Corruption Will Kill Regime, But Not China

 China does have the mechanisms in place to transition out of one party rule just as has happened throughout South East Asia. In my mind, it is not if it will happen but a question of when it will happen.

The good news here is that it appears that the cadres will be forgiven for now and allowed to retire gracefully. This really allows a clean sweep from top to bottom and the introduction of fresh blood.

This also makes it an ideal time to introduce democratic reforms. But if not, the way is quite clear for a future transition. Everyone waits out the decade and prepares for the next transition. Sooner or later the people's will will be accepted slow as it may seem.

The miracle of China, not seen elsewhere, is that it is so large that even the most egregious thief is small potatoes. This means all our assumptions are suspect. I wonder how many thieves actually made the calculation that they could be forgiven?

Chinese Economist: Corruption Will Kill Regime, But Not China

By Veronica Wang December 27, 2012

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/chinese-economist-corruption-will-kill-regime-but-not-china-329161.html

A former Peking University professor, Zhang Weiying, told a public forum last week how corruption could be solved in China, and emphasized that it only poses a serious threat to the Communist Party and not the nation. 

Zhang, who was head of the Guanghua School of Management, spoke about the “two difficulties of anti-corruption” at The Observer Forum in Beijing on Dec. 19, where China’s new political and economic direction for the next decade was discussed following the leadership change in November.

Zhang commented that deeply entrenched corruption in the Chinese Communist Party has been worsening, and he believes few officials would be found free of corrupt behavior if they were all put under investigation. 

He therefore proposed using the recent 18th National Congress as the start of a new timeline, and suggested only punishing those Party officials who continue to commit such crimes, while overlooking those who have corrected their behavior since the start of the new leadership. 

In reference to the report of the 18th National Congress, Zhang opposed former leader Hu Jintao’s comment that if corruption continues, it will ruin both the Party and the country, saying only the Party will be threatened if the new anti-corruption campaign is unsuccessful.

Recently, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Wang Qishan, was appointed as the Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). This was widely seen as an attempt to emphasize the importance being given to the campaign. 

Insiders revealed this as the new Party leader Xi Jinping’s idea because the two men had already reached a mutual understanding on anti-corruption efforts. 

Analysts believe that Wang, who previously had portfolios in finance and economics, will continue his forceful style in his role as CCDI secretary, and is likely set to focus on corruption in China’s financial sphere—where there is plenty of it.

Copper Blocks Antibiotic Resistence

This is actually important although how it can be integrated into the at risk environments is going to be a challenge. The simple fact is that copper requires incessant cleaning and polishing. Perhaps the proper solution is to use a normal alloy such as bronze and to allow the working surface to fully oxidize into its natural green blue color. Then normal cleaning is sufficient.

It will still be hard to keep the clean freaks from turning it into a shining object just because they can. Like the military, it will become necessary to order folks to not shine their combat boots.

The revelation here though is that gene transfer occurs outside the host on working surfaces and this provides a clear reason to make working surface naturally antibiotic. Copper is the low hanging fruit.

Copper restricts the spread of global antibiotic-resistant infections

by Staff Writers

Southampton, UK (SPX) Dec 11, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Copper_restricts_the_spread_of_global_antibiotic_resistant_infections_999.html

New research from the University of Southampton has shown that copper can prevent horizontal transmission of genes, which has contributed to the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide.

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria is largely responsible for the development of antibiotic-resistance, which has led to an increasing number of difficult-to-treat healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs).

The newly-published paper, which appears in the journal mBio, shows that while HGT can take place in the environment, on frequently-touched surfaces, such as door handles, trolleys and tables, which are made from stainless steel - copper prevents this process from occurring and rapidly kills bacteria on contact.

Lead author Professor Bill Keevil, Chair in Environmental Healthcare at the University of Southampton, explains: "Whilst studies have focussed on HGT in vivo (an experiment that is done in the body of a living organism), this work investigates whether the ability of pathogens to persist in the environment, particularly on touch surfaces, may also play an important role. Here we show prolonged survival of multidrug resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae on stainless steel surfaces for several weeks.

However, rapid death of both antibiotic-resistant strains and destruction of plasmid and genomic DNA was observed on copper and copper alloy surfaces, which could be useful in the prevention of infection spread and gene transfer."

Showing that horizontal transmission of genes (for example, those governing antibiotic resistance) occurs on touch surfaces, supports the important role of the environment in infection prevention.

Professor Keevil summarises: "We know many human pathogens survive for long periods in the hospital environment and can lead to infection, expensive treatment, blocked beds and death.

"What we have shown in this work is the potential for strategically-placed antimicrobial copper touch surfaces to not only break the chain of contamination, but also actively reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance developing at the same time. Provided adequate cleaning continues in critical environments, copper can be employed as an important additional tool in the fight against pathogens."

Beyond the healthcare environment, copper also has a wider role to play in infection control. Professor Keevil explains: "Copper touch surfaces have promise for preventing antibiotic resistance transfer in public buildings and mass transportation systems, which lead to local and - in the case of jet travel - rapid worldwide dissemination of multi-drug resistant superbugs as soon as they appear.

"People with inadequate hand hygiene could exchange their bugs and different antibiotic resistance genes just by touching a stair rail or door handle, ready to be picked up by someone else and passed on. Copper substantially reduces and restricts the spread of these infections, making an important contribution to improved hygiene and, consequently, health."

Installations of copper touch surfaces have already taken place across the UK and around the world, harnessing copper's ability to continuously reduce bioburden and consequently the risk of HCAI transmission.

