Yearly Archives: 2012

Nevado fel Ruiz Volcano Nearing Eruption?

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Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia May Erupt in “Days to Weeks”

The small steam plume from Nevado del Ruiz, seen on March 27, 2012. Image from INGEOMINAS Colombia.

Some news brought to my attention by Eruptions reader Sherine merited a quick Saturday post. Thedeveloping volcanic crisis at Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia looks like it is continuing to escalate. INGEOMINAS, the Colombian geological survey, released a “special bulletin” this afternoon elevating the alert status at Nevado del Ruiz to Orange Level (II). This means that the signs of activity at the volcano suggest that an eruption is likely in the days to weeks timescale. Marta Calvache from INGEOMINASmentioed that over the past few days the volcano has experienced tremor related to “fluid motion” (likely magma), rock fracture earthquakes at the summit have been increasing in pulses and sulfur dioxide emissions continue to be high.

 

So far, INGEOMINAS thinks any potentially eruption will be smaller than the activity seen during Ruiz’slast eruptive period between 1985-1989. The major hazard from Ruiz is the lahars that can be generatedas ash and other volcanic material mix with melted snow and ice at the summit. There is also the potential for ash fall (especially hazardous for those with respiratory problems) on towns and cities in the area, including Manizalez and Pereira, both of which are less than 50 km from the volcano, and Bogotá, only ~120 km from Ruiz. If you live in the area around Ruiz, be sure to examine the INGEOMINAS volcanic hazard map to see the places with the highest probability of lahars and pyroclastic flows. Taking a look at the INGEOMINAS Azufrado webcam for Ruiz, a plume can be seen coming from the summit area (see below) while the webicorder shows the increasing seismicity as well. You can also get a glimpse of the volcano from an INGEOMINAS webcam in Manizalez.

Webcam capture from March 31, 2012 showing a small plume from Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia.

from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/nevado-del-ruiz-in-colombia-may-erupt-in-days-to-weeks/

 

Your Brain and Light

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How to Use Light to Control the Brain

Stephen Dougherty, Scientific American
Date: 01 April 2012 Time: 09:38 AM ET

 

Scientists can use light to switch on a neuron.
Scientists can use light to switch on a neuron.
CREDIT: iDesign, Shutterstock

In the film Amèlie, the main character is a young eccentric woman who attempts to change the lives of those around her for the better. One day Amèlie finds an old rusty tin box of childhood mementos in her apartment, hidden by a boy decades earlier. After tracking down Bretodeau, the owner, she lures him to a phone booth where he discovers the box. Upon opening the box and seeing a few marbles, a sudden flash of vivid images come flooding into his mind. Next thing you know, Bretodeau is transported to a time when he was in the schoolyard scrambling to stuff his pockets with hundreds of marbles while a teacher is yelling at him to hurry up.

We have all experienced this: a seemingly insignificant trigger, a scent, a song, or an old photograph transports us to another time and place. Now a group of neuroscientists have investigated the fascinating question: Can a few neurons trigger a full memory?
In a new study, published in Nature, a group of researchers from MIT showed for the first time that it is possible to activate a memory on demand, by stimulating only a few neurons with light, using a technique known as optogenetics. Optogenetics is a powerful technology that enables researchers to control genetically modified neurons with a brief pulse of light.

To artificially turn on a memory, researchers first set out to identify the neurons that are activated when a mouse is making a new memory. To accomplish this, they focused on a part of the brain called the hippocampus, known for its role in learning and memory, especially for discriminating places. Then they inserted a gene that codes for a light-sensitive protein into hippocampal neurons, enabling them to use light to control the neurons.

With the light-sensitive proteins in place, the researchers gave the mouse a new memory. They put the animal in an environment where it received a mild foot shock, eliciting the normal fear behavior in mice: freezing in place. The mouse learned to associate a particular environment with the shock.

Next, the researchers attempted to answer the big question: Could they artificially activate the fear memory? They directed light on the hippocampus, activating a portion of the neurons involved in the memory, and the animals showed a clear freezing response. Stimulating the neurons appears to have triggered the entire memory.

