Potato Earth!! wasn't the Earth Round??

That potato-shaped lump in the picture you're looking at is science's most accurate picture to date of how gravity varies across the Earth. It turns out that our world is closer to being a sphereoid than a perfect sphere.
The strongest gravitational pulls are market in yellow, while the weakest ones are colored blue. Scientists at European Space Agency compiled the model from data sent back from a satellite launched into space in March 2009.
As you can see, the geoid, as it's called, doesn't neatly match up with the contours of the Earth's surface. The model represents a theoretical look at how things would look in the absence of distortions caused by ocean currents and continental crust features - in other words, if the world stopped still and everything was in equilibrium.

Are Male Homosapiens Genetically Programmed to Cheat Their Partner!!

 

Here are a host of reasons why men cheat on their significant other, probably as many reasons as there are men. Broadly we can break the categories down to the same 3 that we use to asses all psychiatric conditions. We mental health professionals call this Bio-Psycho-Social, which means for every action there are biological, psychological and sociological causes.

Today I want to discuss the biological reasons men cheat and yes I’m specifying men rather than people because as you’ll see men are much more prone to cheat than woman.When I say Biological factors I’m referring to Genetics, DNA and brain chemistry and yes believe it or not, men are actually genetically programmed to have multiple sexual partners and here’s why.

The strongest instinct in human nature is often thought to be survival of self but if that is the case how is it possible for a parent to risk their own life or even give their own life to save the life of their child? The answer is that it’s not survival of self that’s the most powerful human drive but rather the survival of our genetics. It’s the closest any of us will come to immortality, passing a part of ourselves, our genes, on to future generations. Thus our child is carrying our genes and thus by saving him/her we are saving a part of ourselves as well. This explains why the sex drive is so powerful. We want to procreate to pass our genes on to our children and hope they will have children so our genes (ourselves) will continue on in perpetuity. This being accepted we can analyze the vastly different strategies men and women will use with respect to sex and having kids. Remember we are looking at this from a stone age perspective when resources were scant and survival was a day to day struggle.
For a woman the equation was simple. She has only a small window of opportunity to be fertile and to be able to have children. Say 20 years or so from roughly 15-35 years of age. Every child must be carried by her for 9 months. She is absolutely sure that her child has her genes. Her strategy is to find the best genes, the best provider, the best mate possible to ensure the strongest survival advantage for her kids. She chooses carefully and then enters into a long term contract (marriage) with the most successful man she can find. She has little evolutionary reason to cheat. She can only have a finite number of kids and raising them is her top priority. Quality over quantity.
Not only that, if she were to cheat, then she could possibly have another man’s baby which would be raised by her husband. From a genetic standpoint there is nothing worse than a man expending his resources (scarce in the stone age) to nurture another’s DNA. This explains why a woman cheating on a man is less common and so much more devastating. Thus the most prized woman were good mothers AND faithful.
A man’s strategy is vastly different. His most important attribute is his ability to provide for his spouse and children. The better he was as a leader, a hunter, a provider, all figured into the equation of where he stood as a potential mate. As long as he fulfilled those obligations then his woman would be able to raise his/her kids successfully and maximize the chance of these genes being continued.
But the man has another way to pass on his genes as well. Lots of sex with lots of partners. He has his family it’s true, but random hook-ups with other women are like a potential wild card for him. If they become pregnant with his child then he has very little in the way of involvement, expends very little of his precious resources (remember this was long before DNA paternity testing) and yet has more of his genes passed on into the future. ALSO from his wife’s prospective it really doesn’t affect her from a genetic standpoint. He’s taking care of her and her children, as long as that isn’t affected, her genes are in good hands.
Even if she were to find out, it wouldn’t be that awful, genetically speaking. In addition this explains why powerful, successful men are more likely to cheat. First these men are considered a true prize by women and outstanding providers, thus the mate would be more likely to forgive transgressions rather than risk losing her provider. Next from a biological stand point testosterone is linked to drive, focus, competition and success. Thus we can postulate that these successful men have higher levels of testosterone and hence much stronger sex drives.
I know your probably thinking: but that was in the stone age what does that have to do with today? One million years of genetics is hard to overcome in a few hundred years of civilized society. Our basic human nature is still the same as it was back in the days of early man.
So does this mean there is no hope for a committed marriage to work? No, not at all. Remember the Bio-Psycho-Social theory I mentioned at the start of this blog? Well modern man certainly has the biologic instincts that I’ve outlined but it’s the psychological and the sociological aspects that I will discuss in upcoming posts that will delve into why the biological model is not the whole story in today’s world.

Where did we come from!!

