Melting ice

Recent reports about melting polar ice is indeed bad news for low laying coastal countries like Singapore. The report says that ice sheets in Green land & Antarctica are shrinking 3 times faster than they did in the 1990s.

What this really means is these melting ice can cause rises in sea levels, which in turn will likely displace coastal population by exposing them to higher tidal & storm impacts.

Our govt has done lots of preventive measures to date;

1. Since last yr govt has raised the minimum level for new land reclamation by at least a metre above current standards.

2. PUB also announced a raft of flood protection measures.

3. This include raising level of platforms in buildings with basements above the highest recorded flood level

Is The internet leaving children brain-dead

Children are losing creativity and practical skills because they spend too much time in front of screens. If this goes on, the next generation of inventors is being lost, with young people often unable to make anything with their hands

But experts  said children could rediscover vital skills if schools used  practical toys. Children have got to be taught hands-on, and not to become mobile phone or computer dependent. 'They should use computers as and when, but there are so many people playing with their computers nowadays that spend all their time sitting there with a stomach.

They are dependent on Google searches. A lot of kids will become fairly brain-dead if they become so dependent on the internet, because they will not be able to do things the old-fashioned way.

It is believed  that simple challenges in schools using tools such as Meccano model kits would give children invaluable skills. With Meccano you could do your own reproduction of, say, the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Meccano is a model  construction system comprising re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears  with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. It enables the building of working models and mechanical devices.

Meccano was invented in 1901 in England by Frank Hornby and manufactured by the British company, Meccano Ltd, between 1908 and 1980. It is now manufactured in France and China. "Erector Sets" currently sold in the USA are actually Meccano sets manufactured by Meccano S.N. of France, part of the Nikko Group of Japan.

 

Turtle soup

My friends love turtle soup. Me not so. But I always find myself tagging along as they say this is a real tonic. But have you wonder why or how Did Turtles Get Their Shells for that matter? Well they found the oldest Known Turtle Fossil, 220 Million Years Old some years back.

 Since the age of dinosaurs, turtles have looked pretty much as they do now with their shells intact, and scientists lacked conclusive evidence to support competing evolutionary theories. Now with the discovery in China of the oldest known turtle fossil, estimated at 220- million-years-old, scientists have a clearer picture of how the turtle got its shell.

Experts after  analysing  the Chinese turtle fossil, found  evidence to support the notion that turtle shells are bony extensions of their backbones and ribs that expanded and grew together to form a hard protective covering.

The fossilized turtle ancestor, dubbed Odontochelys semitestacea (translation: half-shelled turtle with teeth), likely lived in the water rather than on land. This is the first turtle with an incomplete shell. The shell is an evolutionary innovation. It's difficult to explain how it evolved without an intermediate example.

Prior to discovery of Odontochelys, the oldest known turtle specimen was Proganochelys, which was found in Germany. Because Proganochelys has a fully-formed shell, it provides little information about how shells were formed. Odontochelys is older than Proganochelys and is helpful because it has only a partial shell.

Some contemporary reptiles such as crocodiles have skin with bony plates and this was also seen in ancient creatures such as dinosaurs. Some researchers theorized that turtle shells started as bony skin plates, called osteoderms, which eventually fused to form a hard shell.

There are problems with this idea, including studies of how shells form in turtle embryos as they develop within eggs, Rieppel said. Embryo studies show that the turtle backbones expand outward and the ribs broaden to meet and form a shell, he said.

While paleontologists take such studies into account, they aren't sufficient to prove how anatomy evolved over time, and evidence can be read in different ways. The limbs of Proganochelys, for example, show signs of bony plates in the skin.

But Odontochelys has no osteoderms and it has a partial shell extending from its backbone, Rieppel said. It also shows a widening of ribs. Although Odontochelys has only a partial shell protecting its back, it does have a fully formed plastron – complete protection of its underside – just as turtles do today.