The researchers performed several key tests to confirm that it was really the original memory recalled. They tested mice with the same light-sensitive protein but without the shock; they tested mice without the light-sensitive protein; and they tested mice in a different environment not associated with fear. None of these tests yielded the freezing response, reinforcing the conclusion that the pulse of light indeed activated the old fear memory.

In 2010, optogenetics was named the scientific Method of the Year by the journal Nature Methods. The technology was introduced in 2004 by a research group at Stanford University led by Karl Deisseroth, a collaborator on this research. The critical advantage that optogenetics provides over traditional neuroscience techniques, like electrical stimulation or chemical agents, is speed and precision. Electrical stimulation and chemicals can only be used to alter neural activity in nonspecific ways and without precise timing. Light stimulation enables control over a small subset of neurons on a millisecond time scale.

Over the last several years, optogenetics has provided powerful insights into the neural underpinnings of brain disorders like depression, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety, and schizophrenia. Now, in the context of memory research, this study shows that it is possible to artificially stimulate a few neurons to activate an old memory, controlling an animals’ behavior without any sensory input. This is significant because it provides a new approach to understand how complex memories are formed in the first place.

Lest ye worry about implanted memories and mind control, this technology is still a long way from reaching any human brains. Nevertheless, the first small steps towards the clinical application of optogenetics have already begun. A group at Brown University, for example, is working on a wireless optical electrode that can deliver light to neurons in the human brain. Who knows, someday, instead of new technology enabling us to erase memories á la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we may actually undergo memory enhancement therapy with a brief session under the lights.

This article was first published on Scientific American. © 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. VisitScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.   

frohttp://www.livescience.com/19413-mind-control-light.html:

Iwaki Japan Earthquake

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Strong earthquake in Iwaki, Japan

M 5.9      2012/04/01 14:04    Depth 50.0 km     JAPAN – Fukushima-ken Oki
JMA intensity max. 5- (earthquake-report.com considers 5+ as possibly damaging)
The intermediate depth of the epicenter was luckily weakening the impact
Magnitude data provided by JMA Japan
– Epicenter only 9 km (6 miles) NE (53°) from Iwaki, Honshu, Japan
– JMA 5- in Naraha-machi Kitada and Tomioka-machiMoto-oka
– JMA 4 in Koriyama-shi Kaisei*, Shirakawa-shi Shin-shirakawa*, Shirakawa-shi Higashi*, Shirakawa-shi Omotego*, Sukagawa-shi Iwase-shisho*,Nihommatsu-shi Yui*, Nihommatsu-shi Harimichi*, Kawamata-machi Gohyakuta*, Ten-ei-mura Shimomatsumoto*, Nakajima-mura Nametsu*, Ishikawa-machi , Shimoizumi*, Tamakawa-mura Otaka*, Hirata-mura Nagata*, Asakawa-machi Asakawa*, Furudono-machi Matsukawa*, Ono-machi Ono-niimachi*, Tamura-shi Funehikimachi, Tamura-shi Ogoemachi*, Tamura-shi Tokiwamachi*, Tamura-shi Miyakojimachi*, Tamura-shi Takinemachi*, Iwaki-shi Onahama, Iwaki-shi Taira-yotsunami*, Iwaki-shi Nishikimachi*, Iwaki-shi Taira-umemoto*, Soma-shi Nakamura*, Fukushima Hirono-machi Shimokitaba-oyachihara*, Fukushima Hirono-machi Shimokitaba-nawashirogae*, Kawauchi-mura Shimokawauchi, Kawauchi-mura Kamikawauchi-koyamadaira*, Kawauchi-mura Kamikawauchi-hayawata*, Katsurao-mura Ochiai-ochiai*, Shinchi-machi Yachigoya*, Iitate-mura Itamizawa*, Minami-soma-shi Haramachiku-takamicho *
– The earthquake occurred at 23:04 (11:04 PM) local time
– The earthquake was very well felt in Tokyo, although Tokyo was at a distance of 196 km from the epicenter
– The epicenter was following local JMA Japan a little in the Ocean, what surely has weakened the impact.
NO tsunami risk
– The damaged nuclear power plant of Fukushima has been hit by JMA 4 shaking (MMI V to VI), which is reasonable and should not lead to further damage

http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/31/major-earthquakes-list-april-1-2012/

