Astronomers say alien life could be discovered within 20 years

Posted by Unknown on Friday, May 23, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

Curious about whether there is life beyond Earth? The answer should come within 20 years, astronomers told members of a Congressional science committee on Wednesday.
A three-way race is under way to learn if life exists elsewhere in the solar system or beyond, Seth Shostak, senior astronomer with the California-based SETI Institute, said during a hearing before the House Science and Technology Committee.
So far, most efforts — and funding — to find extraterrestrial life have focused on Mars and potential life-bearing moons in the outer solar system.
“At least a half-dozen other worlds (besides Earth) that might have life are in our solar system. The chances of finding it, I think, are good, and if that happens, it’ll happen in the next 20 years, depending on the financing,” Shostak said.
A second initiative scans the atmospheres of distant planets for telltale signs of oxygen or methane, gases which, on Earth, are mostly tied to life. These searches likewise could yield results in the next two decades, Shostak added.
The third project hunts for technologically advanced aliens that are sending radio or other signals out into space. The idea behind the Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, is to eavesdrop on signals that are deliberately or accidentally leaked from another world.
“That makes sense because in fact even we, only 100 years after … the invention of practical radio, already have the technology that would allow us to send bits of information across light years of distance to putative extraterrestrials,” Shostak said.
Humans’ first television broadcasts, including “I Love Lucy,” and “The Ed Sullivan Show,” have passed 10,000 stars, noted SETI hunter Dan Werthimer, with the University of California, Berkeley.
“The nearby stars have seen ‘The Simpsons.’ If we’re broadcasting, maybe other civilizations are sending signals in our direction — either leaking signals the way that we unintentionally send off signals, or maybe a deliberate signal,” Werthimer told legislators.
“The fact that we haven’t found anything means nothing,” Shostak added. “We’ve only just begun to search.”
Source: Discovery News

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17 Reasons Why Having Sex Is Good for Your Health

Posted by Unknown on Thursday, May 22, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

Sex seems to be more than a hormonal discharge and some short moments of pure pleasure. Scientists show that sex is extremely beneficial for our health, while the lack of an active sex life might have negative effects. But too much sex, can also be harmful: more than thrice a week it can weaken the immune system, making us vulnerable to infections...


1. Our mental and emotional health balance is clearly influenced by sex. Abstinence is known to cause from anxiety to paranoia and depression... In fact, in case of light depressions, after having sex the brain releases endorphins, that decrease stress, inducing a state of euphoria. 

2. Sex can be a beauty treatment. While having sex, a woman's body doubles the estrogen level, and this makes her hair shine and the skin becomes softer. 


3. A 10-year research carried on 1,000 middle-aged men 

  at Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, showed that sex on a regular basis increases the humans' lifespan. For the same age and health, those who had orgasms more frequently had half the death rate of men who did not have such frequent orgasms. This could be due to the plummeting stress hormones, reaction that installs after we have sex.

3. Sweating while having sex cleanse the skin pores, making the skin brighter and decreasing the risk of developing dermatitis. 

4. Sex can make us lose weight. You burn all that fat and carbohydrates from the romantic dinner. Quickies of 20 minutes weekly mean 7 500 calories annually, that's as much as you consume on 120 km (745 mi) of jogging. A sex session can burn about 200 calories. This is like running 15 minutes on a treadmill!

5. Sex strengthen our muscles. You can imagine the effort made by your muscles through those pushes and flexions. It depends on your stunts in bed, of course. And it's clearly a lot more fun than running for miles. 

6. The more active your sex life is, the more attractive for the opposite sex you are. High sexual activity makes the body release more pheromones, chemicals that attract the opposite sex. 

7. Sex sharpens our senses, at least the smell. Following the orgasm, a rise of the hormone prolactin makes the brain's stem cells form new neurons in the olfactory bulb, boosting a person's olfactory abilities. 

8. Sex is also a pain reliever, ten times more effective than typical painkillers: immediately before orgasm, levels of the hormone oxytocin rise by five times, determining a huge release of endorphins. These chemicals calm pain, from a minor headache to arthritis or migraines, and with no secondary effects. Migraines also disappear because the pressure in the brain's blood vessels is lowered while we have sex. So now we see that actually, a woman's headache is rather a good reason for having sex, not against it. 

