Stig Östlund

tisdag, juli 31, 2018

Talgoxars impulskontroll i nivå med schimpansernas







Biologer vid Lunds universitet visar i en färsk studie att talgoxar 
har mycket stor förmåga till självkontroll. Tills nu har sådan 
impulskontroll främst förknippats med större, kognitivt
 avancerade djur med långt större hjärnor än talgoxarnas. 
Enligt de nya resultaten har talgoxar nästan samma förmåga 
till självkontroll som korpar och schimpanser.

Talgoxe på en gren.
Talgoxe. Foto: Johan Nilsson
Av Jan Olsson - publicerad den 31 juli 2018
Biologerna vid naturvetenskapliga fakulteten i Lund placerade mat i en genomskinlig liten cylinder. Talgoxar som börjar picka på cylindern för att komma åt maten blev underkända eftersom det anses som en impulsiv handling. Individer som däremot flyttade sig till en öppning i cylindern och på så vis kom åt belöningen utan att först hacka på cylinderns vägg blev godkända.

Åtta av tio rätt

Resultatet visar att talgoxar gör rätt och blir godkända i åtta av de tio första försöken, det vill säga 80 procent. Det är bättre än de flesta andra djur som testats och är nästan i nivå med ”intelligenta” djur som korpar och schimpanser.
– Det är fantastiskt att en fågel med så liten hjärna har sådan självkontroll. Hjärnvolymen hos en talgoxe motsvarar 3 procent av hjärnan hos en korp och 0,1 procent av schimpansens, säger Anders Brodin, professor vid biologiska institutionen.
Studien har han gjort tillsammans med kollegorna Utku Urhan och Emil Isaksson. För ett par år sedan konstaterade Lundabiologerna en annan egenskap hos talgoxar – deras förmåga att lära sig och att minnas genom att observera.

Memorerar och stjäl

Den undersökningen visade att talgoxar kan sitta och iaktta på avstånd och memorera var arter som hamstrar mat gömmer matbitarna. Studien visade också att honor generellt är bättre än hanar på detta. Då jämfördes talgoxar med sina nära släktingar entita och talltita. Till skillnad från entitor och talltitor hamstrar inte talgoxar mat för att överleva vintern. Istället observerar de var släktingarna gömmer sin mat och sedan stjäl de den.
– Talgoxar är väldigt påhittiga. Nu vet vi att de även har stor självkontroll och kan hantera sina impulser när de vill komma åt en belöning som mat, säger Anders Brodin.

För första gången presenteras nu hela kostnaden för den svenska monarkin. Republikanska föreningens granskning av kungahuset visar att den faktiska kostnaden för den svenska monarkin är runt åtta gånger större än apanaget – närmare 1,1 miljard kronor per år, vilket motsvarar lönerna för 2500 sjuksköterskor eller 2300 lärare.

Exercise Makes the Aging Heart More Youthful




For lifelong heart health, start exercising early in life and keep exercising often — ideally, at least four times a week, according to a remarkable series of recent studies involving hundreds of people and their hearts.
But even if you have neglected to exercise in recent years and are now middle-aged, it is not too late. The same research shows that you still can substantially remodel your heart and make it more youthful by starting to work out in midlife, provided you exercise often enough.
By the time many of us are in our mid to late 50s, portions of our heart muscle have begun to atrophy and weaken, and our major cardiac arteries — the blood vessels that move blood from our hearts and to the rest of the body — have stiffened.
These changes increase blood pressure and make our hearts work harder and less well, raising the risk for subsequent health problems, including heart failure.
But Dr. Benjamin Levine, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine in Dallas, was not convinced that these effects were inevitable.
He and his research colleagues wondered if they might be common only among aging people who are sedentary and not among those who are physically active.
So they embarked upon a series of examinations of people and their cardiac systems.
For the first of these, published in 2014 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, they turned to 102 older men and women who were part of a large-scale, ongoing study of heart health. All had provided detailed information about their physical activities for at least the past 20 years.
The scientists then categorized these men and women, based on those exercise histories.
Some were and had been sedentary throughout adulthood. Others, who reported that they had and continued to exercise two or three times a week for at least 30 minutes, were dubbed long-term “casual” exercisers.
A third group, who had worked out four or five times a week for years, were classified as “committed” exercisers.



