Sunday, April 29, 2007
zeus hale
Gay Riders Arrested At Focus On The Family HQ
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: April 29, 2007 - 12:00 pm ET
(Colorado Springs, Colorado) Two members of the Equality Ride were arrested Saturday at the headquarters of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs.
Two busloads of Equality Riders have been crisscrossing the country trying to engage students at the mostly conservative Christian colleges that bar gay and lesbian students.
This is the second year of the ride, organized by the nondenominational Soulforce.
At FOF headquarters the group said it wanted to confront what it called numerous "inflammatory and dehumanizing statements" that Focus founder James Dr. Dobson and his associates have published over the years regarding LGBT people.
About 20 riders held a vigil outside the headquarters, quoting from some of the FOF statements that homosexuality is "choice" and can be "cured", that homosexuality is harmful, that gays live shorter lives, and that same-sex relationships threaten opposite-sex marriage.
Focus on the Family is one of the most vocal anti-gay organizations in the country and a leading advocate of the so-called ex-gay movement.
In a recent interview with Reuters Dobson claimed that he has never made a hateful statement about lesbians and gays.
Following the vigil two riders entered the headquarters building. Chris Hubble and Leigh Lyon, armed with two dozen yellow roses for Dobson and copies of the Soulforce booklet "A False Focus on My Family" and a DVD letter titled "Dear Dr. Dobson", asked to see the conservative Christian leader.
"The goal of this direct action campaign of civil disobedience is not to embarrass or shame Dr. Dobson--but to open his heart," said Hubble.
"I sincerely hope that this 'nonviolent conversation' will persuade him and his associates to finally end their partisan campaign of untruthful rhetoric which causes so much suffering for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people," Hubble said.
"As a mother, I am here to stand against the condemnation that Dr. Dobson and his colleagues heap on gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people and the parents that raise them--because it results in suicides and alienation from God. I want to see this end and I am here to say NO MORE! God loves us all," said Lyon.
When they refused to leave after being told Dobson was not available, the two were arrested and charged with trespassing. They were later released.
FOF spokesperson Gary Schneeberger Dobson was not in the building.
Last year openly gay actor Chad Allen and Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard who was murdered because he was gay, led a Soulforce organized march to the FOF headquarters.
On Friday 10 Equality riders were arrested when they entered the Bethany Lutheran College campus in Mankato, Minnesota. There have arrests at almost all of the campuses the group has visited.
Brendan Smialowski for the New York Times
Trashballs are transparent one-inch plastic orbs that contain objects including found snapshots and poems, business cards, and transit tickets.
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Christopher Goodwin, an art school dropout, finds ephemera in Washington, D.C., and sells it for a quarter.
  |
One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Two-Bit ‘Trashball’
WASHINGTON, April 28 — Christopher Goodwin doesn’t collect trash. He curates it.
Many afternoons find Mr. Goodwin kneeling on some gritty sidewalk here, appraising a faded A.T.M. receipt, a tuft of dryer lint, the scraps of a torn-up letter. Neat streets he doesn’t mess with. His own neighborhood is a bore. “It’s obscenely clean,” he says dismissively.
Litter speaks to Mr. Goodwin, 37, a studiously disheveled art school dropout, and, to his patrons, apparently, who drop their quarters into a couple of gumball machines around town that dispense plastic capsules containing pieces of trash personally selected by the artist.
Tom Jennings — who as a child bought miniature football helmets from similar machines — estimated that in the last year he bought 50 of Mr. Goodwin’s capsules, called Trashballs.
“There’s an element of gambling to it,” said Mr. Jennings, 42, a data technician. He has cracked open the orbs to find ephemera as varied as a crumpled-up Polaroid snapshot from the 1970s, a Danish coin and a canceled 1981 stamp from the African nation of Djibouti.
Trashball started as a quirky art installation at a bar here in late 2005, and has since inspired a surprising number of devotees. More than 3,000 Trashballs have been bought.
Success has not changed Mr. Goodwin. Though he has recently announced on his blog that he will ship internationally, he is not raising his price of 25 cents a Trashball. (He pays about 4 cents each for the capsules.) Nor does he plan to quit his day job as a truck driver for a junk hauler.
His boss, Frank Coyne, admires Mr. Goodwin’s commitment to recycling. But the volume of trash transferred from the company truck to Mr. Goodwin’s car sometimes makes Mr. Coyne scratch his head.
“It sort of hit home why he took a job like this,” Mr. Coyne, the owner of Junk in the Trunk, in Chevy Chase, Md., said of Mr. Goodwin, who previously worked as a contract-proposal editor for a military contractor. “He’s not your usual trash hauler.”
Though some admirers see Trashball as a critique of America’s wasteful ways, Mr. Goodwin views it as archeology, a divination of who people are from what they leave behind, even if it is just because they are too lazy to toss it in a wastebasket.
