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Monday, 2 March 2015

3 dead sperm whales wash ashore within 3 days in Tamil Nadu, India


© M. Karunakaran

An adult male sperm whale stranded at Uyali Kuppam near Kalpakkam on Sunday.



The washing ashore of three sperm whales in the last three days has taken fishermen and marine researchers along the east coast by surprise.

While the first dead whale was found near Puducherry on Friday, a second carcass was located at Alambaraikuppam near Marakkanam on Saturday with the third being found at Uyyalikuppam near Kalpakkam on Sunday.


The stranded whale at Uyyalikuppam was a male measuring 50 feet in length and weighing nearly 4 tonnes. The carcass found on Saturday at Alambaraikuppam was that of a female sperm whale which measured 35 feet and weighed nearly 3 tonnes. Both died of injuries suffered on the tail after getting entangled in large nets near the sea surface, said researchers.


Supraja Dharini of TREE Foundation, who visited Uyyalikuppam village, said the flipper of the dead whale was 52 inches long and 30 inches wide, the short dorsal fin was two feet wide -- measurements which indicate that it was full grown adult male. The carcass, which bore superficial injuries, had begun to decompose badly when washed ashore. Oil globules were found all over the dorsal side of the body, she said.


S Venkataraman, director, Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), told TOI that often earthquakes under the sea could disorient these deep sea mammals forcing them to move towards the sea surface where they could have swum into nets and died. With its large population of squids and flow of water currents, the Bay of Bengal region is believed to be a breeding ground for sperm whales though no proper study has been done on this, he said.


But P Dhandapani, formerly with ZSI, suspected the death due to infighting between the older mammals and the young ones. "Certain aspects of the whale's behaviour have not been observed and recorded so far. So it would be difficult to ascertain the exact cause of death," he said.


Sperm whales are one of the biggest and powerful aquatic mammals with a close and complex social structure. They can dive up to 2,000 metres and can hold their breath for two hours. Due to their deep diving capabilities, they frequently hunt giant squids. Spermaceti, an oily substance found in large quantities inside the mammal's head, was used to make candles in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ambergris, another substance, was used to make perfumes. Extraction of both are banned now.


Palestine's first complaint against Israel's alleged war crimes to ICC in April


© Reuters/Suhaib Salem

A Palestinian man stands at his makeshift shelter near the ruins of his house that witnesses said was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war last summer, on a rainy day east of Gaza City February 19, 2015.



Palestine's first complaint against Israel's alleged war crimes will be filed at the International Criminal Court in April, according to a senior Palestinian official. The issue will reportedly be related to the 2014 war in Gaza.

"One of the first important steps will be filing a complaint against Israel at the ICC on April 1 over the [2014] Gaza war and settlement activity," Mohammed Shtayyeh, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) told AP on Monday.


The Palestinians will be able to take legal action at the court based in The Hague, Netherlands, after the nation moved to join the international authority formally in January. According to the court's procedures, "the statute will enter into force for the State of Palestine on April 1."


Israel's foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon expressed his country's refusal to react to the declaration, describing it as "speculative and hypothetical," as quoted by AP. The Israeli administration has for decades consistently opposed Palestine's legal power to sue Israel for war crimes.


After Palestine's move to join the ICC was confirmed by the UN in January, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country "will not let Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers and officers be dragged" to The Hague. Following the announcement in January, Israel froze the transfer of half a billion shekels ($125 million) in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority.


The ICC, with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, announced a preliminary examination into Israel's 2014 actions in Gaza. Around 2,200 Palestinians were killed in that conflict, with over 60 percent of the victims being civilians. Israel's losses included 66 soldiers and 6 civilians, according to an investigation, carried out by AP earlier this month.


After Palestine officially joins the Court in April, it also plans to sue Israel over its policy of settlement building on land occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Under international law, all Israeli construction on land seized during the war is considered illegal.


7 LAPD officers witness their guns shooting a 'homeless man' in Los Angeles




A small memorial at the scene of the shooting, Sunday, in Los Angeles



Authorities said Sunday night that Los Angeles police fatally shot a man on skid row during a struggle over an officer's weapons.

Police officials offered a detailed account of what they say prompted the Sunday morning shooting, which was captured on video by a bystander.


Cmdr. Andrew Smith said officers assigned to the LAPD's Central Division and Safer Cities Initiative — a task force focused on skid row — responded to the location about noon Sunday after receiving a 911 call reporting a possible robbery.


