Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Monday, July 24, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Chris and Annie Nielsen's children are both killed, and then a few years later Chris himself dies in an accident. Chris goes to heaven, a place built of his imagination, and the paintings he loved in life. He discovers from an angel that Annie has committed suicide, as she is bereft without her family. Chris determines to search for her, but as he has gone to heaven and she to hell, he must endure great hardships to find her.
New Scientist Breaking News - Lack of sleep saps men's brain power:
Lack of sleep saps men's brain power
11:00 23 July 2006
IF YOU have ever thought you were stupid to sleep with someone, consider this. Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily.
Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an "actigraph", to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart.
Men and women fared differently. While men thought they slept better with a partner, and women believed they didn't, actually both sexes had more disturbed sleep, even when they did not have sex. Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men, and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day.
However, the women apparently slept more deeply when they did sleep, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested. Their stress levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent.
Kloesch presented his work at a meeting of the Forum of European Neurosciences in Vienna last week.
Sleeping with someone also affected dream recall, with women remembering more after sleeping alone and men recalling best after sex.
IF YOU have ever thought you were stupid to sleep with someone, consider this. Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily.
Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an 'actigraph', to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart.
Men and women fared differently. While men thought they slept better with a partner, and women believed they didn't, actually both sexes had more disturbed sleep, even when they did not have sex. Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men, and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day.
However, the women apparently slept more deeply when they did sleep, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested. Their stress levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent.
Kloesch presented his work at a meeting of the Forum of European Neurosciences in Vienna last week.
Sleeping with someone also affected dream recall, with women remembering more after sleeping alone and men recalling best after sex."
Lack of sleep saps men's brain power
11:00 23 July 2006
IF YOU have ever thought you were stupid to sleep with someone, consider this. Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily.
Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an "actigraph", to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart.
Men and women fared differently. While men thought they slept better with a partner, and women believed they didn't, actually both sexes had more disturbed sleep, even when they did not have sex. Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men, and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day.
However, the women apparently slept more deeply when they did sleep, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested. Their stress levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent.
Kloesch presented his work at a meeting of the Forum of European Neurosciences in Vienna last week.
Sleeping with someone also affected dream recall, with women remembering more after sleeping alone and men recalling best after sex.
IF YOU have ever thought you were stupid to sleep with someone, consider this. Sharing your bed could actually make you stupid if you are a man - at least temporarily.
Even without having sex, bed sharing disturbs sleep quality, say Gerhard Kloesch and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. The team recruited eight unmarried, childless couples, and used questionnaires and a wrist activity monitor, an 'actigraph', to assess sleep patterns after 10 nights together and 10 apart.
Men and women fared differently. While men thought they slept better with a partner, and women believed they didn't, actually both sexes had more disturbed sleep, even when they did not have sex. Lack of sleep led to increased stress hormone levels in men, and reduced their ability to perform simple cognitive tests the next day.
However, the women apparently slept more deeply when they did sleep, since they claimed to be more refreshed than their sleep time suggested. Their stress levels and mental scores did not suffer to the same extent.
Kloesch presented his work at a meeting of the Forum of European Neurosciences in Vienna last week.
Sleeping with someone also affected dream recall, with women remembering more after sleeping alone and men recalling best after sex."
Saturday, July 22, 2006
ScienceDaily: Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
ScienceDaily: Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
ScienceDaily: Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
Dark And Distant Heavenly Bodies Revealing The Secrets Of Star And Galaxy Formation
British astronomers are releasing the first data from the largest and most sensitive survey of the heavens in infrared light to scientists across Europe. The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) has completed the first of seven years of data collection, studying objects that are too faint to see at visible wavelengths, such as very distant or very cool objects. New data on young galaxies is already challenging current thinking on galaxy formation, revealing galaxies that are massive at a much earlier stage of development than expected. These first science results already show how powerful the full survey will be at finding rare objects that hold vital clues to how stars and galaxies in our Universe formed.
The large blue image shows an optical picture of the Pleiades star cluster, which lies around 400 light-years from the Sun and is thought to be typical of the regions where Stars form in our Galaxy. The three close-up images show three objects that may be brown dwarfs that have been found in UKIDSS data. In each case, the colour scheme indicates that the stars are much cooler (i.e. redder) than other stars that happen to lie in the line of sight. If further study confirms that these objects are indeed members of the Pleiades star cluster, then they will likely have masses around 4% of the Sun, or around 40 times the mass of the planet Jupiter. (Image courtesy of Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council)
UKIDSS will make an atlas of large areas of the sky in the deep infrared. This survey will reveal more cool and faint objects than we have ever been able to see before. It will also detect objects at the very edge of our known universe. UKIDSS is being conducted by UK astronomers working with Japanese and ESO astronomers. The data is being shared with astronomers across Europe through ESO.
"Astronomers across Europe will jump on these exciting new data. We are moving into new territory - our survey is both wide and deep, so we are mapping huge volumes of space. That's how we will locate rare objects - the very nearest and smallest stars, and young galaxies at the edge of the universe." said Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, UKIDSS Principal Investigator.
The UKIDSS data was collected by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope situated near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii using the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) built by the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC) in Edinburgh. WFCAM is the most powerful infrared imager in the world. It generates enormous amounts of data - 150 gigabytes per night (equivalent to more than 200 CDs) – and approximately 10.5 Terrabytes in total so far (or 15,000 CDs!!).
A small amount of data was released in January 2006 and already teams led by Omar Almaini at the University of Nottingham and Nigel Hambly of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh are beginning to reveal some of the secrets of star and galaxy formation.
Omar Almaini, Ross McLure and the Ultra Deep Survey team have been looking at distant galaxies by surveying the same region of sky night after night to see deeper and to find these very faint objects. This survey will be one hundred times larger than any similar survey attempted to date and will cover an area four times the size of the full Moon. So far several hundred thousand galaxies have been detected and among the early discoveries, nine remarkable galaxies have been found that appear to be 12 billion light years away. As it has taken 12 billion years for the light to travel from these galaxies to Earth, we are seeing them as they were when they were very young – only a billion years after the Big Bang. The newly discovered galaxies are unusual as they appear to be very massive for their age. This challenges thinking on how galaxies form, since it was thought that large galaxies form gradually over billions of years as smaller components merge together.
"We're surveying an enormous volume of the distant Universe, which allows us to discover rare massive galaxies that were previously almost impossible to find. Understanding how these galaxies form is one of the Holy Grails of modern astronomy, and now we can trace them back to the edge of the known Universe" said Omar Almaini.
Nigel Hambly and Nicolas Lodieu have been using the UKIDSS data to discover more about very cold objects in our Galaxy called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are formed in the same way as stars but typically they have less than 8% of the mass of the Sun (or approximately 80 times the mass of Jupiter). This is not large enough for core nuclear reactions to occur, and so brown dwarfs do not shine like normal stars. Brown dwarfs give off less than one ten thousandth of the radiation of a star like our Sun. This relatively tiny amount of heat can be detected by WFCAM and the UKIDSS survey hopes to find out how many of these "failed stars" there are in our Galaxy.
