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Geologists discover `dinosaur dance floor'
23 October 2008
23 October 2008
By MIKE STARK,Associated Press Writer AP -
Wednesday, October 22
SALT LAKE CITY - Geologists say they have discovered prehistoric animal tracks so densely packed on a 3/4-acre site that they're calling it a "dinosaur dance floor."
The site along the Arizona-Utah state line offers a rich new set of clues about the lives of dinosaurs 190 million years ago.
Back then, large stretches of the West were a Sahara-like desert. More than 1,000 tracks were found in what would have been a watery oasis nestled among towering, wind-whipped sand dunes.
The footprints could provide fodder for researchers trying to understand dinosaurs that survived in what many considered a "vast, dry, uninhabitable desert," said Marjorie Chan, professor of geology at the University of Utah and one of the authors of a new study of the site.
"Maybe it really wasn't as lifeless as we think," Chan said Monday.
The discovery adds yet another site to the region's long list of dinosaur hot spots. The difference, though, is sheer numbers. Scientists estimate there are more than 1,000 tracks at the site, which is in a protected area of Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.
In some places, there are a dozen footprints in a square yard.
"It was a place that attracted a crowd, kind of like a dance floor," Chan said.
Researchers identified four different kinds of tracks in the rock but haven't determined the specific species that left them behind.
Some of the footprints _ once thought to be potholes formed by erosion _ measure 16 inches across and have three toes and a heel. Others are smaller and more circular.
The area also includes what researchers think are rare tail drag marks.
Winston Seiler, who studied the site for a master's thesis, said the area might have been a popular gathering spot for adults and youngsters alike. It could have been one of many where Early Jurassic dinosaurs stopped for refreshment before moving along.
Seiler imagines dinosaurs were "happy to be at this place, having wandered up and down many a sand dune, exhausted from the heat and the blowing sand, relieved and happy to come to a place where there was water."
The study's findings were published in the October issue of the journal Palaios.
"It's an exciting site and deserving of a lot more work," said Jim Kirkland, Utah's state paleontologist, who was not involved with the study.
He hopes paleontologists begin a large-scale survey of the site to better understand what's there and what stories the tracks might tell.
Dinosaur tracks can provide important insight about dinosaur behavior and movements across the landscape, said Andrew Milner, paleontologist at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in southwestern Utah.
The newly discovered site, about three miles from the nearest road, is part of a protected wilderness area that also includes a geologic formation called "The Wave" _ a gallery of striped, twisted sandstone.
Twenty permits are issued each day to enter the area. Linda Price, the monument's manager, expects interest in the area will jump with word of the dinosaur track site.
___
On the Net:
http://www.utah.edu
Dinosaur Photos Slideshow
Source: Yahoo News
Sleepy brain prone to sudden shutdowns study
29 May 2008
29 May 2008
P.S: I'm not trying to say anything but I really think 'Some Guy' should read this. =X Labels: News
By Julie Steenhuysen
Tue May 20, 6:53 PM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Being deprived of sleep even for one night makes the brain unstable and prone to sudden shutdowns akin to a power failure -- brief lapses that hover between sleep and wakefulness, researchers said on Tuesday.
"It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly," said David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"Imagine you are sitting in a room watching a movie with the lights on. In a stable brain, the lights stay on all the time. In a sleepy brain, the lights suddenly go off," Dinges said in a telephone interview.
The findings suggest that people who are sleep-deprived alternate between periods of near-normal brain function and dramatic lapses in attention and visual processing.
"This involves more structures changing than we've ever seen before, but changing just during these lapses," Dinges said.
He and colleagues did brain imaging studies on 24 adults who performed simple tasks involving visual attention when they were well rested and when they had missed a night's sleep.
The researchers used a type of brain imaging known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which measures blood flow in the brain.
They found significant, momentary lapses in several areas of the brain, which seemed to frequently falter when the people were deprived of sleep, but not when these same people were well rested.
"These people are not lying in bed. They are sitting up doing a task they learned and they are working very hard at doing their best," Dinges said.
He said the lapses seem to suggest that loss of sleep renders the brain incapable of fully fending off the involuntary drive to sleep.
He said the study makes it clear how dangerous sleep deprivation can be while driving on the highway, when even a four-second lapse could lead to a major accident.
"These are not just academic interests," he said.
(Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)
Source: Yahoo News
Vatican scientist says belief in God and aliens is OK
By Philip Pullella Labels: News
Wed May 14, 4:59 AM ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of "extraterrestrial brothers" perhaps more evolved than humans.
