as when beetles were alive millions of year ago?”
McNamara’s team took .00008 millimeter-wide samples of the fossils’ surfaces, too small to see unaided but enough to determine surface shape when viewed under an electron microscope. From that shape, they used models derived from modern beetle shells to calculate how the fossils ought to look. Prediction and reality didn’t quite match: According to their calculations, the fossils now appear just slightly more reddish than they ought to. The fossils don’t perfectly replicate the beetle’s original carapaces, and subtly change how light refracts as it passes through shell layers.
“You need to mentally redshift the color. If it’s green, it’s actually a little more on the yellow side. If it’s blue, it’s a little greener,” said McNamara, who next plans to analyze the colors of moth fossils.
“Holding these fossils is amazing,” she said. “But what I really get a kick out of is investigating the details that are preserved on such a tiny scale. It’s one thing to look at a colored fossil beetle, but quite another to realize the level of preservation extends right down to the level of structures that are smaller than a cell.”
On the following pages are examples of the fossils and their structures.
Images: McNamara et al./Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Brandon is a Wired Science reporter and freelance journalist. Based in Brooklyn, New York and Bangor, Maine, he's fascinated with science, culture, history and nature.
Follow @9brandon on Twitter.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/beetle-fossil-colors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign
Clean Water found along California Coast
Los Angeles --
California beach goers enjoyed another summer of clean water, according to an annual study released Tuesday.
An estimated 92 percent of the 447 beaches along the state's coast that were tested for bacterial pollution from Memorial Day through Labor Day appeared clean, according to Heal the Bay.
The Santa Monica environmental organization, which oversees the Beach Report Card, studied levels of bacteria found in water samples taken by local agencies from Humboldt County on the north coast to the Mexico border.
The situation is also looking up for some of the state's most polluted beaches. All the sites tested in the port city of Long Beach appeared clean, and the city of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island is expected to spend $5 million to repair a deteriorating sewer system that has been contributing to high pollution levels.
Meanwhile, legislators approved a bill that would replace funding for water testing that was cut in 2008 due to the budget crisis. Since that time, many coastal communities relied on local general funds or volunteers for reduced testing. The state water board had provided funding through 2011, but there was no secured state funding for next year.
The bill, which is awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature, would funnel permit fees collected by the state water board into beach water quality monitoring.
Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, called the funding critical to safeguard the public health of millions of ocean users statewide.
Most bacterial contamination occurs during winter, when heavy rains overload storm drains and sewage systems, washing waste into the sea. Swimming in such pollution can cause gastrointestinal, respiratory and other illnesses.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/27/BA4I1LAAPP.DTL#ixzz1ZGK70Umn
California beach goers enjoyed another summer of clean water, according to an annual study released Tuesday.
An estimated 92 percent of the 447 beaches along the state's coast that were tested for bacterial pollution from Memorial Day through Labor Day appeared clean, according to Heal the Bay.
The Santa Monica environmental organization, which oversees the Beach Report Card, studied levels of bacteria found in water samples taken by local agencies from Humboldt County on the north coast to the Mexico border.
The situation is also looking up for some of the state's most polluted beaches. All the sites tested in the port city of Long Beach appeared clean, and the city of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island is expected to spend $5 million to repair a deteriorating sewer system that has been contributing to high pollution levels.
Meanwhile, legislators approved a bill that would replace funding for water testing that was cut in 2008 due to the budget crisis. Since that time, many coastal communities relied on local general funds or volunteers for reduced testing. The state water board had provided funding through 2011, but there was no secured state funding for next year.
The bill, which is awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature, would funnel permit fees collected by the state water board into beach water quality monitoring.
Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, called the funding critical to safeguard the public health of millions of ocean users statewide.
Most bacterial contamination occurs during winter, when heavy rains overload storm drains and sewage systems, washing waste into the sea. Swimming in such pollution can cause gastrointestinal, respiratory and other illnesses.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/27/BA4I1LAAPP.DTL#ixzz1ZGK70Umn
Monday, September 26, 2011
Fighting Cervical Cancer With Vinegar and Ingenuity
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: September 26, 2011
OYAI, Thailand — Maikaew Panomyai did a little dance coming out of the examination room, switching her hips, waving her fists in the air and crowing, in her limited English: “Everything’s O.K.! Everything’s O.K.!”