Only a few hundred of these enigmatic objects have been found previously but the UKIDSS survey should establish if they are rare or a relatively common phenomenon. This large study of brown dwarfs will reveal the true scale of the link between the smallest normal stars and large gas planets, such as Jupiter.
Nigel Hambly, of the UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey said "There is every reason to suppose that the physical process leading to the formation of stars is continuous across the mass boundary that separates normal hydrogen-fusing stars like the Sun and the so-called failed stars, or brown dwarfs. With UKIDSS, we will find many thousands of brown dwarfs in many different star formation environments within our own Galaxy; furthermore we expect to find even cooler and much dimmer objects than are currently known. This will tell us how significant a role the brown dwarfs have in the overall scheme of Galactic structure and evolution."
Mike Irwin and his team at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge have automated the processing of the huge amount of data produced by the surveys. More than 2 million images have been analysed so far, with the team tasked with removing instrumental artefacts, cataloguing the thousands of objects visible on each frame and providing quality measures for the 10,000 images produced per night.
Friday, July 21, 2006
New Scientist News - Relic neutrinos join the hunt for dark energy
Relic neutrinos join the hunt for dark energy
21 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby
MASSIVE optical telescopes on mountain tops have been the main tools for exploring dark energy - the mysterious stuff that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Soon the quest could move underground. Neutrinos born in stellar cataclysms and detected in gigantic water tanks buried in mines may become the new probes for dark energy.
Dark energy was discovered in the late 1990s by astronomers studying the light from stellar explosions known as type 1a supernovae. Since then telescopes around the world, such as the Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Chile, have been used to study the light from more and more supernovae.
Now Lawrence Hall of the University of California at Berkeley and colleagues think that neutrinos spewed out in another type of stellar explosion, a core-collapse supernova, could be just the tool for studying dark energy.
When the core of a massive star grows too large, it collapses under its own gravity, releasing a flood of neutrinos - a theory confirmed in 1987 when a supernova went off in a nearby dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and a sudden wave of the particles hit neutrino detectors on Earth.
Two of them, Kamiokande-II in Japan and the IMB detector in the US, were underground water tanks. Photomultiplier tubes lining these tanks detected the distinctive and rare blue flashes of light emitted when a neutrino hits an electron.
“Neutrinos might bounce off dark energy so that their spectrum is distorted in a way that tells us something about it”
The millions of core-collapse supernovae that have gone off throughout the history of the universe must have created a background of supernova relic neutrinos. But the diffuse nature of these neutrinos makes them very difficult to detect. However, the next generation of neutrino detectors, such as the planned Underground Nucleon decay and Neutrino Observatory, which will be about 20 times larger than Super-Kamiokande in Japan (see right), will have tanks that can hold a million tonnes of water and so should be up to the job. "If I have to bet on it, the next neutrinos of astrophysical origin we see will be supernova relic neutrinos," says physicist Chang Kee Jung of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who is involved with the UNO proposal.
Hall's team has worked out that the spectrum of these relic neutrinos could hold cosmological treasure. That's because the flux of neutrinos measured today is affected by how the universe expanded in the past. So measuring the flux of supernova relic neutrinos of different energies could reveal how the universe is expanding.
This is similar to the way dark energy was first discovered, when astronomers found that type 1a supernovae were dimmer than expected. The accelerating expansion of space had diluted their light, and this was put down to some kind of invisible repulsive force whose nature is still unknown.
Relic neutrinos might merely confirm the acceleration, leaving the exact nature of dark energy a mystery - or they could reveal new physics. Neutrinos might bounce off dark energy, in which case their spectrum will be distorted in such a way as to tell us something more about this mysterious force.
Or it may be that light from distant supernovae is being distorted in some strange way - perhaps by being gradually converted into particles called axions. Finally, the spectrum of supernova relic neutrinos could reveal whether anything is awry with optical supernova studies.
From issue 2561 of New Scientist magazine, 21 July 2006, page 17
Relic neutrinos join the hunt for dark energy
21 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby
MASSIVE optical telescopes on mountain tops have been the main tools for exploring dark energy - the mysterious stuff that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. Soon the quest could move underground. Neutrinos born in stellar cataclysms and detected in gigantic water tanks buried in mines may become the new probes for dark energy.
Dark energy was discovered in the late 1990s by astronomers studying the light from stellar explosions known as type 1a supernovae. Since then telescopes around the world, such as the Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Chile, have been used to study the light from more and more supernovae.
Now Lawrence Hall of the University of California at Berkeley and colleagues think that neutrinos spewed out in another type of stellar explosion, a core-collapse supernova, could be just the tool for studying dark energy.
When the core of a massive star grows too large, it collapses under its own gravity, releasing a flood of neutrinos - a theory confirmed in 1987 when a supernova went off in a nearby dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and a sudden wave of the particles hit neutrino detectors on Earth.
Two of them, Kamiokande-II in Japan and the IMB detector in the US, were underground water tanks. Photomultiplier tubes lining these tanks detected the distinctive and rare blue flashes of light emitted when a neutrino hits an electron.
“Neutrinos might bounce off dark energy so that their spectrum is distorted in a way that tells us something about it”
The millions of core-collapse supernovae that have gone off throughout the history of the universe must have created a background of supernova relic neutrinos. But the diffuse nature of these neutrinos makes them very difficult to detect. However, the next generation of neutrino detectors, such as the planned Underground Nucleon decay and Neutrino Observatory, which will be about 20 times larger than Super-Kamiokande in Japan (see right), will have tanks that can hold a million tonnes of water and so should be up to the job. "If I have to bet on it, the next neutrinos of astrophysical origin we see will be supernova relic neutrinos," says physicist Chang Kee Jung of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who is involved with the UNO proposal.
Hall's team has worked out that the spectrum of these relic neutrinos could hold cosmological treasure. That's because the flux of neutrinos measured today is affected by how the universe expanded in the past. So measuring the flux of supernova relic neutrinos of different energies could reveal how the universe is expanding.
This is similar to the way dark energy was first discovered, when astronomers found that type 1a supernovae were dimmer than expected. The accelerating expansion of space had diluted their light, and this was put down to some kind of invisible repulsive force whose nature is still unknown.
Relic neutrinos might merely confirm the acceleration, leaving the exact nature of dark energy a mystery - or they could reveal new physics. Neutrinos might bounce off dark energy, in which case their spectrum will be distorted in such a way as to tell us something more about this mysterious force.
Or it may be that light from distant supernovae is being distorted in some strange way - perhaps by being gradually converted into particles called axions. Finally, the spectrum of supernova relic neutrinos could reveal whether anything is awry with optical supernova studies.
