Shelter Sense

Friday, October 5, 2012

A Rose Like No Other: New Photo Shows Stunning Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light
years away at the edge of the molecular
cloud Monoceros. Josh Knutson took
this image in Rio Rancho, New Mexico on May
27,2012. Knutson and Salvatore Grasso
collaborated on the photo’s post-processing.
CREDIT: Josh Knutson image

A Rose Like No Other: New Photo Shows Stunning Rosette Nebula
Oct 5, 2012 | Nina Sen

The likeness of a rose appears in this beautiful night sky image of a gaseous star cluster and nebula.
Astrophotographer Josh Knutson captured this photo of the Rosette Nebula from his backyard in Rio Rancho, N.M. on May 27, 2012.

The Rosette Nebula is so named because its clouds of gas and dusts resemble the petals of a rose. The nebula is about 5,000 light years away at the edge of the molecular cloud Monoceros, or the Unicorn constellation. The nebula is a region of the Milky Way filled with glowing gas and a central cluster of hot, young stars that are only a few million years old.

Knutson used a 200mm Celestron SCT at F/2.0, Hyperstar III, and QHY-8 OSC CCD camera to take this photo. The image is made of four hours of five-minute exposures stacked together. Knutson and Salvatore Grasso collaborated on post-processing.

Editor's note: If you have an amazing skywatching photo you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

NEW 4-Mile Long Oil Slick Near BP’s Gulf Oil Well

NEW 4-Mile Long Oil Slick Near BP’s Gulf Oil Well
Oct 4, 2012 | Washingtons Blog

BP’s Macondo Well May Leak for Years

CNN reports:

An oil sheen about four miles long has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, a Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear where the oil is coming from, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Ryan Tippets. [Although previous oil has been matched as a "dead ringer" to the BP well.]

Coast Guardsmen went to the location after seeing the oil on a satellite image, Tippets said. The response team collected samples and sent them to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab in Connecticut for testing.

***

The sheen is near the spot where, on April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded over the Macondo well, killing 11 workers and spewing oil that spread across a huge portion of the Gulf.

Read more..

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Walmart Workers Strike at Stores Nationwide

Workers strike Thursday outside a Southern
California Walmart store. (Photo: Organization
United for Respect—Our Walmart).

Walmart Workers Strike at Stores Nationwide
Oct 4, 2012 | CommonDreams.org

Walmart workers at various stores around the country are on strike today, protesting poor working conditions and alleged retaliation for their attempts to organize.

The one-day strike was expected to culminate in a mass rally outside a store in Pico Rivera, Calif., this afternoon.

OUR Walmart, a coalition of Walmart workers and other sympathizers, organized the protest.

According to Salon.com, Pico Rivera Wal-Mart employee Evelin Cruz said “I’m excited, I’m nervous, I’m scared … But I think the time has come, so they take notice that these associates are tired of all the issues in the stores, all the management retaliating against you.” Rivera, a department manager, said her store is chronically understaffed: “They expect the work to be done, without having the people to do the job.”

According to a release from the group, although Walmart's more than 4,000 stores employ 1.4 million people in the United States, "For too many of us, the economy Walmart helped create isn't working—but we have the power to change it."

OUR Walmart's objectives include, but are not limited to, minimum pay of $25,000 a year, quality, affordable health coverage; that Walmart and the Walton family sign "a global labor agreement" guaranteeing employees the right to organize; and that they guarantee that contractors and subcontractors will "provide living wages and worker safety protections, respect basic human and labor rights including freedom of association, and freedom from racial and gender discrimination," according to the release.

A previous, 15-day strike in Riverside, Calif., prompted today's strike, according to David Dayen at FiredogLake.com.

"In the past, Walmart has responded harshly to unionization efforts," Dayen wrote. "When one set of food workers voted to join a union at a Walmart store in North America, the company simply shut down the store and left the area. Walmart has seen labor actions at its supply chain in recent weeks too, particularly around the guest worker abuse at a seafood supplier in Louisiana. Labor organizers also brought tens of thousands to the streets of Los Angeles to protest the proposed opening of a new store in Chinatown. These actions are clearly linked and are feeding off one another. But Walmart’s vicious anti-unionization efforts give them the upper hand."

