Bacterial Supplement Energizes Pig Immune System

This is really neat and as noted it should carry over to human health. We all want a robust immune system and it could just be that a dose of this pro biotic at the right time will do the trick. We also have a core pathway to recognize a working protocol.

In the meantime, do eat high quality yogurt from time to time. It just may be powering up your immune system in ways that the text books never knew.

I keep been struck by just how ignorant we are of our interaction with the natural world and how so much seriously wrong ideas are out there that are accepted with little study. After all if it sounds good it must be. What is worse, what we do loosely, science has been doing in spades.

In a better world we can take a yogurt holding an age adjusted dose of pro biotic s every month or two and then forget everything else we think we know about germs and disease because they will all be suppressed. I suspect we are closer to this world than is obvious.

Bacterial supplement could help young pigs fight disease

by Staff Writers

Orlando FL (SPX) Jan 24, 2013

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Bacterial_supplement_could_help_young_pigs_fight_disease_999.html

In a study of 36 weanling-age pigs, researchers found that a dose of lipid-producing Rhodococcus opacus bacteria increased circulating triglycerides. Triglycerides are a crucial source of energy for the immune system.

"We could potentially strengthen the immune system by providing this bacterium to animals at a stage when they are in need of additional energy," said Janet Donaldson, assistant professor in Biological Sciences Mississippi State University. "By providing an alternative energy source, the pigs are most likely going to be able to fight off infections more efficiently."

Donaldson and other researchers tested R. opacus because the bacterium naturally makes large amounts of triglycerides. Normally, R. opacus would use the triglycerides for its own energy, but a pig can use the triglycerides too.

Jeff Carroll, research leader for the USDA Agricultural Research Service Livestock Issues Research Unit in Lubbock, Texas, said R. opacus could be used sort of like an energy producing probiotic. He said weanling pigs are more susceptible to pathogens and stress because they have to adjust to a new diet and a new environment. To add to the risk, weaning comes at a time when a pig's immune system is immature. The stress of weaning can lead to reduced feed intake, less available energy and an increased risk of infection.

With an oral supplement of live R. opacus, weanling pigs would have an alternative source of energy. Even if pigs ate less feed, they would still have access to the triglycerides produced by these bacteria.

The triglycerides could be used as an energy source during this critical stage of development.

Throughout the experiment, the researchers kept watch for any potential side effects. Donaldson said they saw no negative side effects in the pigs given R. opacus. Because of this success, Donaldson said pig producers might someday use R. opacus on their own farms. She said the bacteria could be provided to pigs through existing watering systems.

The next step in the experiment is to test how pigs given R. opacus react to an immune challenge such as Salmonella. Carroll said he is also curious to see if R. opacus can help calves stay healthy during transport.

"This could potentially be carried over to human health as well," Donaldson said.

This study was a collaboration between Janet Donaldson at Mississippi State University; Jeff Carroll at USDA-ARS' Livestock Issues Research Unit; Ty Schmidt at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Todd Callaway at USDA-ARS' Food and Feed Safety Research Unit; Jessica Grissett at Mississippi State University; and Nicole Burdick Sanchez at USDA-ARS' Livestock Issues Research Unit.

The abstract from this project, titled "Novel Use of Lipid-Producing Bacteria to Increase Circulating Triglycerides in Swine," is the 2013 recipient of the National Pork Board Swine Industry Award for Innovation. The award will be presented at the 2013 American Society of Animal Science Southern Section Meeting in Orlando, Florida

40,000 Year Old Fossil Link to Today

 We already have established linkages that are ten thousand years old in Europe, so now been able to trace human biological continuity back a full 40,000 years is great news. Because it is all local, a lot of distractions disappear. Even better they are clearly family.

What this also continues to confirm is that when agricultural man arose ten thousand years ago, their expanding population simply absorbed the local non agricultural peoples. We see exactly this happening today with our first nation peoples. The majority are already hybrids and it is inevitable that this will continue apace as they are now successfully fitting into the greater whole just about everywhere.

Preservation of an inbred tribe depends on population success and that has become totally irrelevant in the modern world. It is now wiser to optimize genetic diversity instead to attract maximum hybrid vigor.

It is remarkable how the march of time dissolves away all local conceits in progress of our genetic inheritance.

Fossil human traces line to modern Asians

The person shared a common origin with the ancestors of modern Asians

22 January 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21123717

Researchers have been able to trace a line between some of the earliest modern humans to settle in China and people living in the region today.

The evidence comes from DNA extracted from a 40,000-year-old leg bone found in a cave near Beijing.

Results show that the person it belonged to was related to the ancestors of present-day Asians and Native Americans.

The results are published in the journal PNAS.

Humans who looked broadly like present-day people started to appear in the fossil record of Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.

But many questions remain about the genetic relationships between these early modern humans and present-day Homo sapiens populations.