This research offers additional evidence to deploy copper (and copper-containing alloys that benefit from the metal's antimicrobial properties) in the form of touch surfaces to provide extra protection alongside standard hygiene practices.

African Transition

Human continuity for 300,000 years appears to be much longer than presently accepted and continuous occupation may well imply cultural stasis. Thus the bottleneck may alternatively mean that a special group made the key breakthrough around 50,000 years ago.

That also fits well with our projected time line for a ten thousand year transition to modernity from 50,000 BP to 40,000 BP. Our own transition has taken about the same amount of time since the Pleistocene Nonconformity.

An expanding special population of modernizing humanity will simply absorb remnant groups back into the global DNA in much the same way that our last tribes are been absorbed into our six billion man ocean.

Tracing humanity's African ancestry may mean rewriting 'out of Africa' dates

This 2012 image shows the structure used by inhabitants of the region for well over 200000 years. Credit: Pamela Willoughby, University of Alberta.

by Staff Writers

Edmonton, Canada (SPX) Dec 18, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Tracing_humanitys_African_ancestry_may_mean_rewriting_out_of_Africa_dates_999.html

New research by a University of Alberta archeologist may lead to a rethinking of how, when and from where our ancestors left Africa. U of A researcher and anthropology chair Pamela Willoughby's explorations in the Iringa region of southern Tanzania yielded fossils and other evidence that records the beginnings of our own species, Homo sapiens.

Her research, recently published in the journal Quaternary International, may be key to answering questions about early human occupation and the migration out of Africa about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, which led to modern humans colonizing the globe.

From two sites, Mlambalasi and nearby Magubike, she and members of her team, the Iringa Region Archaeological Project, uncovered artifacts that outline continuous human occupation between modern times and at least 200,000 years ago, including during a late Ice Age period when a near extinction-level event, or "genetic bottleneck," likely occurred.

Now, Willoughby and her team are working with people in the region to develop this area for ecotourism, to assist the region economically and create incentives to protect its archeological history.

"Some of these sites have signs that people were using them starting around 300,000 years ago. In fact, they're still being used today," she said. "But the idea that you have such ancient human occupation preserved in some of these places is pretty remarkable."

Magubike: Home to a modern Stone Age family?

Willoughby says one of the fascinating things about Magubike is the presence of a large rock shelter with an intact overhanging roof. The excavations yielded unprecedented ancient artifacts and fossils from under this roof. Samples from the site date from the earliest stages of the middle Stone Age to the Iron Age. The earlier deposits include human teeth and artifacts such as animal bones, shells and thousands of flaked stone tools.

The Iron Age finds can be dated using radiocarbon, but the older deposits must go through more specialized processes, such as electron spin resonance, to determine their age. Other parts of the Magubike rock shelter, excavated in 2006 and 2008, include occupations from after the middle Stone Age. Taken together, this information could be crucial to tracking the evolutionary development of the inhabitants.

"What's important about the whole sequence is that we may have a continuous record of human occupation," said Willoughby. "If we do-and we can prove it through these special dating techniques-then we have a place people lived in over the bottleneck."

Rugged, hilly terrain may have been key to survival

The team made similar findings at Mlambalasi, about 20 kilometres from Magubike. Among the findings at this site was a fragmentary human skeleton that probably dates to the late Pleistocene Ice Age-after the out-of-Africa expansion but at the end of the bottleneck period.

The bottleneck theory explains what geneticists have found by studying the mitochondrial DNA of living people-that all non-Africans are descended from one lineage of people who left Africa about 50,000 years ago.

Reconstructions of past environments through pollen and other archeological records in Iringa suggest that people abandoned the lowland, tropical and coastal areas during that period but remained in the highlands, where vegetation has remained mostly unchanged over the last 50,000 years. Those who moved to higher ground may have found what is likely one of the few places that facilitated their survival and forced their adaptation. Further testing will determine whether these findings point to a clearer link to our African ancestors-a find Willoughby says could put that region of Tanzania on many archeologists' radar.

"It was only about 20 years ago that people recognized that modern Homo sapiens actually had an African ancestry, and everyone was focused on looking at early Homo sapiens in Europe who appeared around 40,000 years ago," she said.

"But we now know that as far as back as around 200,000 years ago, Africa was inhabited by people who were already physically exactly like us today or really close to being the same as us. All of a sudden, it's not Europe in this time period that's really important, it's Africa."

Engaging community yields co-operation, opportunity

Along with its scientific significance, Willoughby's work may be a linchpin to potential economic growth for the region. Since 2005, when a local cultural officer showed her the sites, she has been sharing information about her research with local citizens, schools and government-opening up opportunities for more research and co-operation.

She keeps the region informed of the team's findings through posters distributed around Iringa, and has asked for and accepted assistance from local scholars. Now the community is also looking for her help in establishing the historic sites as a tourist attraction that will benefit the region.

Willoughby says she feels fortunate to have the support of the Tanzanian people. She tells people it is a shared history she is uncovering, something she is honoured to be able to do.

"They're telling me, 'You're putting Iringa on the map,'" she said. "As long as they keep letting me work there, and keep letting the people working with me work there, we'll be happy."

Red Rain Revisit

We are revisiting the Red Rain phenomena. First it is the only specific phenom that does conform to the Panspermia hypothesis although one may presume an earlier report inspired the original hypothesis since the color red was associated with the idea.

This report informs us that integrity is retained up to 300 C. This excludes any Earth borne explanation unless it so happens that a slime mold gets up there and is cooked off. That does not work either because integrity at 300 C is difficult to achieve with carbon based molecules.

This now begs the question of why here unless it is simply unique. Then it is a case of simple luck.

