http://louis9j9sheehan9esquire.wordpress.com
Power has its perks, even for laboratory-housed monkeys. When moved from individual to group cages, socially dominant male monkeys exhibit a brain-chemistry change that fosters resistance to using drugs such as cocaine, a new study finds.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
This alteration increases the amount of so-called dopamine D2 receptors, a molecular gateway on brain cells controlled by the chemical messenger dopamine.
Earlier studies implicated these receptors in pleasurable responses to drugs and other stimuli.
In contrast, male monkeys at the bottom of the social pecking order display no boost in the D2 receptors when housed with other monkeys, say neuroscientist Michael A. Nader of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., and his colleagues. Unlike their more dominant cage mates, the low-ranking monkeys readily self-administer large amounts of cocaine.
These findings raise the possibility that a person's vulnerability to drug abuse can be influenced by brain-altering environmental factors, Nader's group concludes in an upcoming Nature Neuroscience.
"This is the first demonstration in primates that a social stressor, such as a dominance hierarchy, can regulate levels of dopamine D2 receptors," remarks psychiatrist Nora D. Volkow of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. "It provides a potential biological mechanism to explain why people in lower social classes are generally at higher risk for drug abuse."
Nader and his coworkers used a scanning technique called positron emission tomography (PET) to study D2 receptors in the brains of 20 male macaque monkeys that had been housed in individual cages for 1� years. PET scans were repeated after the monkeys were moved into larger cages, grouping four animals per cage, and given time to establish social hierarchies.
The scans revealed comparably low numbers of dopamine D2 receptors in all individually housed monkeys and in low-ranking monkeys in the groups. In dominant monkeys, D2-receptor numbers increased sharply. These animals also displayed relatively low concentrations of dopamine in the junctions, or synapses, between brain cells.
Excess synaptic dopamine leads to an oversensitivity of the brain's reward pathway and creates a susceptibility to drug abuse, the researchers theorize.
Loss of control over environmental factors may have triggered such a dopamine pattern in low-ranking monkeys, they hold. When the scientists implanted intravenous lines, subordinate animals quickly learned to press a lever to receive infusions of cocaine in increasing doses and largely ignored a lever controlling delivery of saline solution.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
In dominant monkeys, the surge in dopamine D2 receptors indicates they use dopamine efficiently for cell-to-cell communication, Nader's group contends. These monkeys showed no preference for receiving intravenous cocaine over a saline solution.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Whether these findings have correlates among people remains an open question, the researchers note. In line with the new study, earlier PET data indicated that people with low dopamine D2-receptor numbers report more pleasurable responses to stimulant drugs than those with high D2 numbers do. "We're going to have to start paying much closer attention to the social rank of individuals in studies of the biology of drug abuse," Volkow says.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
fermi 44.fer.000002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Curtain up! Light the lights! In its first four months of monitoring the heavens from orbit, NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope has unveiled the activity of celestial objects that emit powerful gamma rays — photons that pack 20 million to more than 300 billion times the energy of visible light. The orbiting observatory features the first detectors in space capable of recording the most energetic of these photons. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
For now, Fermi’s flurry of first findings — which include new discoveries about gamma-ray bursts as well as the energetic radiation emitted by rapidly spinning stellar corpses called pulsars, several never before recorded — poses new puzzles. But ultimately the discoveries will offer new insight into the origin of these powerful emissions and the activity of some of the most enigmatic objects in the cosmos, says Peter Michelson of Stanford University, principal investigator of Fermi’s Large Area Telescope, the device on the observatory that records the high-energy emissions.
Michelson and his Stanford colleague Aurelien Bouvier presented some of the discoveries on December 8 in Vancouver at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. Other reports will follow later this week at the conference.
Some of the new findings focus on gamma-ray bursts, the ephemeral flashes of light that signal the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. Long-duration bursts — those lasting more than about a second or two — may be the birth cries of black holes, as jets of material zoom out of collapsing stars. Short bursts may signal the final coalescence of two elderly neutron stars or black holes.
In his talk, Bouvier announced that the Large Area Telescope had for the first time captured high-energy emissions from three gamma-ray bursts. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
In each case, the telescope did not record any energetic radiation until well after Fermi’s other instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, had recorded the low-energy components of the same bursts.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The time delay between the onset of high- and low-energy emissions — which amounted to five seconds in a burst discovered on September 19 and dubbed GRB 080916C — suggests that the high-energy gamma rays from bursts might be produced at a different place or by different particles than the lower-energy radiation, says Bouvier.
