Nazca Lines (submitted by Stefano Montalto)

The Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than 80 kilometres (50 mi) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, scholars believe the Nazca Lines were created by the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 CE.^[1] The hundreds of individual figures range in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, orcas, llamas, and lizards.
The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the ubiquitous reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes; more than seventy are designs of animal, bird, fish or human figures. The largest figures are over 200 metres (660 ft) across. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but they generally ascribe religious significance to them.

The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes or giant astronomical calendars.^[2]

Due to the dry, windless and stable climate of the plateau and its isolation, for the most part the lines have been preserved. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.

Albinism: Do they get sunburned easily? (from our class discussion- 6 A)

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism
AlbinismAlbinism (from Latin albus, "white"; see extended etymology, also called achromia, achromasia, or achromatosis) is a congenital disorder characterized by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to absence or defect of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect all vertebrates, including humans. The most common term used for an organism affected by albinism is "albino". Additional clinical adjectives sometimes used to refer to animals are "albinoid" and "albinic".
Albinism is associated with a number of vision defects, such as photophobia, nystagmus and astigmatism. Lack of skin pigmentation makes the organism more susceptible to sunburn and skin cancers.
Signs and Symptoms
Most albinistic humans appear white or very pale as the melanin pigments responsible for brown, black, and some yellow colorations are not present.
Because individuals with albinism have skin that partially or entirely lacks the dark pigment melanin, which helps protect the skin from the sun's ultraviolet radiation, their skin can burn more easily from overexposure.^[3]
The human eye normally produces enough pigment to colour the iris and lend opacity to the eye. However, there are cases in which the eyes of an albinistic person appear red or purple, depending on the amount of pigment present. Lack of pigment in the eyes also results in problems with vision, related and unrelated to photosensitivity.
The albinistic are generally as healthy as the rest of the population (but see related disorders below), with growth and development occurring as normal, and albinism by itself does not cause mortality,^[4] although the lack of pigment increases the risk of skin cancer and other problems.
Genetics
Most forms of albinism are the result of the biological inheritance of genetically recessive alleles (genes) passed from both parents of an individual, though some rare forms are inherited from only one parent. There are other genetic mutations which are proven to be associated with albinism. All alterations, however, lead to changes in melanin production in the body.^[4][7]
The chance of offspring with albinism resulting from the pairing of an organism with albinism and one without albinism is low. However, because organisms can be carriers of genes for albinism without exhibiting any traits, albinistic offspring can be produced by two non-albinistic parents. Albinism usually occurs with equal frequency in both genders.^[4] An exception to this is ocular albinism, which it is passed on to offspring through X-linked inheritance. Thus, ocular albinism occurs more frequently in males as they have a single X and Y chromosome, unlike females, whose genetics are characterized by two X chromosomes.^[8]
There are two different forms of albinism; a partial lack of the melanin is known as hypomelanism, or hypomelanosis and the total absence of melanin is known as amelanism or amelanosis.

Being Multilingual helps with Multitasking (submitted by Marianne de Bedout)

At a session of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researchers discussed some of the benefits of being multilingual, such as heightened focus and better multitasking. Cynthia Graber reports

February 18, 2011 

To hear the podcast, go here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=being-multilingual-helps-with-multi-11-02-18

According to a variety of studies my languages may be providing mental benefits beyond the ability to chat with locals when I travel. Judith Kroll, from Penn State University, discussed findings from a number of her lab’s papers on February 18th at a session of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Common thought, she explained, holds that bilingual children are hindered in their cognitive development. But it turns out that bilingual children and adults perform better when it comes to multitasking and focusing on important information. That’s because the other languages are always present in the background. So the multilingual is always making choices in selecting the appropriate language for a given situation. In the lab’s most recent paper, that scenario held true for deaf students who use American Sign Language and written English.
Ellen Bialystok, from Toronto’s York University, explained that bilingual children are better at prioritizing tasks than monolinguals. She also found that multilingualism may help protect against age-related mental decline, such as Alzheimers and dementia.
So maybe [the fact that I speak a few languages (in Hebrew)] helps me pop between different topics for this podcast.

