Flora and Fauna/Misc weather

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11858-fruit-flies-display-rudimentary-free-will.html

be well, be love.

david

fruit flies display rudimentary free will
01:00 16 may 2007
newscientist.com news service
bob holmes

fruit flies have free will. even when deprived of any sensory input to react to, the zigs and zags of their flight reveal an intrinsic, non-random - yet still unpredictable - decision-making capacity.

if evolution has furnished humans with a similar capacity, this could help resolve one of the long-standing puzzles of philosophy.

science assumes that effects have causes, and that if we understand the causes well enough we can predict the effects. but if so, our experience of being free to make choices is an illusion, since we are in effect just sophisticated robots responding to stimuli. if our behaviour is unpredictable, this is only because random events prevent us from responding perfectly to our environment.

to test whether behaviour can be truly random, björn brembs, a neurobiologist at the free university of berlin in germany, put fruit flies into a sensory deprivation chamber: a drum with a white interior, that offers the flies no visual cues to orient themselves.

the flies were glued to a torque meter that measured their zigs and zags as they attempted to fly. (watch a video of a fly in the chamber.)

[soup]

a little thought experiment - so imagine that some fruit fly has some connection to the fruit fly's higher self. it falls prey to participate in some experiment in a way the fruit fly is somehow isolated from sensory stimulus.

1) is the fact that it is participating in the experiment a violation of its free will?

2) let's assume that the fruit fly's free will isn't violated because its too stupid to care. let's say its higher self wishes to influence its behavior and observe to what degree the fruit fly follows its influence because its higher self is curious about such things. does the fruit fly's higher self influence the fruit fly to go about in some patterned way, or in some random way?

3) in the absense of any experimental breach of fruit fly's free will, in the absense of sensory stimulus, and in the absense of fruit fly's higher self acting to influence the fruit fly's behavior, does a fruit fly typically fly in a pattern or does it fly random?

4) can a fruit fly ask its higher self for help in some way, or is it too stupid for such concerns? if it is too stupid to ask for help, does the fruit fly's higher self work to influence its behavior regardless of its stupidity, out of the goodness of the higher self's heart?

5) could there be some consequence to the law of free will that allows the higher self opportunity to offer help when its requested, and then allow the higher self the priveledge of observing how that best effort help may have influenced behavior in the one who asked for help?


okay so out of this thought experiment seems
an opportunity for a prayer:

dear beautiful principle of my higher self,
i love you. thank you for attending to me.
in some ways i feel as stupid as a fruit fly,
i have no idea what way to go and am not
convinced the similar patterns of my past
are conducive to our evolutionary growth
into a greater sense of bliss and wholeness.
please come into my life and offer guidance
that is heard by me, directing my path in
positive ways. please offer guidance which
i can choose to follow knowing in my heart
that it is utilizing my free will choice to its
potential of progressing the greater good.
please help me see where to go in times
when i have trouble seeing where myself.
thank you, thank you, thank you.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

could it be? make sure you check out all the links...

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/06/chile-coldest-months-in-20-years.html

chile: coldest months in 20 years

may and june 2007 have been chile's coldest months in the last 20 years. correspondingly, natural gas consumption hit a record, too. you may also read about the brutal cold may 2007 in south america.

during the weekend, parts of australia have experienced the chilliest june day on record. last week, record cold temperatures had to be edited in queensland, too.

another continent that overlaps with the southern hemisphere is africa. what weather do you associate with zimbabwe? a few days ago, they recorded -7 celsius degrees. several people froze.

forget warming - beware the new ice age

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=bdc24964-7f82-4f7a-863c-f0ff43010278

be well, be love.

david

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1641603,00.html

be well, be love.

david

first snow in buenos aires since 1918
monday, jul. 09, 2007 by ap/bill cormier

(buenos aires, argentina) — thousands of argentines cheered and threw snowballs in the streets of buenos aires on monday as the capital's first major snowfall since 1918 spread a thin white mantle across the region.

wet snow fell for hours in the argentine capital, accumulating in a mushy but thin white layer late monday, after freezing air from antarctica collided with a moisture-laden low pressure system that blanketed higher elevations in western and central argentina with snow.