It may be easier — and quicker — for electrons, which are relatively lightweight, to rev up to high speeds and crash into each other, producing the early, lower-energy part of these bursts, says Bouvier. It’s possible that protons, which are heavier and therefore take longer to accelerate, contribute to the higher-energy component some time later.
And there could be another, more intriguing — and much more speculative — explanation for at least part of the delay, Bouvier adds. The highest energy photons — 13 gigaelectron volts — from the September 19 event arrived 16.5 seconds later than the lowest energy emissions. Spectra of the visible-light afterglow of the burst reveal an origin in a remote galaxy 12.2 billion light-years from Earth.
Many theories of quantum gravity predict that spacetime on its tiniest scale isn’t continuous but is as malleable and variable as sea foam. Because of this foaminess, not all photons would travel at the same speed. Those with higher gravitational potential — higher energies, according to Einstein’s E=mc2 — would travel slightly slower through space and arrive slightly later than lower-energy photons. The effect would be tiny, but over a journey of 12.2 billion light-years, it might be detectable.
Two of the three bursts detected by the Large Area Telescope — the September 19 event as well as a burst recorded on August 25 — belong to a class of bursts that last for more than a second. But on October 24, the telescope for the first time recorded extremely high-energy emissions from a short gamma-ray burst, one that lasted for only a few tenths of a second.
The Fermi data “support the picture that while the progenitors of long and short bursts are different … the sources of the outflow in both cases share many similarities and are probably sharing the same physical mechanism,” comments Ehud Nakar of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Also at the conference, Michelson reported that the Large Area Telescope has now recorded 15 previously unknown pulsars in our galaxy. These 15 rapidly rotating neutron stars, the dense cinders left behind when massive stars explode, have been found to emit only gamma rays, not pulses of radio waves as most of the 1,800 known pulsars do. If Fermi continues to find gamma-ray–only pulsars at such a high rate, it could double the population of known pulsars. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
For now, Fermi’s flurry of first findings — which include new discoveries about gamma-ray bursts as well as the energetic radiation emitted by rapidly spinning stellar corpses called pulsars, several never before recorded — poses new puzzles. But ultimately the discoveries will offer new insight into the origin of these powerful emissions and the activity of some of the most enigmatic objects in the cosmos, says Peter Michelson of Stanford University, principal investigator of Fermi’s Large Area Telescope, the device on the observatory that records the high-energy emissions.
Michelson and his Stanford colleague Aurelien Bouvier presented some of the discoveries on December 8 in Vancouver at the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. Other reports will follow later this week at the conference.
Some of the new findings focus on gamma-ray bursts, the ephemeral flashes of light that signal the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. Long-duration bursts — those lasting more than about a second or two — may be the birth cries of black holes, as jets of material zoom out of collapsing stars. Short bursts may signal the final coalescence of two elderly neutron stars or black holes.
In his talk, Bouvier announced that the Large Area Telescope had for the first time captured high-energy emissions from three gamma-ray bursts. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.ORG
In each case, the telescope did not record any energetic radiation until well after Fermi’s other instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, had recorded the low-energy components of the same bursts.http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.NET
The time delay between the onset of high- and low-energy emissions — which amounted to five seconds in a burst discovered on September 19 and dubbed GRB 080916C — suggests that the high-energy gamma rays from bursts might be produced at a different place or by different particles than the lower-energy radiation, says Bouvier.
It may be easier — and quicker — for electrons, which are relatively lightweight, to rev up to high speeds and crash into each other, producing the early, lower-energy part of these bursts, says Bouvier. It’s possible that protons, which are heavier and therefore take longer to accelerate, contribute to the higher-energy component some time later.
And there could be another, more intriguing — and much more speculative — explanation for at least part of the delay, Bouvier adds. The highest energy photons — 13 gigaelectron volts — from the September 19 event arrived 16.5 seconds later than the lowest energy emissions. Spectra of the visible-light afterglow of the burst reveal an origin in a remote galaxy 12.2 billion light-years from Earth.
