V-flying birds pick efficient flapping pattern
Timing is everything to catch a boost from a neighbor’s wing

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/v-flying-birds-pick-efficient-f...

Researchers Find New Form Of Quantum Matter
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113049585/new-form-of-quantum...

There is no sixth sense!

Yes, without invoking a sixth sense, people can reliably sense when a change had occurred even when they could not see exactly what had changed.

People can reliably sense when a change had occurred even when they could not see exactly what had changed, according to a new study by researchers in Australia.

However, the researchers concluded that this is not due to extrasensory perception (ESP) or having a sixth sense. Rather they do this by picking up cues from more conventional senses such as sight.

Lead researcher Dr Piers Howe said the research is the first to show in a scientific study that people can reliably sense changes that they cannot visually identify.

In the study, published in PLOS ONE, observers were presented with pairs of color photographs, both of the same female. In some cases, her appearance would be different in the two photographs. For example, the individual might have a different hairstyle.

Each photograph was presented for 1.5 seconds with a 1 second break between them. After the last photograph, the observer was asked whether a change had occurred and, if so, identify the change from a list of nine possible changes.

Results showed study participants could generally detect when a change had occurred even when they could not identify exactly what had changed.

For example, they might notice that the two photographs had different amounts of red or green but not be able to use this information to determine that the person had changed the color of their hat. This resulted in the observer “feeling” or “sensing” that a change had occurred without being able to visually identify the change.

According to the researchers, this is evidence that people can receive information through their senses that they are unable to describe verbally. However, people often attribute this “feeling” or “sensing” to an extrasensory ability.

“There is a common belief that observers can experience changes directly with their mind, without needing to rely on the traditional physical senses such as vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch to identify it. This alleged ability is sometimes referred to as a sixth sense or ESP,” said Dr Howe.

“We were able to show that while observers could reliably sense changes that they could not visually identify, this ability was not due to extrasensory perception or a sixth sense.”

Source: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone....

Plants like animals can learn things!
Researchers in Australia have published evidence that plants can learn and remember just as well as it would be expected of animals.
After publishing a study about plants being able to ‘talk’ using sound, a researcher in Australia has now discovered that they can ‘learn’ as well.

While this may sound stranger than fiction, Dr Monica Gagliano has solid evidence to support her theories, the latest of which is published in Oecologia.

In the new article, Dr Gagliano and her team show that Mimosa pudica plants can learn and remember just as well as it would be expected of animals, but of course, they do it all without a brain.

Using the same experimental framework normally applied to test learnt behavioral responses and trade-offs in animals, they designed their experiments as if Mimosa was indeed an animal.

Dr Gagliano and her colleagues trained Mimosa plants’ short- and long-term memories under both high and low-light environments by repeatedly dropping water on them using a custom-designed apparatus (Mimosa folds its leaves in response to the drop).

In their experiments, Mimosa plants stopped closing their leaves when they learnt that the repeated disturbance had no real damaging consequence. Mimosa plants were able to acquire the learnt behavior in a matter of seconds and as in animals, learning was faster in a less favorable environment (i.e. low light).

Most remarkably, these plants were able to remember what had been learned for several weeks, even after environmental conditions had changed.

Although plants lack brains and neural tissues, they do possess a sophisticated calcium-based signaling network in their cells that is similar to animals’ memory processes.

While the researchers do not yet understand the biological basis for this learning mechanism, their findings may radically change the way we perceive plants and the boundaries between plants and animals. This includes our definition of learning (and hence memory) as a unique property of organisms with functioning nervous systems.
Source:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00442-013-2873-7
The nervous system of animals serves the acquisition, memorization and recollection of information. Like animals, plants also acquire a huge amount of information from their environment, yet their capacity to memorize and organize learned behavioral responses has not been demonstrated. In Mimosa pudica—the sensitive plant—the defensive leaf-folding behaviour in response to repeated physical disturbance exhibits clear habituation, suggesting some elementary form of learning. Applying the theory and the analytical methods usually employed in animal learning research, we show that leaf-folding habituation is more pronounced and persistent for plants growing in energetically costly environments. Astonishingly, Mimosa can display the learned response even when left undisturbed in a more favourable environment for a month. This relatively long-lasting learned behavioural change as a result of previous experience matches the persistence of habituation effects observed in many animals.

Scientific acronyms:
CuNT - unfortunate shorthand for Copper NanoTube
One of the ISS flight controller positions has the following console tools:

APU, BART, HOMER, LISA, MARGE, MAGGIE, MOE, PATI, and DUFFman.

APU: Attitude Planning Utility
BART: Basic Attitude Replication Tool
LISA: Library for ISP, SODF, and Applications
astronomy!

BIGASS: Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey
FLAMINGOS: FLoridA Multi-object Imaging Near-infrared Grism Observational Spectrometer
GANDALF: Gas AND Absorption Line Fitting algorithm
LUCIFER: LBT near infrared spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research
WISEASS: Weizmann Institute of Science Experimental Astrophysics Spectroscopy System
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~gpetitpas/Links/Astroacro.html
Bra in Quantum Mechanics, used for dual vectors!

Creating Tastier and Healthier Fruits and Veggies with a Modern Alternative to GMOs
By combining traditional plant breeding with ever-faster genetic sequencing tools, researchers are making fruits and vegetables more flavorful, colorful, shapely and nutritious
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/creating-tastier-and-heal...