High-intrigue junk — like the yellowed pair of wisdom teeth he recovered in Maryland — or items too big for a Trashball capsule are posted on his blog, guyclinch.blogspot.com.
“I’m interested in being able to construct a story around someone’s life based on their refuse,” he said on a recent afternoon at Busboys and Poets, a cafe and bookstore with a Trashball machine wedged between the men’s and women’s restrooms. “The most important thing for me is the secret history of objects.”
Like the love poem scrawled on the back of a phone-message slip. The Western Union telegram dryly announcing the birth of a baby boy, 9 pounds, 7 ounces. The page from a girl’s diary that abruptly segues from softball games and Easter gifts to a series of stark phrases: “Today mom was mean. I am sad mom hit me a lot. I am sore all over Dad is in California.” Though some Trashballs are commentary and others a snapshot of some stranger’s life, many hold just trash: candy wrappers, ketchup packets, cigarette butts.
“One man’s trash is another man’s trash,” Mr. Goodwin warns on signs atop the Trashball machines. “Still ... you might get something good.”
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tenet Says 'Slam Dunk' Misused | TIME
Thursday, Apr. 26, 2007
Tenet Says 'Slam Dunk' Misused
(WASHINGTON) — When CIA Director George Tenet uttered the now-infamous phrase "slam dunk" at a 2002 White House meeting, he says he was referring broadly to the case that could be made against Saddam Hussein — not his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"We can put a better case together for a public case. That's what I meant," Tenet said, explaining his remark for the first time in an interview to air Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." Short excerpts were released Thursday.
The phrase "slam dunk" was associated with Tenet after it was leaked by a senior administration official to author and journalist Bob Woodward. According to Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," Bush turned to Tenet during the meeting and asked if the information he had just presented on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was the best Tenet had.
"It's a slam dunk case," Tenet replied, according to Woodward.
Bush administration officials repeatedly used Tenet's "slam dunk" line to show that U.S. spy agencies had intelligence to support the main facet of the administration's argument for invading — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
In the "60 Minutes" interview, Tenet said the administration misrepresented his comment and used it to shift blame as the debate heated up about the legitimacy of the Iraq invasion. Tenet, who served as CIA chief from 1997 to 2004, called the leak to Woodward "the most despicable thing that ever happened" to him.
A former intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the release of Tenet's memoir next week, said everyone at the White House meeting — and many allies around the world — already believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The meeting was about what intelligence could be used publicly — an early effort to prepare the material that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell would present to the United Nations.
Breaking almost three years of silence, Tenet said it's unbelievable that the president would base his decision to go to war on his one remark.
"So a whole decision to go to war, when all of these other things have happened in the run-up to war? You make mobilization decisions, you've looked at war plans," Tenet said. "I'll never believe that what happened that day informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never!"
Tenet is expected to elaborate on the slam-dunk meeting, prewar Iraq intelligence, postwar planning, events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001, and other issues in his book, "At the Center of the Storm."
Tenet said the hardest part has been listening to officials including Vice President Dick Cheney repeat the phrase. "I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. 'Look at the idiot (who) told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous," he said.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Gliese 581 is much cooler and dimmer than our own Sun
Artist's impression: Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and possibly having liquid water on its surface.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | New 'super-Earth' found in space
New 'super-Earth' found in space
Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface. The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.
Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.
They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.
"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result.
| | 'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask Alison Boyle London Science Museum |
"Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans."
Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, added: "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it."
He believes the planet may now become a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life.
These missions will put telescopes in space that can discern the tell-tale light "signatures" that might be associated with biological processes.
The observatories would seek to identify trace atmospheric gases such as methane, and even markers for chlorophyll, the pigment in Earth plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.
'Indirect' detection
The exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest yet found, and completes a full orbit of its parent star in just 13 days.
Indeed, it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to our Sun.
However, given that the host star is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the "habitable zone", the region around a star where water could be liquid.
Gliese 581 was identified at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) facility at La Silla in the Atacama Desert.
To make their discovery, researchers used a very sensitive instrument that can measure tiny changes in the velocity of a star as it experiences the gravitational tug of a nearby planet.
Astronomers are stuck with such indirect methods of detection because current telescope technology struggles to image very distant and faint objects - especially when they orbit close to the glare of a star.
The Gliese 581 system has now yielded three planets: the new super-Earth, a 15 Earth-mass planet orbiting even closer to the parent star, and an eight Earth-mass planet that lies further out.
The latest discovery has created tremendous excitement among scientists.
Of the more than 200 exoplanets so far discovered, a great many are Jupiter-like gas giants that experience blazing temperatures because they orbit close to hot stars.
The Gliese 581 super-Earth is in what scientists call the "Goldilocks Zone" where temperatures "are just right" for life to have a chance to exist.
Commenting on the discovery, Alison Boyle, the curator of astronomy at London's Science Museum, said: "Of all the planets we've found around other stars, this is the one that looks as though it might have the right ingredients for life.
