Moments of Awareness

Eggs are bad. Wait, no they're not. Wheat is good. Wait, no it's not. Fat is bad. Wait, no it's not. In fact, the low-density lipids (cholesterols) in egg yolks helps sweep high-density lipids (the kind that stick) out of the blood. In fact, celiac disease - gluten intolerance - is known to affect at least 3 million Americans. (See below for more.) Many find relief from diverticulitis, Crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and ulcerative colitis, and improvement or elimination of Type 2 diabetes when they reduce or eliminate wheat, rye, and barley (the gluten-containing grains) in their diets. Now we're learning that the FDA agrees with those of us who've long felt the egg principle extends to all fats, that there are healthy fats and unhealthy ones, and the healthy ones are useful in filling calorie requirements in nutrient-heavy ways while at the same time offering a buffer against the ill effects of sticky, greasy, low-nutrient fats. The FDA's...

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While love doesn't always conquer all, it can be a potent antidote to addiction, according to a growing body of research. The latest study on the matter examined male prairie vole behavior, finding that those that had bonded to a female partner were less interested in taking amphetamine than bachelor voles.   "These results indicate that the pair-bonding experience decreased the rewarding properties of amphetamine," says Kimberly Young, an author of the study and a postdoctoral student at Florida State University. Unlike rats or mice, prairie voles form lifelong bonds with their mates, more closely approximating human social behavior, which is why scientists like to study them. For the current research, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers looked closely at how pair-bonding and amphetamine affected voles' brains. The first experiment involved 30 male voles, 17 of which had been allowed to mate and form pair bonds; the rest were ...

The biggest surprise of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair , which took place last month at the Javits Center in New York, wasn’t the latest objet by a global superstar. It was an amazingly polished collection of classroom furniture that was designed by a group of eighth graders. The project, Tools at Schools (which even won the Editor’s Award for Best Design School, an honor usually reserved for college-level institutions showing work at the fair), was initiated by Aruliden , a New York-based design consultancy, at the School at Columbia University, an independent school whose students include the children of Columbia’s faculty as well as children from the neighborhood. Tools at Schools started when Rinat Aruh, a partner [...] Full article at  tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

CO-ORBITAL ASTEROID FLYBY: Small asteroid 2009 BD is flying through the Earth-moon system today about 215,000 miles from Earth. The 10m wide space rock poses no threat to our planet, but it is of acute scientific interest. "It's notable [...] ECLIPSE OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN: A solar eclipse at midnight? It's not only possible, it actually happened last night. On June 1st, the new Moon passed in front of the midnight sun above the Arctic circle, producing a partial eclipse of exquisite [...] SOUTH POLE AURORAS: Earth is exiting a solar wind stream that sparked colorful auroras ...

A slew of big-name former politicians are endorsing a report that says the war on drugs is not working and that drug enforcement policy needs to fundamentally change. The Global Commission on Drug Policy will urge a "paradigm shift" that emphasizes public health over criminalization tomorrow at a meeting in New York City, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/drugs-trade-drugs ">The Guardian reports. Those backing the report include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Fed Chair Paul Volcker. Former elected leaders of Greece, Brazil and Colombia have also signed on. See http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/ ">the full list of backers here. "What we have here is the greatest collection thus far of ex-presidents and prime ministers calling very clearly for decriminalization and experiments with legal regulation," Danny Kushlick, spok...

WASHINGTON  — The United States is warning that a cyber attack — presumably if it is devastating enough  — could result in real-world military retaliation. Easier said than done. In the wake of a significant new hacking attempt against Lockheed Martin Corp, experts say it could be extremely difficult to know fast enough with any certainty where an attack came from. Sophisticated hackers can mask their tracks and make it look like a cyber strike came from somewhere else. There are also hard questions about the legality of such reprisals and the fact that other responses, like financial sanctions or cyber countermeasures, may be more appropriate than military action, analysts say. "There are a lot of challenges to retaliating to a cyber attack," said Kristin Lord, author of a new report on U.S. cyber strategy at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball a...

