It's a question that has plagued scientists for decades: Is there, or has there ever been, life on Mars?
While the answer to that question has often swayed from a slight "maybe" to a definitive "no," the recent discovery of iron 'blueberries' -- small, spherical hematite balls -- by the NASA Opportunity Rover indicates that life may have existed on Mars millions of years ago.
These 'blueberries,' as they have been dubbed, were initially thought to provide evidence of water on Mars, according to LifeScientist. However, researchers from the University of Western Australia and the University of Nebraska found that similar iron-oxide spheres analyzed on Earth are formed by microorganisms. If the same holds true for Mars, the iron 'blueberries' could not have plausibly been created without the existence of microbes on Mars.
Published in the August issue of Geology, the study analyzed the bio-signatures of iron 'bluberries' found here on Earth on beaches and deserts such as the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone in Utah. Using a high resolution microscope, the researchers evaluated the apparent connections in the iron-oxide spheres, noting a particular relationship between microbe-like forms and biological elements.
Though previous theories surrounding the iron 'blueberries' suggested they were formed by chemical reactions, this new analysis indicates microorganisms were a crucial part of their formation. Thus, the evidence indicates that water, and life, once existed on the red planet.
Despite a recent study that suggests magma, rather than water, may have formed some of the deposits on the planet, the new research reinforces the theory that water was present on the Red Planet. However, more research is still required to further the theory of life on Mars.
Friends leaving the Yelokhovsky Passage mall in the direction of Yelokhovsky Cathedral, background, where Pussy Riot sang before Christ the Savior Cathedral. Dmitry Medvedev is calling for the rockers’ release.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday called for the early release of jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band.
Speaking to United Russia activists in Penza, Medvedev said the jail time already served by the three band members was “a very, very serious punishment” and adding any more would be “counterproductive in this case,” Interfax reported.
A Moscow court on Aug. 17 sentenced band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich to two years in jail for their February “punk prayer” in Christ the Savior Cathedral in which they denounced Putin and Patriarch Kirill.
The verdict against Pussy Riot will not go into force until the Moscow City Court rules on their appeal on Oct. 1.
Medvedev also made it clear that he was not prepared to support the band.
“I am sick over what they did, of their public appeal and the hysteria that surrounds them,” he said.
Medvedev’s comments came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin condemned the band’s performances as “witches’ sabbaths.”
And they came a day after state television suggested that the band’s stunt in Christ the Savior Cathedral was orchestrated by exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
A documentary-style report aired on the Rossia 1 channel Tuesday night that quoted Alexei Veshnyak, identified as a close Berezovsky associate, as saying that Berezovsky had discussed plans for Pussy Riot’s February performance with him.
The report also quoted U.S. publicist William Dunkerley as saying that a London-based public relations agency had offered Western celebrities cash if they supported Pussy Riot.
The report, titled “Provocateurs. Part 2,” appeared as an installment in the “Special Correspondent” series hosted by Arkady Mamontov, who has been branded by critics as a Kremlin propaganda mouthpiece.
In April, Mamontov made the same claim about Berezovsky as the television program.
Berezovsky on Wednesday denied the accusations.
“I would be proud if I had thought up” the Pussy Riot performance, he on Ekho Moskvy radio. He added that he knew Vishnyak but had never discussed Pussy Riot with him.
Tuesday’s program identified Veshnyak as the head of a nongovernmental organization called Preobrazheniye, or Transfiguration.
Moskovskiye Novosti in April that someone named Alexei Vishnyak heads the Vrata-1 and Vrata-2 companies, which sell souvenirs and jewelry on the premises of Christ the Savior Cathedral.
Vishnyak was also registered in 2010 as the head of Vrata-4, a subsidiary of the Christ the Savior Cathedral Fund, which is financed by City Hall, the report said.
It was unclear whether Veshnyak and Vishnyak are the same person.
Dunkerley, meanwhile, denied Mamontov’s claim that he had obtained evidence of Berezovsky’s involvement.
