Science Special News

[Rasputin]

Quarry yields homes older than Stonehenge

Archaeologists have for the first time unearthed the homes of Neolithic henge builders, in a set of dwellings, some older than Stonehenge, excavated from a Northumberland quarry. The two settlement sites, each about the size of a football pitch and probably inhabited by a few related families, are dated to between 4,000BC and 3,000BC. The remains of the modest buildings are among the most extensive Neolithic dwellings ever found in Britain. The site is near the village of Milfield, in an area with a rich archaeological history, dominated by the enormous Yeavering Bell hill fort, built 1,000 years after the huts and henges on the plain below. The dwellings are surrounded by timber and earth bank henges so close in date it is assumed they must have been built by the same people.

The Neolithic Britons left some of the most spectacular prehistoric monuments in the world, but there have been only scraps of evidence showing where and how they lived. House sites are so rare that some archaeologists believe most people lived a semi-nomadic existence. "Neolithic habitation sites are as rare as hens' teeth anyway, but this is the first time we have found them in association with henge sites," David Miles, chief archaeologist at English Heritage, said yesterday.

[Rasputin]

A Real Alien?

This picture was taken from a frame of a video called "UFOs: Fifty Years of Denial" , James Fox, Executive Producer (not associated with the FOX News Network). FOX Production said that the "alien" picture was dated circa 1952 and wouldn't give anymore details.
Note the apparent bruising on the face and the knot running diagonally up along the thin neck (like its head was twisted more that 90 degrees then brought back). Is this evidence of crash injuries? It appears that the EBE was erected upright for this picture, you will can also make out what looks like rags or packing material is just behind it. Another striking feature is what appears to be a tight fitting uniform.

[Rasputin]

'Space Ring' could shade Earth

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes. There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example. And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops. But the idea, detailed today in the online version of the journal Acta Astronautica, illustrates that climate change can be battled with new technologies, according to one scientist not involved in the new work.

All scientists agree that Earth gets warmer and colder across the eons. A delicate and ever-changing balance between solar radiation, cloud cover, and heat-trapping greenhouse gases controls long-term swings from ice ages to warmer conditions like today.Those who are often called experts admit to glaring gaps in their knowledge of how all this works. A study last month revealed that scientists can't pin down one of the most critical keys: how much sunlight our planet absorbs versus how much is reflected back into space.

[Rasputin]

'Mothman' expert to discuss newest research

This may sound odd, but it wasn't that long ago that the people of the region were gripped with fear over the hundreds of sightings of UFOs, the "Men in Black" and the Mothman. It sounds like something out of a movie (and indeed a movie has been made based on the story), but it all happened close to Athens in the late 1960s.Gallipolis resident Jeff Wamsley grew up in Pt. Pleasant W.Va., just a few doors down from one of the first couples who reported spotting the Mothman. Wamsley has researched the Mothman story extensively over the years, and has written two books on the subject. Tonight, Wamsley is speaking at the Athens Public Library at 7:30. He will tell the story of the Mothman, including new information gleaned from his research. In addition to writing two books on the subject, Wamsley built a Web site devoted to the Mothman (www.mothmanlives.com), curates the Mothman Museum in Pt. Pleasant, and helps coordinate the annual Mothman Festival, also in Pt. Pleasant.

Over a 13-month period in the late 1960s, the Gallipolis-Pt. Pleasant region, a short drive south of Athens, had hundreds of reported sightings of the Mothman, as well as other strange things. According to Wamsley's Web site, the first report of the Mothman's red eyes came in on Nov. 14, 1966 in Salem, W.Va. On that night, a man was watching television at home when his screen blanked out and he heard a strange noise outside. When he went outside, he saw two red circles, or red eyes, near his barn, according to the Web site. The man went inside and got his gun, but his dog ran toward the eyes and was never seen again.

[jjbb]

Riaz Tarikh ghesmati az science hast !!!

Marijuana ghesmati az pezeshki hast keh baz marbut misheh beh science ! .

To ro Khoda alaki naya chizi benevis inja ! .

evala javabe manteghi

[Rasputin]

Vatican: Intelligent design is not science

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design'' isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate raging in the United States. The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design ideas alongside the theory of evolution in school programs was "wrong'' and was akin to mixing apples with oranges."Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be,'' the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science.''His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design'' -- whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism -- a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation -- camouflaged in scientific language and say it does not belong in science curriculum.

In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe."If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly,'' he wrote.

[Rasputin]

[green_president2004]

omg

[Rostam]

In topics ha khili jaleb and, well done.

[Rasputin]

Rare Volcanic Eruption Causes Rapid Growth of Island

A rare volcanic eruption is rapidly expanding the size of an island in the South Atlantic, scientists announced today.

New satellite images show that Montagu Island, a volcano in the South Sandwich Islands, has grown by 50 acres (0.2 square kilometers) in the last month as lava pours into the sea.