What happened is that a meteorite burst took place in the Stratosphere and resultant material then descended onto Southern India as it was washed out of the lower atmosphere with rain over a period of several weeks. This is no longer controversial.

I conjecture that these cells are living travel cells that expel their contents on contact with water. Thus we get the yellow rain. We also see reports of what appear to be micro cells. In the meantime all components demonstrate auto-luminescence.

What this is is an outright demonstration of the transmittal of complex organic material through space.

Next time around, I suggest that we get up there and sample the material before it drifts down into the atmosphere. If this proves feasible then we should gain a lot of critical data.

I would love to know just what the cell walls are.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/science/red-rain-in-india-may-have-alien-origin-275252.html

A rare shower of red rain fell for about 15 minutes in the city of Kannur, Kerala, India, early on June 28. Local residents were perturbed, but this is not the first time the state has experienced colored rain.

This strange phenomenon was first recorded in Kerala a few hours after a meteor airburst in July 2001, when a space rock exploded in the atmosphere. More than 120 such rain showers were reported that year, including yellow, green, and black ones. [ it took a lot of time to leach out of the upper atmosphere were air flow is possibly no issue. This part of India just happened to be in the landing envelope - arclein ]

Astrobiologist Godfrey Louis, pro vice-chancellor at nearby Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), has studied samples of red rainwater in 2001 and discovered strange properties, including autofluorescence—light that is naturally emitted by cell structures like mitochondria.

Scientific analysis showed the striking red coloration is due to microscopic particles resembling biological cells, possibly originating from comet fragments.

Louis believes these cells could be extra-terrestrial because existing theories already hypothe

“Such comets can break into fragments as they near the sun during their travel along highly elliptical orbits,” he told The Epoch Times via email. “These fragments can remain in orbit and later can enter Earth’s atmosphere periodically.”

According to Louis, red particles in the atmosphere from a fragmented meteor probably seeded the red rain clouds.

###

A red cell as seen with transmission electron microscopy. (Godfrey Louis/CUSAT)

“There can be roughly of the order of 100 million cells in one liter of red rain water,” he said. “The red rain can appear like black coffee if the concentration of the cells increases in the rain water.”

These “alien” cells resemble normal cells, but lack conventional biological molecules like DNA, and are expected to have different biochemistry.

“Unlike other biological cells, these red rain microbes can withstand very high temperatures,” Louis explained. ”It is possible to culture them at temperatures as high as 300 degrees centigrade [572 degrees Fahrenheit].”

[ These are then surely not earth based but may be stratosphere based - arclein]

Even the toughest known heat-loving bacteria on Earth cannot withstand the same hot conditions as the red cells.

“Currently known conventional hyper-thermophilic microbes do not survive culturing beyond 122 degrees centigrade [252 degrees Fahrenheit].”

Louis has also studied yellow rain, and says it contains some unknown dissolved materials but no red cells.

“Yellow rain and red rain are related as both show an unusual characteristic: autofluorescence,” he said. “It is inferred that the materials dissolved in the yellow rain are the biological byproducts of these micro-organisms.”

Researchers are attempting to identify the molecular components in the red cells and to provide more insights into colored rain.

Read Louis’ research paper on the red rains in 2001 here.

Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala

Godfrey Louis & A. Santhosh Kumar

School of Pure and Applied Physics, Mahatma Gandhi University,

Kottayam – 686560, Kerala, India.

E-mail: godfreylouis@vsnl.com

Date: October 5, 2003

Red coloured rain occurred in many places of Kerala in India during July to September 2001 due to the mixing of huge quantity of microscopic red cells in the rainwater. Considering its correlation with a meteor airbust event, this phenomenon raised an extraordinary question whether the cells are extraterrestrial. Here we show how the observed features of the red rain phenomenon can be explained by considering the fragmentation and atmospheric disintegration of a fragile cometary body that presumably contains a dense collection of red cells. Slow settling of cells in the stratosphere explains the continuation of the phenomenon for two months. The red cells under study appear to be the resting spores of an extremophilic microorganism. Possible presence of these cells in the interstellar clouds is speculated from its similarity in UV absorption with the 217.5 nm UV extinction feature of interstellar clouds. Keywords: astrobiology, exobiology, panspermia, extraterrestrial life & red rain.

1. Introduction

Panspermia, the theory that the seeds of life are every where in the Universe has been gaining more support recently on the basis of several new findings. Modern version of panspermia considers comets as the delivery vehicles that spread life throughout a galaxy .

. Comets can protect cells from UV and cosmic radiation damage and cometscan drop cells high in the atmosphere to float gently down

. Paleogeochemical evidence show that life appeared on Earth as early as 3,800 million years ago or even before that, immediately following the Earths surface cooling. This gives too short a time for the evolution of life to take place from simple precursor molecules to the level of prokaryotic and photoautotropic cells and it leads to the argument that life has earlier originated elsewhere and then it was transported to primitive Earth

. There is evidence to show that microbial life can remain in a resting phase for millions of years, which can enable them to make long space travel

. There is also the possibility of liquid water in comets, which could support active life in comets

. Some of the observational data from comets have also been interpreted as evidence to prove biological content in2 Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala comets

. In the extreme conditions in comets, if not in active state, life can be expected to be present as spores. Spores in the dormant state, undergo no detectable metabolism and exhibit a high degree of resistance to inactivation by various physical insults

. Thus the most possible means by which microorganisms can arrive in a planet after a journey in space must be as spores. Considering the universal nature of biochemistry, the chemical makeup of extraterrestrial life forms can be expected to be similar to the one found on Earth.

