NEWS THREAD 3

[towhom]

Hi everyone!

Here's the continuation of the GT "News Thread".

Peace and Joy
Always

Sally Anne

[fr33ksh0w2012]

WOW NEWS THREAD 3 ALREADY ;D

[towhom]

Multiple atomic dark solitons in cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates
arXiv
G. Theocharis, A. Weller, J. P. Ronzheimer, C. Gross, M. K. Oberthaler, P. G. Kevrekidis, D. J. Frantzeskakis
[v1] Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:54:07 GMT
Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Pattern Formation and Solitons (nlin.PS)
arxiv.org/abs/0909.2122

Abstract
We consider the stability and dynamics of multiple dark solitons in cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Our study is motivated by the fact that multiple matter-wave dark solitons may naturally form in such settings as per our recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 130401 (2008)]. First, we study the dark soliton interactions and show that the dynamics of well-separated solitons (i.e., ones that undergo a collision with relatively low velocities) can be analyzed by means of particle-like equations of motion. The latter take into regard the repulsion between solitons (via an effective repulsive potential) and the confinement and dimensionality of the system (via an effective parabolic trap for each soliton). Next, based on the fact that stationary, well-separated dark multi-soliton states emerge as a nonlinear continuation of the appropriate excited eigensates of the quantum harmonic oscillator, we use a Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis to systematically study the stability of such structures. We find that for a sufficiently large number of atoms, multiple soliton states may be dynamically stable, while for a small number of atoms, we predict a dynamical instability emerging from resonance effects between the eigenfrequencies of the soliton modes and the intrinsic excitation frequencies of the condensate. Finally we present experimental realizations of multi-soliton states including a three-soliton state consisting of two solitons oscillating around a stationary one.

Complete article available for download in multiple formats at the link displayed above.

[towhom]

Switchable Genetic Oscillator Operating in Quasi-Stable Mode
arXiv
Natalja Strelkowa, Mauricio Barahona
[v1] Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:31:34 GMT
Subjects: Molecular Networks (q-bio.MN)
arxiv.org/abs/0909.1935

Abstract
Ring topologies of repressing genes have qualitatively different long-term dynamics if the number of genes is odd (they oscillate) or even (they exhibit bistability). However, these attractors may not fully explain the observed behavior in transient and stochastic environments such as the cell. We show here that even repressilators possess quasi-stable, travelling-wave periodic solutions that are reachable, long-lived and robust to parameter changes. These solutions underlie the sustained oscillations observed in even rings in the stochastic regime, even if these circuits are expected to behave as switches. The existence of such solutions can also be exploited for control purposes: operation of the system around the quasi-stable orbit allows us to turn on and off the oscillations reliably and on demand. We illustrate these ideas with a simple protocol based on optical interference that can induce oscillations robustly both in the stochastic and deterministic regimes.

Complete article available for download at the link displayed above.

Synthetic biology - bears watching...

[towhom]

Tech giants offer ideas on charging readers online
Technology Review / arXiv Blogs
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
www.technologyreview.com/wire/23462/?a=f

NEW YORK -- Some of the world's most prominent technology companies are offering suggestions to publishers on how they can charge readers for news online.

IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. -- a company some newspapers blame for helping dig their financial hole -- responded to a request by the Newspaper Association of America for proposals on ways to easily charge for news on the Web.

But building the infrastructure for charging readers is one part of the equation. The other part looks more challenging: getting publishers to make the leap and stop giving news out for free on the Web.

Randy Bennett, the senior vice president of business development at the newspaper association, said his group initiated the process after a meeting of publishers in May near Chicago. A report that was posted online Wednesday by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University includes 11 different responses from technology companies.

Bennett said the trade group wanted to give newspapers options, and will not recommend one proposal over the others.

Google's proposal may be the most eyebrow raising, if only because the company -- which aggregates thousands of articles from media outlets on its news pages -- is so closely associated with the freewheeling ethos of an open Internet.

"Google believes that an open Web benefits all users and publishers," the company writes in its proposal. "However, 'open' need not mean free."

Google proposed offering news organizations a version of its Google Checkout system, which is used for processing online payments. It would give readers a place to sign in to an account and then pay for media from a variety of sources without having to punch in their information over and over. And the company says it could offer publishers several pay methods, from basic subscriptions to so-called "micropayments" on a per-article basis.