"despite all my years, this is the first time i've ever seen in snow in buenos aires," said juana benitez, an 82-year-old who joined children celebrating in the streets.

argentina's national weather service said it was the first major snow in buenos aires since june 22, 1918, though sleet or freezing rain have been periodically reported in decades since.

one man stripped to his shorts to welcome the snow. children scraped snow off cars and threw snowballs. motorists honked horns, some with small snowmen on their hoods. some fender benders were reported on slick suburban streets.

the storm struck on argentina's independence day holiday, adding to a festive air and prompting radio stations to play an old tango song inspired by the 1918 snowfall, "what a night!"

[Jasper]

hi all, firstly my good old friend 144 turned up yesterday in fantastic style. i was playing cricket (google it if you've never played) with some old school friends (our 26th year). without going into the rules of the game the idea is to score more 'runs' than the other side. about two thirds of the way through my teams 'innings' i predicted that we would end up with 144 'runs'. guess what, i was spot on...........we lost the game !! anyway, enough of that. an item on the bbc news website caught my eye, here's the link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6896753.stm

and the opening gambit reads :

scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly.

it seems the insect world is leading the way in the changes to come.

toodlepip,
jasper

[Chris Hamilton]

plant and animal life changes except for the bees (its own separate category), and miscellaneous weather observations independent of global warming.

[linsybyster]

hmm... it's my understanding that global warming will actually cause cooling in some areas. it doesn't just cause everywhere to warm analogously. the weather makers by tim flannery gave by far the best explanation i've read.

[Chris Hamilton]

hello linsy,

i created this xtra weather category because the global warming category is so large, i thought a small area for other theories would work better. that is all:) chris

[Tom O'Meara]

"now mi-jeong jeong of the national institute of agricultural biotechnology in suwon, south korea, and colleagues claim to have identified two genes in rice that respond to sound waves. they also say that the promoter of one of the sound-sensitive genes could be attached to other genes to make them respond to sound too. "

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/mg19526196.100-plant-genes-switched-on-by-sound-waves.html

tom

[Lorigga]

hi all,

apparently these whales usually go further up north to feed on krill. just seems like another of those big indications that ecosystems are dramatically changing.

-lorenzo

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/18/eveningnews/main3272647.shtml

"(cbs) spotting the distant spray from a blue whale is enough to send shouts of joy across the bough of capt. dan salas' tour boat. but that pales in comparison to what comes next: an up-close meeting with the 100-foot-long creature.

"i was thinking this must be the best day of my life,” says whale watcher tammy lang.

and possibly the luckiest day, too. because the rule around los angeles is that after labor day, nothing this big and this blue is supposed to be in this water."

[Chris Hamilton]

"japanese scientist's unveiled the world's latest genetic breakthrough (or abomination, depending on your point of view): clear, transparent frogs, whose internal organs can be seen through their skins." quoted from fate magazine.

here is an article from reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestylemolt/idust222820070926

chris

[LightEye]

dear friends,

interesting interview with paul davies.

http://podcast.sciam.com/weekly/sa_podcast_071212.mp3

be well, be love.

david

are there (microbial) aliens on earth?

in this episode, theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist paul davies ponders the question of whether life originated more than once on earth, and how to find examples of a second origin if it did.