Recently there have been a few claims of finding extraterrestrial life. McKey et al. have found structures similar to microfossils of nanobacteria in a Martian meteorite, which was interpreted as evidence for life in Mars. To test the idea of cometary panspermia, Narliker et al. have performed a stratospheric sample collection experiment using a balloon and found microorganisms in the air samples collected over Hyderabad in India at various heights up to 41 km. Wickramasinghe et al., argue that these microorganisms are of extraterrestrial origin and consider this finding as evidence to vindicate the idea of cometary panspermia.

In this paper we open a new finding in support of cometary panspermia. A study of the red rain phenomenon show that the microscopic cells that coloured the rainwater originated most possibly from a cometary meteor that disintegrated in the upper atmosphere above Kerala on 25^th July 2001. A physical study of the cells indicate that the cells are spores of an extremophilic microorganism and hence we argue that the red rain phenomenon of Kerala is a case of cometary panspermia and the red cells are the first clear example of life beyond Earth. Though this claim is extraordinary, there appears no other less extraordinary way to explain the mystery of red rain in Kerala.

The red rain Phenomenon

The mysterious red rain phenomenon occurred over different parts of Kerala, a State in India. The news reports of this phenomenon appeared in Nature and various newspapers and other media and are currently carried by several websites . The red coloured rain first occurred at Changanacherry in Kottayam district on 25^th July 2001 and continued to occur with diminishing frequency in Kottayam and other places in Kerala for about two months. The red colouring of the rainwater was found to be

entirely due to the p resence of tiny red cells about 10 micrometers in size, which appeared dispersed in rainwater. These cells had some similarity in appearance with alga cells. From the magnitude of the phenomenon, it can be estimated that several thousands of kilograms of these cells are required to be there in the atmosphere to [Godfrey Louis & A. Santhosh Kumar] account for all the red rain. From where the huge quantities of these cells originate and how they reach the rain clouds to cause red rain for two months is found to be a mystery. In majority of cases the colour of the rain was red. There were a few cases of yellow rain and rare unconfirmed cases of other colours like black, green, grey etc.

Coloured hailstones were another reported case. It is easy and non-controversial to dismiss this phenomenon without much study by stating some conventional, simple and unproved reasons like: dust from Sahara, pollen grains, volcanic dust from distant volcanoes, fungal spores from trees, algae from sea and factory pollution etc. But a closer examination of the features of this phenomenon and the properties of the cells show that these kinds of reasons are not valid.

A study of the distribution of the red rain incidences with location and time was done using the data available on this phenomenon. This data was mostly compiled from the reports that appeared in local leading Malayalam language newspapers, which have an extensive network of reporters covering all parts of Kerala. In many cases photographs of the collected rainwater were given with the news item. Being an unusual phenomenon the local press have given much importance to this. Still there can be

several cases where people have not reported the incidence to the press. Also there can be several cases, which went unobserved by the people, such as the cases, which occurred during night. But the available data is sufficient to show the trend and nature of the phenomenon (See supplementary information for a list of red rain incidences with time and place).

A plot (Fig.1a) of the number of coloured rain incidences in Kerala on different dates shows that about 75% of the total 124 listed cases occurred during the first 10 days. A plot (Fig.1b) of the average rainfall data of Kerala enclosing the coloured rain period from 25th July to 23^rd

September 2001, demonstrates that the coloured rain started suddenly during a period of rainfall in the State. Thus the cells are not something which accumulated in the atmosphere during a dry period and washed down on a first rain. It was found that several cases of red rain phenomenon have occurred on rainy days after and during normal rains. Thus it cannot be again assumed that the red cells came from some accumulation in the lower atmosphere. The vessels kept in open space also collected red rain. Thus it is not something that is washed out from rooftops or tree leaves. It appears as if the rain clouds in some region are suddenly mixed with red cells.

It may be argued that the cells arrived here, from a distant source like a desert in another part of the world, through some wind system. But in such a system it is hard to explain the repeated delivery of these cells to target over a few districts in Kerala for two months while not over other adjacent States in India, despite the changes in climatic conditions and wind pattern spanning over two months.

When the red rain reports are viewed in the background of the normal rainfall data the pattern that emerges is that of a sudden starting of red rain reports after 25^th July 2001 and then a gradual decay of reports with time. A gap in the red rain reports is due to the absence of rainfall in the State during that period. If cell clouds are created in the stratosphere at various heights by a mechanism of meteor fragmentation and disintegration then clouds of such cells can slowly settle down to the rain clouds to give such a pattern of red rain. This idea is elaborated with some actual calculations in the

next section.

The geographical distribution of the red rain cases (Fig.1c.) shows a clustering of cases in Kottayam and neighbouring districts like Pathanamthitta, Ernakulam, Idukki and Alappuzha with abrupt decrease towards the south and gradual decrease towards the north. This distribution over the geographical area can be explained by considering the path and the location of final airbust of the meteor. This idea is also elaborated in the following section.

***

Atlantean Subsidence

We have reached the point at which the Atlantean Subsidence can be characterized. Work here has pinpointed the event itself in time to 1159 BC. We established that it ended a sea based culture known as the Sea Peoples to the Egyptians and as the Atlanteans to us. This culture arose to principally trade in copper and other metals including gold and its existence generated an expansion of general global mining activity that lasted approximately one and one half thousand years. Its principal expression in archeology was palace based trading factories all over the globe.

This civilization provided the impulse for the first Chinese dynasty, the first apparent Indian civilization and surely Meso - America and the Andean and Amazonian cultures. I would also not rule out Sumeria and Egypt in all this as either part of the original emergence or at least driven by it. My point here is to recall the global impact of the European Nations of Spain and Portugal as well as Great Britain between 1500 and 1800, all before the industrial revolution made market access worthwhile.

