March 20, 2008, 7:35 PM CT

Floating a big idea

Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, as per new findings by MIT scientists in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Details of how the ancient trading system worked more than 1,000 years ago were reconstructed largely through the efforts of former MIT undergraduate student Leslie Dewan, working with Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology Dorothy Hosler, of the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology (CMRAE). The findings are being published in the Spring 2008 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research.

The new work supports earlier evidence documented by Hosler that the two great centers of pre-European civilization in the Americas--the Andes region and Mesoamerica--had been in contact with each other and had longstanding trading relationships. That conclusion was based on an analysis of very similar metalworking technology used in the two regions for items such as silver and copper tiaras, bands, bells and tweezers, as well as evidence of trade in highly prized spondylus-shell beads.

Early Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch accounts of the Andean civilization include descriptions and even drawings of the large oceangoing rafts, but provided little information about their routes or the nature of the goods they carried......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:54:51 GMT

List of Ill Repute

Consumer Reports annual list of the 11 worst cars in America is out. Automotive analysts for the magazine took a look at more than 260 vehicles in this year's evaluation and once again SUVs made in the U.S. dominated the field.
Surprisingly, two Toyotas hit rock bottom as well and Chrysler placed three models on the list of ill repute with the Jeep brand.
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Here are the results for 2008, according to Consumer Reports - Read more of "List of Ill Repute" Posted by: Jeff Bressler      Read more     Source

March 5, 2008, 8:11 PM CT

Big Energy Picture Must Balance Security

The world has no choice but to build more energy-producing plants--and find new sources of energy--but the build out process will not happen overnight, a government expert recently told an MIT audience.

A worldwide boost in demand for energy, coupled with environmental concerns, will force a huge U.S. increase inthe number of nuclear power plants--but it will take more than two decades to come to fruition, as per Carl O. Bauer, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL).

Bauer's Feb. 26 colloquium, "Energy Supply and Demand, Economics and Greenhouse Gas Management: Are They Related?" was sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative. The discussion focused on the intertwined aspects of security, sustainability, supply and the environment in relation to the world's energy production.

Bauer said blackouts in California, Texas and New England by 2016 are just some of the challenges facing decision makers as they tackle America's energy future.

"I happen to believe we're right on the cusp of a huge energy build out because we have no choice," Bauer said. But, he added, the lack of U.S. nuclear plant construction in recent decades has led engineers to turn to other fields, and construction companies to commit resources to building plants overseas......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 01:41:14 GMT

Top Hollywood Singles

It looks like there's a new crowd of hot, available singles making the rounds in Hollywood these days.

Although they still enjoy great popularity and fan interest, celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, the Hilton girls, Jennifer Garner, Vince Vaughn, George Clooney, have been replaced by mostly younger scene makers.

Chase Crawford, shown above, who looks like a young Christian Slater to me, is ranked number 10 on the current Yahoo.com list of "Hollywood's Top 10 Sexiest Singles".

Check out the article and see who is now considered Hollywood's Sexiest Single is a link to a page on the World Wide Web.

Image Source:www.omg.yahoo.com Posted by: jim      Read more     Source

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 11:28:40 GMT

A start

This is a stretch of our eastern boundary, just down the hill from the northeastern corner (where a big tree top came down in the ice storm).

I’ve talked about how I am slowly cutting a clear path along our fences so it’s easy to hike along them when we do so a couple of times a year just to be sure all is well. I’d like to take credit for this stretch: it’s so open and level. (That’s the fence on the left.) I didn’t clear it, though. It is naturally this way. I may have cut back few branches or some low scrub, but this is mostly the work of the forest gods. (Or maybe the nature of the soil.)

Actually, I don’t really want a path this big in most of the places. I’m more of a forest than a field guy. There are a couple of points on the southern boundary, though, that I could clear (in my copious free time) to let them grow more grassy.

It was a beautiful and relatively warm winter day when we made this hike. I think the turn to warmer weather may be just about here. Once the bugs come out, I probably won’t visit the fence lines as often to clear the path, but there may be a couple more opportunities yet before that happens.