[donald@newdirectionscs.com]

i just found this one this morning just confirming more of what we have learned from david, donald

the rise and fall of species on earth might be driven in part by the undulating motions of our solar system as it travels through the disk of the milky way, scientists say.

two years ago, scientists at the university of california, berkeley found the marine fossil record shows that biodiversity-the number of different species alive on the planet-increases and decreases on a 62-million-year cycle. at least two of the earth's great mass extinctions-the permian extinction 250 million years ago and the ordovician extinction about 450 million years ago-correspond with peaks of this cycle, which can't be explained by evolutionary theory.


here is link to whole article
http://www.livescience.com/space/scienceastronomy/070423_cosmic_evo.html

[Starseedling]

not only the bees having a die off problem, but it seems that bats in the northeastern us are having one, too.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_11135.cfm

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080520-fish-evolution.html

be well, be love.

david

"reverse evolution" discovered in seattle fish
anne minard for national geographic news
may 20, 2008

when a historic cleanup helped clear the waters of a polluted lake near seattle, a population of tiny, spiny fish called sticklebacks may have "evolved in reverse" to survive.

in the 1950s, lake washington, an inland lake that parallels washington state's pacific coast, took on 20 million gallons (76 million liters) of phosphorous-laden sewage a day (see washington state map).

then an unprecedented u.s.-$140-million cleanup in the mid-1960s transformed the lake into the pristine boaters' paradise that it is today.

but the lake's recovery put at least one species in a pickle: the three-spine stickleback.

the small fish, formerly hidden in the murky depths, found itself swimming in plain view of predators like cutthroat trout.

researchers now think the threat of predators spurred the fish into rapid evolution toward an older version of itself, evolutionarily speaking.

today's lake washington sticklebacks are a throwback to their ancestors, which grew armored plates as a defense, according to katie peichel, a biologist at the fred hutchinson cancer research center in seattle.

[Jacob]

so there is a route back to the womb!! ;)

[Yusuf]

greetings to you,
it would be interesting to see what dna changes have taken place as well.
it just shows how quickly adjustments can be made when the environment you're living in change.

peace and love to you,

yusuf

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/06-harnessing-the-weather

be well, be love.

david

harnessing the weather
could new technology help humans eliminate "acts of god"?
by donovan webster

not far from the dead dog saloon, behind a body shop on the main street of grantsville, utah, stands a rusting, four-foot-tall metal box. the box sits atop a tank of gaseous silver iodide that, when fired up, sends a plume downwind toward the nearby oquirrh mountains. once carried up on the wind, each silver iodide crystal forms a core, or nucleus, around which water droplets collect. since silver iodide has a crystalline structure similar to that of ice, it allows the tiny water droplets to coalesce until they are big and heavy enough to fall out of the sky, ultimately increasing snowfall between 10 and 15 percent a year. that’s more water for later release across the state’s thirsty desert during spring and baking summer, more water for irrigation, livestock, human consumption, and sports. it means millions of dollars in water-related revenues for the state’s economy every year.

the utah cloud-seeding effort comes courtesy of north american weather consultants, america’s oldest weather modification company, located in an upscale office park in nearby sandy, utah. founded in the 1950s, the group is currently run by two solid-citizen scientists with commercial aims, don griffith and mark solak, who have spent their careers working in privately funded weather modification efforts around the country and the world.

in colorado they seeded the gunnison river drainage, a series of reservoirs and dams in the west of the state. in california they run seeding programs for the santa barbara county water agency, a group that says the effort may increase rain in target areas up to 20 percent a year.

[SuperManny]

there's no need to get too technical about the process. i think the native americans had it right with their rain dances, and the way they approached the weather.

in my experience, if you invite the rain, the way you would invite a friend to dinner, and then get into the feeling of the blessed rain feeding the earth and nourishing all the little green living things, your chances are pretty good. and of course be sure and thank the rain for coming.

i've done this for years, because i've worked outside for most of my life i would simply ask for 8 hours of clear weather at the worksite, and i almost always got it. i can remember driving home several times and just getting a mile or two away from the jobsite, i'd run into a shower or thunderstorm, or sometimes everything would be soaked because one had just passed thru.

