Clipmarks | arifsali's clips

Einstein was right, McGill astrophysicists say

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:30:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Observations of unique twin-pulsar star system show effects of general relativity

Researchers at McGill University’s Department of Physics - along with colleagues from several countries - have confirmed a long-held prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, via observations of a binary-pulsar star system. Their results will be published July 3 in the journal Science.

Pulsars are small, ultradense stellar objects left behind after massive stars die and explode as supernovae. They typically have a mass greater than that of our Sun, but compressed to the size of a city like Montreal. They spin at staggering speeds, generate huge gravity fields and emit powerful beams of radio waves along their magnetic poles. These illuminate Earth-based radio-telescopes like rotating lighthouse beacons as the pulsar spins. More than 1,700 pulsars have been discovered in our galaxy

Tags: science, einstein

Enlisting your email client to help fight email overload

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:12:38 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: This is very helpful article from the Zenbe team (for those who may be using Zenbe).

Clip Source: blog.zenbe.com

There are many articles being written about email overload these days, and as many articles on how to deal it. Most productivity experts generally agree there are two solutions: 1. Don’t get interrupted so often; deal with emails in scheduled time blocks. 2. Handle email in a systematic way, like using GTD. But they don’t talk much about what email clients can do to help. In fact, many recommend against using the automation features found in most email clients.

Why should we not use the computer in front of us to help? After all, computers are supposed to be productivity tools. I think the main reason is because email clients were designed long ago, in an era when people got far fewer emails in a day. Not much has changed in email client designs in decades and they simply lack the features. We need modern tools to deal with modern problems.

Today I will introduce you to the first set of tools we have in Zenbe to help with the battle against email overload.

Tags: email, information

Doctors Find Meditation Affects Your Body

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:44:51 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: A Preliminary Study Shows Meditating Turns off Stress-Related Genes

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

It turns out peaceful thoughts really can influence our bodies, right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA, according to a new study.

Researchers for the study, published in the Public Library of Science, took blood samples from a group of 19 people who habitually meditated or prayed for years, and 19 others who never meditated.

The researchers ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes -- about 1,000 of them -- than the nonmeditating group.

The more these stress-related genes are expressed, the more the body will have a stress response like high blood pressure or inflammation. Over long periods of time, these stress responses can worsen high blood pressure, pain syndromes and other conditions.

By the end of the training, the novice meditating group was also suppressing stress-related genes, although at lower levels than those of the long-term meditating people.

Tags: meditation, science, research

Dinner in the Sky

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:37:58 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: wvs.topleftpixel.com

Dinner in the Sky is a great event brought to Toronto's Dundas Square by AMEX. 24 people get lifted about 50 meters to enjoy their food in the sky. Flickr set here.

Tags: canada

Hitler wax figure unveiled in Berlin

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:31:10 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

Berlin's new waxwork museum on Thursday unveiled a figure of a glum-looking Adolf Hitler in a mock bunker during the last days of his life, an exhibit that has been criticised as in bad taste.

The row over the figure overshadowed the media preview of the new branch of Madame Tussauds which opens its doors to the public on Saturday.

Critics say it is inappropriate to display the Nazi dictator, who started World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews and other minorities, in a museum alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting heroes.

"Of course the figure will arouse interest but we hope people will realise he is part of an exhibition with a range of attractions," said Meike Schulze, head of Midway Attractions in Germany which is responsible for Madame Tussauds here. "It will be a shame if he dominates everything." Her plea appeared to be falling on deaf ears.

Tags: hitler, germany

Exhibit aims to shatter US stereotypes of Islam

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:53:47 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - In the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Princess Wijdan Al Hashemi and her friend Aliki Moschis-Gauguet noticed that the only depictions they saw of Muslim women showed figures behind veils, oppressed by their cultures.

Moschis-Gauget said, "'Do you see what's going on the media?... Muslim women are being portrayed as women living behind long veils,'" said Al Hashemi, founder and director of the Royal Society of Fine Arts of Jordan. "She couldn't stand the way Muslim and Arab women were being portrayed."

Al Hashemi and Moschis-Gauguet, president of the Pan-Mediterranean Women Artists Network, turned to the world they knew best to find an answer: the world of art.

To combat what they saw as misperceptions about the Muslim world and Arab nations, the two women teamed up to create a traveling exhibit featuring female artists from Islamic countries.

The show "Breaking the Veils: Women Artists From the Islamic World"

Tags: art, culture, islam, religion, women

More A-Theists Than We Realize

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:59:37 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: newsweek.washingtonpost.com

The problem with this question is in the definition of an atheist. Literally, that word means “not to believe in a theistic deity.”

Theism is attached to the concept of an external, supernatural deity, who intervenes in human history to accomplish some divine purpose or to answer prayers. In the light of the work of Galileo, who made the theistic God above the sky homeless, and Isaac Newton, who rendered the theistic God to be unemployed, theism has come on bad days.

Theism, however, is not God; it is a human definition of God that is dated and inadequate. Professional theologians hardly ever talk about a theistic God, yet none of them are atheists in the sense of asserting that there is no God.

It is a pity that theological knowledge so seldom makes it down to the people in the pews. It seems from this Pew Survey, however, that it might be making it in the ranks of the atheists.

Former Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Newark

Grisly Human Sacrifice Revealed at Syria Dig

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:59:07 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Around 2300 B.C., an acrobat was killed during a bizarre sacrificial ceremony in what is now northeastern Syria, according to a new study published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity

Gory evidence of the entertainer's death -- along with the remains of several rare horse-like animals which appear to have been sacrificed as well -- was found in the remains of a building at a site called Tell Brak, which was once the ancient city of Nagar. The findings suggest some ancient cultures may have sacrificed well-known public figures, as well as animals of great personal and monetary worth.

