Madame Butterfly

Hubble confirms young planet at nearby star

Dimensions of Fomalhaut’s dusty disk provide evidence

 

 

By Robert Roy Britt

Senior science writer

 

Updated: 1:27 p.m. ET June 22, 2005New observations of a star suspected of harboring a planet provide the most convincing evidence yet of the young world’s existence.

 

 

 

Rather than spotting the planet, however, astronomers have photographed an odd-shaped ring of dust that surrounds the star. They assume that the unseen planet sculpted the arrangement.

 

The star, Fomalhaut, is the 17th brightest in our night sky and is easily found with the unaided eye and a sky chart. It is a relatively young star, still shrouded in the dust of its birth.

 

Fomalhaut is about 25 light-years away.

 

Distortions explained

In 2002, astronomers said they had found distortions in Fomalhaut’s disklike dust ring and calculated that a Saturn-sized planet must be orbiting the star. Observations also hinted that the ring was offset in relation to the star, in a manner that suggested the presence of a planet, but that speculation was based partly on computer models.

 

The new optical view, from the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the exact dimensions of the swirling mass of star-formation leftovers.

 

The dust ring is not centered on the star, as would be expected if only the star’s gravity had sculpted it. Instead, the center is 1.4 billion miles (15 times the distance from Earth to the sun) away from the star. That is strong evidence of a planet tugging on the ring, scientists said Wednesday.

 

"Our new Hubble images confirm those earlier hypotheses that proposed a planet was perturbing the ring," said Paul Kalas of the University of California at Berkeley.

 

A familiar ring

Kalas and his colleagues assume the mystery object is a planet and not something larger, such as a dim failed star known as a brown dwarf, because they say Hubble would have spotted a brown dwarf directly with the observations that were made.

 

The investigation is important because the Fomalhaut (Fo-mal-ought) system is thought to resemble our own solar system when it was about 200 million years old (ours is now 4.6 billion years old). Astronomers have a theoretical model for how the planets formed, but only by looking at young solar systems can they confirm that the process played out as expected.

 

The ring around Fomalhaut resembles our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, a region of cometlike objects beyond Neptune. Astronomers think that as planets, asteroids and comets develop out of dust, a lot of material is kicked either inward to the star our outward into a leftover ring of debris.

 

Importantly, the theory holds that the region near a newborn star, such as the location of Earth, is bereft of water in a solar system’s early years. Some of icy material that develops farther out is, however, expected to be booted inward after planet formation, bringing precious water ice to nascent planets and providing the ingredients for life.

 

While confident that such a process set up conditions for biology on Earth, scientists are eager to learn if the scheme is common.

 

More evidence

Hubble provided more clues suggesting a planet.

 

The ring’s inner edge is sharper than the outer edge, consistent with computer models of a planet sweeping material up in the manner of a snowplow. The width of the ring, now measured to be about 2.3 billion miles, is also what would be expected if it’s shaped by a nascent world. With no planet to keep material in check, the ring would be wider.

 

The shepherding of the ring is similar to what is seen in the rings of Saturn, which are confined by the gravitational influence of moons, Kalas said.

 

Despite similarities to our solar system, the setup at Fomalhaut is also distinct.

 

"While Fomalhaut's ring is analogous to the Kuiper Belt, its diameter is four times greater than that of the Kuiper Belt,” Kalas said. That suggests “that not all planetary systems form and evolve in the same way.”

 

Indeed, many of the other 150 or so extrasolar planets found to date orbit incredibly close to their host stars. In some systems, Jupiter-sized worlds orbit a star in just a few days. Other planets take wildly eccentric paths around their stars.

 

The findings are detailed in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

 

© 2005 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com

I've always volunteered.

 

Organizing programs for children at homeless shelters, local carnivals, at the local elementary school, at the library, scouting programs.

Hmmmmmm, think this is a duplicate thread. :(

NASA Chief Says He Can't Promise to Finish Space Station

 

By Traci Watson and Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

 

WASHINGTON - The new chief of NASA on Tuesday threw further doubt on the future of the International Space Station, saying he couldn't promise that all the pieces needed to complete the orbiting laboratory would make it to space.

 

 

 

In an interview with USA TODAY, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said an agency team is still studying what the space station will ultimately look like. Until the team finishes its work this summer, he said, he couldn't be sure which pieces of the station might be left on the ground, including those already scheduled to fly on future shuttle missions.