Translation: The nurse just told me I do not have cervical cancer, and even the little white spot I had treated three years ago is still gone.
What allowed the nurse to render that reassuring diagnosis was a remarkably simple, brief and inexpensive procedure, one with the potential to do for poor countries what the Pap smear did for rich ones: end cervical cancer’s reign as the No. 1 cancer killer of women. The magic ingredient? Household vinegar.
Every year, more than 250,000 women die of cervical cancer, nearly 85 percent of them in poor and middle-income countries. Decades ago, it killed more American women than any other cancer; now it lags far behind cancers of the lung, breast, colon and skin.
Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.
The procedure is one of a wide array of inexpensive but effective medical advances being tested in developing countries. New cheap diagnostic and surgical techniques, insecticides, drug regimens and prostheses are already beginning to save lives.
With a Pap smear, a doctor takes a scraping from the cervix, which is then sent to a laboratory to be scanned by a pathologist. Many poor countries lack high-quality labs, and the results can take weeks to arrive.
Women who return to distant areas where they live or work are often hard to reach, a problem if it turns out they have precancerous lesions.
Miss Maikaew, 37, could have been one of them. She is a restaurant cashier on faraway Ko Chang, a resort island. She was home in Poyai, a rice-farming village, for a brief visit and was screened at her mother’s urging.
The same thing had happened three years ago, and she did have a white spot then. (They resemble warts, and are caused by the human papillomavirus.) It was frozen off with cryotherapy, which had hurt a little, but was bearable, she said.
Since she has been screened twice in her 30s, her risk of developing cervical cancer has dropped by 65 percent, according to studies by the Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention, a coalition of international health organizations funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The procedure, known as VIA/cryo for visualization of the cervix with acetic acid (vinegar) and treatment with cryotherapy, can be done by a nurse, and only one visit is needed to detect and kill an incipient cancer.
Thailand has gone further than any other nation in adopting it. More than 20 countries, including Ghana and Zimbabwe, have done pilot projects. But in Thailand, VIA/cryo is now routine in 29 of 75 provinces, and 500,000 of the 8 million women, ages 30 to 44, in the target population have been screened at least once.
Dr. Bandit Chumworathayi, a gynecologist at Khon Kaen University who helped run the first Thai study of VIA/cryo, explains that vinegar highlights the tumors because they have more DNA, and thus more protein and less water, than other tissue.
It reveals pre-tumors with more accuracy than a typical Pap smear. But it also has more false positives — spots that turn pale but are not malignant. As a result, some women get unnecessary cryotherapy.
But freezing is about 90 percent effective, and the main side effect is a burning sensation that fades in a day or two.
By contrast, biopsies, the old method, can cause bleeding.
“Some doctors resist” the cryotherapy approach, said Dr. Wachara Eamratsameekool, a gynecologist at rural Roi Et Hospital who helped pioneer the procedure. “They call it ‘poor care for poor people.’ This is a misunderstanding. It’s the most effective use of our resources.”
At a workshop, nurse trainees pored over flash cards showing cervixes with diagnosable problems. They did gynecological exams on lifelike mannequins with plastic cervixes. They performed cryotherapy on sliced frankfurters pinned deep inside plastic pipes. Then, after lunch, they broke into small groups and went by minibus to nearby rural clinics to practice on real women.
Because cervical cancer takes decades to develop, it is too early to prove that Thailand has lowered its cancer rate. In fact, Roi Et Province, where mass screening first began, has a rate higher than normal, but doctors attribute that to the extra testing. But of the 6,000 women recruited 11 years ago for the first trial, not a single one has developed full-blown cancer.
VIA/cryo was pioneered in the 1990s simultaneously by Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, an American gynecologist working in Africa, and Dr. Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan in India.
Dr. Blumenthal said he and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins medical school had debated ways to make cervical lesions easier to see, and concluded that whitening them with acetic acid would be effective. Freezing off lesions is routine in gynecology and dermatology; the challenge was making it cheap and easy. Liquid nitrogen is hard to get, but carbon dioxide is readily available.
