flowers

Out boozing for several hours every night — that would be drinking like a tree shrew. Except the tree shrews can scurry a straight line afterward.

The pentailed tree shrews (Ptilocercus lowii) of Malaysia average more than two hours each night sipping palm nectar that has naturally fermented, report Frank Wiens of the University of Bayreuth in Germany and his colleagues in the July 29 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences।

“This is the first recorded case of chronic alcohol consumption by a wild mammal,” Wiens says.

If tree shrews’ metabolism worked like humans’, they would reach or exceed the legal European driving limit of 0।05 percent blood alcohol content every third night,” Wiens says। Licking this much fermented nectar would put them in about the same condition as a European woman drinking nine small glasses of wine over the course of 12 hours. http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com

But tree shrews may not have the same metabolism as humans when it comes to detoxifying alcohol। Tree shrews and the palms both belong to ancient lineages, so the animals could have evolved an efficient detoxifying pathway, Wiens suggests। http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com

Telling whether another animal is feeling slap-happy has its challenges. But in the wild, the tippling tree shrews didn’t wobble, lose their grip or show other obvious signs of inebriation, the researchers report.

The study grew out of fieldwork tracking the tree shrews in the dense growth of spiny palms. Starting in 1996, Wiens and his colleagues followed the tree shrews on their nightly palm crawls and tested hair samples for alcohol metabolites typical of chronic drinking. The researchers also measured palm fermentation and combined the results in a mathematical model to predict the shrews’ probable alcohol intake.

Bertam palms (Eugeissona tristis) don’t observe a strict season, so at any given time plants will be flowering somewhere in the forest। The stemless palms send up a tall spike with more than 1,000 flowers, some with just male sexual organs and the others hermaphroditic। For weeks before a particular sexual phase, the flower buds dribble nectar. Yeasts inside the buds typically raise the nectar’s alcohol content mildly, to around 0.06 percent, but can punch it up to as high as 3.8 percent. http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.com

“This is an astonishing story,” says John Dransfield, a palm specialist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in Richmond, England। He says he doesn’t know of another palm offering such a beer bash, but perhaps the other species secreting abundant nectar just haven’t been studied yet। http://louisbjbsheehan.blogspot.कॉम

Tree shrews, not ground-burrowing shrews but pointy-nosed tree-climbers with tails, are close cousins to primates. The tree shrew lineage could be the second-closest living relatives to primates (after a group called flying lemurs or colugos).

radioactive

Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over। The problem, though, is how to take advantage of that immense source of energy। http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Witness the explosive power of a volcano or the eruptions of geysers and hydrothermal vents, and it’s clear that Earth has a prodigious source of internal heat. Most of that heat is generated by the radioactive decay of elements such as uranium, thorium and potassium, says David S. Chapman, a geophysicist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City। http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US

Only in a few places, such as Iceland, is the heat flow through Earth’s surface concentrated enough to efficiently provide geothermal power. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.USData gathered at more than 20,000 sites worldwide show that typical heat flow from the ground is relatively feeble: At sites on land, heat flow is about 65 milliwatts per square meter, Chapman says. Put another way, the heat flowing up through an area the size of a football field, if it could be harnessed, would power only three 100-watt light bulbs.

At and near mid-ocean ridges, where molten material flows to the surface from deep inside Earth, average heat flow is about 140 milliwatts per square meter, the data suggest. Through ancient ocean crust, heat flow typically measures around 100 milliwatts per square meter.

Overall, the average heat flow through a square meter of Earth’s surface is about 87 milliwatts per square meter, Chapman reported May 27 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. That average, however, when added up across Earth’s entire surface, totals 44 terawatts, he notes (one terawatt is 1 trillion watts). For comparison, one recent study placed global energy consumption in 2005 at 15 terawatts.

study

Everyone knows by the second grade that boys have germs and girls have cooties। But at least for boys, new research says cooties might actually be good for you। http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com

According to a new study, preschool boys perform better on tests that measure learning and other important skills when they are in classes that have more girls than boys. The pattern doesn't seem to hold for girls, though. For preschool girls, the presence or absence of boys did not affect learning.

