Biomass currently supplies about a third of the developing countries’ energy varying from about 90% in countries like Uganda, Rawanda and Tanzania, to 45 percent in India, 30 percent in China and Brazil and 10-15 percent in Mexico and South Africa. The crucial questions are whether the two billion or more people who are now dependent on biomass for energy will increase. The fact that 90 percent of the worlds population will reside in developing countries by about 2050 probably implies that biomass energy will e with us forever.
Between the January 1589 and the spring of 1590, at Helmstedt, Giordano Bruno wrote "The Lulliana Medicine”.
This work consists of a practical application of the Lullian System in the medical astrology. The text incorporate large sections of Explanatio Compendiosaque Applicatio Artis Illuminati Doctoris Magistri Raymundi Lulli (1235-1315), edited by the Franciscan Bernard de Lavinheta (c.1517).
The work opens with the premise that health is determined by the balance of four elements, fire hot and dry, the air hot and humid, the water cold and wet and the earth dry and warm. Regarding the astrological studies applied to the medical art, Bruno gave to the world a vision of nature alive full of magic and spirituality.
Spaceship Earth: Entropy Factor #1We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson
Global Energy Consumption
Comets are thought to be some of the oldest, most primitive bodies in the solar system, but new research on the comet Wild 2 indicates that inner solar system material was transported to the comet-forming region at least 1.7 million years after the formation of the oldest solar system solids.
Published in Science, the research provides the first constraint on the age of cometary material from a known comet. The findings are published in the Feb. 25 edition of Science Express.
The NASA Stardust mission to comet Wild 2, which launched in 1999, was designed around the premise that comets preserve pristine remnants of materials that helped form the solar system. In 2006, Stardust returned with the first samples from a comet.
Video games may help recovering stroke patients improve their motor function, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.The pilot study focused on movements with survivors' impaired arms to help both fine (small muscle) and gross (large muscle) motor function.
Twenty survivors (average age 61) of mild to moderate ischemic or hemorrhagic strokes were randomized to playing recreational games (cards or Jenga, a block stacking and balancing game) or Two Nintendo Wii games, tennis or Wii Cooking Mama, which uses movements that simulate cutting a potato, peeling an onion, slicing meat and shredding cheese.
New research using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shows that abuse or emotional neglect during childhood combined with genetic factors can result in structural brain changes, rendering some individuals more vulnerable to depression. The study results appear in Neuropsychopharmacology.
The food police have argued amongst themselves for many years over how to change consumers' eating habits. Some have suggested that 'pricing strategies' (i.e. higher taxes) may change behavior while others say subsidies for healthy foods are the way to encourage people to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The thought is that if you make it cheaper, people will eat more of it, more expensive and people will eat less.
To sort out the controversy, a team of researchers from the University of Buffalo set out to determine in the laboratory which method is best for dictating to consumers what's good for them, taxes on junk food or subsidies for healthy food. Their results appear this month in Psychological Science.
The T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka) project has tracked their first neutrino, one of the least understood particles in the universe. The detection of the neutrino as it passed 185 miles from the East to the West of Japan means the study of the mysterious phenomenon of neutrino oscillations may shed more light on the role of the neutrino in the early universe, or perhaps even help answer questions about why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe.
"Neutrinos are the elusive ghosts of particle physics, T2K spokesperson Takashi Kobayashi said."They come in three types, called electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and tau neutrinos, which used to be thought to be unchanging. This is a big step forward, we've been working hard for more than 10 years to make this happen."
Researchers who observed viruses as they evolved to infect bacteria say they have confirmed the Red Queen Hypothesis, the idea that competing species drive molecular evolution through natural selection for adaptation and counter-adaptation.
The team used high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to sequence thousands of virus genomes. They found that when the bacteria could evolve defenses, the viruses evolved at a quicker rate and generated greater diversity, compared to situations where the bacteria were unable to adapt to the viral infection. The results are published in Nature.
Why do some people who experience traumatizing events develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder while others don't? Scientists know that, in general, the more traumatic events a person experiences the higher their likelihood of developing PTSD, but even under extreme stress not all individuals develop the disorder. Now, researchers writing in Biological Psychiatry say that survivors of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide may help explain how genetic factors influence this relationship.