The Atlanteans had 1500 years to pull it together and make themselves unassailable.

Their core cultural center was on their home islands which provided protection from barbarism. These home islands included Lyonese directly west of Ireland and of the same size, the Azores platform likely as large, the Bermuda Bank which was much larger and critically, the Cuban ridge which compares to Japan.

This whole complex, linked to the Atlantic Ridge and the orthogonal Cuban Ridge was vulnerable to additional subsidence after the Pleistocene Nonconformity in 11900 BC. The trigger was the ongoing removal of the northern Ice Cap which resulted in the steady rise of the Hudson Bay platform and the transmission of hydrostatic change southward in particular.

This massive subsidence took place in 1159 BC and by its nature took the day and night that is reported in the cultural records. The west end of Cuba appears to have dropped a full mile. Lesser amounts are noted elsewhere. The Bahama Bank likely dropped modestly as it is part of the continent. As far as the Atlantic Ridge is concerned, we need to locate cultural artifacts such as we uncovered in Cuba to determine the magnitude.

My expectation though is that the worst part of the subsidence was centered on the Cuban Ridge and the Gulf of Mexico and the effects were substantially contained there. Recall that the Bahama Bank extends from Mid Florida to the Cuban Coast.

In short, the subsidence was way larger and more extensive than imagined just as the scope of the Atlantean empire was way larger and more influential than imagined. If I have learned anything though it is that it does not pay to be conservative on this at all and lack of evidence merely means we have not looked.

Hawthorne Effect on Productivity

What mystery? The reality is that people do take pride in their work and respond well if you show them that you are observing them. This inevitably results in increasing productivity as the employees themselves improve their skills. It soon becomes a game with internal feedback. Yet all that is necessary is to been seen doing something that allows the employee to be seen.

People love competition and the worst most boring repetitive task becomes pleasant when turned into a game. Better still, just how many folks would spend any time throwing a baseball for wages and no recognition and no game involved. Were do you think their productivity would go? Now if we could apply this insight to picking raspberries and a few other thrilling tasks about the farm.

Good management knows this although it is often because the manger in question is a natural social organizer. If not, then the manger must make himself pay attention and cause appropriate activities to take place. It is never enough to simply grind the numbers.

The lasting mystery of the Hawthorne Effect

Esther Inglis-Arkell

http://io9.com/5968356/the-lasting-mystery-of-the-hawthorne-effect

The Hawthorne Effect is cited by both business experts and psychology experts, but rarely in the same way. Some say it's real, some that it's real but misinterpreted, and then others that it doesn't exist and never has. It all started with an attempt to increase productivity at a factory in the 1920s, and we've been arguing about it ever since. What does it mean? You tell us.

The story of the Hawthorne Effect begins in the 1920s, when productivity studies began at the Hawthorne Works electrical equipment factory in Illinois. They continued for the better part of a decade, with investigators tweaking nearly every aspect of working life. They changed the break schedule, the length of the working day, even the climate conditions. The most famous segments of the Hawthorne Works project were the so-called Illumination Studies, where investigators brightened the lights in the factory. Productivity increased. They brightened them some more. Productivity increased. They brightened them yet again. Productivity increased. They dimmed the lights until the factory was darker than it had ever been before. Productivity increased.

There were few things that researchers did that could decrease productivity. Surprisingly, they found that one of the few things that did was a series of small pay raises, but soon found that the workers had gotten together and planned to decrease their productivity because they thought the combination of heightened productivity and a little extra cash for people meant that the higher-ups were going to fire some extraneous workers. Shortening the working day by too long decreased overall productivity as well, although hourly productivity increased with shorter hours. Mostly, according to the original interpreters of the experiments, it seems that any meddling caused productivity to go up.

For many scientists this was an example of the bias that comes from people's understanding that they are part of an experiment. No matter how much researchers might try to make experiments controlled, they can rarely control for the fact that the people involved know they are being experimented on. Business managers and practical psychologists took a different view - or rather a few different views. Some believed that the constant signs that they were being watched kept workers productive. Some thought that it was the knowledge that they were part of an experiment made workers feel that their job was important, and so they worked harder. Others thought that the change itself kept the day fresh. Elton Mayo, who was one of the people who coined the term, "The Hawthorne Effect," believed that the sympathy and communication that the researchers gave to the workers might have made them more productive.

Many modern researchers consider the Hawthorne Effect no more than a myth. There are quite a few problems with the study. For one thing, in some cases workers received productivity reports, and often worked towards known productivity goals, which may have influenced them more than the trivial changes in working conditions. As for the famous illumination studies, most of the data on them was lost or destroyed; they became more anecdotal than anything else. When a copy of the data was found on microfilm, analysts noted that the lighting levels were changed on Sunday, the day off for workers. Monday was more productive than the Saturday before. However, Mondays were always more productive than the final days of the last week, even if no changes were implemented. The jump in the output numbers was largely due to the day of the week, not the change in the conditions. The most famous result of the study may have been entirely fictitious.

Which was not to say that the study was necessarily useless. The long-term factory workers who had been there for the long years of the studies did improve their performance with much coaching and eight years of practice in making electrical equipment under many different conditions. And a lot of modern medical facilities implement Hawthorne-influenced policies in which they let workers know that they'll be keeping track of certain medical problems - for example, infection rates - and see a drop in infection and an increase in cleanliness protocols. When people know someone, somewhere, will be taking note, they are more apt to change their behavior. But if any random change or hint of watchfulness has an effect on workers, no one knows. If the Hawthorne Effect holds true, there are few ways to test it. What do you think?

