Space storm caught slamming into Earth’s atmosphere

A space storm has been observed exploding from a central point in Earth’s upper atmosphere for the first time. The result could one day lead to better predictions of the storms, which can harm satellites and power grids on the ground.

The energy that powers space storms comes from clouds of plasma hurled at Earth by the sun. These clouds stretch our planet’s magnetic field like a rubber band, storing energy in a long magnetic tail behind our planet.

The energy released when the field snaps back into place creates the ethereal glow of auroras (see a gallery of the light shows). It also floods the space around our planet with radiation that can incapacitate satellites and sicken astronauts, and can trigger electric currents on Earth capable of knocking out power gridsMovie Camera.

Now, scientists have obtained the clearest view yet of the energy that was released in the magnetic tail arriving and initiating a disturbance in Earth’s upper atmosphere, or ionosphere.

via Space storm caught slamming into Earth’s atmosphere – space – 26 May 2009 – New Scientist.

How I avoided two painful and expensive dental procedures

When it comes to your health, don’t trust just one expert’s view. Consult several. Keep looking until you find the best option.

I was told about a year ago that I needed a deep cleaning which would involve two dental visits and 11 shots to get me numb each time. I broke a tooth below the gum line and on the part that came out, I could see tartar (aka calculus), hard rough spots of different colored “stuff” clinging to my broken tooth.

Meanwhile, I got sick for about a month and I had swollen glands in my neck. From these symptoms, I believed I had an infection due to build up below the gum line. This is very common in adults after a certain age.

On a whim, I googled the phrase “dissolve tartar“. To my pleasant surprise, I found a solution to avoid a deep cleaning: Periogen! No tartar = no gum disease = no need for a deep cleaning.

Today, after a month of Periogen use and a few weeks of CoQ10 use, I finally had my exam–along with an ordinary dental cleaning.

RESULTS: I was told by the hygienist today that my gums look very healthy. He only found one small spot with any plaque, and said that I am very far from needing the “root scaling and planing” procedure, also known as a deep cleaning. My pocket depths were all 2′s and 3′s with two 4 millimeter readings back near where I had my wisdom teeth out.

Note: To avoid bias, I did not tell him that another dentist had recommended a deep cleaning until after I had the results.

Either Periogen did remove the tartar as it claims and did fix my gums (the CoQ10 I’ve been taking for a few weeks may have helped too)  or I previously had a dentist who was recommending a procedure I did not need. (This is the same dentist who told me I had worn down a tooth by flossing too much. I still do not think ordinary floss can damage a tooth with normal flossing, even if you saw back and forth for a minute a day… which I didn’t anyway…)

Back to my main point: Hats off to Perigen!! Healthy Gums!! No shots required!!! Not only did I have a good dental check up, but I believe that by removing the breeding grounds for gum disease bacteria, I am also improving my overall general health.

Here is how Periogen dissolves tarter:

Periogen® works by exploiting a weakness discovered by The Periogen Company in the fundamental structure of oral tartar.  Their patent pending composition and process is exclusive and cannot be found in any other gum disease treatment in the world.  All other treatments only address infections below the gum line.  Periogen® however, addresses infection and also dissolves layer after layer of disease-laden tartar with each application.

The number of Periogen® applications necessary to remove all tartar depends directly on the thickness of deposits.  Once tartar is completely removed from teeth below the gum line, natural processes restore gum-tooth connections and close periodontal pockets.  This simple and painless process facilitates complete periodontal recovery without the need for painful, expensive, and often ineffective tartar removal dental office procedures.

Tartar, above and below the gum line, is comprised primarily of calcium phosphate salts, saliva, debris and other minerals.  Visually, the structure of tartar is that of millions of fossilized bacteria bound together in tens of thousands of layers.  Up until now, tartar has been universally understood to be inert – so hard that only mechanical scraping with steel dental instruments could remove it.  Living within this porous material are fresh bacteria that ferment infection after infection.  This tartar-bacteria connection is the true nature of periodontal disease.

Periogen® does not dissolve the hardened tartar directly, but acts to dissolve the binding agents – the “cement” which holds fossilized bacteria and debris together.  Microscopic study of Periogen® in action shows that thousands of individual fossilized bacteria disconnect and float free from cemented-together tartar “communities” with each application.  Each application is as effective as the last, until tartar is dissolved into its most fundamental microscopic components.

All the while during this innovative, alternative treatment, new bacteria simply have no place to live – so infections disperse and do not return – completely naturally – without the use of powerful anti-bacterial agents.  In fact, Periogen® users can expect relief from the pain, bleeding and soreness of periodontal disease within the first few days of use.