And a fourth group, who exercised six or seven times a week and competed in sports, were marked as athletes.
The researchers then scanned and tested everyone’s hearts.
They found that the sedentary group showed the usual effects of time. Parts of their heart muscles, particularly their left ventricles or chambers, were shrunken and less powerful than in younger people.
The same changes were evident in casual exercisers.
But they were not seen to the same extent in men and women who had exercised at least four times a week for years, or in those who were masters’ athletes. Both of those groups had left ventricles that looked and functioned much like those of people decades younger.
To extend those findings, the researchers next turned to cardiac arteries, which, like the heart muscle, typically become less healthy with age.
For a study published this month in The Journal of Physiology, the scientists assessed the stiffness and relative age of the major cardiac arteries in about 100 additional adults, most of them in their 70s and who, as in the earlier study, had provided regular reports about their exercise habits for at least two decades.
The researchers again grouped them into the four categories, based on how frequently they exercised.
And again, the scientists noted considerable differences in cardiac health, depending on how often the men and women had been physically active during adulthood. In general, the cardiac arteries of both the sedentary people and the casual exercisers, who worked out two or three times a week, were stiffer than in younger people.



But among long-term committed exercisers and masters’ athletes, the researchers found, major cardiac arteries were relatively flexible and, in functional terms, youthful and healthy, compared to the vessels in the other groups.
Which would be good news, except that those studies looked at people who had been exercising for decades. The results cannot tell us whether people who have reached middle-age without exercising could, at that point, begin and still change the structure and function of their hearts.
So, for perhaps the most important of the recent studies, which was published in April in Circulation, Dr. Levine and his colleagues had a group of sedentary middle-aged men and women start exercising four or five times a week, while another group began stretching and balance training as a control.
The exercisers completed at least one session a week of brief but strenuous intervals, while their other workouts were moderate, such as brisk walking or jogging, and lasted for 30 minutes or longer.
The groups continued their routines for two years, by the end of which time the exercisers were fitter than they had been. Those in the control group were not.
More notably, the left ventricles in the exercisers’ heart muscles were stronger and less stiff than at the start of the study. Their hearts, in effect, were more youthful now.
These results suggest that our hearts can “retain plasticity” deep into middle age, Dr. Levine says, meaning that they still can change in desirable ways if we exercise.
But the exercise most likely needs to occur at least four or five times a week and continue for years, he says.
“It is a commitment,” he says. “But I tell people to think of exercise as part of personal hygiene, like brushing their teeth. It should be something we do as a matter of course to keep ourselves healthy.”


Johann Sebastian Bach. Uttryckskraft. Mörkt preludium men ... Kamplysten fuga



"Johann Sebastian Bachs orgelverk" av Hans Fagius:

 "Få har vill nog förneka att Preludium och fuga e-moll definitivt hör till de verk som för alltid har placerat sig högt på parnassen"

 "Tonarten e-moll är elegisk [sorgsen] och dyster, men verkar också rymma drag av kamp och trots. Ett preludium [förspel] med en mörk och ångestladdad affekt medan fugan är ytterst energisk och kamplysten, ett [detta gillar jag -->] slags protest mot dysterheten och något av en bild av viljan att gå vidare".

måndag, juli 30, 2018

Hot



Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones.
The continental United States had its hottest month of Mayand the third-hottest month of June. Japan was walloped by record triple-digit temperatures, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle.

Heat wave to have firm grip on northwestern US into end of July

Is it because of climate change? Scientists with the World Weather Attribution project concluded in a study released Fridaythat the likelihood of the heat wave currently baking Northern Europe is “more than two times higher today than if human activities had not altered climate.”

While attribution studies are not yet available for other record-heat episodes this year, scientists say there’s little doubt that the ratcheting up of global greenhouse gases makes heat waves more frequent and more intense.
Elena Manaenkova, deputy head of the World Meteorological Organization, said this year was “shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record” and that the extreme heat recorded so far was not surprising in light of climate change.

Record-Breaking Heat Wave Hits Japan Killing 44

“This is not a future scenario,” she said. “It is happening now.”What was like to be in these really different places on these really hot days? We asked people. Here’s what we learned.
Ouargla, Algeria: 124°F on July 5
At 3 p.m. on the first Thursday of July, on the edge of the vast Sahara, the Algerian oil town of Ouargla recorded a high of 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Even for this hot country, it was a record, according to Algeria’s national meteorological service.
Abdelmalek Ibek Ag Sahli was at work in a petroleum plant on the outskirts of Ouargla that day. He and the rest of his crew had heard it would be hot. They had to be at work by 7 a.m., part of a regular 12-hour daily shift.
“We couldn’t keep up,” he recalled. “It was impossible to do the work. It was hell.”
By 11 a.m., he and his colleagues walked off the job.
But when they got back to the workers’ dorms, things weren’t much better. The power had gone out. There was no air conditioning, no fans. He dunked his blue cotton scarf in water, wrung it out, and wrapped it around his head. He drank water. He bathed 5 times. “At the end of the day I had a headache,” he said by phone. “I was tired.”