Self Assembling Life

The problem is naturally dual in nature and yet all the inherent components are available in part or in whole. Just how does a bucket of nuts and bolts self assemble into an aware state?

Can we even imagine a least action? Playing around with zeolites, we can work up self catalytic environments to generate a lot of complex molecules. So how does it resolve into a chemical version of the mathematical game of Life?

Because we can in fact emulate the situation in two dimensions it is a simple imaginative extension to project the production of increasingly complex molecules. Yet we are going to have to get it right and then observe it in action. Going from there to self replicating DNA has to take time and encasing it all inside a organic bubble a great deal more complexity. Yet it may turn out to be easy.

I am sure that the tools exist and what is left is the time and best conditions and really good imaging tools to sort out wheat from chaff.

ASU researchers propose new way to look at the dawn of life

by Staff Writers

Tempe AZ (SPX) Dec 18, 2012

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/ASU_researchers_propose_new_way_to_look_at_the_dawn_of_life_999.html

One of the great mysteries of life is how it began. What physical process transformed a nonliving mix of chemicals into something as complex as a living cell?

For more than a century, scientists have struggled to reconstruct the key first steps on the road to life. Until recently, their focus has been trained on how the simple building blocks of life might have been synthesized on the early Earth, or perhaps in space. But because it happened so long ago, all chemical traces have long been obliterated, leaving plenty of scope for speculation and disagreement.

Now, a novel approach to the question of life's origin, proposed by two Arizona State University scientists, attempts to dramatically redefine the problem.

The researchers - Paul Davies, an ASU Regents' Professor and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and Sara Walker, a NASA post-doctoral fellow at the Beyond Center - published their theory in the current issue (Dec. 12) of the Royal Society journal Interface. Their article is titled "The algorithmic origins of life."

In a nutshell, the authors shift attention from the "hardware" - the chemical basis of life - to the "software" - its information content. To use a computer analogy, chemistry explains the material substance of the machine, but it won't function without a program and data.

Davies and Walker suggest that the crucial distinction between non-life and life is the way that living organisms manage the information flowing through the system.

"When we describe biological processes we typically use informational narratives - cells send out signals, developmental programs are run, coded instructions are read, genomic data are transmitted between generations and so forth," Walker said. "So identifying life's origin in the way information is processed and managed can open up new avenues for research."

"We propose that the transition from non-life to life is unique and definable," added Davies. "We suggest that life may be characterized by its distinctive and active use of information, thus providing a roadmap to identify rigorous criteria for the emergence of life.

"This is in sharp contrast to a century of thought in which the transition to life has been cast as a problem of chemistry, with the goal of identifying a plausible reaction pathway from chemical mixtures to a living entity."

Focusing on informational development helps move away from some of the inherent disadvantages of trying to pin down the beginnings of chemical life.

"Chemical based approaches," Walker said, "have stalled at a very early stage of chemical complexity - very far from anything we would consider 'alive.' More seriously they suffer from conceptual shortcomings in that they fail to distinguish between chemistry and biology."

"To a physicist or chemist life seems like 'magic matter,'" Davies explained. "It behaves in extraordinary ways that are unmatched in any other complex physical or chemical system. Such lifelike properties include autonomy, adaptability and goal-oriented behavior - the ability to harness chemical reactions to enact a pre-programmed agenda, rather than being a slave to those reactions."

"We believe the transition in the informational architecture of chemical networks is akin to a phase transition in physics, and we place special emphasis on the top-down information flow in which the system as a whole gains causal purchase over its components," Davies added.

"This approach will reveal how the logical organization of biological replicators differs crucially from trivial replication associated with crystals (non-life). By addressing the causal role of information directly, many of the baffling qualities of life are explained."

The authors expect that, by re-shaping the conceptual landscape in this fundamental way, not just the origin of life, but other major transitions will be explained, for example, the leap from single cells to multi-cellularity.

In addition to being a post-doctoral Fellow at the Beyond Center, Walker is affiliated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and the Blue Marble Space Institute, Seattle.

Bee Tales

This is one more kick at this cat. The attempt to avoid the reality continues and will not end until the beekeeping industry launches a class action suit against Bayer in particular and all other found ins. They do not even try to create compelling controversy anymore. Ignoring it seems good enough.

I am sure that bee keepers are now doing their own checking before they set out hives in order to minimize the risk of exposure. That may be good enough in most cases and the farmers will be working around it all also. That could also be the reason things have quieted down.

It is hard to understand how anyone thought that a persistent pesticide background would fail to be concentrated by foraging bees except as wishful thinking.

Study Links Pesticides to Bumblebee Destruction…Again

by Elizabeth Renter

December 13th, 2012

http://naturalsociety.com/study-links-pesticides-bumblebee-destruction/

In today’s news from the desk of Captain Obvious—scientists have found that pesticides may be contributing to the decline in bumblebees. Yes, apparently we needed another study for this. That study, led by biologists with the University of London, looked at what happened to bees in areas where different crops are sprayed with pesticides. What they found could explain why bumblebee colonies are failing.

According to Raw Story, the study was particularly important because it looked at what happened to bees following pesticide exposure for four weeks. Current industry guidelines in the testing of pesticides for safety, only require 96 hours.

The bees were divided into four groups. Three had access to feeder boxes with a sugary syrup spiked with either imidacloprid insecticide or a filter paper with gamma-cyhalothrin on it. The bees were not forced into these boxes, but the boxes were left in the path of the bees, around landscaping for pollen-foraging. The fourth group of bees was a control group, having no access to the chemicals.