Once periodontal pockets close to within 3 millimeters or so in depth, normal brushing and irrigating (or flossing) can maintain your newly restored dental health.  As an option, patients may continue to irrigate with Periogen® over the long-term to prevent tartar from accumulating above and below the gum line.  It has been reported that during such maintenance periods including Periogen,® routine dental visits are tartar-free and “most enjoyable.”

http://www.globaltonic.com/pages/how-periogen-works.html

One more tip: Avoid Crown Lengthening with Laser Dentistry

I also recently avoided another recommended painful and disfiguring surgical procedure known as a crown lengthening by finding a laser dentist who could cut away the gums enough to work around the one tooth. I believe this is known as laser de-epithelialization. This was just one visit to the laser dentist and did not involve lowering my gums, exposing roots of other teeth, or filing down my jaw bone.

It was slightly gross to have my gums burned away around the tooth, and it was sensitive for a week or more, but SO much better than the alternative which I learned about in detail by consulting a periodontist.

I understand the Periodontist’s explanation that a smooth surface is required for good attachment and to avoid future decay, but if the laser works, you save a huge amount of pain, money and future discomfort from exposure of the roots of your nearby teeth!

The good thing about the laser is that it encourages regrowth of Keratinized Gingiva the tough gum tissue that attaches to your teeth and protects the roots.

If the crown lengthening is done with laser therapy instead of the traditional surgical intervention, the healing will tend to be quicker and the procedure will have less swelling and discomfort as a rule. Not all lasers are appropriate for this procedure. – tgs

GPS Could Fail Next Year, Warns GAO

The U.S. Air Force may not be able to acquire new satellites in time to prevent disruption in GPS service for military and civilian users. The global positioning system could fail next year and repairs aren’t moving quickly enough to prevent failure, according a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

It’s unclear whether the U.S. Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to prevent disruption in GPS service for military and civilian users, according to the report.

The GAO said that the Air Force has struggled in recent years to stay within cost and scheduling constraints while building GPS satellites. So far, one satellite program has incurred cost overruns of $870 million and the launch of its first satellite has been pushed back three years to November 2009.

“Of particular concern is leadership for GPS acquisition, as GAO and other studies have found the lack of a single point of authority for space programs and frequent turnover in program managers have hampered requirements setting, funding stability, and resource allocation,” the report states. “If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to.”

That could have wide-ranging implications on all GPS users, although the Air Force and others can make contingency plans, the GAO report said.

via GPS Could Fail Next Year, Warns GAO — GPS — InformationWeek.

Four states adopt ‘no-smiles’ policy for driver’s licenses

Stopping driver’s license fraud is no laughing matter: Four states are ordering people to wipe the grins off their faces in their license photos.

“Neutral facial expressions” are required at departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia. That means you can’t smile, or smile very much. Other states may follow.

The serious poses are urged by DMVs that have installed high-tech software that compares a new license photo with others that have already been shot. When a new photo seems to match an existing one, the software sends alarms that someone may be trying to assume another driver’s identity.

But there’s a wrinkle in the technology: a person’s grin. Face-recognition software can fail to match two photos of the same person if facial expressions differ in each photo, says Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Takeo Kanade.

Dull expressions “make the comparison process more accurate,” says Karen Chappell, deputy commissioner of the Virginia DMV, whose no-smile policy took effect in March.

Elaine Mullen of Great Falls, Va., bristled at the policy while renewing her license until she heard the reasoning. “It’s probably safer from a national-security point of view,” she says.

Arkansas, Indiana and Nevada allow slight smiles. “You just can’t grin really large,” Arkansas driver services chief Tonie Shields says.

A total of 31 states do computerized matching of driver’s license photos and three others are considering it, says the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Most say their software matches faces regardless of expressions. “People can smile here in Pennsylvania,” state Transportation Department spokesman Craig Yetter says.

In Illinois, photo matching has stopped 6,000 people from getting fraudulent licenses since the technology was launched in 1999, says Beth Langen, the state head of Drivers Services.

via Four states adopt ‘no-smiles’ policy for driver’s licenses – USATODAY.com.

If I had it to do, I’d have my license refused for smiling, then I’d take it to court. The problem with the software is their problem, not mine.

14 cars damaged during WA couple’s stripping game

Troopers have arrested a man and a woman suspected of damaging at least 14 vehicles by throwing rocks onto them from a railroad trestle over Interstate 5 near Lakewood, Wash., as a part of a bizarre stripping game.

