Madame Butterfly

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  4. Posted · Edited by Madame Butterfly

    David Beckham ("Rugby Player")

     

    David Beckham is not a rugby player.

     

    He is a soccer (football) player.

    347592[/snapback]

     

     

    :D:D:heart:

     

    I sooo did not expect that post from you Sean.

     

    I mean, I do.

     

    But somehow I thought you'd be asking where your name was or, more likely, comparing yourself to those men!! How they pale in comparison to you!! :D :P

  9. Posted · Edited by Madame Butterfly

    They surmize that at least 60% of the corn crop in my county is gone from the drought. :rolleyes:

     

    Though alot of it around me does look very good and healthy, I learned that it's in the tassels.

     

    If they still have tassels, then that corn will be ok. The tassels didn't form, it's not going to be good for anyone.

  10. Posted

    Powerful Earthquake Shakes Japan, Injuring Dozens

    7.2 Magnitude Temblor Spawns Two Small Tsunamis

    By SHIZUO KAMBAYASHI, AP

     

     

     

     

     

     

    TOKYO (Aug. 16) - A powerful earthquake shook northeastern Japan on Tuesday, triggering landslides, sending a shower of ceiling debris into a crowded indoor swimming pool and shaking skyscrapers as far away as Tokyo. At least 59 people were reportedly injured.

     

    The 7.2-magnitude quake, centered about 50 miles off the coast of Miyagi state, knocked out power to about 17,000 homes, while high-speed train services in northern Japan were suspended and flights were temporarily grounded at Haneda airport in Tokyo, 185 miles to the south.

     

    Part of roof of an indoor pool in the coastal city of Sendai fell, injuring 17 people, Miyagi police spokesman Kazunori Abe said. Elsewhere, others were hurt by falling rocks and tumbling roof tiles.

     

    TV news footage showed a collapsed house outside Tokyo and landslides in the quake-hit area. A Chiba police spokesman said an 80-year-old woman was trapped but later rescued.

     

    "I thought my tires punctured...the jolt was long and slow," Shinji Abe, a 55-year-old taxi driver in Shiogama, outside of Sendai, told Kyodo News agency. "People were running out of buildings."

     

    Many of the injured were at a public pool crowded with more than 200 people, some children on summer vacation. The force of the quake sent pieces of tile, glass and other debris showering over the bathers, cutting some of them.

     

    National broadcaster NHK said there were preliminary reports of 59 people injured. Officials were still tallying figures, but police in Miyagi, which suffered the brunt of the quake, could only confirm 26 injuries, while neighboring Fukushima prefecture had four.

     

    "The horizontal shaking was very strong, so much so that I almost couldn't remain standing," said Masami Oshima, an official with Miyagi state. Sendai is Miyagi capital city.

     

    The quake struck at around 11:46 a.m. and was centered 12 miles below the ocean floor, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.

     

    Two 4-inch tsunami waves hit the nearby coast shortly after noon, and officials expected little damage from the waves, it said.

     

    The quake was followed by at least four aftershocks and additional quakes of up to magnitude 6 could follow.

     

    Tuesday's temblor hit one of Japan's most quake prone regions. Several powerful quakes have struck the same area off-shore over the past few decades, and the Education and Science Ministry earlier this estimated the region had a 99 percent chance of suffering a 7.5 magnitude quake over the next 30 years.

     

    In 1995, a magnitude-7.3 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people. The depth and offshore location of Tuesday's quake helped limit the damage that might have occurred had it been centered under a city.

     

    Authorities in Miyagi were still assessing damage in the area.

     

    A nuclear power plant in the neighboring prefecture of Fukushima was not affected by the earthquake, Kyodo News agency reported, citing the plant's operator. Another plant in Onagawa in Miyagi shut down automatically and was being checked for damage, reports said.

     

    Japan sits at the juncture of four tectonic plates _ or moving slabs of the earth's outer crust _ and is one of the world's most quake-prone regions. A magnitude-6.0 quake shook the Tokyo area on July 23, injuring more than two dozen people.

