New study identifies a “Happiness Gene”

… The 5-HTT gene, which provides the operating code for serotonin transporters in our neuron cell walls, has a variation (or allele) which can be either long or short. The long allele is more efficient, resulting in increased gene expression and thus more serotonin transporters in the cell membrane. Inheriting the gene from both parents, each of us will have a genotype which can be long-long, short-short or a combination of the two alleles.

The study compared the subject’s genetic type with their answer to the question “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?” – to which they could give one of five possible answers: very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied or neither.

The results showed that a much higher proportion of those with the efficient (long-long) version of the gene were either very satisfied (35 per cent) or satisfied (34 per cent) with their life – compared to 19 per cent in both categories for those with the less efficient (short-short) form. Conversely, 26 per cent of those with the short-short allele were dissatisfied, compared to only 20 per cent of those with the long-long variant.

The study showed that possessing one long allele increases the likelihood of being very satisfied with life by 8.5 per cent as compared to having no long alleles of the 5-HTT gene. For two long alleles, the average likelihood of being very satisfied with life rose by 17 per cent in the study population.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve said: “It has long been suspected that this gene plays a role in mental health but this is the first study to show that it is instrumental in shaping our individual happiness levels.”

“The results of our study suggest a strong link between happiness and this functional variation in the 5-HTT gene. Of course, our well-being isn’t determined by this one gene – other genes and especially experience throughout the course of life will continue to explain the majority of variation in individual happiness. But this finding helps to explain why we each have a unique baseline level of happiness and why some people tend to be naturally happier than others, and that’s in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up.”

Source: Medical News Today [May 05, 2011]

via The Archaeology News Network: New study identifies a “Happiness Gene”.

Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved

… There has been a long-lived bit of Apollo moon landing folklore that now appears to be a dead-end affair: microbes on the moon.

The lunar mystery swirls around the Apollo 12 moon landing and the return to Earth by moonwalkers of a camera that was part of an early NASA robotic lander – the Surveyor 3 probe.

On Nov. 19, 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean made a precision landing on the lunar surface in Oceanus Procellarum, Latin for the Ocean of Storms. Their touchdown point was a mere 535 feet (163 meters) from the Surveyor 3 lander — and an easy stroll to the hardware that had soft-landed on the lunar terrain years before, on April 20, 1967. [Video: Apollo 12 Visits Surveyor 3 Probe]

The Surveyor 3 camera was easy pickings and brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew. When scientists analyzed the parts in a clean room, they found evidence of microorganisms inside the camera.

In short, a small colony of common bacteria — Streptococcus Mitis — had stowed away on the device.

  The astrobiological upshot as deduced from the unplanned experiment was that 50 to 100 of the microbes appeared to have survived launch, the harsh vacuum of space, three years of exposure to the moon’s radiation environment, the lunar deep-freeze at an average temperature of minus 253 degrees Celsius, not to mention no access to nutrients, water or an energy source.

Now, fast forward to today. …

A diligent team of researchers is now digging back into historical documents — and even located and reviewed NASA’s archived Apollo-era 16 millimeter film — to come clean on the story.

As it turns out, there’s a dirty little secret that has come to light about clean room etiquette at the time the Surveyor 3 camera was scrutinized.

“The claim that a microbe survived 2.5 years on the moon was flimsy, at best, even by the standards of the time,” said John Rummel, chairman of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Panel on Planetary Protection. “The claim never passed peer review, yet has persisted in the press — and on the Internet — ever since.” [Coolest New Moon Discoveries]

The Surveyor 3 camera-team thought they had detected a microbe that had lived on the moon for all those years, “but they only detected their own contamination,” Rummel told SPACE.com. …

via Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved – Yahoo! News.

Finger length clue to motor neurone disease

The length of a person’s fingers could reveal their risk of motor neurone disease, according to a study.

UK researchers measured the finger length of 110 people, including 47 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of the disease.

The study, in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, suggests a link between a longer fourth finger relative to the index finger and ALS.

Experts say finger length cannot help screen for ALS and more work is needed.

The ratio between the fingers has already been linked to many traits, including sporting prowess and aggression, and is believed to be set in the womb.

Experts believe a longer fourth finger relative to the index finger could be partly determined by how much exposure a baby has to the male hormone testosterone before birth.

Indeed, men often do have slightly longer ring fingers than index fingers, while women often do not.

And experts know that motor neurons need testosterone for survival and repair, and men who are born without the ability to use testosterone in the normal way develop a form of motor neuron degeneration.

Dr Brian Dickie of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, said: “This simple, but carefully conducted study raises some interesting questions about how events occurring before birth may increase the risk of developing motor neuron disease later in life.

“But it’s important to remember that exposure to higher testosterone in the womb does not directly cause motor neuron disease.