For example, some evidence hints at extensive migration into Europeafter the last Ice Age.

And fossil finds from Red Deer Cave, also in China, and Iwo Eleru in Nigeria point to a hitherto unappreciated diversity among Late Pleistocene humans.

New technique

The team managed to extract genetic material from an ancient leg bone found in 2003 at the site of Tianyuan Cave outside Beijing.

They managed to extract the type of DNA found in the nuclei of cells (nuclear DNA) and genetic material from the cell's "powerhouses" - known as mitochondria.

They used new techniques that can identify ancient genetic information from an archaeological find, even when large amounts of DNA from soil bacteria are also present.

Analysis of the person's DNA showed that they were related to the ancestors of present-day Asians and Native Americans. But the analysis showed that this individual had already diverged from the ancestors of present-day Europeans.

The fossils were discovered in 2003 at Tianyuan near Beijing

"More analyses of additional early modern humans across Eurasia will further refine our understanding of when and how modern humans spread across Europe and Asia", said co-author Svante Pääbo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Research in the last few years has shown that early modern humans interbred with ancient human species such as the Neanderthals and Denisovans as they migrated from Africa and settled across the world.

Around 40,000 years ago, the Neanderthals and Denisovans were being replaced by Homo sapiens. Genetic studies of people living at this important crossover period could help scientists understand when and how this interbreeding took place.

The researchers found that the person from Tianyuan cave carried about the same proportion of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA as people in the region today.

Layered Moly Oxide for High Speed Electronics

 We are left to guess how the graphene fits into all this. Whatever the case, it is still getting faster and step by step we are mastering the art of producing nano thick layers of useful materials like moly oxide.

Physics has become the science of very thin materials and we are seeing ample surprises. We are not quite to the point of manufacturing things one atom at a time but it does not appear so unattainable today. We are certainly close enough to reasonably understand the activity produced.

But yes a number of breakthroughs have opened up the potential for vast improvements again and progress appears swift.

New 2D material for next generation high-speed electronics

Jan 23, 2013

http://www.spacemart.com/reports/New_2D_material_for_next_generation_high_speed_electronics_999.html

The material - made up of layers of crystal known as molybdenum oxides - has unique properties that encourage the free flow of electrons at ultra-high speeds. In a paper published in the January issue of materials science journal Advanced Materials, the researchers explain how they adapted a revolutionary material known as graphene to create a new conductive nano-material.

Graphene was created in 2004 by scientists in the UK and won its inventors a Nobel Prize in 2010. While graphene supports high speed electrons, its physical properties prevent it from being used for high-speed electronics.

The CSIRO's Dr Serge Zhuiykov said the new nano-material was made up of layered sheets - similar to graphite layers that make up a pencil's core.

"Within these layers, electrons are able to zip through at high speeds with minimal scattering," Dr Zhuiykov said.

"The importance of our breakthrough is how quickly and fluently electrons - which conduct electricity - are able to flow through the new material."

RMIT's Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh said the researchers were able to remove "road blocks" that could obstruct the electrons, an essential step for the development of high-speed electronics.

"Instead of scattering when they hit road blocks, as they would in conventional materials, they can simply pass through this new material and get through the structure faster," Professor Kalantar-zadeh said.

"Quite simply, if electrons can pass through a structure quicker, we can build devices that are smaller and transfer data at much higher speeds.

"While more work needs to be done before we can develop actual gadgets using this new 2D nano-material, this breakthrough lays the foundation for a new electronics revolution and we look forward to exploring its potential."

In the paper titled 'Enhanced Charge Carrier Mobility in Two-Dimensional High Dielectric Molybdenum Oxide,' the researchers describe how they used a process known as "exfoliation" to create layers of the material ~11 nm thick.

The material was manipulated to convert it into a semiconductor and nanoscale transistors were then created using molybdenum oxide.

The result was electron mobility values of >1,100 cm2/Vs - exceeding the current industry standard for low dimensional silicon.

The work, with RMIT doctoral researcher Sivacarendran Balendhran as the lead author, was supported by the CSIRO Sensors and Sensor Networks Transformational Capability Platform and the CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering Division.

It was also a result of collaboration between researchers from Monash University, University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), CSIRO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT.

Superconducting at 35 Celsius

 Even better the material produced has far better characteristics for working with. What is important is that this work has produced a class of products able to operate at thirty degrees Celsius and that makes it practical for normal operating conditions and regular cooling arrangements. Sooner or later, we are going to produce a monolayer on a working substrate and be able to actually use it.

Joe Eck has been leading the way in this work for a number of years and has been making incremental advances and obviously continues to do so.

As previously posted, this technology is necessary for manufacturing the Magnetic Field Exclusion Vessel of MFEV a reported in my article published in Viewzone in 2007.