     

     

    8/16/2005 07:12:32

  11. Posted

    Ancient ruins still stand amid Iraq chaos

    Few risk making journey to lonely site north of Baghdad

     

    Updated: 7:15 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2005

    HATRA, Iraq - Over 2,000 years ago this thriving Mesopotamian oasis city welcomed caravans of camels carrying travelers between East and West, twice held back Roman invaders, and was famous for its tolerance of different religions.

     

    Now Hatra sits in ruins in a vast desert. Parts of its giant temples, columns and arches are still standing under the incessant sun but its city center is probably visited by more rabbits than people. Around it stands a nation still struggling to heal ancient grievances between feuding religious and ethnic groups, hoping to revisit high points in its history where the roots of civilization once sprouted.

     

    The United Nations has declared it a world heritage site, but few people these days risk journeying to the ruins, 200 miles north of Baghdad.

     

     

    Most visitors are guests of the U.S. military, and a handful of Iraqi guards protect the site. Most of the wire fence surrounding it has collapsed, but a girl in a bright dress is still on hand to dutifully raise a gate for a visiting convoy of Humvees.

     

    Inside the circular city stand several largely intact temples to ancient gods, including a stone shrine over two stories high, dedicated to Shamash, the sun god. Although many relics and statues were rushed away to museums in Baghdad and Mosul during the 2003 invasion, a statue of a robed woman, possibly a king’s wife, still stares down at visitors.

     

    Inscriptions in Aramaic, the language once spoken by Christ, are still visible on some buildings.

     

    After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, looters shot and damaged decorated features on Hatra’s walls, McGuire Gibson, an archaeology professor at the University of Chicago, said in an e-mail.

     

    “The site is wonderful to walk around in, especially late in the evening and early in the morning,” he said. “It is amazing that such a large city could exist where it does, dependent on cisterns and ground water.”

     

    Gibson was on a U.N. team that investigated stolen or damaged Iraqi antiquities after the war.

     

    “Probably the worst damage was caused by the exploding of munitions by U.S. forces,” he said.

     

    Gibson said the military eventually diminished the blasts, which were threatening to destabilize buildings in Hatra, but continued detonating explosives in the area.

     

    Despite the turmoil, glimpses of the city’s mixed East-West architecture of Roman, Hellenistic and Parthian styles testify to the diverse tradesmen and travelers who once passed through.

     

    “The significance of Hatra as a bridge between East and West is plain for all to see,” Roberta Ricciardi Venco, a professor at Turin University in Italy who has conducted surveys and excavations in the city, said in an e-mail.

     

    The city’s two defensive walls remain visible, including the outer one of clay that is over 3 miles long. More than 150 closely spaced towers helped Hatra withstand Roman attack in the second century A.D., according to a guide provided by the U.S. military, but the city eventually fell to the Sassanid empire of what is now Iran.

     

    Hatra’s novelty is its largely unexcavated condition. Dozens of unfinished digs lie outside the inner wall of the city, showing sand-covered shapes that leave visitors wondering about what lies beneath.

     

    The site is also recognized by film buffs as the opening scene of the classic movie “The Exorcist,” in which an aging priest finds a relic that signals he will soon face an evil that turns out to be a demonically possessed girl.

     

    Iraq’s recent tortured history is also on display. In the 1990s Saddam Hussein started to reconstruct parts of the site — but ordered that bricks stamped with his name be used.

     

    A handful of bullet casings lined some temple floors and U.S. Black Hawk helicopters swooped above. Though U.S.-led forces have brought relative calm to this rural area, guards warned of insurgents in the distance.

     

    U.S. soldiers said grants were allocated after the invasion to lure tourists to the site, but a nearby hotel now serves as an Iraqi Army base. Archaeologists say they don’t expect to be back soon.

     

    “You’ve got to be kidding. I know of no archaeologist who would think of visiting the site right now,” said Gibson.

