Sunday, 19 April 2009

AD SPRNG VLLY IVW FLR CRSS

/////////TATA-TILL LBMUK


///////////PNRMA-LF AFTR WOOLIES



////////////CBTAR-CNMA-AFTERMATH


///////////HEALTH AND CARE PROFESSN RECESSN PROOF?



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Friday, 17 April 2009

FELUDA ONLINE MUSEUM

Feluda fan society creates Online museum

Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, April 11: For the first time in the city's history, an Online museum on Feluda has been set up.
Feluda, alias Pradosh C Mitter, is the private investigator and protagonist in Satyajit Ray's detective series. He first made his appearance in Badsahi Angti, published in the late 1960s. Feluda has been translated into English and French.
Feluda Inc, an international Feluda fan society, has created the "virtual museum" with the help of three city-based web designers. The Online museum can be found at http://felumuseum.tripod.com.
The virtual museum contains pictures of various articles referred to Pradosh C Mitter (better known as Feluda), as well as images of various places that feature in the detective stories. Visitors will find pictures of Golakdham, an old building at Ballygunge (mentioned in Golakdham Rohosshyo), Sir Thomas Godwin's tomb (figured in Gorasthane Shabdhan), and the nine stamps (appearing in Chhinnomostar Obhishaap). Mr Soumit Dasgupta, a UK-based consultant otoneurologist and member of the Feluda society, found in a recent study that Feluda is one of the characters that has the broadest appeal among people of all age groups. Like Sherlock Holmes and Hercules Poirot, Feluda has taken on the guise of a real-life character. So people from across the world want to know more about the detective. Mr Dasgupta said that he was inspired to create a public resource on Feluda after visiting the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London. He collected most of the pictures with the help of his friend, Mr Surojoy Bhowmick. Later, they urged Mr Soumendu Dasmunshi, a city-based web designer, to design the webpage along with his associates. The core members of the society also persuaded more than 27,000 members of the Feluda society on Orkut to contribute their collections on the character. The members of the society are also planning to persuade the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and dignitaries in the city to take the initiative to set up a museum at 21A, Rajani Sen Road (see photograph) ~ the character's residence in Satyajit Ray's immortal series.


/////////////////////Kiss and make up―but too much makeup has ruined many a kiss.
―Mae West



////////////////////RAAG VS ABHIMAAN


///////////////////GREEK FTHR SON MOVIE-WHAT IS IT?A SPARROW-DIARY-SON ASKED 21 TIMES,HUGGED EACH TIME


//////////////////////CAST AWAY- FOLLOWING A FRACTURE



///////////////////SX=INEBRIATED EXCHANGE OF BODILY FLUIDS



///////////////////SCIENCE
Reading This Will Change Your Brain

A leading neuroscientist says processing digital information can rewire your circuits. But is it evolution?
By Jeneen Interlandi | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 14, 2008


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Is technology changing our brains? A new study by UCLA neuroscientist Gary Small adds to a growing body of research that says it is. And according to Small's new book, "iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," a dramatic shift in how we gather information and communicate with one another has touched off an era of rapid evolution that may ultimately change the human brain as we know it. "Perhaps not since early man first discovered how to use a tool has the human brain been affected so quickly and so dramatically," he writes. "As the brain evolves and shifts its focus towards new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills."

The impact of technology on our circuitry should not come as a surprise. The brain's plasticity—it's ability to change in response to different stimuli—is well known. Professional musicians have more gray matter in brain regions responsible for planning finger movements. And athletes' brains are bulkier in areas that control hand-eye coordination. That's because the more time you devote to a specific activity, the stronger the neural pathways responsible for executing that activity become. So it makes sense that people who process a constant stream of digital information would have more neurons dedicated to filtering that information. Still, that's not the same thing as evolution.

