Where’s That Radioactive Sulfur Now? Possibly In Your Pants

On a normal day, (Antra) Priyadarshi sees between 180 and 475 sulfur-35 atoms as sulfates per cubic meter of air, but on the 28th, her team recorded about 1500. “No one has ever seen such a high percentage of the stratospheric air coming into the marine-bound layer,” she says.

via Fukushima Reactor Damage Picked Up in California Winds – ScienceNOW.

The researchers surmise the sulfur was produced when emergency workers at Fukushima flooded the nuclear plant’s runaway reactors with seawater to cool the melting fuel rods. Neutrons emitted by the fuel rods struck chlorine atoms in the water, forming sulfur-35 that escaped from the plant in the form of steam.

Prevailing winds carried the sulfur toward California, the researchers contend. They estimate that only about 0.7 percent of the radioactive sulfur emitted at Fukushima reached the California coast.

The California Air Resources Board estimates that Californians inhale 10-50 liters of air per minute during normal activities ranging from sitting to running. A liter equals 0.001 cubic meters, meaning Californians may have inhaled only about 360 radioactive sulfur atoms on that day—or more.

Priyadarshi’s co-author, Mark Thiemens, assured The Los Angeles Times that the levels observed pose no threat to Californians. ”The levels we observed are in no way harmful in California,” Thiemens said.

Many scientists agree such tiny amounts of radiation pose no risk—except for those scientists who contend that all additional radiation poses additional risk.

Sulfur-35 is a weak beta emitter. All but 20 percent of the radiation it emits is halted by the dead layer of skin at the surface of the human body, according to the Health Physics Society. However, the body more readily absorbs ingested or inhaled sulfur.

Sulfur-35 has a half-life of 87.5 days outside of the body, but a biological half-life of 623 days, according to Michigan State University’s Office of Radiation, Chemical & Biological Safety.

Most universities advise employees to handle volatile Sulfur-35 within a hooded enclosure.

Sulfur-35 is absorbed by the entire body but is of particular concern to men because it tends to concentrate in the testicles, according to a Nuclide Safety Data Sheet from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Beta radiation occurring there could damage neighboring cells.

The San Diego researchers published their findings Monday in the Publication of the National Academy of Sciences.

via Where’s That Radioactive Sulfur Now? Possibly In Your Pants – Forbes.

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection

Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.

Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them — including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.

The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory’s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.

Because the technology is so broad-spectrum, it could potentially also be used to combat outbreaks of new viruses, such as the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, Rider says. …

Rider drew inspiration for his therapeutic agents, dubbed DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers), from living cells’ own defense systems.

When viruses infect a cell, they take over its cellular machinery for their own purpose — that is, creating more copies of the virus. During this process, the viruses create long strings of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), which is not found in human or other animal cells.

As part of their natural defenses against viral infection, human cells have proteins that latch onto dsRNA, setting off a cascade of reactions that prevents the virus from replicating itself. However, many viruses can outsmart that system by blocking one of the steps further down the cascade.

Rider had the idea to combine a dsRNA-binding protein with another protein that induces cells to undergo apoptosis (programmed cell suicide) — launched, for example, when a cell determines it is en route to becoming cancerous. Therefore, when one end of the DRACO binds to dsRNA, it signals the other end of the DRACO to initiate cell suicide.

…Most of the tests reported in this study were done in human and animal cells cultured in the lab, but the researchers also tested DRACO in mice infected with the H1N1 influenza virus. When mice were treated with DRACO, they were completely cured of the infection. The tests also showed that DRACO itself is not toxic to mice.

The researchers are now testing DRACO against more viruses in mice and beginning to get promising results. Rider says he hopes to license the technology for trials in larger animals and for eventual human clinical trials.

This work is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the New England Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, with previous funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and Director of Defense Research & Engineering (now the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering).

via New drug could cure nearly any viral infection – MIT News Office.

Texas-Sized ‘White Arrow’ Found on Titan

Experts investigating Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn, recently discovered a white arrow on the object’s surface. About the size of Texas, this structure went unexplained for quite some time. Now, scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles propose an explanation for its existence.

The UCLA team says that these sharp, surprising cloud shapes are produced via a stenciling effect. The effect itself is produced by atmospheric waves that act at a planetary scale, influencing the odd moon’s climate patterns to a great extent.