Trooper Guy Gill says 23-year-old Joshua N. Sizemore and 18-year-old Amanda L. Madison were tossing baseball-sized rocks from the trestle early Monday. Sizemore, of Tacoma, and Madison, of Lakewood, were booked into the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Wash., for investigation of malicious mischief and second-degree assault.

Sizemore and Madison were tracked down by troopers on the ground with assistance from a State Patrol airplane which captured video of the couple throwing rocks. Investigators say Madison was in her underwear when police caught up with the couple.

Investigators say the couple was playing a stripping game, the rules of which involved Madison shedding a layer of clothes for every left headlight the two managed to bust. The same rule applied to Sizemore and right headlights.

Gill says the vehicles that were hit included a State Patrol cruiser. One person was injured when a rock crashed through the window and bruised his arm. He did not need to be hospitalized.

via Local News | 14 cars damaged during WA couple’s stripping game | Seattle Times Newspaper.

Lunatics.

Five-million-year old sloth fossil found in Peru

The nearly intact fossil of an ancient sloth that lived 5 million years ago has been unearthed in Peru, a find about 4 million years older than similar ones discovered in the Americas, researchers said.

The sloth was found beneath the cement floor of a house in the Andean region of Espinar in southern Peru when workers were installing a water system. Parts of a giant armadillo that has also been dated to 5 million years ago were also found nearby.

The sloth, about 10 feet long, was an herbivore and lived during the Mio-Pliocene era, said paleontologist Rodolfo Salas of Peru’s Natural History Museum and one of the scientists on the dig sponsored by the French government.

“This skeleton of the sloth is especially important as it is the first complete skeleton of its kind that is 5 million years old in the Americas,” he told Reuters. “Previously, discoveries have been made of partial skeletons of similar animals, but from the Pleistocene era, meaning from the last million years.”

The sloth was found at 13,000 feet above sea level.

Salas said the sloth was relatively small compared with other animals of its type and would help researchers better understand evolution of mammals in the Andes.

Peru’s dry climate has helped preserve thousands of fossils from the Pacific coast to the Andes highlands, making it a favorite of fossil hunters.

via Five-million-year old sloth fossil found in Peru – Yahoo! News.

Hard-luck Montana town pushes to house Gitmo detainees

The tiny town of Hardin, Montana, is offering an answer to a very thorny question: Where should the nation put terror detainees if the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is shut down by the end of the year as President Obama has pledged?

Hardin, population 3,400, sits in the southeast corner of Montana, in the state’s poorest county. Its small downtown is almost deserted at midday. The Dollar Store is going out of business. The Hardin Mini Mall is already shut. The town needs jobs — and fast.

Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The jail was ready for prisoners two years ago, but has yet to house a single prisoner.

People here say politics in the capital of Helena has kept it empty. But the city council last month voted 5-0 to back a proposal to bring Gitmo detainees — some of the most hardened terrorists in the world — to the facility.

… Although the facility was intended to be used as a medium-security prison, Smith says it meets maximum-security criteria. Smith, a military veteran, doesn’t have corrections experience, but challenges anyone who doubts the security at Two Rivers.

He says he’d be glad to lock the doubters up to test it. “We will give them three days and I’ll buy the coffee in the coffee shop if they can get out. I’d be happy.”

Glyn Perkins agrees on that score. He worked for eight years in maximum security prisons in Texas and says Two Rivers is the most secure facility he has ever been in. …

via Hard-luck Montana town pushes to house Gitmo detainees – CNN.com.

Do it. Give them fair trials too. Favorite Fark comment: “Montana? I thought we were done torturing people.”

Why Chimps, Monkeys Don’t Develop Alzheimer’s

Scientists have long noticed a curious phenomenon among primates: Humans get the devastating neurological disorder known as Alzheimer’s disease, but their closest evolutionary cousins don’t.

Even more inexplicable is the fact that chimpanzee and other non-human primate brains do get clogged with the same protein plaques that are believed by many to cause the disease in humans.

The answer to this puzzle could yield valuable insight into how Alzheimer’s develops and progresses, and now researchers report they may have a clue. They report their finding in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

They found that a “tag” molecule used to track plaque build-up latches easily onto plaques in human brains but not in those of apes and monkeys, suggesting that there is a basic structural difference between the two types of plaque.

Figuring out the difference, they said, could lead to ways to render human amyloid plaques as harmless in human brains as they are in the brains of other primates.