Many theories of quantum gravity predict that spacetime on its tiniest scale isn’t continuous but is as malleable and variable as sea foam. Because of this foaminess, not all photons would travel at the same speed. Those with higher gravitational potential — higher energies, according to Einstein’s E=mc2 — would travel slightly slower through space and arrive slightly later than lower-energy photons. The effect would be tiny, but over a journey of 12.2 billion light-years, it might be detectable.
Two of the three bursts detected by the Large Area Telescope — the September 19 event as well as a burst recorded on August 25 — belong to a class of bursts that last for more than a second. But on October 24, the telescope for the first time recorded extremely high-energy emissions from a short gamma-ray burst, one that lasted for only a few tenths of a second.
The Fermi data “support the picture that while the progenitors of long and short bursts are different … the sources of the outflow in both cases share many similarities and are probably sharing the same physical mechanism,” comments Ehud Nakar of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Also at the conference, Michelson reported that the Large Area Telescope has now recorded 15 previously unknown pulsars in our galaxy. These 15 rapidly rotating neutron stars, the dense cinders left behind when massive stars explode, have been found to emit only gamma rays, not pulses of radio waves as most of the 1,800 known pulsars do. If Fermi continues to find gamma-ray–only pulsars at such a high rate, it could double the population of known pulsars. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
ethanol 55.eth.10083 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Switching the nation's vehicles from gasoline to mostly ethanol will not reduce air pollution, a new study finds. The work joins other evidence questioning the benefits of ethanol fuel.
Mark Z. Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University, created a model that takes into account how the chemicals emitted in car exhaust transform through reactions in the atmosphere. He combined the resulting chemical profile with population and health-effects data to determine the risks associated with each of the fuels.
Jacobson looked at emissions from E85, the 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend considered a potentially large-scale replacement for gasoline. He examined a scenario based on expected emissions in 2020, the first year that he says that E85-ready cars might dominate the roads.
Jacobson's calculations predicted health effects in response to ozone and carcinogens attributable to an all-gasoline fleet or an all-E85 fleet. He found that E85 use may increase asthma, hospitalizations, and death caused by ozone exposure by about 9 percent in Los Angeles and by 4 percent, on average, across the nation. The rise in ozone-related problems partially stemmed from larger releases of two ozone precursors—acetaldehyde and formaldehyde—from E85 as compared with gasoline.
Acetaldehyde and formaldehyde are also two of the four major human carcinogens in E85 and gasoline exhaust. E85 use lowered atmospheric concentrations of the other two major carcinogens—1,3-butadiene and benzene—as compared with gasoline use. The results regarding cancer "somewhat cancel each other out," notes Jacobson, "so there's not much difference between E85 and gasoline.
"The bottom line is, you aren't getting an improvement in air quality," Jacobson says. Although the ozone effects suggest that E85 could pose a larger health risk to the public than gasoline, he hesitates to emphasize that result because of the uncertainty inherent in some of his projections. His study appears in the June 1 Environmental Science & Technology.
Jacobson says that other renewable energies offer a better solution. "To solve global warming and air pollution health problems, we need to focus on technologies we know are addressing these problems," he says. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Timothy E. Lipman, a research scientist working on energy at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees. "There are other ways to substitute for petroleum that are likely to yield better greenhouse-gas and air-quality benefits," he says. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
The study "should remind policy makers and others to be really skeptical about claims that E85 will improve air quality," comments Jana B. Milford, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The atmospheric-chemistry model that Jacobson developed is well regarded, she says, although he has examined only one scenario. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
"It's a solid study," Milford says, "but it won't be the last word." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Mark Z. Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University, created a model that takes into account how the chemicals emitted in car exhaust transform through reactions in the atmosphere. He combined the resulting chemical profile with population and health-effects data to determine the risks associated with each of the fuels.
Jacobson looked at emissions from E85, the 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend considered a potentially large-scale replacement for gasoline. He examined a scenario based on expected emissions in 2020, the first year that he says that E85-ready cars might dominate the roads.
Jacobson's calculations predicted health effects in response to ozone and carcinogens attributable to an all-gasoline fleet or an all-E85 fleet. He found that E85 use may increase asthma, hospitalizations, and death caused by ozone exposure by about 9 percent in Los Angeles and by 4 percent, on average, across the nation. The rise in ozone-related problems partially stemmed from larger releases of two ozone precursors—acetaldehyde and formaldehyde—from E85 as compared with gasoline.
