Indonesia's Infamous Mud Volcano Could Outlive All of Us

 

Unstoppable. Lusi could spew mud for decades to come.

Since it roared to life in May 2006, a mud volcano near Indonesia's coastal city of Sidoarjo has swallowed homes, rice paddies, factories, and roads, killing 15 people, displacing 40,000, and harming the livelihoods of many more. As the ongoing eruption nears its 5th anniversary, observers wonder whether it will ever stop. The answer: Not anytime soon. A new study predicts the volcano will continue spewing significant amounts of mud for another 2 decades. A second study forecasts that it could grind on as long as 87 years.

The mud volcano has inflicted a punishing blow to the region of Java island 700 kilometers east of the capital, Jakarta. Nicknamed Lusi, a contraction of lumpur (Indonesian for mud) and Sidoarjo, the volcano has so far disgorged 144 million cubic meters of mud, some of which now covers an area roughly twice the size of New York City's Central Park. Much of the mud has been diverted to a nearby river, where it has formed a new 83 hectare island and extended a natural delta. Compensation and mitigation have cost at least $767 million, according to Humanitus, a nongovernmental organization in Melbourne, Australia, that is studying the disaster's social impact. That is a fraction of the real economic toll, which is still being tallied.

Lusi may be a harbinger of disasters to come. "Like a volcanic eruption, a mud eruption is just the effect of geological activity, and I'm sure in the future another mud volcano must erupt in this region," says Soffian Hadi Djojopranoto, a geologist with the Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency. "We need very serious research to understand this phenomenon."

Despite being the most intensely studied mud volcano ever, scientists have failed to agree on the cause of the eruption, which began in the early-morning hours of 29 May 2006. Mud suddenly started gushing out of vents 200 meters from a rig drilling an exploratory gas well. Drilling logs indicate problems with the well several hours before the eruption, and many scientists believe there was an underground blowout. Others, however, suggest that a magnitude-6.3 earthquake that occurred 2 days earlier and 280 kilometers away activated a local fault. Despite the uncertainty, the Indonesian government pressured the Bakrie family, majority owners of the drilling company and one of the country's wealthiest families, to foot most of the bill for compensation and mitigation.

Debate now centers on how Lusi's plumbing works. "The most important piece of work now is to estimate the longevity," says Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom. That will determine if mud-handling countermeasures are sufficient. Dueling hypotheses have led to different forecasts. Davies argues that the eruption is driven by pressurized water from a deep aquifer in permeable material beneath an impermeable rock layer. He argues that the wellbore pierced the impermeable rock, allowing water to gush up and sweep overlying mud to the surface. Modeling this scenario using combinations of known quantities, such as total ejected mud volume after 1 year and 3 years and assumed parameters, including aquifer size, Davies and colleagues arrived at an estimated longevity of 26 years, published online on 24 February in the Journal of the Geological Society. They also predict that the ground around Lusi will subside up to 475 meters from its original elevation, with mud filling the crater.

Others augur that Lusi will be kicking around far longer. Michael Manga, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, contends that pressure and fluid originate not in the deep aquifer but in a shallower mud layer. In a paper in review, his team predicts that an ever-widening circle of subterranean mud will get sucked into the volcanic system and pushed to the surface. The model "is a new way of thinking about how eruptions work," Manga says. His team estimates a 50% chance that the eruption will last 40 years and a 33% chance that it will drag on for 87 years.

The predictions are getting a mixed reception. Peter Flemings, a geologist at the University of Texas, Austin, has not seen Manga's results, but he says his "gut feeling" is that tapping into a large permeable aquifer, as Davies proposes, would produce the volume of material spewing from Lusi. The "absolutely critical assumption," Flemings says, is the aquifer's size—and calculating that from limited data, he says, "is fraught with uncertainty." Davies's subsidence projections, meanwhile, "look big," says Heri Andreas, a geophysicist at the Institute of Technology Bandung in Indonesia. GPS surveys of ground deformation show that after an initial period during which the ground was sinking up to 4 centimeters per day, subsidence has tapered off to just several centimeters per year.

For more robust projections, says Manga, "we need more and better data." And more is at stake than scientific models. Long-term social, ecological, and infrastructure programs can't be planned "until this geological phenomenon is better understood," says Humanitus Director Jeffrey Richards. Humanitus is organizing a May symposium in Surabaya at which Richards hopes experts will forge a consensus on what studies are most likely to reveal Lusi's geological secrets. Davies would like to see a well drilled into the aquifer some distance from Lusi to measure pressures. Other options are 3D seismic surveys of the subsurface.