From issue 2561 of New Scientist magazine, 21 July 2006, page 17
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Enjoyable activities appear to unfold all around you today, but something holds you back from joining in the play. Resentment can get the best of you, so don't bury your emotions because it seems more convenient to do so. If you can get it out into the open, you might just find that you are able to relax enough to partake in the fun.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
U.S. official: Israel needs time to 'defang' Hezbollah
Secretary of State Rice won't travel to Mideast before next week
By Elise LabottCNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not go on a peace mission to the Mideast before next week, giving Israel time to "defang" Hezbollah, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
Rice, who's set to travel to New York to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday, has said the U.S. would support a cease-fire in the seven-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah "when conditions are conducive to do so."
More than 300 Lebanese have been killed and more than 1,000 injured after a week of Israeli airstrikes, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday. Israel's military said 29 Israelis have died in the conflict, including 15 civilians. (Full story)
Senior administration officials said more time is needed to shape the diplomacy and to create conditions on the ground for a permanent change of the situation -- not merely a cease-fire. Israel needs time to "defang Hezbollah," said one of the officials, who asked not to be named in light of the ongoing diplomacy.
Major strikes will end depending, in part, on when Israel believes the job is done, but one senior official said there could be "manageable differences" over determining when enough is enough.
The officials said some Israeli goals may not be achieved overnight or by military action.
A U.N. team under Annan is returning from a trip to assess the crisis, but officials said it was unclear whether the team accomplished much.
Rice will hear from the team during Friday's meeting at the United Nations, the State Department said.
Rice also plans to meet with European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, who also recently returned from the Mideast.
The ultimate goal is to get the Lebanese army to deploy with international support.
Toward that end, senior administration officials said options considered by the United Nations include:
creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel;
expanding the UNIFIL peacekeeping force that was created in 1978;
dispatching an international team to monitor the border;
imposing an international arms embargo for Lebanon, except for the Lebanese army, which is seen as too weak to deploy on its own, and
rallying international support for Lebanon, such as a donors' conference, to rebuild the country.
Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have called for an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon larger and stronger than UNIFIL, a long-established U.N. peacekeeping force already in the country. (Full story)
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton described calls for a cease-fire a "simplistic" solution to the problem.
He said he would clarify the U.S. position on the crisis after the U.N. team presents its findings.
"Among other things, I want somebody to address the problem [of] how you get a cease-fire with a terrorist organization," Bolton said. "I'd like to know when there's been an effective cease-fire between a terrorist organization and a state in the past.
"This is a different kind of situation and I'm not sure that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking works in a case like this."
Iran's state-run news agency reported Wednesday that Lebanese President Emile Lahoud met with Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad-Reza Sheybani and expressed thanks for Iranian support during the week-long Israeli air offensive in Lebanon.
Israel has used mostly warplanes to counter Hezbollah rocket firings in the cross-border hostilities that began after two Israeli soldiers were captured by guerrillas inside Israeli territory on July 12.
Bush blames Hezbollah
President Bush called Hezbollah the root cause of the situation in remarks to reporters Tuesday, and said the militants must be confronted.
"I strongly believe every nation ought to be able to defend itself from terrorist attacks," he said.
But he urged Israel to be mindful not to undermine the Lebanese government, which formed just over a year ago with the first elections held after 20 years of a Syrian military presence.
"It's in our interest for Syria to stay out of Lebanon," Bush said.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made it clear that in addition to a cease-fire, Israel wants its abducted soldiers returned unharmed and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon disarmed. (Full story)
Nouhad Mahmoud, Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations, said a cease-fire would be necessary before the kidnapped Israelis could be returned.
Mahmoud said Lebanese authorities might be able to persuade the Shiite militia, which holds seats in Lebanon's parliament and government, to release the men -- but could not force Hezbollah to free them.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/19/mideast.diplomacy/index.html
Secretary of State Rice won't travel to Mideast before next week
By Elise LabottCNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not go on a peace mission to the Mideast before next week, giving Israel time to "defang" Hezbollah, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
Rice, who's set to travel to New York to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday, has said the U.S. would support a cease-fire in the seven-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah "when conditions are conducive to do so."
More than 300 Lebanese have been killed and more than 1,000 injured after a week of Israeli airstrikes, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Wednesday. Israel's military said 29 Israelis have died in the conflict, including 15 civilians. (Full story)
Senior administration officials said more time is needed to shape the diplomacy and to create conditions on the ground for a permanent change of the situation -- not merely a cease-fire. Israel needs time to "defang Hezbollah," said one of the officials, who asked not to be named in light of the ongoing diplomacy.
Major strikes will end depending, in part, on when Israel believes the job is done, but one senior official said there could be "manageable differences" over determining when enough is enough.
The officials said some Israeli goals may not be achieved overnight or by military action.
A U.N. team under Annan is returning from a trip to assess the crisis, but officials said it was unclear whether the team accomplished much.
Rice will hear from the team during Friday's meeting at the United Nations, the State Department said.
Rice also plans to meet with European Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, who also recently returned from the Mideast.
The ultimate goal is to get the Lebanese army to deploy with international support.
Toward that end, senior administration officials said options considered by the United Nations include:
creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel;
expanding the UNIFIL peacekeeping force that was created in 1978;
dispatching an international team to monitor the border;
imposing an international arms embargo for Lebanon, except for the Lebanese army, which is seen as too weak to deploy on its own, and
rallying international support for Lebanon, such as a donors' conference, to rebuild the country.
Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have called for an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon larger and stronger than UNIFIL, a long-established U.N. peacekeeping force already in the country. (Full story)
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton described calls for a cease-fire a "simplistic" solution to the problem.
He said he would clarify the U.S. position on the crisis after the U.N. team presents its findings.
"Among other things, I want somebody to address the problem [of] how you get a cease-fire with a terrorist organization," Bolton said. "I'd like to know when there's been an effective cease-fire between a terrorist organization and a state in the past.
"This is a different kind of situation and I'm not sure that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking works in a case like this."
Iran's state-run news agency reported Wednesday that Lebanese President Emile Lahoud met with Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad-Reza Sheybani and expressed thanks for Iranian support during the week-long Israeli air offensive in Lebanon.
Israel has used mostly warplanes to counter Hezbollah rocket firings in the cross-border hostilities that began after two Israeli soldiers were captured by guerrillas inside Israeli territory on July 12.
Bush blames Hezbollah
President Bush called Hezbollah the root cause of the situation in remarks to reporters Tuesday, and said the militants must be confronted.
"I strongly believe every nation ought to be able to defend itself from terrorist attacks," he said.
But he urged Israel to be mindful not to undermine the Lebanese government, which formed just over a year ago with the first elections held after 20 years of a Syrian military presence.
"It's in our interest for Syria to stay out of Lebanon," Bush said.
On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made it clear that in addition to a cease-fire, Israel wants its abducted soldiers returned unharmed and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon disarmed. (Full story)
Nouhad Mahmoud, Lebanon's ambassador to the United Nations, said a cease-fire would be necessary before the kidnapped Israelis could be returned.