“Many people with long ring fingers will never develop motor neuron disease as we believe there are numerous genetic and environmental factors that need to coincide in order to trigger the disease.”

via BBC News – Finger length clue to motor neurone disease.

Milk Hill “alien” crop circle sumbols.

Milk Hill 2009 showed an amazing series of astronomical hieroglyphs, stretching across the green field for approximately 500 meters:

via Milk Hill of June 2009 seems to predict a new, bright astronomical object in our solar system, possibly a comet or even an “extra planet”, on the new Moon of June 1, 2011.

Wernher von Braun’s contribution to Nazi V-2 rocket questioned

Newly unearthed documents challenge whether Wernher von Braun, Nazi physicist and crucial figure in the US space programme, was really the inventor of Hitler’s infamous V-2 rocket.German academic Uta Mense has discovered a bitter rivalry between von Braun and colleagues at the Nazi rocket base Peenemünde, one of whom told the Americans von Braun had had nothing to do with the V-2. More than 3,000 Vergeltungswaffe 2 (Vengeance Weapon 2) ballistic missiles were launched in the final years of World War II.

Paul Schröder worked with von Braun at the Nazi military research facility on the Baltic Sea coast, testing and developing the Aggregat-4, which would become the V-2 rockets. They were two of the four section leaders at the huge facility.

Mense, a researcher at the Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus, has found documents which Schröder wrote, criticising von Braun’s work, and even later warning the Americans he was making mistakes.

He said von Braun had been excluded from all decision-making in the Aggregate-4 rocket development after having disgraced himself with a series of failed experiments.

This would change the accepted notion of von Braun having been the genius physicist who had been working for the Nazis but was secretly spirited out of defeated Germany in Operation Paperclip, and taken to the United States.

There he was held as a prisoner of war, but by 1950 he was employed by the US Army at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, a crucial part of American attempts to get a head start against the Soviets in rocket, satellite and then space development. Mense’s new evidence puts this into doubt – she has dug up previously-unseen papers from Schröder’s belongings.

Schröder was not taken from Germany as part of Operation Paperclip, but made his own way there in 1952 where he worked for the US Air Force. He later moved into the aerospace industry and returned to Germany in 1958.

She found letters Schröder wrote warning American authorities of mistakes von Braun was making which he said could hinder the development of rocket technology. And his was not the only voice raised against von Braun – Mense has also found evidence that other Peenemünde colleagues were speaking out against him.

She is due to publicise further details from her research at Greifswald University on May 27 as part of a conference marking the 20th anniversary of the museum at Peenemünde.

via Wernher von Braun’s contribution to Nazi V-2 rocket questioned – The Local.

Two-headed baby born in China

video here.

The babies were born by caesarean on Thursday at the Suining City Central Hospital in Sichuan. The twins weighed 9 pounds (4 kilograms) and measured 20 inches (51 centimetres), according to local press reports.

The parents, who are migrant farmers living outside of the southwestern city, did not learn of the abnormality until two days before the mother was due to give birth.

Two ultra sound scans in September and February failed to reveal the two heads because the technicians were viewing the single embryo in profile.

Doctors consider separating the babies, who have separate spines and esophaguses but share major organs, almost impossible.

“It is hard to say how they will survive in the future but we will try the best to keep them alive at the moment,” said Pu Youhua, a doctor with Suining Hospital.

The pair have now been moved to a hospital in nearby Chongqing for further examination.

via Video: Two-headed baby born in China – Telegraph.

Shirley the chain-smoking orangutan reveals the cruel horror of Malaysian zoos

A trip to the zoo should fill any animal fan with a sense of joy wonder, but in Malaysia the experience inspires revulsion.

Crocodiles struggle in waterless enclosures while lions and tigers are trapped in boxes barely big enough to house them, leaving no room to roam around.

But worst of all is the plight of Shirley, a 25-year-old orangutan, who competes with cage-mate Abu for cigarette butts thrown by tourists to satisfy her smoking habit.

The government-run zoo in in Johor Baru has erected a ‘no smoking’ sign but that will do precious little to stop the sad practice while attendants turn their backs on it.

Shirley spends much of her sad existence tearing apart drinks cans and chewing on food wrappers thrown at her by visitors.

She regularly reaches through the bars of her cage to beg for cigarettes.

Attempts by the Malaysian government’s wildlife ministry Perhilitan to clamp-down on the appalling conditions in the country’s zoos, rated among the worst in the world, have been virtually ignored.

Last October a new law was passed that gave the zoos six moths to clean up their act but when the June deadline passes there will have been shamefully little progress made.

Ten zoos in the country were investigated last week and animals were still found living in tiny, dirty enclosures, sometimes without water for drinking or swimming. …

Some animals were being made to perform, despite the practise being banned, but worst of all was the example of one zoo that had been obtaining its animals on the black market.