"It's 20 light-years away and so we won't be going there anytime soon, but with new kinds of propulsion technology that could change in the future. And obviously we'll be training some powerful telescopes on it to see what we can see," she told BBC News.
"'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask."
This artist's illustration shows a newly discovered planet otuside our solar system that's so similar to Earth it might sustain life, astronomers say. The planet's temperature is between 32 and 104 degrees fahrenheit. While it is 14 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, the star, Gliese 581, is smaller and dimmer.
New Earth-like Planet 'Habitable'
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
April 24, 2007 — Astronomers have found the first Earth-sized world circling its mother star at a distance suitable for life. It also has good prospects for liquid surface water — believed to be a key ingredient for life.
"This planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life," said Xavier Delfosse, with Grenoble University in France.
It will be years before more sensitive instruments are developed to glean additional clues about whether life exists on the planet.
"It is not possible with current telescopes and instruments yet," Xavier Bonfils, an astronomer with the Lisbonne Observatory in Portugal, wrote in an e-mail to Discovery News. "But in the next decade, we may have the tools to answer this question."
The planet, which is about 50 percent larger than Earth, circles a star in the constellation Libra known as Gliese 581, about 20.5 light-years away. Light travels in a vacuum at about 187,000 miles per second.
Astronomers previously have found a Neptune-sized world circling Gliese 581, as well as strong evidence for a third planet about eight times the mass of Earth.
The new planet, which is the smallest planet beyond our solar system found to date, circles its star 14 times closer than Earth orbits the sun. But because Gliese 581 is smaller and colder than our sun, the system's so-called habitability zone, where liquid water and thus life is possible, is closer to the mother star than in our solar system.
Astronomers estimate the mean temperature of the newly discovered planet to be between 0 degrees and 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Water would be liquid," notes lead researcher Stephane Udry with Switzerland's Geneva Observatory. "Models predict that the planet should be either rocky — like our Earth — or covered with oceans."
The discovery likely will bolster efforts to find other Earth-like planets circling so-called red dwarf stars, which are the most common type of stars in our galaxy. Of the 100 closest stars to the sun, 80 are red dwarfs.
"Red dwarfs are ideal targets for the search for such planets because they emit less light, and the habitable zone is thus much closer to them than it is around the sun," Bonfils said.
Planets closer to their mother stars are typically easier to find than those farther away. The scientists, part of an international team from Switzerland, France and Portugal, submitted their findings for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The discovery was made using with the Chile-based European Southern Observatory High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher instrument.
Picture: DCI |
Source: Discovery News
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Source: Discovery News
By visiting this site, you agree to the terms and conditions
of our Visitor Agreement. Please read. Privacy Policy.
Copyright © 2007 Discovery Communications Inc.
The leading global real-world media and entertainment company.
Google: "Something feels very new, making you so excited that it's difficult to contain yourself. On the other hand, you may think that someone is asking you to move too quickly. You don't necessarily need time to decide what you want to do. You know exactly what you want. You just don't like it when you feel pressure from others -- even if they have your best interests at heart.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007"
Wednesday, April 25, 2007"
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Artist's impression of the planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581. Using the instrument HARPS on the ESO 3.6-m telescope, astronomers have uncovered 3 planets, all of relative low-mass: 5, 8 and 15 Earth masses.
 MSNBC.com |
Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet
Models predict planet should be either rocky or covered with oceans
By Ker Than
Staff Writer
Space.com
Updated: 6:28 p.m. ET April 24, 2007
An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today.
Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the "Goldilocks" distance — not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.
And while astronomers are not yet able to look for signs of biology on the planet, the discovery is a milestone in planet detection and the search for extraterrestrial life, one with the potential to profoundly change our outlook on the universe.
”The goal is to find life on a planet like the Earth around a star like the sun. This is a step in that direction,” said study leader Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. “Each time you go one step forward you are very happy.”
The new planet is about 50 percent bigger than Earth and about five times more massive. The new “super-Earth” is called Gliese 581 C, after its star, Gliese 581, a diminutive red dwarf star located 20.5 light-years away that is about one-third as massive as the Sun.
Smallest to date
Gliese 581 C is the smallest extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” discovered to date. It is located about 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun; one year on the planet is equal to 13 Earth days. Because red dwarfs, also known as M dwarfs, are about 50 times dimmer than the Sun and much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them while still remaining within their habitable zones, the spherical region around a star within which a planet’s temperature can sustain liquid water on its surface.
Because it lies within its star’s habitable zone and is relatively close to Earth, Gliese 581 C could be a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life, said study team member Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France.
“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” Delfosse said.
Two other planets are known to inhabit the red dwarf system. One is a 15 Earth-mass “hot-Jupiter” gas planet discovered by the same team two years ago, which orbits even closer to its star than does Gliese 581 C. Another is an 8 Earth-mass planet discovered at the same time as Gliese 581 C, but which lies outside its star’s habitable zone.