Thailand seems made for the vinegar technique. It has more than 100,000 nurses and a network of rural clinics largely run by them.
Also, while poor rural villagers in many countries go to shamans or herbalists before they see doctors, poor Thais do not. Thailand has a 95 percent literacy rate, and doctors are trusted. The king is the son of a doctor and a nurse; his father trained at Harvard. One of the royal princesses has a doctorate in chemistry and an interest in cancer research.
But the real secret, Dr. Wachara said, is this: “Thailand has Lady Kobchitt.”
Dr. Kobchitt Limpaphayon to her colleagues at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University medical school and “Kobbie” to her classmates long ago at New York’s Albany Medical College, she is the gynecologist to the Thai royal family. “Kobbie is a force of nature,” said Dr. Blumenthal, who has taught with her. In 1971, as a young doctor, she moved from Albany to Baltimore to help start the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics.
In 1999, she read one of Dr. Blumenthal’s papers and asked him to introduce VIA/cryo in Thailand. Without her connections and powers of persuasion, said Dr. Bandit, it would have been impossible to get the conservative Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to give up Pap smears, or to persuade Parliament to allow nurses to do cryotherapy, a procedure previously reserved for doctors.
The free screenings at public clinics are crucial to people like Yupin Promasorn, 36, who was part of Miss Maikaew’s group.
She sells snacks in Bangkok, and her husband drives a tuk-tuk motorcycle taxi. With two children, she has no time to wait at Bangkok’s jammed public hospitals, and she is too poor to see a private doctor. So she and her husband drove the 12 hours here, to her native village, in his tuk-tuk. When she found out she was negative, she sat in a chair fanning herself.
“I feel like a heavy mountain is gone from my chest,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27cancer.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Published: September 26, 2011
OYAI, Thailand — Maikaew Panomyai did a little dance coming out of the examination room, switching her hips, waving her fists in the air and crowing, in her limited English: “Everything’s O.K.! Everything’s O.K.!”
Translation: The nurse just told me I do not have cervical cancer, and even the little white spot I had treated three years ago is still gone.
What allowed the nurse to render that reassuring diagnosis was a remarkably simple, brief and inexpensive procedure, one with the potential to do for poor countries what the Pap smear did for rich ones: end cervical cancer’s reign as the No. 1 cancer killer of women. The magic ingredient? Household vinegar.
Every year, more than 250,000 women die of cervical cancer, nearly 85 percent of them in poor and middle-income countries. Decades ago, it killed more American women than any other cancer; now it lags far behind cancers of the lung, breast, colon and skin.
Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant.
The procedure is one of a wide array of inexpensive but effective medical advances being tested in developing countries. New cheap diagnostic and surgical techniques, insecticides, drug regimens and prostheses are already beginning to save lives.
With a Pap smear, a doctor takes a scraping from the cervix, which is then sent to a laboratory to be scanned by a pathologist. Many poor countries lack high-quality labs, and the results can take weeks to arrive.
Women who return to distant areas where they live or work are often hard to reach, a problem if it turns out they have precancerous lesions.
Miss Maikaew, 37, could have been one of them. She is a restaurant cashier on faraway Ko Chang, a resort island. She was home in Poyai, a rice-farming village, for a brief visit and was screened at her mother’s urging.
The same thing had happened three years ago, and she did have a white spot then. (They resemble warts, and are caused by the human papillomavirus.) It was frozen off with cryotherapy, which had hurt a little, but was bearable, she said.
Since she has been screened twice in her 30s, her risk of developing cervical cancer has dropped by 65 percent, according to studies by the Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention, a coalition of international health organizations funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The procedure, known as VIA/cryo for visualization of the cervix with acetic acid (vinegar) and treatment with cryotherapy, can be done by a nurse, and only one visit is needed to detect and kill an incipient cancer.
Thailand has gone further than any other nation in adopting it. More than 20 countries, including Ghana and Zimbabwe, have done pilot projects. But in Thailand, VIA/cryo is now routine in 29 of 75 provinces, and 500,000 of the 8 million women, ages 30 to 44, in the target population have been screened at least once.