The Washington Post reports that we're having a sudden outbreak of common sense: Nearly two decades after a zero-tolerance culture took hold in American schools, a growing number of educators and elected leaders are scaling back discipline policies that led to lengthy suspensions and ousters for such mistakes as [...] Full article at  motherjones.com A.Men. Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil ’s environmental agency gave final approval on Wednesday for a giant hydroelectric power plant in the Amazon rain forest that has been at the center of a protracted battle between the government and environmentalists over the fate of indigenous people. After three decades of planning, the environmental agency, Ibama, granted a license to the North Energy consortium for the dam, which will be the world’s third largest, capable of producing 11,200 megawatts of electricity. Opponents said they would not give up the fight against the Belo Monte dam , which they said would flood a large part of the Xingu River basin, affecting local fishing and forcing tens of thousands of indigenous people from their native lands. “We will not cede an inch,” said Antônia Melo, the coordinator of Xingu Vivo Para Sempre, a group based in Altamira, a city that will be partly flooded. “Our indignation and our strength to f...

Now that the Supreme Court has given California the choice of shrinking its prison population drastically or making sufficient room for the prisoners it has, attention has naturally turned to how the financially strapped state will respond. But that focus shouldn’t obscure the remarkable nature of what the court did last week when it upheld a lower court’s order requiring California to reduce its prison population to no more than 137.5 percent of capacity within two years to cure overcrowding so severe that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Kennedy’s opinion evokes the Supreme Court of the civil rights era. As I read the majority opinion , I had the eerie feeling of entering a time warp, of being whisked back to an earlier era, one that preceded my own decades of close encounters with the Supreme Court. It was a time when federal judges took charge of state and local institutions — prisons, school systems, hospitals, child welf...

A NEW scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home. Some of these land acquisitions are enormous. South Korea, which imports 70 percent of its grain, has acquired 1.7 million acres in Sudan to grow wheat — an area twice the size of Rhode Island. In Ethiopia, a Saudi firm has leased 25,000 acres to grow rice, with the option of expanding. India has leased several hundred thousand acres there to grow corn, rice and other crops. And in countries like Congo and Zambia, China is acquiring land for biofuel production. These land grabs shrink the food supply in famine-prone African nations and anger local farmers, who see their governments selling th...

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A committee in the Louisiana State Senate approved a ban on dispersants in the state's waters on Tuesday as new evidence came to light indicating that the record volume of chemicals used last year in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill may have done more harm than good . [...] Full article at  motherjones.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

Credit: NOAA . It's here. The start of the 2011 hurricane season. And so is the seasonal hurricane forecast of Phil Klotzbach and Bill Gray at Colorado State University. Their summary: We continue to foresee well above-average activity for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season. We are predicting the same levels of activity that were forecast in early April due to the combination of expected neutral ENSO conditions and very favorable atmospheric and oceanic conditions in the tropical Atlantic. We continue to anticipate an above-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall.   Specifically, for 2011, they're forecasting the likelihood of: 16 named storms 9 hurricanes 5 intense hurricanes [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Crossposted from Deep Blue Home . Full article at motherjones.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

What if you could take a pill and erase painful memories? Most of us would probably choose not to lose parts of our past, but for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, such a pill might bring welcome relief. In a study that sounds very much like a scene from the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” researchers have shown that the right medication might actually help rub out wrenching remembrances.  For the new study, researchers rounded up 33 university students and asked them to watch a video presentation that told the story of a little girl who has a horrible accident while visiting with her grandparents. While the girl and her grandfather are constructing a birdhouse, one of the little girl’s hands gets caught in a saw. One of the pictures shown to the study volunteers is of her mangled hand. Though the girl’s hand is eventually saved at the hospital and the story ends fine, the presentation is tough to sit through and tends to ...

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DEVILS LAKE, N.D. -- Amtrak officials say flooding in northern North Dakota has forced a temporary shutdown of passenger rail service between St. Paul, Minn., and Spokane, Wash. The company says two bridges are threatened because of rising water in the Devils Lake basin, and the rail station in Minot was closed after water flooded the basement. [...] Full article at  ktvb.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

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Los Angeles International Airport reported 102 laser events last year -- the highest number for a single airport in the U.S. (CNN) -- The FAA has seen the light. And it wants to put an end to it. Federal Aviation Administration officials on Wednesday plan to announce they will impose civil penalties on people who point lasers into the cockpit of aircraft. The number of pilots reporting being targeted by lasers nearly doubled last year to 2,836, up from 1,527 the previous year, the FAA said. Officials say the increase is likely attributable to the increased availability of cheap and powerful laser pointers, to the introduction of green lasers which are more easily seen, and to increased reporting of laser events by pilots. [...] Full article at  cnn.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

3D visualization of gravitational waves produced by two orbiting black holes. CREDIT: Henze/NASA View full size image For years, scientists have been trying — and failing — to detect theoretical ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. But new research suggests that building just one more detector might finally do the trick. Four gravitational wave detectors are currently in operation. Proposals have been submitted to build three more , one each in Japan, Australia and India. Constructing just one of these would double the amount of sky being covered in current searches for gravitational waves and would drastically increase the chances of a detection, according to the study . The study, by physicist Bernard Schutz of the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, waspublished May 27 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitt...