Missouri calendar:

• Washington’s Birthday
• Chipmunks come out of hibernation.

Today in Missouri history:

• Radio, stage, television, and USO star Jane Froman, known as the "Soldier in Greasepaint" who hailed from St. Louis, was gravely injured in an airplane crash on this date in 1943. She went on to perform for another three decades.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 02:01:25 GMT

Powerful cleaning

Who needs Zen when there’s ultra-concentrated Joy? Of course, the claims are lies: it’s a cheap detergent, no more concentrated than any of the competing brands, and a little bit of it doesn’t go very far at all. But at least it doesn’t claim to be “Home-E-Zential,” or (like another one of Trader Joe’s cleaning products) Next to Godliness.

I have to say, though, I think the soap makers are thinking too small. Cleaning needn’t be merely joyful, meditative, or morally improving; it can and probably should be a life-changing experience. I’m sure an Orgasm detergent will be coming soon. But what about Epiphany? What about Jesus?! This is America. If we can expect epiphanies for breakfast, it may take more than mere joy to clean the dishes. Posted by: Vianegativa      Read more     Source

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:32:02 GMT

Why not plant some native fruits?

Fruit trees and shrubs are a great way to expand your backyard food production beyond the vegetable garden. When I was growing up, we had a peach tree, a persimmon tree, blackberries, and wild plums to graze on, and my grandmother kept us supplied us with raspberries, Concord grapes, and apples. For a while, I lived on the West coast, where I had Meyer lemons, oranges, and apples in my yard. I’ll never forget the taste of the first glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice made from oranges picked that morning in my own back yard.

Native North American fruits were often overlooked by European settlers. They gamely tried some of the new fruits that the native peoples introduced to them, but for the most part, they really missed the fruits that they were used to eating “back home.” So, they imported them. Apples, cherries, pears, oranges, lemons, limes….all were introduced to North America by settlers. It makes the phrase “American as apple pie” seem kind of funny in retrospect.

The three main native fruit crops sold commercially are cranberries, American grapes, and blueberries. I wrote about cranberries, which include four species in the genus Vaccinium, here and here; the primary commercial cranberry is American cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon. In the same genus as cranberries, blueberries are cultivated and grown in the wild throughout the continent. The most common species are Northern highbush, V. corymbosum and lowbush, blueberry, V. angustifolium. The American grape, Vitis labrusca, is also called fox grape. Tmost well-known cultivar of the American grape is the Concord grape, Vitis x labrusca, which was developed by a grower in Concord, Mass. in 1849. Other varieties of the American grape are the Catawba, Delaware, and Niagara grape.

Lesser-known native fruits include the American Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), beach plum (Prunus maritima), and saw palmetto (Serenoa repens). And let’s not forget the scuppernong, a grape-on-steroids that is native to the Southeastern U.S.

Two that I find particularly interesting are the American persimmon, (Diospyros virginiana), the fruit of my childhood, and the pawpaw (Asimina triloba). The American persimmon isn’t as big as the Chinese persimmons that you sometimes see in supermarkets and I remember if you eat one before its time, it’s very sour. But a ripe American persimmon tastes heavenly, maybe like an apricot but sort of honey-ish and pumpkin-y. The fruit ripens in the fall, usually after all the leaves have fallen off. I remember that it was usually pretty messy underneath that tree.

I’ve never tasted a pawpaw or even seen one for that matter, but I’m really intrigued by this fruit. It seems like an under appreciated delight; I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’re not more popular. In an article in this month’s Audubon magazine, author Lee Reich heretheir taste as “a congenial mix of vanilla custard, banana, mango, and avocado–which makes it a fine substitute for creme brulee (without the fat and sugar.)”

Doesn’t that sound fabulous!? I must taste this fruit.

Pawpaws look like a tropical fruit–the fruits look like mangoes and grow in clusters like bananas. But since they’re native to Eastern North America, they grow in temperate zones. They’re found naturally south of New England to north of Florida and west to Nebraska. Supposedly they can be grown in cold zones such as New England, though they are reputed to be hard to establish.

