A lot of people will discover that when making home repairs and overall improvements, the procedure never exactly meets the look. You could think something will simply please take a day and some effort, but you?ll probably find that things get more complicated. Make an effort to streamline the advance process by reading these tips.
Maintain your fans circulating, or invest in some if you do not currently use them. Rooms are kept more cool with all the circulating air produced by fans. In addition, the use of them as opposed to air conditioning on those times that are not scorching, the amount of energy you consume is reduced, allowing you to enjoy lower household utility bills.
In relation to home improvements, a very important factor that needs to be understood is that sometimes you have to spend money to save money. Purchasing a new fridge can save you cash electricity, and insulating a room or especially an attic can help to save on heating and air-conditioning bills. All these types of improvements will also improve the value of your house if you choose to sell down the road. http://www.ac-heating-experts-placentia.us
Ceiling fan installation is a great and value effective do-it-yourself project that you need to consider. Fans are great for circulating the environment in the home, and keeping the property cool. They can also help reduce the cost of your household utility bills through the elimination of the need for air conditioning during the cooler times of the summer.
Improving the air quality in your home is usually an invaluable do-it-yourself for your overall health along with the resale value of your house. The initial step should be to replace any old carpets and have them professionally cleaned, as they may be hiding contaminants, allergens and ugly odors. Secondly, in case your budget allows, install an electricity efficient air conditioning system.
Be it summer or winter always look for drafts. You?ll find nothing more frustrating than heating or cooling the exterior. Use a lighted candle near a door or window, and when the candle flickers, you realize it is likely you possess a crack to close. Make sure to check all sides of each of the windows and exterior doors.
If you are living within a province, consider getting a power back up generator. Once the lights go out and sometimes your heating even is dependent upon it, you can be without power all day and even days in seriously harsh weather. An electric generator will help you conserve the necessities that you just can?t do without if the electricity is out. www.ac-heating-experts-placentia.us
A great do-it-yourself to make is usually to add French doors or french doors. Nearly these doors allow more light inside, nonetheless they can open up a region to make it seem larger. Viewing outdoors boosts the apparent level of the bedroom and modern energy-efficient doors save the heating and cooling costs.
Get a freestanding electric fireplace unit to supplement your heating sources in the wintertime. Nearly shiny things cost pennies hourly to own, in addition they can easily be moved from room to room. You may even shut off the central heating system during the night and cuddle on top of an electric fireplace inside the room your location sleeping. The simulated flames will also create a relaxing ambiance in almost any room.
Diy is often a vast topic. From putting a new list of curtains approximately actually replacing your windows, anything can qualify as an ?improvement.? For even the actual task you?re attempting, you will need to be properly educated regarding how to accomplish it. Make use of the tips in this article to guide you through some common improvements.
The guard tower at the front gate of Camp Five and Camp Six at Guantanamo Bay in 2012
Photo by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday President Obama renewed his effort to close Guant?namo Bay prison, where 100 inmates have been staging a hunger strike, some since February. (This week Slate is publishing the memoir of a prisoner who was tortured at Guant?namo and is still being held despite a judge?s order that he be released.) In 2004, Explainer described the physiological response to fasting and answered the question of how long someone can survive without food.
Despondent over the injuries he allegedly caused his stepdaughter while setting his estranged wife's house ablaze, Charles Robert McNabb is on a hunger strike at the Spokane County Jail. He has lasted 123 days so far, subsisting on water and the occasional cup of coffee. How long can a hunger striker expect to survive?
Sixty days, give or take, is the rule of thumb, though results vary depending on the faster's body fat and striking strategy. Physiologists generally agree that no human being can survive losing more than 40 percent of his body mass?a threshold that McNabb, stunningly, may already have crossed, if reports of his starting (180 pounds to 185 pounds) and current (around 100 pounds) weights are to be believed.