Numerous efforts to plug the volcano have failed. Fortunately, the mud flow is now manageable, says Djojopranoto. After peaking at 180,000 cubic meters per day in early 2007, the rate has tapered to 10,000 cubic meters per day. A system of 6- to 7-meter-high earthen dikes encloses some 700 hectares of ponds where mud and water is collected and then pumped into the Porong River, where it is adding to a natural delta downstream. The impact on the Porong has been minimal, given that it historically carried heavy sediment loads from magmatic volcanoes upstream, Djojopranoto says.

Environmentalists claim that authorities are understating some of Lusi's ill effects. Studies by nongovernmental organizations in 2007 indicated that high sedimentation was smothering marine life, particularly bottom-dwelling creatures like snails, says Pius Ginting of the Indonesian Forum for Environment. An ongoing concern, he says, is the mud's toxicity, which he claims is laden with carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons—a contention that Djojopranoto says has never been independently verified.

In Lusi's vicinity, the mitigation bureau has rerouted roads and resettled most families. Mud volcano tourism is providing income, says Djojopranoto, but "not enough to revive the economy." Even after the eruption ends, Lusi may erupt periodically or ooze mud for centuries. "On east Java, we have mud volcanoes that have been active for hundreds of years," Djojopranoto says. None, however, compare in size, in societal harm, or in the puzzles that Lusi continues to present to scientists.

Source : http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/indonesias-infamous-mud-volcano-.html?ref=hp

More Evidence Against Dark Matter?

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Nothing hidden. Without dark matter, MOND neatly explains the relation between the mass of visible matter in a gas-rich galaxy like this one and the galaxy's rotation speed.

Thousands of physicists, astrophysicists, and astronomers are searching for dark matter, mysterious stuff whose gravity seems to hold the galaxies together. However, an old and highly controversial theory that simply changes the law of gravity can explain a key property of galaxies better than the standard dark-matter theory, one astronomer reports. That claim isn't likely to win over many skeptics, but even some theorists who favor the standard theory say the analysis hands them a homework problem they should solve.

"The standard theory should explain this, and it doesn't yet. That's fair to say," says Simon White, a cosmologist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, who was not involved in the current analysis.

In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky suggested the existence of dark matter when he found that the galaxies in a particular cluster swirl about each other too fast to be bound by their gravity alone. In the 1970s, American astronomer Vera Rubin and others discovered that the stars at the edges of individual galaxies also appear to move too fast to be held by the gravity of the stars in the center. Those outer stars ought to move more slowly than the ones circling closer in—just as Jupiter orbits the sun more slowly than Earth. Instead, the speed of the stars generally increases with the distance from the galactic center, eventually flattening out at a maximum value. That observation seemed to clinch the case for some sort of dark matter.

Or did it? In 1983, Mordehai Milgrom a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, found that he could explain the so-called galaxy rotation curves without dark matter if he simply assumed that on the galactic scale, dynamics and gravity worked a bit differently from what Isaac Newton postulated. Specifically, Milgrom assumed that for very small accelerations, the square of the acceleration, not just the acceleration, is proportional to the gravitational force.

For the past 28 years, Milgrom's idea, known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) has generated a long-simmering debate. Many researchers argue that ever more evidence from clusters of galaxies, the largest scale structure of the universe, and the afterglow of the big bang points to the existence of dark matter. Still, a few researchers counter that when they look at the details, MOND does a better job—at least on the galactic scale.

Now, in the latest shot from the MOND side, Stacy McGaugh, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, College Park, reports that MOND can explain an observed correlation between the mass and the rotation speed of galaxies—that is, the speed of those outer stars—called the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation. MOND researchers had tried to do this before, but for their models to work, they had to make an untested assumption about the relationship between a star's mass and the amount of light it puts out. That assumption introduces a large uncertainty, weakening the argument.

To avoid that problem, McGaugh gathered data from various sources on 47 galaxies that contain more hydrogen gas than stars. The mass of the gas can then be estimated directly. McGaugh made a plot of visible mass versus rotation speed for the galaxies. He then plotted the prediction that comes straight out of MOND in a few lines of algebra. The MOND line went right through the data. "You draw the line and the data fall right on it," McGaugh says. "No muss, no fuss." He reports the result in a paper in press at Physical Review Letters.