Reached by telephone in Connecticut, he said a colleague had told him that the Bell Pottinger PR firm had offered artists up to 100,000 euros ($129,000) for making statements in support of Pussy Riot.
The fact that Bell Pottinger had worked for Berezovsky in the past “is an interesting parallel,” he said.
The London-based company was founded by Timothy Bell, the British godfather of PR, who worked for both British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko. Bell Pottinger did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Dunkerley, who first linked Berezovsky to the Pussy Riot case in Komsomolskaya Pravda earlier this month, said he has no political agenda.
“I am not endorsing one side or another, but I am happy to be used as a source to get to the truth,” he.
Meanwhile, Orthodox theologian Andrei Kurayev questioned Mamontov’s program by saying that the Pussy Riot performance was not a “persecution” of the church. on his LiveJournal blog, Kurayev suggested that Preobrazheniye, the organization linked to Veshnyak, does not exist, and he assailed the program for linking the toppling of an Orthodox cross by Ukraine’s Femen activists with a promise by a Pussy Riot lawyer to stage an event to support the band.
Kurayev is no stranger to conspiracy theories himself. In July, he speculated that Pussy Riot’s performances were orchestrated by the head of City Hall’s culture department, Sergei Kapkov, to boost support for Putin.
Televizor, a Soviet protest group from the late 1980s that was banned.
ST. PETERSBURG — A concert in support of Pussy Riot looks set to go ahead at a St. Petersburg club despite allegations of police pressure.
The concert at Glavclub on Sunday will not, however, be advertised on street posters, because the outdoor advertising agency that was approached to do the job "got scared," organizers said.
Glavclub's owner, Igor Tonkikh, said that he had started receiving threatening calls from the police and district administrations of both the Petrograd Side of the city, where Glavclub's temporary summer marquee was located, and of the Central District, where Glavclub moved its activities to on Sept. 1.
He was told that there were many agencies who would probe various violations that the club was allegedly responsible for if the concert went ahead.
Tonkikh said he had decided to host the Free Pussy Riot Fest because he organized concerts by Televizor — one of the show's participants — as an underground promoter in Moscow when the band was banned in the late 1980s for its protest songs such as "Get Out of Control" and "Your Daddy Is a Fascist." However, he said he also felt responsible for the jobs of the people working at his venue.
The concert will be the second charity event to be held at the club this week. The club will host a non-political concert aimed at supporting the homeless on Thursday.
"We haven't received any calls about that event," Tonkikh stressed.
The police denied they had called the venue, and said that no permits for holding concerts were needed, Rosbalt reported last week.
However, concert organizer Olga Kurnosova said she had managed to get a "permit" from the police.
"I asked the police to provide assistance in holding the concert and received a document from them," she said, adding that the piece of paper does not guarantee the event from further harassment from the authorities.
According to Kurnosova, one of the police chiefs with whom she negotiated initially argued that Glavclub was "too close" to the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra monastery — which is about 1 kilometer from the club — and suggested that the organizer should find a venue located further from a church for the concert.
DDT, Televizor, PTVP, Electric Guerrilas, Razniye Lyudi and Gleb Samoilov will be taking part, as well as some younger bands who offered to play, but several acts refused to take part, most notably Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium.
Tickets cost 500 rubles ($15) and the proceeds will go to support the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich — who were sentenced to two years each in a prison colony in Moscow last month.
A portion of the funds raised will go to the "Prisoners of Bolotnaya," activists arrested in the aftermath of the May 6 demonstration on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow that erupted into clashes as the result of an alleged police provocation, and also to Taisia Osipova, an opposition activist sentenced last week to eight years in prison in Smolensk on dubious drug distribution charges.
Free Pussy Riot Fest will take place Sunday. 7 p.m. Glavclub, 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya. St. Petersburg. Tel. (812) 905-7555.
A photo of Putin burning after Pussy Riot members ignited it as part of a video thanking supportive musicians.
Members of punk band Pussy Riot have released a video in which they thank musicians Madonna and Bjork for their support of the group while they rappel down the side of an abandoned building and burn a picture of President Vladimir Putin.