 

"We're trying to develop a station plan," Griffin said. "We don't have it yet."

 

The space station, which now serves as a home to one Russian and one American, has been more than 20 years in the making. The United States and 15 other nations share the $100 billion cost, but the station has long generated controversy in the USA as its cost grew and its purpose changed. Congress nearly killed it in 1993.

 

Four planned shuttle flights are supposed to carry large pieces of the space station, including solar panels and scaffolding, into orbit. NASA has even announced crews for the four flights.

 

"The flights will fly," Griffin said. "What piece of hardware goes on what flight is what's up for grabs."

 

NASA had planned at least 28 more shuttle flights to the station: 18 to finish building it and 10 to provide supplies or support research. President Bush declared last year that the shuttle would retire in 2010, limiting the number of flights. His decision was triggered, in part, by the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia in 2003.

 

As a result of Bush's decision, the 28-flight plan "won't work," Griffin said. "So we need a new plan, and we're trying to develop it."

 

 

 

Only the shuttle can haul pieces of the station into orbit. Cutting back the number of shuttle flights will make it difficult, if not impossible, to finish the station.

 

Legislation introduced Tuesday by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, would require NASA to complete the space station.

 

Griffin offered a sober assessment of the challenges NASA faces, saying America's space program has "fallen behind."

 

"Our shuttle is grounded. Two nations have flown people in space since we last did it," Griffin said. "We're at least five years away from having a replacement vehicle. ... We (at NASA) and America need to work hard to regain our pre-eminence in space."

Updated: 10:41 AM EDT

Solar Sail Space Launch Failed, Russia Says

Reports Conflict on Fate of Spacecraft

By Christian Lowe, Reuters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOSCOW (June 22) - The world's first solar sail-powered spacecraft failed to reach its planned orbit after the Russian rocket carrying it shut down seconds after launch, Russia's state space agency said on Wednesday.

 

But it was unclear if the privately-funded Cosmos 1 was in space or had crashed to earth, with the U.S. backers of the project saying the craft was sending faint signals, possibly from a lower orbit.

 

"The unique solar sail spacecraft was not delivered to its planned orbit because the engine of the first stage of the "Volna" rocket shut itself down 83 seconds into the flight," Russia's Federal Space Agency said in a statement.

 

"Unfortunately, this is the second unsuccessful attempt to launch a solar sail craft on a journey through space," it said.

 

Separately, Russia's Itar-Tass and Interfax news agencies quoted an unnamed Russian space agency source as saying the craft had crashed in the Barents Sea close to where it had been launched on Tuesday from a Russian submarine.

 

But controllers at the Pasadena, California office of the Planetary Society, the mission's U.S. backers, said the craft appeared to be "alive" and sending signals to tracking stations.

 

"We have no evidence that anything is wrong with the spacecraft at all," said Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's director of projects, late on Tuesday.

 

The Planetary Society, the world's largest private space advocacy group, hoped the mission would show that a group of space enthusiasts could kick-start a race to the stars on a shoestring budget of $4 million.

 

Cosmos 1 blasted off in a converted Russian ballistic missile from the Barents Sea on Tuesday. But the disc-shaped craft lost contact with its controller almost immediately. For several hours, Cosmos 1 was believed lost.

 

A spokesman for the Russian Space Agency said they could not say if Cosmos 1 had crashed to earth or was in orbit. He referred enquiries to the Russian military but a spokesmen could not immediately be reached.

 

Sailing on Sunlight

 

However, weak signals received by tracking stations in the Pacific Ocean, Russia and the Czech Republic seemed to show it had made it into orbit.

 

Mission controllers discovered after reviewing data recorded by the stations that the craft had signalled its passage during what had been believed to be several hours of radio silence, said Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray.

 

"The good news is we have reason to believe it's alive and in orbit," said Murray, a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The bad news is we don't know where it is."

 

The signal appeared weak probably because the orbiter had veered off course during its final rocket burn, and ground antennae were now trained on the wrong part of the sky, Murray said.

 

For that reason, it was not clear whether planned communications sessions with the spacecraft would help mission managers find Cosmos 1, he said.

 

They planned to enlist the help of the U.S. Strategic Command, whose job is to monitor the skies for signs of incoming missiles and other threats.