Crucially, McGaugh finds very little scatter in the data—just what would be expected if the mass of gas and stars was directly determining the rotation speed. It's not clear exactly what dark-matter models would predict, McGaugh says. However, such models make no strong connection between the amount of visible matter and the rotation speed. Indeed, galaxies with the same mass of dark matter can have different numbers of stars. So it would be surprising if dark-matter models yielded such a tight correlation.

"I think the data are good, and the fact that MOND fits is striking," says White, who has worked extensively on simulating the evolution of the universe. "I think Stacy is right in holding this up and saying [to dark-matter modelers], 'Look at this [correlation]. Go see if you can explain it.' " Still, White says, dark matter can explain the variations in the afterglow of the big bang and other cosmological data with which MOND struggles.

But whether MOND is right may be beside the point, says Jerry Sellwood, a theoretical astrophysicist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "The real strength of Stacy's paper is that it points to something that can't be explained in cold dark matter, irrespective of whether MOND is right." At the least, Sellwood says, McGaugh deserves credit for keeping others honest about what their models can do.

Souce : http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/more-evidence-against-dark-matte.html?ref=hp

East Coast Winds Would Support a Stable Power Grid

Blowin' in the wind. Electricity output from individual turbine farms can vary greatly (colored lines), but linking them up along whole coastlines can smooth out total power production (thick black line).

Individual wind turbines and even whole wind farms remain at the mercy of local weather for how much electricity they can generate. But researchers have confirmed that linking up such farms along the entire U.S. East Coast could provide a surprisingly consistent source of power. In fact, such a setup could someday replace much of the region's existing generating capacity, which is based on coal, natural gas, nuclear reactors, and oil.

In terms of potential, wind-energy resources are tremendous. One estimate puts it at nearly five times as much as the world's entire existing electricity demand. And for environmentalists and anticarbon advocates, wind offers an energy source that does not require drilling, mining, or enriched uranium—and its carbon footprint is essentially zero.

But wind is erratic. A region might get gale-force winds one day and dead calm the next. To balance things out, engineers have proposed linking up wind farms to take advantage of wind variability across a wider area. But until now, no one had ever quantified whether meteorological conditions would justify such a linkup.

In the new study, energy policy analyst and electrical engineer Willett Kempton of the University of Delaware, Newark, and colleagues did just that. "Instead of just looking at the statistics of connecting turbines," he says, "we also decided to look at the meteorology." First the researchers chose a region known for its relatively constant winds. They compiled 5 years of wind data from 11 offshore weather-monitoring stations buoyed along 2500 kilometers of the East Coast. They estimated how much power offshore wind farms could produce if they had been placed at the same locations as the monitoring stations—which would be the case under current wind-farm configurations. Then they calculated the combined power output of the farms if they were all connected into a single grid.

As the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, at no time during the 5-year span of the study did the winds die down completely along the hypothetical grid. That means it would have been possible for the hypothetical offshore wind-power grid to generate electricity continuously for all of that time. Moreover, Kempton explains, linking the wind farms showed "a tremendous amount of smoothing" of power output. Farms located, say, in the Northeast might be operating at full tilt under gale-force winds, while the southeastern portion of the grid languishes under sunny skies and tepid breezes. As the wind data showed, he added, the quick swings between high- and low-power generation periods that are characteristic of individual wind farms slowed down dramatically within the simulated grid, taking days instead of hours or even minutes. By creating a wind-power grid, he says, "you can make a rapidly changing and unsteady source of power a slowly changing and stable one."

This is the first time a study has demonstrated that offshore East Coast wind energy can provide "a relatively reliable supply of smooth power," says environmental engineer Mark Jacobson of Stanford University in California. The findings are "important," he says, because the wind resources of the region are "tremendous and could theoretically supply all U.S. electric power demand."

The findings are "amazing," agrees Cristina Archer, a specialist in wind energy meteorology at California State University, Chico. Kempton's team shows "that an uninterrupted power supply from winds along the most populated and most energy-demanding coastal area in the country, and perhaps in the world, is possible."

Source : http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/east-coast-winds-would-support-a.html?ref=hp

Can Geoengineering Halt Sea-Level Rise?

Extreme. Launching trillions of tiny lenses into space to block the sun may halt sea-level rise.