Mahmoud said Lebanese authorities might be able to persuade the Shiite militia, which holds seats in Lebanon's parliament and government, to release the men -- but could not force Hezbollah to free them.
Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/19/mideast.diplomacy/index.html
BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific Nuclear plant struck by jellyfish
Nuclear plant struck by jellyfish
A mass of jellyfish clogged a pipe in a seawater cooling systemA nuclear power plant in Japan was forced to lower the output of its reactors after jellyfish blocked a filter in a seawater cooling system.
Power from two reactors at Chubu Electric Power Co's plant in Hamaoka had to be reduced after the water intake system shut down automatically.
Workers removed the jellyfish mass and output later returned to normal.
"It's the first time we have had to lower power output because of jellyfish," a company spokesman said.
Output for the two reactors was reduced to between 60 and 70% of capacity for about three hours, the company said.
"We sometimes do the same thing when debris from typhoons sticks to the filter," the spokesman told Reuters news agency.
The Hamaoka plant is in Shizuoka prefecture on Japan's Pacific coast.
Recently, giant jellyfish have been a problem for fishing and coastal communities on Japan's west coast.
The government has been looking at measures to deal with the creatures, worried about their potential impact on local economies.
Nuclear plant struck by jellyfish
A mass of jellyfish clogged a pipe in a seawater cooling systemA nuclear power plant in Japan was forced to lower the output of its reactors after jellyfish blocked a filter in a seawater cooling system.
Power from two reactors at Chubu Electric Power Co's plant in Hamaoka had to be reduced after the water intake system shut down automatically.
Workers removed the jellyfish mass and output later returned to normal.
"It's the first time we have had to lower power output because of jellyfish," a company spokesman said.
Output for the two reactors was reduced to between 60 and 70% of capacity for about three hours, the company said.
"We sometimes do the same thing when debris from typhoons sticks to the filter," the spokesman told Reuters news agency.
The Hamaoka plant is in Shizuoka prefecture on Japan's Pacific coast.
Recently, giant jellyfish have been a problem for fishing and coastal communities on Japan's west coast.
The government has been looking at measures to deal with the creatures, worried about their potential impact on local economies.
Enjoyable activities appear to unfold all around you today, but something holds you back from joining in the play. Resentment can get the best of you, so don't bury your emotions because it seems more convenient to do so. If you can get it out into the open, you might just find that you are able to relax enough to partake in the fun.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
No matter how much you want to hide away today, you must take into consideration that others are counting on you. You aren't interested in letting anyone down now, so you might override your personal desires with social obligations. Remember that you can always find time to be alone later in the day.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Today is a powerful day for you, dear Aquarius. Your emotions may be a bit stubborn, but realize the very thing you are resisting is the thing you need the most. Consider making a major change in your life that will help bring about a more healthy balance between you and the people you associate with. It may be time for a whole new outlook on how you deal with your relationships.
"You might be on edge in your closest relationships as the love planet moves through sensitive Cancer. Normally you like a bit of emotional detachment -- just enough to give you some breathing room. Now, however, the object of your love may be too clingy and this can make you irritable. This phase only lasts for a few weeks, so stretch into it and try not to avoid the intimacy. It could even bring you joy."
Dave Navarro and Carmen Electra arrive to the US Hot Hollywood Awards in Hollywood, Calif., Wednesday, April 26, 2006. Electra and Navarro are "amicably separating," Electra's publicist, Brit Reece, said Monday, July 17, 2006. (AP Photo/Branimir Kvartuc, File)
LOS ANGELES Jul 17, 2006 (AP)� "`Til Death Do Us Part" not quite. Actress Carmen Electra and musician Dave Navarro are "amicably separating," Electra's publicist, Brit Reece, said Monday.
Reece would not elaborate on the reasons behind the split.
Former "Baywatch" star Electra and former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Navarro documented their 2003 wedding on MTV's "`Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave."
The sexy pair met on a blind date, and "it was love at first sight," Electra told The Associated Press during an interview in 2004.
Navarro currently co-hosts the CBS talent competition "Rock Star."
Monday, July 17, 2006
New Scientist Breaking News - Magic mushrooms really cause 'spiritual' experiences
Magic mushrooms really cause 'spiritual' experiences
05:01 11 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
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“Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.
About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.
However, psilocybin use has been associated with side effects such as severe paranoia, nervousness and unwanted flashbacks and so experts warn against experimentation. “Once you’ve started down the path, you might not like where it ends,” comments Herbert Kleber, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, US. “These are powerful agents that are just as likely to do harm as to do good.”
Psilocybin is found in mushrooms such as the liberty cap (Psilocybe semilanceata and about 186 other species. Hippies embraced the compound during the 1960s, after its mind-altering potential was touted by Timothy Leary, then a researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But as its use grew, US lawmakers took action. It is now generally illegal to sell or possess psilocybin drugs in the US.
Demonised compound
But Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, US, and his colleagues believe there is a need to revisit the biological effects of psilocybin, which have been virtually ignored by the scientific community for about 40 years. “It so traumatised our society that we’ve demonised this compound,” he says.
Griffiths's team recruited 36 healthy volunteers who had not experimented with the drug before. They were informed that they would receive a hallucinogen but did not know in which of two or three sessions they would receive it. Each session was separated by two months.
They either received a substantial dose – about 30 milligrams – of psilocybin or a similar dose of an "active" placebo, Ritalin. The latter has a stimulating effect but is not known as a hallucinogen. An inactive placebo would be easy to identify by the volunteers when compared to psilocybin, which could bias the experiences they reported.
The researchers used psychological questionnaires and found that 22 of the 36 volunteers had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin – far more than the four who reported this type of experience after taking Ritalin.
More than one-third of the volunteers said that their encounter with psilocybin was the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes – no person given Ritalin said the same. Experts say the study is the most rigorous study of psilocybin’s potential to elicit spiritual feelings because it is the first to use an active control.
Spiritual shortcut
However, more than 20% of the participants described their psilocybin sessions as dominated by negative feelings such as anxiety. And while psilocybin appears to mimic the brain signalling-chemical serotonin, its precise action on mind function remains elusive.
Griffiths says that in the future psilocybin might have a therapeutic use, perhaps helping people who have just learned they have cancer come to terms with the news. But he is quick to add that “the therapeutic application is very speculative”.
“My guess is that there will be people saying ‘You’re looking for a spiritual shortcut’” says Griffiths. He stresses that the drug is no replacement for the mental health benefits of continuous personal reflection: “There’s all the difference in the world between a spiritual experience and a spiritual life.”
