>Longest Lightning Storm On Saturn Breaks Solar System Record

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A powerful lightning storm in Saturn’s atmosphere that began in mid-January 2009 has become the Solar System’s longest continuously observed thunderstorm. It broke the record duration of 7.5 months set by another thunderstorm observed on Saturn by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft between November 2007 and July 2008.

The observations of the thunderstorm will be presented by Dr Georg Fischer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany, on Tuesday 15 September.

The current thunderstorm on Saturn is the ninth that has been measured since Cassini swung into orbit around Saturn in July 2004. Lightning discharges in Saturn’s atmosphere emit very powerful radio waves, which are measured by the antennas and receivers of the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument. The radio waves are about 10 000 times stronger than their terrestrial counterparts and originate from huge thunderstorms in Saturn’s atmosphere with diameters around 3000 km.

Dr Fischer said: “These lightning storms are not only astonishing for their power and longevity, the radio waves that they emit are also useful for studying Saturn’s ionosphere, the charged layer that surrounds the planet a few thousand kilometres above the cloud tops. The radio waves have to cross the ionosphere to get to Cassini and thereby act as a natural tool to probe the structure of the layer and the levels of ionisation in different regions.”

via Longest Lightning Storm On Saturn Breaks Solar System Record.

>Longest Lightning Storm On Saturn Breaks Solar System Record

>

A powerful lightning storm in Saturn’s atmosphere that began in mid-January 2009 has become the Solar System’s longest continuously observed thunderstorm. It broke the record duration of 7.5 months set by another thunderstorm observed on Saturn by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft between November 2007 and July 2008.

The observations of the thunderstorm will be presented by Dr Georg Fischer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany, on Tuesday 15 September.

The current thunderstorm on Saturn is the ninth that has been measured since Cassini swung into orbit around Saturn in July 2004. Lightning discharges in Saturn’s atmosphere emit very powerful radio waves, which are measured by the antennas and receivers of the Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument. The radio waves are about 10 000 times stronger than their terrestrial counterparts and originate from huge thunderstorms in Saturn’s atmosphere with diameters around 3000 km.

Dr Fischer said: “These lightning storms are not only astonishing for their power and longevity, the radio waves that they emit are also useful for studying Saturn’s ionosphere, the charged layer that surrounds the planet a few thousand kilometres above the cloud tops. The radio waves have to cross the ionosphere to get to Cassini and thereby act as a natural tool to probe the structure of the layer and the levels of ionisation in different regions.”

via Longest Lightning Storm On Saturn Breaks Solar System Record.

>Nut allergies eased … by eating nuts

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The findings of a pilot study have raised hopes that people with nut allergies might be able to reduce the effects by consuming other nuts.

Researcher Dr Billy Tao of Flinders Medical Centre says doctors had long assumed people with nut allergies should not consume any nuts.

He says the research was set up to check validity of the theory.

“Practically all kids with a known nut allergic history will be told by their doctors to avoid all nuts, but this type of approach does not really have any evidence,” he said.

Under close medical supervision, nearly 50 patients were put through months of testing.

Dr Tao says it was surprising to find that regular consumption of other nuts could lower the reaction among patients to nuts they were allergic to.

He said 25 per cent of those involved showed improvements and a wider study was now needed.

“It shows that it is actually quite safe to eat the non-allergic nuts if you are allergic to some … nuts,” he said, but Dr Tao stressed that medical advice was essential and people should not attempt anything at home to desensitise those with nut allergies.

via Nut allergies eased … by eating nuts – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Are nut allergies real? Are the people who get sick really just reacting to some pesticides sprayed on the nuts or something? I don’t understand why nut allergies would have evolved.

>NY dad told soldier-son killed in war — he wasn’t

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An Army unit is reviewing how it delivers information to families after a call to a western New York couple led them to believe their son had been killed in combat.

Ray Jasper of Niagara Falls said he, his wife, Robin, and their extended family spent four hours Sunday mourning their son, Sgt. Jesse Jasper, before learning from his girlfriend that he was alive.

The 26-year-old soldier called his father from Afghanistan to prove it after hearing about the mix-up.

“Dad what’s going on?” Jesse Jasper asked.

“I said, ‘Oh my God you’re alive, I love you, I love you, I love you, you’re alive,'” Ray Jasper, 49, said Tuesday.

An Army spokesman with Jasper’s unit said officials may revise the written scripts used by volunteer liaisons to inform all families of any deaths within the unit to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future.

The nightmare started about 2 p.m. Sunday when Ray Jasper, while on a family camping trip, got an urgent message from a family liaison from his son’s unit in the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, N.C. When he reached the liaison — the wife of a soldier deployed with Jasper’s son — she told him she had a “red line message” that she needed to read to him verbatim.

“She said, ‘I’m sorry to inform you that on Sept. 12, that Sgt. Judin and Sgt. Jesse Jasper were killed in Afghanistan,'” Ray Jasper recounted.

“My wife was talking to me at the time and I said, ‘say that again,’ and she said the same thing over again. I couldn’t do any more. I hit the floor,” he said.