Smart Meters: How the Government Monitors Your Every Move

Smart Meters: How the Government Monitors Your Every Move
Oct 4, 2012 | Susanne Posel

Smart meters have been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who says their risks are minimal. However many customers blame them for causing health problems and house fires. These devices are responsible for two-way communication with utilities corporations and government; helping them spy on their customers.

Researchers in Germany have concluded that when privacy implications were analyzed, they proved that customers were being surveilled by their utility company with encrypted data to determine whether or not the customers were home.

They are marketed as a way to save energy on monthly bills as well as reduce carbon emissions. Jim Marston, vice president of energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, maintains that “if done right, smart meters allow us to eliminate waste from the system. “t’s not unlike the revolution in telephones. These are things that allow you to know when you are gone and to turn off all your lights. Or to allow your appliances to turn on only when renewable power is available, or for utilities to figure out where outages are.”

In Australia, the energy corporation, Origin Energy, forces customers to fill out online forms that request detailed personal information that is shared with private sector corporations. This data is given to government authroities, electricity installers, data processing analysts, IT service providers, debt collection and credit reporting agencies.

In California, smart meters give hourly reports of electrical usage through wireless connections. Yet the California Public Service Commission (CPSC) received complaints that the data received by utilities corporations led to rate hikes.

Pacific gas and Electric (PGE) claims that their smart meters are in compliance with FCC regulations. Most notably is that the installation of the device requires professional contractors, not utility workers, as if the usual case. PGE contracts others such as Wellington and Corix to install smart meters. These corporations hire temp workers who are not qualified and this may lead to fires and explosions.

In some states, an opt-out program has been installed where customers pay a fee for analog meters. Colorado, Maine and Arizona provide this service while Maryland and the District of Columbia does not.

The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), a think-tank for Internet policy in Britain, asserts that smart meters may be used as blackmail or fuel for a hostile attack against the UK government by a foreign power or a terrorist group. This information would be most likely sold to identity thieves as well as able to be manipulated by energy corporations.

Smart meters have the capacity to spy on you in your home. They collect data on the electrical usage in your home, then that information is remotely sent to a central database at your utilities corporation.

In March, CIA Director David Petraeus commented on the “internet of things” explaining that: “Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing . . . The latter now going for cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

In December of 2011, the FCC announced plans to transition unused over-the-air wireless bands into Super Wi-Fi. This super Wi-Fi will use low frequencies (from 470 to 698 megahertz) that have longer wavelengths and travel father; and even penetrate walls.

An indicator of these plans can be found on the underside of any electronic device in your home. Even on the underside of a simple calculator, toaster oven, and even your refrigerator; you will find the following: “This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) This device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.”

What this disclaimer means is that this device is not allowed to jam or block any signals and must accept any incoming signal given (by FCC regulations under Part 15 of the FCC Rules).

The Vermont Department of Health released a report in 2012 that stated smart meters use radio signals to communicate with the utility corporations and the exposure to radio frequency radiation (RFR) is detrimental to human health. The human body absorbs a wide range of thermal energy and capable of expelling that energy.

However high exposure to radio frequencies breaks down the body’s natural abilities as well as causes cancer to form which leads to serious health complications.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Quantum causal relations: A causes B causes A

© University of Vienna
A new framework for quantum mechanics
which does not assume a pre-existing
global time. It demonstrates the possibility
for two agents to perform a communication
task in which it is impossible to tell with
certainty who influences whom.

Quantum causal relations: A causes B causes A
Oct 2, 2012 | Fabio Costa

This press release is available in German.

One of the most deeply rooted concepts in science and in our everyday life is causality; the idea that events in the present are caused by events in the past and, in turn, act as causes for what happens in the future. If an event A is a cause of an effect B, then B cannot be a cause of A. Now theoretical physicists from the University of Vienna and the Université Libre de Bruxelles have shown that in quantum mechanics it is possible to conceive situations in which a single event can be both, a cause and an effect of another one. The findings will be published this week in Nature Communications.