Launching sun-blocking aerosols into space or growing vast new forests could help cool the planet, but such "geoengineering" schemes will have a tough time stopping sea-level rise by the end of the century, a new study suggests. More extreme schemes could help, however, as might combining geoengineering with drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists hope that geoengineering could, in addition to curbing global warming, stop sea-level rise by cooling the planet enough to slow glacier melting and flow. Rising waters are a threat to coastal cities around the world—and even with strict cuts in emissions, scientists believe sea levels will rise significantly by 2100.

The new study is the first to estimate how much geoengineering might reduce sea-level rise, says study leader John Moore of Beijing Normal University in China. According to a model developed by Moore and colleagues, without geoengineering, sea levels would rise between 50 to 100 centimeters over the next century. Relatively modest geoengineering schemes would help only a bit. One of the these schemes would involve mimicking large volcanic eruptions, like the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo—the second largest of the past 100 years—which shot sunlight-blocking sulfate aerosols high into the atmosphere. Moore's team found that pumping a Pinatubo-worth of sulfates into the stratosphere every 4 years would limit sea-level rise to about 30 centimeters. A similar effect would be achieved by combining biomass power plants that capture their CO₂ with vast new forests and enormous quantities of biochar—a form of charcoal that locks away carbon from the air.

To cut sea-level rise to zero, Moore says researchers would need to combine these approaches with drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions—or employ "extreme geoengineering" strategies. These could include injecting aerosols at Pinatubo levels into the atmosphere every 18 months instead of every 4 years, or launching trillions of tiny lenses into space, the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These extreme geoengineering approaches are potentially hazardous, however, as blocking sunlight can alter rainfall patterns and even damage the ozone layer, Moore says. "I think that sucking CO₂ out of the atmosphere is the best way to stop sea-level rise before 2100." That could be accomplished with the biomass power plants and new forests considered in the study, or by massively scaling up CO₂ removal techniques currently deployed in spacecraft and submarines.

Geochemist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, says the findings are "worthy" but that it's too early to decide which approach is best. "Significantly more study is needed before we are justified in making general claims." Every geoengineering method has pros and cons, Caldeira says, and involves a tradeoff of costs, risks, and effectiveness.

Source : http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/can-geoengineering-halt-sea-leve.html?ref=hp

Tree Leaves Fight Pollution

Tree Leaves Fight Pollution

Environmental organizations keep reminding us that we need to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases. But plants are already doing their part. Research published online today in Science shows that deciduous tree leaves, such as those from the maple, aspen, and poplar, suck up far more atmospheric pollutants than previously thought.

The study concerns the most abundant class of carbon-based particles in the atmosphere, so-called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Plants produce VOCs when they decay, but a major source comes from automobile exhaust, coal burning, and other human activities. Some atmospheric VOCs combine with oxygen to form tiny airborne particles called oxygenated VOCs (oVOCs), which insulate the atmosphere and lead to warming. These oVOCs have been "poorly represented or partly even neglected in [climate] models," says atmospheric chemist Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, who was not involved in the study. And even though plants take up a major greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide—when they photosynthesize, researchers weren't sure if they also consumed oVOCs in large amounts.

So scientists led by Thomas Karl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, decided to re-examine how deciduous plants interacted with oVOCs. Via a combination of computer modeling, laboratory experiments, and field studies, the researchers looked at how many oVOCs were taken up by a poplar tree leaf sample. Plants exposed to oVOCs increased their normal uptake of the compounds, absorbing 40% more than expected. Although scientists suspected that plants consume small amounts of oVOCs, this study provides the "first concrete data," says chemist Roger Atkinson of the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved with the research.

In another set of experiments, the team showed that stressing out the plants—by exposing them to ozone pollution, for example—also increased their uptake of oVOCs. This suggests, says Karl, that deciduous trees provide good negative feedback for atmospheric pollution: The more polluted the atmosphere becomes, the more oVOCs the plants take up. However, he says, there is a limit to how much pollution plants can handle. Karl and his team now plan to look at pines and other coniferous trees to see if they also suck up oVOCs and other pollutants.

Those data, along with the new work, will help scientists devise more accurate climate models, says atmospheric chemist Mattias Hallquist of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Karl suggests another possible benefit of understanding how plants process oVOCs. "This is looking very far into the future," he says, "but perhaps these new models could even lead to genetically engineering plants to uptake more air pollution."

