Science Special News

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Halloween outfits 'create fear'

Retailers who sell traditional Halloween merchandise, such as scary masks, are creating a "climate of fear", the Bishop of Bolton has said. The Rt Rev David Gillett has written to supermarkets asking them to rethink the way they promote the pagan festival, celebrated on 31 October. He said they are focussing on the darker side of Halloween. Mr Gillett suggested shops stock hair braids, bright balloons and colourful costumes alongside traditional items. "I share the view of many Christians that large retailers are increasingly keen to commercialise Halloween celebrations in a way that pressurises parents to purchase goods that promote the dark, negative side of Halloween and could encourage anti-social behaviour," he said. "I am worried that Halloween has the potential to trivialise the realities of evil in the world and that occult practices should not be condoned, even if they are only being presented in a caricatured, light-hearted form."

He added: "Those in the Church supporting this move towards a more positive approach to the event are not being killjoys, but are simply reflecting the concerns of many parents and teachers across the land. "We want supermarkets to take a responsible position in relation to the products they promote for celebrating the event."

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Space Shuttle delayed by 'Mystery Objects'

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis reported seeing three more pieces of debris floating outside the aircraft Wednesday -- just a day after two other mystery objects delayed the planned landing until at least Thursday. The discovery of the new pieces of debris came after six astronauts, including Canadian Steve MacLean, inspected the shuttle for any possible damage that may have been caused by one of the mystery object that apparently floated off the aircraft on Tuesday.NASA scientist Paul Dye told a news conference Wednesday that it was "very hard to identify what these things might be."However, fellow NASA scientist Steve Stich told the conference that althought it was "a little bit unusual to see these object this late in the mission," he "fully expected" the shuttle to be able to land on Thursday.Using the Canadian-made robotic arm and cameras, the astronauts checked the condition of the shuttle's heat shield Wednesday, which is crucial for re-entry.A boom, which is attached to the shuttle's 15-metre robotic arm and has cameras and sensors at its end, was used to look at hard-to-reach places.

NASA officials said the first mystery object appeared to drift away when landing systems were put through a normal but bumpy trial run early Tuesday morning.Concern about whether it came from a crucial part of Atlantis was enough to make NASA postpone the shuttle's landing from Wednesday until Thursday or even later. NASA officials said their best guess was that the object was a plastic filler placed in between thermal tiles which protect the shuttle from blasting heat.

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'Water wars' loom ?

With a steady stream of bleak predictions that "water wars" will be fought over dwindling supplies in the 21st century, battles between two Sumerian city-states 4,500 years ago seem to set a worrying precedent. But the good news, many experts say, is that the conflict between Lagash and Umma over irrigation rights in what is now Iraq was the last time two states went to war over water.Down the centuries since then, international rivals sharing waters such as the Jordan River, the Nile, the Ganges or the Parana have generally favored cooperation over conflict.So if history can be trusted, things may stay that way. "The simple explanation is that water is simply too important to fight over," said Aaron Wolf, a professor at Oregon State University. "Nations often go to the brink of war over water and then resolve their differences."Since the war between Lagash and Umma, recorded on a stone carving showing vultures flying off with the heads of defeated Umma warriors, no wars have been fought and 3,600 international water treaties have been signed, he said.

Yet politicians regularly warn that water shortages caused by surging populations and climate change could trigger conflicts this century in a world where a billion people in developing countries lack access to clean drinking water."Fierce competition for fresh water may well become a source of conflict and wars in the future," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in 2001. The English word "rival" even comes from the Latin "rivalis" meaning "someone sharing a river."Other experts say international "water wars" are unlikely.

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Remains of earliest child discovered in Ethiopia

LONDON (Reuters) - A 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on Wednesday.

They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.

The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide information about the child's height and structure.

"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.

"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright walking creature," he told Reuters.

But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.

"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.

He said the fossil was older than the 3.2-million-year-old remains of "Lucy" discovered in 1974 and described by scientists as one of the world's greatest archaeological finds.

"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.

The fossil has been named "Selam," which means peace in Ethiopia's official Amharic language.

JUVENILE "LUCY"

Dr Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University in England described it as a massively exciting discovery of a juvenile "Lucy." "This tremendous fossil will make us challenge many of the ideas we have about how and why we came to walk on two feet," he said.

An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the child lived.

It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.

"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments surrounding the remains.

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'Lucy's baby' found in Ethiopia

The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region. The female Australopithecus afarensis bones are from the same species as an adult skeleton found in 1974 which was nicknamed "Lucy". Scientists are thrilled with the find, reported in the journal Nature. They believe the near-complete remains offer a remarkable opportunity to study growth and development in an important extinct human ancestor. The juvenile Australopithecus afarensis remains vanishingly rare. The skeleton was first identified in 2000, locked inside a block of sandstone. It has taken five years of painstaking work to free the bones. "The Dikika fossil is now revealing many secrets about Australopithecus afarensis and other early hominins, because the fossil evidence was not there," said dig leader Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The find consists of the whole skull, the entire torso and important parts of the upper and lower limbs. CT scans reveal unerupted teeth still in the jaw, a detail that makes scientists think the individual may have been about three years old when she died. Remarkably, some quite delicate bones not normally preserved in the fossilisation process are also present, such as the hyoid, or tongue, bone. The hyoid bone reflects how the voice box is built and perhaps what sounds a species can produce.