Along with the technology heavyweights offering ideas are tiny startups.

CircLabs, run by just four people and incubated at the Missouri School of Journalism, is developing a program that would feed news from different sources into a bar across the top of Web browsers. Martin Langeveld, the company's executive vice president, said the application will offer both targeted advertising and the option of charging. (Langeveld said the company has seed money from The Associated Press. AP spokesman Paul Colford said the news cooperative does not disclose which ventures it invests in.)

The idea, Langeveld said, isn't just to squeeze more money out of readers but to build "something that addresses the needs of consumers, publishers and advertisers."
[Note: Nice PR spin - oh, and it IS set to squeeze more money out of the readers.]

The number of proposals bodes further competition for Journalism Online, a startup led by Court TV founder Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. The company has made a well-publicized effort to sign up newspapers for its own payment system.

Still, having the tools available may not persuade publishers to use them. Publishers are nervous about scaring off readers. Charging for news online may open a new source of revenue for struggling newspapers but also could choke off Internet ad dollars by driving down traffic.

"This was supposed to be the year that newspapers started charging for online content," said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor who works as an industry consultant and blogger and submitted one of the 11 proposals. (Mutter said the AP also has invested in his project). "Based on what I've seen, I don't get any sense that there is unanimity about charging or that they would know how to go about doing it."

[towhom]

Most U.S. doctors want public-private mix: poll
NewsDaily
Posted 2009/09/14 at 7:10 pm EDT
www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58d671-us-usa-healthcare-doctors/

BOSTON, MA — Most U.S. doctors favor having both public and private options in a reformed healthcare system, a survey published on Monday said.

The possible inclusion of a public option -- a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers -- is one of the most divisive parts of the reform that is President Barack Obama's top domestic legislative priority.

When given a three-way choice among private plans that use tax credits or subsidies to help the poor buy private insurance; a new public health insurance plan such as Medicare; or a mix of the two; 63 percent of doctors supported a mix, 27 percent said they only wanted private options, and just 10 percent said they exclusively wanted public options.

The survey of 2,130 U.S. doctors, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that more 55 percent, regardless of their medical specialty, would favor expanding Medicare so it covered people aged 55 and older.

Medicare is the federal health insurance plan for people aged over 65 and some disabled people.

"The result shows that physicians see this system is broken and needs to be fixed," Dr. John Lumpkin, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which sponsored the survey, said in a telephone interview.

About half of doctors supported trying to save money by restricting care to treatments proven to be cost-effective, a separate survey of 991 doctors in the same journal said.

PAYMENTS

The polls have been published less than a week after Obama addressed Congress to outline the plan he says will overhaul the $2.5 trillion industry to cut costs, improve care and expand coverage to many of the 46 million Americans without any healthcare insurance.

The concept of a public option has drawn much controversy and the American Medical Association, which represents about 250,000 U.S. doctors, has opposed it.

Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, authors of the larger study, found broad physician support for a combination of private and public insurance, regardless of their region, medical specialty, how they earned their income, or how many hours they spent treating patients.

Similar results were seen when doctors were asked about extending Medicare to those aged 55 and above. Fifty-eight percent supported the idea, 23 percent were opposed and 19 percent were unsure.

In the smaller survey, 73 percent said every doctor ought to care for the uninsured and underinsured and 67 percent said they were willing to accept limits on payments for expensive drugs and procedures as a way to save money and make basic care available to more people.

"By contrast, physicians were divided almost equally about cost-effectiveness analysis; just over half (54 percent) reported having a moral objection to using such data 'to determine which treatments will be offered to patients,'" said the survey team, led by Ryan Antiel of the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota.

Family doctors were more likely to favor reform than surgeons and other specialists.

[towhom]

Scientists find CO2 link to Antarctic ice cap origin
NewsDaily
Posted 2009/09/14 at 7:10 am EDT
www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58d20u-us-climate-antarctica-co2/

SINGAPORE — A team of scientists studying rock samples in Africa has shown a strong link between falling carbon dioxide levels and the formation of Antarctic ice sheets 34 million years ago.

The results are the first to make the link, underpinning computer climate models that predict both the creation of ice sheets when CO₂ levels fall and the melting of ice caps when CO₂ levels rise.

The team, from Cardiff, Bristol and Texas A&M Universities, spent weeks in the African bush in Tanzania with an armed guard to protect them from lions to extract samples of tiny fossils that could reveal CO₂ levels in the atmosphere 34 million years ago.

Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, mysteriously fell during this time in an event called the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition.

"This was the biggest climate switch since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," said co-author Bridget Wade from Texas A&M University.

The study reconstructed CO₂ levels around this period, showing a dip around the time ice sheets in Antarctica started to form. CO₂ levels were around 750 parts per million, about double current levels.

"There are no samples of air from that age that we can measure, so you need to find something you can measure that would have responded to the atmospheric CO₂," Paul Pearson of Cardiff University told Reuters.

Pearson, Wade and Gavin Foster from the University of Bristol gathered sediment samples in the Tanzanian village of Stakishari where there are deposits of a particular type of well-preserved microfossils that can reveal past CO₂ levels.

"Our study is the first that uses some sort of proxy reconstruction of CO₂ to point to the declining CO₂ that most of us expected we ought to be able to find," Pearson said on Monday from Cardiff.

He said that CO₂, being an acidic gas, causes changes in acidity in the ocean, which absorbs large amounts of the gas.

"We can pick that up through chemistry of microscopic plankton shells that were living in the surface ocean at the time," he explained.

Evidence from around Antarctica was much harder to find.

"The ice caps covered everything in Antarctica. The erosion of sediments around Antarctica since the formation of the ice caps has obliterated a lot of the pre-existing evidence that might have been there."

"Our results are really in line with the most sophisticated climate models that have been applied to this interval," Pearson added. The results were published online in the journal Nature.

"Those models could be used to predict the melting of the ice. The suggested melting starts around 900 ppm (parts per million)," he said, a level he believes could be reached by the end of this century, unless serious emissions cuts were made.

[towhom]

Apocalypse now? Dark visions at Toronto film festival
NewsDaily
Posted 2009/09/14 at 3:19 pm EDT
www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58d44l-us-toronto-environment/

TORONTO — A new wave of documentaries at this year's Toronto International Film Festival poses a disturbing question: is environmental and social disaster on a global scale imminent and perhaps inevitable?

Doomsday visions captured by three filmmakers at the annual industry event may have seemed a bit implausible only a couple of years ago. But after the global economy's near-death experience over the past 12 months, such ideas may no longer strike audiences as radical or hard to fathom.

"Compared to ... even five years ago, a lot has changed in the consciousness of people about the environment," said director Peter Mettler about his film "Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives of the Alberta Tar Sands."

Mettler presents a bird's eye view of the sprawling oil-sands projects carved out of the boreal forests of northern Canada, capturing the massive scale of the destruction there. His is not the only film to spell gloom, and even doom.

"Colony" by Carter Gunn and Ross McDonnell is a mystery story about the pastoral world of beekeeping turned on its head by a phenomenon known as "colony collapse disorder" and its devastating impact on agriculture.

Michael Moore, always one to rake up the muck, has grabbed headlines for his take on 2008's financial market meltdown with Capitalism: the Movie," but perhaps a more ominous picture of a world in crises is painted by "Collapse" director Chris Smith.

Taken together, this wave of doomsday documentaries might make audiences wonder if they should be stocking their shelves with food and water. But Mettler, whose credits include "Gambling, Gods and LSD," says the underlying theme is, more simply, raising the consciousness of how people see the world.

"That is the essential element of the problem about the oil sands," he said. "We are short-sighted and disconnected."

PROVOCATIVE IMAGES

Development of the oil sands, the world's second-largest proven oil reserve, is having a devastating impact on water, land, air and climate, environmentalists say, in an area that eventually could be as large as England.

Filmed from the air, "Petropolis" offers a perverse, almost meditative beauty as Mettler's cameras soar over a vast wilderness from which oil-laden earth is scooped and trucked to smoke-belching "upgraders," where petroleum is extracted.

Mettler avoids bombarding audiences with facts, forcing them to come to grips, visually, with images of destruction.

"It is meant to be a provocation for analysis, for discussion," he said. "We have only been using petroleum basically for 80 years and look at the havoc it's wreaked."

"Colony" also focuses on man's impact on the environment, but in different and little-known arena -- beekeeping. It looks at how the collapse of bee colonies, which some experts blame on insecticides, is impacting the U.S. agricultural economy.

Filmmakers Gunn and McDonnell also humanize their tale by focusing on a family of beekeepers during 2008 and 2009, adding the tension of the economic meltdown to dramatic effect.

