The Daily Drift

Howdy, neighbor ...!

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 199 countries around the world daily.   

Neighbor ... !

Today is - Neighbor Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our reader today have been in:

The Americas

Menasha, Dekalb, Chardon, Alabaster, Portal and Temecula, United States

Charlottetown, Nunalla, L'ancienne-Lorette, Saint John's and Lake Louise, Canada

Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Rio De Janeio and Porto Alegre, Brazil

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Barquisimeto, Venezuela

Tipitapa, Nicaragua

Bogota and Medellin, Colombia

Luquillo, Puerto Rico

Buenos Ares, Argentina

The Bottom, Sint Eustatus and Saba

Europe

Warsaw and Gdansk, Poland

Portsmouth, London and Slough, England

Malaga, Castello De La Plana, Algeciras, Madrid and L'Olleria, Spain

Hrinova, Slovakia

Espoo, Nokia and Vantaa, Finldand

Vladivostok, Novgorod and Ryazan, Russia

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

L'viv, Zhovtivody and Kiev, Ukraine

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Vilnius, Lithuania

Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Oslo, Norway

Ivrea, Rome, Florence and Ravenna, Italy

Zurich, Switzerland

Kolin, Czech Republic

Leipzig, Germany

Teixoso, Portugal

Reykjavik, Iceland

Asia

Bhubaneshwar, Thiruvanthpuram, Mumbai, Kolkata, Shillong, Suratgarh, Nangloi Jat, Chetput, Bangalore,  New Delhi, Chennai, Srinagar and Vishakhaptanam, India

Doha, Qatar

Bangkok, Thailand

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Jakarta and Medan, Indonesia

Muscat, Oman

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Singapore, Singapore

Tehran, Iran

La Dagotiere, Mauritius

Colombo and Mulleriyawa, Sri Lanka

Islamabad, Pakistan

Baghdad, Iraq

Africa 

Osogbo and Lagos, Nigeria

Algiers, Algeria

Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa

Cairo, Egypt

Douala, Cameroon

The Pacific

Subiaco, Sydney and Adelaide, Australia

Makati, Philippines

Port-Vila, Vanuatu

Wellington, New Zealand

Today in History

526		St. John I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1643		Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, is granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king's will.
1652		A law is passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it causes little stir and seems unlikely to be enforced.
1792		Russian troops invade Poland.
1802		Britain declares war on France.
1804		Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the Emperor of France.
1828		The Battle of Las Piedras, between Uruguay and Brazil, ends.
1860		Abraham Lincoln is nominated for president.
1864		The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reaches its peak at the Bloody Angle.
1896		The Supreme Court's decision on Plessy v. Ferguson upholds the "separate but equal" policy in the United States.
1904		Brigand Raizuli kidnaps American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.
1917		The U.S. Congress passes the Selective Service act, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.
1931		Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashes his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He is picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.
1933		President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.
1942		New York ends night baseball games for the rest of World War II.
1944		The Allies finally capture Monte Cassino in Italy.
1951		The United Nations moves its headquarters to New York city.
1969		Two battalions of the 101st Airborne Division assault Hill 937 but cannot reach the top because of muddy conditions.
1974		India becomes sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.
1980		After rumbling for two months, Mount Saint Helens, in Washington, erupts 3 times in 24 hours.

Non Sequitur

10 Science Experiments You Can Eat With Your Kids

There's very little about cooking that doesn't involve chemistry, physics, biology, or even math. But don't tell your kids that. Sneak education into your kitchen with these 10 experiments, gathered from the websites of creative teachers and parents.

One reason Americans are so damned ignorant ...

FDA approves first prosthetic arm that translates muscle signals to perform complex tasks

FDA approves first prosthetic arm that translates muscle signals to perform complex tasks

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today allowed marketing […]

Scientists Create Man-Made DNA

Chemical biologists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, announced the creation of man-made DNA last week. Prior to their work, all DNA contained only the four nucleotide bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). But the Scripps researchers created two additional molecules, denoting them as X and Y. The artificial nucleotides were inserted into e-coli bacteria which then reproduced normally and passed along the new genetic units.
“This is the first experimental demonstration that life can exist with information that’s not coded the way nature does (it),” said Floyd Romesberg, an associate professor of chemistry at Scripps. The announcement was the culmination of a 15-year project, and was accompanied by an article published Wednesday in science journal, Nature.
The work raises the possibility of creating new medicines that have more than the four natural nucleotides, of life engineered with none of them, or of life with no DNA at all. Ethical debates regarding the emerging field of synthetic biology are expected.