  17. Posted

    Dolphin, Human Brain Size Not So Different

    By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

    Nov. 10, 2004 — Dolphins and humans share a similar brain size, according to the first map of cetacean brain evolution over the past 47 million years.

     

    Experts have long known that toothed whales boast exceptionally large brains. Some species, including the famously bright dolphins, have capabilities previously only ascribed to humans and, to some extent, other great apes.

     

     

    “ Essentially, the brains of primates and cetaceans arrived at the same cognitive space while evolving along quite different paths. ”

     

     

    For instance, dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors and understand symbol-based communication systems and abstract concepts.

     

    Such intelligence is probably due their big brains, but the evolution of such brains has remained a mystery.

     

    To investigate this question, Lori Marino, from Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues carried out the largest fossil study ever done on animals, searching museum collections for four years.

     

    The team, whose research will be appear in the December issue of The Anatomical Record, tracked down 66 fossilized cetacean skulls.

     

    After determining the specimens' brain sizes with CT scans, the researchers estimated body mass by examining the size of bones around the base of the skulls.

     

    They also studied brain and body weight data from 144 modern cetacean specimens, for a total sample of 210 specimens representing 37 families and 62 species.

     

    The aim was to find each creature's encephalization quotient (EQ) — the ratio of brain to body mass. An average-sized brain for the body weight produces an EQ of one. An animal with an EQ less than one indicates a smaller-than-average brain; an EQ greater than one, a relatively large brain.

     

    Humans are the brainiest of all creatures, with an EQ of seven.

     

    The skull examination found two points in cetacean evolution when the EQ jumped.

     

    "The time when the first whale suborder went extinct and the new suborders emerged, about 35 million years ago, is a critical phase in cetacean evolution because the changes in encephalization level were tremendous and there were also other changes in body size and dentition," Marino said.

     

    Indeed, about 35 million years ago, dolphins' earliest ancestors, from the Archaeoceti group, were about nine meters (29.5 feet) long, had sharp teeth and an EQ of about 0.5.

     

    The EQ jumped to 2.5 in Odontocete group, smaller creatures with smaller teeth that followed the Archaeoceti after they mysteriously died out.

     

    Bigger Brains with Ecolocation?

    That growth in brain size came as the first cetaceans developed echolocation — emitting high-frequency sounds that bounce off objects, creating an echo that the animal interprets, Marino said.

     

    The study showed that a second brain size boost occurred in the origin of the superfamily Delphinoidea — oceanic dolphins, porpoises, belugas and narwhals — about 15 million years ago. Their EQs jumped to four and five.

     

    "Essentially, the brains of primates and cetaceans arrived at the same cognitive space while evolving along quite different paths. What the data say to me is that we, as humans, are not that special. Although we are highly encephalized, it's not by much or for that long compared with odontocetes," Marino said.

     

    According to Patrick Hof, a neurobiologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, Marino's study is one of the very few modern examples of paleoneurologic research on specimens other than the human fossil record.

     

    "It is indeed most interesting and important research. It shows that several evolutionary points in cetacean evolution took place corresponding to the emergence of distinct suborders and later on of delphinoidea," Hof told Discovery News.

     

    "It is rare to see such a good correlate of evolution in the fossil record, and, more to the point, to be able to make functional inferences from fossil taxa by comparison with extant species," he said.

  18. Posted

    Garlic's Potent Effects Revealed

    By Jennifer Viegas

     

     

    Aug. 15, 2005 — In the instant garlic hits the tongue, the body initiates a series of strong reactions that leads to pain and possibly lowered blood pressure, suggests a new study concerning how garlic affects us on the molecular level.

     

    For years, herbal medicine practitioners have touted the health effects of the stinky bulb. The new study indicates there may be some truth to such claims.

     

    "(Our findings) do substantiate the idea that garlic and its derivatives are capable of producing vasodilation (widening of the blood vessels) through activation of the TRPA1 channel on sensory neurons," said David Julius, one of the study's authors. "This action may contribute to the purported ability of garlic to reduce hypertension."