9. Kissing your partner daily means less visits to dentist. Kissing stimulates salivation, which cleanses food left between the teeth and lowers the acidity in the mouth, the main cause of the tooth decay. 

10. A good sex session can be a good remedy against stiff nose, being a natural antihistaminic that helps combating asthma and high fever. 

11. Having sex regularly drops the cholesterol level, balancing the ratio good cholesterol: bad cholesterol.

12. The hormones released while we have sex helps both men and women; estrogen protects a woman's heart but on the long term, it can be efficient also against Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis while testosterone strengthens the bones and muscles. 

13. Sex is not beneficial not only for the heart, but also for the blood circulation, especially in the brain, because of the increased heart rate and deep breathing. 

14. The sexual activity lowers the risk of getting colds and the flu. 1-2 intercourses weekly means 30 % higher levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, that spurs the immune system. 

15. Sex leads to a better control of the bladder, by strengthening the pelvis muscles controlling the flow of urine. 

16. After orgasm, especially in the evening, we become sleepy. This is the effect of some good sex: it increases sleep quality. Following an orgasm, the body of both males or females becomes completely relaxed, so they may have a good deep sleep. 

17. Sex fights cancer! Various researches have shown that a high ejaculation frequency and sexual activity are linked to a lower risk of prostate cancer later in life. A study found out that men who ejaculated 13 to 20 times monthly presented a 14% lower risk of prostate cancer than men who ejaculated on average, between 4 and 7 times monthly for most of their adult life. Those ejaculating over 21 times a month presented a 33% decreased risk of developing prostate cancer than the baseline group.

Source : Internet - 

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Sri Lankan born Michelle de Kretser wins NSW Premier's Literary Award

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 | 0 comments | Leave a comment...

Michelle de Kretser

Michelle de Kretser has added to her prizes for Questions of Travel at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, where her novel was named book of the year, as well as winner of the Christina Stead Prize for fiction and joint winner of the Community Relations Commission Award for a Multicultural NSW.

De Kretser said she was "gobsmacked’’ and ‘‘thrilled’’ to win her second Christina Stead Prize for her first novel set in Sydney. ‘‘Stead was such a Sydney writer,’’ she said. ‘‘She is an important writer to me, especially when I was trying to describe Sydney.’’

Sri Lankan-born de Kretser moved to Sydney from Melbourne five years ago, after winning the 2008 Christina Stead Prize for her previous novel, The Lost Dog. 

Questions of Travel, which has already won the Miles Franklin Literary Award and Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction among others, follows 40 years in the lives of a Sydney woman, Laura, who travels the world as a tourist, and a Sri Lankan man, Ravi, driven to Sydney’s inner-western suburbs by political violence.

The fiction judges (of which I was one) said, ‘‘The quality of the prose in all dimensions, together with the resonance and power of its story, lifted Questions of Travel above the other titles on the shortlist ... In its smallness and largeness, in the particulars and the generalities of a story of human movement across time and space, [it] gives very modern voice to a tale both ancient and epic.’’

On her first visit to Sydney in the 1980s de Kretser walked up George Street from Circular Quay to Central Station as Teresa did in Stead’s 1945 novel For Love Alone to save money for her trip to London. In de Kretser’s novel, Laura walks along George Street in the opposite direction.

‘‘Sydney was a city of literature for me. I discovered it in the pages of novels by Stead and Patrick White and Jessica Anderson. Maybe one day a young bookish woman will come and traipse around Hurlstone Park,’’ she said with a laugh.

She did not make a political plea at the State Library of NSW last night, as she did for asylum seekers at the Prime Minister’s awards. However, she asked for her $10,000 share of the Community Relations Commission Award, which ‘‘tries to promote empathy and inclusion’’, to be shared among the other four finalists.

Andrew Bovell shared that prize for his play The Secret River, a creative adaptation of Kate Grenville’s novel. There were also joint winners of the Douglas Steward Prize for non-fiction - Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir by Kristina Olsson and Rendezvous with Destiny by Michael Fullilove.

Winners in 12 categories won a total of $275,000. A special award of $10,000 went to Rodney Hall for his lifetime’s work as an author, poet and advocate for Australian culture. (Sydney Morning Herald) 

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