Although it is still not known if such situations can be actually found in nature, the sheer possibility that they could exist may have far-reaching implications for the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity and quantum computing.

Causal relations: who influences whom

In everyday life and in classical physics, events are ordered in time: a cause can only influence an effect in its future not in its past. As a simple example, imagine a person, Alice, walking into a room and finding there a piece of paper. After reading what is written on the paper Alice erases the message and leaves her own message on the piece of paper. Another person, Bob, walks into the same room at some other time and does the same: he reads, erases and re-writes some message on the paper. If Bob enters the room after Alice, he will be able to read what she wrote; however Alice will not have a chance to know Bob's message. In this case, Alice's writing is the "cause" and what Bob reads the "effect".

Each time the two repeat the procedure, only one will be able to read what the other wrote. Even if they don't have watches and don't know who enters the room first, they can deduce it by what they write and read on the paper. For example, Alice might write "Alice was here today", such that if Bob reads the message, he will know that he came to the room after her.

Quantum violation of causal order

As long as only the laws of classical physics are allowed, the order of events is fixed: either Bob or Alice is first to enter the room and leave a message for the other person. When quantum mechanics enters into play, however, the picture may change drastically. According to quantum mechanics, objects can lose their well-defined classical properties, such as e.g. a particle that can be at two different locations at the same time. In quantum physics this is called a "superposition". Now an international team of physicists led by Caslav Brukner from the University of Vienna have shown that even the causal order of events could be in such a superposition. If - in our example - Alice and Bob have a quantum system instead of an ordinary piece of paper to write their messages on, they can end up in a situation where each of them can read a part of the message written by the other. Effectively, one has a superposition of two situations: "Alice enters the room first and leaves a message before Bob" and "Bob enters the room first and leaves a message before Alice".

"Such a superposition, however, has not been considered in the standard formulation of quantum mechanics since the theory always assumes a definite causal order between events", says Ognyan Oreshkov from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (formerly University of Vienna). "But if we believe that quantum mechanics governs all phenomena, it is natural to expect that the order of events could also be indefinite, similarly to the location of a particle or its velocity", adds Fabio Costa from the University of Vienna.

The work provides an important step towards understanding that definite causal order might not be a mandatory property of nature. "The real challenge is finding out where in nature we should look for superpositions of causal orders", explains Caslav Brukner from the Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics, Quantum Information group of the University of Vienna.

Publication:

"Quantum correlations with no causal order"
Ognyan Oreshkov, Fabio Costa, Caslav Brukner. Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2076.

4 Ancient Superfoods and their Timeless Benefits

4 Ancient Superfoods and their Timeless Benefits
Oct 3, 2012 | Elizabeth Renter

Though the term “super food” has only been in circulation in recent years, the idea of super-nutritious and life giving foods have been around since the beginning of time. As a matter of fact, it’s likely that ancient man had a far better idea of what true superfoods are than what we gather as we wade through aisles of cans and boxes, seeking out those things that are in their most natural forms. Still, today anyone can compile a hefty superfoods list for the next shopping day.

Ancient Superfoods for Your Superfoods List

There are foods that have been around for centuries, even millennia. And many of these foods are just as good now as they were then. So which foods should be on your superfoods list? Here are some timeless superfoods that you should include in your diet today:

Quinoa - You’ve likely heard of it because it’s experienced a growing resurgence in the past few years. But, quinoa has been around for ages. The Incas of South America refer to this food as chisaya mama, or the mother of all grains. It’s high in protein, calcium, and iron, and is very versatile. Cook with herbs and diced veggies or form with legumes and seasonings into veggie patties. Due to it’s high protein content, it is great to help makeup a high protein vegetarian diet, and can be used with natural remedies for hair loss and hair thinning.

