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Turkey-Greece Coast Earthquake

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Very strong earthquake along the Turkey and Greece Coast

Last update: June 10, 2012 at 1:52 pm by By

Very strong earthquake along the Turkey and Greece Coast
The epicenter of the earthquake is only 31 km SW Fethiye, Turkey (pop 60,437)
Luckily the epicenter is below the sea floor, but the impact will still be considerable in the Turkish cities of Fethiye and Dalaman. Both cities are also Tourist destinations.
Update : USGS reports a M5.7 Magnitude at a depth of 20 km. 275,000 people will (according to USGS) have felt a moderate shaking. If USGS is right in his expected intensity, earthquake-report.com believes this earthquake not to generate serious damage.
Update : Electricity and Mobile communications have been lost in Fethiye. Our readers are reporting heavy shaking in Damalan and Fethiye.
Update : USGS has increased his Magnitude to M 5.8, but – good news – the depth was decreased to 39 km (less dangerous). USGS puts his epicenter at only 24 km Oludinez.
Update : Many aftershocks have been noticed so far and will continue the following hours and days. Tourists will not be sleeping well tonight, locals are more used to earthquakes but are seldom confronted with heavy earthquakes like this one.
Update : A reader in Oludenir reports : Standing on the beach, heard buildings rattle, people shouting then vibration that lasted around 2 seconds. Very slight rock disturbance on mountain to south of beach.
Update : Awaiting further news from the epicenter area and because the epicenter looks to be closer to the coast than initially expected, we have raised the Alert status of this earthquake to RED.

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/06/10/major-earthquakes-list-june-10-2012/

Strong Earthquake Off Taiwan

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Very strong but luckily deep earthquake 50 km east of Yilan county, Taiwan

Last update: June 10, 2012 at 6:37 am by By

Taiwan Central Weather Bureau reports a Magnitude of Ml 6.5 at a depth of 61.7 km (the scales used by USGS and CWB are although different, USGS is using the Moment Magnitude scale and CWB the Ml Local Magnitude scale also called the Richter scale by press and public. Ml is rather accurate up to Ml7.

A very strong but deep earthquake occurred 50 km to the east of North Taiwan.
The depth of approx. 70 km had an effect that people felt the earthquake in a wide radius.
Taiwan has a very good preparedness record but has also a lot of earthquakes. Today’s earthquake is one of the most powerful since a long time, but was luckily deep and off the island’s coast.

Image and intensities courtesy CWB, Taiwan

Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : Ml 6.5
UTC Time : Saturday, June 09, 2012 at 21:00:18 UTC
Local time at epicenter : Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 05:00:18 AM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 61.7 km
Geo-location(s) :
50 km (31 miles) E of Su’ao, Taiwan
95 km (59 miles) NE of Hualien, Taiwan
100 km (62 miles) SE of TAIPEI, Taiwan

Update : Another Ml 4.8 earthquake (aftershock?) occurred at a depth of 32.4 km at 14:23 local time.  Epicenter more to the South and closer to the coast.

Update : The Magnitude values reported by the various agencies all over the world are seriously different, partly by the different scales but not completely. CWB values refer to a stronger Magnitude and a lesser depth and explain in part why this earthquake was felt so strongly in the north.  Earthquake-report.com gives, different to most press instances in the world, a high credibility to local skilled seismological agencies like CWB.  CWB has a lot of seismographs installed all over the island and therefore reports very accurate values.

Update : as stated below in the Experience reports we have received from our Taiwan readers, minor damage like falling objects and cracks in walls is already a certainty.

Update : Since the mainshock, CWB has reported 2 aftershocks, the first at Ml 4.5 and the second at Ml 5.1. These aftershocks may go on for some time, but as they occur the same distance out of the coast, we consider them not to cause damage.

CWB reported intensities (CWB scale)
The CWB scale is somewhat similar as the JMA (Japan scale) and goes from 0 to 7
5 CWB means in normal language : most people are considerably frightened.
Nan-ao, Yilan County               5
Heping, Hualien County             5
Su-ao, Yilan County                4
Luodong, Yilan County              4
Neicheng, Yilan County             4
Niudou, Yilan County               4
Tailuge, Hualien County            4
Wufenshan, New Taipei City         4
Hualien City, Hualien County       4
Yanliao, Hualien County            4
Nanshan, Yilan County              4
Tongmen, Hualien County            4
Shoufeng, Hualien County           4
Yilan City, Yilan County           4
Deji, Taichung City                4

The earthquake was felt all over the island, but people in the North are reporting heavy shaking.

