With amphibians facing population crashes around the world, the red-eyed tree frog has become a poster species for rainforest conservation.
Every second, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is destroyed. More than 31 million football fields of rainforest are sacrificed to unsustainable agriculture, ranching and mining every year.
One redoubt is Corcovado National Park on Osa Peninsula, a crooked finger of land jutting out of the southwestern corner of Costa Rica. The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with the Costa Rican government, established the more-than-100,000-acre park in 1975. Today, the Conservancy is developing park management plans to further protect the lush primary rainforests on the western edge of the peninsula, which provide sanctuary for the red-eyed tree frog.
Natural Light Photos.
"Natural Light" gives you access to the most arresting photos from The Nature Conservancy's huge archives. From Tibet to Tanzania, from hissing alligators to quivering zebras, "Natural Light" opens a brilliant window onto our work and the astonishing nature that we at the Conservancy encounter every day.
Related: China’s First National Park - Pudacuo.
No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party's rule.
But pollution poses its own threat. Officials blame fetid air and water for thousands of episodes of social unrest. Health care costs have climbed sharply. Severe water shortages could turn more farmland into desert. And the unconstrained expansion of energy-intensive industries creates greater dependence on imported oil and dirty coal, meaning that environmental problems get harder and more expensive to address the longer they are unresolved.
Beijing has declined to use the kind of tax policies and market-oriented incentives for conservation that have worked well in Japan and many European countries.
Provincial officials, who enjoy substantial autonomy, often ignore environmental edicts, helping to reopen mines or factories closed by central authorities. Over all, enforcement is often tinged with corruption.
President Hu Jintao's most ambitious attempt to change the culture of fast-growth collapsed this year. The project, known as "Green GDP," was an effort to create an environmental yardstick for evaluating the performance of every official in China. It recalculated gross domestic product, or GDP, to reflect the cost of pollution.
But the early results were so sobering — in some provinces the pollution-adjusted growth rates were reduced almost to zero — that the project was banished to China's ivory tower this spring and stripped of official influence.
"Typically, industrial countries deal with green problems when they are rich," said Ren Yong, a climate expert at the Center for Environment and Economy in Beijing. "We have to deal with them while we are still poor. There is no model for us to follow."
For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. But even many of its newest coal-fired power plants and industrial furnaces operate inefficiently and use pollution controls considered inadequate in the West.
Emissions of sulfur dioxide from coal and fuel oil, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases as well as acid rain, are increasing even faster than China's economic growth. In 2005, China became the leading source of sulfur dioxide pollution globally.
In many parts of China, factories and farms dump waste into surface water with few repercussions. China's environmental monitors say that one-third of all river water, and vast sections of China's great lakes, the Tai, Chao and Dianchi, have water rated Grade V, the most degraded level, rendering it unfit for industrial or agricultural use.
Its energy needs are compounded because even some of its newest heavy industry plants do not operate as efficiently, or control pollution as effectively, as factories in other parts of the world, a recent World Bank report said.
Chinese buildings rarely have thermal insulation. They require, on average, twice as much energy to heat and cool as those in similar climates in the United States and Europe, according to the World Bank.
While over the long term, combined-cycle plants save money and reduce pollution, Berrah said, they cost more and take longer to build. For that reason, he said, central and provincial government officials prefer older technology. "China is making decisions today that will affect its energy use for the next 30 or 40 years," he said. "Unfortunately, in some parts of the government the thinking is much more shortsighted."
Today, a culture of collusion between government and business has made all but the most pro-growth government policies hard to enforce.
"The main reason behind the continued deterioration of the environment is a mistaken view of what counts as political achievement," said Pan Yue, the deputy minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration. "The crazy expansion of high-polluting, high-energy industries has spawned special interests. Protected by local governments, some businesses treat the natural resources that belong to all the people as their own private property."
Despite the demise of Green GDP, party leaders insist that they intend to restrain runaway energy use and emissions. The government last year mandated that the country use 20 percent less energy to achieve the same level of economic activity in 2010 compared with 2005. It also required that total emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants decline by 10 percent in the same period.
Lake Tai, the center of China's ancient "land of fish and rice," succumbed this year to floods of industrial and agricultural waste.
Toxic cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as pond scum, turned the big lake fluorescent green. The stench of decay choked anyone who came within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who live amid the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the lake had to stop drinking or cooking with their main source of water.
.. The insects aren't very good travelers either. When a truck carrying bees gets caught in a summer traffic jam, for instance, hives quickly overheat, despite the fact that the millions of workers inside them furiously fan their wings in an attempt to prevent it, says Wes Card, a beekeeper whose Merrimack Valley Apiaries in Billerica, Mass., pollinates crops from California to Maine.