 

If the craft is still in space, mission backers still face the prospect that it is in a deteriorating orbit and may eventually fall back to Earth, or that the orbit is so irregular that the solar sails cannot deploy properly.

 

Cosmos 1 was to unfurl a 100-foot (30-metre) petal-shaped solar sail to power its planned orbit around Earth and show that photons -- light particles emanating from the Sun -- would impel the craft forward at an ever-increasing rate of speed.

 

The mission's goal is to raise Cosmos 1 to a higher orbit above the Earth by "sailing" the spacecraft on streams of photons.

 

The project started as a dream by Planetary Society founders Murray, Carl Sagan and Louis Friedman, a former NASA engineer who proposed sending a solar sail craft to Halley's Comet in the 1970s.

 

Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan, provided most of the funding for the mission through her entertainment company, Cosmos Studios.

 

Additional reporting by Gina Keating in Pasadena and Sonia Oxley in Moscow

As a younger child I was more involved with books and actually hid in trees to hide from my Mom so I could read more than she liked.

 

In Jr. High I ran track with my girl friend, which I decided wasn't my thing. I had more fun at field hockey and tripping the other players!! :)

 

In High School I played tennis, and got a Varsity letter all three years there.

 

Since then I've dabbled in lots of things, softball, long distance running, bike riding [15 mile rides daily], and aerobics.

 

I've finally settled on a combination of Hatha Yoga, Vinyasa Flow Yoga, a bit of pilates, and the occassional run.

 

I tried teaching tennis two summers ago, nearly killed the little darlings. :( :) I shouldn't teach relatives. :(

To My Special Someone. :(

 

 

Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)

Billy Joel

 

 

Goodnight, my angel

Time to close your eyes

And save these questions for another day

I think I know what you've been asking me

I think you know what I've been trying to say

I promised I would never leave you

And you should always know

Wherever you may go

No matter where you are

I never will be far away

 

Goodnight, my angel

Now it's time to sleep

And still so many things I want to say

Remember all the songs you sang for me

WHen we went sailing on an emerald bay

ANd like a boat out on the ocean

I'm rocking you to sleep

THe water's dark

And deep inside this ancient heart

You'll always be a part of me

 

Goodnight, my angel

Now it's time to dream

And dream how wonderful your life will be

Someday your child may cry

And if you sing this lullabye

Then in your heart

There will always be a part of me

 

Someday we'll all be gone

But lullabyes go on and on...

They never die

That's how you

And I

Will be

I am reading a similar book about the Chinese.

 

They basically mapped the world before anyone else.

 

It's a fascinating read.

How could he not help after all those who came to help him?

 

3000 people looked for this boy on Sunday

I just kept thinking about all the skills scouts use for survival, and I hoped he knew enough of them to survive until he either made it back, or they found him.

 

I felt optimistic about this one. :(

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Did ancient Polynesians visit California? Maybe so.

Scholars revive idea using linguistic ties, Indian headdress

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

 

Monday, June 20, 2005

 

 

Printable Version

Email This Article

 

 

 

 

Scientists are taking a new look at an old and controversial idea: that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California a millennium before Christopher Columbus landed on the East Coast.

 

Key new evidence comes from two directions. The first involves revised carbon-dating of an ancient ceremonial headdress used by Southern California's Chumash Indians. The second involves research by two California scientists who suggest that a Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is derived from a Polynesian word for the wood used to construct the same boat.

 

The scientists, linguist Kathryn A. Klar of UC Berkeley and archaeologist Terry L. Jones of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, had trouble getting their thesis of ancient contact between the Polynesians and Chumash published in scientific journals. The Chumash and their neighbors, the Gabrielino, were the only North American Indians to build sewn-plank boats, a technique used throughout the Polynesian islands.

 

But after grappling for two years with criticisms by peer reviewers, Klar and Jones' article will appear in the archaeological journal American Antiquity in July.

 

If they are right, their finding is a major blow to North American anthropologists' traditional hostility to the theory that non-Europeans visited this continent long before Columbus.

 

Until now, few scientists have dared to speculate that the ancient Polynesians visited Southern California between 500 and 700 A.D., that is to say, in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. This is known as the "transpacific diffusion" hypothesis.

 

"The dominant paradigm in American archaeology for the past 60 or more years has been anti-diffusionist, and our findings are already stimulating a rethinking of that paradigm," Klar told The Chronicle.