 

April 1-7

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This week brings with it a lull in the storm.  Take time to go within, to meditate, contemplate, create over what you have learned.  What has changed in your life in the past three months?  Change can be gradual, day to day, but when seen from a temporal perspective, you can get a sense of all that has happened.  There is joy in some of the discoveries that you will be making this week,. some sorrow in others.  Yet you will learn more of the people who are really there for you.  Stay focused and know what is right for you within your deepest heart knowing.  This is a week for realizing that everything is coming together as is right.  There are more changes coming your way, some quite dramatic.  This is a time for knowing your strength and your power.  There are things that you must do, some of them you are aware of and have been putting off.  The larger view that this week provides will give you the impetus and desire to move forward. Continue reading →

BBC Documentary Power of Nightmares

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from:   http://www.wanttoknow.info/powerofnightmares 

The Power of Nightmares

This highly revealing BBC documentary digs deep into the roots of the war on terror, only to find that much of the widespread fear in the post-9/11 world has been fabricated by those in power for their own interests. The intrepid BBC team presents highly informative interviews with experts and top officials in combating terrorism who raise serious questions about who is behind all of the fear-mongering. These experts and riveting footage also show how the media have been manipulated to support secret power agendas.

This eye-opening documentary shows that, especially after 9/11, fear has been used widely in the media to manipulate the public into giving up civil liberties and turning over power to elite groups with their own hidden agendas. The Power of Nightmares clearly demonstrates that the nightmare vision of a powerful, united terrorist organization waiting to strike our societies is largely an illusion. Wherever the BBC team looked for al-Qaeda, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the sleeper cells in America, they found that we are chasing a phantom enemy. For all citizens who care about the future of our world, this is a must-watch video.
View Free: All Three Parts of the BBC Documentary Power of Nightmares

Each episode is one hour. Part 3 is the most revealing. A 22-minute summary is also available.

For 22 minutes of the best excerpts from this three-hour documentary, click here

For a high quality version of part three of Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, click here.

Click here to watch and read reviews of Power of Nightmares on archive.org.

Click here to watch all three episodes Power of Nightmares on Google Video.

For the downloaded copy of an excellent review of Power of Nightmares in the Los Angeles Times, click here.

For a full written transcript of each part of Power of Nightmares: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3

For transcripts, audio and video downloads, and other excellent information on the series, click here.

To order all three parts of Power of Nightmares on one DVD, click here.

Another excellent, highly revealing BBC/Adam Curtis documentary, Century of the Self, delves into the history of mass propaganda and its power to shape public perception. Click here to purchase. Click here to watch it free.

Abiotic Oil Theory

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Here is some information.  Is it true?  The research needs to be done:

Abiotic Oil a Theory Worth Exploring

September 14, 2011 RSS Feed Print

It’s our nature to sort, divide, and classify. We label ourselves to identify political leanings, religious beliefs, the food we enjoy, and the sports teams we cheer. The oil industry too has its own distinct labels which include the “Peak Oil” theorists, those who believe the world is fast depleting the finite supply of fossil fuel; and the pragmatists, those who recognize that engineering and technological advances in oil drilling and extraction continuously identify new reserves that make oil plentiful.

And there’s a third group you may not know. These people are deeply interested in oil and its origins, but their advocacy of “abiotic theory” has many dismissing them as heretics, frauds, or idealists. They hold that oil can be derived from hydrocarbons that existed eons ago in massive pools deep within the earth’s core. That source of hydrocarbons seeps up through the earth’s layers and slowly replenishes oil sources. In other words, it turns the fossil-fuel paradigm upside down.

[Read: How Much Oil is There?]

Perhaps the breakthrough for this theory came when Chris Cooper’s story appeared April 16, 1999, in The Wall Street Journal about an oil field called Eugene Island. Here’s an excerpt:

Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330’s output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.

Then suddenly—some say almost inexplicably—Eugene Island’s fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.