To see how the Internet might be rewiring us, Small and colleagues monitored the brains of 24 adults as they performed a simulated Web search, and again as they read a page of text. During the Web search, those who reported using the Internet regularly in their everyday lives showed twice as much signaling in brain regions responsible for decision-making and complex reasoning, compared with those who had limited Internet exposure. The findings, to be published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, suggest that Internet use enhances the brain's capacity to be stimulated, and that Internet reading activates more brain regions than printed words. The research adds to previous studies that have shown that the tech-savvy among us possess greater working memory (meaning they can store and retrieve more bits of information in the short term), are more adept at perceptual learning (that is, adjusting their perception of the world in response to changing information), and have better motor skills.
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Small says these differences are likely to be even more profound across generations, because younger people are exposed to more technology from an earlier age than older people. He refers to this as the brain gap. On one side, what he calls digital natives—those who have never known a world without e-mail and text messaging—use their superior cognitive abilities to make snap decisions and juggle multiple sources of sensory input. On the other side, digital immigrants—those who witnessed the advent of modern technology long after their brains had been hardwired—are better at reading facial expressions than they are at navigating cyberspace. "The typical immigrant's brain was trained in completely different ways of socializing and learning, taking things step-by-step and addressing one task at a time," he says. "Immigrants learn more methodically and tend to execute tasks more precisely."

But whether natural selection will favor one skill set over the other remains to be seen. For starters, there's no reason to believe the two behaviors are mutually exclusive. In fact, a 2005 Kaiser study found that young people who spent the most time engaged with high-technology also spent the most time interacting face-to-face, with friends and family. And as Small himself points out, digital natives and digital immigrants can direct their own neural circuitry—reaping the cognitive benefits of modern technology while preserving traditional social skills—simply by making time for both.

In the meantime, modern technology, and the skills it fosters, is evolving even faster than we are. There's no telling whether future iterations of computer games, online communities and the like will require more or less of the traditional social skills and learning strategies that we've spent so many eons cultivating. "Too many people write about this as if kids are in one country and adults are in another," says James Gee, a linguistics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What the future brain will look like is still anybody's guess.

NWSWEEK=



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YAM DOOT-MAKAN KHALI KARO

///////////////////BUDDHA DTH MUSTARD STORY



//////////////////25K DAYS OF LVNG


///////////////////Man bites snake


NAIROBI, April 16: If you find yourself bound by a giant python, what should you do?
According to Mr Ben Nyaumbe, the answer is to bite back. The Kenyan farm manager was preparing a meal of maize porridge when a snake coiled itself around his feet. He was soon being dragged towards a tree. With nothing else to fight with, he resorted to his teeth. “I had to bite it as I struggled," he said.
n The Independent



///////////////////''GURU TUMI CHHILEY BOLEY AMRA ACCHI'' - Felu


http://felumuseum.tripod.com./index.html

PANTHEISM-LOST IN WONDER


DHARMIC SNIPPETS OF PHILOSOPHY



/////////////////NEVER ENDING DAYS OF BEING DD-NIRMOHA LF


/////////////////Early Humans Settled India Before Europe, Study Suggests
Brian Vastag
for National Geographic News
November 14, 2005

Modern humans migrated out of Africa and into India much earlier than once believed, driving older hominids in present-day India to extinction and creating some of the earliest art and architecture, a new study suggests.

The research places modern humans in India tens of thousands of years before their arrival in Europe.

University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James developed the new theory after analyzing decades' worth of existing fieldwork in India. They outline their research in the journal Current Anthropology.

"He's putting all the pieces together, which no one has done before," Sheela Athreya, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University, said of Petraglia.

Modern humans arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind cave paintings, jewelry, and evidence that they drove the Neandertals to extinction.

Petraglia and James argue that similar events took place in India when modern humans arrived there about 70,000 years ago.

The Indian subcontinent was once home to Homo heidelbergensis, a hominid species that left Africa about 800,000 years ago, Petraglia explained.

"I realized that, my god, modern humans might have wiped out Homo heidelbergensis in India," he said. "Modern humans may have been responsible for wiping out all sorts of ancestors around the world."

"Our model of India is talking about that entire wave of dispersal," he added. "[T]hat's a huge implication for paleoanthropology and human evolution."

A New Model

Petraglia and James reached their conclusions by pulling together fossils, artifacts, and genetic data.

The evidence points to an early human migration through the Middle East and into India, arriving in Australia by 45,000 to 60,000 years ago, they say.

Their model begins about 250,000 years ago, when Homo heidelbergensis arrived in India toting crude stone tools. Digs in central India in the 1980s turned up skeletal remains of the species, and other sites revealed almond-shaped hand axes chipped from stone.