Possible waterworld
Computer models predict Gliese 581 C is either a rocky planet like Earth or a waterworld covered entirely by oceans.
“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius [32 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit], and water would thus be liquid,” Udry said.
The scientists discovered the new world using the HARP instrument on the European Southern Observatory 3.6 meter telescope in La Sille, Chile. They employed the so-called radial velocity, or “wobble,” technique, in which the size and mass of a planet are determined based on small perturbations it induces in its parent star’s orbit via gravity.
Udry said there was a fair amount of time between the calculation of Gliese 581 C’s size and the realization it was within its star’s habitable zone. “That came at the end,” Udry said.
When it did hit him, Udry knew he would be spending time fielding phone calls from the media. “You right away think about the journalists who will like it very much,” he told SPACE.com.
More to come
David Charbonneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who was not involved in the study, said the new finding is an “absolutely fantastic discovery.”
“It means there probably are many more such planets out there,” Charbonneau said in a telephone interview. Whether Gliese 581 C harbors life is still unknown, but “it satisfies for the first time a key requirement.”
Charbonneau also praised the team’s technical skills. “The wobble induced on the star by each of these planets is really tiny — it’s just a few meters a second. That means their measurement precision is exquisite,” he said.
David Latham, another astronomer at Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, echoed other scientists’ praise of the discovery but said the next step is to find a similar world where the orbit of the habitable planet carries it between Earth and its parent star. This will allow scientists to observe it using the transit technique, whereby the small dimming starlight caused by the planet’s passage across the face of its sun can be used to calculate its size.
Only then can scientists determine for certain whether the world is rocky or covered by water, Latham said.
Alan Boss, a planetary theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington D.C., said the new planet’s potential for liquid water made it “fascinating." Gliese 581 C “is the closest planet to another Earth that has been found to date. I hope the SETI folks are listening,” Boss said.
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI institute, said the Gliese 581 system has in fact been looked at twice before for signs of intelligent life. The first time was in 1995 using the Parks Radio Telescope in Australia; the second time was using the Greenbank Radio Telescope in West Virgina. Both times revealed nothing.
“It has been looked at twice, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at it again,” Shostak said. “And indeed we should because this is the best candidate the solar planet guys have come up with yet.”
Shostak said he was “jazzed” by the discovery. “This is pointing to something that in the past has only been an assumption, namely that Earth-sized worlds are not rare,” he said. “We know of only two [planets in the habitable zone]. We know this one and we know our own. But two is better than one.”
Shostak said the Gliese 581 system might be looked at again when the new Allen Telescope Array begins operations this summer.
“You could say it’s going to the head of the class,” he said.
© 2007 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18293978/
© 2007 MSNBC.com
Monday, April 23, 2007
NASA releases 3D images of sun - Yahoo! News
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By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer 46 minutes ago
NASA released the first three-dimensional images of the sun Monday, saying the photos taken from twin spacecraft may lead to better predictions of solar eruptions that can affect communications and power lines on Earth.
"The first reaction was 'Great, the instruments work,' but beyond that the first reaction was 'Wow!'" scientist Simon Plunkett said as he explained the images to a room full of journalists and scientists wearing 3D glasses.
The images from the STEREO spacecraft (for Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) are available on the Internet and at museums and science centers nationwide.
The twin spacecraft, launched in October, are orbiting the Sun, one slightly ahead of the Earth and one behind. The separation, just like the distance between our two eyes, provides the depth perception that allows the 3D images to be obtained.
That depth perception is also particularly helpful for studying a type of solar eruption called a coronal mass ejection. Along with overloading power lines and disrupting satellite communications, the eruptions can endanger astronauts on spacewalks. Scientists would like to improve predictions of the arrival time from the current day or so to a few hours, said Russell Howard, principal investigator for the Naval Research Laboratory project.
STEREO program scientist Madhulika Guhathakurta said scientists have until now been "modeling in the dark" when it came to predicting solar storms. The twin spacecraft give researchers the vantage point to "provide the observations needed to validate the models."
The sun has been relatively quiet since the launch, so STEREO scientists have not predicted the arrival of any storms yet, Plunkett said.
The eruptions — also called solar flares — typically blow a billion tons of the sun's atmosphere into space at a speed of 1 million mph. Besides power and communications problems, the phenomenon is responsible for the northern lights, or aurora borealis, the luminous display of lights seen in the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
STEREO scientist Michael Kaiser said scientists would like to be able to predict solar disturbances, just as meteorologists are able to predict hurricane formation.
"We'd like to do the same thing with solar storms," Kaiser said. "We aren't quite there yet."