"In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.
"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.
Asked if he was referring to beings similar to humans or even more evolved than humans, he said: "Certainly, in a universe this big you can't exclude this hypothesis."
In the interview headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," he said he saw no conflict between belief in such beings and faith in God.
"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.
"Why can't we speak of a 'brother extraterrestrial'? It would still be part of creation," he said.
Funes, who runs the observatory which is based south of Rome and in Arizona, held out the possibility that the human race might actually be the "lost sheep" of the universe.
"There could be (other beings) who remained in full friendship with their creator," he said.
THE "BIG BANG?"
Christians have sometimes been at odds with scientists over whether the Bible should be read literally and issues such as creationism versus evolution have been hotly debated for decades.
The Inquisition condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church did not rehabilitate him until 1992.
Funes said dialogue between faith and science could be improved if scientists learned more about the Bible and the Church kept more up to date with scientific progress.
Funes, an Argentine, said he believed as an astronomer that the most likely explanation for the start of the universe was "the big bang," the theory that it sprang into existence from dense matter billions of years ago.
But he said this was not in conflict with faith in God as a creator. "God is the creator. There is a sense to creation. We are not children of an accident ...," he said.
"As an astronomer, I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the product of something casual but children of a good father who has a project of love in mind for us," he said.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella, editing by Richard Balmforth)
Source: Yahoo News
Jerks Are All Around...
09 April 2008
09 April 2008
Documents: Sect married girls at puberty Labels: News
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 9, 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
ELDORADO, Texas - A polygamist compound with hundreds of children was rife with sexual abuse, child welfare officials allege in court documents, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.
The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that
triggered the raid, by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, officials still aren't sure where the girl is.
Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the compound in Eldorado.
Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Another 139 women left on their own.
"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.
McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children.
Patrick Peranteau, lawyer for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
An unknown number of men and women church members were at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday the adults were not being held, but if they left the compound, they could not return while the search continued.
At least two FBI agents were seen entering the back entrance of the temple on Tuesday.
Spokesmen for the FBI and DPS declined to comment.
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit said.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would "beat and hurt" her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.
The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her, and that she was several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to "the outsiders' world" but didn't know where.
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls' husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have sex with lots of men."
At the end of the call, she began to cry.
Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was among the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate allegations of abuse.
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, "resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators," the affidavit said.
Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed closets as a form of discipline, the affidavit said.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. The children are likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities 54 years ago in a similar raid.
That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known — an event that decades later a former community member recalls as traumatizing.
"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when authorities raided the remote community of Short Creek — now known as the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Authorities took 200 children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of polygamy."
Bistline, who is now a Mormon, was not rounded up in the 1953 raid, but the woman he married later in life was 15 when she and her seven siblings were shipped to Phoenix, pulled from the friends and family who constituted their whole world. Nearly two years passed before they were allowed to return, he said.
Most of the current sect members are descended from families from the Arizona-Utah community. The sect broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.
The 1953 Short Creek raid also changed the community, said Carolyn Jessop, the former wife of the man believed to be running the Eldorado compound.
The distinct pioneer-style dresses, worn over long underwear year-round and sewn by the women, became part of the dress code after the 1953 raid as each generation added more restrictions, said Jessop, who left the community five years ago.
Despite the new hardships for the children and women in Texas, Bistline said the raid is appropriate if children are being forced into marriages.
"This situation in Texas is a justifiable raid," he said.
But an FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, had a different view.
"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last year.
The Texas investigation is the state's first with FLDS, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.
Authorities investigating the Eldorado compound have described FLDS members as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and living quarters has triggered some trouble.
On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of felony tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger.
He declined to give details on the arrests or how Levi Barlow Jeffs might be related to the FLDS leader.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders have filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.
___
Associated Press writer Betsey Blaney contributed to this report from Lockney and Associated Press photographer Tony Gutierrez contributed to this report from Eldorado.
Source: Yahoo News
Polygamist compound raid nets 401 children, 133 women
AFP - Wednesday, April 9
ELDORADO, Texas (AFP) - - Texas state authorities have removed more than 400 children from the secluded, sprawling compound of a polygamist sect, amid allegations of widespread sexual and physical abuse.
The tally could rise as authorities search the 1,700 acre (688 hectare) ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, led by jailed Warren Jeffs, who is considered the sect's prophet.
A judge has ordered every child removed from the ranch because they were deemed at imminent risk of harm.