 

Falling out of favor

 

The idea that ancient North America might have received visitors from the Pacific islands and Asia has had few friends in modern times. The idea was popular among researchers in the 19th century, but fell out of scholarly favor in the 20th.

 

Through the last century, scientists' opposition didn't seem unreasonable: Not only is the Pacific the world's widest ocean, sailors from the west would have faced contrary currents and winds that would tend to push them in the wrong direction.

 

Recently, though, scientific opposition to at least some diffusionist ideas has begun to waver. A huge blow to the skeptics came more than a decade ago, with the discovery of archaeological evidence that ancient Polynesians ate sweet potatoes, which are native to South America. Presumably, Polynesian sailors ventured to South America, obtained sweet potatoes and brought them back to their home islands.

 

That discovery seemed to undermine a major plank of the critics' old argument: that Polynesian travel to the Americas was physically impossible. Still, direct evidence for Polynesian contact with North America has been scarce.

 

Until now, that is. Now, the tide is turning in this old debate, in a way that might transform our understanding of the early peoples of the Golden State.

 

Chumash canoes yield clues

 

The first bit of new evidence is Klar and Jones' analysis of the Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" -- which they claim is extremely similar to the Polynesian term for the redwoods used to build the same mode of transport. (The Polynesians made their boats from redwood logs that had floated across the Pacific with the prevailing ocean currents.)

 

The Chumash word for "sewn-plank canoe" is tomolo'o, while the Hawaiian word for "useful tree" is kumulaa'au. The Polynesians colonized Hawaii during the first millennium A.D., and in the process their language evolved into the Hawaiian language. The Polynesian word tumu means tree or tree-trunk, and ra'akau means wood or branch; Klar's complex linguistic analysis shows how the combination of those two words evolved into the Hawaiian kumulaa'au. Many Hawaiian words that start with "k" originally began with "t." Replace the "k" in kumulaa'au with a "t" and the similarity between the words becomes obvious. The similarity is so great, Klar says, that it is highly unlikely to be a coincidence.

 

The sewn-plank canoe was the Chumash Indians' version of an ocean-worthy yacht, a vehicle sturdy enough to allow them to fish in deep offshore waters. Traditionally, Native American canoes were relatively simple objects, often dug out of logs or assembled from bundled reeds. By contrast, the sewn-plank canoe was a highly engineered vehicle, one in which planks were cut, heated in hot water and bent into streamlined shapes. Holes were drilled in the wood, allowing the planks to be sewn together with strong plant fibers from yucca leaves. Tar was affixed to the gaps between the planks, making them watertight.

 

The resulting vessel was sleek, lightweight, fast and durable, or the perfect vehicle for long-distance travel through choppy waters, including deep- sea fishing areas.

 

Sharing knowledge

 

Klar and Jones reason that ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California and shared their boating knowledge with the Chumash. This was an ancient form of what would today be called "technology transfer," as in the post-World War II transfer of nuclear power technology from the United States to other nations.

 

Before now, scholars argued that the Chumash invented sewn-plank canoes on their own.

 

One key piece of evidence for this view was the carbon-dating of abalone shells from a Chumash ceremonial headdress fashioned from the skull of a swordfish, a deep-sea fish. Based on earlier carbon-dating methods, the shells, now stored at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, were thought to be about 2,000 years old. That date implied the Chumash were fishing in deep-sea waters about 400 years earlier than the Polynesian-Chumash contact hypothesized by Klar and Jones.

 

As it turns out, though, the original carbon-14 date, which was determined before scientists realized they had to take into account varying levels of atmospheric carbon-14, was wrong.

 

A cautious investigator

 

Inspired by Klar and Jones' hypothesis, John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum, decided to recalibrate the abalone shells. He discovered they dated from approximately 600 A.D., several hundred years younger than previously thought. He announced his finding in April at an archaeology conference in Salt Lake City.

 

Six hundred A.D. is smack in the middle of the period during which the ancient Polynesians sailed to Southern California, according to Klar and Jones' theory.

 

In an interview, Johnson cautioned that despite the recalibrated date, he thinks it's premature for Klar and Jones to declare victory. This is partly because some of their archaeological evidence hasn't been recalibrated, either, he said. Also, he's worried that they have fashioned their linguistic argument from a reanalysis of just a few words in the Chumash and Polynesian languages, too few to clinch their argument.