"Then every minute counts," he adds, for unless the driver can quickly find a way to pull off the road and hose down the hives with cooling water, desperately hot queens emerge from their inner sanctums and typically wind up venturing into nearby colonies on the truck, where they are perceived as alien invaders and promptly killed.
One of CCD's strangest symptoms, say bee experts, is a phenomenon that might be called the madness of the nurses. Nurse bees are workers that nurture a hive's preadult bees, called brood. Workers begin their adult lives as nurses, and only during the final third or so of their six-week lives do they become foragers, venturing outside the hive to collect nectar and pollen.
Researchers have discovered that the young nurses are maintained in a kind of immature, thickheaded state by chemical signals emanating from the queen. Nurses aren't supposed to leave the hive. They're not ready to cope with the big outside world, which requires a mature bee's smarts. Besides, with nurses on leave, the all-important brood would wither.
Yet empty hives struck by CCD are often found with intact brood, which means nurses were on the job shortly before all the bees flew off forever. Beekeepers find this gross dereliction of duty much weirder than the disappearance of foragers, which essentially work themselves to death and often die outside the hive.
Says Hackenberg: "Basically, I've never seen bees go off and leave brood. That's the real kicker."
Perhaps the nurses aren't really acting crazy when they fly away. Instead, their strange behavior may represent a perfectly natural attempt by doomed workers to protect their sisters from killer microbes.
After all, a hive's workers represent a famously close-knit sorority, geared by evolution to act strictly in the best interests of their colonies. Beekeepers have long known that sick bees generally leave the hive to die, minimizing the risk that they will infect others.
To beekeepers' dismay, the farm bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for $286 billion to be spent over the next five years on everything from school snacks to biofuels, earmarked no funds specifically for CCD research.
The book, Buddhism And Psychotherapy Across Cultures: Essays on Theories and Practices
by Mark Unno, Editor is published by Wisdom Publications (a nonprofit charitable organization).
As Buddhism and psychotherapy have grown and diversified in Asia and the West, so too has the literature dealing with their intersection. In this collection of essays, leading voices explore many surprising connections between psychotherapy and Buddhism.
Table of Contents
Part I.
Promises and Pitfalls: Dialogue at the Crossroads
Promises and Perils of the Spiritual Path
Individuation and Awakening: Romantic Narrative and the Psychological Interpretation of Buddhism
Cross-Cultural Dialogue and the Resonance of Narrative Strands
Buddhist Practice in Relation to Self-Representation: A Cross-Cultural Dialogue
On Selves and Selfless Discourse
Transcendence and Immanence: Buddhism and Psychotherapy in Japan
Part II.
Creative Possibilities: Psychotherapy and Buddhism in Mutual Encounter
Psychotherapy and Buddhism: Attending to Sand
The Borderline Between Buddhism and Psychotherapy
Naikan Therapy and Shin Buddhism
Psychology, the Sacred, and Energetic Sensing
Part III.
Death and Dying in Pure Land Buddhism
Shandao's Verses on Guiding Others and Healing the Heart
Shin Buddhist Ministry: Working with Issues of Death and Dying
A Buddhist Perspective on Death and Compassion: End-of-Life Care in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism
Appendices
I. Illusions of the Self in Buddhism and Winnicott
II. Shinran's Thought Regarding Birth in the Pure Land
III. Key Terms: Shin Buddhism
Milton Erickson is known as a pioneer in the fields of family therapy, hypnotherapy, and brief therapy, he was an unconventional therapist who adapted his practice in all manner of ways. He is known for his ability to "utilize" anything about a patient to help them change, including their beliefs, favorite words, cultural background, personal history, or even their neurotic habits.
The following is the case of a young woman, severely depressed and with no social life, who threatened suicide unless Erickson was able to help her within three months. She was attracted to a young man at work, and he seemed to show some interest in her, but she was unable to act on her impulses in any way. Her parents were dead, she was alone, and she felt completely isolated:
The young woman was pretty, but she managed to make herself unattractive [with her unkempt hair and unflattering outfits] ... Her main physical defect, according to her, was a gap between her front teeth. [Yet] the gap was only about one-eighth of an inch... Generally, this was a girl going downhill, heading for suicide, ... and resisting any acts that would help her achieve her [stated] goal of getting married and having children.
Erickson approached this problem with two major interventions. He proposed to the girl that she have one last fling [spending her savings on herself, at the clothing store and the beauty salon].... The woman was willing to accept the idea, since it was not a way of improving herself but part of going downhill and merely having a last fling.
Then Erickson gave her a [second] task. She was to go home and in the privacy of her bathroom practice squirting water through the gap between her front teeth until she could achieve a distance of six feet with accuracy. She thought this was silly, but it was partly the absurdity of it that made her go home and practice...