"Red hot lava has formed a molten river 90 meters wide [99 yards] that is moving fast, possibly several meters per second and extending the shoreline on the north side of the island," said John Smellie of British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "This event is special because Montagu Island is mostly ice covered and it's very rare that we get to make direct observations of eruptions under ice sheets."

Smellie studies Antarctic rock formations to find out how ancient eruptions affected the growth and retreat of ice sheets over the past 30 million years. The research helps climate scientists put modern atmospheric changes into perspective and predict future climate change.

"This opportunity to monitor a live eruption and see how it affects ice cover is priceless," he said.

[Rasputin]

Is AIDS a man made virus ?

The disease was first uncovered in homosexual men from Manhattan. "Gay cancer," in the form of Kaposi's sarcoma skin tumors, was the most striking telltale sign; and drugs, promiscuity, and anal sex were all thought to play a role in the unprecedented suppression of the immune system. It was soon obvious that the disease was not limited to gays: the mysterious agent was in the national blood supply, and an epidemic of AIDS was also uncovered in Central Africa. In April 1984 Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced his discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. Subsequently, Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris filed a lawsuit claiming he had first discovered the AIDS virus at Pasteur, and that Gallo had stolen the French virus after it was sent to his lab for study. Twenty-five years later, the origin of AIDS still remains a mystery. The disease is widely believed to have originated in Africa when a primate (monkey) virus "jumped species" to first infect Black Africans.

However, it is important to note that this belief is theory, not proven fact. Montagnier has wisely cautioned that it is extremely important to distinguish between the ancestral origin of HIV and the actual beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The animal virus ancestor of HIV may indeed be centuries old, but it is obvious that the epidemic itself is new.The epidemic did not begin in Africa. The first AIDS cases were uncovered in Manhattan in 1979. At that time there were no reported African cases. In fact, the AIDS epidemic in Africa did not begin until the autumn of 1982 at the earliest.

[moonlight79]

Did you know? Yeast is the star of the drinks industry. If it feeds on sugar in the absence of oxygen, it releases carbon dioxide and ethanol - the drinkable form of alcohol


Only 20% of the alcohol you swallow is absorbed by the stomach


Heavy drinking is blamed for up to 33,000 deaths a year in the UK


When you consume alcohol, you lose more water in your urine than you take in the drink itself


Booze interferes with the nerve endings that control erections


Binge drinking is thought to have serious long-term health impacts


After a heavy night out drinking your body is dehydrated which causes your brain to shrink away from the skull


Infected with yeast
Alcohol was discovered thousands of years ago when humans tasted liquids, which had become infected with yeasts. Recipes discovered on ancient tablets prove that the Babylonians were 'getting the beers in' back in 4300 BC. The Ancient Greeks and the Romans were wine connoisseurs and by the Middle Ages alcoholic brews were drunk as a safe alternative to water, which was often contaminated.

In the 19th century the 'Temperance movement' began to portray drink as an evil rather than a benefit. Between 1919 and 1933 the US introduced the Prohibition, which banned alcohol and resulted in the creation of underground drinking dens.



Today, drinking is an increasingly popular social phenomenon and recent research has suggested a health benefit of moderate alcohol consumption. But the dangers of drinking are also being more widely understood.


Drinking is popular


Is alcohol a dangerous drug?




Alcohol is a poison that can cause irreversible damage to the liver, which labours to remove it from the body The liver can remove alcohol from the body at the rate of one unit per hour

Heavy drinking is blamed for up to 33,000 deaths a year in the UK Research has shown that moderate consumption of wine and beer is good for the heart

In Britain, nearly one in ten men and one in 20 women drinkers have an alcohol problem Moderate consumption of alcohol by young women is thought to prevent high blood pressure

Over 9m people in the UK drink at levels that place their long-term health at risk Research has suggested that moderate alcohol consumption may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease in ageing drinkers

Drinkers are more likely to have casual sex that leads to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases Drinking helps people to relax in social situations

Alcohol is estimated to be a factor in 20-30% of accidents worldwide

Long-term alcoholics often suffer from alcoholic myopathy, a muscle-wasting condition that causes extreme tiredness after physical activity

Long-term alcoholics also lose bone mass as alcohol affects the way calcium is processed by the body

[moonlight79]

The Drinking Habit


The recommended limits of alcohol consumption are 2-3 units per day for women and 3-4 units for men. In standard UK pub measures a unit is half a pint of ordinary beer or lager, a third of a pint of strong brew, a small glass of table wine, one glass of sherry or a single whisky.

The limits were changed to a daily dose when doctors realised many people's interpretation of the weekly limits was that if they saved all their units up for Friday night they'd still be OK. In fact, binge drinking is thought to have serious long-term health impacts although this form of drinking has been less well studied.