Finally, there is a single person's point of view taken to apocalyptic heights in "Collapse," which tells of Michael Ruppert, a Los Angeles cop turned futurist who sees the global financial crisis and dwindling petroleum reserves as nothing less than the beginning of the end to industrialized society.

Ruppert's ideas revolve around the notion of "peak oil," which says the world is rapidly running out of the only substance that can power civilization as we know it.

"Collapse" director Chris Smith shot what essentially is a highly focused monologue by Ruppert in what appears on screen to be an underground bunker. While he does not fully share his subject's point of view, Smith said it forced him to think.

"What I hoped to reveal was ... that his obsession with the collapse of industrial civilization has led to the collapse of his life," Smith said. "In the end, it is a character study about his obsession."

I did not post this article to support another wave of "doomsayer dogma". They are interesting and thought-provoking perspectives on the interactions of humanity and the environment(s) we live in. We have alternatives and we have the innovation to move from these viewpoints and live in harmony with the Earth.

The saddest part of this article was highlighted by Mr. Smith's statement referencing Mr. Ruppert's "obsession". This is all too true and applicable in the cases of other "sites" and their "founders / promotors" - the "obsessions" have eclipsed the messages to the point of meaningless drivel driven by $$$.

[towhom]

Nanotech safety: Smaller particles may be riskier
NewsDaily
Posted 2009/09/13 at 1:24 pm EDT
www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58c1f7-us-nanotech-environment/

CHICAGO — In determining the safety of improbably small materials known as nanoparticles, special properties associated with some of the very smallest particles may be the key, scientists said on Sunday.

Nanotechnology, the design and manipulation of materials thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, has been hailed as a way to make strong, lightweight materials, better cosmetics and even tastier food.

But scientists are only starting to look at the impact such tiny objects may have. Some studies suggest nano-sized objects may have different effects in the body than larger ones.

Traditionally, a particle is deemed nano if its diameter is between 1 and 100 nanometers -- about 1/10,000 the diameter of a human hair, and if it has properties not present in its naturally occurring counterpart.

But a team led by researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, believes focusing on these special properties may be a better way to look for any potential hazards posed by nanotechnology.

"There are an infinite number of potential new man-made nanoparticles, so we need to find a way to narrow our efforts," said Mark Wiesner, an engineering professor at Duke and director of the federally funded Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology, whose study appears in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Wiesner said it appears the very smallest particles -- those less than 30 nanometers in width -- are most likely to have unique properties that could pose a risk.

"Many nanoparticles smaller than 30 nanometers undergo drastic changes in their crystalline structure that enhance how the atoms on their surface interact with the environment," Wiesner said in a statement.

He said some nanoparticles can be highly reactive with other chemicals in the environment and can also disrupt certain activities within cells.

"While there have been reports of nanoparticle toxicity increasing as the size decreases, it is still uncertain whether this increase in reactivity is harmful to the environment or human safety," Wiesner said.

Devising a better definition of nanoparticles is important as teams attempt to determine whether they pose a threat, he said. "We need to be speaking the same language when assessing any unique properties of these novel materials."
[Note: Uh huh, let's come up with a new definition that will exclude certain high-profile profitable nanotechnology from the "Safety List" or "Toxicity Reports". Cute, real cute...]

Last December, a report by the National Research Council found serious gaps in the government's plan for determining if nanomaterials pose a risk and called for an effective national plan for identifying and managing potential risks.

Currently, more than 600 products involving nanomaterials are on the market. Most are health and beauty products, but many researchers are working on ways to use the materials for medical therapies, food additives and electronics.

[towhom]

Flash Recovery Of Ammonoids After Most Massive Extinction Of All Time
ScienceDaily
Sep. 14, 2009
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902122331.htm

Asteroceras, a Jurassic ammonite from England. (Credit: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

After the End-Permian extinction 252.6 million years ago, ammonoids diversified and recovered 10 to 30 times faster than previous estimates. The surprising discovery raises questions about paleontologists' understanding of the dynamics of evolution of species and the functioning of the biosphere after a mass extinction.

The study, conducted by a Franco-Swiss collaboration involving the laboratories Biogéosciences (Université de Bourgogne / CNRS), Paléoenvironnements & Paléobiosphère (Université Claude Bernard / CNRS) and the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne (Switzerland), appeared in the August 28 issue of Science.