Adam’ walked the Earth 209,000 years ago: UK scientists claim the first man lived 9,000 years earlier than previously thought

To calculate age of the Y chromosome, researchers multiplied data on age fathers have their first child with the number of mutations they uncovered
They then divided this figure by the mutation rate of the Y chromosome
Their findings suggest that 'Adam' lived in the same time frame as 'Eve'
Earlier study at Arizona University claimed Y chromosome originated in a different species through interbreeding and dated 'Adam' to be twice as old

STUDY SUGGESTS ADAM AND EVE LIVED IN AFRICA AT THE SAME TIME

Results of a separate study announced in August last year suggest that Adam and Eve lived in Africa at the same time - but probably never met.

It was previously believed that ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ and ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ - the most recent common ancestors to males and females - lived at completely different times.

But a study of 69 men from around the world found ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ walked the Earth between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed.

It places him nearer to Eve who was around 99,000 to 148,000 years ago the analysis found.

The researchers at Stanford University, California, say it is ‘extremely unlikely’ they were exact contemporaries.

Initial estimates for the male MRCA ranged from between 50,000 to 115,000 years ago.

Geneticist Professor Carlos Bustamante, of Stanford University, California, said: 'Previous research has indicated the male most recent common ancestor (MRCA) lived much more recently than the female MRCA. But now our research shows there is no discrepancy.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2544731/Adam-walked-...

Childhood Amnesia – At What Age Do We Start Forgetting Childhood Memories?
Memories are the way that infants learn new information, however, few adults can remember events that occurred before the age of three. According to a new study from Emory University psychologists, these early memories fade around age seven in a phenomenon known as “childhood amnesia.”

According to Emory’s Carol Clark, the research team interviewed children about past events in their lives, starting at age three. At ages five, six, seven, eight and nine, different subsets of the total group of children were tested for recall of those same events.

“Our study is the first empirical demonstration of the onset of childhood amnesia,” said Emory psychologist Patricia Bauer. “We actually recorded the memories of children, and then we followed them into the future to track when they forgot these memories.” Bauer collaborated with Marina Larkina, a manager of research projects for Emory’s Department of Psychology.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113055060/childhood-memories-...

Stephen Hawking now says there are no black holes - at least not in the way we perceive them !
Stephen Hawking has produced a "mind-bending" new theory that argues black holes do not actually exist — at least not in the way we currently perceive them. Instead, in his paper, Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes, Hawking proposes that black holes can exist without "event horizons" , the invisible cover believed to surround every black hole. During a previous lecture, "Into the Black Hole" , Hawkins described an event horizon as the boundary of a black hole, "where gravity is just strong enough to drag light back, and prevent it escaping" . "Falling through the event horizon, is a bit like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe" , he said. "If you are above the falls, you can get away if you paddle fast enough, but once you are over the edge, you are lost. There's no way back.

"As you get nearer the falls, the current gets faster. This means it pulls harder on the front of the canoe, than the back. There's a danger that the canoe will be pulled apart. It is the same with black holes."

But now, Hawking is proposing "apparent horizons" could exist instead, which would only hold light and information temporarily before releasing them back into space in "garbled form" , Nature has reported.

The internationally-renowned theoretical physicist suggests that quantum mechanics and general relativity remain intact, but black holes do not have an event horizon to catch fire.

His work attempts to address the "black-hole firewall paradox" first discovered by theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski and his colleagues almost two years ago, when Polchinski and his team began investigating what would happen to an astronaut who fell into a black hole.

They hypothesised that instead of being gradually ripped apart by gravitational forces, the event horizon would be transformed into a "highly energetic region" , and anyone who fell in would hit a wall of fire and burn to death in an instant — violating Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

In his paper, Hawking writes: "The absence of event horizons means that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity."

He told Nature jour nal: "There is no escape from a black hole in classical theory, but quantum theory, however, "enables energy and information to escape from a black hole."

Don Page, a physicist and expert on black holes at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada told Nature that "the picture Hawking gives sounds pretty reasonable" .

"You could say that it is radical to propose there's no event horizon" , he said. "But these are highly quantum conditions, and there's ambiguity about what space-time even is, let alone whether there is a definite region that can be marked as an event horizon."

Stephen Hawking, famous theoretical physicist and bestselling author, has created a flutter in the scientific world by proposing that what science has theorized about black holes may be wrong.

In a paper which is yet to be peer reviewed, Hawking suggests that black holes may not have an event horizon, the boundary that prevents any light or matter from escaping the clutches of its monstrous gravity, the scientific journal Nature reported today. What may exist is an "apparent horizon" which is much less tyrannical and only temporarily prevents matter and energy from escaping.

Hawking is considered as one of the world's foremost cosmologists and it was he who did most of the spadework for the theory of black holes in the 1970s. Later he proposed that 'event horizons' are not as impermeable as theorized and some matter or energy does manage to escape from them. This was dubbed Hawking Radiation.

According to Einstein's theory, a black hole is an entity in which matter has collapsed to a single point creating gigantic gravitational force, and trapping all energy or matter from ever escaping its clutches. Since light or any radiation cannot escape from a black hole, humans or their instruments can never directly 'see' a black hole although its existence is inferred from other symptoms nearby like high energy radiation emitted by matter just before falling into the black hole.