When the girl was dressed properly, looking attractive, and skillful at squirting water through the gap in her teeth, Erickson made a suggestion to her ... [to play] a practical joke. When that young man appeared at the water fountain at the same time she did, she was to take a mouthful of water and squirt it at him. Then she was to turn and run, but not merely run; she was to start to run toward the young man and then turn and "run like hell down the corridor."
The girl rejected this idea as impossible. Then she thought of it as a somewhat amusing but crude fantasy... She was in a mood for a last fling anyhow.
On Monday, ... [meeting the young man at the water fountain,] she filled her mouth with water and squirted it on him. The young man said something like "You damn bitch." This made her laugh as she ran, and the young man took after her and caught her. To her consternation, he grabbed her and kissed her.
The next day the young lady approached the water fountain with some trepidation, and the young man sprang out from behind a telephone booth and sprayed her with a water pistol. The next day they went out to dinner together... Within a few months she sent Erickson a newspaper clipping reporting her marriage to the young man, and a year later a picture of her new baby.
Although the account is somewhat humorous, the young woman's inner condition was quite serious, serious enough that no amount of direct counseling would have worked. While there are major differences between the case of Kisa Gotami and this young woman, in both cases the teacher/therapist meets the supplicant/client at her point of greatest need in the here and now and turns what had seemed to be a great negative into the very thing that becomes the positive force for religious/therapeutic transformation.
From: Buddhism And Psychotherapy Across Cultures: Essays on Theories and Practices by Mark Unno
Four tiny orphaned hedgehogs are snuggling up to the bristles of a cleaning brush - because they think it's their mother. Workers say Mary, Mungo, Midge and Slappy get comfort from playing with the centre's cleaning brush and enjoy rubbing against it.
The smells on the brush, which is used to sweep a yard, remind the hedgehogs of their natural habitat while the texture reminds them of their mother.
Manager John Crooks, 41, said: "They are a bit like human babies - they need activities to keep them busy.
"Because they have very poor eyesight you have to appeal to their sense of smell and touch by giving them different scents and textures.
"They like natural scents and have enjoyed playing with our cleaning brushes, soil, leaves, flower pots and the like.
"They particularly seem to enjoy rubbing against the brush.
"It may sound odd but I imagine the bristles feel a bit like their mum."
The hedgehogs will be fed until they are full-sized and then they will be released back into the wild.
Lions are the only truly social cat, living in groups called prides. A pride is a set of females, often but not always sisters, along with their cubs and subadult cubs. There are also one or more males, usually a coalition of two brothers, but sometimes unrelated lions. Lionesses are the backbone of the pride—they stay together for many years. Males tend to come and go—the typical time frame for them dominating a pride is just 3 to 4 years. Upon reaching adulthood female cubs may stay with the pride. Males never do—they disperse and become nomadic, looking for a pride where they can challenge the dominant male and take over.
Male lions really look the part of the "king of beasts". Their lives are full of violence, exploitation and sex—in other words just like human royalty through much of history. Male lions sleep an average 20 hours per day. The females on the other hand do all of the really hard work—killing the majority of prey, which the males then appropriate for themselves. The main danger males face is fighting off other males that want to take over their pride and territory. This is serious business; most male lions die in such fights. In between territory fights they are bad tempered and terrorize the females in their pride. ..
Lions can seem quite inept at hunting, because they have no way to communicate complicated information. In order to catch a buffalo a lion must jump on the buffalo's back, and do to that they need to get past the horns. They must jump on the back from the side or behind. Once on the back, the lion hangs on for dear life, a bit like a cowboy riding a bull. The goal is to get the buffalo to stumble. If there is more than one lion hunting this is the point when they will start to pile on.
Lions don't wait to kill the animal before starting the process of eating it—as soon as the buffalo stops thrashing, lions start to eat. This is much harder than it sounds however, because the hide is very thick. ..
The impulse to make video games easier can be traced to a fundamental change in perception over what a game should be. The older school of thought, which dates back and beyond the days of Space Invaders to the era of pinball, is that a game should measure the player's skill. Arcade games, in fact, must make it difficult for a player to last for any great length of time in order to keep money coming into the coin box. The newer concept is that a game should provide an experience to the player. The player is to feel like some character, or like he's participating in a story, or that he's making some difference in a fictional realm. ..
An international team of 31 researchers found a number of strange animals while exploring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range that runs from Iceland to the Azores islands west of Portugal (see Europe map).
Over the course of five weeks, the team cataloged a host of exotic worms, colorful corals, unusual sea cucumbers, and weird fish. At least one species found during the survey—a tiny crustacean called a seed shrimp—is thought to be new to science.
"It was like going to a new country," said expedition leader Monty Priede of Britain's University of Aberdeen.
From Colors of Religion: Buddhism.
The principle colors involved in Buddhism are Blue, Black, White, Red, Green, and Yellow, and each — except for Black — are aligned to a specific Buddha.
See Five Wisdom Buddhas for the five qualities of the Buddha and each Buddha's color.