Taiwan Central Weather Bureau reports a Magnitude of Ml 6.5 at a depth of 61.7 km (the scales used by USGS and CWB are although different, USGS is using the Moment Magnitude scale and CWB the Ml Local Magnitude scale also called the Richter scale by press and public. Ml is rather accurate up to Ml7.

for more information, and updates, go to:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/06/10/very-strong-but-luckily-deep-earthquake-50-km-east-of-yilan-county-taiwan/

Dr. Mercola on Cancer Causing Foods

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New Evidence Against These Cancer-Causing Foods – And the Massive Cover-Up Effort

June 09 2012

Story at-a-glance

  • The World According to Monsanto explains how the biotech giant threatens to destroy the agricultural biodiversity that has served mankind for thousands of years
  • Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, has been deemed a major health hazard to the environment, and to animal- and human health. A French research team that has studied Roundup extensively has concluded it is toxic to human cells, and likely carcinogenic to humans
  • A recent safety review, which determined that “the available literature shows no solid evidence linking glyphosate exposure to adverse developmental or reproductive effects,” was in fact funded by Monsanto itself
Here is the link for the video:  “The World According to Monsanto”:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rml_k005tsU

By Dr. Mercola

The World According to Monsanto is an absolutely brilliant documentary  that should be on the required viewing list of virtually everyone on the planet.  While it’s already a few years old, the information it contains will remain current until we stop allowing genetically engineered crops to be planted altogether.

The film explains how the biotech giant Monsanto threatens to destroy the agricultural biodiversity that has served mankind for thousands of years.  I must warn you though; it may bring tears to your eyes as you learn how they have decimated so many lives and part of the environment through their morally bankrupt behavior.

A Hostile Takeover of Our Food Supply

For millennia, farmers have saved seeds from season to season. Genetically engineered seeds have completely altered the agricultural landscape, as these seeds are patented, which means farmers must purchase new seed for each planting season and are not allowed to share or save any of the seed.

Doing so equates to patent infringement, and Monsanto has become notorious for tracking down and prosecuting farmers who end up with patented crops in their fields without having paid the prerequisite fees—even when their conventional or organic crops are contaminated by unwanted genetically engineered (GE) seed spread by wind or pollinating insects from neighboring farms that grow GE crops.

To do this, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents who secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops. They infiltrate community meetings, and gather information from informants about farming activities. Some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.

For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented.

But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed for seed patents in a five-to-four decision, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic engineering and modification of seeds; many, if not most of which are “Roundup Ready,” meaning they can withstand otherwise lethal doses of the herbicide Roundup, also created and sold by Monsanto.

Most Commonly Used Herbicide Found to be Carcinogenic

As if the health hazards of genetically altered food crops weren’t bad enough, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has also been deemed a major health hazard both to the environment, and to animal- and human health. It is toxic to human cells, and according to a French research team, it is also carcinogenic. The team has studied the herbicide extensively, and published at least five articles on glysphosate’s potential for wide-ranging environmental and human harmi. Their research shows that glyphosate:

  • Causes cell cycle dysregulation, which is a hallmark of tumor cells and human cancers
  • Inhibits DNA synthesis in certain parts of the cell cycle—the process by which cells reproduce that underlies the growth and development of all living organisms
  • Impedes the hatchings of sea urchins. (Sea urchins were used because they constitute an appropriate model for the identification of undesirable cellular and molecular targets of pollutants.) The delay was found to be dose dependent on the concentration of Roundup. The surfactant polyoxyethylene amine (POEA), another major component of Roundup, was also found to be highly toxic to the embryos when tested alone, and could therefore be a contributing factor

Monsanto-Funded Research Finds “No Evidence” of Harm from Roundup

It doesn’t matter that the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health recently published “research” to the contraryii, the French team says―the world needs to know the truth about who did that “safety-finding” research.  It was funded by none other than Monsanto itself! Is it any wonder they came to the conclusion that:

“[T]he available literature shows no solid evidence linking glyphosate exposure to adverse developmental or reproductive effects at environmentally realistic exposure concentrations.” 

The new Monsanto-funded safety research actually used the French team’s original research to debunk the evidence that Roundup could have human or environmental safety issues. And that didn’t sit well with the French team, which was so angered they wrote a detailed response to Monsanto’s article, accusing the researchers of minimalizing the French group’s work and publishing misleading information.