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'Shadow person' feeling conjured in brain

Schizophrenics sometimes feel the presence of an unknown person behind them who mimics their movements. Now scientists have produced the same disturbing effect in a nonschizophrenic person by applying electric stimulation to a specific area of her brain. The discovery could help scientists unravel the brain processes behind delusions of paranoia, persecution, and alien control. Doctors unintentionally produced the delusion while evaluating a 22-year-old epileptic woman for possible surgery. Though the woman had no history of psychological problems, she repeatedly perceived a "shadow person" hovering behind her when doctors electrically stimulated an area of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction.

"Our data most importantly show that paranoia might be related to disturbed processing of one's own body, [which] in some instances may become misrecognized as the body of somebody else," said Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The hallucinatory condition was temporary and ended when stimulations were stopped.

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Excerpt 1:
(apparently a short biography from “Encedus”)

One night, as I slept in my tent, which I had managed to lease for a small fee with the money made from doing odd jobs and filling in for Gilda, I went to sleep and began to dream of my secret love. I think she knew all along that I was infatuated with her, but that night, she surely did.
I was in a dark forest, with low branches and a fog pouring over the moors. I saw Gilda, lovely, in a fine satin robe of irridescent white. I approached her from behind and moved to caress her shoulder with my hand. I touched her, Gilda turned, startled. "Encedus" she admonished, quite startling me. "I had no idea you had grown so in the ways of the Walk." She smiled and took my hand. "You must never enter my dreams again. Unless I wish it. Or anyone's, for that matter. This is a very private place where our secret heart and fears can relax and be free, without thought of reproach. I will teach you what I know of the Walk, but you must be careful how you use it.”

In the olden times, when I was a lad in my father's tailor shop in England, I was allowed to roam the booths at the bazaar. After a small number of years, I eventually became well known to all the tent-dwellers and hawkers, fishmongers and yes, the fortune tellers, or soothsayers, as we referred to them in those days. One in particular, I liked to visit - she was of fair hair and complexion, a mere decade older than myself. I was in love, or at least thought I was. She allowed me to come around and talk to her when she was not busy. She was a safe but fasinating diversion for me, a child of only 14 years, and a way to pass the time between clients, for her.

Only after a great while did Gilda begin to reveal to me some of her arts in soothsaying. At first, I was shocked; some practices were no more than shams. Later I came to realize that you had to do those things to make a living. Other things she showed me were of a decidedly curious nature. She taught me how to focus my
mind for crystal gazing. Tarot practically worked themselves - interpreting them was the tricky part. Soon, I had become her apprentice (much to the chagrin of my father) and became a man of my own right in time, known for my own talents.

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Excerpt 2:
(An apparently random line)

The word is that one which can only be upon the heart of the beggar and the prince.

Excerpt 3:
(Perhaps an unknown tie-in?)

Partly his own fault, Anthony Taylor was a guest at the Queen's Royal Banquet, 3rd of May 2000. Began as rain poured down upon the murky(?) bazarre shop owners, minstrels and mongers, who headed for shelter at the outset, the lute strings bent and twisted, twang with dissatisfaction as the spectator's faces become more morose, fallow. Only the brickmason remained, bricking a wall he had started
early that morning, his shoes shining in the sunlight like gold in the rainbow.

Excerpt 4:
(I am being directly addressed here by Encedus. This was fairly common to be directly addressed, sometimes in the middle of a narrative or message.)

Hello. I fear this is a bad time for introductions, but my name is Encadus. I was once a powerful and wealthy nobleman from what you call Rome. Never fear - we all think the same thoughts and have the same fears, but this is the most insignificant beginning to our friendship. I have seen great times but am now not a worldly man. A favor I ask of you. Please choose better liquor. The pleasures I have now are few so please choose more carefully.

Dreams were my specialty – as Dream Oracle, I worked in the temple. It amused me.

Three strikes the hour. Three knocks the door. Three burns the candles. Three are the days to fulfillment - the right to ask is yours, grasp it and hold on <-n.
(He signed his messages <-n for ENcadus).
Excerpt 5:
(Possibly related?)

And the sky was filled with hoofbeats, which thundered across the mesa. Enjoying the spectacle, astride his charger, sat the great Railhazad. Clad in the finest silks and embroidered cloth from many countries, he adjusted his cutlass by his side. Peering through the approaching dust cloud, he saw the teeming army of the barbarian invaders (incomplete)

Excerpt 6:
(This excerpt I'd classify as partial stream-of-consciousness, as I “received” it as I was thinking about how best to summarize some of the earlier points – and some of it seems to rely on some of my own experiences, yet I myself do not necessarily share most or all of the reasonings and beliefs that are expressed. I have no documentation to indicate who, if anyone specifically, is responsible for any of this.)

Perception in the spirit realm, at least in most cases, differs from normal human perception. There doesn't appear to be a differentiation of the senses, such as sight and sound, etc. but it appears to be an overall experience, at least for spirits. Some spirits claim that they rose out of their bodies and death and could see themselves and the rest of their environment, but they simply wouldn't interact with it. This seems to indicate normal perception (seeing their own corpse, hearing the sirens of the ambulance), but may also be accounted for by a type of perception beyond what the living know.

The spirit is focused on the physical (his death scene to be precise), and can wander around, able to "see" and "hear" but unable to interact. It seems at some point the spirit loses interest in such a boring place and the physical world begins to fade from view, replaced by darkness. This darkness is not physical, but mental, as the spirit , because of his state of being, perceived things by thought, and fails to perceive things by absence of thought. "Out of sight, out of mind" and vice-versa, are both literal laws of perception for spirits. Whether there are diffferent planes (astral, spiritual, mental) and whether perception in each is open to question, but most spirits that interact with humans are all subject to the same set of rules, which are in effect what I will call the astral plane, but I mean that as a generalization, meaning non-physical (unlike our own plane).