Quantum theory however allows energy to escape the black hole. This paradox - the variance between two theories that are true in their own conditions but fail in extreme conditions like the black hole - has troubled scientists for long. The only way out would be for some theory that could successfully merge gravity with the quantum mechanics.

Hawking's latest paper, titled "Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes" is available on the arXiv preprint server.

According to Nature, Hawking's paper is an "attempt to solve the so-called black-hole firewall paradox, which has been vexing physicists for almost two years". This paradox works like this: Einstein's theory predicts that if a space traveler were to fall into a black hole, he or she would just shoot through the event horizon with nary a ruffle and accelerate towards the black hole's infinitely dense core, all the time getting stretched longer and longer like a noodle. But quantum mechanics predicts that the event horizon should be a highly energetic region - a 'firewall' as Nature puts it - and the space traveler would be burnt to a cinder instantaneously.

Hawking's paper is the solution - a third way out of this paradox. He does away with the event horizon, saving both general relativity and quantum mechanics. Hawking's new idea is the 'apparent horizon' where energy like light rays speeding away from the black hole will be suspended. In some cases the event horizon may coincide with the apparent horizon, in others it may shrink below the apparent one.

This idea upturns the whole black hole mystique. "The absence of event horizons mean that there are no black holes — in the sense of regimes from which light can't escape to infinity," Hawking writes in the paper, according to Nature.

Video: Debating the State of Global Science

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/video-debating-the-state-...

Truth about ordinary bulbs, CFLs and LEDs:

CFLs are 75 percent more efficient and LEDs 85 percent more efficient than a traditional incandescent light bulb. Lighting in residential homes is about 12 to 15 percent of an average home electrical bill, so the electricity savings to consumers are not trivial.
Moreover, power-saving bulbs last longer, so you will not have to make as many trips to the store. According to University of Kentucky lighting design professor and American Lighting Association consultant Joe Rey-Barreau, standard incandescent bulbs last an average of 1,000 hours, whereas CFLs last 10,000 hours and LEDs an astonishing 25,000 to 100,000 hours.
CFLs have some drawbacks. According to U.S. EPA, each CFL bulb contains about 4 milligrams of mercury. The concern is that, once broken, the bulb will emit potentially hazardous mercury vapor into the surrounding environment.

A 2011 study published in the journal Environmental Engineering Science by Jackson State University researchers Yadong Li and Li Jin revealed that mercury contents in CFLs vary significantly by brand and wattage, from 0.17 milligram to 3.6 milligrams.

The study found that the "vast majority of CFLs are nonhazardous" and that it would take weeks or even months for the mercury vapor released in a room to exceed the safe human exposure limit.
The LED is currently the most promising light source being sold on the consumer market. "The lack of mercury, the efficiency, the good color, the fact that it produces very little heat -- those are all benefits of the LED,"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/goodbye-and-good-riddance...

How Does The Brain Create Sequences?
And how do separate small elements come together to become a unique and meaningful sequence?

When you learn how to play the piano, first you have to learn notes, scales and chords and only then will you be able to play a piece of music. The same principle applies to speech and to reading, where instead of scales you have to learn the alphabet and the rules of grammar.

But how do separate small elements come together to become a unique and meaningful sequence?

It has been shown that a specific area of the brain, the basal ganglia, is implicated in a mechanism called chunking, which allows the brain to efficiently organize memories and actions. Until now little was known about how this mechanism is implemented in the brain.

In an article published today (Jan 26th) in Nature Neuroscience, neuroscientist Rui Costa, and his postdoctoral fellow, Fatuel Tecuapetla, both working at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme (CNP) in Lisbon, Portugal, and Xin Jin, an investigator at the Salk Institute, in San Diego, USA, reveal that neurons in the basal ganglia can signal the concatenation of individual elements into a behavioral sequence.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113055507/how-does-the-brain-...

Bio robots make a splash in the Indian Ocean
(CSIRO)
Robotic floats armed with revolutionary new sensors will be launched in the Indian Ocean, as part of a new India-Australia research partnership to find out what makes the world's third largest ocean tick - and how both nations can benefit from it.

The Indian Ocean contains vast fisheries and mineral resources that are of strategic importance to both Australia and India. It also plays a direct role in driving the climates of its surrounding regions - home to more than 16 per cent of the world's population.

The new 'Bio Argo' floats, to be launched in mid 2014, will enhance the already successful Argo float technology to measure large-scale changes in the chemistry and biology of marine ecosystems below the Indian Ocean's surface.

The Argo floats are a network of 3600 free-floating sensors, operating in open ocean areas that provide real-time data on ocean temperature and salinity.

The 'Bio Argo' floats will include additional sensors for dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, and particle scattering. They will target specific gaps in our understanding of Indian Ocean ecosystems of immediate concern to India and Australia, such as the Bay of Bengal and the waters of north Western Australia.

CSIRO's Dr Nick Hardman-Mountford said the pilot project, led by CSIRO in collaboration with the Indian National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, will improve our understanding of cause and effect in the Indian Ocean's climate and ecosystems.