Source “http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/10/tree-leaves-fight-pollution.html?ref=hp

Schools Often React Poorly to Student Suicides, Experts Say

Many school officials react in exactly the wrong ways when one of their students completes suicide, according to the authors of a new book.

While they may be well-intentioned, administrators who don't send the right messages may make copycat suicides more likely, and are not providing the help needed by others hurting from the tragedy.

"Without the proper knowledge and resources, many school administrators may implement strategies that could actually increase the risk of suicide among students," said Darcy Haag Granello, professor of counselor education at Ohio State University.

Granello is co-author of the bookSuicide, Self-Injury and Violence in the Schools: Assessment, Prevention and Intervention Strategies. She co-authored the portion of the book dealing with suicide with her husband, Paul Granello, also an associate professor of counselor education at Ohio State.

While school officials may be well-meaning in their response to a suicide, the best way to react is actually counterintuitive to our cultural norms, said Paul Granello.

"We naturally want to have ceremonies and memorials, flowers at the fence and burning candles. But when you do this in the case of a suicide, it sends the wrong message to troubled youth who might also be contemplating suicide," he said.

"They may see this outpouring of grief as a glorification of the person who completed suicide. Some troubled people might think that they want to get all that attention, too. That could cause contagion."

Even the way school officials and others talk about a suicide can send the wrong message.

For example, many well-meaning adults may say that a student killed himself to "end the pain."

"What a dangerous message that is for young people," Darcy Granello said.

"It tells them that suicide is the way to end pain. But suicide is never that simple. There is never a direct line from some bad things happening to someone to a choice to complete suicide."

Instead, adults should talk about how suicide transfers pain from the person who killed him or herself to a whole community who is now in pain, she said.

Schools should avoid holding in-school memorials, or cancelling classes or school. And while education about mental health issues and suicide is important, schools should not do this in large assemblies. All these actions can serve to sensationalize the death.

For the same reason, school officials should minimize discussion of the details of the suicide.

"Students learn from hearing the story of the student death, and copycat suicides can result," Paul Granello said.

"Instead of focusing on the suicide itself, focus on what help if available and how people are responding to the grief. The focus should be on the community response."

But that doesn't mean suicide should not be discussed at all -- quite the contrary, Darcy Granello emphasized.

Schools should provide students with facts about suicide risk and mental health resources. This should be done in small groups, or individually if needed.

Adults shouldn't be afraid to talk about suicide and to directly ask troubled students if they are thinking about suicide, Darcy Granello said.

"There's a lot of research that shows that talking about suicide appropriately actually reduces the risk -- it doesn't increase it," she said.

"Young people are already talking about suicide. They are just talking about it with friends and others who don't know any more than they do. We need to find ways to have the conversation with young people."

The main message to students should be that their problems are not unsolvable. In most case, suicides result from undiagnosed or untreated depression.

"About 80 percent of cases of depression are treatable," Paul Granello said. "The tragedy is that we have this epidemic of suicide among young people, when in most cases the cause is depression that could be treated."

Teachers and administrators should be especially alert after a suicide for students who may be taking the death particularly hard.

Studies show that only about one-quarter of young people would tell an adult if they knew of a peer with suicidal thoughts, according to Darcy Granello. That means that, after a suicide, many of the friends of the victim may be feeling guilty that they kept this secret.

"These young people are at a much higher risk of suicide themselves because they knew this secret and didn't do anything," she said.

"Part of the response by schools should be to work with all these friends who kept secrets. And part of the prevention strategy should be helping students recognize that keeping secrets about suicide is not smart."

While dealing with a suicide may seem overwhelming to school officials, there are resources to help them. The key is to have a plan in place before tragedy strikes.

"If you have a suicide at your school today, now is not the time to figure out what to do. That is how mistakes are made and inappropriate actions are taken," Darcy Granello said.

Fortunately for schools, a research-based plan for dealing with suicides is already available for them. It is called the School-based Youth Suicide Prevention Guide, available online through the Florida Mental Health Institute: http://theguide.fmhi.usf.edu/

"One of the things we tell schools all the time is that they don't have to invent a suicide prevention plan. It just needs implementation, it doesn't need recreating," Darcy Granello said.

