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Saturday, March 2, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Sahara Desert dust affects California water supply, study finds
High-altitude dust blown thousands of miles across the Pacific from Asian and African deserts can make it rain and snow in the Sierra Nevada, according to new research that suggests tiny particles from afar play a role in California's water supply.
The study, published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, grew out of researchers' questions about two similar Sierra storms in winter 2009. Even though the storm systems carried the same amount of water vapor, one produced 40% more precipitation than the other. When scientists analyzed ground samples of the rain and snow dropped by the wetter storm, they found an abundance of Asian dust.
Two years later, a science team spent days flying through Sierra storm clouds on a government research plane, collecting an array of atmospheric samples at the same time that instruments below in the Tahoe National Forest took ground measurements. The results: When dust and tiny biological particles from halfway around the globe were detected in the clouds swirling above the Sierra peaks, there was more rain and snow.
"There was this sort of magical switch," said Kim Prather, a UC San Diego atmospheric chemist and coauthor of the paper. "The days with dust you see one thing, and the days without dust you see a different thing."
Previous research by one of the paper's 12 authors had shown that windblown mineral dust transported long distances acts as a seed for atmospheric ice that is key to forming a significant amount of precipitation.
But the scientists said the Sierra study is the first direct documentation that dust and biological particles from as far away as the Sahara Desert and the deserts of China and Mongolia can help wring water out of the sky in the Western United States.
"The fact that something happening on another continent in terms of dust generation could influence precipitation patterns in the U.S ? that's a challenging problem," said Marty Ralph, a coauthor and research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Researchers identified the source of the airborne dust by its chemical fingerprint and by looking at satellite data and numerical weather models that track the global trajectory of air masses. The Sierra range is the first thing the particles hit in California. Whether they have the same effect on precipitation in other West Coast mountains, such as the Cascades, or more interior ranges, such as the Rockies, is unknown.
Ralph was initially dubious that aerosols ? as dust and other atmospheric particles are known ? have much of an impact on whether a cloud gives up water or holds on to it.
But the difference in the output of the 2009 storms "was a bit of a scientific epiphany," he said. "I came into this very skeptical and have come to where I am now, coauthoring a paper that's saying aerosols can have a significant impact."
The next step, he added, is to quantify that precipitation effect.
The Sierra research was part of a three-year field study, called CalWater, that investigated influences on California rain and snow. "I think it has huge implications," said Guido Franco of the California Energy Commission, which funded the program. "It may counteract some of the effects of a warming climate."
Scientists predict that, in general, Earth's wet regions will become wetter with global warming and dry regions will become drier. That could mean more windblown desert dust in the atmosphere and, if the Sierra results bear out, more precipitation in the Northern California mountains that provide the state with roughly a third of its water supply.
Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia research meteorologist and president of the American Meteorological Society, was not prepared to go that far. "I don't know if we can make that leap yet and say that [more dust] is going to lead to large global changes in precipitation patterns," Shepherd said. "There are so many other competing factors."
bettina.boxall@latimes.com
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Jay-Z Is 'More Gritty' After Blue Ivy's Birth
'He's definitely more skilled and better than he was,' The-Dream tells 'RapFix Live' of his buddy Jay-Z.
By Rob Markman, with reporting by Sway Calloway
Jay-Z
Photo: James Devaney/WireImage
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702847/jay-z-blue-ivy-father.jhtml
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Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 2
With the Panorama 2 ($2,200 list), Bowers & Wilkins has refined what audiophiles may consider to be a dubious concept: the high-end soundbar. You could easily question whether it makes sense to spend more than two grand on a single speaker, when you could outfit your room with a top-notch 5.1 system with surround speakers and a dedicated receiver for the same money. But the Panorama 2 is aimed at the listener who wants the best sound possible in a single, beautiful box, and doesn't have the room (or the aesthetic tolerance) for separate components. The Panorama 2 sounds great with movies, with surprisingly spacious left-center-right imaging. But it's not particularly convincing surround-wise, and its slightly colored midrange performance messes with some on-screen voices and puts a damper on using the Panorama 2 as a music playback system.
Design, Connectivity, and Remote
The Panorama 2 is beautifully crafted, with a gently curved outer enclosure that has no seams. The look is clean, minimalist, and understated. It measures 5 by 44 by 7.24 inches (HWD) and weighs 31.1 pounds. It's much heavier than low-end soundbars we've tested, like the Editors' Choice Sony HT-CT260. And it's quite a bit wider and deeper, too, by at least several inches. The mirror black, stainless steel skin and black steel mesh grille exude class and sophistication; no one is going to look at this thing and think "cheap."