Journal reference: Psychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5)
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Weblinks
Commonly abused drugs, NIDA
http://www.nida.nih.gov/DrugPages/DrugsofAbuse.html
Psilocybin and Psilocyn and other Tryptamines
http://www.dea.gov/concern/psilocybin.html
Roland Griffiths, Johns Hopkins University
http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/RolandGriffiths.php
Psychopharmacology
http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=journal&issn=0033-3158
Magic mushrooms really cause 'spiritual' experiences
05:01 11 July 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi
');
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Mozilla/2.") >= 0 navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE") >= 0) {
document.write('');
}
document.write('');// -->
“Magic” mushrooms really do have a spiritual effect on people, according to the most rigorous look yet at this aspect of the fungus's active ingredient.
About one-third of volunteers in the carefully controlled new study had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin, with half of them describing their encounter as the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes.
However, psilocybin use has been associated with side effects such as severe paranoia, nervousness and unwanted flashbacks and so experts warn against experimentation. “Once you’ve started down the path, you might not like where it ends,” comments Herbert Kleber, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, US. “These are powerful agents that are just as likely to do harm as to do good.”
Psilocybin is found in mushrooms such as the liberty cap (Psilocybe semilanceata and about 186 other species. Hippies embraced the compound during the 1960s, after its mind-altering potential was touted by Timothy Leary, then a researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But as its use grew, US lawmakers took action. It is now generally illegal to sell or possess psilocybin drugs in the US.
Demonised compound
But Roland Griffiths, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, US, and his colleagues believe there is a need to revisit the biological effects of psilocybin, which have been virtually ignored by the scientific community for about 40 years. “It so traumatised our society that we’ve demonised this compound,” he says.
Griffiths's team recruited 36 healthy volunteers who had not experimented with the drug before. They were informed that they would receive a hallucinogen but did not know in which of two or three sessions they would receive it. Each session was separated by two months.
They either received a substantial dose – about 30 milligrams – of psilocybin or a similar dose of an "active" placebo, Ritalin. The latter has a stimulating effect but is not known as a hallucinogen. An inactive placebo would be easy to identify by the volunteers when compared to psilocybin, which could bias the experiences they reported.
The researchers used psychological questionnaires and found that 22 of the 36 volunteers had a “complete” mystical experience after taking psilocybin – far more than the four who reported this type of experience after taking Ritalin.
More than one-third of the volunteers said that their encounter with psilocybin was the single most spiritually significant experience in their lifetimes – no person given Ritalin said the same. Experts say the study is the most rigorous study of psilocybin’s potential to elicit spiritual feelings because it is the first to use an active control.
Spiritual shortcut
However, more than 20% of the participants described their psilocybin sessions as dominated by negative feelings such as anxiety. And while psilocybin appears to mimic the brain signalling-chemical serotonin, its precise action on mind function remains elusive.
Griffiths says that in the future psilocybin might have a therapeutic use, perhaps helping people who have just learned they have cancer come to terms with the news. But he is quick to add that “the therapeutic application is very speculative”.
“My guess is that there will be people saying ‘You’re looking for a spiritual shortcut’” says Griffiths. He stresses that the drug is no replacement for the mental health benefits of continuous personal reflection: “There’s all the difference in the world between a spiritual experience and a spiritual life.”
Journal reference: Psychopharmacology (DOI: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5)
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Weblinks
Commonly abused drugs, NIDA
http://www.nida.nih.gov/DrugPages/DrugsofAbuse.html
Psilocybin and Psilocyn and other Tryptamines
http://www.dea.gov/concern/psilocybin.html
Roland Griffiths, Johns Hopkins University
http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/RolandGriffiths.php
Psychopharmacology
http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=journal&issn=0033-3158
Google: "Today may give you reason for reevaluation, even if you are on the right track. You are looking at your current situation and attaching feelings to it that resonate with your own personal history. Your practice today is to accept the messages coming from your own subconscious mind. Then talk about them, even if the thought of sharing some of these things out loud makes you uncomfortable.
Monday, July 17, 2006"
Monday, July 17, 2006"
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Today's energy remains high all day long. It may even feel like an ecstatic genie is floating around in other dimensions now, just waiting for you to ask for the help that you need. Go ahead and reach out, even if you don't really believe in non-physical beings. It can't hurt. And no one other than you will need to know about your secret ally.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Paul Gauguin. (French, 1848-1903). The Seed of the Areoi. 1892. Oil on burlap, 36 1/4 x 28 3/8" (92.1 x 72.1 cm). The William S. Paley Collection
On view at MoMA
Publication excerpt
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999
The Polynesian goddess sits on a blue-and-white cloth. Gauguin's style fuses various non-European sources: ancient Egyptian (in the hieratic pose), Japanese (in the relative absence of shadow and modeling, and in the areas of flat color), and Javanese (in the position of the arms, influenced by a relief in the temple of Borobudur). But there are also signs of the West, specifically through aspects of the pose derived from a work by the French Symbolist painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. The color, too, is eclectic: although Gauguin claimed to have found his palette in the Tahitian landscape, the exquisite chromatic chords in The Seed of the Areoi owe more to his compositional eye than to the island's visual realities.
In the origin myth of the Areoi, a Polynesian secret society, a male sun god mates with the most beautiful of all women, Va�ra�mati, to found a new race. By painting his Tahitian mistress Tehura as Va�ra�mati, Gauguin implied a continuity between the island's past and its life during his own stay there. In fact, Tahiti had been profoundly altered by colonialism (the Areoi society itself had disappeared), but Gauguin's anachronistic vision of the place gave him an ideal model for his painting. This vision was particularly powerful for him in its contrast with the West, which, he believed, had fallen into "a state of decay."
Vincent van Gogh. (Dutch, 1853-1890). Portrait of Joseph Roulin. Arles, early 1889. Oil on canvas, 25 3/8 x 21 3/4" (64.4 x 55.2 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange)
Vincent van Gogh. (Dutch, 1853-1890). The Starry Night. Saint R�my, June 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
On view at MoMA
Publication excerpt
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999
Van Gogh's night sky is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning. But death was not ominous for van Gogh. "Looking at the stars always makes me dream," he said, "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."
The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: "This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting.
This 1992 image is one in a series of remarkable photos documenting the daily lives of two of Kennedy Space Center's most famous residents: The southern bald eagles that inhabit an enormous nest on the Kennedy Parkway North.
Each fall, the eagles take up winter residence in the nest to breed and raise a new generation. Thanks to a remote-controlled Nikon camera installed yearly in the same pine tree as the nest, the activities of these magnificent birds are recorded on film.
In 1992, a rare and unique event was captured by the camera when a second clutch of eggs was laid, even though a healthy eaglet was born a month earlier. Although it is impossible to determine if it is the same eagles returning each year, the continued tolerance shown by this pair to the human presence seems to indicate that they are the same couple.
According to wildlife experts at the time the photo was taken, eight or nine pairs of bald eagles inhabit nests at the space center. The nest is particularly well-known because of its huge size and close proximity to a busy road.