Each of the five Buddhas first identifies a specific human failing and then helps us in transforming it into a positive attribute, bringing about the spiritual evolution required for enlightenment.
The Five Buddha Families and the Eight Consciousnesses by Thrangu Rinpoche, Geshe Lharampa. Translated by Peter Roberts. (Pdf)
The ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre (AWRC) (located in Sungei Tengah Agrotech Park) will occupy two hectares (five acres) and will provide a safe haven for more than 400 wild animals rescued from illegal trade, potentially including primates (such as gibbons, macaques, and lorises), marsupials, reptiles, small ungulates, and small carnivores. The AWRC will also help to end the cruel trafficking in rare species by serving as an educational facility for the public. With the assistance of volunteers, ACRES plans to use the center to generate increased awareness of the impact of the illegal wildlife trade—and to help create a more caring and compassionate society.
Illicit wildlife trafficking is rampant in Southeast Asia, with an active trade in many species of wild animals for their meat, for their body parts to be used in traditional medicines, and for supplying the exotic pet trade.
In recent years, there has been an alarming increase in the illegal trade in protected species of wild animals and plants. In Singapore, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has stepped up its enforcement efforts, leading to the confiscation of an increasing number of illegally traded animals.
The AWRC will provide such confiscated animals with an ideal environment in which to rest and recuperate. Wherever possible, ACRES will seek to repatriate animals back to reputable sanctuaries in their country of origin. However, for those animals who cannot be repatriated, the AWRC will serve as a permanent home.
ACRES undercover operations has led to prosecutions of importers, traders, and buyers of illegal trade in Singapore. ACRES operates the 24-hour ACRES Wildlife Crime Hotline, which provides a means of blowing the whistle on anyone who buys, owns, or trades in exotic species.
Public roadshows, advertisements in the local media, and talks and exhibitions at schools are all part of a strategy to raise public awareness of the impact of the illegal wildlife trade and ultimately to achieve the main aim of ACRES: to foster compassion and respect for all animals.
How is information coded in neural activity?
It is likely that mental information is stored not in single cells but in populations of cells and patterns of their activity. Although traveling bursts of voltage can carry signals across the brain quickly, those electrical spikes may not be the only—or even the main—way that information is carried in nervous systems.
How are memories stored and retrieved?
Almost all theories of memory propose that memory storage depends on synapses, the tiny connections between brain cells. When two cells are active at the same time, the connection between them strengthens; when they are not active at the same time, the connection weakens. Out of such synaptic changes emerges an association.
There is no good theory to explain how memory retrieval can happen so quickly. Moreover, the act of retrieval can destabilize the memory. When you recall a past event, the memory becomes temporarily susceptible to erasure.
What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?Some of the baseline activity may represent the brain restructuring knowledge in the background, simulating future states and events, or manipulating memories. Most things we care about—reminiscences, emotions, drives, plans, and so on—can occur with no external stimulus and no overt output that can be measured.
The awake state may be essentially the same as the dreaming state, only partially anchored by external stimuli. In this view, your conscious life is an awake dream.
How do brains simulate the future?
Many neuroscientists have suggested over the past few decades that perception arises not simply by building up bits of data through a hierarchy but rather by matching incoming sensory data against internally generated expectations.
Your memories about your life may come to be understood as a special subtype of emulation, one that is pinned down and thus likely to flow in a certain direction.
What are emotions?
Emotions are measurable physical responses to salient stimuli: the increased heartbeat and perspiration that accompany fear.
Modern views propose that emotions are brain states that quickly assign value to outcomes and provide a simple plan of action. Thus, emotion can be viewed as a type of computation, a rapid, automatic summary that initiates appropriate actions.
One goal of emotional neuroscience is to understand the nature of the many disorders of emotion, depression being the most common and costly. Impulsive aggression and violence are also thought to be consequences of faulty emotion regulation.
What is intelligence?
Recent experiments explore the possible relationship of intelligence to the capacity of short-term memory, the ability to quickly resolve cognitive conflict, or the ability to store stronger associations between facts; the results are not yet conclusive. Many other possibilities—better restructuring of stored information, more parallel processing, or superior emulation of possible futures—have not yet been probed by experiments.
How is time represented in the brain?
Your notion of the smooth passage of time is a construction of the brain. Clarifying the picture of how the brain normally solves timing problems should give insight into what happens when temporal calibration goes wrong, as may happen in the brains of people with dyslexia. Sensory inputs that are out of sync also contribute to the risk of falls in elderly patients.
Why do brains sleep and dream?
In humans, continuous wakefulness of the nervous system results in mental derangement; rats deprived of sleep for 10 days die.