Smith said the officers approached the man and made contact with him, at which point he "began fighting and physically resisting the officers." The officers attempted to take him into custody and at one point, attempted to use a Taser that Smith said was "ineffective."


The man continued to resist police, Smith said, and the man and some of the officers fell to the ground.


"At some point in there, a struggle over one of the officer's weapons occurred," Smith said. "At that point an officer-involved shooting happened."




Two officers and a sergeant fired at the man, who was pronounced dead at the scene, Smith said. It was unclear how many times the officers fired, although at least five shots can be heard on the video recording that captured the shooting.

No other gun was recovered at the scene, Smith said. It was unclear if the man had any other weapons among his possessions — investigators were still combing the scene late Sunday night.




The man has been tentatively identified, but Smith said it was unclear if he was homeless.

Two officers were treated and released for injuries sustained in the struggle, Smith said. The extent of those injuries was unclear.


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Impending ice age? North America braces for yet another winter snow storm

snow nyack new york

© Reuters/Mike Segar

A man stands in falling snow at the shore of the Hudson River in the New York City suburban town of Nyack, New York March 1, 2015.



Winter's relentless battering was poised on Monday to hit northern states across the nation with more snow and ice as the season's bitter weather stretched its reach into the early days of March.

A fresh storm was due to stretch from Wyoming to Michigan on Monday evening and cross all the way to Maine by Tuesday, meteorologists predicted.


Warmer air mixing in from the South will create messy conditions of icy rain in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, said Accuweather.com.


Icy travel conditions are expected in St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, the weather website said.


Three to four more inches of snow is likely with the next storm in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the National Weather Service said.


Boston, which posted its coldest February on record and its second-snowiest ever, was likely to see two to four inches of new snow on top of the more than 102 inches recorded so far this winter.


The city could surpass its record winter snowfall of nearly 108 inches, set in 1995-96, with the pending storm.


Harvard University professor Moshik Temkin, walking his son to school along slushy narrow sidewalks in Cambridge, said he would be happy to see the record left unbroken.


"I'm pretty satisfied already with what is we have," he said. "I don't think more snow would be good for anybody."


Boston student Harrison Sidell, 20, said he had more mixed feelings about the historic snow accumulation.


"Since we're so close, we may as well break the record," he said. "But I'm really tired of the snow. If we could break the record and then it started raining right then and all the snow just goes away, that would be nice."


Snow on Sunday and early Monday fell from the nation's capital to New England, leaving five to six inches of fresh accumulation in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service.


Eight inches of new snow was reported in South Kingston, Rhode Island, the Weather Service said.


What is the fourth phase of water?

Glass of Water

© dreamatico.com



University of Washington Bioengineering Professor Gerald Pollack answers this question, and intrigues us to consider the implications of this finding. Not all water is H2O, a radical departure from what you may have learned from textbooks.

Dr. Gerald Pollack, University of Washington professor of bioengineering, has developed a theory of water that has been called revolutionary. He has spent the past decade convincing worldwide audiences that water is not actually a liquid.


Dr. Pollack received his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. He then joined the University of Washington faculty and is now professor of bioengineering. For years, Dr. Pollack had researched muscles and how they contract. It struck him as odd that the most common ideas about muscle contraction did not involve water, despite the fact muscle tissue consists of 99 percent water molecules.


Water Research happens at Pollack Laboratories, which states, "Our orientation is rather fundamental -- we are oriented toward uncovering some of nature's most deeply held secrets, although applications interest us as well."


Uncovering nature's secrets involving water is what Dr. Pollack, his staff and students do best.


In his 2001 book, Dr. Pollack explains how the cell functions. Research suggests that much of the cell biology may be governed by a single unifying mechanism - the phase transition. Water is absolutely central to every function of the cell - whether it's muscle contraction, cells dividing, or nerves conducting, etc.


This extraordinary book challenges many of the concepts that have been accepted in contemporary cell biology. The underlying premise of this book is that a cell's cytoplasm is gel-like rather than an ordinary aqueous solution.