Joan Oates, lead author of the paper, and her colleagues were struck by the arrangement of three human bodies in the reception and main office portion of the ancient building. They describe the skeletal layout as "unusual, indeed strange."

Tags: syria, archaeology, culture

The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:25:30 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.linkinn.com

Clip Source: www.thedeepbook.org

The Deep
The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
By Claire Nouvian

Tags: fish, sea

Spiritual effects of hallucinogens persist, research

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:18:55 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Writing in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the Johns Hopkins researchers note that most of the 36 volunteer subjects given psilocybin, under controlled conditions in a Hopkins study published in 2006, continued to say 14 months later that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," says lead investigator

Psilocybin, a plant alkaloid, exerts its influence on some of the same brain receptors that respond to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in some cultures for hundreds of years or more

Tags: science, religion

In Stone Age Caves, Art and Music Mixed

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:12:01 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

At least 12,000 years ago, the most popular musical events might have taken place in torch-lit caves next to walls covered in art, according to new archaeological research in France.

Stone Age-era caves there bear paintings located in the most acoustically resonant places, where sound lingers or echoes.

The first cathedrals, theaters and concert halls, researchers now theorize, may have been inspired by musical performances held in caves.

"I am a specialist of the resonance of buildings and spaces, particularly of the resonance of Romanesque churches," Reznikoff explained. "The first time I happened to be in a prehistoric cave, I tried the resonance in various parts of the cave, and quickly the question arose: Is there a relation between resonance and locations of the paintings?"

Tags: science, prehistoric, caves

The dilemma of anti-extremist Pakistanis

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:03:00 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: The whole piece is worth reading.

Clip Source: icga.blogspot.com

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front-page article on the growth of al-Qaida in Pakistan and the failure of the Bush administration to devise any strategy to confront it.

(Instead they are apparently thinking again about attacking Iran.

As usual, the Times article presented the alternatives as do nothing, Predator missile strikes, or invasion by U.S. Special Forces, without any discussion of competing Pakistani and Pashtun political agendas for the tribal agencies.

American hypocrisy has played into the hands of Islamic militants. They have been vigorously promoting the notion that this is a bipolar conflict of Islam, which they claim to represent, versus imperialism. Many Pakistanis, who desperately want someone to stand up to the Americans, buy into this.

According to Khattak, one part of the "government of Pakistan" is at war with groups created by another part of the "government of Pakistan." A policy toward "Pakistan" cannot address this problem.

Tags: terrorism, united states, pakistan

Meet Peter Higgs, father of the 'God Particle'

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:25:11 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: To many people, the sole purpose of the LHC is to find the famous Higgs boson. James Randerson met the self-effacing man behind the legend

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Peter Higgs rarely gives interviews. The 79-year-old might be a shoo-in for a Nobel prize if the LHC finds evidence for the fundamental particle he proposed in 1964 - known as the Higgs boson or, more colourfully, the God Particle - but he is a reluctant rock-star scientist, too self-deprecating to even refer to the particle by name. He prefers to call it the "boson named after me".

Particle physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964 proposed the existence of a fundamental particle – now known as the Higgs boson – that gives all matter its mass.

Finding the Higgs boson is probably the only thing many people outside physics know about the impending experiments at Cern. And until recently, the man behind it has been as mysterious as the missing particle.

In April, Higgs visited Geneva for a peek at the LHC before it was super-cooled with liquid helium, ready for the near light-speed buzz of the first proton beam around the ring.

Tags: science

Michio Kaku explains collisions at CERN

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:16:57 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Scaremongers have warned that the collisions at Cern could unleash incalculable danger and perhaps even destroy the Earth. Michio Kaku puts some fears to rest

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

media is correctly reporting that some physicists believe that the Large Hadron Collider might produce mini black holes in its collisions, and that black holes are in general so powerful that they can swallow up not just the Earth, but whole star systems. The media also correctly reported that physicists, when pressed, cannot completely dismiss the chance of being eaten alive by these mini black holes from the LHC.

These headlines may sell newspapers, but the media conveniently downplay, or even omit, giving the full picture. First of all, mother nature can produce subatomic particles of greater energy than the puny LHC in the form of cosmic rays. These high-energy particles, which are accelerated to astronomical energies by huge magnetic and electric fields in space, have been raining down on Earth for billions of years, plenty of time to swallow up the planet - yet we are still here to write about it.

Tags: science

How Terrorism Paranoia Killed 1,600 Americans in 2002

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:12:11 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Widespread fear after 9/11 pushed people from (safe) planes to (dangerous) cars.

In the aftermath of 9/11, many Americans were so afraid of flying that they chose to drive instead. That decision, based on the perceived threat of another airliner hijacking, led to 1,600 casualties in the following year. The families of the people who died in those crashes thought they had lost them to “the routine traffic accidents we accept as the regrettable cost of living in the modern world.” Daniel Gardner begs to differ: What killed them was fear.

How do we decide what to dread, and why do we do it so badly? Threats such as asteroid impacts, online pedophiles, and terrorist attacks trigger gut reactions so powerful that they override rational thought, Gardner explains, and pretty soon we are willing to carry gas masks to protect ourselves from a chemical weapons attack—but not to exercise and eat our fruits and veggies.

Tags: fear, terrorism, united states