"By studying the Indian Ocean in this detail, we can investigate the origin and impact of marine heatwaves like the one that devastated the coral reefs and fisheries off north Western Australian in 2011 - and improve our prediction of them in the future," Dr Hardman-Mountford said.

CSIR-NIO Director, Dr Wajih Naqvi, said the novel technological innovation will give researchers from both countries a new understanding of the Indian Ocean.

"We expect the technology being utilised in this project to provide new insights into the biogeochemistry of the Indian Ocean and how it is being impacted by human activities," Dr Naqvi said.

The proposed advances in ocean observation, ecosystem understanding and resources management, which will benefit the entire Indian Ocean Rim, can only occur through collaboration between India and Australia.

Dr Nick D'Adamo, Head of the Perth Programme Office supporting UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) - a partner in the project - praised the collaborative nature of the project.

"By combining the research capabilities of India and Australia we will see an improved ability to predict and prepare for global climate change, as well as better conservation of marine biodiversity," Dr D'Adamo said.

The $1 million project was funded in part by the Australian Government under the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund.

For more information please click on the links:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychopaths-might-have-an...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-mind-of-a-psyc...

Researchers Digitize Neuroscience’s Most Famous Brain

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113057641/amnesiac-brain-digi...

Acid bath offers easy path to stem cells

Just squeezing or bathing cells in acidic conditions can readily reprogram them into an embryonic state.
In 2006, Japanese researchers reported a technique for creating cells that have the embryonic ability to turn into almost any cell type in the mammalian body — the now-famous induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. In papers published this week in Nature, another Japanese team says that it has come up with a surprisingly simple method — exposure to stress, including a low pH — that can make cells that are even more malleable than iPS cells, and do it faster and more efficiently.
Yoshiki Sasai, a stem-cell researcher at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and a co-author of the latest studies. It took Haruko Obokata, a young stem-cell biologist at the same centre, five years to develop the method and persuade Sasai and others that it works.

Obokata says that the idea that stressing cells might make them pluripotent came to her when she was culturing cells and noticed that some, after being squeezed through a capillary tube, would shrink to a size similar to that of stem cells. She decided to try applying different kinds of stress, including heat, starvation and a high-calcium environment. Three stressors — a bacterial toxin that perforates the cell membrane, exposure to low pH and physical squeezing — were each able to coax the cells to show markers of pluripotency.

But to earn the name pluripotent, the cells had to show that they could turn into all cell types — demonstrated by injecting fluorescently tagged cells into a mouse embryo. If the introduced cells are pluripotent, the glowing cells show up in every tissue of the resultant mouse. This test proved tricky and required a change in strategy. Hundreds of mice made with help from mouse-cloning pioneer Teruhiko Wakayama at the University of Yamanashi, Japan, were only faintly fluorescent. Wakayama, who had initially thought that the project would probably be a “huge effort in vain”, suggested stressing fully differentiated cells from newborn mice instead of those from adult mice. This worked to produce a fully green mouse embryo.

Still, the whole idea was radical, and Obokata’s hope that glowing mice would be enough to win acceptance was optimistic. Her manuscript was rejected multiple times, she says.

To convince sceptics, Obokata had to prove that the pluripotent cells were converted mature cells and not pre-existing pluripotent cells. So she made pluripotent cells by stressing T cells, a type of white blood cell whose maturity is clear from a rearrangement that its genes undergo during development. She also caught the conversion of T cells to pluripotent cells on video. Obokata called the phenomenon stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP).

Her results suggested a different explanation: that pluripotent cells are created when the body’s cells endure physical stress. “The generation of these cells is essentially Mother Nature’s way of responding to injury,” says Vacanti, a co-author of the latest papers.

http://www.nature.com/news/acid-bath-offers-easy-path-to-stem-cells...

Observation of Dirac monopoles in a synthetic magnetic field
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7485/full/nature12954.html

Psychotic traits in comedians

Psychologists gave more than 500 funnymen a personality test that assesses traits associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And they found that the comics score higher than uncreative types, and even higher than actors, on a range of psychotic traits, including fear of intimacy, impulsive behavior, difficulty focusing and a belief in the paranormal.
Results: Comedians scored significantly above O-LIFE norms on all four scales. Actors also differed from the norms but on only three of the scales. Most striking was the comedians' high score on both introverted anhedonia and extraverted impulsiveness.

Conclusions: This unusual personality structure may help to explain the facility for comedic performance.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early/2014/01/02/bjp.bp.113.134569.a...

How to minimize radiation exposure during a nuclear attack using math:
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/nuclear-attack-there%...
Atmospheric scientist Michael Dillon of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has developed some helpful rules of thumb. He focused on minimizing total radiation exposure regardless of blast size, wind direction or many other factors that could affect radiation levels. In math terms, you’re minimizing the area under the curve of your radiation exposure over time: the integral, for those who took calculus.
One way to minimize that total exposure is to get to a location that blocks more radiation. The best shelter is belowground — say, in a basement. Hiding in the basement of a large apartment or office building can bring radiation levels down to one two-hundredth of the outdoor dose, a protection factor of 200. Being inside a one-story wooden house, on the other hand, may only cut your exposure in half, a protection factor of 2.
So what to do if you are caught in a poor shelter but think you can get to a better one? Here's where Dillon's math comes in. Essentially, you’re comparing the extra area added to your exposure curve while you’re outdoors with the area you’ll save by spending time in the better shelter later. Radiation levels will be tailing off over time; one rule of thumb is called the 7-10 rule: Seven hours after a blast, you’ll be getting one-tenth the dose received in the first hour.