Some 133 women dressed in ankle-length dresses voluntarily left the compound with the children. Most were mothers.
"I can't speculate on what those women are feeling," said Marleigh Meisner, spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services, which is conducting the probe.
More than 200 CPS workers were brought into the small town of Eldorardo, Texas to conduct one-on-one interviews.
"You can imagine this is a whole new world for them and we're trying to be sensitive to that," Meisner told a press conference.
Meisner would not describe what type of abuse allegedly took place on the ranch but said a judge determined there was sufficient evidence to order all 401 children into temporary state custody.
Court hearings will be held in the next two weeks to determine whether the children should be permanently taken from their parents.
"There were allegations of physical abuse, allegations that these children were at risk of harm," she said.
In court filings Monday lawyers for the religious sect asked for a restraining order against the state, called the raid unconstitutional and an "irreparable" desecration of the group's way of life.
The women and children were temporarily housed in an old Army fort that is now a museum in the nearby town of San Angelo, as state resources were stretched to the limit to accommodate the unprecedented case.
The children have lived a life devoid of popular culture, one in which the outside world is considered evil, people familiar with the sect said.
In assigning case workers and potential foster families, "they're going to need a lot of people that understand their culture and history," said Sam Brower, a private investigator who has visited the secluded compound.
"They're trying to communicate with people that have lived out their lives in a cave, basically -- very, very isolated," he said.
One person was arrested and charged with interfering with the "duties of a public servant," the Texas Department of Public Safety said, but no other charges have yet been filed.
State police sealed off the compound and would not allow the men to leave, although they have been conducting their search with care in order to ease tensions.
"We have tried very hard to be sensitive to the folks at the ranch," said DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange.
More than 80 people were killed, including 22 children, in a botched 1993 raid on a religious compound in Waco, Texas.
The operation began Thursday after authorities received a call from a 16-year-old girl who said she had been sexually and physically abused and had given birth to a child fathered by her 50-year-old husband.
Authorities have not yet identified the girl among those bused off the ranch.
Tensions rose on Saturday when church members blocked authorities from searching their temple in an hours-long standoff, but police were eventually allowed in without incident.
The YFZ (Yearn For Zion) ranch, 255 miles (411 kilometers) southwest of Dallas, Texas, is linked to Jeffs, an avowed polygamist who is now behind bars.
Jeffs was arrested near Las Vegas in 2006 and jailed for life for being an accomplice to rape. He also faces federal charges in Arizona and Utah.
The vast Texas ranch was bought by the sect in 2003 and has been kept under surveillance by the authorities. It has about 30 to 35 residential buildings -- some as large as 32,000 square feet (2,973 square meters) -- and another 30 outbuildings.
The mainstream Mormon church -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- renounced polygamy more than a century ago as a price of Utah's admission to the United States.
It now excommunicates members who engage in the practice and disavows any connection with the FLDS church.
Members of the FLDS church are known to live in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota and British Columbia.
Source: Yahoo News
Why are females always the victim of those jerks?? Why are there always jerks around the world??? >_<
Human Are Getting Insame Ard D World
Read the Yahoo news and came across the following articles. Labels: News
1) Teens who are 'Sicked' with their mind
8 teens charged in videotaped attack
Tue Apr 8, 9:39 AM ET
LAKELAND, Fla. - Eight teenagers have been arrested on charges alleging they beat another teen in an "animalistic attack" so they could make a videotape to post on YouTube.
Seven of them remained in juvenile detention Tuesday, authorities said. A boy who was charged as an adult had been released on bail.
Victoria Lindsay was attacked on March 30 by six teenage girls when she arrived at a friend's home, authorities said.
One of the girls struck the 16-year-old victim on the head several times and then slammed her head into a wall, knocking her unconscious, according to an arrest report.
Later, according to a clip of the video that was released by the Polk County sheriff's office, the teens can be seen blocking a door and hitting Victoria.
"It's absolutely an animalistic attack," Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday on NBC's "Today." "They lured her into the home for express purpose of filming the attack and posting it on the Internet."
Victoria's father, Patrick Lindsay, said the teens intended to post the video on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.
Christina Garcia, mother of one of the defendants, said her daughter had turned the tape over to police.
The sheriff's office said that after the attack, three of the teens forced the victim into a vehicle and drove her to another location, where she was told she would be given a worse beating if she contacted police.
All eight suspects were arrested April 2 and charged with battery and false imprisonment. The three teens who took Lindsay to the second location are also charged with felony kidnapping.