     

     

    Julius, professor and vice-chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, explained that the TRPA1 is like a door on a cell's surface. When something causes it to open, electrically charged atoms can enter the cell's interior.

     

    To see if garlic affected this channel, Julius and his team performed experiments with garlic itself and allicin, an organic compound containing sulfur that is present in garlic. They tested how rat cells reacted to allicin and garlic's other sulfurous ingredients, but they say humans likely would react in a similar way.

     

    The findings are published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

     

    The scientists determined that allicin and garlic's other potent compounds first bind to protein receptors on the surface of nerve endings on the tongue and other parts of the mouth. This causes the TRPA1 ion channel to open, allowing ions such as sodium and calcium to rush into the nerve cell.

     

    "When this occurs, an electrical signal is generated and sent to the spinal cord, and from there to pain processing centers of the brain," Julius said. "This produces a sensation of discomfort or pain. At the same time, the sensory nerve fiber releases substances at the initial site of activation (in the mouth), causing vasodilation and inflammation in the surrounding tissue."

     

    The researchers performed related studies on the potent compounds found in chili peppers and mustards like yellow mustard and wasabi. They found that the body reacts to these ingredients in a similar way. This suggests chilis and mustards might also lower blood pressure.

     

    David Clapham, professor of neurobiology at the Harvard Medical School and a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, told Discovery News that he agrees with the study. He attributes the potency of garlic, chilis and mustard to natural plant defense mechanisms.

     

    Clapham said, "In the long coevolution with animals, plants make molecules that attract — smell or taste good — for help in spreading their seeds, or repel animals — taste bad, etc. — to keep from being eaten."

     

    Michael Caterina, associate professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, also agrees with the new research, but he thinks further studies are needed before diners should load up on garlic, chilis and mustard for health reasons.

     

    "This study should be viewed as a fascinating step towards scientific understanding of the ways in which plant-derived chemicals can interact with proteins in our bodies, but not as a basis for canceling your gym membership and planting a quarter-acre of garlic in your back yard," Caterina told Discovery News.

     

    He added, "Spicy foods should be enjoyed for their taste and the company with which they are shared. In time they might also prove to be important components in a healthy diet, but right now, that's not entirely clear."

  20. Posted

    Some chimps are left-handed, study finds

    Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:02 PM ET

     

     

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wild chimpanzees can be left or right-handed just as humans are, researchers reported on Monday in a study that sheds light on the evolution of "handedness."

     

    A study of 17 wild chimpanzees in Gombe National Park in Tanzania shows that most preferred to use their left hands when fishing for termites, although they used their right hands for other tasks such as cracking nuts.

     

    "Handedness runs in families of wild chimpanzees, with offspring hand use resembling the hand preferences of their mother," Elizabeth Lonsdorf and William Hopkins of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

     

    Chimpanzees in captivity show a right-handed preference for some tasks, but researchers have wondered if this because they are raised by humans, who are mostly right-handed.

     

    So Lonsdorf and Hopkins watched chimpanzees to see what happened in the wild.

     

    "Termite fishing involves precision movements that require the chimpanzees to insert small sticks into holes in dirt mounds that contain the termites," they wrote.

     

    They said their findings suggest that the beginnings of left-brain/right-brain splits associated with hand preference had already evolved 5 million years ago, before early humans separated from the ancestors of chimpanzees.

     

    Chickens and frogs show a type of "handedness" but some experts had argued that being left or right-handed in humans was associated with language centers in the brain.

     

    Humans are still far more likely than chimps to be right-handed. It could be there was a genetic mutation favoring right-handedness in humans, the researchers said.

     

    Or it could be that this is a reflection of the unique organization of human brains, they added.

  23. Posted

    Researchers find stem cells for brain cancer

    Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:14 PM ET

     

     

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some types of brain cancer may start with specialized stem cells, researchers said in a report that could lead to new treatments for hard-to-treat brain tumors.