The most important factors, Dillon found, are how long it has been since the detonation and how long it will take you to get to the better shelter. To minimize the area under your curve, you’re going to want to minimize the ratio of the time you spend in an initial poor-quality shelter to the time you spend outdoors getting to better shelter.
If you have access to only a poor-quality shelter initially (something like a wooden house with no basement) but can get to an adequate shelter (with a protection factor of 10 or more, like the basement of a wooden house) within five minutes, you should ditch the poor shelter immediately and go to the better shelter, Dillon reports January 14 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. If it will take you 15 minutes to get to the adequate shelter, you can still reduce your total exposure as long as you make your move within 30 minutes of the detonation. After that, your savings decline along with the outdoor radiation levels.
If you are in or able to immediately enter adequate shelter right after a blast, guidelines say you shoud stay put. You should probably stay in an interior room near the center of the building unless you're confident you can get to that supersafe basement before highly radioactive fallout starts raining down. "if you are outside of the building-collapse area immediately surrounding the detonation, you should have several minutes before fallout arrives." After that, it's unlikely you're going to have enough information to calculate whether your total dosage would be reduced by moving from adequate to better shelter, even if you've memorized the equations.

Once you’re hunkered down, you can generally expect to stay put for at least a couple hours in a minimally adequate shelter before trying to evacuate the area, and 24 hours or more if you're in a good shelter with a protection factor over 100 (again, minimizing your total exposure as outdoor levels fall). That decision can involve a different set of equations, based on wind speed and direction plus a whole host of other variables.

Part - 2 - how to minimize nuclear radiation / contamination:

It's vital to understand the difference between nuclear radiation and nuclear contamination.

A burst of radiation accompanies the initial blast, but the radiation load from fallout is completely determined by weather. So it is important to understand the prevailing winds and weather patterns when considering whether to leave a poor shelter for a better shelter.

A much bigger concern is nuclear contamination. If you choose to leave a poor shelter for a better one, and your clothes (and lungs!) get "dusted" with fallout during your trip, you were probably better off in the poor shelter.

The sort of radiation is also important to understand. Even in a poor shelter, most of the beta radiation will be blocked by even a residential composition roof. True, gamma radiation will pass right through most roofs but be blocked by concrete, but it is generally much less damaging than beta radiation. Again, if you are in a poor shelter that protects you from beta radiation, you may be better off than travelling unprotected to a better shelter, which could even expose you to alpha radiation, the most damaging but the easiest to shield against.

Sooner or later, you'll need to drink water and eat food if you've lived that long. Understanding nuclear contamination is especially crucial at this point, because many of the common fission products (iodine, caesium, strontium) incorporate themselves into human tissue, given the chance, and will continuously irradiate nearby tissue, damaging DNA and causing cancer.

To summarize, I think understanding the local weather and striving to avoid personal contamination are the overriding factors, which probably biases toward a "stay put" survival strategy.
--
So one assumes that even something as simple as a large plastic garbage bag over most of your torso and head (so long as you see to navigate) would help mitigate dusting, is that correct? ... and this assumes you can dispose of it without difficulty or further contamination at your destination.

--

The hard part would be getting the bag off without spreading the contamination.

--

Part 3- http://www.ecoreality.org/wiki/Radiation_fallout_plan

here are four levels of radiological emergency defined:

1. Radiological watch: there has been an event somewhere on the planet that could credibly cause fallout of radioactive contaminants on Salt Spring Island. This includes nuclear power plant melt down, atmospheric nuclear testing, or nuclear war.
   • The protocol for a radiological watch is to begin monitoring ionizing events using a Geiger-Müller counter and to monitor public health authorities and international news.
2. Public warning could happen between our local readings.
3. Light fallout event is defined as when the outdoor ionizing event count exceeds two times the root-mean-square average of the readings from the past two days.
   • The protocol for a light fallout event is defined in this document.
4. Heavy fallout event is defined by any ionizing event count that corresponds to the level defined by Canadian health authorities as acutely dangerous.
   • The protocol for a heavy fallout event is to follow Canadian health authorities' recommendations for evacuation.

Light fallout concerns

A light fallout event is not an acute radioactivity health concern; there will be no immediate danger of imminent sickness or death at this level. Rather, the concern is the inhalation or ingestion of radioactive dust, which can have long-term health impacts, including cancer.

The following procedure is designed to minimize long-term health impacts on humans and animals and their food supply.