Non-profit British charity Nature Alert has worked hard to prick the conscience of the Malaysian government but with obvious indifference to the new regulations, it says the time has come to focus international attention on a problem for which a wealthy country has no excuse.

‘The government makes promise after promise. They never keep any of them, but I will hold their feet to the fire until they do,’ Sean Whyte of Nature Alert told The Mirror. …

via Shirley the chain-smoking orangutan reveals the cruel horror of Malaysian zoos | Mail Online.

Local pastor made up elaborate Navy SEAL tale

In the wake of the dramatic Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound earlier this month, it was perhaps to be expected that some expansive soul would step forward to claim the prestige of a fabricated tour as a SEAL for himself. Such tall tales are not uncommon, after all, amid high-profile military actions.

This time the exposed fabricator was a preacher–though at least one person who monitors this brand of public lie notes that members of the clergy are often tempted into such misrepresentations. More curious still, the prevaricator in question seems to have lifted at least some details of his account from the 1992 Steven Seagal SEAL-themed blockbuster, “Under Siege.”

Yes, as his area newspaper, the central Pennsylvania Patriot-News, pulled together a dispatch on the exploits of the elite Navy operation, Jim Moats, the pastor at Christian Bible Fellowship Church in Newville, Penn., spun some fantastical details of his alleged time as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War.

Moats told his church for five years that he was a former SEAL, and even once wore the elite program’s gold Trident medal around town. He elaborated on that tale when his local paper contacted him last week as it was reporting a story about the rigors of SEAL training in the wake of the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

Among other things, Moats said he was subjected to waterboarding when he trained at Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach in 1971 and was assigned dishwashing duty for his bad attitude. “I had almost no discipline. I was as wild as they came. That was my nemesis,” he told the paper. “They weren’t looking for a guy who brags to everyone he is a SEAL. They wanted somebody who was ready but had an inner confidence and didn’t have a braggadocio attitude.”

Several former SEALs wrote into The Patriot-News casting doubt on the reverend’s account of his service.

“We deal with these guys all the time, especially the clergy. It’s amazing how many of the clergy are involved in those lies to build that flock up,” said retired SEAL Don Shipley. Shipley also speculated the waterboarding and kitchen details came from the action depicted in “Under Siege.”

Moats fessed up to his whopper, and admitted he bought the Trident medal at a military surplus store. …

via Local pastor made up elaborate Navy SEAL tale – Yahoo! News.

Revealed: The truth about near-death experiences

… No one knows for sure, but scientists believe as many as one in ten of us will have a near-death experience, most likely during cardiac arrest.

Typically, we will see a light, travel through a tunnel, have an encounter with a lost loved one or float above ourselves and watch doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate us.

Those who have had such experiences often describe profound moments of joy and insight that change them for ever.

Many believe they have had a glimpse of the afterlife, an experience that shores up their faith and leaves them unafraid of death. To them, it is real, lucid and precious. …

It might come as something of a shock, then, for them to learn that a respected American neurologist believes he can explain all the symptoms of near-death experience in physiological terms — terms that would firmly close the door on thoughts of souls departing for the afterlife before returning to Earth.

Kevin Nelson, Professor of Neurology at the University of Kentucky, has been studying near-death experiences for more than 30 years.

In his new book, The God Impulse — Is Religion Hardwired Into The Brain?, he puts forward explanations for all elements of the near-death experience, but central to his argument is the involvement of REM — rapid eye movement.

This is the time during sleep when we dream most and during which the sleeper is paralysed apart from the eye muscles, heart and diaphragm (which controls breathing).

Professor Nelson believes that some people are more susceptible than others to a condition called ‘REM intrusion’, where the paralysis that accompanies REM happens while an individual is awake — and is often accompanied by vivid hallucinations.

Research conducted by Professor Nelson examined the cases of 55 people who had described having a near-death experience.

Of those, 60 per cent had previously had episodes of REM intrusion, compared with only 24 per cent in a group of people chosen at random.

‘Instead of passing directly between the REM state and wakefulness, the brains of those with a near- death experience are more likely to blend the two states into one another,’ he says.

This places the subject into what he calls the ‘borderlands’ of consciousness. …

‘Many people enter this unstable borderland for only a few seconds or minutes before emerging into REM or waking,’ he says.

‘In the borderland, paralysis, lights, hallucinations and dreaming can come to us. During a crisis such as a cardiac arrest, the borderland could explain much of what we know as the near-death experience.’

But what about the light, the tunnel, the spiritual encounters and out-of-body experiences? He has explanations for these, too.

In his study, Professor Nelson found that the symptoms of near-death experiences happened in fainting as well as during life-or-death traumas such as heart attacks.