The study raises questions about having all-boy or all-girl classes for preschool , says psychologist Arlen Moller, of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, who led the study. Other studies have shown that high-school girls may perform better in all-girl schools. In middle school, however, the effects of same-sex schooling are unclear, and even less is known for very young kids.

To find out, researchers studied 70 preschool classes including a total of 806 children who were between 31/2 and 6 years old. For each class, teachers recorded student progress over a 6.5-month school year.

Their data included teacher scores of motor skills, social skills and thinking skills. The researchers found that boys developed each of these skills more quickly when there were more girls in the class than boys.

In majority-girl classrooms, boys developed at the same rate as girls। But in classes where boys were the majority, boys developed more slowly than girls। Girls tended to advance in classrooms with any combination of boys and girls. http://louis2j1sheehan2esquire.blogspot.com

The study is one of the first to look at how the proportion of boys and girls in a class affects learning. Because it's a new finding, though, researchers can't say why this difference exists.

"This is an exciting topic, but it is too early to draw any conclusions because this area is so underexplored," says psychologist Lena Malofeeva of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in Ypsilanti, Mich.

captured

Volcanic rocks deep beneath the sea off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington State might prove one of the best places to store the carbon dioxide emissions that are causing global warming, a new study finds. In fact, the very instability that causes earthquakes and eruptions adds an extra layer of protection to keep the CO₂ from ever escaping.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other experts, including the G8 (Group of Eight) leaders of the world's richest nations, have called carbon capture and storage a critical tool in the fight against climate change. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com

In essence, such technology catches the CO₂ and other pollutants emitted when coal or other fossil fuels are burned. It is then compressed into a liquid and, theoretically, pumped deep beneath the surface to be permanently trapped.

Such technologies have been demonstrated on a small scale to enhance the recovery of oil from tapped out fields; pumping down the CO₂ pushes up more of the black gold. But geophysicist David Goldberg of Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., and his colleagues found that pumping such CO₂ into basalt rock beneath the ocean floor might be a better solution.

Specifically, liquid CO₂ is heavier than the water above it at 8,850 feet (2,700 meters) or more under the surface, meaning any leaks would never bubble back into the atmosphere. Further, the CO₂ mixes with the volcanically warmed water below the surface and undergoes chemical reactions within the basalt (the black rock created from rapidly cooling lava) to form carbonate compounds—otherwise known as chalk—effectively locking up the greenhouse gas in mineral form. The 650-foot (200-meter) layer of marine sediment on top of the basalt rock acts as yet another barrier. "You have three superimposed trapping mechanisms to keep your CO₂ below the sea bottom and out of the atmosphere," Goldberg says. "It's insurance on insurance on insurance."

The researchers estimate, conservatively, that at least 229 billion tons (208 billion metric tons) of carbon could be stored in the basalt formations of the Juan de Fuca Plate 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the U.S. west coast in this way—or the equivalent of 122 years of all U.S. emissions of 1.9 billion tons (1.7 billion metric tons) annually.

It is unlikely that all of the CO₂ emitted in the U।S। could ever be captured and transported—whether by pipeline or tanker—to the west coast for injection, but local coal-fired power plants might be able to take advantage of the formation. http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com



"On the one hand you wouldn't want to bet the future of U.S. climate policy on it until one has done more work, but on the other hand it looks quite promising," says engineer M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University, a carbon sequestration expert. "In contrast to CO₂ injected in the ground, which is buoyant, in this case it won't be buoyant।" http://louiskjksheehan.blogspot.com



Such formations are also potentially accessible in many parts of the world, according to Goldberg, who is currently researching the global resource. The next step will be a small pilot project during which researchers plan to inject some CO₂ into the undersea formation and see what happens—a process that will take at least three years. Also, colleagues in Iceland will begin pumping CO₂ from a power plant into similar basalt formation later this year, but on land. "The volumes [of storage] we're talking about are huge and the problem is huge," Goldberg says. "The prize is very large here with this option. It's worth a serious look."