Part 4-

Procedure

1. Preparation
   • Begin topical application of tincture of iodine, applying eight millilitres of 2% tincture to a patch of skin on your abdomen every 24 hours, or two hours before public warning of impending fallout.
   • Prepare the wash room for use as a cleanup area. Make sure the wash tub, washing machine, and shower are accessible.
   • Close the wash room internal door.
   • Locate and make available dust masks and outerwear.
   • Bring the Geiger-Müller counter to just outside the wash room for use in contamination detection.
   • Sequester all domestic animals. Goats will be locked into their shelter using cattle panels. Chickens will be locked inside their coop.
   • Close greenhouse ventilation.
   • Close all windows in the house.
   • Have 50 litres of water on-hand.
   • Have a week's food supply on-hand.
2. Routine
   • Wear a dust mask and cover as much exposed skin as possible whenever outside.
   • Enter and exit through the wash room only.
   • When outside, wear outer clothing that can be easily and quickly removed and "hosed down."
   • Animal feed and water is to be taken only from closed areas and closed containers.
   • Keep animal feed and water covered during transport.
   • Procedure on entry:
     1. To avoid contamination of the Geiger-Müller counter, have someone "clean" from inside the house go over you with the counter. Do not allow the counter to contact anything that may be contaminated.
     2. Any "hot" clothing (hat, gloves, mask) should be immediately put into the washer.
     3. If any "hot" clothing is detected, the person entering should immediately use the shower.
     4. After this decontamination procedure, re-check the person and the area for contamination. Spot-clean any local contamination with clean rags, which immediately go into the wash with the contaminated clothing. Do not re-use rags without laundering.
     5. Do not open the interior door until the wash room is "clean."
   • Do not harvest nor eat any plants that did not come from the sealed greenhouse or the grocery store.
   • If domestic animals have not been sequestered, do not eat any of their food products.

Part 5:

More information

• Guide to radiation fallout
• Radioiodine protection from tincture of iodine
• North Pacific Jet Stream
• History of U.S. Nuclear Accidents
• Estimating your increased risk of thyroid cancer due to atmospheric...

Part 6:

Coping With Radioactive Contamination; How To Protect Yourself

Food/consumption:

Hygiene: Hygiene is important, keep food in sealed containers, indoors. Keep food preparation surfaces clean and free of dust or dirt. Clean produce well and peel any root vegetables. Do not keep or consume food in places where dirt and contamination could be blown onto the food. Avoid hand to mouth gestures when hands may be dirty or in an area more prone to contamination like outdoors. Washing hands before food preparation, eating or smoking can help.

Water: Only use water known to be safe or decontaminated, including for cooking water. See home section for details on making water safer.  Do not use collected rainwater for anything related to food unless it is decontaminated first.

Food: Know your food source as much as possible. Try to buy products where you know the original source and that they have not been heavily co-mingled with products from other areas. Check for product testing by the manufacturer or the area it came from. This web site provides some food testing results sorted by food type and location. http://yasaikensa.cloudapp.net/BrowseByProduct.aspx

Food harvested before March 2011 should be safer as long as it has been properly sealed and stored to prevent contamination. Previous seasons of foods like rice or wheat, as long as they have been stored properly would be safer and could be stockpiled.

Eating foods known to be uncontaminated and lower on the food chain is a good general rule of thumb. Since there was considerable contamination dumped into the Pacific ocean look for seafood from further regions or that has been fully tested. Contamination can “bioaccumulate” as animals consume large amounts of contaminated plants or other animals that are contaminated.

Foods high in potassium, anti-oxidants and boron can be protective, but radioactive cesium reacts much like potassium, so many high potassium foods also tend to uptake too much Cs-137.  More research is needed, but it looks like legumes and field grains (millet, barley, wheat etc.) are high in potassium but less-inclined to absorb cesium. A good rule would be to try to find high potassium foods more likely to be not contaminated. See our list of beneficial  foods for more information.

Certain clays that are known to be edible as supplements are thought to absorb certain types of radiation and pull them out of the body. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) has also been used to protect kidneys from uranium damage. 1 teaspoon of baking soda powder every 4 hours for adults, up to 4 teaspoons per day. For children consult your doctor for safe amount based on age. Sodium bicarbonate changes the urine ph and protects the kidneys from uranium.

http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=1879

Part 7:

Home/office:

Water: Reverse osmosis water systems will remove contamination from water. Whole house units and under sink models are available. Water distillers will remove contamination. Distillers come in small countertop models or larger models that do many gallons at a time.  The tank residue should be treated as contaminated when cleaning a distiller. Zeolite shower and water filters can be found online. Zeolite is known to remove cesium. Water filters should be changed frequently. Filters are available as whole house, under counter and models that attach to a faucet or shower head.

Interior environment: Again, hygiene is key.  Minimize dirt into the home or office.  Take shoes off outside or in an isolated entryway. Coats and umbrellas should be similarly handled. Try to keep dust down, scuffing your feet or cleaning techniques that disturb dust should be avoided. Sweeping, brushing, compressed air or vacuum cleaners can throw dust into the air. Use wet mopping, wet rags or paper towels when cleaning.  Areas where dust and contamination can collect are door handles, sinks, phones, computer keyboards and fans.

If high levels of contamination are in the air close windows and doors and if necessary seal them off if high winds are predicted.  Many “Mitsubishi” style wall air conditioner units can be fitted with a HEPA filter as can most central forced air heating or cooling systems. Some window air conditioners can be fitted with a HEPA filter, check with the manufacturer.  Pollen and dust filters will not filter out radioactive contamination. Please treat items such as used HEPA filters, vacuum filters and dust or other filters as potentially radioactive waste. Wrap in a plastic bag or close able plastic bag and dispose of properly.

Low level decontamination can be done by simple measures. Clothing can be washed, assure the clothing gets clean in the wash cycle. Showering with soap and shampooing hair are usually sufficient to remove low levels of contaminated dust people may encounter.