Pictured above, from top to bottom, are Concord grapes (courtesy of Wikipedia), scuppernong (courtesy of the State Library of North Carolina), American persimmon (courtesy of Cornell University) and pawpaw (courtesy of Wikipedia). Posted by: Caroline Brown      Read more     Source

February 26, 2008, 10:21 PM CT

Coastal community bounce back

Two LSU scientists are taking what might be the most comprehensive approach ever to determine how some coastal communities bounce back from disaster.

The end goal of the project, which is in the early stages of a two-year grant, is to be able to develop and use an index of coastal community resilience to educate and inform decision and policy makers about ways to increase resilience in weaker areas.

Right now, were focused on Louisiana, but once the index is developed it could easily be applied to any other coastal communities in the world, said Nina Lam, professor and chair of environmental studies at LSU and one of the primary scientists involved in the study.

Margaret Reams, associate dean of the School of the Coast and Environment at LSU, and Lam have teamed together with financial support from the United States Minerals Management Service to develop an index of coastal community resilience. But, unlike most other studies, Reams and Lam are factoring in the full spectrum of economic and environmental causes.

Our first step is to develop an index, something to provide us with useful baseline information, said Lam. How do we measure resiliency" There are very complex linkage issues and so a number of variables to consider.

Applying a variety of statistical- and Geographical Information System-based analytical techniques, the scientists will look at data from 1970 2000 to see trends and consistencies that might have a place in the index......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

February 12, 2008, 9:24 PM CT

Sumatran tigers are being sold

Laws protecting the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger have failed to prevent tiger body parts being openly sold in Indonesia, as per a TRAFFIC report launched today.

Tiger body parts, including canine teeth, claws, skin pieces, whiskers and bones, were on sale in 10 percent of the 326 retail outlets surveyed during 2006 in 28 cities and towns across Sumatra. Outlets included goldsmiths, souvenir and traditional Chinese medicine shops, and shops selling antique and precious stones.

The survey conservatively estimates that 23 tigers were killed to supply the products seen, based on the number of canine teeth on sale.

This is down from an estimate of 52 killed per year in 19992002, said Julia Ng, program officer with TRAFFIC Southeast Asia and lead author on The Tiger Trade Revisited in Sumatra, Indonesia. Sadly, the decline in availability appears to be due to the dwindling number of tigers left in the wild.

All of TRAFFICs surveys have indicated that Medan, the capital of North Sumatra province, and Pancur Batu, a smaller town situated about nine miles away, are the main hubs for the trade of tiger parts.

Despite TRAFFIC providing authorities with details of traders involved it is not clear whether any serious enforcement action has been taken, apart from awareness-raising activities......... Posted by: Ethen      Read more         Source

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:31:25 GMT

Time to bring them back!

Remember the 50s? Yeah, me neither! I am an 80's child, but I can still appreciate the fashion of the 50s. I loved how women wore dresses almost all of the time. I wish we could return to that phase instead of some of the frumpy messes that are going on today. So what classifies 50s styles? Well, pencil skirts, swing skirts, short cropped jackets, bolero sleeves, broad collars and heels were mandatory and gloves were always appreciated. I love, love, love the silhouette created from swing skirt styles, it is so flattering and feminine. Now, you don't have to run to your local vintage store and find authentic 50s clothing, you can do modern interpretations if you would like. Let's bring the 50s back!!

Get yourself an authentic 50s dress. I LOVE this dress. 1950'S Lace Front Dress, $169 at Posh Girl Vintage Want a modern interpretation of a swing skirt? This one will do. Ribbon-trimmed pleated skirt, $68 at Talbots Three-quarter sleeves, button front, cropped?!? A perfect 50s inspired jacket. Flounce Crop Cotton Jacket, $128 at Nordstrom Stilettos and ballet flats were part of the 50s shoe styles and all are still relevant. But let's not forget the most popular were saddle shoes. Not ready to bring those back yet? These are the modern interpretation of the saddle shoe. Hush Puppies Giulietta , $73 at Zappos Giulietta , $73 at Zappos Posted by: Ryan      Read more     Source