rainbow

Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind a person at a low altitude angle (on the ground). The most spectacular rainbow displays happen when half of the sky is still dark with draining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky in the direction of the Sun। The result is a luminous rainbow that contrasts with the darkened background। http://www.soulcast.com/Louis_J_Sheehan_Esquire_1

The rainbow effect is also commonly seen near waterfalls or fountains. Rainbow fringes can sometimes be seen at the edges of backlit clouds[1] and as vertical bands in distant rain or virga. The effect can also be artificially created by dispersing water droplets into the air during a sunny day. Rarely, a moonbow, lunar rainbow or night-time rainbow, can be seen on strongly moonlit nights. As human visual perception for colour is poor in low light, moonbows are often perceived to be white. http://www.soulcast.com/Louis_J_Sheehan_Esquire_1

It is difficult to photograph the complete arc of a rainbow, as this would require an angle of view of 84°. For a 35 mm camera, a lens with a focal length of 19 mm or less wide-angle lens would be required। http://www.soulcast.com/Louis_J_Sheehan_Esquire_1 From an aeroplane, one has the opportunity to see the whole circle of the rainbow, with the plane's shadow in the centre. This phenomenon can be confused with the glory, but a glory is usually much smaller, covering only 5°–20°.

The rainbow's appearance is caused by dispersion of sunlight as it goes through raindrops. The light is first refracted as it enters the surface of the raindrop, reflected off the back of the drop, and again refracted as it leaves the drop. The overall effect is that the incoming light is reflected back over a wide range of angles, with the most intense light at an angle of 40°–42°. The angle is independent of the size of the drop, but does depend on its refractive index. Seawater has a higher refractive index than rain water, so the radius of a 'rain'bow in sea spray is smaller than a true rainbow. This is visible to the naked eye by a misalignment of these bows.^[2]

The amount by which light is refracted depends upon its wavelength, and hence its colour. Blue light (shorter wavelength) is refracted at a greater angle than red light, but because the area of the back of the droplet has a focal point inside the droplet, the spectrum crosses itself, and therefore the red light appears higher in the sky, and forms the outer colour of the rainbow. Contrary to popular belief, the light at the back of the raindrop does not undergo total internal reflection and some light does emerge from the back. However, light coming out the back of the raindrop does not create a rainbow between the observer and the sun because spectra emitted from the back of the raindrop do not have a maximum of intensity, as the other visible rainbows do, and thus the colours blend together rather than forming a rainbow.

Light rays enter a raindrop from one direction (typically a straight line from the Sun), reflect off the back of the raindrop, and fan out as they leave the raindrop. The light leaving the rainbow is spread over a wide angle, with a maximum intensity of 40.6°–42°.

White light separates into different colours (wavelengths) on entering the raindrop because red light is refracted by a lesser angle than blue light. On leaving the raindrop, the red rays have turned through a smaller angle than the blue rays, producing a rainbow.

A rainbow does not actually exist at a particular location in the sky. It is an optical illusion whose apparent position depends on the observer's location and the position of the sun. All raindrops refract and reflect the sunlight in the same way, but only the light from some raindrops reaches the observer's eye. This light is what constitutes the rainbow for that observer. The position of a rainbow in the sky is always in the opposite direction of the Sun with respect to the observer, and the interior is always slightly brighter than the exterior. The bow is centred on the shadow of the observer's head, or more exactly at the antisolar point (which is below the horizon during the daytime), appearing at an angle of 40°–42° to the line between the observer's head and its shadow. As a result, if the Sun is higher than 42°, then the rainbow is below the horizon and cannot be seen as there are not usually sufficient raindrops between the horizon (that is: eye height) and the ground, to contribute. Exceptions occur when the observer is high above the ground, for example in an aeroplane (see above), on top of a mountain, or above a waterfall.