Source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110209121659.htm

Emotional Response May Predict How the Body Responds to Stress

Your emotional response to challenging situations could predict how your body responds to stress, according to research published this month in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

"People who reported high levels of anger and anxiety after performing a laboratory-based stress task showed greater increases in a marker of inflammation, than those who remained relatively calm," said Dr Judith Carroll, who conducted the study at the University of Pittsburgh. "This could help explain why some people with high levels of stress experience chronic health problems," she added.

The investigators asked healthy middle-aged individuals to complete a speech in the laboratory in front of video camera and a panel of judges. During the speech, they monitored the physical responses to the task and then afterwards asked them about the emotions that they had experienced.

"Most people show increases in heart rate and blood pressure when they complete a stressful task," explained Dr Carroll, "but some also show increases in a circulating marker of inflammation known as interleukin-6. Our study shows that the people who have the biggest increases in this marker are the ones who show the greatest emotional responses to the task."

"Our results raise the possibility that individuals who become angry or anxious when confronting relatively minor challenges in their lives are prone to increases in inflammation," explained lead author Dr Anna Marsland, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh. "Over time, this may render these emotionally-reactive individuals more vulnerable to inflammatory diseases, such as cardiovascular disease," she said.

The research, funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, is part of a burgeoning field, known as Psychoneuroimmunology, which investigates the interactions between psychological processes and health. "This paper addresses a key question in psychoneuroimmunology -- what explains individual differences in the inflammatory response to stress," said Dr Margaret Kemeny, a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. "These findings suggest that the specific nature of the emotional response to the task may be a key predictive factor and set the stage for future work defining these pathways and addressing their clinical implications," she added.

Source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110217083125.htm

Healthy eye vision guide:

Practice Distance seeing (more than 20 feet’s away): The human eye was not designed by creation for extended use in close-work (reading, computers, factory work, sewing etc). Gazing into the distance is the natural position of the eye (20 or more feet away). Eye muscles RELAX when distance seeing. So it is always good for your eye and vision, if you regularly practice distance viewing or gazing.
Don't do Close Work during and immediately after Meals: During digestion, blood are drawn to the stomach for digestion purpose, so close work during or after digestion has shortage of nutrition to eyes, thus this lack of nutrients to the eyes, weak eye muscles and thus cloudy vision.
Avoid reading when tired or sick: Weak bodily energy weakens the entire system. Reading during illness or fatigue weakens the focusing eye muscles.
Should not read more than thirty minutes at a time: Thirty minutes is about maximum time the eyes can handle without strain or fatigue. So practice some eye relaxation exercises in between to avoid eye strains.
Sunshine(Rising or falling) is Food for the Eyes: It is nourished and healed by its warm radiating energy. So it is always best to expose yourself and particularly your eye to the sunlight to nourish it.
Eye massages and Eye exercises: Eye exercise and or massages gives some physical exercise, better blood flow and thus high nutrients to our eye muscles thus they regain its lost elasticity.

Source : http://www.e-healtharticles.com/Detailed/6163.html

History of Valentine Day

Every year, the fourteenth day of the month of February has millions across the world presenting their loved ones with candy, flowers, chocolates and other lovely gifts. In many countries, restaurants and eateries are seen to be filled with couples who are eager to celebrate their relationship and the joy of their togetherness through delicious cuisines. There hardly seems to be a young man or woman who is not keen to make the most of the day.

          The reason behind all of this is a kindly cleric named Valentine who died more than a thousand years ago.

          It is not exactly known why the 14th of February is known as Valentine's Day or if the noble Valentine really had any relation to this day. The history of Valentine's Day is impossible to be obtained from any archive and the veil of centuries gone by has made the origin behind this day more difficult to trace. It is only some legends that are our source for the history of Valentine's Day.

          The modern St. Valentine's Day celebrations are said to have been derived from both ancient Christian and Roman tradition. As per one legend, the holiday has originated from the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalis/Lupercalia, a fertility celebration that used to observed annually on February 15. But the rise of Christianity in Europe saw many pagan holidays being renamed for and dedicated to the early Christian martyrs. Lupercalia was no exception. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius turned Lupercalia into a Christian feast day and set its observance a day earlier, on February 14. He proclaimed February 14 to be the feast day in honor of Saint Valentine, a Roman martyr who lived in the 3rd century. It is this St. Valentine whom the modern Valentine's Day honors.

          According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were at least three early Christian saints by the name of Valentine. While one was a priest in Rome, another was a bishop in Terni. Nothing is known about the third St. Valentine except that he met his end in Africa. Surprisingly, all three of them were said to have been martyred on 14th February.