Handshake Strength Reveals Education, Age

Handshake Strength Reveals Education, Age

A handshake can tell a lot about a person.

Why Women Should Ask For More Pay

Why Women Should Ask For More Pay

Trace takes a look at a few studies saying how women are equally effective in leadership positions, and how women get better grades in school.

Random Celebrity Photos

Firing Up a Liquid Nitrogen BBQ

Hard Science: Firing Up a Liquid Nitrogen BBQ

We took the traditional BBQ and turned it on it's head - with liquid nitrogen. Find out if hot dogs, ice cream, beer and more taste better or worse with this culinary experiment.

DIY Edible Water Bubbles and Other Round Food

Inhabitat – a weblog showcasing innovations in sustainability – presented an ingenious alternative to wasteful water bottles this week, posting a video and step-by-step instructions for making gelatinous water bubbles by using spherification.
Introduced in 2003 by chef  Ferran Adrià, spherification is a molecular gastronomy technique in which a gel membrane forms around a calcium-infused liquid when that liquid is submerged in a bath of sodium alginate. The video shows how it can be done at home with water and other commonly available ingredients.
Serious spherification cooks can find a spherification course and molecular gastronomy kits at MolecularRecipes.com. The site also lists other spherification recipes and techniques for making edible foams, films, ashes, crystal bread, and flavored snows.

What Is Gluten?

What Is Gluten?

Many people may eat gluten-free, but that doesn't mean they know what gluten is.

Rice vs. Wheat People

Rice vs. Wheat People: Crops Yield Different Traits

What crops your ancestors grew likely determined your mindset, a new study finds.

Science

Understanding aspirin’s effect on wound healing

Understanding aspirin’s effect on wound healing

In addition to its known capacity to promote bleeding events, […]

Study strengthens link between insecticides and collapse of honey bee colonies

Study strengthens link between insecticides and collapse of honey bee colonies 

Two widely used neonicotinoids—a class of insecticide—appear to significantly harm

The monster that pond scum wrought

The monster that pond scum wrought

A genomic investigation by University of British Columbia researchers has […]

Ziggy

Moon Orbiter Captures Stunning 21st Century 'Earthrise'

Moon Orbiter Captures Stunning 21st Century 'Earthrise'

It's a 21st-century version of the famous "Earthrise" photo taken by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders in 1968: our brilliant blue world rising above the craters of the moon captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on Feb. 1, 2014.

NASA Successfully Recreates Alien Dust in the Lab

NASA Successfully Recreates Alien Dust in the Lab

Scientists have, for the first time, have created stellar dust in the lab that is belched into space by dying stars in an effort to understand its role in planetary formation processes.

Radiation from Early Universe Found Key to Answer Major Questions in Physics

Radiation from Early Universe Found Key to Answer Major Questions in Physics

Astrophysicists at UC San Diego have measured the minute gravitational […]

Radar Pings 'Invisible' Asteroid During Earth Flyby

Radar Pings 'Invisible' Asteroid During Earth Flyby

An asteroid approached Earth in our 'blind spot,' but a radar tag team pinged the space rock to clock its spin rate and resolve its surface features.

Our Sun's Long Lost Stellar 'Sister' Found

Our Sun's Long Lost Stellar 'Sister' Found

Astronomers have found a star that “almost certainly” formed from the same cloud of gas and dust that produced the sun.

NASA Spots Square-Shaped 'Hole' in the Sun

"Inside the coronal hole you can see bright loops where the hot plasma outlines little pieces of the solar magnetic field sticking above the surface," SDO officials wrote in the video description. "Because it is positioned so far south on the sun, there is less chance that the solar wind stream will impact us here on Earth." NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory is just one of a fleet of spacecraft keeping a close watch on the weather on Earth's parent star. In 2013, the sun experienced its peak activity of its 11-year solar weather cycle.

How NASA Photographs The Sun

In 2010, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft equipped with instruments to improve our understanding of our star's magnetic field, with the hope of achieving better solar forecasts.

The results of the mission, so far, have been as informative as they are beautiful. The images that the observatory has beamed back to Earth are sublime in the truest sense of the word - evocative of sheer power and with sharp contrasts. They also come in nice colors.