The Water in Your Cells Give Them Their Negative Charge


Other inherent differences between regular water and EZ water include its structure. Typical tap water is H2O but this fourth phase is H2O; it's actually . It's also more viscous, more ordered, and more alkaline than regular water, and its optical properties are different. The refractive index of EZ water is about 10 percent higher than ordinary water. Its density is also about 10 percent higher, and it has a negative charge (negative electrical potential). This may provide the answer as to why human cells are negatively charged. Dr. Pollack explains:




"Everybody knows that the cell is negatively charged. If you insert an electrode into any of your cells, you'll measure a negative electrical potential. The textbook says that the reason for this negative electrical potential has something to do with the membrane and the ion channels in the membrane.




Oddly, if you look at a gel that has no membrane, you record much the same potential -- 100 millivolts or 150 millivolts negative. The interior of the cell is much like a gel. It's kind of surprising that something without a membrane yields the same electrical potential as the cell with a membrane.




That raises the question: where does this negativity come from? Well, I think the negativity comes from the water, because the EZ water inside the cell has a negative charge. The same is true of the gel--the EZ water in the gel confers negativity. I think the cells are negatively charged because the water inside the cell is mainly EZ water and not neutral H2O."




What Creates or Builds EZ Water?


One of the greatest surprises is that the key ingredient to create EZ water is light, i.e. electromagnetic energy, whether in the form of visible light, ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths and infrared wavelengths, which we're surrounded by all the time. Infrared is the most powerful, particularly at wavelengths of approximately three micrometers, which is all around you. The EZ water can build on any hydrophilic or water-loving surface when infrared energy is available.


It builds by adding layer upon layer of EZ water, and can build millions of molecular layers. This is how it occurs in nature. For example, ice doesn't form directly from ordinary H2O. It goes from regular water to EZ water to ice. And when you melt it, it goes from ice to EZ water to regular water. So EZ water is an intermediate state.



"Glacial melt is a perfect way to get EZ water. And a lot of people have known that this water is really good for your health," Dr. Pollack says.



Testing water samples using a UV-visible spectrometer, which measures light absorption at different wavelengths, Dr. Pollack has discovered that in the UV region of 270 nanometers, just shy of the visible range, the EZ actually light. The more of the 270 nanometer light the water absorbs, the more EZ water the sample contains. EZ water appears to be quite stable. This means it can hold the structure, even if you leave it sitting around for some time. Water samples from the river Ganges and from the Lourdes in France have been measured, showing spikes in the 270 nanometer region, suggesting these "holy waters" contain high amounts of EZ water. According to Dr. Pollack, there's compelling evidence that EZ water is indeed lifesaving...


Where can we get structured water?

Spring water -- under pressure (deep in the ground) becomes structured.


Glacial melt -- ice turns into Structured Water (EZ water) when melting . . . The phase between liquid and solid is structured water.


Vortexing -- A vortex occurs naturally in nature, as in streams, rivers, waterfalls, etc. The vortex is a kind of mechanical perturbation or agitation. Vortexing is a very powerful way of increasing structure. There are devices on the market which vortex water.


Juicing -- is water that comes from the plant cells. Structured juice water!


Antioxidents -- Most of the tissues in our body are negative. Our cells are a negative charge; oxidants are a positive charge. Antioxidents maintain the negative charge in our body.


Sunlight -- critical to our health. Light builds Structured Water (EZ water.)


Circulation -- Red blood cells work their way through capillaries; light is the driver of flow. Add light and flow increases. Something other than the heart (pressure) is driving the blood.


Infared light -- energy is generated everywhere. It drives the processes in your body.


The fourth phase of water: starts with the basics of what we know about water...from simple experiments we figure out this fourth phase of water. What's the nature of this fourth phase? Why is this interesting? It applies to everything water touches. It's in the sky and the clouds. It's in the oceans, lakes and rivers, and it fills the inside of our body.


Sources:

University of Washington, Pollack Laboratory

Structured Water Unit

Mercola.com


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Hospital psych ward kidnaps student who was dropped at emergency room sick with flu

Kaitlin Taylor



Kaitlin Taylor



A New Jersey woman has filed a lawsuit claiming she was held for six days in a New York hospital's psychiatric ward after first complaining of flu-like symptoms.

NJ.com reports Kaitlin Taylor was a student at Syracuse University in 2013 when she went to the school's medical center seeking a prescription because she believed she had the flu or a bad cold.

While there, Taylor reportedly spoke briefly with a school counselor and said she was considering changing her arts major and had wanted to take a leave of absence from the school but missed an important deadline to file paperwork.