There are at least three popular (and nonexclusive) guesses. The first is that sleep is restorative, saving and replenishing the body’s energy stores. However, the high neural activity during sleep suggests there is more to the story. A second theory proposes that sleep allows the brain to run simulations of fighting, problem solving, and other key actions before testing them out in the real world. A third theory—the one that enjoys the most evidence—is that sleep plays a critical role in learning and consolidating memories and in forgetting inconsequential details. In other words, sleep allows the brain to store away the important stuff and take out the neural trash.
Dreaming is akin to an off-line practice session.
How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?
While the brain’s ability to do parallel processing is impressive, its ability to rapidly synthesize those parallel processes into a single, behavior-guiding output is at least as significant.
There is no special anatomical location in the brain where information from all the different systems converges; rather, the specialized areas all interconnect with one another, forming a network of parallel and recurring links. Somehow, our integrated image of the world emerges from this complex labyrinthine network of brain structures.
What is consciousness?
The mechanisms underlying consciousness could reside at any of a variety of physical levels: molecular, cellular, circuit, pathway, or some organizational level not yet described. The mechanisms might also be a product of interactions between these levels. One compelling but still speculative notion is that the massive feedback circuitry of the brain is essential to the production of consciousness.
The Nature Conservancy has helped China achieve a conservation landmark: the establishment of that country's first national park, which will also serve as a model for a new Chinese national park system.
The new park — Pudacuo National Park in China's Northwest Yunnan Province — is located in one of the most biodiverse regions of the world.
The establishment of Pudacuo National Park is significant in other ways as well:
It increases conservation in the region by incorporating 10 times more land into an area that was formerly a nature reserve;
It introduces skilled park management techniques to help abate threats to biodiversity in the area;
It provides a source of environmental education for local communities; and
It provides economic benefits to local communities through park-related jobs and ecotourism.
The Conservancy introduced the national park system to China as part of a partnership with the Chinese government. The partnership included study tours for local, provincial and national Chinese government officials to such places as Yellowstone National Park in the United States and Komodo National Park in Indonesia, where they observed examples of protected-area management and learned about park design, infrastructure development and tourism management.
“What…distinguishes this park [from a typical Chinese nature reserve] is that the local communities are already benefiting from it because they are preferentially employed for jobs within the park,” says Zhu Li, communications manager for the Conservancy’s China Program. “The national park system embodies the conservation ideal of ‘nature for people’ rather than ‘nature from people.’”
Conceived by the leader of our conceptual design team, Mr. Ed Jacobs, the motorcycle is at once primitive, bohemian, and yet highly technical. She is skeletal, i.e. she showcases human crafts work. The machine is minimal ; using the fewest pieces, moving parts and systems to accomplish her dynamic mission. ..
Researchers have found that New Caledonian crows--which are known to make complex food-getting tools in the wild--can also spontaneously use one tool on another to get a snack.
It appears that the birds may have solved the problem that confronted them by using analogical reasoning rather than simple trial and error. Analogical reasoning requires the ability to see a novel situation as being essentially the same as a previous situation, the researchers explained.
In the study, the researchers presented crows with some meat in a hole and a stick that left the meat out of reach. The birds needed to get a long stick out of a "toolbox" in order to get the meat from the hole. However, the long stick was also out of reach. "The creative thing the crows did was to use the short stick to get the long tool out of the box so that they could then use the long stick to get the meat," said Alex Taylor, also of the University of Auckland.
In a second experiment, the researchers reversed the positions of the two sticks so that the small stick was inside the toolbox and the long stick was handy. The crows then briefly probed the box containing the short stick with the long stick before correcting their error by taking the stick directly to the hole.
Gray said. "Six out of seven birds tried to get the long stick with the short stick at their first attempt at solving the problem. To do this, they had to inhibit their normal response of trying to get the food directly with the short stick and realize that they could use the short stick to get the long stick."
Developing in your children a positive sense of self-worth is one of your greatest responsibilities and biggest challenges.
Children who have self-confidence have a feeling of internal worth that enables them to welcome challenges and work cooperatively with others. When children don't develop self-confidence, they tend to focus on failure instead of success, problems instead of challenges, and difficulties instead of possibilities. There is no single way to enhance self-esteem, but one way is to show children "unconditional positive regard." Let your children know that you care about them, accept them, and approve of them, no matter what. Your challenge is to accept your child as a person, even when you do not accept his behavior.
Honest recognition and sincere praise come from the heart and draw attention to something specific the child has done. Praise is an external source of esteem, which is helpful but not nearly as valuable and effective as internal sources that come from a sense of competence.
Showing respect for your children also reinforce your child's self-worth. You can offer them choices when appropriate, then respect and abide by their decisions. Showing confidence in your child's ability to make decisions helps build his self-esteem. Another way to show respect towards children is to explain the reasons behind the rules or adult decisions.