Joe Eck Reports 35 Celsius Superconductor after substituting Silicon

FEBRUARY 03, 2013

http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/02/joe-eck-reports-35-celsius.html

Superconductors.ORG (Joe Eck) reports the 30 Celsius superconductor discovered in December 2012 has been successfully reformulated to advance high Tc to above 35 Celsius (95F, 308K). This was accomplished with a simple substitution of tetravalent silicon into the magnesium atomic sites. The chemical formula thus becomes Tl5Pb2Ba2Si2.5Cu8.5O17+. This is the third material discovered with a critical transition temperature (Tc) above room-temperature.

Joe Eck is a lone researcher who has had some previous work published in smaller journals and some other researchers have copied his work and had them published. He detects magnetic transitions that indicate likely superconductivity but the material has a low percentage of superconducting material and needs to be processed and purified. He has not been able to get the interest or cooperation of larger institutions. Joe has also done work to improve the formulation of YCBO superconducting materials

Multiple magnetization tests were performed on two separate test pellets to confirm this exceptionally high Tc. The highest and lowest measurements on the first sample ranged from 37.1 C to 35.8 C. The second pellet produced diamagnetic transitions between 37.5 C and 35.5 C. The average of all the tests was just under 36 Celsius. The flashing lines in the two plots at page top represent the average of the noise component skewing apart near 36 C in both warming and cooling test cycles

With an ionic radius smaller than magnesium (0.4 Å - vs - 0.72 Å) silicon will occupy the same atomic sites in the "Light" region of the C1 and C2 axes as magnesium does. This is illustrated in the D9223 graphic at left with an arrow pointing to the Si-Cu plane. Though the planar weight ratio is lower with silicon than with magnesium, the Cu02 planes clearly benefit from being electron-doped.

Below is the plot of a second sample pellet, synthesized and tested three days after the first pellet. The plot again shows an unambiguous diamagnetic transition just below 36 C. Resistance tests were not possible with this formulation, as the non-superconductive bulk material i 

  The idea that silicon might be an acceptable substitute for magnesium came from two prior discoveries that included silicon. The proto-compound TlSiBa₄Tm₂CaCu₅O_x produced a minority phase with Tc near 208 Kelvin. And (Tl_0.5Pb_0.5Si)Sr₄TmCaCu₄O_x produced a minority phase with Tc near 213 K. The only way for such high transition temperatures to result from such small unit cells was if silicon was occupying both the C1 and C2 axes.

       A dot and yellow rectangular box have been placed within the C1 plot below, depicting where D223(Si_2.5Cu_8.5) lies relative to the other high performance thallium copper-oxides. Even though the PWR-v-Tc has decreased along the C1 axis, with this formulation the rich electron doping of the CuO2 planes has increased Tc well above the curve of its progenitors.

a Yen for Inflation

This item is helpful and by been about Japan, we are spared parochial considerations. The Canadian experience, now a couple of decades old has been excellent. It slowly eats away the cash bubble produced by interest and over the same types of time frames. I actually think that two percent happens to be the sweet spot.

The difference between the Canadian experience and the Japanese experience argues just this. I also think that any higher will be also be counter productive and agitation to go higher needs to be ignored. Whether we like it or not we have entered a low interest world that needs to be sensibly sustained even as it reprices assets upward

Once this form of inflation stability is secured, it is inevitable that housing in the USA will reprice upward to around a $300,000 average close to the present average new house price. Once again, the home becomes a solid store of value. Recall that two percent built in? It means a well priced housing buy must be worth half again as much in thirty years or so which is the actual planning cycle of the consumer of housing.

It is not fabulous, but it is good enough to also mitigate local weak spots. The net result is that owners always come out whole unless they were really unlucky. That is what really matters after all. Profits are good for bragging rights but remaining whole while living well is the real agenda of everyone.

A yen for inflation

William Watson | Jan 23, 2013 

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/01/23/william-watson-a-yen-for-inflation/

John Crow’s 2% target is adopted by Japan as well as U.S.

It begins to appear the real Canadian superstar central banker of the last quarter-century was, not Mark Carney, but John Crow. On Monday yet another big country adopted Crow’s strategy of a 2% target for inflation, this time Japan. The U.S., the biggest convert of all, came over last year. Truth be told, we weren’t the first to adopt inflation targeting as a central bank strategy. New Zealand preceded us by two years and went a percentage point lower. But, led by Crow, who took all the heat at the new monetary regime’s outset and was a one-term bank governor as a result, we were in at the start.

One difference between us and the Japanese is that when we adopted inflation targeting, 2% was an ambitious goal. At the time, our inflation rate was over 5%. In Japan, by contrast, the consumer price index is basically constant. It was 100 in 2005 and 98.8 last November, which is not so much deflation as no-flation. What fun awaits the Bank of Japan! As a sect, central bankers are trained from their earliest days that inflation is anathema. Now Japan’s have been tasked to deliberately create some. It’s like preachers being required to cavort with floozies.