Outside:

Stay out of the dirt and avoid places where rain and runoff accumulate.  Don’t go into street gutters or ditches and avoid areas of dense shrubs etc.. where fallout could be transferred. Avoid being in the rain or use an umbrella: rain will collect contamination out of thousands of feet of air as it falls to the ground.

Do not touch any exposed skin, such as your face. open cuts or abrasions.  Do not smoke, eat, drink, or chew while within areas of high contamination. Wash your hands after handling things outside.

If you must handle objects outside that accumulate dirt, disposable gloves, safety glasses, coveralls and respirator masks can reduce the possibility of ingestion or absorption of radioactive materials. The surgical masks used to avoid pollen do not filter out radioactive contamination.  If wet, they do remove a high percentage of the Cs-137, which is the most prevalent contaminant outside of Japan at the moment, so this might be an option for short stretches outdoors.

Do not allow children to play in the dirt, ask if your playground has been tested and what the level was. Local governments have been setting maximum levels for local playgrounds and schools. There are a number of parents groups working to protect children from radiation exposure. We have listed all we currently know of in our Japan Aid Resources list of link on our website. at www.fukuleaks.org/web

Part 8:

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/contamination.asp

and

Is Radioactive Hydrogen in Drinking Water a Cancer Threat?

Suspicious Virus Makes Rare Cross-Kingdom Leap From Plants to Honeybees

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2014/01/31/suspic...

Sloths may be slow, apparently boring animals, but their hair is fast becoming an intriguing avenue for scientists seeking new drugs, including antibiotics and cancer-fighting compounds.
Panama’s sloths harbour potential drugs
A paper published in PLOS One this month (15 January) shows that sloth hair harbours a rich diversity of fungi whose extracts may contain a treasure trove of compounds active against bacteria, breast cancer cells and the parasites that cause malaria and Chagas’ disease.

The study looked at what was hiding in the outer hair of three-toed sloths (Bradypus variegatus), tree-dwelling mammals found in Panama’s lowland forests, collected from Soberanía National Park. It identified diverse species of fungi some of them potentially new, and went on to test 84 extracts from those fungi for their activity against disease-causing microbes and cells.

http://www.scidev.net/global/medicine/news/panama-s-sloths-harbour-...

Take this with a pinch of salt. Because the studies are not conclusive! _ Krishna

Microparticles To Help Treat Heart Attacks
Researchers have found that microparticles injected into the blood can boost heart function and reduce heart scarring after a heart attack.
The preclinical study, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed that injecting tiny balls of absorbable material 200 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair into the bloodstream within 24 hours of a heart attack can reduce tissue damage caused by inflammatory cells.

After a heart attack, much of the damage to heart muscle is caused by inflammatory cells that rush to the scene of the oxygen-starved tissue. But researchers found this damage was slashed in half when they used the microparticles to keep the highly damaging cells away.
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/6/219/219ra7.abstract?sid=40d87e7...

Surgeons have completed 50 kidney transplants using a robot-assisted procedure in which the organ is cooled with ice during the operation.
http://www.europeanurology.com/article/S0302-2838%2813%2901327-4/ab...

Organic food is not all it claims to be!

Pricey organic food is an unnecessary luxury good, marketed to people who fell for organic food-pushers’ marketing ploy to fear the conventionally grown apple. In the other corner are parents terrified of feeding their kids fruits and veggies laced with dangerous poison that can have untold effects on their growing kid’s body and brain.
Organic food contains pesticides, too. Washing fruits and veggies can reduce the pesticide load substantially. And most definitely, conventionally grown fruits and veggies are way better than none at all.
Science doesn’t tell us what these pesticides are actually doing in young kids’ bodies and brains. Maybe at such low levels they are completely harmless. But it’s possible that at even low levels, these molecules can have subtle effects that animal studies couldn’t possibly detect.

The studies on organic foods are incomplete. Yet the prices of organic foods are very high. Organic foods do contain pesticides too. Organic food growers cannot benefit without using conventional pest control methods. They are not really what they claim to be when studies were conducted.Thorough washing is necessary in their case too. So decide for yourself whether you should go organic or not.

India to build world's largest solar plant in Rajastan

Facility will triple the country's solar capacity and dwarf existing photovoltaic arrays.
India has pledged to build the world’s most powerful solar plant. With a nominal capacity of 4,000 megawatts, comparable to that of four full-size nuclear reactors, the ‘ultra mega' project will be more than ten times larger than any other solar project built so far, and it will spread over 77 square kilometres of land.
State-owned companies ( it would be set up and run by a joint venture of five public sector utilities BHEL, Powergrid Corporation of India, Solar Energy Corporation of India, Hindustan Salts limited and Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments Limited). have formed a joint venture to execute the project, which they say can be completed in seven years at a projected cost of US$4.4 billion. The proposed location is near Sambhar Salt Lake in the northern state of Rajasthan.

The solar photovoltaic power plant will have an estimated life of 25 years and is expected to supply 6.4 billion kilowatt-hours per year, according to official figures. It could help to reduce India's carbon dioxide emissions by more than 4 million tonnes per year.

Government is considering a tariff of Rs 5.50 per unit of solar power generated for this project.