Occasionally, a second, dimmer, and thicker secondary rainbow is seen outside the primary bow. Secondary rainbows are caused by a double reflection of sunlight inside the raindrops, and appear at an angle of 50°–53°. As a result of the second reflection, the colours of a secondary rainbow are inverted compared to the primary bow, with blue on the outside and red on the inside. The dark area of unlit sky lying between the primary and secondary bows is called Alexander's band, after Alexander of Aphrodisias who first described it.

A third, or tertiary, rainbow can be seen on rare occasions, and a few observers have reported seeing quadruple rainbows in which a dim outermost arc had a rippling and pulsating appearance. These rainbows would appear on the same side of the sky as the Sun, making them hard to spot. One type of tertiary rainbow carries with it the appearance of a secondary rainbow immediately outside the primary bow. The closely spaced outer bow has been observed to form dynamically at the same time that the outermost (tertiary) rainbow disappears. During this change, the two remaining rainbows have been observed to merge into a band of white light with a blue inner and red outer band. This particular form of doubled rainbow is not like the classic double rainbow due to both spacing of the two bows and that the two bows share identical normal colour positioning before merging. With both bows, the inner colour is blue and the outer colour is red.

Higher-order rainbows were described by Felix Billet (1808-1882) who depicted angular positions up to the 19^th-order rainbow. A pattern he called “rose” [2]. In the laboratory, it is possible to observe higher-order rainbows by using extremely bright and well collimated light produced by lasers. A sixth-order rainbow was first observed by K. Sassan in 1979 using a HeNe laser beam and a pendant water drop^[3]. Up to the 200^th-order rainbow was reported by Ng et al. in 1998 using a similar method but an argon ion laser beam ^[4].

A supernumerary rainbow is an infrequent phenomenon, consisting of several faint rainbows on the inner side of the primary rainbow, and very rarely also outside the secondary rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are slightly detached and have pastel colour bands that do not fit the usual pattern.

It is not possible to explain their existence using classical geometric optics. The alternating faint rainbows are caused by interference between rays of light following slightly different paths with slightly varying lengths within the raindrops. Some rays are in phase, reinforcing each other through constructive interference, creating a bright band; others are out of phase by up to half a wavelength, cancelling each other out through destructive interference, and creating a gap. Given the different angles of refraction for rays of different colours, the patterns of interference are slightly different for rays of different colours, so each bright band is differentiated in colour, creating a miniature rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are clearest when raindrops are small and of similar size. The very existence of supernumerary rainbows was historically a first indication of the wave nature of light, and the first explanation was provided by Thomas Young in 1804.

[edit] Reflection rainbows, reflected rainbows, fire rainbows

Primary and reflection rainbow at sunset

Other rainbow variants are produced when sunlight reflects off a body of water. Where sunlight reflects off water before reaching the raindrops, it produces a reflection rainbow. Such a rainbow shares the same endpoints as a normal rainbow but encompasses a far greater arc when all of it is visible. Both primary and secondary reflection rainbows can be observed.

A reflected rainbow is produced when light that has first been reflected off a larger body of water then reflects inside raindrops before reaching the observer. [See http://www.eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/rnbw8.gif]

Another rainbow-like variant is produced when sunlight is reflected off clouds. The fire rainbow or circumhorizontal arc can sometimes be seen in cirrus clouds with ice crystals (normally at least 6 km above sea level) and with the sun at least 58° above the horizon.

In Song Dynasty China (960–1279), a polymathic scholar-official named Shen Kuo (1031–1095) hypothesized—as a certain Sun Sikong (1015–1076) did before him—that rainbows were formed by a phenomenon of sunlight encountering droplets of rain in the air.^[5] Paul Dong writes that Shen's explanation of the rainbow as a phenomenon of atmospheric refraction "is basically in accord with modern scientific principles."^[6]

The Persian astronomer, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236–1311) gave a fairly accurate explanation for the rainbow phenomenon. This was elaborated on by his student, Kamal al-Din al-Farisi (1260–1320), who gave a more mathematically satisfactory explanation of the rainbow.^[7]

In Europe, the work of Robert Grosseteste on light was continued by Roger Bacon, who wrote in his Opus Majus of 1268 about experiments with light shining through crystals and water droplets showing the colours of the rainbow.^[8] Theodoric of Freiberg is also known to have given an accurate theoretical explanation of both the primary and secondary rainbows in 1307. He explained the primary rainbow, noting that "when sunlight falls on individual drops of moisture, the rays undergo two refractions (upon ingress and egress) and one reflection (at the back of the drop) before transmission into the eye of the observer".^[9] He explained the secondary rainbow through a similar analysis involving two refractions and two reflections.