Why would a country with almost perfect price stability opt instead for inflation? One problem is that consumer price indexes are always biased upward: In real life, when the price of a good rises, people substitute away from it. The CPI assumes, by contrast, that their spending patterns stay unchanged. Studies suggest the bias is half to three-quarters of a percentage point, so unless you’ve got a little bit of CPI inflation, you really have deflation. That may or may not be bad. Views differ. But it’s not strictly price stability.

But why take inflation beyond the half to three-quarters per cent a year that would be true price stability? The idea is to fix the “problem” of the Zero Lower Bound.

With zero inflation, cash pays zero per cent real interest. Cash always pays nominal interest, i.e., it doesn’t pay interest. So the real interest it pays depends on the inflation rate.

Deflation gives cash a positive return that’s more or less risk-free (unless you’re holding your cash late at night in clear plastic bags in a rough part of town). Positive risk-free real interest on cash may discourage investment in anything else that does involve risk. If you want to see increased investment in real estate or capital equipment or individual learning, positive real returns to cash don’t help.

By contrast, inflation gives cash a negative real return. Two per cent a year may seem trivial — it did when countries had become used to 5% or 6% or even higher — but with inflation at 2%, $100 turns itself into $82 after 10 years and $67 after 20 years, not at all trivial if you’re thinking long term, which is how we want people to think.

With inflation drip-dripping away at the value of cash in this way, people may be more willing to consider other types of investments, including the bricks-and-mortar, nuts-and-bolts, silicon-and-bytes kind that create jobs.

Trouble is, once people know inflation is coming, they’ll act to offset it. All else equal, 2% inflation would reduce all real interest rates by 2% and that would make real, employment-generating investment easier. But of course all else won’t be equal. If everyone knows inflation will be 2%, everyone lending money will ask for an extra 2% to preserve the real return to their investment. Nominal rates change, real rates don’t.

The only investments for which compensating adjustments aren’t possible are those already made. If you lent money at 5% when you thought there wouldn’t be any inflation, you were counting on a 5% real return. Now the central bank decides it prefers 2% inflation, so your real return falls to three. You’re out 2% real. Too bad, so sad!

Do such windfall transfers from lenders to borrowers help the economy? Maybe in the short run. One of the biggest borrowers of all is Japan’s government, which has debts approaching 200% of GDP. Paul Krugman recently wrote approvingly about higher Japanese inflation “helping to inflate away part of the government’s debt,” which it certainly will do.

But will the effects be all good? What happens to lending in the long term? People lend expecting one inflation regime and then the government announces a new regime? True, the government never guaranteed it wouldn’t. The lenders lent with their eyes open. Still, it’s a kind of swindle, isn’t it?

The government now says it won’t swindle again. Two per cent will be the rate for the long term. But what’s to prevent it, three years from now, from going to 4% — as in fact several prominent economists have suggested the U.S. should do in order to deal with its own Zero Lower Bound?

Greater anxiety about the likelihood of making a given rate of return on money lent isn’t the worst disaster imaginable. But will a reputation for policy duplicity really secure Japan’s future?

Housing Optimism Premature.

 Yes we are assuming that the past informs the present. However I want you to look at this chart that I have posted from the second item. Fundamentally the new generation has adopted the condo lifestyle close to their work. The trend is moving against the single family dwelling model for efficiency sake.

Thus Shiller is right that optimism may well be misplaced and we could be seeing a new life way taking shape that backs of from the massive commitment that a single family home demands.

Cities are also waking up to the Vancouver model in which modern condos are all stuffed downtown to completely revitalize the region. Add in rapid transit to satellite hubs and the car is off the road.

In Vancouver the traffic entering the core has stagnated for years because of this while the population of the core has surely doubled.

SHILLER: All This Housing Optimism Is Way Too Premature

Henry Blodget and Lucas Kawa | Jan. 25, 2013, 4:36 AM

http://www.businessinsider.com/shiller-housie-prices-2013-1#ixzz2J0fBLXzj

Yale professor Robert Shiller is one of the pre-eminent experts in house prices.

Shiller created the "Case-Shiller Index," which tracks changes in house prices on a monthly basis and is the most closely followed house-price index in the country.

We sat down with Professor Shiller in Davos to get his take on the future of the housing market.

Henry Blodget: Everybody in the U.S. seems convinced that the housing market is going to come roaring back, it’s going to save the economy, house prices are going to rise, houses are a great investment again. Are they right?

Professor Shiller: First of all, I challenge your statement a little bit. The Pulsenomics survey of experts – they had 105 experts in their December survey – and not one of them predicted a return to the boom that we had. The most optimistic had a real return for the next 4/5 years of something like 6 percent.

Blodget: But that’s way better than zero.