According to Cooper,

Thomas Gold, a respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, has held for years that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs, he says.

All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene Island is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous source miles below the Earth’s surface. That, they say, raises the tantalizing possibility that oil may not be the limited resource it is assumed to be.

More recently, Forbes presented a similar discussion. In 2008 it reported a group of Russian and Ukrainian scientists say that oil and gas don’t come from fossils; they’re synthesized deep within the earth’s mantle by heat, pressure, and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface. Under the so-called abiotic theory of oil, finding all the energy we need is just a matter of looking beyond the traditional basins where fossils might have accumulated.

The idea that oil comes from fossils “is a myth” that needs changing according to petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, speaking at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits.”

Alexander Kitchka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences estimates that 60 percent of the content of all oil is abiotic in origin and not from fossil fuels. He says companies should drill deeper to find it.

Is abiotic theory the real deal? Is Eugene Island “Exhibit A?”  Look how long it’s taken for this conversation to reach a tipping point!

from:   http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/on-energy/2011/09/14/abiotic-oil-a-theory-worth-exploring

Allergy Epidemic Link to Antibacterial Products

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Rise in Allergies Linked to War on Bacteria

By Diana Gitig, Ars Technica

“Allergic diseases have reached pandemic levels,” begins David Artis’s new paper in Nature Medicine. Artis goes on to say that, while everyone knows allergies are caused by a combination of factors involving both nature and nurture, that knowledge doesn’t help us identify what is culpable — it is not at all clear exactly what is involved, or how the relevant players promote allergic responses.

 

There is some evidence that one of the causes lies within our guts. Epidemiological studies have linked changes in the species present in commensal bacteria — the trillions of microorganisms that reside in our colon — to the development of allergic diseases. (Typically, somewhere between 1,000 and 15,000 different bacterial species inhabit our guts.) And immunologists know that signaling molecules produced by some immune cells mediate allergic inflammation. Animal studies have provided the link between these two, showing that commensal bacteria promote allergic inflammation. But these researchers wanted to know more about how.

To figure it out, Artis and his colleagues at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine treated mice with a broad range of oral antibiotics to diminish or deplete their commensal bacteria and then examined different immunological parameters. They used a combination of five different antibiotics, ranging from ampicillin, which is fairly run of the mill, to vancomycin, which is kind of a nasty one.

They found that mice treated with antibiotics had elevated levels of antibodies known to be important in allergies and asthma (IgE class antibodies). The elevated antibodies in turn increased the levels of basophils, immune cells that play a role in inflammation, both allergic and otherwise.

This connection doesn’t only apply to mice but also to humans who have high levels of IgE for genetic reasons. People with genetically elevated levels of IgE are hypersusceptible to eczema and infections, and antibodies that neutralize IgE are used to treat asthma.

The antibiotic treatments and IgE did not act by promoting the survival of mature basophils, but rather by promoting the proliferation of basophil precursor cells in the bone marrow. Commensal bacteria limit this proliferative capacity.

That discovery is the real insight contributed by this paper. It has been well known for some time that IgE mediates allergies. But no one knew that bacteria living in the gut may use it to check the growth of immune precursor cells in the bone marrow. The finding might have wide-ranging implications and help us make sense of other chronic inflammatory disease states that have also been associated with changes in this bacterial populations. Commensal bacteria might impact these other inflammatory conditions — including cancer, infection, and autoimmune disorders — through this mechanism, as well.

Experts have puzzled over the enormous explosion of asthma and allergies in recent years, and been unable to pinpoint the cause. This paper suggests that perhaps the overuse of antibacterial products could be to blame.