Jasper knew the military’s policy is to notify families in person when a soldier has been killed, but after being away all weekend, he thought someone might have called after finding no one home.

The Jaspers were given a number to call for details but decided they would not dial it until after making the 60-mile trip home from the Ellicottville campground and assembling other family members. As family and friends gathered, others posted condolence messages on Facebook.

Jasper’s girlfriend in North Carolina saw the postings and called the Jaspers.

“She was screaming to me, ‘He’s not dead! He’s not dead!'” Jasper said. “I said, ‘How do you know this?’ She said, ‘I just got off the phone with him.’

Their son called soon after.

via NY dad told soldier-son killed in war — he wasn’t – Yahoo! News.

>World’s oldest person dies in California at 115

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The world’s oldest person, a woman who was born in 1894 and gained a measure of fame when she voted for Barack Obama for U.S. president, died on Friday at the age of 115.

Gertrude Baines died peacefully in her sleep sometime between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. local time (1300 and 1400 GMT) at the Western Convalescent Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had spent the past decade of her life.

“She’s a very dignified lady,” Emma Camanag, the hospital’s administrator, told Reuters. “It has truly been a blessing and an honor for us to take care of her over the last 10 years and we will greatly miss her. It’s just like we lost a relative.”

Baines had no living relatives, Camanag said, but was popular at the home and at her church, where she attended services every Sunday until she became too ill to leave her room.

Camanag said parishioners at the church often visited Baines, who was born on April 6, 1894 in Shellman, Georgia, and became the world’s oldest person when 115-year-old Maria de Jesus of Portugal died in January.

Japan’s Kama Chien, 114, is now the oldest person in the world.

As a Black woman who grew up in the South during the time of Jim Crow laws, which required Blacks to use separate and often inferior public facilities, Baines was celebrated in the media when she voted last November for Obama, the first African American elected president of the United States.

She had only voted once previously, for John F. Kennedy, and told the Los Angeles Times at the time that she supported Obama “because he’s for the colored.” She kept a signed picture of Obama on her wall, the Times reported.

Baines, who was born during the administration of Grover Cleveland, married young and later divorced. Her only child, a daughter, was born in 1909 and died of typhoid at the age of 18.

She worked as a maid in Ohio before moving to Los Angeles and lived on her own until she was well over 100.

via World’s oldest person dies in California at 115 | Oddly Enough | Reuters.

>Study exposes how bacteria resist antibiotics

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Scientists have discovered how bacteria fend off a wide range of antibiotics, and blocking that defense mechanism could give existing antibiotics more power to fight dangerous infections.

Researchers at New York University said on Thursday that bacteria produce certain nitric oxide-producing enzymes to resist antibiotics.

Drugs that inhibit these enzymes can make antibiotics much more potent, making even deadly superbugs like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA succumb, they said.

“Developing new medications to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA is a huge hurdle, associated with great cost and countless safety issues,” said Evgeny Nudler of NYU Langone Medical Center, whose study appears in the journal Science.

“Here, we have a short cut, where we don’t have to invent new antibiotics. Instead, we can enhance the activity of well-established ones, making them more effective at lower doses,” he said in a statement.

via Study exposes how bacteria resist antibiotics | Science | Reuters.

>Do You Have the Right to Flip Off a Cop?

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David Hackbart was mad, and he wanted to show it, but he didn’t think he would end up in federal court protecting his right to a rude gesture and demanding that the city of Pittsburgh stop violating the First Amendment rights of its residents.

Hackbart, 34, was looking for a parking space on busy Murray Avenue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood on April 10, 2006. Spotting one, he attempted to back into it, but the driver of the car behind him refused to back up and give him sufficient room. Hackbart responded in the classic way. “I stuck my hand out the window and gave him the finger to say ‘Hey, jerk, thanks,’ ” says Hackbart. “That’s all I was trying to say — ‘Thanks, thanks a lot.’ “

At that moment, a voice rang out telling Hackbart not to make the rude gesture in public. “So I was like, How dare that person tell me? They obviously didn’t see what happened. Who are they to tell me what to say?” he says. “So I flipped that person off. And then I looked, and it was a city of Pittsburgh cop in his car right next to me.”

That turned out to be police sergeant Brian Elledge, who happened to be passing in the other direction in his cruiser. Elledge whipped around and pulled Hackbart over, citing him under the state’s disorderly-conduct law, which bans obscene language and gestures. And here’s where the problem lies, says state American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) legal director Witold (Vic) Walczak: the middle finger and equivalent swear words are not legally obscene. In fact, courts have consistently ruled that foul language is a constitutionally protected form of expression. A famous 1971 Supreme Court case upheld the right of a young man to enter the Los Angeles County Court House wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words “F___ the Draft.”