Shiller: I’m taking the most optimistic out of 105. We also had – what’s that perma-bear guy, anyway, we had someone at minus 10 percent. I think that we may be recovering, but I also think that we may have further real price declines in the coming years.  People are overly – we tend to focus on the latest starts and permits and other indicators, but I think that there might have – and this isn’t a confident forecast – but there might have been a decline in our appreciation of this American Dream: detached, dispersed single family homes – you have to drive for 45 minutes to get there from your job. And the idea has gone, well it’s not gone, but it’s diminished – that this would be a good investment. So the latest data, ever since the crisis, almost all new housing has been rental. New household units want rentals. If that’s a trend, it means that home prices of single-family detached homes should probably go down, because it’s hard to maintain those as rental units. If people demand that kind of – I think they’ll sell at a discount. Co-ops and condos could have a different trend at the same time.

Blodget: So what is your sense of the next five years? Do you think we’ve hit bottom in the housing market or do you have to stratify it that way?

Shiller: I think that we might have [hit bottom], but my biggest sense is that probably nothing dramatic happens either way. If the Pulsenomics survey is right, and it’s up between 1 and 2 percent real, that’s plausible to me. But also down 1 or 2 percent real, that’s plausible. I’m sorry I don’t have a more precise forecast.

The Case-Shiller Index.

Blodget: One of the things I feel that people might be missing is that if the economy does return to strength, at some point presumably interest rates will start to rise to more normal levels which will change the cost of mortgages and make them much more expensive. How much do you think the cost of mortgages affects the price of housing, and if interest rates do go from 4 now up to 7 percent, will that dampen house prices?

Shiller: It would seem from economic theory that it ought to. If the 10-year Treasury goes from 1.8 percent to 7 percent, that means mortgage rates will go from 3.5 to 10 percent, or something like that. And that ought to affect home prices. And in a very broad sense, that seems to be the case. Home prices reached a low in the early 80s, right around the time Paul Volcker pushed interest rates up. But on the other hand, it doesn’t fit very well, this whole model. Home prices don’t look like an inverse of interest rates.

Blodget: They don’t? You’ve studied it hundreds of years of home prices and you haven’t seen a correlation between the two?

Shiller: No, in fact if you look at the path of interest rates since Paul Volcker, interest rates have just gone down secularly for 30 years. It’s absolutely amazing, how strong that downtrend is. And it’s hit practically zero, it’s at a record low right now. It can’t keep going down, so now where is it going to go from here? I don’t know. I don’t see as much commentary on this trend. Somehow, there was a turning point, a major turning point with Paul Volcker, that we went from an economy of increasing inflation to decreasing deflation, and not many people appreciated how profound that transition was. But now, the question is where are we going now when we’ve hit record lows. I wish I knew.

Blodget: Well, presumably there are two options. Either we’re Japan and rates stay low for 20 years, or they go back up.

Shiller: The question is attaching probabilities to those scenarios.

Blodget: Do you want to take a stab at that?

Shiller: I don’t know. This is something that, Bayesian statisticians have tried to represent ignorance by probabilities, and this is why my son is a philosophy Ph. D candidate right now, and he’s interested in how to represent uninformative priors. There’s all kinds of paradoxes when you try to do it. So we just don’t know, and I can’t attach a probability.

Blodget: Thanks, Professor Shiller.

This item comes from an investment newsletter and the chart tells it all.

Breaking: We Hit the Peak in 2005!

By Jeff Siegel | Monday, January 28th, 2013

62 miles.

This was my mother's daily commute for about two years after we moved out to the suburbs in 1981. Total transit time was about three hours round-trip, depending on traffic, of course.

So basically, my mother spent about two and half days' worth of time every month driving to and from work...

Two and a half days!

Fortunately, she only had to do that commute for a couple of years before getting reassigned back to the main office, which was much, much closer to home. But it was around that time I realized I would never put myself through that kind of hassle.

It just made no sense... the wear and tear on the car... the stinging fuel costs... the wasted time and productivity... the stress of daily traffic...

No, this was never something I wanted. And after college, I made a conscientious effort to never live more than ten or fifteen minutes from work. Anything more would just be unacceptable.

And as it turns out, I wasn't alone. Over the past ten or fifteen years, there's been an interesting shift in behaviors regarding daily work commutes. And what was once considered just a part of a daily routine has started to become an exercise in futility.

The mere thought of spending a significant amount of one's life behind the wheel of car, sitting in traffic and starting the day completely stressed out has sparked a migration back to some of this nation's cities — at least, for a younger generation that works within city limits.

And this has led to some folks not even needing a car anymore, as biking, mass transit, and carsharing services like Zipcar are making it easier for daily commuters to live without a car.

This new trend not only represents a complete reversal of the car-centric society in which I grew up, but some believe it could actually be one of the reasons behind what some are now calling “Peak Car.”

New Trends

There was an interesting article a couple of weeks ago by business and policy writer Tim Fernholz in which he considers the possibility that demand for cars has hit a plateau and, from this point forward, demand can only start to decline.