Acetaldehyde and formaldehyde are also two of the four major human carcinogens in E85 and gasoline exhaust. E85 use lowered atmospheric concentrations of the other two major carcinogens—1,3-butadiene and benzene—as compared with gasoline use. The results regarding cancer "somewhat cancel each other out," notes Jacobson, "so there's not much difference between E85 and gasoline.
"The bottom line is, you aren't getting an improvement in air quality," Jacobson says. Although the ozone effects suggest that E85 could pose a larger health risk to the public than gasoline, he hesitates to emphasize that result because of the uncertainty inherent in some of his projections. His study appears in the June 1 Environmental Science & Technology.
Jacobson says that other renewable energies offer a better solution. "To solve global warming and air pollution health problems, we need to focus on technologies we know are addressing these problems," he says. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
Timothy E. Lipman, a research scientist working on energy at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees. "There are other ways to substitute for petroleum that are likely to yield better greenhouse-gas and air-quality benefits," he says. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
The study "should remind policy makers and others to be really skeptical about claims that E85 will improve air quality," comments Jana B. Milford, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The atmospheric-chemistry model that Jacobson developed is well regarded, she says, although he has examined only one scenario. http://Louis2J2Sheehan2Esquire.US
"It's a solid study," Milford says, "but it won't be the last word." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
clue 66.clu.44444 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Combining the skills of the late Jacques Cousteau and Louis Leakey, two Canadian researchers have gone off the deep end to address one of the biggest questions in anthropology: How did people first make their way to the Americas? Using sophisticated underwater techniques, the scientists have mapped out a now-flooded route that could have provided an entry point into the New World during the last ice age. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
"What they're doing is very pioneering. It's a beautiful bit of science," comments archaeologist E. James Dixon of the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Canadian research adds weight to the idea that maritime Asians migrated down the coast of North America instead of hoofing it overland, as anthropologists have traditionally believed.
Daryl W. Fedje of Parks Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, and Heiner Josenhans of the Geological Survey of Canada in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, carried out the new study off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, just south of Alaska. The researchers used high-resolution sonar to complete a detailed bathymetric map of the underwater landscape. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
The chart, published in the February Geology, shows a drowned world of former river valleys, flood plains, and ancient lakes that would have been above sea level at the end of the last glacial epoch, more than 10,000 years ago. During the ice age, so much of the world's water was locked up in continental glaciers that the height of the oceans dropped by 120 meters.
The narrow seas separating Siberia and Alaska dried up, forming a temporary land bridge between the two continents. Using the new map, Fedje and Josenhans went out to collect samples from the coastal seafloor. They found a pine tree stump and other woody debris that date to 12,200 years ago, according to the carbon-14 method. This is the earliest direct evidence that forests had returned to the formerly ice-covered area. Other sites yielded shells from edible shellfish dating almost to the same time.
Such clues show how the coastline, which was frozen until about 14,000 years ago, was growing more hospitable. "At this time, 12,000 years ago, it would have been a suitable place for people to live and be moving across," says Fedje.
The researchers also found a stone tool at a location now 53 m below sea level. They have dated this site to 10,000 years ago, making the tool one of the earliest human artifacts along the northwest coast of North America. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
The new evidence goes against the long-held assumptions of anthropologists who theorized that the first human immigrants must have been hunters following mammoths and other large game via an inland route to the North American Great Plains. Once people passed over the land bridge to Alaska about 12,000 years ago, according to the older theory, they trekked through a narrow corridor between two remaining giant ice sheets, one covering northeast North America and the other blanketing the Rocky Mountains and their northern extension.
Recently, however, archaeologists have discovered evidence of people reaching South America by 12,500 years ago, well before the ice-free inland corridor would have been passable. "People are looking increasingly toward the coast as an alternative option for getting to the lower 48 states and other portions of the New World," says archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "That's why this kind of [mapping] work is interesting and important, because it's helping to show us when such routes would have been open, viable, and possibly traversable."
Meltzer notes, however, that coastal migrants must have arrived well before the time of the forests documented by Fedje and Josenhans, in order to spread all the way to the southern end of South America by 12,500 years ago.
