Famous People Who Battled Mesothelioma

http://www.mybiologica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/a6f0MerlinOlsen-261x300.jpg


Famous People Who Battled Mesothelioma



Mesothelioma is a cancer most often associated with military service and blue-collar professions, but the asbestos-created disease has touched all walks of life. That includes the rich and the famous.
Professional athletes, Olympic gold medalists,...

Read More: Famous People Who Battled Mesothelioma

#Athletes, #Cancer, #Century, #Fame, #Highest, #League, #Mcqueen, #Prairie, #Renowned, #Result, #Studios

Arctic biodiversity under serious threat from climate change

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~4/N0uxQAXicLo

Unique and irreplaceable Arctic wildlife and landscapes are crucially at risk due to global warming caused by human activities according to the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA), a new report prepared by 253 scientists from 15 countries under the auspices of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council.”An entire bio-climatic zone, the high Arctic, may disappear. Polar bears and the other highly adapted organisms cannot move further north, so they may go extinct. We risk losing several species forever,” says Hans Meltofte of Aarhus University, chief scientist of the report.From the iconic polar bear and elusive narwhal to the tiny Arctic flowers and lichens that paint the tundra in the summer months, the Arctic is home to a diversity of highly adapted animal, plant, fungal and microbial species. All told, there are more than 21,000 species.Maintaining biodiversity in the Arctic is important for many reasons. For Arctic peoples, biodiversity is a vital part of their material and spiritual existence. Arctic fisheries and tourism have global importance and represent immense economic value. Millions of Arctic birds and mammals that migrate and connect the Arctic to virtually all parts of the globe are also at risk from climate change in the Arctic as well as from development and hunting in temperate and tropical areas. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems such as vast areas of lowland tundra, wetlands, mountains, extensive shallow ocean shelves, millennia-old ice shelves and huge seabird cliffs are characteristic to the Arctic. These are now at stake, according to the report.”Climate change is by far the worst threat to Arctic biodiversity. Temperatures are expected to increase more in the Arctic compared to the global average, resulting in severe disruptions to Arctic biodiversity some of which are already visible,” warns Meltofte.A planetary increase of 2 C, the worldwide agreed upon acceptable limit of warming, is projected to result in vastly more heating in the Arctic with anticipated temperature increases of 2.8-7.8 C this century. …


Read More: Arctic biodiversity under serious threat from climate change

#Arctic, #Biodiversity, #Century, #Chief, #Climate, #Council, #Ecology, #Fauna, #Ocean, #Summer, #University

Why white dots appear larger than equal size black dots: How Galileo"s visual illusion works in the mind"s eye

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~4/J789z-V751A

Scientists have studied a visual illusion first discovered by Galileo Galilei, and found that it occurs because of the surprising way our eyes see lightness and darkness in the world. Their results advance our understanding of how our brains are wired for seeing white versus black objects.The work was done by Jens Kremkow and collaborators in the laboratories of Jose Manuel Alonso and Qasim Zaidi at the State University of New York College of Optometry. It will be published on February 10 of 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Galileo was puzzled by the fact that the appearance of the planets depended on whether one looked with the naked eye or with a telescope. Viewed directly, planets seemed “expanded” and had “a radiant crown,” which made Venus looked eight to ten times larger than Jupiter even though Jupiter was four times larger. Though Galileo realized this size illusion was not created by the object — but by his eyes — he did not understand why or how.He mused, “Either because their light is refracted in the moisture that covers the pupil, or because it is reflected from the edges of the eyelids and these reflected rays are diffused over the pupil, or for some other reason.” Generations of scientists following Galileo continued to assume the illusion was caused by blur or similar optical effects. However, though blur can distort size, it does not explain why Venus looks larger than Jupiter with the naked eye. Hermann von Helmholtz — the venerable 19th Century German physician-physicist — was the first to realize that something else was needed to explain the illusion, as he described in his Treatise on Physiological Optics.Only now, with Kremkow and colleagues’ new study, has science finally zoomed in and illuminated the scope of the problem. It’s a feature of how we see everything, no less. By examining the responses of neurons in the visual system of the brain — to both light stimuli and dark stimuli — the neuroscientists discovered that, whereas dark stimuli result in a faithful neural response that accurately represents their size, light stimuli on the contrary result in non-linear and exaggerated responses that make the stimulus look larger. So white spots on a black background look bigger than same-sized black spots on white background, and Galileo’s glowing stellar objects are not really as big as they might appear to the unaided eye.This effect is responsible for how we see everything from textures and faces — based on their dark parts in bright daylight — to why it is easier to read this very page with black-on-white lettering, rather than white-on-black (a well known, and until now, unexplained phenomenon). …


Read More: Why white dots appear larger than equal size black dots: How Galileo"s visual illusion works in the mind"s eye

#Academy, #Alzheimer, #Century, #Galileo, #Health, #Jupiter, #National, #Optometry, #Planets, #Sciences