It's an interesting thought. But on the surface, it's a hard one to buy.

That being said, there has been a visible trend in vehicle miles traveled that could lend itself to Fernholz's argument. According to the OECD, growth in total vehicle miles traveled in the developed world has actually been decreasing steadily since the early part of this century...

In his piece, Fernholz attempts to justify this data with a few solid explanations that are at least worthy of consideration:

1. Increasing costs of fossil fuels, parking, and insurance at a time of stagnant wage growth in advanced countries.
2. Policies designed to mitigate pollution and reduce urban sprawl.
3. Availability of communications technologies that has made some work travel unnecessary.
4. New trends toward urbanization replacing the flight to suburbs.
5. A new generation of potential car buyers — specifically those in the Millennial generation — that doesn't view cars as rights of passage or status symbols, as previous generations have.
6. The inability for people to tolerate daily commutes for more than an hour.

The World's Longest Traffic Jam

Of course, current trends that can make a supportive argument for the case of "Peak Car" do not reflect the full global scenario...

Many automakers today are looking towards emerging markets for continued growth, and certainly we've seen evidence of this in China, India, and a few South American countries.

The question, however, is will these emerging economies embrace car-centric communities as we have done in the United States?

Car ownership in emerging economies is definitely viewed as a status symbol. And having this certain taste of freedom that we've grown so accustomed to in the U.S. is still very new in other parts of the world, and offers a tremendous amount of enthusiasm over car ownership.

Then again, with the significant availability of cars comes some of the hassles, too — particularly when it comes to fuel costs and traffic. Consider for a moment the world's longest traffic jam in history was in China in 2010: It stretched for 62 miles and lasted twelve days!

Truth is it's still too early to know exactly how car ownership will play out over the long-term in emerging economies. But here at home, we're already witnessing a transition to alternative forms of transportation and mass transit acceptance.

I can't say with absolute certainty that this could prove a "Peak Car" theory, but here's what we do know: There has been clear evidence of robust growth in mass transit ridership over the past 16 years.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, from 1995 through 2011, public transportation ridership increased by 34%, representing a growth rate higher than the 17% increase in U.S. population, and higher than the 22% growth in the use of the nation's highways over the same period.

Also worth noting, in 2011 Americans took 10.4 billion trips on public transportation — the second highest annual ridership number since 1957.

And as far as alternative forms of transportation, we know from the actions of automakers that the transition to more fuel-efficient vehicles, like hybrids and electrics, will continue; natural gas will eventually end up powering nearly all of our buses and trucks; and freight rail will continue to build market share, especially in the race to develop and secure this nation's oil and gas resources.

The Wild in the Wolf

This is quite surprising. The tamed dog postpones socialization and exploring its environment until all three senses have kicked in. Now does this also happen with other tamed animals? Can this effect be induced?

It certainly explains the ease in which pups adapt to human life ways. So equipped, it could adapt to any alien life way.

The interesting question is just how the process of domestication affects other animal in this part of behavior development.

Certainly wild animals can become comfortable around humans but are still wild for all that. Wildness may well be a strong fear reflex unconnected with the present. Thus actually safety with wild animals may mean discovering a way to control that particular reflex. Now we know something.

At least it is a starting point and a promising one. Without that reflex, the lion will and can lie down with the lamb.

UMass Amherst Study May Explain Why Wolves are Forever Wild, But Dogs Can Be Tamed

by Staff Writers

Amherst MA (SPX) Jan 21, 2013

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/UMass_Amherst_Study_May_Explain_Why_Wolves_are_Forever_Wild_But_Dogs_Can_Be_Tamed_999.html

Dogs and wolves are genetically so similar, it's been difficult for biologists to understand why wolves remain fiercely wild, while dogs can gladly become "man's best friend." Now, doctoral research by evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggests the different behaviors are related to the animals' earliest sensory experiences and the critical period of socialization. Details appear in the current issue of Ethology.

Until now, little was known about sensory development in wolf pups, and assumptions were usually extrapolated from what is known for dogs, Lord explains. This would be reasonable, except scientists already know there are significant differences in early development between wolf and dog pups, chief among them timing of the ability to walk, she adds.

To address this knowledge gap, she studied responses of seven wolf pups and 43 dogs to both familiar and new smells, sounds and visual stimuli, tested them weekly, and found they did develop their senses at the same time.

But her study also revealed new information about how the two subspecies of Canis lupus experience their environment during a four-week developmental window called the critical period of socialization, and the new facts may significantly change understanding of wolf and dog development.

When the socialization window is open, wolf and dog pups begin walking and exploring without fear and will retain familiarity throughout their lives with those things they contact. Domestic dogs can be introduced to humans, horses and even cats at this stage and be comfortable with them forever. But as the period progresses, fear increases and after the window closes, new sights, sounds and smells will elicit a fear response.