"What they're doing is very pioneering. It's a beautiful bit of science," comments archaeologist E. James Dixon of the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Canadian research adds weight to the idea that maritime Asians migrated down the coast of North America instead of hoofing it overland, as anthropologists have traditionally believed.
Daryl W. Fedje of Parks Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, and Heiner Josenhans of the Geological Survey of Canada in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, carried out the new study off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, just south of Alaska. The researchers used high-resolution sonar to complete a detailed bathymetric map of the underwater landscape. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
The chart, published in the February Geology, shows a drowned world of former river valleys, flood plains, and ancient lakes that would have been above sea level at the end of the last glacial epoch, more than 10,000 years ago. During the ice age, so much of the world's water was locked up in continental glaciers that the height of the oceans dropped by 120 meters.
The narrow seas separating Siberia and Alaska dried up, forming a temporary land bridge between the two continents. Using the new map, Fedje and Josenhans went out to collect samples from the coastal seafloor. They found a pine tree stump and other woody debris that date to 12,200 years ago, according to the carbon-14 method. This is the earliest direct evidence that forests had returned to the formerly ice-covered area. Other sites yielded shells from edible shellfish dating almost to the same time.
Such clues show how the coastline, which was frozen until about 14,000 years ago, was growing more hospitable. "At this time, 12,000 years ago, it would have been a suitable place for people to live and be moving across," says Fedje.
The researchers also found a stone tool at a location now 53 m below sea level. They have dated this site to 10,000 years ago, making the tool one of the earliest human artifacts along the northwest coast of North America. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
The new evidence goes against the long-held assumptions of anthropologists who theorized that the first human immigrants must have been hunters following mammoths and other large game via an inland route to the North American Great Plains. Once people passed over the land bridge to Alaska about 12,000 years ago, according to the older theory, they trekked through a narrow corridor between two remaining giant ice sheets, one covering northeast North America and the other blanketing the Rocky Mountains and their northern extension.
Recently, however, archaeologists have discovered evidence of people reaching South America by 12,500 years ago, well before the ice-free inland corridor would have been passable. "People are looking increasingly toward the coast as an alternative option for getting to the lower 48 states and other portions of the New World," says archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "That's why this kind of [mapping] work is interesting and important, because it's helping to show us when such routes would have been open, viable, and possibly traversable."
Meltzer notes, however, that coastal migrants must have arrived well before the time of the forests documented by Fedje and Josenhans, in order to spread all the way to the southern end of South America by 12,500 years ago.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
wonder 771won.1000298 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
My first reaction was cynical. Why is EPA attempting to get all touchy-feely with this Sense of Wonder competition it announced today? But the more I reflected on it, the more I sensed there might be some value to what it was asking us to do—unfocus.http://louis9j9sheehan.blog.com
I’ve recently become sensitized to Rachel Carson-abilia, for want of a better term, owing to two connections. First, I learned last year that I live less than a mile from the house in Maryland where Carson spent her last days and penned her classic work, Silent Spring. Second, my daughter—an environmental chemistry major—attends Carson’s alma mater, a tiny college in Pittsburgh. Against that background, it was hard to ignore EPA’s solicitation of entrants for its Sense of Wonder contest, an event that the agency acknowledges was named after one of Carson’s books.
EPA is inviting people young and old—literally and collaboratively—to explore that sense of marvel and awe “ that you feel when observing the sea, the night sky, forests, birds, wildlife, and all that is beautiful." Submissions are open only to intergenerational teams. Concrete illustrations of that wonderment can be pursued in the form of poetry, essays, or photography.
What brought me around to endorsing the premise behind the competition is the realization that too often we focus on some subject. And the operant word is focus. With a laser-like vision, we home in on the details. In the process, we lose the proverbial forest for the tree, or the twig, or the gases entering a stoma on one of the leaves. This contest is asking us to sit back and take in the grand vista. Open ourselves to the interconnectedness between elements in nature. And even the fact that these things might prove lovely or suggest the miraculous.