     

    Studies in mice showed that certain incurable types of brain tumor may be initiated by the primitive stem cells, which are a kind of master cell for blood and tissue, they reported on Monday.

     

    "Continued research into the biology of adult stem cells will aid in the understanding of how cancers originate and develop and may lead to possible new therapies for treating aggressive, currently incurable brain tumors," said Dr. Luis Parada of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who led the study.

     

    Writing in the journal Cancer Cell, Parada and colleagues said their findings support evidence that so-called adult stem cells may play a role in the development of some forms of cancer.

     

    Stem cells share some properties with cancer cells, including an ability to live a very long time without self-destructing, as a normal cell does as it ages.

     

    Adult stem cells are already programmed to become certain types of tissue. For example, bone marrow stem cells make various kinds of blood cells such as white blood cells, and can also become muscle when directed properly.

     

    Similarly, there are primitive liver cells and primitive brain cells. Some of these primitive brain cells may be predisposed to form tumors, Parada's team found.

     

    They bred genetically engineered mice that lacked a gene called p53, known for its role in preventing tumors. It repairs the errors in DNA that can result in cancer.

     

    The mice also had a mutated version of another tumor suppressor gene called NF1.

     

    As these gene-engineered mice matured, they all developed brain tumors.

     

    The researchers found that stem cells in a part of the brain called the subventricular zone gave rise to malignant astrocytoma cells in the genetically engineered mice.

     

    Malignant astrocytoma, or glioma, is one of the most common types of brain tumor in adults.

     

    "Our results challenge current dogma, which assumes that tumors of this type arise from glial cells located throughout the brain," Parada said in a statement.

     

    This could help explain why these tumors are so hard to cure. Surgery and radiation therapy my remove the tumor, but the cancer could be replenishing itself from the stem cells, Parada said.

  24. Posted

    Italian archeologists on trail of ancient warships

    Fri Aug 12, 2005 9:42 AM ET

     

     

    By Shasta Darlington

    ROME (Reuters) - Italian archaeologists believe they are on the verge of finding the ancient ships downed in the battle of the Aegates Islands more than 2,000 years ago thanks to modern technology and a police tip-off.

     

    "This project has an enormous historical value, but perhaps more important is the relevance for archaeology," Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily's chief of marine culture, told Reuters on Friday.

     

    "What we find will help us understand how wars were waged at that time and how battleships were built."

     

    After two years of underwater searches around the islands, which lie west of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, experts last year found a bronze helmet and some amphorae from about 241 BC, the date of the decisive Roman victory over the Carthage fleet.

     

    At around the same time, a team of Italy's famed art police busted a collector who had a ship's bronze battering ram from the same period on display in his home. It turned out the relic had been illegally looted using nets from the same area.

     

    Unfortunately for Sicily's archaeologists, that area lies 70 metres (230 feet) below sea level.

     

    "We couldn't dive on it, so about four months ago we started a technical probe of the region," Tusa said.

     

    Experts from Sicily and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Austin, Texas used sonar and multi-beam bathymetric technology to scan the sea bed and sent down remotely controlled cameras.

     

    "Now, we're certain we have found the location of the battle, but we have yet to discover how much was actually preserved," he said.

     

    "What we really expect to find are remnants of the warships with battering rams and various other weapons like helmets, lances and the heavier tools that would have sunk immediately."

     

    He said works, which were put on hold for analysis of the data, will resume in September and that a discovery could be announced as soon as October

     

    The Battle of the Aegates Islands was the final naval battle between the fleets of Carthage and the Roman Republic during the First Punic War and marked a turning point for the two powers. Carthage went into decline after its defeat.

     

    Pinpointing the location of the battle and the some sunken 60 ships has been difficult since fighting lasted for up to four hours while the vessels moved in a southerly direction.

     

    The Carthaginian force included 250-300 newly built warships as well as about 400 cargo ships bearing food and agricultural and war equipment.

     

    Tusa said the finds will be the showcase of a new museum dedicated to the battle being built in a former tuna fishing factory on the isle of Favignana.