          It is clear that Pope Gelasius intended to honor the first of these three aforementioned men. Most scholars believe that this St. Valentine was a priest who lived around 270 AD in Rome and attracted the disfavor of Roman emperor Claudius II who ruled during this time.

          The story of St. Valentine has two different versions - the Protestant and the Catholic one. Both versions agree upon Saint Valentine being a bishop who held secret marriage ceremonies of soldiers in opposition to Claudius II who had prohibited marriage for young men and was executed by the latter. During the lifetime of Valentine, the golden era of Roman empire had almost come to an end. Lack of quality administrators led to frequent civil strife. Education declined, taxation increased and trade witnessed a very bad time. The Roman empire faced crisis from all sides, from the Gauls, Slavs, Huns, Turks and Mongolians from Northern Europe and Asia. The empire had grown too large to be shielded from external aggression and internal chaos with existing forces. Naturally, more and more capable men were required to to be recruited as soldiers and officers to protect the nation from takeover. When Claudius became the emperor, he felt that married men were more emotionally attached to their families, and thus, will not make good soldiers. He believed that marriage made the men weak. So he issued an edict forbidding marriage to assure quality soldiers.

          The ban on marriage was a great shock for the Romans. But they dared not voice their protest against the mighty emperor. The kindly bishop Valentine also realized the injustice of the decree. He saw the trauma of young lovers who gave up all hopes of being united in marriage. He planned to counter the monarch's orders in secrecy. Whenever lovers thought of marrying, they went to Valentine who met them afterwards in a secret place, and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. And thus he secretly performed many marriages for young lovers. But such things cannot remain hidden for long. It was only a matter of time before Claudius came to know of this "friend of lovers," and had him arrested.

          While awaiting his sentence in prison, Valentine was approached by his jailor, Asterius. It was said that Valentine had some saintly abilities and one of them granted him the power to heal people. Asterius had a blind daughter and knowing of the miraculous powers of Valentine he requested the latter to restore the sight of his blind daughter. The Catholic legend has it that Valentine did this through the vehicle of his strong faith, a phenomenon refuted by the Protestant version which agrees otherwise with the Catholic one. Whatever the fact, it appears that Valentine in some way did succeed to help Asterius' blind daughter.

          When Claudius II met Valentine, he was said to have been impressed by the dignity and conviction of the latter. However, Valentine refused to agree with the emperor regarding the ban on marriage. It is also said that the emperor tried to convert Valentine to the Roman gods but was unsuccesful in his efforts. Valentine refused to recognize Roman Gods and even attempted to convert the emperor, knowing the consequences fully. This angered Claudius II who gave the order of execution of Valentine.

          Meanwhile, a deep friendship had been formed between Valentine and Asterius' daughter. It caused great grief to the young girl to hear of his friend's imminent death. It is said that just before his execution, Valentine asked for a pen and paper from his jailor, and signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that lived ever after. As per another legend, Valentine fell in love with the daughter of his jailer during his imprisonment. However, this legend is not given much importance by historians. The most plausible story surrounding St. Valentine is one not centered on Eros (passionate love) but on agape (Christian love): he was martyred for refusing to renounce his religion. Valentine is believed to have been executed on February 14, 270 AD.

          Thus 14th February became a day for all lovers and Valentine became its Patron Saint. It began to be annually observed by young Romans who offered handwritten greetings of affection, known as Valentines, on this day to the women they admired. With the coming of Christianity, the day came to be known as St. Valentine's Day.

          But it was only during the 14th century that St. Valentine's Day became definitively associated with love. UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of "Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine", credits Chaucer as the one who first linked St. Valentine's Day with romance. In medieval France and England it was believed that birds mated on February 14. Hence, Chaucer used the image of birds as the symbol of lovers in poems dedicated to the day. In Chaucer's "The Parliament of Fowls," the royal engagement, the mating season of birds, and St. Valentine's Day are related:

          "For this was on St. Valentine's Day, When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate."