Descartes 1637 treatise, Discourse on Method, further advanced this explanation. Knowing that the size of raindrops did not appear to affect the observed rainbow, he experimented with passing rays of light through a large glass sphere filled with water. By measuring the angles that the rays emerged, he concluded that the primary bow was caused by a single internal reflection inside the raindrop and that a secondary bow could be caused by two internal reflections. He supported this conclusion with a derivation of the law of refraction (subsequently, but independently of, Snell) and correctly calculated the angles for both bows. His explanation of the colours, however, was based on a mechanical version of the traditional theory that colours were produced by a modification of white light.^[10][11]

Isaac Newton was the first to demonstrate that white light was composed of the light of all the colours of the rainbow, which a glass prism could separate into the full spectrum of colours, rejecting the theory that the colours were produced by a modification of white light. He also showed that red light gets refracted less than blue light, which led to the first scientific explanation of the major features of the rainbow.^[12] Newton's corpuscular theory of light was unable to explain supernumary rainbows, and a satisfactory explanation was not found until Thomas Young realised that light behaves as a wave under certain conditions, and can interfere with itself.

Young's work was refined in the 1820s by George Biddell Airy, who explained the dependence of the strength of the colours of the rainbow on the size of the water droplets. Modern physical descriptions of the rainbow are based on Mie scattering, work published by Gustav Mie in 1908. Advances in computational methods and optical theory continue to lead to a fuller understanding of rainbows. For example, Nussenzveig provides a modern overview.^[13]

The rainbow has a place in legend owing to its beauty and the historical difficulty in explaining the phenomenon.

In Greek mythology, the rainbow was considered to be a path made by a messenger (Iris) between Earth and Heaven. In Chinese mythology, the rainbow was a slit in the sky sealed by Goddess Nüwa using stones of five different colours. In Hindu mythology, the rainbow is called Indradhanush, meaning the bow of Indra, the God of lightning and thunder. In Norse Mythology, a rainbow called the Bifröst Bridge connects the realms of Ásgard and Midgard, homes of the gods and humans, respectively. The Irish leprechaun's secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow. This place is impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will move further away.

After Noah's Deluge, the Bible relates that the rainbow gained meaning as the sign of God's promise that terrestrial life would never again be destroyed by flood (Genesis 9.13-15^[14]):

I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

Another ancient portrayal of the rainbow is given in the Epic of Gilgamesh: the rainbow is the "jewelled necklace of the Great Mother Ishtar" that she lifts into the sky as a promise that she "will never forget these days of the great flood" that destroyed her children. (The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet Eleven)

Then Ishtar arrived. She lifted up the necklace of great jewels that her father, Anu, had created to please her and said, "Heavenly gods, as surely as this jewelled necklace hangs upon my neck, I will never forget these days of the great flood. Let all of the gods except Enlil come to the offering. Enlil may not come, for without reason he brought forth the flood that destroyed my people."

The rainbow occurs often in paintings. Frequently these have a symbolic or programmatic significance (for example, Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia I). In particular, the rainbow appears regularly in religious art (for example, Joseph Anton Koch's Noah's Thanksoffering). Romantic landscape painters such as Turner and Constable were more concerned with recording fleeting effects of light (for example, Constable's Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows). Other notable examples appear in work by Hans Memling, Caspar David Friedrich, and Peter Paul Rubens.

rebellion

June 1, Wednesday। http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com Called on the President relative to the appointment of midshipmen। After looking over the list with some care, he finally designated two sons of officers [and] one apprentice, and desired me to complete the nominations।

When I called on the President, Major-General Schenck was with him, and, as I went in, was giving the President a list of names of persons to be selected to fill the board about to be appointed on the question of retired officers, his brother, Commodore Schenck, being one। It was a cool proposition, but characteristic of General Schenck, and I think of the Schencks generally। http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com

We have to-day the results of a meeting of strange odds and ends of parties, and factions, and disappointed and aspiring individuals at Cleveland. Frémont is nominated as their candidate for President and John Cochrane for Vice-President. The gathering had the nomination of Frémont in view, though other objects were professed.