Fasting becomes dangerous after just three to five days, at which point the body begins breaking down fat in order to produce energy. When the liver is reduced to breaking down fat (in lieu of the usual glucose), it produces ketone bodies, a toxic byproduct. These can be excreted through the urine, and a particular variety known as acetone can be expelled through the lungs. (Acetone makes a person's breath smell like pears.) Ketone bodies can also be oxidized by the brain in order to make the fuel it needs. But when ketone bodies become too numerous in the bloodstream, they can cause ketoacidosis, a potentially lethal condition that afflicts some diabetics.
It's all downhill after Week 3, or whenever weight loss exceeds 18 percent of the starting weight. The body tries to compensate by slowing down its metabolism, entering "starvation mode." Still, once fat stores are entirely depleted, the body has no choice but to mine the muscles and vital organs for energy. The striker simply wastes away as his body, quite literally, consumes itself.
The 60-day figure that is commonly quoted as the absolute limit assumes that the striker is a healthy adult with approximately 24 pounds of fat on his or her frame. Someone with a higher fat content might be able to last longer, since that person's body could delay turning to the vital organs for fuel.
Perhaps more important, there are certain tactics that hunger strikers can use to prolong their protests?and their agony. The Irish republicans who fasted near Belfast in 1981, including the famous Bobby Sands, supplemented their all-fluid diets with occasional spoonfuls of salt. If they hadn't, their bodies would have become too depleted of this essential nutrient, and their blood pressures would have become dangerously low at an early stage. (One of 10 prisoners who perished during the hunger strike, Sands lasted 66 days.)
The most innovative hunger strikers so far, however, have been Turkish Marxists protesting their country's shift from dormitory-style prisons to Western-style cells. Their fasts, which claimed an inmate's life this past February, are designed to keep the striker alive as long as possible; some of the strikers have lasted longer than 300 days. Their secret is to ingest salt, unrefined sugar, and vitamins, which limit weight loss to just a few ounces per day.
According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, McNabb did briefly interrupt his hunger strike when he was sent to a hospital for a mental evaluation; there, for three days, he did eat some food. Still, by any objective measure, his 123-day fast is astonishingly long. Gandhi, perhaps history's most famous hunger striker, never fasted for more than 21 days.
Apr. 30, 2013 ? The mantra that quality is more important than quantity is true when considering how social relationships influence depression, say U-M researchers in a new study.
After analyzing data from nearly 5,000 American adults, the researchers found that the quality of a person's relationships with a spouse, family and friends predicted the likelihood of major depression disorder in the future, regardless of how frequently their social interactions took place.
Individuals with strained and unsupportive spouses were significantly more likely to develop depression, whereas those without a spouse were at no increased risk. And those with the lowest quality relationships had more than double the risk of depression than those with the best relationships.
The study, which was published online today in PLOS ONE, assessed the quality of social relationships on depression over a 10-year period, and is one of the first to examine the issue in a large, broad population over such a long time period.
Nearly 16 percent of Americans experience major depression disorder at some point in their lives, and the condition can increase the risk for and worsen conditions like coronary artery disease, stroke and cancer.
"Our study shows that the quality of social relationships is a significant risk factor for major depression," says psychiatrist Alan Teo, M.D., M.S., a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at U-M and the study's lead author. "This is the first time that a study has identified this link in the general population."
Digging deeper into the results, the researchers found that certain positive and negative aspects of relationships also predicted depression. Social strain and a lack of support -- especially in spousal relationships and to some extent with family members -- were both risk factors for developing depression later.
"These results tell us that health care providers need to remember that patients' relationships with their loved ones likely play a central role in their medical care," Teo says. "They also suggest that the broader use of couples therapy might be considered, both as a treatment for depression and as a preventative measure."
While the results confirmed the researchers' assumptions about relationship quality, they did not find a correlation between the frequency of social interactions and the prevalence of depression as predicted. Even if participants were socially isolated, having few interactions with family and friends, it did not predict depression risk. Teo says this finding should also translate to mental health treatment considerations.
"Asking a patient how she rates her relationship with her husband, rather than simply asking whether she has one, should be a priority," Teo says.