The history of life on Earth has been punctuated by a number of mass extinctions, brief periods of extreme loss of biodiversity. These extinctions are followed by phases during which surviving species recover and diversify. The End-Permian extinction, which took place between the Permian (299 – 252.6 MY) and Triassic (252.6 – 201.6 MY), is the greatest mass extinction on record, resulting in the loss of 90% of existing species. It is associated with intensive volcanic activity in China and Siberia. It marks the boundary between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras. Until now, studies had shown that the biosphere took between 10 and 30 million years to recover the levels of biodiversity seen before the extinction.

Ammonoids are cephalopod swimmers related the nautilus and squid. They had a shell, and disappeared from the oceans at the same time as the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, after being a major part of marine fauna for 400 MY.

The Franco-Swiss team of paleontologists has shown that ammonoids needed only one million years after the End-Permian extinction to diversify to the same levels as before. The cephalopods, which were abundant during the Permian, narrowly missed being eradicated during the extinction: only two or three species survived and a single species seems to have been the basis for the extraordinary diversification of the group after the extinction. It took researchers seven years to gather new fossils and analyze databases in order to determine the rate of diversification of the ammonoids. In all, 860 genera from 77 regions around the world were recorded at 25 successive time intervals from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Triassic, a period of over 100 million years.

The discovery of this explosive growth over a million years takes a heated debate in a new direction. Indeed, it suggests that earlier estimates for the End-Permian extinction were based on truncated data and imprecise or incorrect dating. Furthermore, the duration for estimated recovery after other lesser extinctions all vary between 5 and 15 million years.

The result obtained here suggests that these estimates should probably be revised downwards. The biosphere is most likely headed towards a sixth mass extinction, and this discovery reminds us that the recovery of existing species after an extinction is a very long process, taking several tens of thousands of human generations at the very least.

Journal reference:
Brayard A., Escarguel G., Bucher H., Monnet C., Brühwiler T., Goudemand N., Galfetti T. and Guex J. Good Genes and Good Luck: Ammonoid Diversity and the End-Permian Mass Extinction. Science, 2009; 325 (5944): 1118 DOI: 10.1126/science.1174638

Adapted from materials provided by CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange), via AlphaGalileo.

[fr33ksh0w2012]

Sept 15, 2009 3:42:23 GMT 4 @towhom said:

Most U.S. doctors want public-private mix: poll
NewsDaily
Posted 2009/09/14 at 7:10 pm EDT
www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre58d671-us-usa-healthcare-doctors/

BOSTON, MA — Most U.S. doctors favor having both public and private options in a reformed healthcare system, a survey published on Monday said.

The possible inclusion of a public option -- a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers -- is one of the most divisive parts of the reform that is President Barack Obama's top domestic legislative priority.

When given a three-way choice among private plans that use tax credits or subsidies to help the poor buy private insurance; a new public health insurance plan such as Medicare; or a mix of the two; 63 percent of doctors supported a mix, 27 percent said they only wanted private options, and just 10 percent said they exclusively wanted public options.

The survey of 2,130 U.S. doctors, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also found that more 55 percent, regardless of their medical specialty, would favor expanding Medicare so it covered people aged 55 and older.

Medicare is the federal health insurance plan for people aged over 65 and some disabled people.

"The result shows that physicians see this system is broken and needs to be fixed," Dr. John Lumpkin, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which sponsored the survey, said in a telephone interview.

About half of doctors supported trying to save money by restricting care to treatments proven to be cost-effective, a separate survey of 991 doctors in the same journal said.

PAYMENTS

The polls have been published less than a week after Obama addressed Congress to outline the plan he says will overhaul the $2.5 trillion industry to cut costs, improve care and expand coverage to many of the 46 million Americans without any healthcare insurance.

The concept of a public option has drawn much controversy and the American Medical Association, which represents about 250,000 U.S. doctors, has opposed it.

Drs. Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, authors of the larger study, found broad physician support for a combination of private and public insurance, regardless of their region, medical specialty, how they earned their income, or how many hours they spent treating patients.

Similar results were seen when doctors were asked about extending Medicare to those aged 55 and above. Fifty-eight percent supported the idea, 23 percent were opposed and 19 percent were unsure.