Bowers & Wilkins packages two sets of four screw-on feet in the box; the sets are of different heights, and help you get just the right placement. You can also mount the Panorama 2 to a wall. Around back, and unlike the first Panorama model, the Panorama 2 supports HDMI switching with three inputs and one output. There's also a subwoofer output, a 3.5mm analog and digital combination input, and a second, analog-only 3.5mm input. Unfortunately, there's no support for AirPlay or Bluetooth wireless streaming, so you can't use the soundbar as a straight wireless stereo system for your iPhone or Android smartphone, at least without plugging in a wire.
The revised display now includes a proximity sensor; simply wave your hand in front of the display, and it will light up. Sure, Bang & Olufsen has been doing this sort of thing for years, but it never gets old. The display doesn't help all that much, though; while it features touch capacitive buttons for Volume, Surround Mode, and Mute, and features a hardware Power button below, there's no visible volume indicator. More than once, I started playing a scene without realizing the input was incorrect; even after pressing the Volume button down several times, I'd switch to the correct input and then get blown out of my chair.
The Panorama 2 can display an on-screen menu, but you can only see it via an HDMI connection, not over coaxial or optical digital. I found it's worth hooking up this way, though; click the Menu button on the remote, and you'll see many more adjustments for sound EQ, room setup, and tuning, in addition to visual feedback for all settings. You can customize the EQ for how far away you are sitting, whether you're to the left or right of the soundbar, and how far the soundbar is from the left and right walls, sometimes in one foot increments.
The remote control is a bit of a disappointment. It's basically the same unit we saw with the Zeppelin Air. It's not backlit, is made of glossy black plastic, and the individual buttons let out a cheap clicky sound with each press. Worse, it's tough to tell if it's upside down when you pick it up without looking, unless you feel around for the little indentation on the back; I tried muting the sound once and accidentally turned the Panorama 2 off. For $2,200, the remote should be better.
Performance and Conclusions
The Panorama 2 supports Dolby Digital and DTS surround encoding, and also features an all-new array of tweeters, midrange, and low-frequency drivers. There are two 1-inch metal dome tweeters, two 3-inch midrange drivers, two 3.5-inch subwoofer drivers, and four 3-inch surround channel drivers. A 50-watt amplifier drives the two subwoofer cones, while five 25-watt amplifiers handle the rest. In standby mode, the Panorama 2 is rated to consume just half a watt.
We tested the system with the $500 Oppo BDP-103, our current Editors' Choice for high-end Blu-ray players. In Tron: Legacy, the flight and game scenes rang true, with crisp, stunning sound effects and beautiful separation in the front virtual channels. Rear-channel effects were a bit less convincing, though; discs flying by went sort of "up" instead of behind the chair the way proper surround speakers would. Sometimes, dialog from the movie sounded smooth and natural, with excellent dispersion. Other times, various actors sounded oddly distorted at higher volumes?not as if the entire Panorama 2 system was physically distorting, but as if something in the digital surround processing is driving the signal too hard.
With music, the Panorama 2 was also a mixed bag. The unit certainly sounds huge, with plenty of volume and punch. But there's also an overly prominent midrange, with too much low-mid emphasis that makes a mess of electric guitars, sending them too far forward in Rage Against the Machine's "Fistful of Steel." Putting the Panorama 2 in stereo mode helps considerably, of course, but the midrange emphasis is still there. In Muse's "Resistance," the surround mode separated the backing vocals from the lead vocal nicely in the song's chorus, but the reverberant drums were a little hazy in both surround and standard stereo modes, and the bass guitar sounded too prominent in the mix compared with the rest of the instruments.
None of these flaws are fatal, incidentally. Anyone casually walking into the room and hearing the Panorama 2 would be impressed at its clarity, volume, and dynamics; it's clearly a cut above soundbars with a three-digit price tag. And while certain kinds of music and sound effects give away the Panorama 2's lack of a discrete subwoofer, other scenes have plenty of weight and just enough rumble to simulate a real home theater.
Really, the problem is the jaw-dropping price. At $2,200, Bowers & Wilkins is targeting a specific discerning audiophile customer, and this is where the Panorama 2 runs into trouble. At this price level, the Panorama should be just as good at music as it is at movie and TV sound, as if it were an oversized, more-capable Zeppelin Air, and it falls short of that mark. Meanwhile, home theater enthusiasts looking for the best possible sound at this price can do significantly better with separate components, passive speakers, and a powered subwoofer from a range of companies like Paradigm, NHT, PSB, or of course B&W's own excellent line of speakers.
If you don't mind a soundbar with a small, wireless, powered subwoofer, the Harman Kardon SB 30 sounds great with both music and movies and costs less than half of what the Panorama 2 does, although it doesn't look as nice or get quite as loud. But if you have the means, don't have the room for the extra components, and still want movies to sound larger than life, the Panorama 2 delivers the goods.