Astronomers have known for years that Titan’s atmosphere is very odd, although very similar to Earth’s in many respects. The new investigation was conducted using data collected by the NASA Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since July 1, 2004.

In the past seven years, Cassini has snapped countless images of the gas giant, its ring system and its moons, allowing astronomers to better understand how this system functions. However, the more in-depth studies were conducted of Titan, the more its atmosphere revealed amazing features.

“These atmospheric waves are somewhat like the natural, resonant vibration of a wine glass. Individual clouds might ‘ring the bell,’ so to speak, and once the ringing starts, the clouds have to respond to that vibration,” says Jonathan L. Mitchell.

The UCLA team leader holds an appointment as an assistant professor of Earth and space sciences, and of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. He explains that these sharp clouds, including the white arrow-shaped one, can produce intense precipitations. …

via Texas-Sized ‘White Arrow’ Found on Titan – Softpedia.

Might want to have someone take a look at Titan right where that arrow is pointing, in case someone is trying to tell us something.

Why did Japan surrender?

On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history.

In recent years, however, a new interpretation of events has emerged. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa – a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara – has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

“Hasegawa has changed my mind,” says Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” “The Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by the two bombings.”

President Truman’s decision to go nuclear has long been a source of controversy. Many, of course, have argued that attacking civilians can never be justified. Then, in the 1960s, a “revisionist school” of historians suggested that Japan was in fact close to surrendering before Hiroshima – that the bombing was not necessary, and that Truman gave the go-ahead primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union with our new power.

Hasegawa – who was born in Japan and has taught in the United States since 1990, and who reads English, Japanese, and Russian – rejects both the traditional and revisionist positions. According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation …

via Why did Japan surrender? – The Boston Globe.

This idea seems to me to support the Roswell-Russia connection.

Area 51, the new book by Annie Jacobsen, is based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in the top-secret test base in the Nevada Desert.

It dismisses the alien story and puts forward the theory that Stalin was inspired by Orson Welles’s famous radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds, which provoked hysteria across America when broadcast in 1938.

According to the book, the plot started after the Soviet Union seized from Germany at the end of the war the jet-propelled, single wing Horten Ho 229 – a fighter said to be the forerunner of the modern B-2 stealth bomber.

This is where Mengele enters the story. The Nazi doctor, who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and fled to South America after the war, was supposedly enlisted to create a crew of ”grotesque, child-size aviators” in return for a eugenics laboratory.

The book says that the plane was filled with ”alien-like” children, aged 12 or 13, who Stalin wanted to land in America and cause hysteria similar to the 1938 broadcast. But the remotely piloted plane crashed and the Americans hushed up the incident. – link

What everyone leaves out is the fact that the military base near Roswell was, at the time, the one place the USA was keeping its secret weapon, the atomic bomb. The Soviets may have known or suspected this and shining a light on the area may have been a reason for selecting the destination for a planned crash of an “alien” space ship. Certainly the news brought all kinds of reporters to the area and sparked world wide interest. The Roswell crash as a Soviet intelligence operation makes some sense. It was bound to shake out news about the base that would be of interest.

Ontario city mystified by whole lotta shakin’ underground

For months, residents of south and west Windsor have been wondering and worrying about vibrations of unknown origin.

And now, those mysterious rumblings under the city have found a new believer — the city’s Ward 10 Coun. Al Maghnieh, who says it’s time to start taking the phenomenon seriously.

“It’s very present and real,” he said.

Maghnieh added that those who think the phenomenon is a joke or that its proponents are “crazy” need to grasp the implications in terms of health and the environment.

“I mean, it’s actually scary to think that this is going on and we still can’t pinpoint what it is,” he said.

“This is potentially very dangerous.”

Maghnieh said he first started receiving calls from concerned citizens back in March.

But it wasn’t until the early hours of Friday morning — when he’d arranged to visit the homes of rumble witnesses — that he experienced the sensation himself.

“It’s a very sharp, consistent rumble sound,” Maghnieh said. “Sometimes it’s like a hum.”

The city councillor said that at one point, he put a half-full water bottle on the ground and could see the vibrations causing ripples on the water’s surface.

At another point, he could hear the aluminum siding of a house rattle due to the vibrations.

“It was very obvious. It was very evident,” Maghnieh said. “It sent shivers up my spine.”

Maghnieh said he’s so far received about two dozen calls and a half-dozen emails from different people in his ward with complaints about the rumble.