___
On the Net:
http://www.nasa.gov/stereo
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com: "Aquarius
The atmosphere around you may seem somewhat unreal today. If you get a weird vibe from someone, dear Aquarius, take everything this person says with a grain of salt. They have an agenda of their own, and aren't above distorting the truth to achieve it. If what they say doesn't affect you, don't worry about it. If it does, take pains to learn the facts before acting on it. One way or another, you'll be glad you did."
The atmosphere around you may seem somewhat unreal today. If you get a weird vibe from someone, dear Aquarius, take everything this person says with a grain of salt. They have an agenda of their own, and aren't above distorting the truth to achieve it. If what they say doesn't affect you, don't worry about it. If it does, take pains to learn the facts before acting on it. One way or another, you'll be glad you did."
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com: "This is one of those days, dear Aquarius, when you get annoyed if someone who is tagging along with you takes a long time to make up their mind about something. You are not going to have the patience for anyone who continues to go over every single detail of the issue. You are more likely to want to simply make a decision, for better or for worse."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Chocolate: Good, And Good For You, Researchers Keep Finding Evidence That A Little Chocolate Every Day Can Provide Big Health Benefits - CBS News
Chocolate: Good, And Good For You
Chocolate: Good, And Good For You
NEW YORK, April 21, 2007
(CBS) Who hasn't been heartened — literally — with the news from scientists that chocolate is more than just a treat?
New studies show that chocolate and its key ingredient, cocoa, have some major health benefits. In its purest form, chocolate can lower blood pressure, help muscles recover from exercise, improve skin, provide antioxidants and even give us a thrill that rivals a passionate kiss.
However, Health magazine senior food and nutrition editor Frances Largeman-Roth warns that this isn't license to binge.
On "The Saturday Early Show," Largeman-Roth points out that the average bar of dark chocolate — the kind that has the most health benefits — has around 400 calories … "and if the bar has any nuts or caramel in it, it'll cost you more" calorie-wise, she adds.
Her advice: "The best thing to do is savor a small piece of really good chocolate."
If you're able to restrict yourself to a small daily dose, you'll experience some heart-healthy benefits.
"Cocoa improves blood flow, makes blood platelets less sticky — which helps prevent clotting — and also has a positive effect on bad cholesterol. This is due to the antioxidant effect of cocoa, which helps reduce inflammation, which we now understand to be the root of many diseases," she tells CBS News.
Another recent eye-opening study, this one by German researchers, showed that women who drank a half-cup of enriched cocoa every day for three months developed skin that was smoother and had more moisture. Furthermore, the women's skin was less scaly and red after it was exposed to ultraviolet light.
"It is surprising, especially after all those stories about chocolate making you break out," says Largeman-Roth. "It turns out that the flavonoids in chocolate help protect the skin and increase blood flow, which makes it look more refreshed and smooth."
Most recently, British researchers reporting finding that people get more of a buzz from eating chocolate than from a passionate kiss.
"The researchers put electrodes on young couples in their 20s and tested their heart rate and brain activity while eating dark chocolate and then while kissing their sweeties," says Largeman-Roth.
"Surprisingly, heart rate and brain activity both increased far more with the chocolate than with the kissing. And actually, all areas of the brain were stimulated when the chocolate melted on their tongues. Kissing did increase the heart rate, but not for as long."
One word of caution: white chocolate, though delicious, doesn't pack any kind of healthy punch because it doesn't have any cocoa solids, the ingredient that makes dark chocolate so magical.
And some studies were based on having participants eating three or more ounces a day, a heavy caloric load. "But the good news," says Largeman-Roth, "is that researchers say you don't need to eat that much to have an effect — even a bit of chocolate a day can do s
(CBS) Who hasn't been heartened — literally — with the news from scientists that chocolate is more than just a treat?
New studies show that chocolate and its key ingredient, cocoa, have some major health benefits. In its purest form, chocolate can lower blood pressure, help muscles recover from exercise, improve skin, provide antioxidants and even give us a thrill that rivals a passionate kiss.
However, Health magazine senior food and nutrition editor Frances Largeman-Roth warns that this isn't license to binge.
On "The Saturday Early Show," Largeman-Roth points out that the average bar of dark chocolate — the kind that has the most health benefits — has around 400 calories … "and if the bar has any nuts or caramel in it, it'll cost you more" calorie-wise, she adds.
Her advice: "The best thing to do is savor a small piece of really good chocolate."
If you're able to restrict yourself to a small daily dose, you'll experience some heart-healthy benefits.
"Cocoa improves blood flow, makes blood platelets less sticky — which helps prevent clotting — and also has a positive effect on bad cholesterol. This is due to the antioxidant effect of cocoa, which helps reduce inflammation, which we now understand to be the root of many diseases," she tells CBS News.
Another recent eye-opening study, this one by German researchers, showed that women who drank a half-cup of enriched cocoa every day for three months developed skin that was smoother and had more moisture. Furthermore, the women's skin was less scaly and red after it was exposed to ultraviolet light.