Image credit: NASA
Your biggest dreams seem quite close today, no matter how unrealistic. You may feel like you can reach out and touch them. Your friends will encourage you now and tell you to go for it. However, all of a sudden, you could snap out of it and fall back to Earth, realizing that your head was in the clouds. You have a choice in front of you: let your idle wanderings remain fantasies or start making them real.
Saturday, July 8, 2006
Saturday, July 8, 2006
Friday, July 07, 2006
Today you are capable of projecting your most eccentric, yet loveable, side as long as you remember that you don't really know everything about everything. Without even trying, you can be endearingly odd while you're being brilliant. Watch out if you are looking to gain power or trying to control a situation; your cleverness can backfire and you'll wish you didn't say anything at all. But if you can just be yourself, you stand to have a day filled with one unique experience after another.
Friday, July 7, 2006
Friday, July 7, 2006
Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason . Portraits . Will Power PBS
learn more at: www.pbs.org/moyers
Will Power is an award-winning actor, rapper, composer, playwright, and educator whose pioneering fusion of traditional drama, African storytelling, and hip-hop sensibilities is helping transform modern theater.
"It's the question of, 'Do we, as individuals; do we, as a community; and do we, as a nation, really and as a world, do we have the power to make changes? Do we have the power to rule our own destiny?'" ---Will PowerWith his critically acclaimed one-man show FLOW and his more recent off-Broadway production, THE SEVEN (an adaption of Aeschylus's SEVEN AGAINST THEBES), Power has forged a new style of theatrical communication - combining original tunes, rhymed language, DJ music, innovative set design, and dynamic choreography - that speaks to the growing influence of hip-hop as an artistic and cultural force.
"Will Power combines the complexity of serious drama with the visual and sonic arsenal of MTV," the New York Times wrote in its review of FLOW. "For me, hip-hop is all about flipping it," Power has said about his use of hip-hop to convey traditional tales to modern audiences. "When I say flipping it, I mean you take something and keep the essence and the quality and the feel of it, but you make it something different.
Power's multiple talents have landed him jobs in a variety of settings. As a vocalist and composer, he has recorded several albums with Cuban piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and has penned tunes featured on UPN's MOESHA and NBC's KINGPIN. In 1998, he landed the lead role in the film DRYLONGSO, which won the 1999 Grand Jury Prize for best feature at New York's Urbanworld Film Festival and premiered on the Sundance Channel.
Among his many honors, Power has received the Theater Communication Group's Peter Zeisler Memorial Award; a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship; the Jury Award for best theater performance at HBO's 2004 US Comedy Arts Festival; and the Trailblazer Award from The National Black Theater Network. In addition to writing and performing, Power lectures on the social roots and spiritual influences of hip-hop theater.
© Public Affairs Television 2006. All Rights Reserved.
close this window
learn more at: www.pbs.org/moyers
Will Power is an award-winning actor, rapper, composer, playwright, and educator whose pioneering fusion of traditional drama, African storytelling, and hip-hop sensibilities is helping transform modern theater.
"It's the question of, 'Do we, as individuals; do we, as a community; and do we, as a nation, really and as a world, do we have the power to make changes? Do we have the power to rule our own destiny?'" ---Will PowerWith his critically acclaimed one-man show FLOW and his more recent off-Broadway production, THE SEVEN (an adaption of Aeschylus's SEVEN AGAINST THEBES), Power has forged a new style of theatrical communication - combining original tunes, rhymed language, DJ music, innovative set design, and dynamic choreography - that speaks to the growing influence of hip-hop as an artistic and cultural force.
"Will Power combines the complexity of serious drama with the visual and sonic arsenal of MTV," the New York Times wrote in its review of FLOW. "For me, hip-hop is all about flipping it," Power has said about his use of hip-hop to convey traditional tales to modern audiences. "When I say flipping it, I mean you take something and keep the essence and the quality and the feel of it, but you make it something different.
Power's multiple talents have landed him jobs in a variety of settings. As a vocalist and composer, he has recorded several albums with Cuban piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and has penned tunes featured on UPN's MOESHA and NBC's KINGPIN. In 1998, he landed the lead role in the film DRYLONGSO, which won the 1999 Grand Jury Prize for best feature at New York's Urbanworld Film Festival and premiered on the Sundance Channel.
Among his many honors, Power has received the Theater Communication Group's Peter Zeisler Memorial Award; a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship; the Jury Award for best theater performance at HBO's 2004 US Comedy Arts Festival; and the Trailblazer Award from The National Black Theater Network. In addition to writing and performing, Power lectures on the social roots and spiritual influences of hip-hop theater.
© Public Affairs Television 2006. All Rights Reserved.
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Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason . Portraits . Jeanette Winterson PBS
learn more at: www.pbs.org/moyers
Born in Manchester, England, in 1959, novelist Jeanette Winterson was adopted as an infant by working-class Pentecostal parents and raised in the small English mill town of Accrington. By the age of 12, she was reciting the Bible by heart and preaching sermons on street corners. By 16, whe was an outcast from the church, having fallen in love with another teenage girl and left home.
"More than sex. More than money. You know, life is not endless is it? Cash, cars, cocaine, and girls. It's more than that. And there is a spiritual dimension to people...we are driven to want something more." -- Jeanette WintersonMuch of the turmoil of Winterson's early life was recounted in her acclaimed first novel, ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT, which made her an sensation in the British literary world and earned her the 1985 Whitbred Prize for best first novel. Since then, she has written nearly a dozen more, including THE PASSION (1987), SEXING THE CHERRY (1989), WRITTEN ON THE BODY (1992), THE POWERBOOK (2000), and LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING (2004), as well as several screenplays, plays, and works of nonfiction.
Always controversial, Winterson's works explore themes of desire, fantasy, sexuality, feminism, gender identification, love, and power in lyrical and imaginative prose, frequently mixing myth and history in settings ranging from 17th-century England to cyberspace.
Of her early experience with fundamental Christianity, Winterson says she no longer subscribes to any organized religion but that the spiritual influence in some way continues to inform her writing.
"I'm not religious, nor would I seek to be," she has said. "But I suppose it's about transcendence. It's because I am convinced of the invisible world beyond the material that I write the way I do."
In addition to her Whitbread Prize, Winterson has been the recipient of the John Lleweliyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Lambda Award for lesbian fiction, among others.
She writes columns for the British newspapers The TIMES OF LONDON and THE GUARDIAN.
© Public Affairs Television 2006. All Rights Reserved.
close this window
learn more at: www.pbs.org/moyers
Born in Manchester, England, in 1959, novelist Jeanette Winterson was adopted as an infant by working-class Pentecostal parents and raised in the small English mill town of Accrington. By the age of 12, she was reciting the Bible by heart and preaching sermons on street corners. By 16, whe was an outcast from the church, having fallen in love with another teenage girl and left home.