Dr. Bandit Chumworathayi, a gynecologist at Khon Kaen University who helped run the first Thai study of VIA/cryo, explains that vinegar highlights the tumors because they have more DNA, and thus more protein and less water, than other tissue.
It reveals pre-tumors with more accuracy than a typical Pap smear. But it also has more false positives — spots that turn pale but are not malignant. As a result, some women get unnecessary cryotherapy.
But freezing is about 90 percent effective, and the main side effect is a burning sensation that fades in a day or two.
By contrast, biopsies, the old method, can cause bleeding.
“Some doctors resist” the cryotherapy approach, said Dr. Wachara Eamratsameekool, a gynecologist at rural Roi Et Hospital who helped pioneer the procedure. “They call it ‘poor care for poor people.’ This is a misunderstanding. It’s the most effective use of our resources.”
At a workshop, nurse trainees pored over flash cards showing cervixes with diagnosable problems. They did gynecological exams on lifelike mannequins with plastic cervixes. They performed cryotherapy on sliced frankfurters pinned deep inside plastic pipes. Then, after lunch, they broke into small groups and went by minibus to nearby rural clinics to practice on real women.
Because cervical cancer takes decades to develop, it is too early to prove that Thailand has lowered its cancer rate. In fact, Roi Et Province, where mass screening first began, has a rate higher than normal, but doctors attribute that to the extra testing. But of the 6,000 women recruited 11 years ago for the first trial, not a single one has developed full-blown cancer.
VIA/cryo was pioneered in the 1990s simultaneously by Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, an American gynecologist working in Africa, and Dr. Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan in India.
Dr. Blumenthal said he and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins medical school had debated ways to make cervical lesions easier to see, and concluded that whitening them with acetic acid would be effective. Freezing off lesions is routine in gynecology and dermatology; the challenge was making it cheap and easy. Liquid nitrogen is hard to get, but carbon dioxide is readily available.
Thailand seems made for the vinegar technique. It has more than 100,000 nurses and a network of rural clinics largely run by them.
Also, while poor rural villagers in many countries go to shamans or herbalists before they see doctors, poor Thais do not. Thailand has a 95 percent literacy rate, and doctors are trusted. The king is the son of a doctor and a nurse; his father trained at Harvard. One of the royal princesses has a doctorate in chemistry and an interest in cancer research.
But the real secret, Dr. Wachara said, is this: “Thailand has Lady Kobchitt.”
Dr. Kobchitt Limpaphayon to her colleagues at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University medical school and “Kobbie” to her classmates long ago at New York’s Albany Medical College, she is the gynecologist to the Thai royal family. “Kobbie is a force of nature,” said Dr. Blumenthal, who has taught with her. In 1971, as a young doctor, she moved from Albany to Baltimore to help start the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics.
In 1999, she read one of Dr. Blumenthal’s papers and asked him to introduce VIA/cryo in Thailand. Without her connections and powers of persuasion, said Dr. Bandit, it would have been impossible to get the conservative Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to give up Pap smears, or to persuade Parliament to allow nurses to do cryotherapy, a procedure previously reserved for doctors.
The free screenings at public clinics are crucial to people like Yupin Promasorn, 36, who was part of Miss Maikaew’s group.
She sells snacks in Bangkok, and her husband drives a tuk-tuk motorcycle taxi. With two children, she has no time to wait at Bangkok’s jammed public hospitals, and she is too poor to see a private doctor. So she and her husband drove the 12 hours here, to her native village, in his tuk-tuk. When she found out she was negative, she sat in a chair fanning herself.
“I feel like a heavy mountain is gone from my chest,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27cancer.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
There was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin;
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.
Can I Get One Sheet of the Lady Gagas?
Postal Service to Honor the Living on Stamps..
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Let’s face it: the United States Postal Service has not been known for its pizazz in stamp design. But starting next year, along with weather vanes and bonsai plants, there may be some startling new options for those who choose to pay their bills by mail and send their love letters sealed with a kiss.
The service announced Monday that it was tossing out its rule that its stamps honor only dead individuals and will be opening up this postage-stamp-size billboard space to the living, as well.