"It is surprising, especially after all those stories about chocolate making you break out," says Largeman-Roth. "It turns out that the flavonoids in chocolate help protect the skin and increase blood flow, which makes it look more refreshed and smooth."
Most recently, British researchers reporting finding that people get more of a buzz from eating chocolate than from a passionate kiss.
"The researchers put electrodes on young couples in their 20s and tested their heart rate and brain activity while eating dark chocolate and then while kissing their sweeties," says Largeman-Roth.
"Surprisingly, heart rate and brain activity both increased far more with the chocolate than with the kissing. And actually, all areas of the brain were stimulated when the chocolate melted on their tongues. Kissing did increase the heart rate, but not for as long."
One word of caution: white chocolate, though delicious, doesn't pack any kind of healthy punch because it doesn't have any cocoa solids, the ingredient that makes dark chocolate so magical.
And some studies were based on having participants eating three or more ounces a day, a heavy caloric load. "But the good news," says Largeman-Roth, "is that researchers say you don't need to eat that much to have an effect — even a bit of chocolate a day can do s
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com
Aquarius: Jan. 20 - Feb. 18 - Horoscope - MSNBC.com: "You are going to be busy today, dear Aquarius, but happy. It is likely that a project you have been working on for a long time now suddenly yields some positive results. You can't help but be delighted, as this achievement comes at a time when you have been beginning to question your abilities. Well, question no more. It is clear that you are the one for this particular job. Since social activities are also highlighted, why not round up your team members and treat them all to lunch, to celebrate"
Monday, April 16, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Friday, April 06, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Beaming Up 3-D Objects on a Budget - New York Times
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Beaming Up 3-D Objects on a Budget
OVER the last few decades, the electronics industry has worked magic with documents by building gadgets that copy, e-mail, print or fax flat images. Now it is building boxes that do something similar with three-dimensional objects.
These tools are not news to the industrial designers of the world, who have been able to buy 3-D printers and scanners with prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. But now hobbyists and small businesses are starting to benefit from low-cost versions of the tools.
Laser scanners with arrays of cameras can create digital models of objects that encode all the significant bumps, cracks, corners and facets of real things. Computers can enhance, morph or tweak the models before shipping them to 3-D “printers” that may be halfway around the world. The result is a new version of the thing itself, but built from some resin or starch.
For instance, $2,495 could buy a desktop laser scanner from NextEngine (www.nextengine.com) of Santa Monica, Calif., that can digitize small objects that fit on its 6-inch-wide turntable. Older scanners that are also more capable and up to the task of scanning something like a car cost much more. The Z Corporation (www.zcorp.com) sells a hand-held scanner that works much like a big camera for $39,900.
But scanning is only half the task. A three-dimensional version of the local copy shop is appearing as those scans are uploaded to companies that offer printing priced by the job. It is an attractive option, since the commercial machines that do the printing can be the size of small refrigerators and cost $40,000 or more.
Great Eastern Technology (www.get.com), for instance, will make small multicolored copies from a starch-based powder for about $70 using a printer from the Z Corporation. Larger objects that could fill up the printing bed, which measures 10 inches by 10 inches by 8 inches, might cost about $700. Minico Industries (www.minicoindustries.com) uses printers from a company called Dimension that use a different process to build things out of pure monochrome ABS plastic. It charges about $50 a cubic inch.
The Dimension printers are usually chosen by people who need stronger and more durable models created with a bit more precision, while the Z Corporation printers are often favored by those who need multiple colors. The prices are estimates, and most shops will compute a full price from the digital model after measuring the exact amount of raw material needed. The digital models can be enlarged or recolored before printing.
The world is just beginning to grapple with the implications of this relatively low-cost duplicating method, often called rapid prototyping. Hearing aid companies, for instance, are producing some custom-fitted ear pieces from scanned molds of patients. Custom car companies produce new parts for classic cars or modified parts for hot rods. Consumer product makers create fully functional designs before committing themselves to big production runs.
Tom Clay, chief executive of the Z Corporation, says he is constantly amazed by the uses people find for his products. Doctors use them to build practice models, and museums build replicas so people can feel the object without damaging the real artifact. He thinks one big potential market will be three-dimensional portraiture, so people can create busts for immortality.
The legal landscape, though, may not be ready for the Napsterization of three-dimensional things. Most of the cute, small tchotchkes in my house that fit on the turntable of the NextEngine scanner I tested are copyrighted. Zapping up a new version might run afoul of the same laws being used to fight the piracy of songs.
Jessica Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and the author of the book “Digital Copyright,” said, “The rules for running it through your 3-D scanner are pretty much the same as running it through your photocopier.”
I tried to avoid that issue by creating my own objects from a set of Legos. With the scanner connected to my PC, software went to work to construct a three-dimensional model.