Long-term damage
The long-term toll of heavy drinking is serious and the NHS estimates it spends £164m a year treating alcohol-related conditions. One of the most serious consequences is for the liver. In response to long-term alcohol exposure it starts producing more alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme which it uses to break ethanol down.



This means, you need more alcohol for the same effect. This worsens the addiction. The liver then becomes over-active, cells die and the tissue hardens. The result is cirrhosis of the liver. This incurable condition was the reason for football hero George Best's liver transplant.




Cirrhotic liver

Other risks of long-term drinking include heart disease, stroke, dementia and brain damage, myopathy - a weakening of the muscles - and shrivelled sex organs. Cancers related to alcohol include those of the liver, colon, rectum and breast cancer in women.

Treatment centres including the worldwide organisation Alcoholics Anonymous have helped thousands of alcoholics who want to give up drinking. Other forms of help are slowly becoming available. Disulfiram, trade name 'antabuse', is a tablet, which causes an extremely unpleasant reaction including copious vomiting when you consume alcohol. However, it's a severe form of treatment and needs a lot of extra support if it is to work.

[moonlight79]

What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?
Until recently most scientists thought they knew what killed off the dinosaurs. A 10km-wide meteorite had smashed into the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, causing worldwide forest fires, tsunamis several kilometres high, and an 'impact winter' - in which dust blocked out the sun for months or years. It was thought that the dinosaurs were blasted, roasted and frozen to death, in that order.

But now a small but vociferous group of scientists believes there is increasing evidence that this 'impact' theory could be wrong. That suggestion has generated one of the bitterest scientific rows of recent times.

The impact theory
The impact theory was beautifully simple and appealing. Much of its evidence was drawn from a thin layer of rock known as the 'KT boundary'. This layer is 65 million years old (which is around the time when the dinosaurs disappeared) and is found around the world exposed in cliffs and mines.

For supporters of the impact theory, the KT boundary layers contained two crucial clues. In 1979 scientists discovered that there were high concentrations of a rare element called iridium, which they thought could only have come from an asteroid. Right underneath the iridium was a layer of 'spherules', tiny balls of rock which seemed to have been condensed from rock which had been vapourised by a massive impact.

On the basis of the spherules and a range of other evidence, Dr Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary deduced that the impact must have happened in the Yucatan peninsula, at the site of a crater known as Chicxulub. Chemical analysis later confirmed that the spherules had indeed come from rocks within the crater.

The impact theory seemed to provide the complete answer. In many locations around the world, the iridium layer (evidence of an asteroid impact) sits right on top of the spherule layer (evidence that the impact was at Chicxulub). So Hildebrand and other supporters of the impact theory argued that there was one massive impact 65 million years ago, and that it was at Chicxulub. This, they concluded, must have finished off the dinosaurs by a variety of mechanisms.

Challenging the theory
But a group of scientists led by Prof Gerta Keller of Princeton and Prof Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of the University of Karlsruhe begged to differ. They uncovered a series of geological clues which suggests the truth may be far more complicated. In short, that the crater in the Yucatan is too old to have killed off the dinosaurs.

They concentrated on a series of rock formations in Mexico where the iridium layer was separated from the spherule layer by many metres of sandstone. That opinion sparked a massive row, as the supporters of the impact theory such as Prof Jan Smit of Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, rubbished Keller's ideas. Smit argued that the sandstone had been deposited by massive tsunami waves caused by the asteroid, and so did not undermine the idea of a single impact.

But Keller's team found evidence - such as ancient worm burrows - that suggested that the deposition of the sandstone had been interrupted many times. They concluded that there was a gap of some 300,000 years between the deposition of the spherules (from the Chicxulub crater) and the iridium (from an asteroid). Therefore there must have been two impacts.

The Chicxulub impact, they said, was too old to have finished off the dinosaurs, and there must have been another impact somewhere else which was to blame. That crater has not yet been found.

More challenges
Keller's views provoked a lively scientific row. In 2001, to try to resolve the dispute an international group of scientists extracted rock cores from deep within the Yucatan crater. Predictably, each side thought the evidence supported their argument.

Although still in the minority, Keller's work does now attract some support. And a range of scientists have begun to question other hypotheses connected with the impact theory. Claire Belcher of Royal Holloway, University of London, has found evidence which suggests that wildfires were not widespread in North America following the KT impact.

Prof Dave Archibald of San Diego State University is convinced that the survival of creatures such as frogs disproves the idea that the dinosaurs perished amid acid rain as strong as battery acid, or that an 'impact winter' caused a massive and sustained drop in temperature.

Dr Norman MacLeod of the Natural History Museum in London is among a large group of scientists who are convinced the dinosaurs were already being driven to extinction by climate change long before the arrival of the KT impact, or impacts.

[Rasputin]

moonlight79 Thx for you nice articles but :
Pls check The thread .Drug in this forum !
.. ....... this thread from beginnin'. i am followin just Mysterious stuff in science !.

Thx for your attention.