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LAST summer, a business professor and a marketing consultant wrote on The Harvard Business Review’s Web site about their idea for a $300 house . According to the writers, and the many people who have enthusiastically responded since, such a house could improve the lives of millions of urban poor around the world. And with a $424 billion market for cheap homes that is largely untapped, it could also make significant profits. The writers created a competition, asking students, architects and businesses to compete to design the best prototype for a $300 house (their original sketch was of a one-room prefabricated shed, equipped with solar panels, water filters and a tablet computer). The winner will be announced this month. But one expert has been left out of the competition, even though her input would have saved much time and effort for those involved in conceiving the house: the person who is supposed to live in it. We work in Dharavi, a neighborhood in Mumbai that has ...

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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo to his agency that officials will not designate any public lands as "wild lands." [...] Full article at  ktvb.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

The nematode H. mephisto lives nearly a mile (1.3 km) underground in rock fractures near South African goldmines. CREDIT: Property of the University Ghent, Belgium - Gaetan Borgonie View full size image How low can worms go? According to a new study , at least 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers) below the Earth's surface. That's the depth at which scientists discovered a new species of worm, dubbed Halicephalobus mephisto in honor of Faust's demon Mephistopheles. The worm, reported this week in the journal Nature, is the deepest living multicellular organism ever found. "We tried to get the title of the paper to be 'Worms from Hell,'" said study author Tullis Onstott of Princeton University. "But Nature didn't go for that." [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can follow LiveScience   senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas . Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @l...

Getty Images   With the memory of Memorial Day cheeseburgers and bratwursts still lingering, many of us may be relieved to hear that a new study suggests that a meaty, high-fat, Atkins-style diet can do more than contribute to rapid weight loss. It may also be less unhealthy for the heart than many scientists had feared — provided you chase the sausage with a brisk walk. “It took people less time to lose 10 pounds” on a high-fat diet-and-exercise program, about 45 days on average, than the 70 days it took for those who exercised and followed a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet constructed using guidelines from the American Heart Association, said Kerry J. Stewart, director of clinical and research exercise physiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the report. And at least in the short term, there were no apparent harmful effects. The findings are being presented on Friday at the annual meeting of the American College o...

A customer ran into some computer problems and called the help desk for assistance. Here was how the conversation went…. Tech Support: Yes, how can I help you? Customer: Well, after much consideration, I’ve decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process? (Picture of my daughter, Hui) Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?   Customer: Well, I’m not very technical, but I think I’m ready. What do I do first? [...] Full article at  abundancetapestry.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

SAN FRANCISCO — Instead of paying attention in high school, Nick Cammarata preferred to read books on whatever interested him. He also has a gift for coding that got him into Carnegie Mellon University’s esteemed computer science program, despite his grades. But the 18-year-old programmer won’t be going to college this fall. Or maybe ever. Cammarata is one of two dozen winners of a scholarship just awarded by San Francisco tech tycoon Peter Thiel that comes with a unique catch: The recipients are being paid not to go to college. Instead, these teenagers and 20-year-olds are getting $100,000 each to chase their entrepreneurial dreams for the next two years. “It seems like the perfect point in our lives to pursue this kind of project,’’ says Cammarata, of Newburyport, Mass. Along with 17-year-old David Merfield, he will be working on software to upend the standard approach to teaching in high school [...] Full article at...

CHICAGO — The view looking down through the glass floor toward South Wacker Drive is just what you’d expect if you were balanced on top of 6,960 boxes of this city’s deep-dish pizza — or, as the exhibition at the Willis Tower also tells us, standing atop 313 Oprah Winfreys or 283 Barack Obamas. That thought brings on its own sort of vertigo. The comfort is that those human towers would reach the top of the building itself, while this particular perch for a human version of Yertle the Turtle is a bit lower, on the 103rd floor: fewer pizzas, media stars and presidents would be required. Not much help. Stand on the Ledge , as it is called, on the tower’s Skydeck, and look down on rooftops and traffic helicopters, and leftward toward the haze over the lake, and outward along the city’s grid stretching toward the South Side. Despite the reassuring rivets in the 1,500-pound glass panels, the calm stillness of the air at the Windy City’s pinn...