What would the Earth be like if it was the shape of a donut?
According to the laws of physics, a planet in the shape of a doughnut (toroid) could exist. Physicist Anders Sandberg says that such planets would have very short nights and days, an arid outer equator, twilight polar regions, moons in strange orbits and regions with very different gravity and seasons.
http://io9.com/what-would-the-earth-be-like-if-it-was-the-shape-of-...

Do you think cold weather brings nothing good? A recent study from the University of Queensland reveals that shivering against low temperatures may burn body fat. When exposed to the cold, the body excretes hormones that transform white fat, which stores excess calories, into brown fat, which may help the body burn calories.
Shivering burns fat
http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20140502-25215.html

Some animals eat their moms, and other cannibalism facts
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/some-animals-eat-thei...

Old stars gleaned neighbors’ gas, Hubble data show
Snatching matter helps blue stragglers stay hot and look young
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/old-stars-gleaned-neighbors%E2%...

Pompeii-like volcanic ash kept dino remains fresh
China's famous feathered dinosaur fossils owe their exquisite preservation to volcanic ash - just like the victims of Pompeii
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24997-pompeiilike-volcanic-as...

Stem cells correct ring chromosome defect

Normal chromosomes are linear, but sometimes the short and long arms of a chromosome fuse together to form a ring chromosome. Individuals with ring chromosomes can experience birth defects, mental disabilities, and growth retardation. In a new study, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco; Case Western Reserve University; and Kyoto University in Japan used induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to correct a defective ring chromosome. The researchers generated iPS cells from the skin cells of three patients with chromosomal abnormalities. Each patient had a ring chromosome with large deletions (one patient with ring chromosome 17 and two patients with ring chromosome 13) and a normal chromosome of the same number. After the reprogramming, the ring chromosome was replaced by a copy of the normal chromosome. Although the technique has only been used on cells in culture, it holds promise in regenerative medicine for repairing birth defects and other anomalies found in individuals with chromosomal abnormalities.

Non-coding DNA may contribute to type 2 diabetes risk

Individuals with type 2 diabetes have trouble using insulin (a hormone needed to convert sugar, starch, and other food into energy). A person’s risk of type 2 diabetes—a disease that affects more than 300 million people—is determined by many factors including weight, diet, age, and genetics. A new study led by Imperial College London shows that variants in non-coding sections of DNA affect gene expression in pancreatic islet cells that produce insulin. Knowing that pancreatic islet dysfunction must be present for type 2 diabetes to develop, the researchers mapped the regulatory networks of human pancreatic islets. They identified genomic sequences targeted by islet transcription factors that drive islet-specific gene activity, and found that most of the sequences reside in clusters of transcriptional enhancers where genetic variants known to be linked to diabetes also reside. The team also identified trait-associated variants that disrupt DNA binding and islet enhancer activity. The findings illustrate how islet transcription factors interact with the epigenome and provide evidence that individual sequence variation in pancreatic islet cell regulatory regions underlies type 2 diabetes susceptibility.

http://cltampa.com/artbreaker/archives/2014/02/06/an-explosive-qand...
A Q&A with MythBuster Kari Byron

US lead in science and technology shrinking
The United States' (U.S.) predominance in science and technology (S&T) eroded further during the last decade, as several Asian nations--particularly China and South Korea--rapidly increased their innovation capacities. According to a report released today by the National Science Board (NSB), the policy making body of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and an advisor to the President and Congress, the major Asian economies, taken together, now perform a larger share of global R&D than the U.S., and China performs nearly as much of the world's high-tech manufacturing as the U.S.

http://www.sciencecodex.com/us_lead_in_science_and_technology_shrin...

"Gluten Sensitivity" May Be a Misnomer for Distinct Illnesses to Various Wheat Proteins
Gluten may not be the only wheat protein that can make people sick
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gluten-sensitivity-may-be...

New application of physics tools used in biology
A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist and his colleagues have found a new application for the tools and mathematics typically used in physics to help solve problems in biology. Specifically, the team used statistical mechanics and mathematical modeling to shed light on something known as epigenetic memory -- how an organism can create a biological memory of some variable condition, such as quality of nutrition or temperature.

"The work highlights the interdisciplinary nature of modern molecular biology, in particular, how the tools and models from mathematics and physics can help clarify problems in biology," said Ken Kim, a LLNL physicist and one of the authors of a paper appearing in the Feb. 7 issue of Physical Review Letters.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/02/07/new.application.physics...

Science at the Sochi Olympics
How ski jumpers manage fear, why bronze medalists are happier than silver winners, and of course—the physics of curling!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/report/science-at-the-sochi-olymp...

Science and Engineering Indicators 2014

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/

In a study published today in Nature Communications, a research team led by Ken Shepard, professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, and Lars Dietrich, assistant professor of biological sciences at Columbia University, has demonstrated that integrated circuit technology, the basis of modern computers and communications devices, can be used for a most unusual application -- the study of signaling in bacterial colonies. They have developed a chip based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology that enables them to electrochemically image the signaling molecules from these colonies spatially and temporally. In effect, they have developed chips that "listen" to bacteria. "This is an exciting new application for CMOS technology that will provide new insights into how biofilms form," says Shepard. "Disrupting biofilm formation has important implications in public health in reducing infection rates."
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/02/11/chips.listen.bacteria