When he followed up on some of the recent reports, two homeowners agreed to let him on their properties and investigate.

The time period between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. was chosen because that’s when the vibrations are reportedly the most distinct.

“I don’t know if it’s stronger then or not. Maybe it’s just because it’s quieter outside,” Maghnieh said.

Although the Ministry of the Environment has studied the matter and has ruled out industrial sources, Maghnieh said there needs to be further and fuller investigation.

“You can’t have hundreds of people just imagining these things,” Maghnieh said. “We need resources. We need co-operation. We need somebody assigned to this.”

Now Maghnieh is preparing a map of his ward to track the location of the rumblings, with radii indicating where the rumblings have been the strongest. …

via Ontario city mystified by whole lotta shakin’ underground.

Nothing to worry about. Probably just some country digging underground tunnels, bases or missile silos with a nuclear powered tunnel making machine.

North Korea fury at South Korea-US military exercise

The US and South Korea have begun a joint military drill to improve combat readiness on the Korean peninsula.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise brings together 530,000 forces in Korea and abroad, using computer programmes to simulate war situations.

North Korea has reacted furiously to the exercises, which run for 10 days.

It called them “an undisguised military threat” and a “wanton challenge to peace” in the official Rodong Sinmum newspaper last week.

Inter-Korean relations, the article said, “are getting tenser as the days go by”, and the exercises “would further aggravate the already-strained situation on the peninsula”.

In a separate development, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said a source had informed it that the North had installed surveillance cameras and reinforced barbed wire along its border with China to try to stem defections and smuggling.

The measure comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visited the border city of Sinuiju last month, where he accused residents of being influenced by capitalism, citing disorder and the way they dressed, the report said.

Thousands of North Koreans have escaped into China in recent years, many with the ultimate aim of defecting to South Korea. North Korea also fears smugglers bringing mobile phones, TVs and radios into the North from China are challenging Pyongyang’s control.

The 10-day drill links bases in South Korea with US military headquarters in the Pacific and the US, reports the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in Seoul.

This year, local media say the training will shift more responsibility from the joint command to South Korean military chiefs, to prepare for the handover of war-time operational authority in 2015.

The commander of US-South Korean forces, US Gen James D Thurman, said they were “applying lessons learned out of Iraq and Afghanistan” in the training exercises, “as well as those garnered by the Alliance’s recent experiences with North Korean provocations on the peninsula”. …

via BBC News – North Korea fury at South Korea-US military exercise.

Man spends sixth day up 300-foot radio tower

A man who climbed a 300-foot radio tower in Tulsa entered the sixth day of his standoff with police Tuesday, local officials confirmed to msnbc.com.

The KOTV-DT station reported that William Sturdivant II, 25, has been on the Clear Channel radio tower since 11 a.m. Thursday.

It was showing a live stream of Sturdivant, which showed him climbing around on the structure early Tuesday.

Citing police, KOTV-DT reported that Sturdivant asked for a Whataburger meal and some Oreos and milk Tuesday morning.

While it is not believed he is suicidal, officials are concerned for his welfare because the last time he had water was Friday and he had been refusing previous offers of food and drink, Fox News reported.

Fox noted growing public interest in Sturdivant, with a crowd of people on the ground and a number of Twitter hashtags about him appearing.

‘Tower Guy’ pizza

It said a restaurant had offered a “Tower Guy” five-topping pizza to mark his fifth day on the tower.

KOTV-DT said police were asking people to stay away.

“We’ve had a couple of times when we’ve made some progress with him and then the crowd will start yelling and screaming things, it will distract him, and we’ll regress and go 12 hours back in time with the progression that we’ve made with him,” Ryan Perkins, of Tulsa Police, told the station.

“We don’t want people yelling, screaming, taking pictures. We would like people to, basically, ignore him,” he added, warning spectators could be arrested if they obstructed police. …

via Man spends sixth day up 300-foot radio tower – US news – Life – msnbc.com.

 

$360M lost to insurgents, criminals in Afghanistan

The U.S. military estimates that $360 million spent on combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has battled for nearly a decade: the Taliban, criminals and local power brokers with ties to both.

The losses, measured over the past year by a special task force, underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central plank of the U.S. strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to stoke the country’s economy.

But until the task force began its investigation, there was little visibility into the connections these companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals. …

via $360M lost to insurgents, criminals in Afghanistan – USATODAY.com.