 

"They may be right -- I'm just more cautious," Johnson added.

 

Jones replied that the archaeological artifacts cited in his and Klar's paper "have been calibrated with the most up-to-date calibration program." On the linguistic side, Klar replies that the word similarities are too close to be the result of coincidence. Rather, the Chumash must have learned the Polynesian word for sewn-plank canoe during face-to-face contact.

 

Studying the study

 

An unusual aspect of the Klar-Jones thesis is that it gives the public a chance to glimpse the behind-the-scenes processes by which scientists promote a controversial scientific idea. At The Chronicle's request, Klar and Jones agreed to share copies of the letters written by outside experts -- peer reviewers -- who evaluated their manuscript for possible publication in the journals Current Anthropology and American Antiquity.

 

The editor of Current Anthropology, Professor Benjamin S. Orlove of UC Davis, sent copies of it to nine peer reviewers, an unusually large number.

 

The reviews, all written before the redating of the abalone shells, are polite and thoughtful, although sometimes sharply critical on technical points; several express enthusiasm for the Klar-Jones hypothesis. The shortest review is one sentence, from an anonymous expert: "Interesting, scholarly, and bound to cause trouble!"

 

One positive reviewer says Klar and Jones' linguistic argument "seems to be systematically and exhaustively argued," but urges them to "have linguists skilled in Polynesian languages take a hard look at this."

 

Overall, five of the reviews were positive about the Klar-Jones paper and two were negative, but most suggested various improvements. One reviewer advised Orlove to reject the paper but to ask the authors to resubmit it after they made improvements. One reviewer was neutral.

 

Even though a majority of the reviews were positive, Orlove decided to reject the article. Why?

 

Reasons for rejection

 

Orlove stressed that he rejected an earlier version of their paper rather than the one slated for publication in July. He also said that his job as editor is not simply to add up pro and con votes of peer reviewers.

 

"We're certainly more than just a vote-tallying machine," he said. Rather, as editor, he must ponder the reviewers' remarks and make the best judgment he can: to publish or not to publish?

 

Orlove acknowledged that nine reviewers is "certainly unusually high." That number was necessary partly because of the interdisciplinary nature of the paper, which required feedback from experts in various subjects.

 

"By and large, our reviewers are fair and generous, and, by and large, we trust them," Orlove said. "I'm certainly a strong believer in the peer-review process."

 

Ultimately, the article was accepted by American Antiquity. That journal's peer reviewers also gave the article a "mixed" reception, editor Michael Jochim told Klar and Jones, but Jochim elected to publish it anyway.

 

One anonymous reviewer for American Antiquity was "not fully convinced" by their thesis but welcomed publication anyway:

 

"Jones and Klar do us a service by resuscitating the debate (over Pacific diffusion) from the 'unthinkable' shelf it has for too long languished on."

Stonehenge druids 'mark wrong solstice'

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

(Filed: 21/06/2005)

 

Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe.

 

 

 

 

 

The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice.

 

Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered.

 

Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University of Sheffield's archaeology department, which is studying monuments around Stonehenge, said pigs in the Neolithic period were born in spring and were an early form of domestic pig that farrowed once a year. The existence of large numbers of bones from pigs slaughtered in December or January supports the view that our Neolithic ancestors took part in a winter solstice festival.

 

The revellers at Durrington Walls, the largest ceremonial site in the country and even larger than Avebury, are also thought to have feasted on cattle and aurochs - an extinct wild ox - before going to Stonehenge while fires burned on cliffs or hill tops. Prof Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield university, who leads the project, said: "We have no evidence that anyone was in the landscape in summer.''

 

Up to 20,000 people were expected at Stonehenge last night with visitors being allowed in from 10pm. The site will be closed from 9am today for the whole day so that the area can be cleaned up.

 

 

 

What do you believe Stonehenge was built and used for?

pale pink shorts, sleeveless black top.

 

What a deal, got it at GAP for 6.99, regularly 19.99 :(

Smooth Rider

 

Dave Matthews Band

At another site I frequent the concensus was the film was excellent and the only thing about Katie Holmes that grabbed screen time was the fact that she always seemed "cold". :(

Eating some almonds

 

Listening to the new Dave Matthews Band CD

 

Browsing the net.