One of the Monsanto-backed team’s major flaws was their total disregard for the scientific context within which their glysphosate research was performed―namely, the DNA-damaging and carcinogenic potential of the chemical.

Furthermore:

“The second flaw was the claim that their results were “not environmentally relevant” (repeated 5 times in the article), despite the fact that the French researchers were able to demonstrate toxicity in 100% of the individual cells at short exposure time below the usage concentration (20 mM) of the herbicide in present agricultural applications. They elaborated on this point further:

“Therefore, regarding the considerable amount of glyphosate-based product sprayed worldwide, the concentration of Roundup in every single micro droplet is far above the threshold concentration that would activate the cell cycle checkpoint. (2) The effects we demonstrate were obtained by a short exposure time (minutes) of the cells to glyphosate-based products, and nothing excludes that prolonged exposure to lower doses may also have effects.

Since glyphosate is commonly found present in drinking water in many countries, low doses with long exposure by ingestion are a fact. The consequences of this permanent long term exposure remain to be further investigated but cannot just be ignored,” GreenMedInfo.com reportsiii:

Monsanto Guilty of Falsely Advertising Roundup as Safe

 for more, go to:    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/06/09/monsanto-roundup-found-to-be-carcinogenic.aspx?e_cid=20120609_DNL_art_1

Another Earthquake in Italy

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Moderate earthquakes in Italy

Last update: June 9, 2012 at 1:40 pm by By

Moderate earthquake in Northern Italy (new area!)
The earthquake occurred at 04:04 in the middle of the night. Surprisingly this earthquake was not an aftershock in the Ferrara, Mantua, Parma area but mote to the West direction Udinese.  82 km to the north of Venice and in the foothills of the Dolomites mountain range.
The people living in this area have also felt the stronger Ferrara earthquakes.

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/06/09/major-earthquakes-list-june-9-2012/

Quantum Physics & Biology

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Weird World of Quantum Physics May Govern Life

Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 05 June 2012
The bizarre rules of quantum mechanics may in fact enable many of life's fundamental processes, scientists say.
The bizarre rules of quantum mechanics may in fact enable many of life’s fundamental processes, scientists say.
CREDIT: agsandrew | Shutterstock

NEW YORK — The bizarre rules of quantum physics are often thought to be restricted to the microworld, but scientists now suspect they may play an important role in the biology of life.

Evidence is growing for the involvement of quantum mechanics in a wide range of biological processes, including photosynthesis, bird migration, the sense of smell, and possibly even the origin of life.

These and other mysteries were the topic of a panel lecture June 1 held here at the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, part of the fifth annual World Science Festival.

uantum mechanics refers to the strange set of rules that governs the behavior of subatomic particles, which can travel through walls, behave like waves and stay connected over vast distances. [Stunning Photos of the Very Small]

“Quantum mechanics is weird, that’s its defining characteristic. It’s funky and strange,” said MIT mechanical engineer Seth Lloyd.

These oddities generally don’t affect everyday macroscopic objects, which are thought to be too hot and wet for delicate quantum states to withstand. But it seems nature may have found ways to harness quantum mechanics to power some of its most complex and vital systems.

“Life is made out of atoms and atoms behave quantum mechanically,” said cosmologist Paul Davies of Arizona State University. “Life has been around for a long time — 3.5 billion years on this planet at least — and there’s plenty of time to learn some quantum trickery if it confers an advantage.”

Bird brains

One area where clues are implicating quantum mechanics is the internal compasses of birds and other migratory animals. Many bird species migrate thousands of miles every year to return not just to the same region, but to the exact same breeding spot.

For ages, scientists have puzzled how birds could achieve such a feat of navigation, assuming they possess some ability to sense direction based on Earth’s magnetic field.

“We see clearly they can detect the magnetic field,” said University of California, Irvine, biophysicist Thorsten Ritz. “What we cannot do is say, ‘This is the magnetic organ.'”

Mounting evidence now suggests birds may be relying on quantum entanglement — the strange ability of particles to share properties even when separated, so that if an action is performed on one, the other feels its consequences.

Scientists think the process is made possible by a protein inside birds’ eye cells called cryptochrome.

When green light passes into the bird’s eye, it hits cryptochrome, which gives an energy boost to one of the electrons of an entangled pair, separating it from its partner. In its new location, the electron experiences a slightly different magnitude of Earth’s magnetic field, and this alters the electron’s spin. Birds can use this information to build an internal map of Earth’s magnetic field to figure out their position and direction.