Eager — some might say desperate — to engage the public as postal revenues decline, the service has asked citizens to jump on Facebook and Twitter and submit the names of five living people they would like to commemorate.
Postal officials said they hoped the move would create some excitement and even prompt some young people to engage with snail mail, at least for special occasions.
“Having really nice, relevant, interesting, fun stamps might make a difference in people’s decisions to mail a letter,” said Stephen Kearney, the Postal Service’s manager of stamp services. “This is such a sea change.”
When the news broke Monday on the Web sites of various news organizations, including The New York Times, readers began promoting their favorite candidates. Popular nominees included Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Bob Dylan. CBS News gave readers a choice, listing options like Neil Armstrong (very popular) and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (not so much).
Mr. Kearney said that while the Postal Service is enjoying perusing the responses, its choice would not depend on such polls to pick the first living honorees. Its Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee will sift through the suggestions and make a recommendation to the postmaster general, who will make the final decision.
The Postal Service usually receives about 40,000 suggestions a year, but this move is likely to increase that number.
In one famous instance, the postmaster himself — not the committee — came up with a person to put on a stamp, and it turned out to be the most popular stamp ever: Elvis Presley, who died in 1977. The Postal Service did survey citizens on whether to use an image of the heavier older Elvis or the slender young Elvis. In what was then an unprecedented move, preaddressed ballots were distributed in post offices throughout the country. More than one million ballots were received — the young Elvis was the overwhelming choice.
The stamp was issued in 1993, and about 124 million were sold. The only other person among the top 10 best-selling stamps of all time was Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962. Her stamp was issued in 1995, and about 44 million were sold.
Mr. Kearney said that the usual three-year process to move a stamp from suggestion to implementation would be condensed so that at least one stamp with a living person would be available later next year, along with 34 other new stamps already scheduled for release.
Some, including stamp collectors, were worried about the postal service’s decision to break with tradition and use living people, saying it could allow the influence of commercial interests or result in fly-by-night people with no lasting legacy.
“Why not just sell ad space on stamps?” one reader wrote on nytimes.com.
But Mr. Kearney said the critics should not worry.
“I want to reassure everyone that we won’t let this cheapen the value of being on stamps,” he said.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/postal-service-will-begin-honoring-living-people-on-stamps.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The service announced Monday that it was tossing out its rule that its stamps honor only dead individuals and will be opening up this postage-stamp-size billboard space to the living, as well.
Eager — some might say desperate — to engage the public as postal revenues decline, the service has asked citizens to jump on Facebook and Twitter and submit the names of five living people they would like to commemorate.
Postal officials said they hoped the move would create some excitement and even prompt some young people to engage with snail mail, at least for special occasions.
“Having really nice, relevant, interesting, fun stamps might make a difference in people’s decisions to mail a letter,” said Stephen Kearney, the Postal Service’s manager of stamp services. “This is such a sea change.”
When the news broke Monday on the Web sites of various news organizations, including The New York Times, readers began promoting their favorite candidates. Popular nominees included Lady Gaga, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Bob Dylan. CBS News gave readers a choice, listing options like Neil Armstrong (very popular) and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook (not so much).
Mr. Kearney said that while the Postal Service is enjoying perusing the responses, its choice would not depend on such polls to pick the first living honorees. Its Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee will sift through the suggestions and make a recommendation to the postmaster general, who will make the final decision.
The Postal Service usually receives about 40,000 suggestions a year, but this move is likely to increase that number.
In one famous instance, the postmaster himself — not the committee — came up with a person to put on a stamp, and it turned out to be the most popular stamp ever: Elvis Presley, who died in 1977. The Postal Service did survey citizens on whether to use an image of the heavier older Elvis or the slender young Elvis. In what was then an unprecedented move, preaddressed ballots were distributed in post offices throughout the country. More than one million ballots were received — the young Elvis was the overwhelming choice.
The stamp was issued in 1993, and about 124 million were sold. The only other person among the top 10 best-selling stamps of all time was Marilyn Monroe, who died in 1962. Her stamp was issued in 1995, and about 44 million were sold.