 

Discussing with someone whether or not Kristen Dunst is a skank and a coat rack or not.

Updated: 03:32 PM EDT

Boy Scout Found Alive After Intensive Search

By PAUL FOY, AP

 

 

 

AP

Brennan Hawkins, shown here in a school photo, disappeared while on a camping trip with a friend in Utah's mountains.

 

 

KAMAS, Utah (June 21) - An 11-year-old boy who vanished from a Boy Scout camp has been found alive after an intensive four-day search, an official said Tuesday.

 

Brennan Hawkins was found just before noon near Lily Lake, about five miles northeast of the camp in the Uinta Mountains where he was last seen Friday, said Kay Godfrey, director of public relations for the Great Salt Lake Council.

 

''He has been found, he is alive, and he's in pretty good shape for an 11-year-old boy,'' Godfrey told The Associated Press.

 

Calling the rescue ''a modern-day miracle,'' Godfrey said a medical helicopter could not reach him where he was, so it was trying to find a nearby location to land. Authorities planned to take him to a hospital to be checked.

 

There was no immediate confirmation from the Summit County sheriff's office. Sheriff Dave Edmunds was believed to be at the lake, and was expected to hold a news conference later Tuesday.

 

Edmunds had said the boy would have been able to survive because the nights continue to be warm, with temperatures falling only into the 50s. The area is about 100 miles northeast of Salt Lake City.

 

But rescuers had feared that he could have fallen in a river that was swollen by heavy snow melt. The East Fork of the Bear River is within 100 yards of the road where the boy was believed to have been walking.

 

 

"(H)e's in pretty good shape for an 11-year-old boy."

-Kay Godfrey 

 

Deep-water rescue teams had searched the river while other rescuers and volunteers combed the rugged area around it.

 

On Monday, rescuers found three socks and a sandal in the river, but none belonged to Brennan. The boys' parents also sifted fruitlessly through enough clothing collected from the mountains to fill the bed of a pickup.

 

Brennan carried no food or water, and his family had said he did not have a good sense of direction.

 

Among the volunteers was Kevin Bardsley, whose 12-year-old son, Garrett, vanished last August while camping at a nearby lake. He was never found despite a weeklong search.

 

''When we came off this mountain in the winter, my friends and I decided right then, if anyone came missing, we'd be there immediately,'' said Bardsley.

No Ordinary Love

 

Sade

Temperature: 82°F 28°C

Conditions: n/a

Winds: WNW 13 MPH WNW 21 KPH

Relative Humidity: 51%

Barometer: 30.06 Steady

Visibility: 10.00 Miles 16.09 Kilometers

Feels Like: 84°F

 

 

It'll be 90 by 2 o'clock easily. :(

 

Thank God for Central Air Conditioning. :)

TNG

Still in my summer weight jammies, enjoying a cool breeze through the window

Hayden was not good.

Unified

A Course on Truth and Practical Guidance

By Roger G. Lanphear

 

 

1421

The Year China Discovered America

By Gaven Menzies

 

Fascinating read BTW

 

 

 

 

Yoga & Ayuveda

Self-Healing and Self-Realization

By David Frawley

Egypt's other pasts

By Sylvia Smith for CNN

 

 

Sunday, June 19, 2005 Posted: 1550 GMT (2350 HKT)

 

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- Although Egypt stands at the crossroads of continents and civilizations, images of pyramids, The Sphinx and mummies dominate, eclipsing its other historic cultural and religious strands.

 

Now attempts are being made to redress the balance and to put the Pharaonic period in context through an ambitious renovation project in Cairo and a series of cultural events in the United States.

 

Tourism has flourished under the watchful eyes of the Pharaohs with the majority of foreign visitors being attracted by the prospect of viewing ancient tombs and temples.

 

But this rather blinkered view of Egypt's past has been criticized because it overlooks the county's debt to the heritage of the Greeks, Romans, Copts and Islam.

 

A huge refurbishment of the old mosques in historic Cairo and the opening of the newly redone Coptic Museum has brought fresh interest in these cultures.

 

According to Mostapha Abbadi, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology and Greco-Roman studies at the University of Alexandria Egypt's history has been shaped by a series of important events, arguably the most significant being the Arab invasion.