This strongly suggests Odontochelys was a water dweller whose swimming exposed its underside to predators. Reptiles living on the land have their bellies close to the ground with little exposure to danger.  Other arguments favor the notion that turtle shells evolved as extensions of the reptile's backbones and ribs,  but the partial shell of Odontochelys speaks very clearly. This animal tells people to forget about turtle ancestors covered with osteoderms.

Well does this information do anything to those of us who love the soup? apparently not much. My friends were listening to me going about this while enjoying the meal & most probably thinking I'm such a strange nerd...lol...

Myth with fruits like apples & bananas!

Does An Apple a Day Really Keeps the Doctor Away?

 Nobody seriously believes apples are a magic illness-fighting wonder fruit. Good for you, maybe; delicious in a pie, absolutely—but life saver? Come on.

Not so fast. According to researchers at Ohio State University, apples may help fight off everything from cancer to strokes. Thanks to something called phytochemicals, eating a whole bunch allows your body to break down cholesterol twenty percent faster, freeing up your arteries to do important stuff like keeping you alive. This in turn decreases your chance of taking a fatal nosedive into your morning pizza; while increasing your lung capacity to Brian Blessed proportions. And while we’re on the subject of fruit . .

Does Bananas Make Boys 

Let’s say you and your partner are trying for a boy. You don’t fancy IVF, but are willing to play loose with nature’s rules. What do you do?

You could try eating all the bananas. A comprehensive study by Oxford University found a high potassium intake around breakfast time increases your chance of having a boy. And guess what? Bananas are the kings of potassium. From a sample of 740 mothers, the researchers found that those on the banana diet had a fifty-six percent chance of having a boy, compared to forty-five percent on a separate diet. An eleven percent difference may not sound like much, but holy hell, when you consider the amount of children born each year, that’s potentially quite significant.

$3m grant for TCM research

Was really pleased to hear this piece of news. Govt has grant $3m for TCM research focusing on chronic diseases, so that TCM can work alongside Western medicine to improve patient outcome.

This would provide all of us reliable info on which TCM therapy is safe effective & complimentary with western medicine.
It's about time right????

Science behind decision making

Game theory is one common way people analyze decision making, but one facet of game theory is based on the idea that the decision is being made by someone with perfect knowledge of what they’re doing. That’s not always the case, in fact that is probably never the case. Most often people act irrationally or even randomly.

Studies done on game play and show that some games are too complex to be fully understood, and that affects the decision making of the players.

 If you’ve ever played poker with anyone who thinks they’re very good at poker, you’ve probably heard that person say they lost a hand because their opponent didn’t make the move they were supposed to. That’s because your friend who thinks they’re great at poker is assuming everyone is thinking like they are. This is known as the equilibrium point, and  it’s not always the best thought process for decision making.

 This could have implications in the financial world as well. Many analysts study the stock market and make predictions based on the equilibrium theory. They assume the traders know what they’re doing and are making the best possible moves and trades.

With trading on the stock market, for example, you can have thousands of different stock to choose from, and people do not always behave rationally in these situations or they do not have sufficient information to act rationally. This can have a profound effect on how the markets react.

Basically, assuming people always make the best decision can lead to inaccurate predictions, because obviously people don’t always make the right decisions.

China & research

It is reported China has experienced the strongest growth in scientific research over the past three decades & it’s not slowing down. It is only second place to the US now. And if it continues like this, it will be the largest producer of scientific knowledge by 2020.

Experts in the field said China is out on its own, far ahead of the pack. Although its quality remains mixed, Chinese research has also become more collaborative, with almost 9 per cent of papers originating in China having at least one US-based co-author.

The Thomson Reuters figures show not only the “awe-inspiring” expansion of Chinese science but also a very powerful performance by Brazil, much slower growth in India and relative decline in Russia.

 Three main factors are driving Chinese research.

First is the government’s enormous investment, with funding increases far above the rate of inflation, at all levels of the system from schools to postgraduate research.

Second is the organised flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications.

Third is the efficient and flexible way in which China is tapping the expertise of its extensive scientific diaspora in north America and Europe, tempting back mid-career scientists with deals that allow them to spend part of the year working in the west and part in China.