“It’s certainly very plausible,” Lloyd said. “It sounded kind of crazy when I first heard it. We don’t have direct experimental evidence, but it does make sense.”

The theory gained support from a recent experiment with fruit flies, which also contain cryptochrome. When this light-detecting protein was extracted from the fruit flies, they lost their magnetic sensitivity and became discombobulated.

Sniffing scents

Another case where quantum mechanics may come to the rescue is the sense of smell. At first, biologists thought they understood smell through a simple model: Odor molecules waft into the nose, and receptor molecules there bind to these molecules and identify them based on their particular shape.

But scientists realized that some odor molecules that have identical shapes have completely different smells, due to a minute chemical change, such as a single hydrogen atom in the molecule being replaced by a heavier version of hydrogen called deuterium. While this affects the weight of the molecule, it doesn’t change its shape, so it still fits into the receptor molecule in exactly the same way.

How, then, can olfactory systems sense the difference? The answer may lie in quantum particles’ ability to act like waves.

“The theory is that even if the shape of the molecule is the same, because it’s got this slight difference, it vibrates in a different fashion,” Lloyd said. “And this kind of wavelike nature, which is a purely quantum kind of effect, somehow this receptor is able to sense this vibrational difference.”

Missing pieces

Physicists are probing more and more unsolved mysteries of biology, hoping that quantum mechanics may provide the missing piece of the puzzle. They even have hope that it could shed light on one of the most intractable questions in all of biology: How did life get started?

“We want to know ‘How did non-life turn into life?'” Davies said. “Life is clearly a distinctive state of matter. What we would like to know is if that distinctiveness is fundamentally quantum mechanical.”

But in their excitement to try the quantum key in the locks of biology, some scientists are wary of overreaching.

“Quantum mechanics is strange and mysterious,” Lloyd said. “The origins of life are strange and mysterious. That doesn’t mean that they’re all the same thing. I think one should be careful saying that all strange and mysterious things have the same origin.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/20753-quantum-physics-biology-life.html

 

Ray Bradbury Quotes on Death

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5 Great Ray Bradbury Quotes About Death

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 06 June 2012
Ray Bradbury in 2009
Author Ray Bradbury, seen here in 2009, died June 5, 2012 at the age of 91.
CREDIT: Caleb Sconosciuto, distributed by Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License.

Ray Bradbury, known for his imaginative and evocative tales of Martian lands and sinister carnival characters, died Tuesday (June 5) at the age of 91.

During his lengthy career as a sci-fi writer, Bradbury mused on death (and life) at length, even citing his inspiration for writing as a desire to live forever.

Here are some of Bradbury’s most provocative thoughts on dying.

Writing as the protagonist’s dying grandmother in his 1957 novel “Dandelion Wine”:

“Important thing is not the me that’s lying here, but the me that’s sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that’s downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I’m not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family.”

2. In “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” his 1962 novel about an evil traveling carnival:

“The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it.”

And …

“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”

3. In his 1953 dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451”:

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

4. On his website, raybradbury.com, in December 2001, describing a childhood encounter with a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico. The experience inspired Bradbury to begin writing every day:

“Mr. Electrico was a fantastic creator of marvels. He sat in his electric chair every night and was electrocuted in front of all the people, young and old, of Waukegan, Illinois. When the electricity surged through his body he raised a sword and knighted all the kids sitting in the front row below his platform. I had been to see Mr. Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, ‘Live forever!’

I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it?” [Top 10 Immortals]

5. During a 2009 interview with “365 Days of Astronomy,” a daily astronomy podcast:

“I want everybody listening to me to think of Mars, only Mars, again and again and again. And think of going back to the moon and make sure the government hears this from you. These are bad times today. If you read the Wall Street Journal, forget it! You know? If you buy stocks sell ’em! Get rid of ’em! But listen to me and say, ‘Back to the Moon!’ The moon is everything and Mars is beyond, waiting for us. I want to be buried on Mars. I don’t want to be the first live person to arrive there. It’ll be too late. But I want to be the first dead person that gets there. I want to arrive in a Campbell’s soup can. Bury me on Mars in [the] thing called the Bradbury Abyss. They gotta name a place on Mars for me, and I will welcome that.”

from:    http://www.livescience.com/20784-5-great-ray-bradbury-quotes-death.html

Statue of Siddhartha Found

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Ancient Statue Reveals Prince Who Would Become Buddha

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 06 June 2012 Time:
A newly discovered stele from Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan, reveals a depiction of a prince and monk.
A newly discovered stele from Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan, reveals a depiction of a prince and monk. The prince is likely the founder of Buddhism.
CREDIT: Jaroslav Poncar

In the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan, archaeologists have uncovered a stone statue that seems to depict the prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism.