The researchers say that the study's significant effect size -- one in seven adults with the lowest-quality relationships will develop depression, as opposed to just one in 15 with the highest quality relationships -- indicates the potential for substantial change in the general population.
"The magnitude of these results is similar to the well-established relationship between biological risk factors and cardiovascular disease," Teo says. "What that means is that if we can teach people how to improve the quality of their relationships, we may be able to prevent or reduce the devastating effects of clinical depression."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan Health System.
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Journal Reference:
Alan R. Teo, HwaJung Choi, Marcia Valenstein. Social Relationships and Depression: Ten-Year Follow-Up from a Nationally Representative Study. PLOS ONE, 30 Apr 2013 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062396
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Cincinnati, Ohio is best known for the Bengals, Bootsy Collins, and Skyline Chili but it's about to become famous as one of the first cities with a true market for 3D printable designs. 3DLT, a small company based in Cincy and founded by a team of programmers, is bringing the free-for-all world of 3D modellers into line and essentially making an Etsy for ABS.
Apr. 29, 2013 ? By combining high-resolution surface data obtained from laser scanning with subsurface geodata, scientists from Heidelberg University have succeeded for the first time in providing a full picture of so-called karst depressions on the island of Crete, including a three-dimensional view into the subsurface structure of these funnel-shaped hollows. This new 3D representation method has been developed under the leadership of junior professor Dr. Bernhard H?fle at Heidelberg University's Institute of Geography. It is ideal for in-depth analyses at the interface between geosciences and ancient studies. The sediment infills of karst depressions provide terrestrial archives of great value for the reconstruction of environmental scenarios from the past.
For thousands of years, karst landforms and particularly karst depressions like dolines, for example, have been important sites of human husbandry. There is evidence from as far back as the 2nd century BC that such depressions were used for agriculture and livestock breeding, including in the mountainous regions of Crete. Due to their funnel-shaped form, dolines serve as "material traps" in which loose sediments, archaeological finds or volcanic ashes can accumulate. "These infills can supply important information on former climatic conditions, vegetation structure and also on human impact through land use," says Dr. Christoph Siart, a fellow researcher of Prof. H?fle's.
So far, say the Heidelberg geographers, karst depressions have usually only been examined in connection with drilling of sediment cores. These provide insights into the subsurface structure, albeit of a discrete nature, and have been drawn upon in conjunction with geomorphological surface finds to propose explanations for the genesis and function of dolines. With the aid of the new 3D data-modelling method developed in Heidelberg, the scientists have now succeeded in combining the two-dimensional subsurface data with high-resolution 3D surface data. To accomplish this, surface topography data were acquired with the aid of terrestrial laser scanning. Two-dimensional views of various cross-sections of the subsurface of the sediment-filled dolines were achieved with a combination of various geophysical measuring procedures.
The fusion of these data now makes it feasible to undertake soundly substantiated geomorphometric analyses. "For example, we can determine the volume or undertake a digital measurement of the depressions in a virtual three-dimensional model," says Prof. H?fle. "That means we have created the basis for first-ever statements on the genesis, the sediment infill process and the age of the dolines. This is of immense significance for the reconstruction of the environmental history because it supplies a holistic view of geomorphological forms via a combination of surface and subsurface data and thus helps to understand the local processes that ultimately led to the formation of the landscape as we know it today."
Data collection and methodological development took place in the framework of the projects "Reconstruction of Holocene Environmental Change on Crete" and "Geoinformatics and 3D Geoinformation Technology" conducted in the physical geography and geoinformatics research groups of Heidelberg University's Institute of Geography.?
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Heidelberg, Universit?t.
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Journal Reference:
Christoph Siart, Markus Forbriger, Erich Nowaczinski, Stefan Hecht, Bernhard H?fle. Fusion of multi-resolution surface (terrestrial laser scanning) and subsurface geodata (ERT, SRT) for karst landform investigation and geomorphometric quantification. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/esp.3394
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Apr. 30, 2013 ? NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole.