"More than sex. More than money. You know, life is not endless is it? Cash, cars, cocaine, and girls. It's more than that. And there is a spiritual dimension to people...we are driven to want something more." -- Jeanette WintersonMuch of the turmoil of Winterson's early life was recounted in her acclaimed first novel, ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT, which made her an sensation in the British literary world and earned her the 1985 Whitbred Prize for best first novel. Since then, she has written nearly a dozen more, including THE PASSION (1987), SEXING THE CHERRY (1989), WRITTEN ON THE BODY (1992), THE POWERBOOK (2000), and LIGHTHOUSEKEEPING (2004), as well as several screenplays, plays, and works of nonfiction.
Always controversial, Winterson's works explore themes of desire, fantasy, sexuality, feminism, gender identification, love, and power in lyrical and imaginative prose, frequently mixing myth and history in settings ranging from 17th-century England to cyberspace.
Of her early experience with fundamental Christianity, Winterson says she no longer subscribes to any organized religion but that the spiritual influence in some way continues to inform her writing.
"I'm not religious, nor would I seek to be," she has said. "But I suppose it's about transcendence. It's because I am convinced of the invisible world beyond the material that I write the way I do."
In addition to her Whitbread Prize, Winterson has been the recipient of the John Lleweliyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Lambda Award for lesbian fiction, among others.
She writes columns for the British newspapers The TIMES OF LONDON and THE GUARDIAN.
© Public Affairs Television 2006. All Rights Reserved.
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NOVA The Elegant Universe PBS
Watch the Program All three hours of The Elegant Universe are available to watch online here. Watch a Preview
Watch the Program All three hours of The Elegant Universe are available to watch online here. Watch a Preview
NOVA The Elegant Universe PBS
Watch the Program All three hours of The Elegant Universe are available to watch online here. Watch a Preview
Watch the Program All three hours of The Elegant Universe are available to watch online here. Watch a Preview
Today you are capable of projecting your most eccentric, yet loveable, side as long as you remember that you don't really know everything about everything. Without even trying, you can be endearingly odd while you're being brilliant. Watch out if you are looking to gain power or trying to control a situation; your cleverness can backfire and you'll wish you didn't say anything at all. But if you can just be yourself, you stand to have a day filled with one unique experience after another.
Friday, July 7, 2006
Friday, July 7, 2006
Hunter in the Sky
Welcome to Hunter in the Sky Inside you will discover Archaeoastronomy: the Science of the New Millennium...And you can find where the nearest star party is being held or when the next meteor shower will take place. You will also learn why myth sits as the foundation of every religion and that Jesus is the center of Christian celestial mythology...You will also begin to recognize why worldwide peace depends on how well humanity rediscovers its celestial beginnings.Have you ever wondered about the true origins of your own culture? Have you ever imagined all nations coexisting as one planetary people? Have you ever wished Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Atheists would seek out channels of communication? This is not an impossible dream. Hunter in the Sky provides the very tool that will enable humanity to recognize that universal harmony.Here, the secret that every culture on our planet looked to the heavens as a wellspring of enlightenment to create a stable existence is revealed. Over time, religious totalitarians and governmental intrusions did their best to eradicate all knowledge of this fact. But it is through the science of Archaeoastronomy, we now know the sacred bond between heaven and earth existed long before the written word and is linked to the development of the greatest religions, societies and civilizations. Yet, most are unaware that those same awe inspiring skies above their heads are being endangered due to unnecessary light pollution.The sacred sky is a planet wide cultural treasure that must be respected, protected and preserved. The science of Archaeoastronomy and the skies have the potential to win the war against religious and racial hatred. And it’s here where you can take the first step towards celestial enlightenment...
Welcome to Hunter in the Sky Inside you will discover Archaeoastronomy: the Science of the New Millennium...And you can find where the nearest star party is being held or when the next meteor shower will take place. You will also learn why myth sits as the foundation of every religion and that Jesus is the center of Christian celestial mythology...You will also begin to recognize why worldwide peace depends on how well humanity rediscovers its celestial beginnings.Have you ever wondered about the true origins of your own culture? Have you ever imagined all nations coexisting as one planetary people? Have you ever wished Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Atheists would seek out channels of communication? This is not an impossible dream. Hunter in the Sky provides the very tool that will enable humanity to recognize that universal harmony.Here, the secret that every culture on our planet looked to the heavens as a wellspring of enlightenment to create a stable existence is revealed. Over time, religious totalitarians and governmental intrusions did their best to eradicate all knowledge of this fact. But it is through the science of Archaeoastronomy, we now know the sacred bond between heaven and earth existed long before the written word and is linked to the development of the greatest religions, societies and civilizations. Yet, most are unaware that those same awe inspiring skies above their heads are being endangered due to unnecessary light pollution.The sacred sky is a planet wide cultural treasure that must be respected, protected and preserved. The science of Archaeoastronomy and the skies have the potential to win the war against religious and racial hatred. And it’s here where you can take the first step towards celestial enlightenment...
Thursday, July 06, 2006
"Uranus, your key planet, is activated today by charming Venus, so lightning can strike suddenly in the arena of love and romance. New attractions can set a whole new set of circumstances into motion. Since Venus is also symbolic of money, financial issues, too, can be activated by this transit. You are advised to keep your wallet in your pocket, unless you've determined in advance what you are willing to spend.
Thursday, July 6, 2006"
Thursday, July 6, 2006"
Shooting like a roman candle into Florida's blue sky from Launch Pad 39B, Space Shuttle Discovery kicked off the Fourth of July fireworks with its own fiery display, reflected as well in the nearby water. History was made with the first ever launch on Independence Day. During the 12-day mission, the STS-121 crew will test new equipment and procedures to improve shuttle safety, as well as deliver supplies and make repairs to the International Space Station.
Image credit: Nikon/Scott Andrews
Uranus, your key planet, is activated today by charming Venus, so lightning can strike suddenly in the arena of love and romance. New attractions can set a whole new set of circumstances into motion. Since Venus is also symbolic of money, financial issues, too, can be activated by this transit. You are advised to keep your wallet in your pocket, unless you've determined in advance what you are willing to spend.
Thursday, July 6, 2006
Thursday, July 6, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
This 24-day retrograde phase aims your attention back to plans that you thought were already completed. The problem is that something was missed and it may require that you rethink the whole thing through one more time in order to make sure that it's all still workable. Don't fret if it feels like a relationship is falling apart. Rather, you are being given an opportunity to clarify your positions before moving forward again.