The stone statue, or stele, was discovered at the Mes Aynak site in a ruined monastery in 2010, but it wasn’t until now that it was analyzed and described. Gérard Fussman, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, details his study in “The Early Iconography of Avalokitesvara” (Collège de France, 2012).

Standing 11 inches (28 centimeters) high and carved from schist — a stone not found in the area — the stele depicts a prince alongside a monk. Based on a bronze coin found nearby, Fussman estimates the statue dates back at least 1,600 years. Siddhartha lived 25 centuries ago

A newly discovered stele from Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan, reveals a depiction of a prince and monk.

A newly discovered stele from Mes Aynak, in Afghanistan, reveals a depiction of a prince and monk. The prince is likely the founder of Buddhism.
CREDIT: Jaroslav Poncar

In the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan, archaeologists have uncovered a stone statue that seems to depict the prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism.

The stone statue, or stele, was discovered at the Mes Aynak site in a ruined monastery in 2010, but it wasn’t until now that it was analyzed and described. Gérard Fussman, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, details his study in “The Early Iconography of Avalokitesvara” (Collège de France, 2012).

Standing 11 inches (28 centimeters) high and carved from schist — a stone not found in the area — the stele depicts a prince alongside a monk. Based on a bronze coin found nearby, Fussman estimates the statue dates back at least 1,600 years. Siddhartha lived 25 centuries ago.

 

The prince is shown sitting on a round wicker stool, his eyes looking down and  with his right foot against his left knee. He is “clad in a dhoti (a garment), with a turban, wearing necklaces, earrings and bracelets, sitting under a pipal tree foliage. On the back of the turban, two large rubans [are] flowing from the head to the shoulders,” writes Fussman in his new book. “The turban is decorated by a rich front-ornament, without any human figure in it.” [Photos of the statue and ancient Buddhist monastery]

Mes Aynak is located about 25 miles (40 km) east of Kabul and contains an ancient Buddhist monastic complex.

Mes Aynak is located about 25 miles (40 km) east of Kabul and contains an ancient Buddhist monastic complex.
CREDIT: Jerome Starkey CC Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic

The monk stands at the prince’s right side, his right forearm shown upright. In his right hand the monk holds a lotus flower or palm (now broken), and in his left is a round object of some kind.

Based on the iconography of the stele, particularly the pipal leaves, Fussman believes the prince is Gautama Siddhartha Sakyamuni, who is said to have achieved enlightenment, become a Buddha — someone of divine wisdom and virtue — and founded the religion of Buddhism. This stele shows him at an early moment in his life, when he has yet to start his fateful journey of enlightenment.

Siddhartha’s story

According to the story, Siddhartha’s father wanted him to follow a worldly path and tried to keep his son cloistered in a palace.

“Lotus pools were made for me at my father’s house solely for my use; in one, blue lotuses flowered, in another white, and in another red,” says Siddharthain ancient writings attributed to him. “A white sunshade was held over me day and night so that I would not be troubled by cold or heat, dust or grit or dew.” (This translation is from Rupert Gethin’s “The Foundations of Buddhism,” Oxford University Press, 1998.)

The prince’s life would change when he ventured outside the palace and saw the real world. “As soon as he left the palace he became pessimistic,” Fussman told LiveScience, “because by meeting these people, he knew that everybody is to work, everybody may become ill, everybody is to die.”

He grew disenchanted with palace life and left, becoming a poor ascetic.

Tibetan clues

Fussman said that this stele supports the idea that there was a monastic cult, in antiquity, dedicated to  Siddhartha’s pre-enlightenment life. This idea was first proposed in a 2005 article inthe journalEast and West by UCLA professor Gregory Schopen. Schopen found evidence for the cult when studying the Tibetan version of the monastic code, Mulasarvastivada vinaya.

It’s a “cult focused on his image that involved taking it in procession through the region and into town,” Schopen wrote. “A cult tied to a cycle of festivals celebrating four moments, not in the biography of the Buddha but in the pre-enlightenment period of the life of Siddhartha.”

One section of the code authorizes carrying the image of Siddhartha (referred to as a Bodhisattva) on a wagon.

