/////////////UAC,UVC IN 15 MINS-OPHTHLMIC MAGNIFYING GLASSES
///////////Big Bang Day, Radio 4
Hurrah! Public service broadcasting with knobs on
By Nicholas Lezard
Sunday, 14 September 2008
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Well, is it the Higgs boson or the Higgs particle? We seem to be inclining towards the latter, which is a shame. For while more people may know what a particle is than know what a boson is, "Higgs boson" sounds better: more mysterious, more scientific.
Thanks to Radio 4's Big Bang Day last Wednesday, there are more people than ever before who could give the then science minister William Waldegrave the answer he craved in 1993, when he asked facetiously for a comprehensible definition of what a Higgs boson was and why we should be looking for it.
We now know that the Higgs boson is the reason everything, even William Waldegrave's brain, has mass; we just haven't seen one yet. Which is why the Large Hadron Collider has been built, and why Radio 4 sent Today's Andrew Marr to watch it being switched on. According to the Afternoon Play Lost Souls, a specially commissioned episode of Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off, it should not have been switched on until the possibility of murderous extra-dimensional aliens jumping into our universe had been ruled out. (Most people have been worried about the LHC sucking the earth into a black hole. They worry needlessly. It won't happen until October, when the really interesting experiments start.)
Most successful of the laudable attempts to get our heads round this subject have been Simon Singh's daily 15-minute programmes, 5 Particles, which patiently and lucidly tell us about electrons, quarks, antiparticles and the like. We are a long way, it transpires, from agreeing on the pronunciation of "quark" – does it rhyme with "ark" or "walk"? – let alone powering the Enterprise with antimatter. Incidentally, it's quite legitimate to use the noises made by the Enterprise to keep people's attention in programmes like this, but when, as in Ben Miller's r Great Big Particle Adventure, you use the music from the Winter Olympics while a scientist makes an analogy using snowshoes, then that's just distracting.
My favourite, though, was Steve Punt's one-off comedy, The Genuine Particle, which proposed that turning on the LHC would create a wormhole in time. It was an almost direct homage to Douglas Adams ("If we'd wanted an experiment that could have been halted by cups of tea we would have held it in England" or "It's very hard to smuggle an X-ray detector through an X-ray detector"), and none the worse for that. It also used more science, less patronisingly, than the episode of Torchwood. (It was disconcerting to learn that I knew more about particle physics than the good people of Torchwood. And I don't really know that much either.)
But let us salute Radio 4 for going crazy about the LHC. This is public service broadcasting with knobs on, a massive vote of confidence in general levels of interest and intelligence. I'm rather sorry it's over.
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///////////////////Chapter II: Sankhya Yoga
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
II.66. There is no knowledge of the Self to the unsteady and to
the unsteady no meditation is possible, and to the unmeditative
there can be no peace, and to the man who has no peace, how can
there be happiness?
COMMENTARY: The man who cannot fix his mind in meditation cannot
have knowledge of the Self. The unsteady man cannot practise
meditation. He cannot have even intense devotion to Self-knowledge
nor can he have burning longing for liberation or 'Moksha'. He
who does not practise meditation cannot possess peace of mind.
How can the man who has no peace of mind enjoy happiness?
Desire or 'Trishna' (thirsting for sense-objects) is the
enemy of peace. There cannot be an iota or tinge of happiness for
a man who is thirsting for sensual objects. The mind will be ever
restless, and will be hankering for the objects. Only when this
thirsting dies, does man enjoy peace. Only then can he mediatate
and rest in the Self.
/////////////////
From Chapter II: Sankhya Yoga
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
II.65. In that peace all pains are destroyed; for the intellect of
the tranquil-minded soon becomes steady.
COMMENTARY: When the mental peace is attained, there is no
hankering after sense-objects. The Yogi has perfect mastery over
his reason. The intellect abides in the Self. It is quite
steady. The miseries of the body and the mind come to and end.
/////////////////Immaturity of the brain may cause schizophrenia
The dentate gyrus, which is located in the hippocampus in the brain and thought to be responsible for working memory and mood regulation, remained immature in an animal model of schizophrenia.
http://www.brainmysteries.com/research/Immaturity_of_the_brain_may_cause_schizophrenia.asp
////////////////// 1977: Steve Biko dies in custody
The leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, Steve Biko, dies in police custody.
///////////////////thomaskempis5
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
//////////////////////MedWatch - The FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program
FDA issued a Health Information Advisory to consumers and healthcare professionals regarding milk-based infant formula manufactured in China. The Chinese manufactured infant formula may be contaminated with melamine. Melamine artificially increases the protein profile of milk and can cause kidney diseases. Currently, no Chinese manufacturers of infant formula have fulfilled the requirements to sell this product in the United States. FDA officials are investigating whether or not infant formula manufactured in China is being sold in specialty markets which serve the Asian community. Caregivers should not feed infant formula manufactured in China to infants and should replace any product from China with an appropriate infant formula manufactured in the United States. Individuals should contact their health care professional if they have questions regarding their infant’s health or if they note changes in their infant’s health status.
Read the entire 2008 MedWatch Safety Summary, including a link to the FDA Health Information Advisory regarding the above issue:
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2008/safety08.htm#formulaChina
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