I very earnestly supported Frémont in 1856. He was then put forward as the representative of the principles for which we were contending, and I have no reason to give that he was not faithful to the cause. He was, however, as soon as nominated, surrounded, to a great extent, by bad men, in whom no good man had confidence. His bearing was very well so far as he appeared before the public. I saw that he was anxious to be elected but not offensively so; he was not obtrusive, but, on the contrary, reserved and retiring. In nothing did he show extraordinary ability or character, but my conclusions were that his real traits were undeveloped. He did not grow upon me as reserved men usually do. Colonel Benton had in former years extolled him, though opposed to his candidacy. Governor Marcy, no friend of Benton, and not partial to Frémont, had, when Secretary of War, given him name and fame by a most remarkable indorsement in his able report in (I think) 1848.

I have since learned that that part of Marcy’s report was written by Colonel Benton himself, and that President Polk compelled Marcy to incorporate it in the annual report of the War Department. The affair seems incredible almost to me, who knew the several parties, but I learn it in a way that leaves no doubt of its truth. Marcy had ability but was timid and subservient. Frémont has gained no reputation during the War. In power his surroundings have been awful. Reckless, improvident, wasteful, pompous, purposeless, vain, and incompetent. In his explorations, however, he showed perseverance and endurance, and he had the reputation of attaching his men to him. His journals were readable, but I have been told they were prepared and mostly written by Colonel Benton. On all occasions he puts on airs, is ambitious, and would not serve under men of superior military capacity and experience. Frémont first and country after. For a long time he has been in foolish intrigues for the Presidency, and the Cleveland meeting is a Frémont meeting, though others have been concerned.

I am surprised that General Cochrane should have embarked in the scheme। But he has been wayward and erratic। A Democrat, a Barnburner, a conservative, an Abolitionist, an Anti-abolitionist, a Democratic Republican, and now a radical Republican। He has some, but not eminent, ability; can never make a mark as a stateman। It will not surprise me if he should change his position before the close of the political campaign, and support the nominees of the Baltimore Convention. There is not a coincidence of views and policy between him and Frémont, and the convention which has nominated them is a heterogeneous mixture of weak and wicked men. They would jeopard and hazard the Republican and Union cause, and many of them would defeat it and give success to the Copperheads to gratify their causeless spite against the President. He is blamed for not being more energetic and because he is despotic in the same breath. He is censured for being too mild and gentle towards the Rebels and for being tyrannical and intolerant. There is no doubt he has a difficult part to perform in order to satisfy all and do right. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.blogspot.com

This war is extraordinary in all its aspects and phases, and no man was prepared to meet them. It is much easier for the censorious and factious to complain than to do right. I have often thought that greater severity might well be exercised, and yet it would tend to barbarism.

No traitor has been hung. I doubt if there will be, but an example should be made of some of the leaders, for present and for future good. They may, if taken, be imprisoned or driven into exile, but neither would be lasting. Parties would form for their relief, and ultimately succeed in restoring the worst of them to their homes and the privileges they originally enjoyed. Death is the proper penalty and atonement, and will be enduringly beneficent in its influence.

There was, moreover, an aristocratic purpose in this Rebellion. An aristocracy of blood and wealth was to have been established. Consequently a contrary effect would work benignantly. Were a few of the leaders to be stripped of their possessions, and their property confiscated, their families impoverished, the result would be salutary in the future. But I apprehend there will be very gentle measures in closing up the Rebellion. The authors of the enormous evils that have been inflicted will go unpunished, or will be but slightly punished.

stars

http://louisdjdsheehan.blogspot.comTHE task of peering into the cosmos and discovering strange new galaxies sounds like a job for astronomers armed with big and very expensive telescopes. But almost a year ago that all changed when a group of stargazers decided to ask the public to help in a project to explore the northern sky.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey had been looking in this part of space for 16 years, producing so much information that astronomers assumed they would never get through it. So the public was let loose, to help sort what they had found. The scheme is called the Galaxy Zoo project.