The most effective thing you can do to help your children feel a sense of self-worth is to help them achieve competence or an internal feeling of mastery or control. Encourage your children to make their own choices and be as independent as possible. Provide many different activities for them to allow them to explore and develop skills. Creative activities allow children to express their ideas and feelings. Group activities allow children to learn to play and interact with other children.
Children should have sufficient freedom to select the activities they want to participate in, rather than being forced by their parents. You should recognize and praise your child's effort rather than the result. Best is to encourage them to develop a sense of curiosity and have fun in exploring it.
Don't let your child's ego grow too big. Parents can only teach their children how to behave successfully only if their own behaviors are consistent and do not contradicts them.
Somewhat related: A Mother’s Wishes of Her Children - Satisfaction.
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Erich is currently interested in Game Theory, Geometrical Packing, Computational Complexity, and Graph Theory.
Funny Mathematician :)
Are bees dying because factory farms are "overworking" them? California bee farmers who let their hives take it easy find their colonies are thriving.
Honey is just one product of those highly productive bees; the pollen and wax they produce are valuable, too. Exploiting them -- making use of everything possible -- is another lesson from boutique farmers.
Commercial beekeeping has come to resemble other kinds of factory farming. Beehives are crammed close together in rows just a few feet apart; in the wild, a square mile supports at the most three or four hives. A wild colony's diet is diverse, comprising pollen and nectar from myriad plants. To compensate for the lack of forage around bee lots, bees are typically fed high-fructose corn syrup, the same stuff that's contributing to a human health crisis. And just like other agricultural livestock, bees become stressed when you crowd them together. They're more susceptible to diseases and parasites, less able to function naturally.
In nature, most flowers don't get pollinated. But you don't get a billion-pound harvest by letting nature take its course. The agribusiness way is to rent hives for the two-week almond pollination season. This year, growers paid $150 per hive, placing three to five hives per acre.
The natural lifecycle of a bee colony follows the seasons, with a hibernationlike rest period during the winter. Unfortunately for the bees, the lucrative almond pollination season comes at the worst possible time, around Feb. 10, a miserably rainy time of year. A colony may rear ten to 12 generations of bees in a year. The "winter bees" must survive the cold months and live long enough to raise the vigorous new brood that will bring back the spring pollen and begin the cycle again.
Malnutrition could be another piece of the syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Wild bees live on water, nectar, and pollen. Nectar provides the carbohydrates they use for energy and to make honey, while pollen is a rich mix of protein, fats, minerals, vitamins, and micronutrients. Bad weather may have destroyed some nutrients vital to the bees as well, making the pollen useless to their bodies.
Qualls thinks inbred queens are another possible factor in collapsing colonies. Maybe that's what happened to Peter Scholz. In every winter, the colony he has in his backyard dwindled away -- or, you could say, collapsed. Scholz gave up, but left the hive in place. Two springs ago, a feral swarm moved in. This colony is thriving, and he expects to get 50 pounds of honey this year. "It makes sense in a Darwinian way that the hives that flourish locally and swarm are the ones you want to adopt," he says.
Swarming is the natural process by which a colony reproduces itself. Capturing swarms is a popular pastime for backyard beekeepers -- and it may provide insurance against whatever disasters are befalling commercial operators.
A poem written by Suzuki Akiko for her four children before her death. She was given the opportunity to reflect upon her life and death after having cancer and was very grateful. She came to believe that to continue to live in the preciousness of each day's life is the most meaningful way to live. (Simply guided by Namu Amida Butsu)
The poem, titled "Satisfaction", expresses her wishes for her children, wishes that are illuminated by her own self-reflection.
Do not try to be a step ahead of everyone
In this vain and impermanent world
My children
Please do not spend your lives
No matter how far you go
There will be no satisfaction
Do not compete
Do not compare
Do not be envious
Do not lament
Do not belittle yourself
Please let your own flowers bloom
You are yourself and that is enough
Just like the rose in the garden
Just like the pine tree in the garden
Please let the flowers of your human accomplishment bloom
True satisfaction arises there.
There are many ice caves throughout the world, but the Eisriesenwelt Ice Caves in Austria are some of the largest known to man. They are located within the Tennengebirge Mountains near Salzburg and stretch for a remarkable 40 kilometers. Only a portion of the labyrinth is open to tourists but it's enough to get a taste of what the remaining network is like: a truly mesmerizing palate of Mother Nature's handicraft.
In winter, when the air inside the mountain is warmer than outside, cold air streams into the mountain and reduces the temperature of the lower areas of the caves to below freezing point. In spring the meltwater seeps through the cracks in the rock and when it reaches the colder lower areas of the caves it freezes and turns slowly into the wonderful ice formations visible inside the caves.
It's an odd combination of Navier-Stokes equations and NASCAR driving. Computer scientists at the University of Washington have developed software that is incorporated in new technology allowing television audiences to instantaneously see how air flows around speeding cars.