Whether or not the newly discovered stele went on a wagon ride, Fussman said the depiction of Gautama Siddhartha Sakyamuni before he became a Buddha provides further evidence of the existence of this cult. “Here also you have an instance of it,” he said in the interview, “the Buddha before he became a Buddha.”

Excavations continue at the Mes Aynak site as scientists explore the complex in an effort to save the artifacts before the area is disturbed by copper mining.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/20799-ancient-statue-reveals-prince-buddha.html

 

Volcano Update 6/4

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Eruption Update for June 4, 2012: Popocatépetl, Nevado del Ruiz, Kilauea and more

A combination of a thermal and visible image of the Royal Gardens subdivision lava flow field, showing the active (bright) and inactive (dark) lava flows. You can also notice the prominent kipuku (forest surrounded by lava flows) on both sides of the active lava flow in the foreground. Image taken on May 31, 2012, courtesy of USGS/HVO.

There is a big anniversary this week (well, other than our first wedding anniversary) – but I’ll have more on that on Wednesday. Today, I thought I’d update a few bits of volcanic news from the past week or so. If you’re looking for even more details on the week’s volcanic events, check out the latest USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report (of which a few of the updates get linked to below).

Mexico

All eyes continue to be on Popocatépetl and the volcano clearly still deserves the attention. Over the weekend, Popo produced at least 91 explosions over a 24 hour period. However, none of the events were larger than what we’ve been seeing over the last week. In fact, UNAM scientist Giovanni Sosa Ceballos says that we shouldn’t be expecting a large Plinian eruption from Popo as its recent volcanic history doesn’t favor such behavior. This doesn’t mean that the volcano isn’t still dangerous and doesn’t entirely rule out a large event. However, looking at the past activity at a volcano is one of the best ways to know what to expect in the present. The Mexican government still has people and resources ready for evacuations if the activity gets worse.

Check out the webcams to watch Popocatépetl’s activity (conditions permitting).

 

Colombia

Much like Popocatépetl, Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz has been rumbling much of the spring. After a brief respite, the activity at the volcano has kicked back up this week, with almost continuous ash emissions over the last few days. However, the activity hasn’t increased since the volcano was placed back on Orange alert status last Tuesday. INGEOMINAS scientists say that these ash emissions could last for days to weeks, continuing to dust the region around Ruiz with coating of volcanic ash. The Colombian and regional governments have prepared shelters for potential evacuees if the volcano’s activity increases or lahars are generated from these rewned explosions.

Be sure to watch the Ruiz webcams to see any changes at the volcano.

Hawai’i

The lava flows (see above) and ups/downs of the Halema’uma’u Crater lava lake have continued into the early summer at Kilauea on the Big Island. The level of the summit lava lake has oscillated over the last week, changing as much as 60 meters (relative to the floor of the summit crater) and parts of the crater wall falling into the lava lake. You can also check out a brief piece of the earthquake and volcanic threat to another Hawaiian island, Maui.

image http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/multimedia/uploads/multimediaFile-382.jpg

from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/eruption-update-for-june-4-2012-popocatepetl-nevado-del-ruiz-kilauea-and-more/#more-113917

Ireland — 4. Earthquake

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A very rare M4 earthquake hits Ireland!!!

Last update: June 6, 2012 at 10:58 am by By

This is the largest magnitude Irish earthquake ever recorded!

The Lleyn Peninsula Earthquake 19 July 1984 which was M5.4 caused intensity IV in Ireland.
It is expected that Mayo County will have intensity IV-V shaking from this 6th June 2012 earthquake. Mayo County has a population of 132,000 and very little earthquake resistant building measures!
The epicenter was located 50km off the west coast of Ireland.

Locals in a number of areas on the west coast reported feeling earth tremors this morning. Tremors were felt in counties Mayo, Sligo and Galway with some local radio stations receiving calls from listeners who described houses shaking.

There have been reports of some structural damage but this has not been confirmed.

Ishnakea South Island (closest point to the earthquake)

Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : M4.0 (BGS)
UTC Time : 07:58:13.9 UTC on 6th June, 2012
Local time at epicenter : 07:58:13.9 AM  on 6th June, 2012
Depth (Hypocenter) : 3km (BGS)
Geo-location(s) : 45km west of Old Village, Ishnakea South.
Location is approximately 60km west of Belmullet, County Mayo. Felt in the Counties of Mayo, Sligo and Galway.

Historical earthquakes near Ireland (courtesy:BGS)

for more information and updates, go to:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/06/06/a-very-rare-m4-earthquake-hits-ireland/