Taylor said she was then informed that no one at the medical center could write her a prescription and was taken to nearby St. Joseph's Hospital where she was dropped off in front of the emergency room.


As she waited at the ER, Taylor said she grew more stressed and felt as though she was getting sicker by the minute.


"I was getting stressed by the circumstances and the surroundings," she told The New York Post in a written account of her experience. "I thought I'd only be there for an hour or two."


Taylor said she was eventually led to an office where she spoke to a psychiatrist for about 15 minutes. She said she told the psychiatrist she had been having trouble sleeping and was struggling to keep up with coursework.


The psychiatrist's notes indicate the student was admitted for "involuntary treatment" for "insomnia, pressured speech, disorganized, declining grades."


Taylor said she spent the next six days in an observation room with other patients.


She said she was administered Risperdal, a drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as the powerful anti-anxiety drug, Klonopin.




"They made us line up in front of a window and they gave out the pills, just like in the movie '[One Flew Over the] Cuckoo's Nest,'" she said.

She claimed hospital staff told her "the more I cooperated the sooner they'd let me out, that I should take their pills and go along with whatever they told me to do."


Eventually she was permitted to call her mother who traveled to the hospital to get her, Taylor said.


Taylor's attorney, Marc Held, filed the lawsuit recently in Manhattan Supreme Court. He called his client's treatment "unfathomable."


St. Joseph's declined to comment on the suit, citing patient privacy.


A lawyer for the university, Matthew Larkin, said the school "denies that it acted inappropriately in any way."


Taylor, who lives in Union County, New Jersey, has since transferred to Rutgers University.


Details of the lawsuit, including who, specifically, is named and the damages sought by Taylor have not been reported.


Cluster of stars found forming at edge of Milky Way

Milky Way

© NASA/JPL

If alien life existed on the planets orbiting these stars, they would have views of a portion, or all, of the galactic disk.



A cluster of stars forming at the edge of our very own Milky Way galaxy has been discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers using data collected from the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the US space agency announced on Friday.

These stars live on the edge


"A stellar nursery in what seems to be the middle of nowhere is quite surprising," said Peter Eisenhardt, the project scientist for the WISE mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. "But surprises turn up when you look everywhere, as the WISE survey did."


The team of astronomers responsible for the discovery, led by Denilso Camargo of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, have published their findings in a recent issue of the journal .


The Milky Way has a barred spiral shape, with arms of stars, dust and gas emerging from a central bar, the researchers explained. When it is viewed from the side, the galaxy appears to be relatively flat, with the majority of the material in a disk and in the central area.


Stars form within dense clumps of gas in what are known as giant molecular clouds (GMCs). These GMCs are primarily located in the inner part of the galactic disk, and with many clumps within each of these clouds, the majority of stars are born together in clusters.


Carmargo's team analyzed infrared survey images provided from WISE and found GMCs located thousands of light years above and below the galactic disk. They also found that one of them contained two clusters of stars, marking the first time that researchers had ever discovered stars forming in such a remote location of the galaxy.


The new clusters are located in the molecular cloud HRK 81.4-77.8, which is believed to be approximately two million years old and roughly 16,000 light years beneath the galactic disk - a tremendous distance from the traditional regions of star formation, according to the researchers. The clusters have been given the names Camargo 438 and 439.


Cluster explanation


According to Carmago, there are two possible explanations for the phenomenon. In the first, supernova explosions and other violent events eject dusk and gas out of the galactic disk. That material then falls back, merges, and forms GMCs. In the second, the GMCs formed from gas that was disturbed by interaction with the galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds.


The first explanation, also known as the "chimney model," would need several hundred massive stars to have exploded as supernovae over the course of several generations, creating a so-called "superwind" that forced HRK 81.4-77.8 into its present position, the authors explained.


The bubbles created by these explosions would, over millions of years, themselves compress materials, forming an increasing number of stars and fuelling the ejection of material in a type of "galactic fountain," they added. Eventually, the gas and dust would fall back down onto the disk.


"Our work shows that the space around the Galaxy is a lot less empty that we thought," Carmago said in a statement. "The new clusters of stars are truly exotic. In a few million years, any inhabitants of planets around the stars will have a grand view of the outside of the Milky Way, something no human being will probably ever experience."


"Now we want to understand how the ingredients for making stars made it to such a distant spot. We need more data and some serious work on computer models to try to answer this question," the astronomer added.