The algorithm Model Reduction for Real-time Fluids, first presented at a SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference last August, was since used by ESPN and sporting-technology company Sportvision Inc. to create a new effect for racing coverage. The fast-paced innovation hit prime time in late July when ESPN used the Draft Track technology to visualize the air flow behind cars in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The Draft Track application calculates air flow over the cars and then displays it as colors trailing behind the car. Green, blue, yellow and red correspond to different speeds and directions for air flow when two or more cars approach one another while driving at speeds upward of 200 miles per hour.
"What ESPN wanted to do is tell the story for the viewer of how drafting works because it's such a big part of the event," said Rick Cavallaro, chief scientist at Sportvision. "How the drivers use drafting to save gas, pick up speed, et cetera."
Zoran Popović, an associate professor in the UW's department of computer science and engineering, and two students wrote the code that dramatically speeds up real-time fluid dynamics simulations. To make the simulation work in real time and be interactive, "you kind of need to rethink the math problem," he said. The new algorithm first simulates all the ways that smoke, fire -- or in this case, modified stock cars -- can behave. Then it runs the simulation for a reduced number of physically possible parameters.
Popović imagined that the first applications would be introducing interactive simulations in video games that would allow players to drive through a smoky fire, interact with the weather in a flight simulator, or drive racecars in a virtual wind tunnel. Other research results from his lab were licensed to the game industry and then adopted in video games.
Sportvision creates technology to enhance sports coverage. The company has already developed add-ons for ESPN's NASCAR coverage, placing Global Positioning System receivers, inertial measurement systems and telemetry on each car that can determine each car's speed and position several times a second. Now company engineers will use data from those sensors to model and display the air flowing over the cars.
Bones are typically thought of as calcified, inert structures, but researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have now identified a surprising and critically important novel function of the skeleton. They’ve shown for the first time that the skeleton is an endocrine organ that helps control our sugar metabolism and weight and, as such, is a major determinant of the development of type 2 diabetes.
The research demonstrates that bone cells release a hormone called osteocalcin, which controls the regulation of blood sugar (glucose) and fat deposition through synergistic mechanisms previously not recognized. Usually, an increase in insulin secretion is accompanied by a decrease in insulin sensitivity. Osteocalcin, however, increases both the secretion and sensitivity of insulin, in addition to boosting the number of insulin-producing cells and reducing stores of fat.
In this published research, authors show that an increase in osteocalcin activity prevents the development of type 2 diabetes and obesity in mice. This discovery potentially opens the door for novel therapeutic avenues for the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Karsenty and his colleagues had previously shown that leptin, a hormone released by fat cells, acts upon and ultimately controls bone mass. They reasoned that bones must in turn communicate with fat, so they searched bone-forming cells for molecules that could potentially send signals back to fat cells.
The researchers found that osteocalcin directs the pancreas’ beta cells, which produce the body’s supply of insulin, to produce more insulin. At the same time, osteocalcin directs fat cells to release a hormone called adiponectin, which improves insulin sensitivity.
People with type 2 diabetes have been shown to have low osteocalcin levels, suggesting that altering the activity of this molecule could be an effective therapy. That hypothesis is supported by the Columbia research, which showed that mice with high levels of osteocalcin activity were prevented from gaining weight or becoming diabetic even when they ate a high fat diet.
Remote control kite is the brainchild of Singaporean Michael Lim, who was inspired by his young daughter’s childlike request of “plucking the stars from the heavens” to add LED lights to his RC kite so they resemble stars in the night sky. That gave the kite its resemblance to fireflies and it was nicked “Firefly”.
42 kites are flown in today's Singapore national day parade at Marina Bay to mark the nation's 42nd birthday.
Happy birthday, Singapore! :)
Very cool flying kite! 8)
Michael Lim's shop at goflykite.
A freshwater dolphin found only in China is now "likely to be extinct", a team of scientists has concluded. The researchers failed to spot any Yangtze river dolphins, also known as baijis, during an extensive six-week survey of the mammals' habitat.
"The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago," Dr Turvey explained. "This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."
Unlike most historical-era extinctions of large bodied animals, the baiji was the victim not of active persecution but incidental mortality resulting from massive-scale human environmental impacts - primarily uncontrolled and unselective fishing," the researchers concluded.
The damage to the baiji's habitat is also affecting the Yangtze finless porpoise, whose numbers have fallen to below 400, the expedition found.
From BountyFishing.