The group released the video apparently in response to questions submitted to it by American television network MTV ahead of the MTV Video Music Awards, which aired in the States on Thursday evening.
MTV News said in an article that it had asked Pussy Riot to respond to the prominent musicians around the world who have expressed support for the group, three of whose members were sentenced to two years in prison last month for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church.
In the 1-minute 15-second video, three women wearing the group's trademark colorful balaclavas, short dresses and stockings are shown on the roof of an abandoned concrete building.
The women speak emphatically in English about their fight against the authorities and call Putin and strongman Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko "evil men."
"We've been fighting for the right to sing, to think, to criticize," a woman in a green knit balaclava says to open the video.
"To be musicians and artists, ready to do everything to change our country, no matter the risks," another female voice follows.
The women, while rappelling down the side of the building, thank singers Madonna and Bjork as well as the bands Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day and other musicians, for supporting Pussy Riot. Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers have expressed support for the women in concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in recent months.
The women then condemn Putin and Lukashenko, saying they are intolerant of political opposition and support of gays and lesbians. Two of the women then light flares and burn a photo of Putin hanging from the building.
A member of Green Day wore a "Free Pussy Riot" T-shirt at the MTV Video Music Awards on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported. It was unclear whether the latest Pussy Riot video was shown during the Los Angeles ceremony, at which a variety of awards were given out to popular musicians. The video was posted on MTV's website, mtv.com.
Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were sentenced on Aug. 17 by a Moscow court to two years in prison for their February "punk prayer" in Christ the Savior Cathedral in which they denounced Putin and Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill.
World-famous musicians have backed the women's right to free speech, and human rights groups and Western governments have condemned their jail sentence as disproportionate.
A group of Russian musicians planned to play at a benefit concert in support of the band in St. Petersburg late Sunday.
Glavclub's owner Igor Tonkikh, the only owner of a large club in the city to agree to host the charity show, asked the organizers to get at least some kind of "permit" from the police that would guarantee the venue would not be shut down on the day of the concert, he said earlier at a news conference.
Tonkikh said he had started receiving threatening calls from the police and other authorities. The police denied they had called the venue and said no permit for holding concerts was needed, Rosbalt reported last week.
DDT, Televizor, Electric Guerillas and Gleb Samoilov signed up to take part, as well as some younger bands who offered to play, but several acts refused to take part, most notably Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium.
Separately, Lech Walesa, Poland's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he had sent a letter to Putin urging him to release the three band members sentenced last month, Reuters reported Friday.
"I'm not familiar with Russian law, but I'm calling on President Putin to liberate the girls if the law allows that," Walesa, who served as a president of post-Communist Poland, told Reuters in an interview.
I was sitting in a church today not because I’ve ever been Christian or particularly religious, but rather because I find churches a peaceful place to collect my thoughts. I’ve been blessed to be on several university campuses with beautiful places of worship that are truly awe-inspiring. So much so that as I began to quiet my mind, I found myself interrupted by the incessant click-click sounds of cameras. Granted, I was sitting in a truly gorgeous place with an ethereal light shining down into the sacred space. The intricate golden mosaic artwork and Spanish-style architecture I’d determined was impossible to ever truly capture on film. Nothing would do it justice other than to experience it directly. The same way that one can view photos of Italian paintings, chapels, and architecture, and yet it is all second to traveling to Italy to see it with one’s own eyes. Seeing people file in and out of the church, snapping pictures and making a quick exit brought many questions to my mind. Mostly, I wondered what makes us so determined to document and capture every moment often with the intent of sharing it with others? What keeps us from simply taking it in? It is far too simplistic to blame technologies and point immediately to social networking sites such as Facebook. And yet, I was surprised when an article I wrote on deleting Facebook friends was received with overwhelming enthusiasm. It seems people are just over it.