Meanwhile in Africa modern humans arose about 190,000 years ago, most archaeologists believe. These humans too developed stone tools.

Scattered evidence, such as red ochre—perhaps used as body paint—suggests early African humans also dabbled in the creative arts.

The new theory posits that as much as 70,000 years ago, a group of these modern humans migrated east, arriving in India with technology comparable to that developed by Homo heidelbergensis.

"The tools were not so different," Petraglia says. "The technology that the moderns had wasn't of a great advantage over what [Homo heidelbergensis] were using."

But modern humans outcompeted the natives, slowly but inexorably driving them to extinction, Petraglia says. "It's just like the story in Western Europe, where [modern humans] drove Neandertals to extinction," he says.

The modern humans who colonized India may also have been responsible for the disappearance of the so-called Hobbits, whose fossilized bones were discovered recently on the Indonesian island of Flores.

But Athreya of Texas A&M argues that the evidence for such a "replacement event" in India remains weak.

"You have to explain the reasons for the replacement, [such as] technical superiority," she said.

"The genetic evidence shows there were multiple migrations out of Africa, so there would have been multiple migrations into [India]. But I think these migrating populations didn't completely replace the indigenous group."

Early Art

Petraglia and James's report presents evidence of creativity and culture in India starting about 45,000 years ago. Sophisticated stone blades arrive first, along with rudimentary stone architecture.

Beads, red ochre paint, ostrich shell jewelry, and perhaps even shrines to long-lost gods—the hallmarks of an early symbolic culture—appear by 28,500 years ago.

This slow change is in contrast to what many scientists believe played out in Europe. Modern humans blew through the continent like a storm about 40,000 years ago, and Neandertals quickly disappeared.

The switch happened so rapidly—as evidenced by the sudden arrival of advanced stone tools and an explosion of cave painting and other art—that anthropologists call it the "human revolution."

"What we have is a much patchier, very slow and gradual accumulation of what we call modern human behavior in South Asia," Petraglia says.

"And that just simply means that culture developed in a slightly different way in South Asia than it did in Western Europe."

A dearth of fossils and artifacts in India makes Petraglia and James's research even more valuable, writes Robin Dennell, professor of archeology at the University of Sheffield, in a comment accompanying the study.

The subcontinent has produced just one set of early Homo sapiens fossils, found in a cave in Sri Lanka and dated to about 36,000 years ago.

Despite this, Petraglia hopes his analysis throws new light onto early human history in India.

"We're trying to give a wake up call to anthropologists … saying that we have to be looking at all parts of the world," he says.

"If we really want to tell the story of human evolution we've got to bring all parts of the world into the story."



//////////////////WIKI=Homo heidelbergensis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Homo heidelbergensis
Fossil range: Pleistocene

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: H. heidelbergensis
Binomial name
Homo heidelbergensis
Schoetensack, 1908
Homo heidelbergensis ("Heidelberg Man") is an extinct species of the genus Homo which may be the direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. The best evidence found for these hominins date between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago. H. heidelbergensis stone tool technology was considerably close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus.
Contents [hide]
1 Morphology and interpretations
1.1 RAO hypothesis
1.2 Social behavior
1.3 Language
1.4 Evidence of hunting
2 Discovery
2.1 Boxgrove Man
2.2 Sima de los Huesos
3 Extinction or evolution
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
[edit]Morphology and interpretations



Reconstruction of Homo heidelbergensis
Both H. antecessor and H. heidelbergensis are likely descended from the morphologically very similar Homo ergaster from Africa. But because H. heidelbergensis had a larger brain-case with a typical cranial average of modern humans and had more advanced tools and had more behavior, it has been given a separate species classification. The species was 1.8 meters tall on average, and more muscular than modern humans.
[edit]RAO hypothesis
According to the "Recent Out of Africa" theory, similar "Archaic Homo sapiens" found in Africa (ie. Homo sapiens idaltu only 160,000 years old), existing in Africa as a part of the operation of the Saharan pump, and not the European forms of Homo heidelbergensis, are thought to be direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens.
[edit]Social behavior
In theory recent findings in Atapuerca also suggest that H. heidelbergensis may have been the first species of the Homo genus to bury their dead, but that is contested at this time. Some experts believe that H. heidelbergensis, like its descendant H. neanderthalensis acquired a primitive form of language. No forms of art or sophisticated artifacts other than stone tools have been uncovered, although red ochre, a mineral that can be used to create a red pigment which is useful as a paint, has been found at Terra Amata excavations in the south of France.
[edit]Language