[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast,]

Cosmic Census Finds Crowd of Planets in our Galaxy

WASHINGTON -- Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.

At least 500 million of those planets are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where life could exist. The numbers were extrapolated from the early results of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope.

Kepler science chief William Borucki says scientists took the number of planets they found in the first year of searching a small part of the night sky and then made an estimate on how likely stars are to have planets. Kepler spots planets as they pass between Earth and the star it orbits.

So far Kepler has found 1,235 candidate planets, with 54 in the Goldilocks zone, where life could possibly exist. Kepler's main mission is not to examine individual worlds, but give astronomers a sense of how many planets, especially potentially habitable ones, there are likely to be in our galaxy. They would use the one-four-hundredth of the night sky that Kepler is looking at and extrapolate from there.

Jon Lomberg / NASA

A artist's rendering shows what our galaxy might look as viewed from outside our galaxy. The cone illustrates the neighborhood of our galaxy that the Kepler Mission is searching as it looks for habitable planets.

Borucki and colleagues figured one of two stars has planets and one of 200 stars has planets in the habitable zone, announcing these ratios Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. And that's a minimum because these stars can have more than one planet and Kepler has yet to get a long enough glimpse to see stars that are further out from the star, like Earth, Borucki said.

For example, if Kepler were 1,000 light years from Earth and looking at our sun and noticed Venus passing by, there's only a one-in-eight chance that Earth would also be seen, astronomers said.

To get the estimate for the total number of planets, scientists then took the frequency observed already and applied it to the number of stars in the Milky Way.

Many years scientists figured there were 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, but last year a Yale scientist figured the number was closer to 300 billion stars.

Either way it shows that Carl Sagan was right when he talked of billions and billions of worlds, said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, who praised the research but wasn't part of it.


And that's just our galaxy. Scientists figure there are 100 billion galaxies.


Borucki said the new calculations lead to worlds of questions about life elsewhere in the cosmos. "The next question is why haven't they visited us?"


And the answer? "I don't know," Borucki said.

Ms. H2Os Note: But, I can't help but wonder if they have visited and the public hasn't been informed. How many of you believe that life exists outside our planet? I do.

Do you know the seven natural wonders of the world?

These are The Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Please read below to discover and explore these wonders. They are truly amazing.

Aurora Borealis

(This is on my list of things to see before I die)
The auroras, also known as the Northern Lights, are naturally occurring lights that create intriguing and spectacular displays in the sky.
Read More

Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is a massive gorge located in the state of Arizona, United States of America created by the Colorado River.
Read More

Paricutin

Paricutin is a cinder cone volcano in Michoacán, Mexico. It's the youngest in America and it's birth was witnessed by a human.

Read More

 

Mount Everest

Highest mountain in the world reaching a peak of 29,029 feet and the greatest altitude on the earth's surface.
Read More

 

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls is a waterfall in southern Africa on the borders of Zambia and Zimbabwe. It is attributed to as the world’s largest sheet of falling water.

Read More

Great Barrier Reef

The great barrier reef is the world’s largest individual formation created by living organisms.
Read More

Harbor of Rio de Janeiro

Spectacular bay eroded by the Atlantic ocean and surrounded by majestic mountains that offer many different perspectives of the harbor.
Read More

 Seeing all of these things really makes me want to go travel!!!

Biggest Solar Flare in Year (submitted by Agustin Solano)

Explosive magnetic reconnection aims "firehose" of charged gas at Earth.

National Geographic News

Published February 16, 2011

The most powerful solar flare in four years exploded over the sun late Monday, according to NASA.

The magnetic instability that caused the flare also unleashed a blast of charged particles that should hit Earth's atmosphere tonight, possibly sparking auroras farther south than usual, experts say.