But what most of these episodes have in common is a temporary interruption of blood flow to the brain.

‘Normally, 20 per cent of the blood the heart pumps sustains the brain,’ he says. ‘If the blood flow is reduced to a third of its normal supply,  the brain remains immediately active, but after ten to 20 seconds, it  loses consciousness.

‘The brain sustains no injury, even if this flow rate lasts for hours. At these marginal flows, a person may slip in and out of consciousness.

‘A great deal of what happens in the brain during near-death experiences comes about because of a reaction to the crisis of having low blood flow, regardless of how briefly. When blood is draining from the head, just before consciousness is lost, the tissue that is most sensitive to failure is not the brain, it is actually the eye, the retina.

‘When the retina fails, darkness ensues and it fails from the outside inwards, producing the characteristic tunnel vision.

‘The light at the end of the tunnel could come from two different sources. It could be from ambient light — such as the background light in a hospital emergency room — which may be all the brain can recognise as blood drains from the head.

‘Alternatively, the REM system, which is known for its robust activation of the visual system, could generate light internally, within the brain.’

But people don’t just see the tunnel — they feel themselves travelling through it. How can this be?

‘Well, the area of the brain associated with out-of-body experiences, the temporoparietal region, is right next to the area that is responsible for our sensation of motion,’ he says.

‘Normally, this area gets turned off during REM sleep, but in some cases it could be that this process does not function properly, and that during  the transition into REM, the brain experiences a sense of motion.’

That explains the visions, the light and tunnel, but what about the floating out-of-body experience? And the sensation of being dead?

The dead bit is easy — this is down to the fact that sleepers are paralysed during REM sleep, otherwise they might hurt themselves acting out their dreams.

To explain the out-of-body floating, Professor Nelson refers to a piece of research conducted by a neurologist in Switzerland called Olaf Blanke.

Blanke and his colleagues made an astonishing discovery one day while preparing a 43-year-old woman for surgery. She was suffering from seizures and the surgeons were applying electrical impulses to her brain to try to find out from where the problem was emanating.

Suddenly, the woman, who had to be conscious for the procedure, said she had floated outside her body and was looking down on herself. The electrical current was switched off and she returned to her body.

‘The woman’s sense of being in or out of her body came and went with the mechanical predictability of turning on a light switch,’ says Professor Nelson.

‘The person manning the switch moved her consciousness at will. It was as if the elevator “up” button for an out-of-body experience had been discovered.’

Finally, feelings of bliss could be accounted for by the brain’s reward system. During moments of extreme crisis, the body releases chemicals that provide a sense of relaxation and well-being.

This is thought to be an evolutionary quirk that stems back to prehistoric times. If a hunting party had been cornered by a predator and was sure to be killed, it made it easier for the rest of  the group to escape if the victim did not struggle too much.

The predator would expend time and energy consuming one victim, making it easier for the others to avoid the same fate. …

via Revealed: The truth about near-death experiences | Mail Online.

Proton dripping tests a fundamental force in nature

K500 superconducting cyclotron at Texas A&M University that achieved the first sightings of flourine-14.

Like gravity, the strong interaction is a fundamental force of nature. It is the essential “glue” that holds atomic nuclei—composed of protons and neutrons— together to form atoms, the building blocks of nearly all the visible matter in the universe. Despite its prevalence in nature, researchers are still searching for the precise laws that govern the strong force. However, the recent discovery of an extremely exotic, short-lived nucleus called fluorine-14 in laboratory experiments may indicate that scientists are gaining a better grasp of these rules.Fluorine-14 comprises nine protons and five neutrons. It exists for a tiny fraction of a second before a proton “drips” off, leaving an oxygen-13 nucleus behind. A team of researchers led by James Vary, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, first predicted the properties of fluorine-14 with the help of scientists in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Computational Research Division, as well as supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. These fundamental predictions served as motivations for experiments conducted by Vladilen Goldberg’s team at Texas A&M’s Cyclotron Institute, which achieved the first sightings of fluorine-14.

“This is a true testament to the predictive power of the underlying theory,” says Vary. “When we published our theory a year ago, fluorine-14 had never been observed experimentally. In fact, our theory helped the team secure time on their newly commissioned cyclotron to conduct their experiment. Once their work was done, they saw virtually perfect agreement with our theory.”

He notes that the ability to reliably predict the properties of exotic nuclei with supercomputers helps pave the way for researchers to cost-effectively improve designs of nuclear reactors, to predict results from next generation accelerator experiments that will produce rare and exotic isotopes, as well as to better understand phenomena such as supernovae and neutron stars.

“We will never be able to travel to a neutron star and study it up close, so the only way to gain insights into its behavior is to understand how exotic nuclei like fluorine-14 behave and scale up,” says Vary.

via Proton dripping tests a fundamental force in nature.