Homo heidelbergensis skull replica
The morphology of the outer and middle ear suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and very different from chimpanzees. They were probably able to differentiate between many different sounds.[1]
[edit]Evidence of hunting
Cut marks found on wild deer, elephants, rhinos and horses demonstrate that they were butchered, some of the animals weighed as much as 700 kg (1,500 lb) or possibly larger. During this era, now-extinct wild animals such as mammoths, European lions and Irish elk roamed the European continent.
Moreover, a number of 400,000 year old wooden projectile spears were found at Schöningen in northern Germany. These are thought to have been made by Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis. Generally, projectile weapons are more commonly associated with H. sapiens. The lack of projectile weaponry is an indication of different sustenance methods, rather than inferior technology or abilities. The situation is identical to that of native New Zealand Maori - modern Homo sapiens, who also rarely threw objects, but used spears and clubs instead.[2]
[edit]Discovery



Replica of the type specimen from Mauer
The first fossil discovery of this species was made on October 21, 1907 and came from Mauer where the workman Daniel Hartmann spotted a jaw in a sandpit. The jaw (Mauer 1) was in good condition except for the missing premolar teeth, which were eventually found near the jaw. The workman gave it to professor Otto Schoetensack from the University of Heidelberg, who identified and named the fossil.
The next Homo heidelbergensis remains were found in Steinheim an der Murr, Germany (the Steinheim Skull, 350kya), Arago, France (Arago 21), Petralona, Greece and Ciampate del Diavolo, Italy.
[edit]Boxgrove Man
In 1994 British scientists had unearthed a lower hominin tibia bone just a few kilometres away from the English Channel including hundreds of ancient hand axes at the Boxgrove Quarry site. A partial leg bone is dated to 478,000 and 524,000 years old. Homo heidelbergensis was the early proto-human species that occupied both France and Great Britain at that time; both locales were connected by a landmass during that epoch. Prior to Gran Dolina, Boxgrove offered the earliest hominid occupants in Europe.
The tibia had been gnawed by a large carnivore, suggesting that he had been killed by a lion or wolf or that his unburied corpse had been scavenged after death [3].
[edit]Sima de los Huesos
Beginning in 1997, a Spanish team has located more than 5,500 human bones dated to an age of at least 350,000 years old in the Sima de los Huesos site in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. The pit contains fossils of perhaps 28 individuals together with remains of Ursus deningeri and other carnivores and a biface called Excalibur. It is hypothesized that this Acheulean axe made of red quartzite was some kind of ritual offering for a funeral. Ninety percent of the known Homo heidelbergensis remains has been obtained from this site. The fossil pit bones include:
A complete cranium (Skull 5), nicknamed Miguelón, and fragments of other craniums, as Skull 4, nicknamed Agamenón and skull 6, nicknamed Rui (from El Cid, a local hero).
A complete pelvis (Pelvis 1), nicknamed Elvis, in remembrance of Elvis Presley.
Mandibles, teeth, a lot of postcranial bones (femurs, hand and foot bones, vertebrae, ribs, etc.)
Indeed, nearby sites contain the only known and controversial Homo antecessor fossils.
[edit]Extinction or evolution

Some believe that H. heidelbergensis is an extinct species, some that is a cladistic ancestor to other Homo forms sometimes improperly linked to distinct species in terms of populational genetics.
Some scenarios of survival include
H heidelbergensis > H. neanderthalensis > H sapiens sapiens
H. heidelbergensis > H. rhodesiensis > H. idaltu > H sapiens sapiens
Those supporting multiregional origin of modern humans envise fertile reproduction between many evolutionary stages; Homo walking[4], or gene transfer between adjacent populations due to gene passage and spreading in successive generations.
[edit]See also

List of fossil sites (with link directory)
List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)
Saldanha man
Altamura man


/////////////////

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

BIOLF HAS LT HNDD BIAS

why life has a bias to the left
9
04
2009
As the faux conservative pundit Stephen Colbert warned President Bush, reality has a bias to the left. And interestingly enough, so does all life on Earth. We’ve know that all amino acids, the essential components for any terrestrial organism, have left-handed chiralities. Or to translate from science-speak, their molecules wind to the left. This is why genetic engineering experiments can splice genes from very different species in a lab. The molecules will line up and assemble correctly because they’re all wound in the same direction.



