“…”The importance of self-control and self-regulation for understanding human behavior are well known to social scientists, but the possibility that the links of religiosity to self-control might explain the links of religiosity to health and behavior has not received much explicit attention…religion can motivate people to do just about anything.”" Full Slice

“…In a recent paper [researchers] have deciphered the mechanism whereby embryonic cells stop being flexible and turn into more mature cells that can differentiate into specific tissues…They found in their experiments, using embryos from laboratory mice and cells that grow in culture, that this entire process is actually controlled by a single gene, called G9a, which itself is capable of directing a whole program of changes that involves turning off a large set of genes so that they remain locked for the entire lifetime of the organism, thereby unable to activate any further cell flexibility…with the new information discovered by [researchers], the molecular program that is responsible for turning off cell flexibility has been identified, and this may clear the way towards developing new approaches to program cells in a controlled and specific manner.” Full Slice

Based on Western Washington’s excessive fear of snow, I suggest the follow:

“…Some scientists have questioned whether Beijing’s highly publicized air quality restrictions actually had an impact. This new data shows clearly that they did. “After the authorities lifted the traffic restrictions, the levels of these pollutants shot right back up,”…The steep decline in certain pollutants surprised the researchers. In a preliminary analysis of the data, the effect seemed to be minimal…The reductions only became noticeable when the investigators focused tightly on the Beijing area….” Full Slice

“Infectious pathogens like Salmonella typhimurium employ a startling array of techniques to skillfully outwit the body’s defense mechanisms and produce illness. Through their expression of genes—the fundamental building blocks of cellular physiology—such microbes ingeniously adapt to varied environments, modifying their disease-causing potential or virulence.

Although the study of a broad range of microbial virulence factors is now well advanced, many pieces of the puzzle are still missing…spaceflight experiments have shown that Salmonella gene expression and virulence are profoundly altered by microgravity, with the pathogenic cells undergoing a significant increase in their infectious disease potential….” Full Slice

Just think about what might be found if we choose to actually look more often.

[Note that many are those that claim there are NO valuable rewards from our so called fixation on space flight]

“A detailed analysis of the measurements of five different satellites has revealed the existence of the warm plasma cloak, a new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind…The northern and southern polar lights – aurora borealis and aurora australis – are the only parts of the magnetosphere that are visible, but it is a critical part of Earth’s space environment.

“Although it is invisible, the magnetosphere has an impact on our everyday lives…” Full Slice

“…Based on a pattern of layers within layers measured at one location, known as Becquerel crater, the scientists propose that each layer was formed over a period of about 100,000 years and that these layers were produced by the same cyclical climate changes.

In addition, every 10 layers were bundled together into larger units, which were laid down over an approximately one-million-year period; in the Becquerel crater, the 10-layer pattern is repeated at least 10 times. This one-million-year cycle corresponds to a known pattern of change in Mars’s obliquity caused by the dynamics of the solar system.

“Due to the scale of the layers, small variations in Mars’s orbit are the best candidate for the implied climate changes. These are the very same changes that have been shown to set the pacing of ice ages on the Earth and can also lead to cyclic layering of sediments…” Full Slice

“The decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave…a team of…geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis…reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region…While cave formations have previously been used as climate indicators, past analyses have relied on relatively crude sampling tools, typically small dental drills, which required averaging across 10 or even 100 years at a time. The current analysis used an advanced ion microprobe…to sample spots just one-hundredth of a millimeter across. That represents about 100 times sharper detail than previous methods. With such fine resolution, the scientists were able to discriminate weather patterns from individual years and seasons.

Their detailed climate record shows that the Eastern Mediterranean became drier between 100 A.D. and 700 A.D., a time when Roman and Byzantine power in the region waned, including steep drops in precipitation around 100 A.D. and 400 A.D. “Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn’t known, but it is an interesting correlation,”…” Full Slice