Bugs ravage North American forests, Indian physicists use laser to drive blood cell motor]

[Guest guest]

Red blood cells are go!

 

 

 

14 December

2004

Physicists in India have shown that red blood cells can transfer

the angular momentum in a circularly polarized laser beam into

rotational motion. The "motor" developed by Deepak Mathur and

colleagues at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in

Mumbai could find use in a variety of applications, including

biosensors and cellular micromachines (J A Dharmadhikari et al.

2004 Appl. Phys. Lett. 85 6048).

 

Several groups have already shown that optical forces can be used to

make micron-sized objects rotate, but these objects all had to be made

with complicated microfabrication techniques. The advantage of the Tata

approach is that it exploits naturally occurring materials.

Close collaboration between biologists and physicists made it

possible for us to overcome the need to microfabricate specially

designed shapes for the 'rotor'," Mathur told PhysicsWeb. "The

use of biological matter, in the form of red blood cells, allowed

nature to do all the hard work for us as far as fabrication was

concerned."

 

Red blood cells are normally disk-shaped but the forces generated by

the laser beams in an optical trap deform the disks into cylinders (see

figure 1). These cylinders align themselves so that they are edge-on

with respect to the direction of the incident laser beam, and then

begin to rotate by following the polarization of the beam.

 

Mathur and co-workers found that the red blood cells -- which came from

humans and from mice -- could rotate at up 42 revolutions per minute

without being damaged, and that larger cells rotated faster than

smaller ones. The speed of rotation could also be increased by

increasing the laser intensity, although the cells were destroyed when

the laser power exceeded about 100 milliwatts (see figure 2).

The group is now repeating its experiments with cells from

different species. The elasticity of the cell membrane is central to

the process because it governs how the cells deform in the laser beam.

"The torques generated in our 'motor' are enormous," says Mathur,"

but the key question is: can we use such a single-cell motor to perform

tasks on the micron level? We await the answer with bated breath!"

About the author

Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb

 

 

Bugs ravage North American forests

 

 

14 December 2004

NewScientist.com news service

Philip Cohen

 

 

 

 

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Insects whose populations are booming because of local warming -

possibly due to global warming - appear to be devouring huge swathes of

forest in western Canada and Alaska.

 

Forests in Europe and Siberia may also be under threat. This could

lead to a vicious cycle where reduced forest cover leads to more carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere, producing further climate change.

Chris Potter, an ecologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in

Moffett Field, California, US, and colleagues analysed satellite images

collected by NASA's Global Disturbances project to determine how the

cover of tree canopies and other vegetation has changed over time.

 

Nineteen years of satellite data ending in 2000 revealed a

remarkable loss of greenness from the forested region that extends from

the US-Canadian border in western Canada all the way to Alaska. The

researchers found evidence for rapid defoliation over the brief period

from 1995 to 2000.

"It's the kind of thing we see when an area entirely burns up," says

Potter. "If they aren't dead, these trees are going to be dead very

soon."

 

Mammoth scale

Until now, the devastation has gone unnoticed because the region is

largely uninhabited and is not managed or harvested for timber. Also,

no large-scale natural disaster has struck and drawn attention to the

region.

 

After studying forestry reports for the area and conferring with

local experts, Potter's team concluded that the massive die-off was the

result of two small creatures - the mountain pine beetle and the spruce

budworm - killing leaves on a mammoth scale.

 

Both insects are common in these types of forests, but normally the

harsh winters keep a check on their populations. However, during this

19-year period the region experienced some of the mildest winters on

record, and Potter believes that this spared unprecedented numbers of

bugs from freezing and allowed them to thrive in huge numbers in the

spring.

 

"Conventional wisdom is that bugs are part of the system and may be

good for the forest," says Potter. "But this looks like something new

happening on a huge scale. It's a sudden shift into a new kind of

forest condition.”

 

Other forests that rely on winter chill to kill off pests may also

be at risk if the trend of warmer winters continues. Potter and his

team are keeping an eye on similar forests in northern Europe,

Scandinavia and Siberia as they start to analyse satellite data from

2000 onwards.

The work was presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in

San Francisco.

 

The Guru/Messiah Syndrome: similarities between Carl Jung

and Aleister Crowley

At first sight there may seem to be few similarities between

occultist Aleister Crowley and psychologist Carl Jung.Crowley

experimented with drugs, sex and magic, had a strong desire to shock

people, and lived a very controversial life. Jung, on the other hand,

was a respectable member of society and had a far more stable

personality. However, both had a revelatory experience that affected

them profoundly and had far reaching consequences on the course of

their lives.I would like to explore those areas in which a number of

striking similarities occur.

 

 

Occult interests

Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898 when he

was 23. He was a very keen student of the occult, and he made quick

progress through the lower grades.In 1900 there was a schism in the

Golden Dawn, and he left to pursue his own studies, including Buddhism

and yoga in Ceylon.In 1904 in Cairo, he was contacted by a spirit guide

called Aiwass (he said it was his Holy Guardian Angel). Aiwass dictated

the Liber AL Legis or The Book of the Law over a period

of three days, between noon and 1.00pm.This book announced a new aeon,

the Age of Horus (The Crowned and Conquering Child), and its basic

teachings. Crowley was to be the avatar of the new aeon.He said it was

the most important experience in his whole life.It is significant that

this personal crisis took place when Crowley was 29.This is the Saturn

return, when the planet transits its natal position, and many people

experience upheavals in their lives at this stage.For many years

Crowley kept a diary of his magical workings.

 

 

Jung attended seances with his cousin Helene Preiswerk and wrote his

dissertation on her psychic experiences, "On Psychology and Pathology

of So-Called Occult Phenomena" (1902). Beginning in 1913 he conversed

with spirit guides, in particular Philemon, whom he called his guru.

One afternoon in the summer of 1916 Jung experienced spirits in his

house. They gave him what was to be the first sentence, and under

inspiration he wrote Seven Sermons to the Dead in three

evenings. Jung felt that he was expressing the ideas of Philemon.He

distributed it privately under the pseudonym Basilides. Jung said:" All

my works,all my creative activity, has come from those initial

fantasies and dreams which began in 1912" (MDR, p.217). He recorded

these fantasies and dreams in the Black Book and the Red Book.Jung was

experiencing a classic mid-life crisis.He was 41 and Uranus was in

opposition to its natal position, with Neptune square to its natal

position.Quite a number of men experience an outbreak of unconscious

forces at this time of life, though not many to the same extent as Jung

did.Jung visited India in 1938, and he wrote about yoga and various

aspects of Eastern thought. However , he maintained that Eastern

practices were unsuitable for Westerners, being part of a different

culture and heritage.

 

 

Most likely the voice in each case was from their own subconscious

mind.In both cases the messages are in accord with the beliefs of each

man.Crowley was beguiled by ancient Egypt, and Jung had been studying

gnosticism.Both men knew enough about mythology to know that three days

has initiatory significance.Jonah spent three days in the belly of a

whale, Gilgamesh three days in a cave, and Christ rose after three

days.The possible origin is in the fact that the moon is not visible

for this period from the old moon to the new one: see, for example, Ancient

Egypt, the Light of the World by Gerald Massey.

Prolific writers

 

More- http://www.personal.usyd.edu.au/~apert/crow.html

 

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