 

During a recent address at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, he explained to the audience that the arrival of Islam and the supremacy of the Muslim religion in Egypt virtually obliterated all previous pasts. "But," he adds. "The rediscovery of Egypt in the 19th century by European scholarship changed all that."

 

The thrill and excitement of important excavations in the Valley of the Kings just over a century ago placed the Pharaohs once again center stage.

 

During a recent five-day Egyptian cultural fest in Washington DC, that included music, poetry, talks and lectures, eminent academics and media personalities looked at the myths, symbols and misconceptions about the country past and present.

 

Debates were wide-ranging but with particular focus on the relationship between the pyramid builders and modern-day Egyptians.

 

Fekhri Hassan, Petrie Professor of Archaeology at University College, London described the phenomenon that drew such attention to the Pharaohs during excavations such as that of the tomb of King Tut.

 

"There was huge emphasis on the gold and treasure. This played into a change in the intellectual climate of Europe." During the exiting years of adventure and discovery, Fekhri Hassan says, there was more emphasis on material goods, rather than enlightenment.

 

"The way Europeans started to establish status was by luxury consumption. The public were not able to see beyond the glitter and gilt. And so didn't understand the hidden meanings of Egyptian philosophy on questions of death, survival, poverty and disease."

 

At the well-attended concerts music provided the link conjuring up the Nile as Egypt's unifying force with instruments as diverse and the nye, 'oud and the drum.

 

The mighty river has served as a conduit for commerce, beliefs and travelers over many centuries, and along its banks diverse civilizations have grown up, and flourished. And this rich history was conjured up before the audience as groups of Egyptian musicians sang and played.

 

Renditions of 'Oum al Khalthoum, sufi chants and the mystical music of the Moulad led enthralled listeners well beyond the boundaries of the pyramids and time stood still as the dancers whirled and turned.

 

Only once did the dynasties of Pharaonic rulers reassert themselves when Zahi Hawass, Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, spoke of the treasures yet to be discovered.

 

"So far we have uncovered only 30 per cent of our treasures," he stated. "70 per cent are still waiting to be found. Almost every day a significant discovery is made. And the sands of Egypt still have plenty more secrets to reveal."

Updated: 01:35 PM EDT

Scientists Clone Embryos From Eggs Matured in a Lab

By Patricia Reaney, Reuters

 

COPENHAGEN (June 20) - Belgian scientists said on Monday they have cloned the first human embryos from unripe eggs matured in the laboratory, an achievement that could help to overcome a stumbling block in stem cell research.

 

 

Until now, scientists who have managed to clone human embryos have used donated mature eggs which are in short supply.

 

But researchers at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium have demonstrated that immature eggs that are not suitable for fertility treatments can be grown in the laboratory and then be used to create embryos for stem cell research and therapeutic cloning to treat a range of diseases.

 

"We've created an alternative source for human eggs for cloning," Joisiane Van der Elst, one of the researchers, told a fertility meeting.

 

Stem cells are master cells that have the capability to grow into any type of cell in the body. Scientists believe stem cells could act as a type of repair system for the body.

 

Embryonic stem cells are currently derived from very early embryos left over from infertility treatments. Scientists are also trying to create very early human embryos to mine them for stem cells for therapeutic cloning.

 

In May, researchers at Seoul University in South Korea announced they had created batches of embryonic stem cells from nine patients. They used mature eggs harvested from human females to create the cloned embryos from which the stem cells were derived.

 

Van der Elst and her colleague Bjorn Heindryckx, who presented their research at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, said about 10-15 percent of eggs retrieved during fertility treatments are too immature to be useful to patients. Most mature eggs are used for treatments.

 

"The availability of human oocytes (eggs) is a major obstacle at the moment for research into therapeutic cloning. Therefore, we consider this research important because it makes best use of more easily available biological material -- in this case, immature oocytes," said Heindryckx.

 

The Belgian scientists said the cloned embryos formed from the immature eggs grew to the 8-16 cell stage, which was too early to extract stem cells.

 

They are continuing their research to try to get the cloned embryos to the blastocyst stage when they can obtain the stem cells.

 

Although they still have a long way to go, the researchers said their ultimate goal is to develop treatments for patients who suffer from infertility.

 

"Our final goal is to use human therapeutic cloning for infertility treatment by creating artificial eggs and sperm for patients who are infertile because of absence or premature loss of eggs or sperm," Heindryckx said.