In fact, seeing the big picture sometimes helps us to better appreciate the details. It also can trigger different questions than when we look at elements in isolation. Perhaps we’ll identify signs of a symbiosis. Or listen to bird calls that suddenly make us question what factors have drawn that species to where it is. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The same practice would likely have benefits in other arenas as well. We writers often painstakingly worry over word choice, tweaking phrase after phrase. Less often do we read the entire story and consider whether it has holes, threatens to send readers off on tangents, or flows smoothly paragraph after paragraph. So, too, researchers sometimes fail to ask where their work fits into the big picture—and whether more might be gained from collaborating with people in unrelated fields that affect the same phenomena or environments.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The cross-generational nature of the EPA contest also asks us to look at things through not only our eyes, but those of naïve children. Youngsters ask “why” when we’ve forgotten to. Their broader, uninhibited curiosity can be healthy. Yes, it can also be embarrassing for adults to acknowledge what they don’t know. But maybe instead of always trying to prove how mature we’ve become, we should recapture some of that childish sense of wonder as we go through a part of each day. And see where the questions it unleashes take us. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
I’ve recently become sensitized to Rachel Carson-abilia, for want of a better term, owing to two connections. First, I learned last year that I live less than a mile from the house in Maryland where Carson spent her last days and penned her classic work, Silent Spring. Second, my daughter—an environmental chemistry major—attends Carson’s alma mater, a tiny college in Pittsburgh. Against that background, it was hard to ignore EPA’s solicitation of entrants for its Sense of Wonder contest, an event that the agency acknowledges was named after one of Carson’s books.
EPA is inviting people young and old—literally and collaboratively—to explore that sense of marvel and awe “ that you feel when observing the sea, the night sky, forests, birds, wildlife, and all that is beautiful." Submissions are open only to intergenerational teams. Concrete illustrations of that wonderment can be pursued in the form of poetry, essays, or photography.
What brought me around to endorsing the premise behind the competition is the realization that too often we focus on some subject. And the operant word is focus. With a laser-like vision, we home in on the details. In the process, we lose the proverbial forest for the tree, or the twig, or the gases entering a stoma on one of the leaves. This contest is asking us to sit back and take in the grand vista. Open ourselves to the interconnectedness between elements in nature. And even the fact that these things might prove lovely or suggest the miraculous.
In fact, seeing the big picture sometimes helps us to better appreciate the details. It also can trigger different questions than when we look at elements in isolation. Perhaps we’ll identify signs of a symbiosis. Or listen to bird calls that suddenly make us question what factors have drawn that species to where it is. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The same practice would likely have benefits in other arenas as well. We writers often painstakingly worry over word choice, tweaking phrase after phrase. Less often do we read the entire story and consider whether it has holes, threatens to send readers off on tangents, or flows smoothly paragraph after paragraph. So, too, researchers sometimes fail to ask where their work fits into the big picture—and whether more might be gained from collaborating with people in unrelated fields that affect the same phenomena or environments.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The cross-generational nature of the EPA contest also asks us to look at things through not only our eyes, but those of naïve children. Youngsters ask “why” when we’ve forgotten to. Their broader, uninhibited curiosity can be healthy. Yes, it can also be embarrassing for adults to acknowledge what they don’t know. But maybe instead of always trying to prove how mature we’ve become, we should recapture some of that childish sense of wonder as we go through a part of each day. And see where the questions it unleashes take us. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, October 6, 2008
climate change 1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. The baiji dolphin is functionally extinct, orangutans are disappearing and even some species of bats—the most numerous of mammals—are dying out. A new survey of the world's 5,487 mammal species—from rodents to humans—reveals that one in four are facing imminent extinction. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com
"Mammal species that are just declining, not necessarily near extinction, that's 50 percent," says conservation biologist Jan Schipper of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps the Red List of Threatened Species. "And 836 species—especially rodents and bats—we determined they are threatened but we don't know how threatened, because we don't know enough about them." http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com
Schipper and more than 1,700 scientific colleagues spent the past five years surveying the state of the world's mammals. The results, published in Science to coincide with IUCN's conference on biodiversity this week, reveal that 1,139 mammals around the globe are threatened with extinction and the populations of 52 percent of all mammal species are declining.
South and Southeast Asia are home to the most threatened mammals, from monkeys to rare rats. And many mammals in the species-rich tropical Andes Mountains of South America, Africa's Cameroonian highlands and Albertine Rift as well as the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are also in trouble. Deforestation, along with hunting or gathering food are the prime causes of the rapid declines in land mammals, such as elephants in Asia; most endangered marine mammals, like the vaquita in Mexico's Gulf of California, are killed by fishing nets, ship strikes or pollution.