There are photos of Deep-sea glass squid, Snaggletooth, Axolotl, Mudskipper, Slander Lanternfish, Deep-sea stargazer, Giant Hatchetfish, Dumbo Octopus, Eelpout, Black-lip Rattail, Humpback Anglerfish, Coelacanth, Northern Seahorse, Longhorn Cowfish, Leafy Sea Dragon, Lumpfish, Atlantic Wolffish, Lionfish, Deep-Sea Lizardfish, Fangtooth Fish, Black Chimaera, Clown Triggerfish, Longlure Frogfish, Prehistoric Frilled Shark, Black Swallowe and Mantis Shrimp. (and Robot Fish)
Axolotl is cute looking. :)
I remember when I am young, back in my Malaysia hometown, we can see a lot of Mudskippers on the mud near stream.
Related:
Photo in the News: "Extinct" Coelacanth Hooked in Indonesia.
Rare "Prehistoric" Shark Photographed Alive.
The University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together. They have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.
Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.
The Casimir force is due to the fluctuations in all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening empty space between the objects and is one reason atoms stick together. Now, using a special lens of a kind that has already been built, Prof Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin report in the New Journal of Physics they can engineer the Casimir force to repel, rather than attact.
Because the Casimir force causes problems for nanotechnologists, who are trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, among other things, the team believes the feat could initially be used to stop tiny objects from sticking to each other. Micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction at all if one can manipulate the force.
Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams - three of them in Britain - to have put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility by making light waves flow around an object.
From Houston Chronicle.
Yao Ming took wedding pictures with his fiancée Ye Li in Lin'an City of Zhejiang Province on Monday morning, Sina.com reported today. The couple arrived at 6am and spent two hours taking pictures in scenic spots in Taihuyuan. The area is regarded as a smaller Jiuzhaigou. View their wedding photos at YaomingMania.com.
Congratulation to Yao Ming and Ye Li! :)
A university in Venezuela is using a novel method to take books into remote communities and encourage people to read. The book mules known as bibliomulas are helping to spread the benefits of reading to people who are isolated from much of the world around them.
Spreading the joy of reading is our main aim," Christina Vieras told me.
"But it's more than that. We're helping educate people about other important things like the environment. All the children are planting trees. Anything to improve the quality of life and connect these communities."
The organisers are taking advantage of the limited mobile phone signal and equipping the mules with laptops and projectors. The book mules are becoming cyber mules and cine mules. "We want to install wireless modems so the villagers can use the internet," says Robert Ramirez, the co-ordinator of the university's Network of Enterprising Rural Schools.
"Imagine if people in the poor towns in the valley can e-mail saying how many tomatoes they'll need next week, or how much celery. "The farmers can reply telling them how much they can produce. It's blending localisation and globalisation."
This four-legged mobile library is not just keeping this place alive but making it thrive.
When Kisa Gotami's young child had died, she refused to believe he was dead. After asking many people — in vain — for medicine that would revive the child, she was finally directed to the Buddha. When she told him her story, he offered to provide medicine for the child, but he would need some mustard seed — the cheapest Indian spice — obtained from a family in which no one had died. She went from house to house asking for mustard seed, and no one refused to give it to her. But when she asked if anyone had died in the family, the universal response was always, "Oh, yes, of course." After a while, the message sunk in: Death is universal. On abandoning the child's body to a charnel ground, she returned to the Buddha and asked to be ordained as a nun, and afterwards became an arahant.
The story also illustrates Buddha's compassion in leading Kisa Gotami to a deeper realization of suffering and compassion by addressing her immediate practical needs.
In a recent experiment, psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee. The study participants had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.
That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.
Findings like this one, as improbable as they seem, have poured forth in psychological research over the last few years. New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have.
More fundamentally, the new studies reveal a subconscious brain that is far more active, purposeful and independent than previously known.
Dr. Frith has suggested a “bottom-up” decision-making process, in which the ventral pallidum is part of a circuit that first weighs the reward and decides, then interacts with the higher-level, conscious regions later, if at all. This bottom-up order makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.
Researchers do not yet know how or when, exactly, unconscious drives may suddenly become conscious; or under which circumstances people are able to override hidden urges by force of will. Our subconscious mind has strong reactions about the world that don’t always agree with our own, but whose instincts, these studies clearly show, are at least as likely to be helpful, and attentive to others, as they are to be disruptive.
At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has quite a reputation. All the institute's dolphins are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. Kelly took this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool.
The next time a trainer passes, she tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish-reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.
At Kewalo Basin Marine Laboratory in Hawaii, Lou Herman and his team have developed a sign language to communicate with the dolphins, and the results are remarkable. Not only do the dolphins understand the meaning of individual words, they also understand the significance of word order in a sentence.
Most mammals seem to enjoy play - but dolphins seem to like making their games as challenging as possible. A killer whale calf learned the trick of luring gulls to the surface of the water with fish. When the gulls landed on the water, the killer whale would then attempt to capture them in her mouth, without killing them.
Once she mastered this skill, she made the task more challenging for herself: instead of waiting for the gulls to land on the water, she tried to capture the gulls on their descent when they were more than a metre above the water surface.
anonymous
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