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Monday, July 03, 2006
this sunday i told james i had a bad feeling about the shuttle, that it should not fly, and now there is a crack in the form, and they still want to launch on tuesday, so i m willing thunderstorms
ive been full of dreams, one of them was about our ufo,
A. it was from our human future, and not aliens, just advanced humans, and in particular, they knew where you and i were, and had reasons
to photograph us and do some kind of 4400 stuff to us, cause i know i changed after the encounter, with advanced intellect in the science and math, and my art work went abstract
or
B. they are indeed aliens, from now or in a time machine, if an advanced alien culture can warp space and time to travel huge distances, using black holes, worm holes, or i think dark energy, they can travel back and forth in time to observe our civilization, i feel moses was in touch with aliens at mt Sinai, and many many time in art work we see crafts painted in the backgrounds, i feel, and would make a bet, that god in the past was aliens cultures attempting to teach human/apes morals, and to prevent wars,
C. on the other hand, in the past, there are aggressive aliens that incite wars, and they might have been the ones behind world religions that cause war, subjugate women, and abduct humans for dna sample
D. my main revelation is the thought that no only can they travel between the stars, but that they have time technology, and if they are human, they could very well be around us, and know us by our histories
\n \nback to A. what was important about david alan hughes , and james johnson, that in the summer of , i think, 1979, they visited us to make us aware of them, for we showed no fear, that we are special, perhaps its our art, perhaps its something much more valuable\n\n \nps. douglas was here last night, for the first time i showed him my art work, i am networking, and he slept with james all night, but during our conversation i had mentioned you from one of my drawings, and he said he had never met you but that in tampa you are very very highly thought of, that a lot of persons really like you, douglas is a hairdresser, he mentioned you had a body to die for, and that you always rode a bike, so\n\ni thought it cool you have this wonderful loving relationship with persons and that they must often speak of you\n \nhave a remarkable 4th of july, james says his mom will be here , i sort of dread that, im never comfortable with her, as im gay, he bought a lot of food , i set up the glass kitchen table last night, that is what douglas saw and how he was able too see my art works that date back to\n\n1986, when i was counseling kids at hurst elementary in daytona and would spend my afternoons drawing at the pool with my sufer body builder body muse who was always there, so i would draw him.....i eventually got to party with him and his girlfriend at the colisium one night in daytona beach, he was very important to me, but i never came on to him, i had told him he was my muse\n\n \nthen i moved to tampa and lost him, he has gotten hurt doing cross riding a bike in the woods, broke both legs, i remember my last day sitting in my second story window just over the pool, looking through a tree at that window and seeing him look up at me from the pool, i was so depressed and did nt walk down to see how he was, i never saw him again.....i had fallen in love with him, his name was corey.\n",1]
);
//-->
back to A. what was important about david alan hughes , and james johnson, that in the summer of , i think, 1979, they visited us to make us aware of them, for we showed no fear, that we are special, perhaps its our art, perhaps its something much more valuable
ps. douglas was here last night, for the first time i showed him my art work, i am networking, and he slept with james all night, but during our conversation i had mentioned you from one of my drawings, and he said he had never met you but that in tampa you are very very highly thought of, that a lot of persons really like you, douglas is a hairdresser, he mentioned you had a body to die for, and that you always rode a bike, so
i thought it cool you have this wonderful loving relationship with persons and that they must often speak of you
have a remarkable 4th of july, james says his mom will be here , i sort of dread that, im never comfortable with her, as im gay, he bought a lot of food , i set up the glass kitchen table last night, that is what douglas saw and how he was able too see my art works that date back to
1986, when i was counseling kids at hurst elementary in daytona and would spend my afternoons drawing at the pool with my sufer body builder body muse who was always there, so i would draw him.....i eventually got to party with him and his girlfriend at the colisium one night in daytona beach, he was very important to me, but i never came on to him, i had told him he was my muse
then i moved to tampa and lost him, he has gotten hurt doing cross riding a bike in the woods, broke both legs, i remember my last day sitting in my second story window just over the pool, looking through a tree at that window and seeing him look up at me from the pool, i was so depressed and did nt walk down to see how he was, i never saw him again.....i had fallen in love with him, his name was corey.
\n \ni had sat down next to him one afternoon while he laid out half naked at the pool and told him i was gay and was using him as a model, he had a positive reaction, perhaps someday i will see him again\n\n \nso if they were humans, and looking just for us that night in deland, then there is a major reason for them to have traveled back in time to see us, perhaps you and are are now in the future Smithsonian institution as two gay men that changed the world via their art, its at least fun to wonder about why that light was on us for so long\n\n \nand its fun to wonder what they "did" to us, for i feel, i know, that they did something to us, enhanced our gifts, for some reason we have yet to discover, and u know james, i think we still look pretty dammed Young for our age!!\n\n \n \nlove u so much, and money and pot, and other marvels are on your way, if you run across some pot, save me just a little, i want to eat the rest of my mushrooms with some potl\n \n"" I SEE TWO STATUES OF TWO MEN, LIKE THE GUY WHO CREATED WARM DRIVE IN STAR TREK, WITH HIS STATUE IN WYOMING FOR FIRST CONTACT, I SEE YOU AND I AS STATUES, TAKING FROM THOSE PICS THEY TOOK OF US THAT NIGHT, TO HONOR US\n\nFOR OUR ARTISTIC CREATIONS, AND THE YET UNKNOWN MAJIC THESE TWO WITCHES WILL PERFORM IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS""\n \n......it could happen\n\n",0]
);
//-->
i had sat down next to him one afternoon while he laid out half naked at the pool and told him i was gay and was using him as a model, he had a positive reaction, perhaps someday i will see him again
so if they were humans, and looking just for us that night in deland, then there is a major reason for them to have traveled back in time to see us, perhaps you and are are now in the future Smithsonian institution as two gay men that changed the world via their art, its at least fun to wonder about why that light was on us for so long
and its fun to wonder what they "did" to us, for i feel, i know, that they did something to us, enhanced our gifts, for some reason we have yet to discover, and u know james, i think we still look pretty dammed Young for our age!!
love u so much, and money and pot, and other marvels are on your way, if you run across some pot, save me just a little, i want to eat the rest of my mushrooms with some potl
"" I SEE TWO STATUES OF TWO MEN, LIKE THE GUY WHO CREATED WARM DRIVE IN STAR TREK, WITH HIS STATUE IN WYOMING FOR FIRST CONTACT, I SEE YOU AND I AS STATUES, TAKING FROM THOSE PICS THEY TOOK OF US THAT NIGHT, TO HONOR US
FOR OUR ARTISTIC CREATIONS, AND THE YET UNKNOWN MAJIC THESE TWO WITCHES WILL PERFORM IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS""
......it could happen
Sunday, July 02, 2006
You may have wonderfully weird and eclectic views of humanity. You are less than likely to follow the pack when it comes to solving global and community problems. Your beliefs are changing and now you might believe it's time to apply what you've learned to your world. Even though these are challenging times, your optimism is a significant key. Lead the way and others will follow.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Others may expect so much from you now that you feel you won't be able to deliver the goods. The truth is, however, that you really don't need to do quite as much as you think in order to be appreciated. Be conscientious, for you still must cover the basics. Reevaluate what you are doing throughout the day, and if necessary, make adjustments so you don't let others down.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
Saturday, July 1, 2006