The demands taxed my one-year-old system. NextEngine recommends using a PC with plenty of disk space, at least two gigabytes of memory and a high-end video card, although I was able to limp along with only 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. Each model I produced chewed up 50 to 100 megabytes of the disk, something that can be reduced by scanning with less precision.
The process is surprisingly simple and yet fraught with glitches. I pushed one button and the NextEngine scanner took a complete set of pictures from various angles. Every two minutes it completed a scan, rotated the object on its turntable a few degrees, and began again. After I aligned the different scans by identifying the same point in different images, it turned the pictures into a 3-D model ready for printing. Adopters must be ready to develop the same skill as the early photographers who juggled glass plates and egg white emulsions in total darkness. I spent several hours on the phone with a customer-support technician from NextEngine who offered some tips.
When I first put the objects on the turntable and just pressed the button, the results were covered with holes where the scanner could not get a reasonable image. Light-colored matte surfaces are easier for the laser range-finder to measure, and one trick for making models of dark shiny objects is to coat them with a cloud of white powder. Some even paint the object.
NextEngine is working hard to help people over this hurdle. Customer-support connections are built directly into the software so you can easily ask for help. The company is also building another generation of its tools to eliminate some common errors, like segments that escaped the view of the scanner. They touched up my models with this software to make sure there were no gaps that might confound the printer.
I shipped a file (about 45 megabytes) to the two printer manufacturers, the Z Corporation and Minico, to print sample facsimiles. The results were good, although both companies pointed out that they could do a better job with a cleaner scan produced with better resolution — something requiring more care, better lighting and more powder.
I tried scanning my face in a NextEngine scanner, and it wasn’t as easy as scanning a Lego device. It was hard to hold still for several minutes, and it was not simple to align multiple shots. Mr. Clay says that it is vastly simpler to produce what he calls a Mount Rushmore bust from only one angle.
Brad Porter, the president of Great Eastern Technologies, says he has printed a number of busts. “The biggest issue is hair,” he warned. “Hair doesn’t scan well.” Many people will start with direct scans of the faces, he says, but use 3-D modeling software to reconstruct the hair. That is a big advantage for those with cowlicks.
The ability to retouch or modify the scanned objects is surprisingly useful. The printed versions of the Lego spaceship I scanned were enlargements, and retouched before printing. One has a tie-dye look; another has new holes and additions.
The three-dimensional printers that generate the products are also getting cheaper. A Cornell University project called Fab@Home is sharing open-source versions of a design that is being manufactured by an Albuquerque-based company, Koba, at prices of about $3,000.
And the most adventurous are branching out from standard resins. Evan Malone, a Cornell graduate student working with Fab@Home, posted pictures of hors d’oeuvres built by “printing” the school logo on some crackers with Cheez Whiz they loaded into a print head that usually holds plastic.
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| | ![Headdress with leaf-shaped ornaments [Mesopotamia]](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/ht/ht_33.35.3.jpg "Headdress with leaf-shaped ornaments [Mesopotamia]") | | ![Mummy of the Chief Treasurer Ukhhotep [Egyptian; From Meir]](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/ht/ht_12.182.132.jpg "Mummy of the Chief Treasurer Ukhhotep [Egyptian; From Meir]") | | ![Funerary Mask [Sicán or Lambayeque]](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/ht/ht_1974.271.35.jpg "Funerary Mask [Sicán or Lambayeque]") | |
| | | Egyptologists have long noted that the surfaces of many ancient Egyptian objects made of gold bear a distinctive coloration that ranges from a pale reddish hue to a dark purple. This effect is observed on solid cast figures as well as on hammered sheet metal and gold leaf, such that its origin would seem to be independent of the technology used for fabrication. A typical example is the gilded face mask on the mummy of Ukhhotpe (12.182.132). While the effect has been recognized for more than a century, its cause remained a subject of speculation until recently. Over the years, numerous hypotheses have been advanced to explain the phenomenon, including tarnishing of a debased gold alloy, remanent colloidal gold following selective corrosion and removal of alloying elements such as silver and copper, deposition of organic films, and adventitious or deliberate addition of iron-bearing minerals such as hematite or pyrite to the gold alloy. Notably, Alfred Lucas, one of the foremost early researchers in the study of ancient Egyptian technology, correctly surmised that the vast majority of such colorations resulted from fortuitous tarnishing of silver-bearing gold and also recognized correctly that a smaller group of objects bearing a distinctly different red coloration represented another phenomenon altogether. The idea that this coloration derives from a corrosion process and not a deliberate patination is prompted partly by the fact that nearly all native gold occurs as an alloy of gold and silver known as electrum, and partly by occurrences of the coloration in what are sometimes observed to be seemingly irregular distributions on the surfaces of objects. The most notable examples of this kind are the gold-leaf decorations on the wood sarcophagus enclosures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, where