The idea of Facebook “depression” “addiction” and other such terms seem to be more ubiquitous now that everyone’s third cousin and elementary school teacher is on it. Social networks expand in large complicated ways as boundaries blur and identities become ambiguous. The problem of Facebook, however, rests not necessarily with others and what they are doing. Too often we blame “friends” and their carefully photoshopped lives. “Look at my amazing vacation,” and “here are my adorable children.” For the financially strapped or those struggling with fertility, seeing these updates is a virtual and constant slap in the face. How many times have my female therapy clients complained that all of their friends are married and that they are the only single one left? And it’s not a faulty cognition—there’s proof!
While certainly witnessing what appears to be others’ triumphs may prove difficult, there is more to the story. What about the falsehoods we create about our own lives? Do we believe the lies we tell ourselves on Facebook? It rarely escapes most people’s attentions that the most vibrant, exciting, party-filled lives are typically the loneliest and most unhappy. After all, if your life is so wonderful and glamorous, then why do you feel the need to constantly prove the fact again, over and over? And frankly, what are you doing on Facebook all day long if you’re so popular and in demand? Aren’t those who are most fully engaged in life the ones with too little time to devote to their Facebook pages? In truth, we have all done it. We’ve had bad days, rejections, and times when life hits the blahs. We post something fun and upbeat, perhaps as a way to snap ourselves out of it. Maybe it’s to garner a “like” or cheery comment. But at the end of the day when we turn off our computers, our social networks, if confined to a pixilated screen, will snap off just as quickly. The reality is that our own lives are slowly slipping into the makeup of today’s reality television shows. Carefully crafted or scripted, our high highs and low lows are broadcast loudly to the world. We hold our coffees in one hand, our phones in the other, and if we are ultra sleek, we peer out only occasionally from our big sunglasses which shield us from more than just the sun. We are in effect turning into the very celebrities we so claim to disdain. A line I recently came across from a spiritual leader noted that in our cores, many of us are longing for love. Self-love is one of the most important types of love that we rarely speak of. It’s a foreign concept as we have few moments truly to ourselves without the distraction of others or electronics. We don’t have the opportunity to be left alone and to learn to take joy in our own solitude and company. It simply looks weird to sit down at a coffee shop with just your latte while you stare off into space. It makes everyone around you a lot more comfortable if your nose is buried in a book or your fingers are quickly tapping away a text message or update. But there is nothing wrong with stillness; the contentment that lingers is often a quiet one. It may not require any documentation, or if you have the impulse to immediately “share” it, it is an urge worth resisting. Sure, life on Facebook is fun. It’s not unlike the dramatic train wrecks people enjoy watching on trashy television. But creating a life worthy of the “silver” in silver screen is even better.
“…change has to be carefully nurtured by sentries on the lookout for indulgence, corrosion and selfishness.” That’s the view attributed to the Founding Fathers by American Interest contributor Benjamin E. Schwartz in his indictment of the growing trend toward living alone. We solo dwellers are the ones being selfish and indulgent, when we should be married-with-children sentries watching out for other people headed down the road to corrosion. Schwartz does not like Eric Klinenberg’s suggestion in Going Solo that the rise of living alonerepresents a collective achievement. He does not like Klinenberg’s book, and he is really miffed that so many other people do like it. He thinks that the positive arguments put forward about living alone amount to an attempt to recast selfishness as a virtue.
People who live alone, he thinks, are seeking “instant gratification” and abdicating their responsibility “for ensuring that certain values outlast and outlive” them.
Schwartz is worried about the next generation. “Individuals are biologically incapable of producing a next generation except in the crudest possible sense of the term.” I think he is saying that using reproductive technology to have children is crude, but I’m not entirely sure. In any case, that’s not his main gripe. He’s more worried about “social reproduction,” the question of “how well America is developing the character of the next generation.”
People who live alone, Schwartz seems to be arguing, are not socializing the next generation. We’re too caught up in our “expressive individualism,” which he defines as “the idea that one’s greatest priority out to be self-expression, self-cultivation and self-fulfillment.”
He does seem to realize that some of the people who are living alone were once married but are currently divorced. (There’s no mention of being widowed.) He also knows that there are lots of single parents –whether divorced or always single – who are raising children. Somehow, none of those people get credit for socializing the next generation. He instead ascribes to the myth that the children of single parents are doomed.