“What this tells us, first of all, is that plaques are structurally distinct in human vs. non-human primates,” said study author Rebecca Rosen, a neuroscience doctoral candidate at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, at Emory University in Atlanta. “Why that is is a huge question [but] now we have a tool we can use to differentiate the structure [of amyloid plaques] between humans and non-human primates.”

“We can use this [tagging compound] to characterize the toxic nature of the [amyloid plaques] in the human brain in order to understand them better,” she added. “It also confirms the usefulness of the [compound, called Pittsburgh Compound B (PIB)] for diagnosing Alzheimer’s.”

But the true significance when it comes to treating or preventing the disease remains unclear, said another expert.

“This is another finding of unknown significance, but it is a finding,” said Dr. Gary J. Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. “None of us know why these higher primates don’t get Alzheimer’s disease, but we don’t know why humans get Alzheimer’s disease either. . . Where it leads us, I don’t know.”

via Why Chimps, Monkeys Don’t Develop Alzheimer’s – Yahoo! News.

N. Korea fires short-range missiles after successful nuclear bomb test

North Korea fired two short-range missiles from its east coast Tuesday — a day after conducting a nuclear test — South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, citing a South Korean official.

“The North is continuing its saber-rattling,” the unnamed official said.

The firings came a day after the reclusive communist state conducted a nuclear test and fired another short-range missile.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said Tuesday the international community would not be intimidated by North Korea’s “provocative and destabilizing” missile tests.

“If they want to continue to test and provoke the international community, they’re going to find that they will pay a price, because the international community is very clear — this is not acceptable, it won’t be tolerated, and they won’t be intimidated,” Rice told CNN’s “American Morning.”

The U.N. Security Council — which includes North Korea’s closest ally, China — on Monday unanimously condemned Pyongyang’s nuclear test as a “clear violation” of international law.

After passing the non-binding statement of criticism, the Security Council is now working on passing “a strong resolution with teeth,” Rice said. “Those teeth could take various different forms – they are economic levers, they are other levers that we might pursue,” she said.

North Korea agreed in 2008 to scrap its nuclear weapons program — which it said had produced enough plutonium for about seven atomic bombs — in exchange for economic aid. But the deal foundered over verification and disclosure issues, and the North expelled international inspectors and announced plans to restart its main nuclear reactor.

Russia, France and Japan have signaled support for new sanctions against North Korea, already one of the most isolated nations in the world.

North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006. Pyongyang had threatened last month to carry out a new test after the Security Council condemned its test-firing of a long-range rocket and extended economic sanctions against the nation, which is in dire need of food and energy assistance.

Monday’s blast, conducted just before 10 a.m. (9 p.m. Sunday ET) showed up on seismographs with the punch of a magnitude 4.7 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Russia estimated the force of Monday’s blast at 10 to 20 kilotons, in the neighborhood of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs of World War II and far larger than the 2006 test.

via ‘Saber-rattling’ N. Korea fires short-range missiles – CNN.com.

Rooks are latest bird to use tools

Yet another animal has picked up a tool and put it to use.

Once thought a unique primate trait, toolmaking and tool use have been seen in a variety of animals in recent years. Now add to the list rooks, a bird once featured in European folklore as able to forecast the weather.

Rooks are not known to make or use tools in the wild, but quickly came up with the idea when confronted with problems in laboratory tests, British researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Faced with food that could only be obtained by pushing a small stone off a ledge into a tube, rooks quickly mastered the skill.

And when the stone was placed elsewhere, they didn’t take long to decide to pick it up and carry it to the tube, according to researchers Christopher D. Bird of the University of Cambridge and Nathan J. Emery of Queen Mary College, London.

A female bird, Fry, was first to figure out picking up the stone, followed by her mate Cook. A second pair, Connelly and Monroe, also mastered the task.

The birds also succeeded at other tasks involving sticks, wire and even one where they had figure out how to bend a wire into a hook to retrieve an item.

“We suggest that this is the first unambiguous evidence of animal insight because the rooks made a hook tool on their first trial and we know that they had no previous experience of making hook tools from wire because the birds were all hand-raised,” Emery said in a statement.

The wire-bending task repeated the effort of Betty, a New Caledonian crow, who pioneered that skill in a report released in 2002 by the University of Oxford. New Caledonian crows, however, were already known to use tools in the wild.

Many animal species are now known to use tools, ranging from otters and herons to monkeys and chimpanzees. Indeed, Emery and Bird report that as many as 39 species of birds are estimated to use tools in one way of another.

Their research was funded by the Royal Society and University of Cambridge.

via Rooks are latest bird to use tools – Yahoo! News.

Calling someone a “bird brain” isn’t quite the insult it once was.