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.
"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."
Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn's atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.
Both a terrestrial hurricane and Saturn's north polar vortex have a central eye with no clouds or very low clouds. Other similar features include high clouds forming an eye wall, other high clouds spiraling around the eye, and a counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere.
A major difference between the hurricanes is that the one on Saturn is much bigger than its counterparts on Earth and spins surprisingly fast. At Saturn, the wind in the eye wall blows more than four times faster than hurricane-force winds on Earth. Unlike terrestrial hurricanes, which tend to move, the Saturnian hurricane is locked onto the planet's north pole. On Earth, hurricanes tend to drift northward because of the forces acting on the fast swirls of wind as the planet rotates. The one on Saturn does not drift and is already as far north as it can be.
"The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that's likely why it's stuck at the pole," said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va.
Scientists believe the massive storm has been churning for years. When Cassini arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, Saturn's north pole was dark because the planet was in the middle of its north polar winter. During that time, the Cassini spacecraft's composite infrared spectrometer and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer detected a great vortex, but a visible-light view had to wait for the passing of the equinox in August 2009. Only then did sunlight begin flooding Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view required a change in the angle of Cassini's orbits around Saturn so the spacecraft could see the poles.
"Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn's equatorial plane," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet."
Cassini changes its orbital inclination for such an observing campaign only once every few years. Because the spacecraft uses flybys of Saturn's moon Titan to change the angle of its orbit, the inclined trajectories require attentive oversight from navigators. The path requires careful planning years in advance and sticking very precisely to the planned itinerary to ensure enough propellant is available for the spacecraft to reach future planned orbits and encounters.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Images and two versions of a movie of the hurricane can be viewed online at: http://go.nasa.gov/17tmHzo .
For more information about Cassini and its mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .
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Spanish lake found with the oldest remains of atmospheric contamination in southern EuropePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jose Antonio Lozano Rodriguez jalozano@ugr.es 958-230-000 x190123 University of Granada
A team of scientists find in the Laguna de Rio Seco lagoon, at an altitude of 3,020 m, evidence of atmospheric pollution caused by lead and linked to metallurgical activities from 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age)
Atmospheric contamination due to heavy metals is currently a severe problem of global proportions, with important repercussions in public health. However, this type of pollution is not a recent fact and can even be detected during pre-historic times.
A team of scientists, which includes scientists from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences and the University of Granada, has discovered evidence of atmospheric pollution caused by lead. This evidence was found in a lagoon in Sierra Nevada (Granada), at an altitude of 3,020 m. The pollution comes from metallurgical activities, carried out some 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age). This find refers to the oldest atmospheric pollution on record in southern Europe.
The study, published in the journal, Science of the Total Environment, was carried out by researchers from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (Spain), the University of Granada (Spain), the University of Sevilla (Spain), the University of North Arizona (USA), the Andalusian Regional Government (Spain) and the Granada firm Estudios Geolgicos y Medioambientales S.L. (Spain). The main author of this research is Antonio Garcia-Alix, from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences.
Influence of man on the environment
The article reveals the influence of human activity on the environment due to the beginnings of metallurgy at the end of the Holocene period in southern Europe. From the geochemical analyses carried out on the sediments deposited during the past 10,000 years in the Laguna de Rio Seco lagoon, a remote alpine lake in Sierra Nevada, at 3,020 m. above sea level, evidence has been found of atmospheric pollution from lead. This contamination is traced back to metallurgical activities from 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age), coinciding with an increase in forest fires and deforestation in southern Europe.
As the University of Granada researcher, Jose Antonio Lozano Rodriguez explains, "this data tells us of the great influence our ancestors had on the environment. Lead pollution gradually increased during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, coinciding with the development and expansion of metallurgy in southern Europe". The samples studied show a maximum contamination from lead about 2,900 years ago, which would imply an intense movement and manipulation of this metal in the area around Sierra Nevada.