In the smaller survey, 73 percent said every doctor ought to care for the uninsured and underinsured and 67 percent said they were willing to accept limits on payments for expensive drugs and procedures as a way to save money and make basic care available to more people.

"By contrast, physicians were divided almost equally about cost-effectiveness analysis; just over half (54 percent) reported having a moral objection to using such data 'to determine which treatments will be offered to patients,'" said the survey team, led by Ryan Antiel of the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota.

Family doctors were more likely to favor reform than surgeons and other specialists.

WOW TOOK LONG ENOUGH

NOW THEY ARE FINALLY ADOPTING AUSTRALIA'S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM!!!

[fr33ksh0w2012]

Patrick Swayze dies aged 57
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 » 10:19am
Patrick Swayze has died aged 57 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Patrick Swayze has died after a nearly two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

Swayze's publicist Annett Wolf says the 57-year-old Dirty Dancing actor died on Monday with his family at his side.

He came forward about his illness in March 2008, but continued working as he underwent treatments.

Swayze became a star in 1987 with his performance in Dirty Dancing, a coming-of-age story set in a Catskills resort in New York.

The 1990 film Ghost cemented his status as a screen favourite.

Swayze played a murdered man trying to communicate with his fiancee through a spirit played by Whoopi Goldberg.

He continued working even after it was disclosed he had the particularly deadly form of cancer.

He was married to Lisa Niemi for 34 years, but the couple did not have children.

[fr33ksh0w2012]

Homing pigeons faster than ADSL
Monday, September 14, 2009 » 08:02am

A South African IT firm has come up with a new way of transferring data to its head office.

A South African IT firm has come up with a new way of transferring data to its head office that is even faster than broadband.

And it does not involve the latest cutting-edge technology - rather of method of communication that predates even the telegram.

The firm Unlimited IT were experiencing transmission problems sending data files and voice logs, from its satellite office to its headquarters.

Someone thought, it would be quicker to send the information via homing pigeon - and they were right.

It took just over an hour to download their material onto a data card.

Winston, the pigeon, then flew the card over 80 kilometres in just one hour and eight minutes - a total time of two hours and seven minutes.

Telkom had only managed to transfer four per cent of the material in that time.

The CEO said, working in the IT industry required 'thinking-out-of-the-box' solutions.

And with a serious shortage of bandwidth in South Africa, this was one race which probably was worth a flutter.

(NB: ROTFLMAO)

[towhom]

Now this is interesting...

Previous post referencing the following:
[/b]
Luminescence of Speleothems in Italian Gypsum Caves: Preliminary Report
arXiv
Yavor Y. Shopov, Diana Stoykova, Paolo Forti
[v1] Wed, 9 Sep 2009 12:49:46 GMT
Subjects: Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
arxiv.org/abs/0909.1700

And then this article, originally presented in 1997:

Noah's Flood and the Associated Tremendous Rainfall as a Possible Result of Collision of a Big Asteroid with the Sun
arXiv
Y. Y. Shopov, L. T. Tsankov, L. N. Georgiev, Y. Damyanov, A. Damyanova, D. C. Ford, C. J. Yonge
Journal Ref.: Proc. of 12th UIS Congress, La Chaux-de- Fonds, Switzerland, 10-17 August 1997, v.1, pp.107- 109
[v1] Wed, 9 Sep 2009 11:19:11 GMT
Subjects: Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
arxiv.org/abs/0909.1681

Abstract
A good correlation between the growth rate of the cave speleothems and the annual precipitation at the cave site allow quantitative reconstruction of the precipitation. Measuring the growth rate of a speleothem from Duhlata Cave, Bulgaria we found that around 7500 B.P. the speleothem growth rate (averaged for 120 years) exceeds 53 times its recent value suggesting that enormous precipitation flooded the Black Sea basin at that time. Its possible connection with the Bible (Noah's) Flood is discussed. We propose a possible mechanism of the flooding of the Black Sea during the Flood involving production of a super-Tsunami by pushing of the Black Sea water towards the Crimea cost by Mediterranean waters. We propose also an Astronomical Theory of the origin of the Bible Flood. We attribute higher water evaporation and rainfall to be caused by rapid increasing of the solar radiation resulting from a collision of a large asteroid or comet with the Sun.

Complete article available for download at the link displayed above.

[emeraldsun]

Good to see Dan up and about. Wishing you continued healing.

emeraldsun