… Walczak says this issue seems to have more to do with a police officer being confronted by an angry and disrespectful person and turning disorderly-conduct laws into a “contempt of cop” law, as he puts it. “Frankly, I think having someone dropping the F-bomb is better than resisting arrest or taking a swipe at a police officer,” Walczak says. “But what we’re seeing too often is that police who are offended by a lack of respect, often manifested by profanity or cursing, will punish people for that.”

via Do You Have the Right to Flip Off a Cop? – TIME.

We usually get the most angry when we are in the wrong and we are in denial about it.  Flipping the bird in your mind or out of sight works fine. That same cop may save your life some day.

>US military chief wants more troops for Afghan war

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President Barack Obama’s top military adviser endorsed an increase in U.S. forces for the worsening war in Afghanistan on Tuesday, setting up a split with leading Democrats in Congress and complicating an already-tough decision for the president himself.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the war is growing more complicated and the enemy gaining in sophistication. Winning will require more resources from outside Afghanistan, including more troops, Mullen told Congress.

“A properly resourced counterinsurgency probably means more forces, and without question, more time” and dedication, Mullen said.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in charge of both American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, delivered a grim assessment of the war to Washington last month and is expected to follow up soon with a request for thousands of additional troops and more equipment.

That will leave Obama to decide whether to expand a war that polls say is rapidly losing public support in the U.S. and drawing pointed criticism in Congress. He has already roughly doubled the size of the American military force in Afghanistan since taking office, with only limited gains to show. Obama has an ambitious strategy to turn around a war that will soon enter its ninth year, and his aides say the plan needs time to work.

via US military chief wants more troops for Afghan war – Yahoo! News.

>Space-related radiation research could help reduce fractures in cancer survivors

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A research project looking for ways to reduce bone loss in astronauts may yield methods of improving the bone health of cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. …

It is well documented that living in the microgravity environment of space causes bone loss in astronauts, but until recently, little was known about the effects of space radiation on bones. Dr. Ted Bateman leads a project funded by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to understand radiation-induced bone loss and to determine which treatments can be used to reduce that loss and lower the risk of fractures.

“Our studies indicate significant bone loss at the radiation levels astronauts will experience during long missions to the moon or Mars,” said Bateman, a member of NSBRI’s Musculoskeletal Alterations Team.

Bateman, an associate professor of bioengineering at Clemson University, and colleagues at Clemson and Loma Linda University have discovered in experiments with mice that bone loss begins within days of radiation exposure through activation of bone-reducing cells called osteoclasts. Under normal conditions, these cells work with bone-building cells, called osteoblasts, to maintain bone health.

“Our research challenges some conventional thought by saying radiation turns on the bone-eating osteoclasts,” Bateman said. “If that is indeed the case, existing treatments, such as bisphosphonates, may be able to prevent this early loss of bone.”

Bisphosphonates are used to prevent loss of bone mass in patients who have osteoporosis or other bone disorders.

Even though the research is being performed to protect the health of NASA astronauts, cancer patients, especially those who receive radiation therapy in the pelvic region, could benefit from the research. …

Astronauts are at risk of radiation exposure from two sources. The first is proton radiation from the sun. The second, and less understood type, is galactic cosmic radiation from sources outside the galaxy. Galactic cosmic rays and protons would be the source of radiation damage for astronauts during a mission to Mars.

Marcelo Vazquez, NSBRI’s senior scientist for space radiation research, said Bateman’s project and other NSBRI radiation projects will influence spacecraft design and mission planning. “The research will help to define the radiation risks for astronauts during long-term missions,” Vazquez said. “This will lead to strategies for shielding and medical countermeasures to protect against exposure.”

via Space-related radiation research could help reduce fractures in cancer survivors.

>Rich people don’t need friends

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In a paper evaluated by f1000 Medicine, six studies tested relationships between reminders of money, social exclusion and physical pain.

In The symbolic power of money: reminders of money alter social distress and physical pain published in the journal Psychological Science, Xinyue Zhou, Kathleen Vohs and Roy Baumeister explored how money could reduce a person’s feeling of pain and also negate their need for social popularity.

Harriet de Wit, Faculty Member for f1000 Medicine, said: “This research extends our understanding of relationships between social pain and physical pain, and remarkably, shows how acquired symbolic value of money, perhaps because of associations with power or control, can influence responses to both emotional and physical pain.”

She also noted: “These findings have great importance for a social system such as ours that is characterized by wide disparities in financial wellbeing.”

Zhou, Vohs and Baumeister determined that interpersonal rejection and physical pain caused desire for money to increase. They said: “Money can possibly substitute for social acceptance in conferring the ability to obtain benefits from the social system. Moreover, past work has suggested that responses to physical pain and social distress share common underlying mechanisms.”

“Handling money (compared with handling paper) reduced distress over social exclusion and diminished the physical pain of immersion in hot water. Being reminded of having spent money, however, intensified both social distress and physical pain,” the authors said.

via Rich people don’t need friends.

Why not have both then, money and friends? I’m having a money handling party this weekend. Bring $100 bills to use during the experience. (No more than $100,000 per person, please.) We will take turns believing the money belongs to each person. We will feel the money, believe in it, express our social acceptance for each other, then feel no pain.  Might be a good therapy.