Daily Comic Relief

Longevity gene may boost brain power

Longevity gene may boost brain power

Scientists showed that people who have a variant of a […]

Most Europeans to be fatties by 2030

Most Europeans to be fatties by 2030

Rates of obesity and overweight in both male and females […]

A Royal Mess

Inbreeding:

Have you always dreamed of being a princess or a king? Be careful what you wish for -you might end up like one of these folks.

Hapsburgs: From left, Philip V of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and Philip II of Spain. Keep in mind that royal portraits were always flattering.

ALL IN THE FAMILY
For the past thousand years, the royal families of Europe have routinely intermarried. Why? They did it to create dynasties and to keep the royal wealth within their families. The problem: Over time it can create a genetic nightmare. The poster family of royal inbreeding is the House of Hapsburg. Since the 15th century, the Hapsburg have intermarried with royal relatives in Spain, Austria, England, Hungary, Bohemia, Greece, Portugal, and Mexico. Somewhere along the line it created a genetic deformity called the “Hapsburg lip,” which then spread through the family tree. This condition, known as mandibular prognathism, causes the lower jaw to protrude in front of the upper teeth like a bulldog.

Other common Hapsburg traits due to inbreeding: a large misshapen nose, sagging lower eyelids, stunted bodies, and hydrocephalus. This genetic disorder, more commonly known as “water on the brain,” makes fluid accumulate in the skull, putting pressure on the brain. It causes mental disabilities, convulsions, and death -symptoms the Hapsburg royals had in abundance.
ROYAL DISASTERS
Two extreme examples

:

Left: Ferdinand I of Austria in 1870. Right: Charles II of Spain.

* In 1793 Emperor Franz II married his double first cousin (they had the same four grandparents) Marie-Therese. Their son, Ferdinand I (1793-1875), was born with a hydrocephalic head, shrunken body, and epilepsy. He had the Hapsburg jaw, a tongue too large for his mouth, and only marginal intelligence. One of his favorite pastimes was to wedge his bottom in a wastebasket and roll around the floor on it. Despite that, he reigned as emperor for 18 years.
* In 1649 King Philip IV of Spain married Mariana of Austria… his niece. Their son Charles II (1661-1700) had maladies like those of Ferdinand I except that his tongue was so huge he could hardly eat or talk. He was also impotent, which ended the Hapsburg’s reign in Spain.

MAD MEN
The Hapsburgs weren’t the only royal house muddying the gene pool. In 1802, as British essayist Walter Bagehot noted, “every hereditary monarch in Europe was insane.”
* George II of England (1738-1820) was taken to Kew Palace in a straightjacket in 1801 and never seen in public again.
* Queen Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816), whose half-wit husband was also her uncle, liked to dress like a little girl and throw temper tantrums.
* Christian VII of Denmark (1749-1808) ran around the palace smashing furniture and banging his head until it bled.
* Russian Emperor Paul I (1754-1801) may have been a paranoid schizophrenic, and was given to unpredictable behavior: In 1797 he banned shoes with laces, then sent troops into the streets of St. Petersburg with orders to kill anyone violating his edict.
* Ludwig I of Bavaria (1786-1868) was prone to wander the city of Munich in rags carrying a tattered umbrella.
VICTORIA’S SECRET

By all accounts Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901) and her husband (and cousin) Prince Albert (1819-1861) had a happy marriage. Together they produced nine children and married them into every royal family in Europe. Unfortunately one son and two of their five daughters carried a deadly gift from their mother in their genes- hemophilia. Hemophiliacs lack the protein that clots blood, making the smallest cut a potential killer. Victoria’s children who carried this defective chromosome passed it on through their children, some of whom passed it on to their children. The disease is believed to be extinct among the remaining European monarchies, but since female descendants can carry the gene without knowing it, it’s possible that it’s still out there somewhere.
THE WACKY WINDSORS

The current ruling dynasty of England, the House of Windsor, is carrying on the breeding habits of their ancestors. Queen Elizabeth II (1926- ) is married to Prince Philip, her second cousin once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark, and her third cousin through Queen Victoria. The beat goes on…

Coming Tomorrow

Coming Tomorrow

• 8 famous ideas that came form dreams
• What language does your state speak?
• The international Zip Line between Spain and Portugal
• China's strange proposal for an undersea train that connects to the United States

And more ...

This bear is our Animal Picture, for today.
(Oh, and there's a lesson in the picture)