Through observations, Lord confirmed that both wolf pups and dogs develop the sense of smell at age two weeks, hearing at four weeks and vision by age six weeks on average.

However, these two subspecies enter the critical period of socialization at different ages. Dogs begin the period at four weeks, while wolves begin at two weeks. Therefore, how each subspecies experiences the world during that all-important month is extremely different, and likely leads to different developmental paths, she says.

Lord reports for the first time that wolf pups are still blind and deaf when they begin to walk and explore their environment at age two weeks. "No one knew this about wolves, that when they begin exploring they're blind and deaf and rely primarily on smell at this stage, so this is very exciting," she notes.

She adds, "When wolf pups first start to hear, they are frightened of the new sounds initially, and when they first start to see they are also initially afraid of new visual stimuli. As each sense engages, wolf pups experience a new round of sensory shocks that dog puppies do not."

Meanwhile, dog pups only begin to explore and walk after all three senses, smell, hearing and sight, are functioning. Overall, "It's quite startling how different dogs and wolves are from each other at that early age, given how close they are genetically.[ this is really unexpected and needs to be checked with other species also - arclein]

A litter of dog puppies at two weeks are just basically little puddles, unable to get up or walk around. But wolf pups are exploring actively, walking strongly with good coordination and starting to be able to climb up little steps and hills."

These significant, development-related differences in dog and wolf pups' experiences put them on distinctly different trajectories in relation to the ability to form interspecies social attachments, notably with humans, Lord says. This new information has implications for managing wild and captive wolf populations, she says.

Her experiments analyzed the behavior of three groups of young animals: 11 wolves from three litters and 43 dogs total. Of the dogs, 33 border collies and German shepherds were raised by their mothers and a control group of 10 German shepherd pups were hand-raised, meaning a human was introduced soon after birth.

At the gene level, she adds, "the difference may not be in the gene itself, but in when the gene is turned on. The data help to explain why, if you want to socialize a dog with a human or a horse, all you need is 90 minutes to introduce them between the ages of four and eight weeks.

After that, a dog will not be afraid of humans or whatever else you introduced. Of course, to build a real relationship takes more time. But with a wolf pup, achieving even close to the same fear reduction requires 24-hour contact starting before age three weeks, and even then you won't get the same attachment or lack of fear."

Real Employment Continued Contraction

What this tells you is that the real economy has contracted by about three percent since 2007. Everything else is window dressing to disguise this fact. As I posted in the past, we are repairing the credit collapse the hard way. It is also the slow way.

The good news is that the banking system now knows what they have to work with and they have begun to lend again and this will begin to stimulate demand to allow a recovery to get under way. I think we are now into a three year cycle of slow steady recovery.

I have also posted before that it did not need to be way but nothing approaching economic competence appear possible in Washington. Worse, the looting culture of Wall Street remains intact and will strike again in eight years unless real reform is put in place.

I think that the contraction itself is complete although governments everywhere are printing to support welfare payments. These statistics tells us that there are somewhere close to 20,000,000 workers out there wanting to participate in the economy and another 40,000,000 looking for a much better position. Capitalizing them and their jobs would readily support a plus five percent growth rate for five to ten years. Sadly it does not appear to be happening.

Perhaps it is time for Canada and the USA to do a joint Great Lakes Redevelopment Scheme similar to the TVA of times past.

Shocking Numbers That Show The Media Is Lying To You About Unemployment In America

by Michael, on February 1st, 2013

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/shocking-numbers-that-show-the-media-is-lying-to-you-about-unemployment-in-america

Did you know that the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed has continually been falling since 2006 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Did you know that the increase in the number of Americans "not in the labor force" during Barack Obama's first four years in the White House was more than three times greater than the increase in the number of Americans "not in the labor force" during the entire decade of the 1980s? The mainstream media would have us believe that 157,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in January. Based on that news, the Dow broke the 14,000 barrier for the first time since October 2007. But if you actually look at the "non-seasonally adjusted" numbers, the number of Americans with a job actually decreased by 1,446,000 between December and January. But nowhere in the mainstream media did you hear that the U.S. Economy lost more than 1.4 million jobs between December and January. It is amazing the things that you can find out when you actually take the time to look at the hard numbers instead of just listening to the media spin. Back in 2007, more than 146 million Americans were employed. Today, only141.6 million Americans are employed even though our population has grown steadily since then. When the government and the media tell you that we are in a "recovery" and that unemployment is lower than it was a couple of years ago, I encourage you to dig deeper. The truth is that even the government's own numbers tell us that the percentage of the U.S. labor force that is employed continues to fall and that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession. The Obama administration and the media have been lying to you about unemployment and about the true condition of our economy. After you see the numbers that I have compiled in this article, I think that you will agree with me.

First of all, let's take a look at the percentage of the civilian labor force that has been employed over the past several years. These numbers come directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  As you can see, this is a number that has been steadily falling since 2006...