          By the Middle Ages, Valentine became as popular as to become one of the most popular saints in England and France. Despite attempts by the Christian church to sanctify the holiday, the association of Valentine’s Day with romance and courtship continued through the Middle Ages. The holiday evolved over the centuries. By the 18th century, gift-giving and exchanging hand-made cards on Valentine's Day had become common in England. Hand-made valentine cards made of lace, ribbons, and featuring cupids and hearts began to be created on this day and handed over to the man or woman one loved. This tradition eventually spread to the American colonies. It was not until the 1840s that Valentine's Day greeting cards began to be commercially produced in the U.S. The first American Valentine's Day greeting cards were created by Esther A. Howlanda Mount Holyoke, a graduate and native of Worcester. Mass. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as "scrap". It was when Howland began Valentine's cards in a large scale that the tradition really caught on in the United States.

          Today, Valentine's Day is one of the major holidays in the U.S. and has become a booming commercial success. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25% of all cards sent each year are "valentine"s. The "valentines", as Valentine's Day cards are better known as, are often designed with hearts to symbolize love. The Valentine's Day card spread with Christianity, and is now celebrated all over the world. One of the earliest valentines was sent in 1415 AD by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife during his imprisonment in the Tower of London. The card is now preserved in the British Museum.

          There may be doubts regarding the actual identity of Valentine, but we know that he really existed because archaeologists have recently unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to a Saint Valentine. 

Source : http://www.theholidayspot.com/valentine/history_of_valentine.htm

7 Tips To Overcome “Junk Food” Addiction

On the table is served a dish of food which is so tempting. There is a very tasty potato chips. Beside it, there is a biscuit. There is also a plate of fried foods.

You can not resist picking and eating them all? You may have entered the category of eating unhealthy foods addiction. Do not worry, you can stop it. Here’s how:

1. Have Breakfast correctly 
                Start your day with a healthy breakfast, such as fruit juice, low-fat milk, yogurt, high fiber cereal, and fruit. People who diet high fiber foods digest slowly. As a result, the hunger is delayed and the desire for fatty foods are also reduced.

2. Cut the portions and sizes 
                Do not even try to abstain from unhealthy foods as a result you are more tempted to get one. If you want to, buy it in small portions and then share it with your friend.

3. Choose quality 
                If a you like chocolate, choose a high-quality chocolate (which should be quite expensive). Because if it is expensive, so you won’t often buy it.

4. Start exercising 
                Sports will pump endorphins, the natural morphine in the body, to circulate throughout the body. With exercise, you so have little time to eat. To reduce the desire to eat chocolate or sweet foods after a big meal, try a walk around the house for a moment.

5. Eat regularly 
                Passing eating time will lower the blood sugar levels. As a result, you’ll grab sweet foods near you so that sugar levels can be normal. Keep your sugar levels to remain normal with three meals a day with balanced nutrition and appropriate portions for you. Remember, do not overdo it.

6. Look for other alternatives 
                The desire for fatty foods can be a sign of the body needs fat intake.  You should meet the needs of body fat with healthy fats, like avocado and use the salad dressing of olive oil. Eating yogurt, fresh fruit, sorbet, or low-fat ice cream to be able to meet the body’s need for sweet and fatty foods.

7. Consider using supplements 
                Many people do not realize their lack of minerals zinc, a substance found in shellfish and beef. This mineral deficiency that causes the tongue to be losing sensitivity. As a result, we  need more salt and sugar to enjoy the food.

Source : http://medicmagic.net/search/how+to+overcome+a+potato+chip+addiction

Is Chocolate Really Healthier Than Fruits?

Chocolate are often used as ‘medicine’ to eliminatestressand improve mood. Not only does it taste delicious, it is also known to have manyhealthbenefits.

Researchers at the Center for Health andNutritionof Hershey declared that chocolate is worthy of the title ’super fruit’. From studies in laboratory, it is known that chocolate have many antioxidant.

The level of polyphenols and flavonoids in one gram of cocoa powder is more than the ones in fruits used to make juice.

Experts discover that cocoa beans (origin of chocolate) has extraordinary nutrition with macronutrient content, according to medindia.

The findings, which were published in the Chemical Journal, showed that dark chocolate and cocoa powder contain higher flavonoids and polyphenols than fruit juice.

Antioxidants are found in fruits such as grapes, strawberries and pomegranates, some types of juice, dark chocolate, green tea and red wine. Antioxidants are compounds that will fight cell damaging free radicals. When the body lacks antioxidants, it can cause health problems.

However, other experts assessed the phrase ’super fruit’ not true and is just created by chocolate makers as part of marketing. Because, there is no single type of food that contains all the essential nutrients.

Source : http://medicmagic.net/is-chocolate-really-healthier-than-fruits.html