Mr. Kearney said that the usual three-year process to move a stamp from suggestion to implementation would be condensed so that at least one stamp with a living person would be available later next year, along with 34 other new stamps already scheduled for release.
Some, including stamp collectors, were worried about the postal service’s decision to break with tradition and use living people, saying it could allow the influence of commercial interests or result in fly-by-night people with no lasting legacy.
“Why not just sell ad space on stamps?” one reader wrote on nytimes.com.
But Mr. Kearney said the critics should not worry.
“I want to reassure everyone that we won’t let this cheapen the value of being on stamps,” he said.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/us/postal-service-will-begin-honoring-living-people-on-stamps.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Super Yummy Zucchini Brownies
1-1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup applesauce
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini (I use a food processor and make it liquidy)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips
Directions:
1. In a bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt; stir to thoroughly combine.
2. Make a depression at the center of the mixture. Into the depression, add oil, applesauce, and vanilla; stir to thoroughly combine.
3. Stir in zucchini, then chocolate chips and walnuts; stir to thoroughly combine.
4. Pour into greased 9- x 13-inch cake pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes.
Source of recipe: A neighbor gave me this recipe and I modified it a bit
Makes: 1 cake pan, Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 30 minutes
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=41391.msg492573#msg492573
Obama Delivers his Jobs Plan at LinkedIn Event
(09-26) 13:00 PDT MOUNTAIN VIEW -- President Obama took his jobs message to Silicon Valley this morning at a town hall meeting with LinkedIn where he said Americans are "just looking for common sense" from their leaders in solving the unemployment problem but "ideologically driven" politicians in Washington are "focused on the next election and putting party ahead of country."
"I am extra confident about America's longterm future but we are going to have to make decisions about how we move forward," he told a audience of 350 employees and invited guests of LinkedIn at the Computer History Museum near the firm's headquarters in Mountain View.
The event was Obama's third town hall this year in collaboration Bay Area social networking companies. His forum today took place just hours before three Republican leaders in Congress, known as the "Young Guns" and including House Majority leader Eric Cantor, were to discuss their plans for jobs at Facebook in Palo Alto, where the President appeared with CEO Mark Zuckerberg in April.
In choosing LinkedIn, the White House said it aimed to reach "a community focused on the economy and job growth," The company was founded in 2003 and boasts 120 million members in 200 countries, with two new members every second.
While LinkedIn sought questions from millions of Americans, the setting at the museum was an intimate affair, with CEO Jeff Weiner seated together. But unlike Obama's past town halls, many questions came from unemployed Americans, some of them visibly worried about the future and hoping to again find a job.
"The challenge is making sure that you hang in between now and then," the president assured one unemployed IT professional and unidentified LinkedIn member and guest who asked for "words of encouragement" in his employment search.
"The problem is not you: the problem is the economy as a whole," Obama told the man. "My job is to work with everybody I can, from the business community to Congress ... to see if we can speed up this process of healing, this process of recovery."
The president's visit to LinkedIn came amid a fundraising frenzy on the West Coast, which seven events in two days that included two events for deep-pocketed donors in Silicon Valley on Sunday, one of which was a $35,800-per-person dinner at the home of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that inlcuded pop star Lady Gaga.
While the LinkedIn event wasn't billed as a campaign stop, it often mirrored one - with Weiner opening the event by endorsing the president's jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, as the best means of getting Americans back to work. And questions from the crowd and the Internet audience, all of them chosen by the firm, did not challenge Obama.
Doug Edwards, 53, a retired Google executive, said he had made so much money in the Silicon Valley that he no longer needed to work and asked Obama, "Would you please raise my taxes?"
"I would like the country very much to continue" to pay for "things like Pell Grants ... and job training programs," Edwards said. "It kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefiting us for so long."
Obama, seizing on a theme that he has repeatedly touched on across the nation in recent weeks, said in response that taxing wealthier Americans often "gets framed as class warfare."
"America's success is premised on entreprenuers pursuing their dreams and making a whole lot of money in the process," he said. "We're successful because somebody invested in our education, somebody built schools, somebody created incredible universities."
Obama said the question now facing America is: "If we're going to make those investments, how do we pay for it?"
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/26/MNVS1L9K5B.DTL
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