But for many years, there’s been a nagging problem. Why does all life on our planet have these left-handed amino acids? You could very easily wind them to the right and they’d work just as well. In fact, you could get an identical biosphere with a different chirality. Of course you would have a very hard time finding a viable organism with both chiralities since the molecules it had to produce couldn’t match up. It would be like fitting together two different jigsaw puzzles and that means somewhere along the line, there had to be a process which resulted in our present day left-hand chirality gaining dominance over its rightward-wound counterparts. Could it be one the earliest cases of natural selection at work? Actually, it seems that primordial chemistry in the vacuum of space played a major role in what life could evolve on our world.

This is the conclusion of NASA astrobiologists Daniel Garvin and Jason Dworkin who examined meteorites rich in carbon to find the amino acid isovaline. Since isovaline isn’t actively used by living things on Earth and maintains the same chirality over billions of years, scientists can use it to take a look back at the dawn of the solar system and determine the ratio of left-handed to right-handed molecules without the threat of biological contamination. As it turns out, when a meteorite is rich with water, it has up to 18% more left-handed isovaline so when meteors with disproportionate amounts of left-handed amino acids fell to Earth and deposited their organic cargo, they would’ve created a bias towards organisms with our current chirality.



/////////////////OLDEST AD I RMMBR-WSHNG PWDR NRMA



////////////////PLYWOOD-CHALTA RAHE CHALTA RAHE



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CDS 150109-HNY BNGLI-BILLU BRBR KI EMTNL ATYACHAR-INIL CRSS

//////////////////THEY ARE CATCHING UP

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

CDS 140409-NGGNG WF RLCTNT DTR-NWRD

//////////////////JNDRA STAY COSTS 500 GBP

////////////////MUTEST MN



//////////////Antimacassar (noun)
Pronunciation: [æn-ti-mê-'kæ-sê(r)]
Definition: A covering originally thrown over the backs and arms of sofas and chairs to protect them from the hair oil worn by men of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries. Currently these covers, usually crocheted, are used for mere decoration.
Usage: Today's word is an odd lexical orphan, mixing a regular prefix with the name of a commercial product. Converting a proper commercial name into a common noun is not unusual, however, as the Etymology shows.



///////////////////JBCTS CRSS




/////////////////AR GENE-TRANSXUALISM
Scientists discover 'transsexual gene' that makes men feel like women

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:30 AM on 27th October 2008

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Transsexual men who 'feel' female are likely to have an unusual version of a gene that affects the male sex hormone testosterone, a study has shown.

The discovery was made by scientists who examined DNA from 112 male-to-female transsexuals.
Israeli singer Dana International: Recent research shows that transsexuals like Dana are likely to have an unusual version of a gene that affects the hormone testosterone

Israeli singer Dana International: Recent research shows that transsexuals like Dana are likely to have an unusual version of a gene that affects the hormone testosterone

In many cases there was a longer version of a gene known to modify the action of testosterone.

The alteration may 'under-masculinise' the brain during its development in the womb, the researchers believe.

Study leader Dr Vincent Harley, from Prince Henry's Institute in Clayton, Australia, said:'There is a social stigma that transsexualism is simply a lifestyle choice; however, our findings support a biological basis of how gender identity develops.

'As with all genetic association studies it will be important to replicate these findings in other populations.'

The findings are published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Professor Andrew Sinclair, from the University of Melbourne, said: 'This research suggests that extra long copies of the Androgen Receptor gene potentially affect testosterone function in the brains of male-to-female transsexuals.

'These defective copies of the AR gene could severely reduce normal testosterone levels, resulting in a more female-like brain. Consequently, male-to-female transsexuals might be expected to have a more feminised brain and are therefore likely to display a female gender identity.

'This supports the notion that transsexualism has a biological (genetic) basis rather than being due to psychosocial factors in early childhood.

'However, this finding does not explain all male-to-female transsexuals suggesting that multiple genetic factors are involved.'



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