Spirulina - Spirulina is an algae that is rich in protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. It is said to be one of the oldest life forms on earth and has been eaten as long ago as the 9^th century in the Kanem Empire of Chad. It’s good for your eyes, your skin, allergies, and stabilizing blood sugar.

Sacha Inchi - This food is a little more obscure, but has been consumed in the Amazon jungle for ages. It’s considered a superfood of the ancient Incas and is reported to contain concentrated Omega-3 fats. It’s also rich in iodine, and vitamins A and E.

Maca - Another ancient Incan superfood, Maca can be found in the mountains of Peru. It’s said to be an excellent all-natural energy source and also contains numerous plant sterols, iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and iodine.

And let’s not forget other amazing superfoods like turmeric, ginger, honey, garlic and much more. These are foods that fight cancer and protect you against countless diseases.

How can you prepare these foods? While quinoa is easy to find and super easy to cook, the others may be more of a challenge. Both spirulina and maca supplements can be found at most health food stores. Sacha Inchi can be found in an oil form and can be used as you would use olive oil on salads.

The ancients knew a thing or two about natural living, and their foods were the original superfoods you should add to your modern superfoods list.

Additional Sources:

NaturalNews.com/028782_maca_Incas.html

Alsearsmd

NaturalNews.com/036101_spirulina_superfood_nutrients.html

Spirulina-Benefits-Health

The Huffington Post

The Meaning of Having Heart

The Meaning of Having Heart
Oct 3, 2012 | Gaye Levy

Today, as things continue to deteriorate around us, I feel that it is important for all of us to step up and have heart for the good people in our community. These are the people that are ordinary, hard-working, law abiding citizens that have been caught in this economic slump with no job (or a lousy minimum wage job), no safety net, and not a whole lot to look forward to.

I personally feel a lot of compassion for these people and want to share my thoughts on “having heart”. I have used that term often and yet when I tried to find the origin or that saying, I drew a blank. So, lacking something better, let us go with “having the passion to care and to show kindness to your fellow man”.

Now you might ask: Why this? And why today?

I will answer that but first, I want to let you know that back in July, I sent a version of this article to my newsletter subscribers. At the time, my newsletter list was new and I only had a few hundred subscribers which means that only a handful of my readers have seen this. And so I share this today, because for me – and I hope for you – the message is important.

What is wrong with this picture?

Read more..

Scientists Find More Wasps That Eat Maggots from Inside Out

Scientists Find More Wasps That Eat Maggots from Inside Out
Oct 3, 2012 | Live Science

Little is known about tropical parasitic wasps in the subfamily Orthocentrinae besides their gruesome lifestyle. They lay their single egg in the body of a fly maggot and as the baby wasp larva grows, it eats the body of its host from the inside out.

Now researchers say they've discovered a surprising diversity of the group in South and Central America.

Scientists examined 1,549 Orthocentrinae wasps that were collected in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Amazon rain forests of Ecuador. From this group, they identified at least 177 distinct species — far more than the 14 currently described in the region and more than the 151 species known in North America, where they have been more thoroughly studied.

These parasitic wasps, which are just a few millimeters long, were believed to be more diverse in temperate climates. But study researcher Gavin Broad said the new findings challenge that assumption.

"We now have good evidence that these wasps are very diverse in the tropics and we should take that into account when looking at patterns of biodiversity across the globe," Broad, a wasp expert with the Natural History Museum in London, said in a statement. He added that the diversity of species could reveal more about the subfamily's place in the ecosystem.

"Considering the numbers of these wasps that can be found in forests, they must be playing an important role in the complicated cycle that breaks down dead wood," Broad explained.

"The fungi break down wood, as well as leaves and other organic debris. The flies eat the fungi and the orthocentrines feed on the flies — there is a complicated and delicate pyramid of interactions supported by the presence of dead wood and leaf litter in the forests."

Broad and his colleagues identified the wasps through DNA tests and differences in the specimens' physical characteristics. Their findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Wednesday (Oct. 3) and they say their next step is to properly name and describe the new species.