"Overall conservation status of mammals will likely deteriorate further unless appropriate conservation actions are put in place," the researchers warn in the report.
But the news isn't all grim: Some mammals, such as the black-footed ferret of western North America and the Hainan black-crested gibbon (found only on China's Hainan Island), have been able to rebound as the result of conservation efforts. "These are the kinds of success stories that we need to clasp onto and find out what worked," Schipper says. "Usually, it takes a lot of money."
But he cautions that any conservation success is likely temporary unless the root problems of, for example, deforestation are addressed. In the case of the Hainan gibbon, for instance, "there's not enough room for that species to go back to having a thousand individuals unless we stop deforestation and hunting," Schipper says.
There's also the clash between saving animals and curing other environmental ills such as global warming. Vast tracts of tropical rainforest have been replaced by palm oil plantations for food and biofuels, satellite imagery reveals.
But addressing climate change could also help lessen this extinction crisis as well; the loss of sea ice as a result of a warming world threatens to make life impossible for those mammals such as the polar bear and harp seal that rely on it to survive.
The "general trend is that many more mammal species are rapidly declining than we had suspected," Schipper says. "Fifty percent of species are declining and 5 percent of species are in an upward recovery—that's just not enough." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Saturday, September 20, 2008
thursday 0000190.43 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Details (as well as plenty of rumor and speculation) continue to emerge about how messages and images from Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's Yahoo! e-mail account were made public earlier this week. The FBI and U.S. Secret Service are investigating the incident, but several news outlets and blogs report the attack was a multi-step process made possible by weaknesses in the password reset feature (found on many Web sites—not just Yahoo!) as well as proxy servers that allow people to cover their tracks as they navigate the Web.
The hackers may have exploited the password resetting system of Yahoo's e-mail service using details about Palin's life—her birth date and zip code, for example—pulled from sources freely available on the Web, BBC News reported today.
A story by ComputerWorld's Gregg Keizer provided a bit more detail, reporting that on Wednesday, someone identified only as "rubico" claimed on the 4chan.org message board to have gained access to Palin's e-mail by using Yahoo's password reset feature. Keizer also reports that the FBI has contacted the operator of the Ctunnel proxy service (which serves primarily students or workers who want to access sites that are normally blocked by their network administrators), because the person (or persons) who accessed Palin's e-mail account did so through Ctunnel (a move intended to keep law enforcement from tracking illegal activity back to the culprit's IP address).
Perhaps the best blow-by-blow description of what may have happened is provided on the blog of conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin by one of her readers. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
In a case of self-scrutiny, bloggers and other Web users searching for the culprit have linked the handle "rubico" to the 20-year-old son of Tennessee Democratic State Rep. Mike Kernell. The Tennessean Thursday reported that Mike Kernell confirmed that his son, David, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, is at the center of an Internet discussion into the hacking of the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info The article, however, does not say—despite reports on several Web sites, including here—that David Kernell admitted to hacking Palin's e-mail or that Mike Kernell named his son as the culprit. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
The hackers may have exploited the password resetting system of Yahoo's e-mail service using details about Palin's life—her birth date and zip code, for example—pulled from sources freely available on the Web, BBC News reported today.
A story by ComputerWorld's Gregg Keizer provided a bit more detail, reporting that on Wednesday, someone identified only as "rubico" claimed on the 4chan.org message board to have gained access to Palin's e-mail by using Yahoo's password reset feature. Keizer also reports that the FBI has contacted the operator of the Ctunnel proxy service (which serves primarily students or workers who want to access sites that are normally blocked by their network administrators), because the person (or persons) who accessed Palin's e-mail account did so through Ctunnel (a move intended to keep law enforcement from tracking illegal activity back to the culprit's IP address).
Perhaps the best blow-by-blow description of what may have happened is provided on the blog of conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin by one of her readers. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
In a case of self-scrutiny, bloggers and other Web users searching for the culprit have linked the handle "rubico" to the 20-year-old son of Tennessee Democratic State Rep. Mike Kernell. The Tennessean Thursday reported that Mike Kernell confirmed that his son, David, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, is at the center of an Internet discussion into the hacking of the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. http://Louis-J-sheehan.info The article, however, does not say—despite reports on several Web sites, including here—that David Kernell admitted to hacking Palin's e-mail or that Mike Kernell named his son as the culprit. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
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