It was so popular, says Alex Szalay, an astronomer at John Hopkins University, Maryland, that the computer servers on which the project ran “literally overheated and blew a fuse”. More important, within a month of the opening, Hanny van Arkel, a physics teacher from the Netherlands, posted a message on the zoo’s forum about some strange blue stuff she had spotted and asked what it might be.

By January the zoo’s professional keepers had started to pay attention to what the teacher had called a voorwerp, the Dutch word for object. Now it is becoming famous. William Keel, an astronomer at the University of Alabama, took another picture of the voorwerp and suggested that the human eye would probably see it as green, rather than blue as in the original picture. It also has a giant hole at its centre.

What this object might be was a complete mystery at first. It was initially thought to be a distant galaxy, says Chris Lintott, an Oxford University astronomer involved in the project. But after further study astronomers realised that there were no stars in it, and so it must be a cloud of gas. But why the gas was so hot (about 15,000ºC) was a mystery, because there seemed to be no stars to heat it up.

Now, in a posting on the Galaxy Zoo blog, Dr Keel and Dr Lintott suggest that the galaxy right next door to the voorwerp used to be a quasar (a very bright active galactic nucleus) that has since eaten up all its fuel. This quasar lit up the nearby gas, and although the quasar has since gone out, the light from it is still travelling to the object. The blob, says Dr Lintott, sees the galaxy as it was 40,000 years ago. This makes the voorwerp a sort of light echo but on a massive scale. Smaller light echoes have been seen around supernovae. As for the giant hole, Dr Lintott has “no sensible explanation” for that at the moment and needs to wait for more telescope time.

The weird blob could become immortalised as Hanny’s Voorwerp, the name given to the object in a paper Dr Lintott and his colleagues are submitting to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. And towards the end of the year, if the mission to service the Hubble telescope goes as planned, a high-quality image of the voorwerp could emerge.

Data direct

Earlier projects in distributed computing, such as SETI@home, which searched for extraterrestrial life, have used the power of millions of home computers. But more recently, scientists have begun to realise that distributed human brain power itself can be a useful commodity, as in working out the shape of proteins. Dr Szalay says that the voorwerp episode has shown how immensely valuable the public can be.http://louisdjdsheehan.blogspot.com

When the data were put online Dr Szalay thought it was only a matter of time before someone made a big discovery. “It just happened much faster than we thought.” In the past year 40m classifications of galaxies have been submitted on 1m galactic objects in the Galaxy Zoo. Dr Lintott says that the project has proved that the public en masse is as good as professional astronomers at classifying galaxies.

The next step is to ask people to do more complicated things, such as keeping an eye out for weird objects, which is bound to appeal to armchair astronomers. Hanny’s object had been there for decades, unnoticed in the astronomical archives. The idea now is for the public to explore strange new galaxies; to seek out new voorwerps and to boldly go where no amateur has gone before.

catskills

http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.comYou could have taken a nostalgic drive through the past on Thursday night, through the dreamy green landscape at the outer edges of the Catskills, past sleepy fishing towns like Roscoe and Downsville, to the lovingly restored Walton Theater, built in 1914 for vaudeville acts, honored guests like Theodore Roosevelt and community events of all shapes and sizes.

And, if you got there, you would have received a distinctly less dreamy glimpse of the future. You would have heard an overheated mix of fear and greed, caution and paranoia, of million-dollar gas leases that could enrich struggling farmers, of polluted wells, pastures turned to industrial sites and ozone pollution at urban levels.http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.com You would have heard anguished landowners from Wyoming and Colorado, facing issues now improbably appropriate to the Catskills, present their cautionary view of an environment dominated by huge energy companies where some will get rich while their neighbors might just see a hundredfold increase in truck traffic without much else to show for it.