Lindsay was treated for a concussion, damage to her left eye and left ear, and numerous bruises, police said.
Source: Yahoo News
2) People SHOULD NOT Marry and Give Birth If you do not even care about anything
Pa. girl hit with game controller dies
Wed Apr 9, 1 hour, 12 minutes ago
YORK, Pa. - A 2-year-old girl died after being beaten with a video game controller by her mother's boyfriend, police said Tuesday. Darisabel Baez's mother overheard the beating Sunday but did nothing until she realized the girl was unconscious, police said.
The girl was pronounced dead late Monday at Hershey Medical Center, police Lt. Ron Camacho said.
Homicide was added to the list of charges against Harve L. Johnson on Tuesday; he was already in jail on counts including aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.
The girl's mother, Neida E. Baez, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
It was clear from the bruises and other injuries on the little girl's body that Sunday was not the first time she had been abused, Dauphin County coroner Graham Hetrick told WGAL-TV. He said it was one of the worst cases of child abuse he has ever seen.
Baez, 19, called for an ambulance Sunday and said Johnson had brought the unconscious child to her, limp and wet from an attempt to revive her in a bathtub, a police affidavit said.
Johnson, 26, acknowledged beating the girl with a video game controller but did not say why, police said. Baez said Johnson had abused the girl in the past and that she heard the girl scream after Johnson beat her Sunday, according to the affidavit.
Detective Dana Ward said Baez was charged because she did not intervene or try to get help for Darisabel.
Johnson and Baez remained in custody Tuesday. His bail was set at $200,000; hers was $25,000.
Through police, family members declined requests for interviews Tuesday. Court officials said they did not know whether Johnson and Baez had lawyers to speak for them.
Source: Yahoo News
Teens turn deaf ear to risks of MP3 players
28 March 2008
28 March 2008
Reuters - Thursday, March 27 Labels: News
NEW YORK - Teenagers seem to know that loud music can damage their hearing, yet most see no reason to lower the volume on their iPods, a small study suggests.
In focus-group discussions with students at two high schools in the Netherlands, researchers found that the teens were generally aware that blasting an MP3 player could harm their hearing. Yet most said they usually played their own device at maximum volume and had no plans to change that.
Like many teenagers, the students often denied their own personal risk. Most knew the general hazards of loud music, but believed they had a "low personal vulnerability" to hearing loss, the researchers report in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Given this, lead researcher Ineke Vogel told Reuters Health in an email interview, "we strongly recommend parents to inform their children and to discuss with their children the use of MP3 players and the potential long- term, irreversible consequences for hearing capacity."
Parents can also look for signs of a problem, like when a child complains of ringing in the ears or sounds being "muffled," according to Vogel and co-researcher Dr. Hein Raat, who are both based at the University Medical Center Rotterdam.
Based on the focus-group discussions, though, many parents may be unaware of the hearing risks posed by MP3 players, the researchers note. Of the 73 students in the study, few said their parents had warned them that playing the devices too loud could harm their hearing.
It may also be necessary for MP3 manufacturers to make changes, the researchers note in their report.
Many students in the study said they did not know how to tell when their MP3 players were too loud. Volumes at or above 90 decibels are believed to be hazardous, Vogel's team notes, but noise levels need to reach 120 dB to 140 dB to become uncomfortable or painful.
Manufacturers, according to the researchers, could equip MP3 players with an indicator that displays the volume level in terms of decibels, along with a signal -- such as a flashing light -- that goes off when decibel levels reach the danger zone.
For now, Vogel and her colleagues recommend that, as a general "rule of thumb," MP3 users set the volume no higher than 60 percent of its full capacity when using "ear bud" style headphones, like those that come with iPods.
With over-the-ear headphones, they recommend 70 percent as the maximum.
Just as there are safety standards for occupational noise exposure, Vogel and her colleagues suggest that more long-range studies are needed to develop safety guidelines for "leisure-time" noise exposure.
SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics, March 2008.
Credits: Yahoo News
World's oldest person dies at 114
14 August 2007
14 August 2007
Labels: News
AFP/JiJi Press/File - Tue Aug 14, 5:53 AM ET
Japan's oldest person Yone Minagawa, smiles as she receives a bouquet of flowers bouquet at a nursing home in the town of Fukuchi in Fukuoka prefecture, September 2006. The world's oldest person, who counted eating well and getting plenty of sleep as the secret of her longevity, died 13 August at the age of 114.