Society for Interdisciplinary Studies

At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1306555/Our-terrifyingly-crowded-solar-system/ is a short post with a video clip of the asteroids that fly close to the earth - and only those discovered by telescope. It excludes the additional near earth objects found by the WISE mission. It was compiled by astronomer Scott Manley over the last 30 years. He is a former research student at Armagh Observatory.

Daily Mail August 25th ... the remains of a prehistoric child were found in an underwater cave in Mexico - dating back over 10,000 years ago. Scientists hope the skeleton will offer clues to ancient human migrations into the Americas - from SE Asia. Anthropologists think the body was placed in the cave in a funeral ceremony performed when the sea level was some 488 feeet lower than it is today.

At http://opa.yale.edu/news/article_print.aspx?id=7646 July 14th 2010, Yale University press release - scientists at Yale have a paper in Neuron which claims electrical fields can influence the activity of brain cells - the little grey cells of Monsieur Poirot perhaps? It is known that transcranial magnetic stimulation and deep brain stimulation are effective in the treatment of neurological disorders.

BBC News August 26th ... archaeologists in South Africa have unearthed stone points dated 64,000 years ago which were probably arrow heads. A microscope revealed traces of blood and bone. They also found traces of a glue - a plant based resin that was possibly used to fasten them to a wooden shaft. The use of bows and arrows as a hunting tool enabled humans to kill from a distance where previously they had used ambush tactics in order to move in with spears at fairly close quarters.

At www.physorg.com/print201972151.html ... professor Jeongwoo Lee (see also www.csun.edu/physicsandastronomy/IAUS273/) seeks to explain why sun spots are a source of radio emissions because hot electrons gyrate in the coronal magnetic field. As they gyrate they produce an efficient radiation called gyro-resonant emission. This serves as an indicator of the magnetic field and of temperature in the coronae above sun spots.

Yes, the atmosphere is shrinking - as a result of low levels of solar radiation - a lack of sun spots. At www.physorg.com/print202054025.html there is a report on a paper in Geophysical Research Letters from research funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation which sponsors the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at Boulder, Colorado. It is now thought the Sun's magnetic cylce may vary much more than previously considered possible.

At www.physorg.com/print201957102.html ... a paper in Nature purports to have discovered the origin of the universe's first super massive black hole - by computer simulation of dark matter, stars, gas, and black holes. They were born when early galaxies collided and fused together - quite simple really. However, it is not quite simply simple as it means the old hypothesis that gravity draws small pieces of matter together and these then go on to form large structures is - well, redundant.

A subject after my own heart - the salmon fishery. At www.physorg.com/print201969970.html sockeye salmon mysterious vanished from Canadian rivers last year and it was thought the warm El Nino ocean surface water might have been to blame - giving rise to scary stories about global warming in the future and the disappearance of wild salmon from menus around the world. Various things were said to be to blame - apart from AGW they included a drop in ocean food resources, more prey species, and disease picked up from fish farms etc.

At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/27/folow-up-on-the-solar-neutrino-radioactive-decay-story/ --- which is the story that broke a few days ago concerning research that seemed to show a variation in radioactive decay rates on earth - is being reopened after a cascade of criticism. The real shocker is they attributed it to solar neutrinos - and they aren't supposed to react with matter and ar particularly difficult to detect. In fact, they might even not exist.

At http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com Donna Laframboise does a demolition job on the lead author for the Health chapter in the up and coming AR5 IPCC Report (which is under construction). He is branded a shrill alarmist that in the past has urged doctors in New Zealand to discuss with their patients the AGW threat. What this might have to do with a diagnosis of illness is anyone's guess - and needless to say he is an academic and not a practitioner.