Genetic anthropology is an emerging discipline that combines DNA and physical evidence to reveal the history of ancient human migration. It seeks to answer the questions, "Where did we come from, and how did we get here?"

DNA studies indicate that all modern humans share a common female ancestor who lived in Africa about 140,000 years ago, and all men share a common male ancestor who lived in Africa about 60,000 years ago. These were not the only humans who lived in these eras, and the human genome still contains many genetic traits of their contemporaries. Humanity's most recent common ancestors are identifiable because their lineages have survived by chance in the special pieces of DNA that are passed down the gender lines nearly unaltered from one generation to the next. These ancestors are part of a growing body of fossil and DNA evidence indicating that modern humans arose in sub-Saharan Africa and began migrating, starting about 65,000 years ago, to populate first southern Asia, China, Java, and later Europe. Each of us living today has DNA that contains the story of our ancient ancestors' journeys.

Where did we come from!! 

Decoding Human Genes

A massive database cataloging the human genome's functional elements -- including genes, RNA transcripts, and other products -- is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers, and the public, thanks to an international team of researchers.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110419205538.htm 

EARTH DAY 2011

Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. While this first Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year. Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on environmental issues. In 2009, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day.

Unlocking Stonehenge's secrets

Breathtaking Piece of Engineering

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7322753.stm 

Science of Meditation

Functional MRI Shows How Mindfulness Meditation Changes Decision-Making Process

According to research conducted over the last three decades; only about one-fourth of us would say, "Sure. Thanks." The rest would say, "But that's not fair. You have lots. Why are you only giving me a few?" In fact, people will even turn down any reward rather than accept an 'unfair' share.

Unless they are Buddhist meditators, in which case -- fair or not -- more than half will take what is offered, according to new research by Ulrich Kirk, research assistant professor with the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Virginia Tech; Jonathan Downar, assistant professor with the Neuropsychiatry Clinic and the Centre for Addition and Mental Health at the University of Toronto; and Montague, published in the April 2011 issue of Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience.

Their research shows that Buddhist meditators use different areas of the brain than other people when confronted with unfair choices, enabling them to make decisions rationally rather than emotionally. The meditators had trained their brains to function differently and make better choices in certain situations.

The research "highlights the clinically and socially important possibility that sustained training in mindfulness meditation may impact distinct domains of human decision making," the researchers write.

The research came about when Montague wondered whether some people are capable of ignoring the social consideration of fairness and can appreciate a reward based on its intrinsic qualities alone. "That is," he said, "can they uncouple emotional reaction from their actual behavior?"

Using computational and neuroimaging techniques, Montague studies the neurobiology of human social cognition and decision-making. He and his students recruited 26 Buddhist meditators and 40 control subjects for comparison and looked at their brain processes using functional MRI (fMRI) while the subjects played the "ultimatum game," in which the first player propose how to divide a sum of money and the second can accept or reject the proposal.

The researchers hypothesized that "successful regulation of negative emotional reactions would lead to increased acceptance rates of unfair offers" by the meditators. The behavioral results confirmed the hypothesis.

But the neuroimaging results showed that Buddhist meditators engaged different parts of the brain than expected. Kirk, Downar, and Montague explained that "The anterior insula has previously been linked to the emotion of disgust, and plays a key role in marking social norm violations, rejection, betrayal, and mistrust. In previous studies of the ultimatum game, anterior insula activity was higher for unfair offers, and the strength of its activity predicted the likelihood of an offer being rejected. In the present study, this was true for controls. However, in meditators, the anterior insula showed no significant activation for unfair offers, and there was no significant relationship between anterior insula activity and offer rejection. Hence, meditators were able to uncouple the negative emotional response to an unfair offer, presumably by attending to internal bodily states (interoception) reflected by activity in the posterior insula."

The researchers conclude, "Our results suggest that the lower-level interoceptive representation of the posterior insula is recruited based on individual trait levels in mindfulness. When assessing unfair offers, meditators seem to activate an almost entirely different network of brain areas than do normal controls. Controls draw upon areas involved in theory of mind, prospection, episodic memory, and fictive error. In contrast, meditators instead draw upon areas involved in interoception and attention to the present moment. …This study suggests that the trick may lie not in rational calculation, but in steering away from what-if scenarios, and concentrating on the interoceptive qualities that accompany any reward, no matter how small."

 

Science of Love

Can Science help to Get a Girl Friend

Love is the Hormonal cocktail & fireworks of the neuro-chemicals 

Science of Love

Ancient Astronauts

Have Aliens Visited our Planet earth?

Genesis Redefined

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/Drhemanth-712796-genesis-redefined/