All of the bees who were allowed access to the pesticides showed negative results. Those colonies who had contact with imidacloprid were less likely to return to the nest after foraging. Also, the larvae in that colony was less likely to mature to adult bumblebees, suggesting the adult bees brought home the chemicals to the immature insects.

The other group exposed to chemicals, in this case gamma-cyhalothrin, experienced a higher death rate. In both colonies exposed to pesticides, the colonies were more likely to fail.

While this study, published in Nature, was only conducted on bumblebees (the big fuzzy ones), the same results would be likely in other bee varieties—specifically honey bees, whose colonies are much larger.

“Our findings have clear implications for the conservation of insect pollinators in areas of agricultural intensification, particularly social bees, with their complex social organisation and dependence on a critical threshold of workers,” said researchers.

And of course this isn’t the only evidence linking pesticides with bee collapse. Another study confirms that the bee population decline is also linked to corn insecticides that are among the most widely used in the world. The study sheds more light on the rampant downfall of the bee population through mass die-offs, also known as colony collapse disorder, with the researchers noting that an increase in bee deaths began to be observed as soon as the insecticide was put into use.

Bees are the pollinators of the vast majority of plant life. They are said to account for 80% of pollination by insects. And with populations dropping, it’s crucial that people in power take note of studies like this and take steps to remedy the declining numbers.

But, as we reported in April, Monsanto, the company responsible for keeping GMO crops front and center, will be doing their best to bury any links between bee populations and pesticides. Last year they actually bought out a bee research company, Beeologics, to ensure they had input into any potentially damaging information that would come out of the bee world.  This company was recognized as one of the leaders in the world on bee research. Now, however, they have fallen under Monsanto’s spell and their objectivity has been lost.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/study-links-pesticides-bumblebee-destruction/#ixzz2ExgwnijF

Bigfoot is Real

This is a decade old article and it is timely, as it displays the show evolution of scientific acceptance.  Today we are in possession of detailed DNA information that makes this creature not only real but also part human in terms of its ancestry.

A key point is that science is slowly beginning to pay attention.

My own experience began in the mid nineties when I decide to simply go through the available data to see were it led.  It led to a fresh understanding of a proper theoretical foundation for scientific method as well as a powerful case for the reality of Big Foot.  What in fact came out is that with enough data, a surprisingly clear picture will emerge from which testable inferences and questions may be drawn to be confirmed by later sightings.

I then applied the method to what is turning out to be a host of curious data points on other creatures begging for something other that lazy dismissal.  It turns out that Nessie is odd and unique until you discover hundreds of conforming lakes throughout the Northern and Southern Hemispheres all happily general their own local version of the tale.  Again all the data is local and the observers are alone unique while the necessary conditions are common but often outside human interaction.

In the meantime far too many scientists are asked for opinions that they have no right to provide.  Unfortunately too many do opine instead of stating that the data is insufficient and they personally do not care which would be an exact truth.

The Bigfoot phenomenon has now entered a state in which contact has become both plausible and possible.  It will be possible to speak to them.  We need some young researchers to pull a Jane Goodall project.  Several excellent targets now exist.

We even have all the necessary hardware to assist.

Bigfoot Is Real

Stefan Lovgren

National Geographic News

October 23, 2003

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.ca/2012/12/forensic-expert-says-bigfoot-is-real.html

It's been the subject of campfire stories for decades. A camera-elusive, grooming-challenged, bipedal ape-man that roams the mountain regions of North America. Some call it Sasquatch. Others know it as Bigfoot.Thousands of people claim to have seen the hairy hominoid, but the evidence of its existence is fuzzy. There are few clear photographs of the oversized beast. No bones have ever been found. Countless pranksters have admitted to faking footprints. 

Yet a small but vociferous number of scientists remain undeterred. Risking ridicule from other academics, they propose that there's enough forensic evidence to warrant something that has never been done: a comprehensive, scientific study to determine if the legendary primate actually exists.

"Given the scientific evidence that I have examined, I'm convinced there's a creature out there that is yet to be identified," said Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University in Pocatello.

Thousands of Sightings

Sasquatch stories go back centuries. Tales of mythical giant apes lurk in the oral traditions of most Native American tribes, as well as in Europe and Asia. The Himalaya has its Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti. In Australia, Bigfoot is known as the Yowie Man.Bigfoot advocates hypothesize that the primate is the offspring of an ape from Asia that wandered to North America during the Ice Age. They believe there are at least 2,000 ape men walking upright in North America's woods today.An adult male is said to be at least 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall, weigh 800 pounds (360 kilograms), and have feet twice the size of a human's. The creatures are described as shy and nocturnal, and their diets consist mostly of berries and fruits.Matt Moneymaker had been searching for Bigfoot for years. In the woods of eastern Ohio, he claims he finally came eye to eye with the elusive primate."It was 2 o'clock in the morning and the moon was a quarter full," recalled Moneymaker. "Suddenly, there he was, an eight-foot-tall creature, standing 15 feet away, growling at me. He wanted to let me know I was in the wrong place."Moneymaker, who lives in Dana Point in southern California, is a lawyer who runs his own marketing agency. In his spare time, he leads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a network of more than 3,000 people who claim to have seen the Sasquatch.Unfortunately, no one has been able to snap a clear picture of the beast.

Perhaps the most compelling photographic evidence of Bigfoot is a controversial short film shot by Roger Patterson in 1967, which appears to document a female Bigfoot striding along a riverbank in northern California.

"It certainly wasn't human"

Now, Bigfoot advocates are increasingly turning to forensic evidence to prove the existence of the giant creature.

Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger- and footprints, has analyzed the more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Meldrum, the Idaho State professor, keeps in a laboratory.Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla in Washington State has convinced him that Bigfoot is real."The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen," he said. "It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin."Meldrum, meanwhile, says a 400-pound (180-kilogram) block of plaster known as the Skookum Cast provides further evidence of Bigfoot's existence. The cast was made in September 2000 from an impression of a large animal that had apparently lain down on its side to retrieve some fruit next to a mud hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. Meldrum says the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, buttocks, an Achilles tendon and heel. "It's 40 to 50 percent bigger than a normal human," he said. "The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal."A few academics believe Meldrum could be right.Renowned chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall last year surprised an interviewer from National Public Radio when she said she was sure that large, undiscovered primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, exist.

The Skeptics

But the vast majority of scientists still believe Bigfoot is little more than supermarket tabloid fodder. They wonder why no Bigfoot has ever been captured, dead or alive."The bottom line is, they don't have a body," said Michael Dennett, who writes for Skeptical Inquirer magazine and who has followed the Bigfoot debate for 20 years.Bigfoot buffs note that it's rare to find a carcass of a grizzly bear in the wild. While that's true, grizzlies have not escaped photographic documentation.Hair samples that have been recovered from alleged Bigfoot encounters have turned out to come from elk, bears or cows.Many of the sightings and footprints, meanwhile, have proved to be hoaxes.After Bigfoot tracker Ray Wallace died in a California nursing home last year, his children finally announced that their prank-loving dad had created the modern myth of Bigfoot when he used a pair of carved wooden feet to create a track of giant footprints in a northern California logging camp in 1958.Dennett says he's not surprised by the flood of Bigfoot sightings."It's the same kind of eyewitness reports we see for the Loch Ness Sea Monster, UFOs, ghosts, you name it," he said. "The monster thing is a universal product of the human mind. We hear such stories from around the world."

Cancer Communication Breakthgrough

This is unexpected. Everyone thought that an errant cell took of and spread by multiplying. How about simply converting neighbors as well if not mostly. The way cancer does spread is quick and this trick makes that process possible as well as its rapid spread in the body.

The hard question is to actually stop the process itself to also stall the growth and spreading behavior in its tracks. Not as satisfactory as an outright cure but it would still work very well in saving lives.

In the meantime we have a major new research avenue.

Canadian scientists discover how cancer cells communicate with healthy cells in major breakthrough

Sheryl Ubelacker, Canadian Press | Dec 21, 2012

http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/12/21/canadian-scientists-discover-how-cancer-cells-communicate-with-healthy-cells-in-major-breakthrough/

TORONTO — Canadian scientists have made a major discovery about how cancer spreads: tumour cells appear to co-opt normal cells around them, in effect “talking” them into helping the cancer set up shop in other parts of the body.

The process, called metastasis, is what often makes malignancies so challenging to treat — and typically more deadly.

“People often think of cancer as this separate tissue, sort of like a foreign invader, a thing that’s sitting inside that’s separate from their normal body,” said principal investigator Jeff Wrana, a molecular biologist at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto.

“But, in fact, the cancers are intimately communicating in a dialogue with the normal cells around them,” he said. “So basically, the normal cells are passing signals to the tumour cells and the tumour cells are passing signals to the normal cells.”

Working with human breast cancer cells in the lab, Wrana and colleagues found that tumour cells get sets of instructions in the form of protein “messages” passed between healthy and cancerous cells.

It’s been known for a while that communication existed between these cell types, but it was thought it was akin to “words” or incomplete “sentences.”

‘We discovered that the normal cells were basically sending an entire paragraph of instructions to the tumour cells’

“But what we discovered was that the normal cells were basically sending an entire paragraph of instructions to the tumour cells,” said Wrana.

“And these instructions were actually telling the tumour cells how to use its own machinery to invade and metastasize, to spread throughout the body.”

The protein that does the talking is part of tiny fragments of cells called exosomes. In cancer, the tumour cell releases exosomes to influence neighbouring cells — and those nearby normal cells secrete exosomes that help tumour cells to spread.

‘The tumour cells are kind of tweaking the normal cells and making them misbehave’

“The tumour cells are kind of tweaking the normal cells and making them misbehave,” explained Wrana. “Then these normal cells start producing things that actually help the tumour cell.”

The researchers, who were at first surprised and skeptical of their finding, also looked for the phenomenon in lab mice bred as a model for human breast cancer.

They found the communication between normal and tumour cells also occurred in the animals. And Wrana said the same process would go on in people.

Handout/Mount Sinai Hospital/Canadian PressJeff Wrana, a molecular biologist at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto, says members of his research team were at first surprised and skeptical of their finding, but also looked for the phenomenon in lab mice bred as a model for human breast cancer. They found the communication between normal and tumour cells also occurred in the animals. And Wrana said the same process would go on in people.

“And it’s that spreading metastases, for instance to the lung, that is the cause of death for a vast number of cancer patients.”

Metastases that originate from a primary cancer site in other organs — for instance, a prostate tumour that transfers its cells into bone —likely are activated in a similar way, said Wrana, whose lab will next look for this cell-to-cell dialogue in invasive bladder cancer.

He said the discovery of the exosomes’ role is important because it gives researchers a new treatment target: “If we can interfere with that, then we can block the ability of the cancer cells to spread out of the primary site.”

The research team is looking to develop drugs known as biologics that would block this signal pathway between cells.

“Instead of only targeting the primary tumour, we can now pinpoint the cells in the tumour’s environment that are responding to the tumour and target those too,” said Valbona Luga, a co-author of the study published Thursday in the journal Cell.

“We hope to use our new knowledge of the tumour’s immediate surroundings to intercept its signals to cancer cells, and by doing so, drastically impede tumour spreading,” she said.