Image: Janice Haney Carr/CDC

Citation: “Commensal bacteria–derived signals regulate basophil hematopoiesis and allergic inflammation.” David A Hill, Mark C Siracusa, Michael C Abt, Brian S Kim, Dmytro Kobuley, Masato Kubo, Taku Kambayashi, David F LaRosa, Ellen D Renner, Jordan S Orange, Frederic D Bushman and David Artis. Nature Medicine, published online March 25, 2012. DOI: 10.1038/nm.2657  

from:   http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/allergic-bacteria-disease/?intcid=story_ribbon

In Come the Sprites

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SPRITE SEASON BEGINS: The first sprites of summer are starting to appear in the skies of North America. The strange thing is, summer is almost three months away. “Sprite season is beginning early this year,” says Thomas Ashcraft, who photographed these specimens last night from his observatory in New Mexico:

“At precisely two minutes and twenty-six seconds after midnight March 30, 2012 there was an incredibly powerful bolt of lightning in the vicinity of Woodward, Oklahoma that spawned these red sprites,” says Ashcraft. “I could see them from two states away!” He also recorded VLF and shortwave radio emissions from the cluster, which you can hear as the soundtrack to this video.

Sprites are electrical discharges that come out of the top of thunderclouds, opposite ordinary lightning bolts which plunge toward Earth. Sprites can tower as high as 90 km above ground. That makes them a form of space weather as they overlap the zone of auroras, meteors, and noctilucent clouds.

Because they are associated with lightning, sprites are most often seen in summer months, “but in the past few days sprites have been reported in Texas (particularly near the Mexican border) as well as here in New Mexico,” notes Ashcraft.

from:    spaceweather.com

Venezuela Earthquake

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Moderate earthquake at the northern coast of Venezuela

Last update: March 31, 2012 at 4:33 pm by By 


M 4.9      2012/03/31 09:47    Depth 9.8 km     VENEZUELA
local time 05:47 – Epicenter location see below
Shallow moderate earthquake close to the northern coast of Venezuela
26 km S Carúpano (pop 112,082) and 94 km SE Porlamar (pop 87,120)

USGS Sucre, Venezuela Mar 31 09:47 AM 4.9 9.8 MAP

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/03/30/major-earthquakes-list-march-31-2012/

Wind Speed, Eclipses, and Temperatures

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Eclipses’ effect on wind revealed

March 29, 2012 by Tom Marshall

Eclipses' effect on wind revealedSolar eclipses don’t just turn the lights out; they also make the wind slow down and change direction.

Scientists compared hourly measurements of wind speed and direction from 121  across southern England during the August 1999  with the output of a high-resolution weather  that wasn’t programmed to represent the eclipse.

The model agreed very closely with the instruments’ readings right up until the eclipse began. It then showed what the weather would have been like if the eclipse hadn’t happened, giving researchers a much more accurate idea of its effects.

‘The eclipse was like a giant ,’ says Dr Suzanne Gray of the University of Reading, lead author of the paper in  A. The study shows that scientists can now use high-resolution weather models to look at  changes of small magnitude, like those caused by solar eclipses.

The results show that average  across an inland cloud-free region over southern England dropped by 0.7 metres per second, and that the wind’s direction turned anticlockwise by an average of 17° – effectively, the eclipse was causing the winds to become more easterly. Temperatures also fell by an average of about 1°C.

Previous work on the subject has been based only on measurements in a few places, rather than from a network as in this case. And it didn’t compare these measurements with a weather model to predict what would have happened without the eclipse.

It’s only recently become possible to do this kind of experiment, after huge improvement in high-resolution  models over the last decade. ‘We could never have done this when the eclipse occurred,’ says Gray, ‘but now we can use the model to get a far better idea of its impact on the wind.’

Temperatures are likely to fall when the Earth is deprived of sunlight, just like they do at night. And the slower wind speeds weren’t unexpected, Gray says – cooling the atmosphere close to the ground removes energy from it, damping turbulence, which will probably mean less wind. But the changes in wind direction were more of a surprise.

The effects were so pronounced that they can be seen even in measurements that are taken hourly, which is very infrequent in the context of such a transient event as an eclipse.

The results seem to fit the ‘eclipse cyclone’ hypothesis proposed in 1901 by H Helm Clayton, one of the first scientists to investigate eclipses’ impact on the weather. He suggested that when the moon’s gigantic shadow falls on the Earth, it causes a core of cold air around which a weak, short-lived cyclone forms, skewing the winds anticlockwise.

from:    http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-eclipses-effect-revealed.html