(Video: Solar Flare Causes "Sunquakes.")

The most powerful explosions in the solar system, solar flares occur when magnetic field lines on the sun cross, cancel each other out, then reconnect.

These "explosive reconnections" release huge amounts energy as heat—in this case, a short blast measuring roughly 35 million degrees Fahrenheit (19 million degrees Celsius), according to physicist Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO.

In visible light, only the small dark surface blotches of sunspot 1158, which spawned the flare, could be seen. Without the SDO satellite, "you would never have known what was happening above" the sunspot, Pesnell said.

But the satellite's ability to detect many wavelengths of light allowed the observatory to image not only the flash, in extreme ultraviolet, but also streams of charged gas arcing along magnetic field lines—a "perfect example of solar physics." (See a January picture of a large solar flare.)

Not that SDO is perfect. Its digital-imaging hardware, for example, was overwhelmed by the intensity of the flare, resulting in overexposed areas that make the flare look bigger than it was.

Imaged flawlessly, the flare, at its most intense, would "look like a ball of light floating above the surface," Pesnell said, "about the size of a house."

(See pictures of solar eruptions.)

Solar Flare Plus Aurora-Inducing "Wind"?

Monday's fleeting magnetic breakdown also sent "a firehouse of material spraying out from the sun" when "spring loaded" streams of charged gases were freed from the magnetic fields that hold them in place on the sun.

Such so-called coronal mass ejections can pose radiation threats to astronauts and overwhelm Earth's magnetic field, potentially disrupting satellite communications and power grids on the ground.

But the solar gale now heading our way isn't expected to be particularly harmful. That's because, according to predictions, "it won't hit us dead-on," Pesnell said.

Still, he said, strong geomagnetic activity is expected Wednesday night, perhaps most visibly in the form of auroras—the southern and northern lights, which occur when atoms above Earth's gain energy from solar charged particles, then release it as light.

The U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center, he said, forecasts a 30 percent chance of auroras as far south as Washington, D.C.

Stargazers below the northern U.S. should look for a diffuse reddish glow, however, rather than the neon-hued "curtains" seen around the Poles. Furthermore, the nearly full moon will effectively dim any auroras Wednesday night.

(Pictures: Huge Solar Storm Triggers Unusual Auroras.)

X-Rated Solar Flare

Monday's blast was the first X-level solar flare since December 2006—X being the highest level of the flare-rating system.

But at X2.2—or 0.00022 watts per square meter—the Valentine's Day flare wasn't unexpectedly powerful.

"It fits in just perfect" with forecasts that show the sun entering a period of increased activity, Pesnell said.

The recent explosion, he added, has nothing on the giant blasts of the early 2000s. That most recent active period spawned the biggest solar flare on ever directly measured in November 2003—a blast more than ten times as powerful as Monday's.

Compared to that "big honker," he said, this week's flare "is pretty typical—except it was beautifully typical, because we saw it with SDO."

Creepy Madagascan Beasts Rub Their Back Hairs Together To Make Squeaks (submitted by Yoel Patt)

The only mammals in the world that chirp like crickets — by rubbing body parts together — are these strange shrew-like creatures called streaked tenrecs. A BBC film crew has captured their stridulations on camera for the first time.
The animals have special quills on their backs, which look like pale teeth and are noticeably different from the rest of its coarse fur and porcupine-like spines. When a young tenrec gets lost, as in the video below, its family members rub these quills together to produce high-pitched squeaks. The sound penetrates the rainforest undergrowth to help guide the tenrec back to its kin.
About 30 species of tenrecs are found throughout Madagascar, with a few living on the African mainland. The animals share a common ancestor with elephants, aardvarks and manatees. But the only one to communicate in this way is the lowland streaked tenrec, found only in Madagascar.
Their communications are mostly outside the range of human hearing, so filmmakers used bat detectors to ensure they could pick up the tenrecs' ultrasonic calls. They found that the seemingly quiet creatures were actually quite chatty.