More Speaker Reviews:
??? Sony HT-CT260 Home Theater Soundbar
??? Vizio SB4021M-A1 Home Theater Soundbar
??? Harman Kardon SB 30
??? Bowers & Wilkins Panorama 2
??? Yamaha YAS-101
?? more
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/jG2ZwCtmPtE/0,2817,2415727,00.asp
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Is reference to the Bible circular in nature? | Compassion in Politics ...
1) In the context of a court room evidence?which is the context of today looking back 2000+ years?the idea of circularity is distinctively different.
2) All worldviews are generally circular unto themselves. Thats the nature of paradigm shifts and ways of viewing the world.
3) The are internal proofs in the Bible.
4) The historical evidence of Jesus is pretty compelling as a source of external justification.
5) Provide additional justifications based on commonly accepted beliefs about how the world works. This is typically what many apolegists tend to do in combination with other methods.
6) Using the methods of logic?cause and effect relationships, metaphors, analogies, and experiential evidence. Arguably these can even help provide some kind of justification for the spiritual and mystical nature of reality?a reality beyond just materialism?that open up the possibility of realms and reality beyond reductionist science
7) Ultimately some issues may need to rely on faith. But all worldviews have some element of faith.
8] Oxford Theoretical physicist Ard Louis has a notion of a tapestry of Truth. The Christian faith is grounded on a tapestry of integrated ideas and proofs.
9) I?m not sure if any of these specifically address this issue, but Resources about Biblical Authority . I might particularly look at the work of NT Wright, as he?s a widely trusted philosopher and theologian.
10) The nature of logical fallacies is heuristic?not eliminative. This is pretty key. Its also the reason why #5 is true.
11) There are multiple authors to the text. This is an integrative proof. For instance, you have a number of apostles and minor prophets, all who write books. They should be treated as independent texts for the purposes of a proof like this one.
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Source: http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/is-reference-to-the-bible-circular-in-nature/
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Cell movement explained by molecular recycling
Feb. 28, 2013 ? Scientists at The University of Manchester have identified the method by which cells control the recycling of molecules, a process that is essential for them to move. The discovery provides researchers with a better understanding of how our bodies heal wounds.
Working under Professor Martin Humphries, the Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, Dr Mark Morgan and his team at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research studied the role of integrins. These molecules are able to grab hold of the fibres surrounding the cell, like hands, allowing the cell to drag its self along. However, there are several types of integrin on the cell surface and they all have different properties which affect how quickly the cell can move.
Once they have been used by the cell, integrins are moved from the surface to a store inside the cell. When the time is right they are recycled back to the cell surface where they can bind with the surrounding fibres once again.
What the team uncovered is the method by which cells dynamically control the type of integrins that are recycled. They found that another molecule on the surface of the cell, called syndecan-4, is able to detect and interpret subtle changes in the cell's surroundings to decide how it should respond. By regulating where and when the different integrins are delivered to the cell surface, syndecan-4 precisely regulates cell movement and exploration.
Dr Morgan says: "Syndecan-4 plays a critical role in regulating wound healing, so ultimately, we hope that this work will inform the development of novel therapeutic strategies to improve wound healing."
Most cells in the body are able to crawl through the dense network of fibres that surround them. This migration process is essential for repairing wounds, tracking down infection and maintaining tissue function.
In order for a cell to move efficiently, it needs to precisely control which integrins are able to bind to the fibres. At certain times and places they need to bind strongly, whereas at other points they need to bind more weakly, and only when these processes are regulated appropriately can a cell migrate properly.
By studying the movement of fibroblast cells using sophisticated imaging techniques, Dr Morgan and the team identified the role of Syndecan-4. They found that it decodes the vast array of signals outside the cell and functions as a molecular switch to dictate whether the strong or weak binding integrins are recycled.
Dr Morgan explains: "When we changed the way Syndecan-4 senses the environment outside the cell, we were able to alter the way that it transmits signals into the cell and control integrin recycling. By manipulating the molecules in this way we found that we could either force the cells to move in a fast forward motion or stop altogether."
Their findings have been published in the journal Developmental Cell.
The next step will be to investigate how Syndecan-4 can be manipulated to control cell movement with a view to developing novel therapeutic strategies to improve wound healing. It will also be important to test whether this mechanism is involved in tumour progression and metastasis as disruptions in cell movement are often seen in cancer, as well as in vascular disorders and chronic inflammatory disease.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Manchester, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Mark?R. Morgan, Hellyeh Hamidi, Mark?D. Bass, Stacey Warwood, Christoph Ballestrem, Martin?J. Humphries. Syndecan-4 Phosphorylation Is a Control Point for Integrin Recycling. Developmental Cell, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2013.01.027
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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