areas of bright gold leaf are seen juxtaposed against areas of a dark purple coloration along irregular borders that would seem to have no relationship to an intended design. Early attempts to analyze the red colorations often were confounded by the extremely small thicknesses of the layers, such that samples obtained by scraping-no matter how judiciously performed-were usually overwhelmed by contamination from the substrate alloy. However, analysis in situ by x-ray diffractometry and x-ray fluorescence spectrometry has provided a rapid and straightforward way of characterizing the films and has shown them typically to be composed of one or more silver-gold sulfides. The species responsible for the predominant reddish purple coloration is most often indicated to be AgAuS, a compound sometimes found in nature as the mineral petrovskaite. In addition, synthetic gold-silver alloys having a silver content between approximately 8 and 11 weight percent silver have been observed to develop red-purple tarnish films identical in appearance and composition to those found on ancient Egyptian silver-gold objects when exposed to sulfide ion for extended periods at elevated temperatures. With increasing silver content and prolonged exposure to sulfide ion, both historical gold-silver objects and modern synthetic gold-silver surfaces develop black tarnishes that include another phase, Ag3AuS2, which also occurs in nature as the mineral uytenbogaardtite. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the red colorations derive largely-as Lucas first conjectured-from fortuitous tarnishing of native electrum having silver-gold compositions appropriate for the formation of the AgAuS phase. Red sulfide tarnishes have been identified on historical gold-silver objects from other cultural contexts, including goldwork from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (33.35.3) and nineteenth-century European jewelry. That these tarnishes occur predominantly on ancient Egyptian objects likely reflects the high sulfide ion activity associated with the typical contexts of sealed burial chambers as well as the unparted gold-silver alloys used in antiquity. As a footnote to the discussion, it should be added that not all red-purple colorations on historical gold objects belong to the sulfide-tarnish group described here. Indeed, as Lucas also observed, a small number of gold pieces from the tomb of Tutankhamun bear a bright, translucent red coloration on their surfaces distinctly different in appearance from the darker and more opaque examples. The origin of the color on these unusual objects has not been determined, but may well reside in the deliberate or accidental addition of iron-bearing compounds to the gold, as synthetic samples of such composition have yielded similar appearing surfaces. There also occur archaeological gold objects that bear reddish accretions of hydrated iron oxides, such as lepidocrocite, presumably deposited as residues from groundwater during burial, as well as the gold masks and other objects from Pre-Columbian South America that exhibit deliberately applied coatings of the red mercuric sulfide mineral cinnabar (1974.271.35). Finally, we should mention that the addition of copper to gold in several types of Egyptian objects during the reign of Akhenaten appears to have been done for its rutilizing effect, and that during the Third Intermediate Period copper-rich gold inlays were used with precious-metal inlays of other compositions and hues for the embellishment of large figural bronzes. | |
| Tony Frantz Department of Scientific Research, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Deborah Schorsch Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conxervation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Rinpa Painting Style | Thematic Essay | Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Poem page mounted as a hanging scroll, Momoyama period (1573–1615), dated 1606
Painting by Tawaraya Sotatsu (Japanese, active early 17th century); Calligraphy by Hon'ami Koetsu (Japanese, 1558–1637)
Ink on paper decorated with gold and silver; 7 7/8 x 7 in. (20 x 17.8 cm)
The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.59)
Assailed by thousands of melancholy thoughts.
Is it for me alone that the wind in mountain pines
comes again this autumn?
Poem page mounted as a hanging scroll, Momoyama period (1573–1615), dated 1606
Painting by Tawaraya Sotatsu (Japanese, active early 17th century); Calligraphy by Hon'ami Koetsu (Japanese, 1558–1637)
Ink on paper decorated with gold and silver; 7 7/8 x 7 in. (20 x 17.8 cm)
The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.59)
A classic poem has been inscribed by Hon'ami Koetsu on this square sheet of paper decorated by Tawaraya Sotatsu in a gold and silver design of clouds amid cherry blossoms. Now mounted as a hanging scroll, this is one of a set of similar poem pages probably intended to be pasted on a gold-leaf screen. The unusual dated signature, "the 11th day of the 11th month of Keicho [1606], Koetsu," makes this one of the earliest verifiable works by this influential calligrapher and arbiter of taste. The poem, from his favorite anthology of Japanese court poetry, the Shinkokinshu, is by Kamo no Chomei (1155–1216):
I sit staring,Assailed by thousands of melancholy thoughts.
Is it for me alone that the wind in mountain pines
comes again this autumn?
Although the gorgeous spring decoration has no resonance in the poem's nostalgic melancholy, there is visual harmony between Sotatsu's bold design and Koetsu's personal version of Heian court script—a rhythmically modulated blending of thick dark characters with small fluid ones, connected by thin trails of his quickly moving brush. The collaboration between Koetsu and Sotatsu produced many similar works on individual sheets as well as on horizontal scrolls, and laid the foundation for a decorative artistic tradition, later called Rinpa, which gave fresh treatment to ancient yamato-e themes.