i reseeded part of our back yard this spring, so i asked for extra rain until the seedlings had taken root. we got rain every day for about 10 days, and i overheard one of the local meteorologists puzzling over all the "unexpected" rain we were getting! :d

[Earthforce]

indigenous peoples had insight into the sending of love and affirmation to the higher self reality to affect positive weather changes. now the mobius coil, orgone towerbusters, orgone cloudbusters and even orgone pyramids are being made and placed in different communities for atmospheric cleansing by creating a positive energy field to block the negative effects of modern technologies. this form of affirmation may be working on an esoteric level as well as physical level. certainly we need positive energy to negate the harmful effects of chemtrails and the encroaching 90mhz transmitter towers. more scientific work needs to be done to clarify accumulator use in energetic environments. i welcome comments.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

not sure where this article should be placed.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/06/18/2278459.htm?site=science&topic=latest

be well, be love.

david

marine worms follow fibonacci's lead
wednesday, 18 june 2008 stephen pincock

the complicated growth patterns of a group of common marine worms appear to be governed by simple mathematical rules built into their genes, a new report suggests.

the report, which appears in the proceedings of the royal society b, suggests that the appendages that grow along the bodies of some species of polychaete worms follow a mathematical sequence known as the fibonacci string sequence.

polychaetes, sometimes called bristle worms, have a segmented body, each with a pair of fleshy appendages covered in bristles.

in one group, these appendages, known as dorsal cirri, grow in characteristic patterns of alternating short and long versions.

one of the researchers, professor stephen glasby, a mathematician from central washington university, says each species exhibited different sequences.

"different species by and large have different sequences of short and long appendages, and they can be quite complicated," says glasby.

to better understand the numemic nature of the polychaetes, glasby worked alongside his brother dr chris glasby from the museum and art gallery of the northern territory and dr fredrik pleijel from gothenburg university in sweden.

[PriestOfLight]

darwin takes another hit to the chin.

http://www.goodnewsdaily.com/show_story.php?id=8595

paul

paris (afp) — arguably the oddest beast in nature's menagerie, the platypus looks as it if were assembled from spare parts left over after the animal kingdom was otherwise complete.

now scientists know why. according to a study released wednesday, the egg-laying critter is a genetic potpourri -- part bird, part reptile and part lactating mammal.

the task of laying bare the platypus genome of 2.2 billion base pairs spread across 18,500 genes has taken several years, but will do far more than satisfy the curiosity of just biologists, say the researchers.

"the platypus genome is extremely important, because it is the missing link in our understanding of how we and other mammals first evolved," explained oxford university's chris ponting, one of the study's architects.

"this is our ticket back in time to when all mammals laid eggs while suckling their young on milk."

[metaman]

i remember david touching on the concept of the platypus in either the science of peace or a subsequent audio blog. he suggested that perhaps some sort of geopathic energy, perhaps lightning, caused the same sort of dna conglomeration as was seen in the experiment with the chicken and the duck. that experiment being the one where microwaves where passed through one of the species onto the egg of the other. the result was the combo chicken duck.

[Jetamus]

yeah they're an unusual animal.

i've seen them swimming around in a river near where i live.

[Tbonyandsteak]

found this weird sponge at our lawn.
it is transparent as a goblet.
never haerd of a tranparent plant before, so wonder if it could be a new species.
dont know if it is, but i would be gratefull for any comment that would highligt this issue.

regards

[Tbonyandsteak]

found this weird sponge at our lawn.
it is transparent as a goblet.
never haerd of a tranparent plant before, so wonder if it could be a new species.
dont know if it is, but i would be gratefull for any comment that would highligt this issue.



plants need the green substance to draw the energy from the sun.
allthough its a bit different on sponge.
this plant is tranparent, so how does it work on this plant?
it has a purple glow on it. really weird plant.

regards

[weboy78]

http://translate.google.it/translate?u=http%3a%2f%2fmilano.repubblica.it%2fde ttaglio%2farticolo%2f1724473&sl=it&tl=en&hl=it&ie=utf-8 "
music secret plant the sap flows and produces notes
...
i put the melody on the score of a tree a...nd tried to analyze it from a compositional point of view, structure - says silingardi - how much musical grammar i had to go back in time. technically, the green world produces notes through tetrachords. these melodies composed by the succession of four sounds, as happened in the music of ancient greece.