War is a locust, feasting on the seeds that should feed our future. Plug the leak: End war.

On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $8.2 billion in cuts that will not only affect college students but the poor and the mentally ill as well. With $500 million dollar budget cuts for the University of California and Cal State University systems, as well increasing tuition for community colleges, the budget cuts will hit the education system hard. As Jean Ross stated in a prepared statement, “the cuts will limit young Californian’s ability to obtain a college education, place thousands of the state’s children at risk of homelessness and make it immeasurably tougher for parents to move from welfare to work.”

via UCregentlive

 

Red meat linked to increased risk of type 2 diabetes

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers finds a strong association between the consumption of red meat—particularly when the meat is processed—and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The study also shows that replacing red meat with healthier proteins, such as low-fat dairy, nuts, or whole grains, can significantly lower the risk.

The study, led by An Pan, research fellow in the HSPH Department of Nutrition, will be published online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on August 10, 2011 and will appear in the October print edition.

Pan, senior author Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH, and colleagues analyzed questionnaire responses from 37,083 men followed for 20 years in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study; 79,570 women followed for 28 years in the Nurses’ Health Study I; and 87,504 women followed for 14 years in the Nurses’ Health Study II. They also conducted an updated meta-analysis, combining data from their new study with data from existing studies that included a total of 442,101 participants, 28,228 of whom developed type 2 diabetes during the study. After adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI), and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, the researchers found that a daily 100-gram serving of unprocessed red meat (about the size of a deck of cards) was associated with a 19% increased risk of type 2 diabetes. They also found that one daily serving of half that quantity of processed meat—50 grams (for example, one hot dog or sausage or two slices of bacon)—was associated with a 51% increased risk.

“Clearly, the results from this study have huge public health implications given the rising type 2 diabetes epidemic and increasing consumption of red meats worldwide,” said Hu. “The good news is that such troubling risk factors can be offset by swapping red meat for a healthier protein.” …

via Red meat linked to increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Spoiler alert: Stories are not spoiled by ‘spoilers’

Many of us go to extraordinary lengths to avoid learning the endings of stories we have yet to read or see – plugging our ears, for example, and loudly repeating “la-la-la-la,” when discussion threatens to reveal the outcome. Of book and movie critics, we demand they not give away any plot twists or, at least, oblige with a clearly labeled “spoiler alert.” We get angry with friends who slip up and spill a fictional secret.

But we’re wrong and wasting our time, suggests a new experimental study from the University of California, San Diego. People who flip to the last page of a book before starting it have the better intuition. Spoilers don’t spoil stories. Contrary to popular wisdom, they actually seem to enhance enjoyment.

Even ironic-twist and mystery stories – which you’d be forgiven for assuming absolutely depend on suspense or surprise for success – aren’t spoiled by spoilers, according to a study by Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt of UC San Diego’s psychology department, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Christenfeld and Leavitt ran three experiments with a total of 12 short stories. Three types of stories werestudied: ironic-twist, mystery and literary. Each story – classics by the likes of John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver – was presented as-is (without a spoiler), with a prefatory spoiler paragraph or with that same paragraph incorporated into the story as though it were a part of it. Each version of each story was read by at least 30 subjects. Data from subjects who had read the stories previously were excluded.

Subjects significantly preferred the spoiled versions of ironic-twist stories, where, for example, it was revealed before reading that a condemned man’s daring escape is all a fantasy before the noose snaps tight around his neck.

The same held true for mysteries. Knowing ahead of time that Poirot will discover that the apparent target of attempted murder is, in fact, the perpetrator not only didn’t hurt enjoyment of the story but actually improved it.

Subjects liked the literary, evocative stories least overall, but still preferred the spoiled versions over the unspoiled ones.

Why? The answers go beyond the scope of the study, but one possibility is perhaps the simplest one: that plot is overrated.

“Plots are just excuses for great writing. What the plot is is (almost) irrelevant. The pleasure is in the writing,” said Christenfeld, a UC San Diego professor of social psychology.

“Monet’s paintings aren’t really about water lilies,” he said.

It’s also possible that it’s “easier” to read a spoiled story. Other psychological studies have shown that people have an aesthetic preference for objects that are perceptually easy to process. …

via Spoiler alert: Stories are not spoiled by ‘spoilers’.