Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a theory. The molten-rock layer is 10 miles thick and can’t be seen, felt or smelt from the surface. Researchers Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy of Arizona State University found the layer using a relatively new technique that measures changes in weak electrical currents flowing through the Earth’s mantle rock. The current is created when the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged atomic particles emitted by the sun, interact with Earth’s magnetic field, called the magnetosphere. The chemical make-up of the rocks affects their conductivity. By measuring changes in the current at different depths, the scientists were able to detect distinct rock layers, including the ‘invisible’ magma layer. ‘Rocks are semiconductors,’ Tyburczy said. ‘And rocks with more hydrogen embedded in their structure conduct better, as do rocks that are partially molten.’ The discovery, detailed in the June 21 issue of the journal Nature, partially confirms a recent hypothesis by two Yale University geoscientists, which states that a band of molten […]
MINDELO, Cape Verde - Virtually every aspect of global migration can be seen in this tiny West African nation, where the number of people who have left approaches the number who remain and almost everyone has a close relative in Europe or America. Migrant money buoys the economy. Migrant votes sway politics. Migrant departures split parents from children, and the most famous song by the most famous Cape Verdean venerates the national emotion, ‘Sodade,’ or longing. Lofty talk of opportunity abroad mixes at cafe tables here with accounts of false documents and sham marriages. The intensity of the national experience makes this barren archipelago the Galapagos of migration, a microcosm of the forces straining American politics and remaking societies across the globe. An estimated 200 million people live outside the country of their birth, and they help support a swath of the developing world as big if not bigger. Migrants sent home about $300 billion last year - nearly three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined. Those sums are building houses, educating children and seeding small businesses, and they have made migration central to discussions about how to help the global poor. A leading academic text […]
The child raised as the eldest in a family is likely to have a higher IQ than his or her siblings, work reveals. A Norwegian team found first born children and those who had lost elder siblings and had hence become the eldest, scored higher on intelligence. The link, reported in Science, was found by looking at more than 250,000 male Norwegian conscripts. Experts have disagreed for decades about how birth order might influence intellect and achievement. Brainier Supporters of the theory argue the eldest child gets more undivided attention from their parents from an early age. Others claim differences occur in the womb before birth because with each subsequent pregnancy the mother produces higher levels of antibodies that may attack the foetal brain. While others claim the relationship between birth order and intelligence is false, being biased by family size – historically, couples with lower IQs have tended to have more children than couples with higher IQs. Professor Petter Kristensen, at the National Institute of Occupational Health in Oslo, and colleague Tor Bjerkedal, at the Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Service, said although the IQ difference they found in their study groups […]
NEW YORK – It’s a question that often prompts a boastful answer or a bashful one: How many sex partners have you had? Now the federal government says it has authoritative statistics, documenting that men are far more likely to play the field than women. A new nationwide survey, using high-tech methods to solicit candid answers on sexual activity and illegal drug use, finds that 29 percent of American men report having 15 or more female sexual partners in a lifetime, while only 9 percent of women report having sex with 15 or more men. The median number of lifetime female sexual partners for men was seven; the median number of male partners for women was four. The survey, released Friday, is based on data collected from 1999 to 2002 for the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In previous federal surveys on these topics, participants were asked questions in face-to-face interviews. The CDC believes that caused underreporting of behaviors which might be viewed negatively, although the survey did not provide any comparative results from earlier reports. This time, data was gathered from 6,237 adults, […]
Lori Boyer couldn’t stop trembling as she sat on the examining table, hugging her hospital gown around her. Her mind was reeling. She’d been raped hours earlier by a man she knew - a man who had assured Boyer, 35, that he only wanted to hang out at his place and talk. Instead, he had thrown her onto his bed and assaulted her. ‘I’m done with you,’ he’d tonelessly told her afterward. Boyer had grabbed her clothes and dashed for her car in the freezing predawn darkness. Yet she’d had the clarity to drive straight to the nearest emergency room - Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, Pennsylvania - to ask for a rape kit and talk to a sexual assault counselor. Bruised and in pain, she grimaced through the pelvic exam. Now, as Boyer watched Martin Gish, M.D., jot some final notes into her chart, she thought of something the rape counselor had mentioned earlier. ‘I’ll need the morning-after pill,’ she told him. Dr. Gish looked up. He was a trim, middle-aged man with graying hair and, Boyer thought, an aloof manner. ‘No,’ Boyer says he replied abruptly. ‘I can’t do that.’ He turned back to his writing. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