I have addressed the overwrought take on the supposedly pitiful children of single parents many times before, so that’s not what I will discuss here. Instead, I want to critique two other assumptions: that solo dwellers do not connect with other people except in the most self-indulgent ways (to go to a football game or a movie, for example), and that the proliferation of choices about how to live is a bad thing.
To read Schwartz is to believe that people who are single have nothing to do but play (another myth debunked here). He mentions the evidence that single people go out to dinner more often than married people do, but not that they also stay in touch more, and more often exchange help with, parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors.
He also does not acknowledge that single people often provide more than their share of the caring of aging relatives. Oddly, he does not seem to recognize the many ways that adults can contribute to the socializing of the next generation other than by raising them in nuclear family households. Teaching, mentoring, befriending, pitching in to help with other people’s kids, or just hanging out with kids – none of that seems to count as an investment “in the acculturation of future generations.”
Maybe the more fundamental problem with Schwartz’s argument, though, is that he seems to implicitly condemn a fact of contemporary life – that we have ever more choices about how to live. I think Schwartz would be happy if we all married, had kids, and stayed married.
He cannot seem to allow that for some people, marrying and having kids is the good life, but that it is not the best life for everyone – nor would it be best for society if everyone followed the same life path.
I think we all benefit when people who do not want to be parents, and who would not be very good at it, do not feel compelled to have kids anyway. I think it is good for individuals and for society when people who are passionate and talented in the pursuit of scientific innovation or social justice (or any other endeavor that benefits more than a small set of biological children) feel free to make use of their abilities single-mindedly and without guilt.
If you love what you are doing and work hard at it, then yes, you will enjoy “self-expression, self-cultivation, and self-fulfillment,” Schwartz’s defining features of the expressive individualism that he detests. But maybe you will also contribute to a better society in ways that endure for many generations to come.
When I was in elementary school, my teacher told my class that the full moon makes people crazy.
She said it was caused by the gravitational tug of the moon on the Earth—the same forces that cause high and low tides—the argument being that our bodies are more than 60% water.
I was impressionable and fascinated by weird science—who isn't at that age?—and have long since stored that "fact"oid in my ever-developing hippocampus. The full moon last night (the blue moon, in fact—the second full moon of the month) reminded me of this theory and made me want to do a little research of my own.
Does the full moon really do something to our brains?
Firstly, we must be on the same page as to what a "full moon" really means. The moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth revolves around the sun. The phases of the moon simply represent the portions illuminated by the sun.
All of this motion creates a very dynamic display for us earthlings. So when you see that little sliver in the sky, the rest of the moon is still there—the sun's rays just aren't reflected on the surface we're seeing. That being said, why would an illuminated moon have some sort of effect (on tides, craziness, etc.), while a shadowed moon wouldn't?
Here's where the "science" comes in.
A 1985 meta-analysis review of 37 studies regarding moon phase and lunacy (including mental hospital admissions, hotline crisis calls,psychiatric disturbances, and criminal offenses) found no statistically significant relationships between the full moon and human behavior.
Sleep disturbances have been reported in response to a full moon. A 1999 hypothesis details how the additional outdoor lighting may contribute to sleeplessness.
We should, perhaps, turn to the animal world to see how some non-self-conscious beings react to the full moon.
A study on Azara's owl monkeys found them prowling the Argentinean forests more actively on full moon nights; the poor things will actually sleep in late the next morning, not unlike your average teenager.
Interestingly, a hypothesized light-sensitive protein in Acropora millepora corals may account for their synchronous spawning for a few nights every year just after the full moon. (Good thing humans don't carry that gene.)
It also appears that prey are less active during the full moon, as the additional light makes them more visible to predators.
So the full moon isn't causing, like, mini gravitational tides in our watery bodies. The extra light is messing with our heads, somehow. Truth be told, we're likely just being paranoid and superstitious. Or perhaps those who claim lunacy are those who transform into werewolves a couple times a year.