Contamination during the Roman Empire
In the samples studied by the scientists, there are also high levels of atmospheric contamination from lead during the Roman Empire, when large quantities of this metal were extracted in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as during the past 300 years, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution and the reactivation of mining activity in southern Spain.
A curious detail also shown by the study is a reduction in atmospheric pollution from lead during the last few decades, which, as Lozano concludes, "suggests that the global measures taken to reduce lead emissions, such as the use of lead-free gasoline, have helped to reduce the levels of this metal in the atmosphere".
Anthropogenic Impact and Lead Pollution Throughout the Holocene in Southern Iberia. Science of the Total Environment. 449: 451-460.
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.01.081.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Spanish lake found with the oldest remains of atmospheric contamination in southern EuropePublic release date: 30-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jose Antonio Lozano Rodriguez jalozano@ugr.es 958-230-000 x190123 University of Granada
A team of scientists find in the Laguna de Rio Seco lagoon, at an altitude of 3,020 m, evidence of atmospheric pollution caused by lead and linked to metallurgical activities from 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age)
Atmospheric contamination due to heavy metals is currently a severe problem of global proportions, with important repercussions in public health. However, this type of pollution is not a recent fact and can even be detected during pre-historic times.
A team of scientists, which includes scientists from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences and the University of Granada, has discovered evidence of atmospheric pollution caused by lead. This evidence was found in a lagoon in Sierra Nevada (Granada), at an altitude of 3,020 m. The pollution comes from metallurgical activities, carried out some 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age). This find refers to the oldest atmospheric pollution on record in southern Europe.
The study, published in the journal, Science of the Total Environment, was carried out by researchers from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (Spain), the University of Granada (Spain), the University of Sevilla (Spain), the University of North Arizona (USA), the Andalusian Regional Government (Spain) and the Granada firm Estudios Geolgicos y Medioambientales S.L. (Spain). The main author of this research is Antonio Garcia-Alix, from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences.
Influence of man on the environment
The article reveals the influence of human activity on the environment due to the beginnings of metallurgy at the end of the Holocene period in southern Europe. From the geochemical analyses carried out on the sediments deposited during the past 10,000 years in the Laguna de Rio Seco lagoon, a remote alpine lake in Sierra Nevada, at 3,020 m. above sea level, evidence has been found of atmospheric pollution from lead. This contamination is traced back to metallurgical activities from 3,900 years ago (Early Bronze Age), coinciding with an increase in forest fires and deforestation in southern Europe.
As the University of Granada researcher, Jose Antonio Lozano Rodriguez explains, "this data tells us of the great influence our ancestors had on the environment. Lead pollution gradually increased during the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, coinciding with the development and expansion of metallurgy in southern Europe". The samples studied show a maximum contamination from lead about 2,900 years ago, which would imply an intense movement and manipulation of this metal in the area around Sierra Nevada.
Contamination during the Roman Empire
In the samples studied by the scientists, there are also high levels of atmospheric contamination from lead during the Roman Empire, when large quantities of this metal were extracted in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as during the past 300 years, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution and the reactivation of mining activity in southern Spain.
A curious detail also shown by the study is a reduction in atmospheric pollution from lead during the last few decades, which, as Lozano concludes, "suggests that the global measures taken to reduce lead emissions, such as the use of lead-free gasoline, have helped to reduce the levels of this metal in the atmosphere".
Anthropogenic Impact and Lead Pollution Throughout the Holocene in Southern Iberia. Science of the Total Environment. 449: 451-460.
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.01.081.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The guard tower at the front gate of Camp Five and Camp Six at Guantanamo Bay in 2012 
Cincinnati, Ohio is best known for the Bengals, Bootsy Collins, and ![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sjXCYgwBhewWHszFfsgKvU8LBl7jSsGQrDynUVdDuGisub05qcawi1eFmLbYWFZMNgjl26yTy_hTp5POaie39J85seAEMZV9sm1wnEw_w=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
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