2006: 63.1

2007: 63.0

2008: 62.2

2009: 59.3

2010: 58.5

2011: 58.4

In January, only 57.9 percent of the civilian labor force was employed.

Do the numbers above represent a positive trend or a negative trend?

Even a 2nd grader could answer that question.

So how in the world can the Obama administration and the mainstream media claim that the employment picture is getting better and that we are in a "recovery"?

But most Americans believe what they are told. It is almost as if we are in some kind of a "matrix" where reality is defined by the corporate-controlled propaganda that is relentlessly pumped into our brains.

The only way that the government has been able to show a declining unemployment rate is by dumping massive numbers of Americans into the "not in the labor force" category.

Just check out how the number of Americans "not in the labor force" has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years...

2006: 77,387,000

2007: 78,743,000

2008: 79,501,000

2009: 81,659,000

2010: 83,941,000

2011: 86,001,000

In January, there were supposedly 89,868,000 Americans that were at least 16 years of age that were not in the labor force.

That number has risen by more than 8 million since Barack Obama first entered the White House, and that is highly unusual, because the number of Americans "not in the labor force" only increased by2,518,000 during the entire decade of the 1980s.

You sure can get the numbers to look more "favorable" if you pretend that millions upon millions of American workers simply "don't want a job" any longer. The truth is that if the labor force participation rate was at the same level it was at when Barack Obama was first elected, the official unemployment rate would be well above 10 percent.

But that wouldn't do at all, would it? 7.9 percent sounds so much nicer.

And of course even if you do have a job that does not mean that you are doing okay.

If you can believe it, in America today 41 percent of all workers make $20,000 a year or less.

To me, that is a mind blowing statistic. It would be incredibly challenging for anyone to live on $20,000 a year, much less try to support a family.

If you live in Washington D.C. or New York City and you have a "good job" working for the establishment, you may not realize it, but there are tens of millions of American families that are really hurting out there. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either "poor" or "low income" at this point, and most of those people actually do have jobs.

For much more on the "working poor" in the United States, please see my previous article entitled "35 Statistics About The Working Poor In America That Will Blow Your Mind".

If something is not done, the middle class will continue to disappearand poverty in America will continue to explode.

In a previous article, I noted that during Obama's first term, the number of Americans on food stamps increased by an average of about 11,000 per day.

How bad do things have to get before people realize that we are living through a nightmare?

Sadly, most Americans still have faith in the system.

Most Americans are still convinced that our politicians will somehow find a way to turn things around.

Most Americans will gather around their television sets this weekend and watch the Super Bowl and laugh at all the funny commercials without even thinking about how America is literally falling apart all around them.

But there is one group of Americans that is acutely aware of how bad things have really gotten.  Small businesses have traditionally been the primary engine of job growth in this country, but right now small business owners all over the nation are facing a tremendous crisis.

Millions of small businesses are on the verge of extinction, and yet our politicians just continue to pile on more taxes, more rules and more regulations.

A recent Gallup poll found that 61 percent of all small business owners in America are "worried about the potential cost of healthcare", and that an astounding 30 percent of all small business owners in America are not hiring and fear that they will go out of business within the next 12 months.

In a previous article entitled "We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America", I detailed how small businesses in America are being systematically wiped out.  Small businesses are dying all around us, and the number of new small businesses continues to decline.

According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per one thousand Americans breaks down by presidential administration...

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

Is that a good trend or a bad trend?

All of this is so simple that even the family pet should be able to figure it out, and yet most Americans seem oblivious to all of this.  They just keep gobbling up the mainstream media propaganda and they just continue to go out and wildly spend money.

It is almost as if we didn't learn any lessons from 2008.

Even while household spending in Europe has moderated, household spending in the United States continues to soar. Just check out the charting this article.

And guess what? The infamous "no money down mortgages" are back. If we wait long enough, perhaps "interest only mortgages" will make a comeback as well.

Unfortunately, I am afraid that time is running out. we have been living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and it is only a matter of time until it bursts.

2008 was just a "hiccup" compared to what is coming.  Our politicians and the Federal Reserve were able to keep the house of cards from completely crashing down back then, but they are not going to be able to avert the economic horror show that is rapidly approaching.

I hope that you are getting prepared. Back in 2008, millions of Americans suddenly lost their jobs, and because many of them did not have any savings, many of them suddenly lost their homes. One of the most important things that you can do to prepare for the coming crisis is to build up an emergency fund. If things suddenly go bad, you don't want to lose your house and everything that you have always worked for.

In addition, anything that you can do to become more self-sufficient and more independent of the system is a good thing, because the system is failing. The years ahead are going to be much more chaotic than what we are experiencing right now, and when the next crisis strikes you will be very thankful for the time and the energy that you put into preparing.

So what are all of you seeing in your own areas?

Are businesses shutting down?

Are people having a hard time finding good jobs?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below...