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427335.600-tomorrows-weather-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-fractals.html?full=true

be well, be love.

david

tomorrow's weather: cloudy, with a chance of fractals
04 november 2009 by robert matthews

we've all watched those vast heaps of cotton wool float across the sky. lofted and shaped by updrafts of warm air, cumulus clouds mesmerise with their constantly changing shape. some grow ever taller, while others wither and die before our eyes. all bear witness to the ceaseless roiling of the ocean of air we call the atmosphere.

about 80 years ago, the british mathematician lewis fry richardson was pondering the shapes of such clouds when a startling thought occurred to him: the laws that govern the atmosphere might actually be very simple.

even at the time, with scientific meteorology still in its infancy, the idea seemed absurd: key equations governing the behaviour of the 5 million billion tonnes of air above us had already been identified - and they were anything but simple.

no one was more aware of this than richardson, who is recognised as one of the founders of modern weather forecasting. even now, the world's most powerful computers are pushed to their limits extracting predictions of future weather and climate from the equations he wrestled with using pencil and paper.

yet richardson suspected that behind the mathematical complexity of the atmosphere lay a far simpler reality - if only we looked at it the right way.

now an international team of researchers analysing signals from satellites, aircraft and ground-based stations have found clear evidence that richardson's intuition was right and that the complexity of the atmosphere could really be an illusion.

the results point to a new view of the atmosphere as a vast collection of cascade-like processes, with large structures the size of continents breaking down to feed ever-smaller ones, right down to zephyrs of air no bigger than a fly.

the implications promise to transform the way we predict everything from tomorrow's local weather to the changing climate of the entire planet. "we may never be able to view the atmosphere and climate in the same way again," says team member shaun lovejoy of mcgill university in montreal, canada. "rather than seeing them as so complex that only equally complex numerical models can make sense of them, we're seeing a kind of scale-by-scale simplicity."

[weboy78]

tomorrow's weather: cloudy, with a chance of fractals
we've all watched those vast heaps of cotton wool float across the sky. lofted and shaped by updrafts of warm air, cumulus clouds mesmerise with their constantly changing shape. some grow ever taller, while others wither and die before our eyes. all bear witness to the ceaseless roiling of the ocean of air we call the atmosphere.

about 80 years ago, the british mathematician lewis fry richardson was pondering the shapes of such clouds when a startling thought occurred to him: the laws that govern the atmosphere might actually be very simple.

even at the time, with scientific meteorology still in its infancy, the idea seemed absurd: key equations governing the behaviour of the 5 million billion tonnes of air above us had already been identified - and they were anything but simple.

no one was more aware of this than richardson, who is recognised as one of the founders of modern weather forecasting. even now, the world's most powerful computers are pushed to their limits extracting predictions of future weather and climate from the equations he wrestled with using pencil and paper...

[LightEye]

dear friends,

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/fractal-patterns-in-nature/

be well, be love.

david

earth’s most stunning natural fractal patterns
by jess mcnally

from sea shells and spiral galaxies to the structure of human lungs, the patterns of chaos are all around us.

fractals are patterns formed from chaotic equations and contain self-similar patterns of complexity increasing with magnification. if you divide a fractal pattern into parts you get a nearly identical reduced-size copy of the whole.

the mathematical beauty of fractals is that infinite complexity is formed with relatively simple equations. by iterating or repeating fractal-generating equations many times, random outputs create beautiful patterns that are unique, yet recognizable.

we have pulled together some of the most stunning natural examples we could find of fractals on our planet.