Such gatherings are being repeated throughout a swath of upstate New York, from Walton to Liberty to New Berlin, as thousands of landowners, many of whom have already signed leases with landmen fanning out across the state, contemplate a new era of gas production now hovering almost inevitably over New York’s horizon.

It’s a development born of new technology, rising energy prices and insatiable demand that is turning the Marcellus Shale formation, which reaches from Ohio to Virginia to New York, into a potential trillion-dollar resource in the gut of the nation’s most populous and energy-hungry region.

Development of the Marcellus has been most advanced in Pennsylvania, but since the beginning of the year, development pressures, land prices and activity by oil and gas firms have increased exponentially across a broad expanse of New York from Lake Erie to the Catskills. “It’s kind of a frenzy here,” said David Hutchison, a retired geology professor who attended the meeting.

Experts say the development will have enormous, barely glimpsed consequences for the upstate economy, the state’s finances and the way of life in quiet rural communities like this one, many of them now heavily influenced by the second-home market. There will be questions about the environmental consequences, especially the potential effect on the upstate reservoirs and watershed that provide New York City’s drinking water.

“This is happening, it’s unstoppable,” said Chris Denton, a lawyer in Elmira who is assembling big blocks of landowners to negotiate with gas companies. “And the question is whether we do it in a way that makes sense or a way that’s irrational and irresponsible.”

The Marcellus Shale has been known to be a potential energy source for a century. But advances in horizontal drilling and soaring energy prices have made it attractive to energy firms. A few years back, farmers could lease their mineral rights for a dollar an acre. This year alone prices in many places have soared to $2,500 an acre from about $200.

So, for example, when Henry Constable, 77, a retired dairy farmer who owns 140 acres outside Walton, left the theater on Thursday night, his head was swimming with alternating visions of financial gain and environmental hazard. He did not quite know what he thought. Would he lease his land?

“It’s definitely a two-sided deal,” he said. “I can’t give you an honest answer. I’ll probably sign something, but I don’t know.”

A stranger listening in offered him a business card and started giving him advice.

“Let me give you fair warning,” he began. “I’m a financial adviser and a landowner, so I’m on both sides of this play. First thing, you need to have a good lawyer, to make sure you have a good lease that gives the right to sue or defend yourself if you’re sued in local court. What these companies want to do is sue you in Minnesota or someplace. And you don’t want to sign a walk-down-the-street lease. You need to be working with an oil and gas attorney.”http://louisajasheehan.blogspot.com

The man, who declined to identify himself to a reporter, started adding up how much Mr. Constable’s land could be worth at $2,500 an acre and a minimum of 12.5 percent royalties. “That could be $1.2 million per year for every 40 acres,” he said. “Do the math. Assuming you’re just signing a lease and not some other monkey deal, you’re suddenly J. R. Ewing. You have an estate tax problem. You have an income tax problem. You’ve got to talk to somebody soon.”

Most of the meetings have focused on just such issues of what landowners can do to maximize their return and control. This one, sponsored by the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group, featured presentations by landowners and environmental and citizens’ advocates like Jill Morrison of the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo., and Peggy Utesch of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance in New Castle, Colo.

They said those royalty checks came at a huge cost: polluted air and water, industrial noise, well blowouts, toxic chemicals leaching into groundwater and wells and a fracturing of communities. Of paramount importance, many said, would be protecting the New York City watershed, an issue that could touch off regulatory and environmental disputes.

The first wells in New York, which have the required state permits, are already being drilled, and the process could play out over 40 years.

“There are problems and challenges that people haven’t even conceived of,” Ms. Morrison said. “And I can tell you that those of us who have gone through it know it has consumed the last 10 or 15 years of people’s lives. I can’t express enough the profound impacts this will have on people’s lives, on land, water, air, wildlife. You need to do an enormous amount of planning to get out in front of it, because this is the richest industry in the world, and they’re going to come whether you want them or no