Soaring temperatures, humidity bring dangerous heat in South


Ouargla’s older residents told him they’d never seen a day so hot.
Hong Kong: Over 91°F for 16 straight days
In this city of skyscrapers on the edge of the South China Sea, temperatures soared past 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days in the second half of May.
Not since Hong Kong started keeping track in 1884had a heat wave of that intensity lasted so long in May.
Swimming pools overflowed with people. Office air-conditioners purred. But from morning to night, some of the city’s most essential laborers went about their outdoor work, hauling goods, guarding construction sites, picking up trash.
One blistering morning, a 55-year-old woman named Lin gripped the hot metal handles of her handcart. She pushed it up a busy road, glancing over her shoulder for oncoming cars. She had fresh leafy greens to deliver to neighborhood restaurants in the morning, trash to haul in the evening. Some days, she had a headache. Other days, she vomited.
“It’s very hot and I sweat a lot,” said Lin, who would only give her first name before rushing off on her rounds. “But there’s no choice, I have to make a living.”

Death toll climbs as Japan wilts under a record-breaking heat wave


Poon Siu-sing, a 58 year-old trash collector, tossed garbage bags into a mounting pile. Sweat plastered the shirt onto his back. “I don’t feel anything,” he maintained. “I’m a robot used to the heat of the sun and rain.”
Nawabshah, Pakistan: 122°F on April 30
Nawabshah is in the heart of Pakistan’s cotton country. But no amount of cotton could provide comfort on the last day of April, when temperatures soared past 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius. Even by the standards of this blisteringly hot place, it was a record.
The streets were deserted that day, a local journalist named Zulfiqar Kaskheli said. Shops didn’t bother to open. Taxi drivers kept off the streets to avoid the blazing sun.
And so, Riaz Soomro had to scour his neighborhood for a cab that could take his ailing 62-year-old father to a hospital. It was Ramadan. The family was fasting. The father became dehydrated and passed out.
The government hospital was packed. In the hallways sat worn-out heatstroke victims like his father. Many of them had been working outdoors as day laborers, Mr. Soomro said.
Throughout the area, hospitals and clinics were swamped. There weren’t enough beds. There weren’t enough medical staff. The power failed repeatedly throughout the day, adding to the chaos.
“We tried our best to provide medical treatment,” said Raees Jamali, a paramedic in Daur, a village on the outskirts of Nawabshah. “But because of severity of the heat, there was unexpected rush and it was really difficult for us to deal with all patients.”

Britain's 'furnace Friday' to test temperature records

Every day that week, the high temperature in Nawabshah was no less than 113 degrees, according to AccuWeather.
Oslo: Over 86°F for 16 consecutive days
“Warning! We remind you about the total ban on fires and barbecuing near the forest and on the islands.”
This was the text message that Oslo residents got from city officials on a Friday afternoon in June.
May had been the warmest in 100 years. June was hot, too. By mid-July, a village south of Oslo recorded 19 days when the temperature shot up past 86 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 Celsius, according to MET Norway.
Spring rains were paltry, which meant that grass had turned brown dry and farmers were having trouble feeding their livestock. Forests had turned to tinder. And city officials put a stop to one of the most popular Norwegian summer pastimes: heading out to the woods with a disposable barbecue.
“People not being used to this heat, they’re used to leaving a barbecue and nothing happens, Marianne Kjosnes, a spokeswoman for the Oslo Fire Department, said. “Now if a little spark catches the grass, you have a grass fire going.”
Public parks are off limits to barbecuing. So are the islands in the nearby fjord. The Oslo Fire Department’s Facebook pageis trying to get the word out.
Per Evenson, a fire watchman posted in the tower on Linnekleppen, a rocky hill southeast of Oslo, counted 11 separate forest fires in one day in early July. Here and there, white smoke rose in the distance. By July 19, the civil protection department had tallied 1,551 forest fires, more than the numbers of fires in all of 2016 and 2017. The department said 22 helicopters were simultaneously fighting fires.

2018 is a hot year: It's on pace to be the 4th-hottest on record

“This is really frightening if this is the new normal,” Thina Margrethe Saltvedt, an energy industry analyst who lives in Oslo, wrote in an email.
Los Angeles: 108°F on July 6
At least Marina Zurkow had air conditioning.
Ms. Zurkow, an artist, has long been grappling with climate change in her work. But she was still surprised when a day of extreme weather impacted one of her projects in a big way.
The name of that project, which was designed to make people think about the impact of climate change on how we eat, is “Making the Best of It.” It is only half in jest.
“It’s both trying to make the best of a bad situation,” she said, “and in another way it’s a commitment to making things as delicious as possible.”
The latest iteration of that project was to host a dinner for a new era of dry, hot weather in California. Less Mediterranean, more Mojave Desert.
Ms. Zurkow’s partners, a team of two private chefs called Hank and Bean, prepared an elaborate meal designed to make their guests chew on the impact of climate change. The menu included sage fritters, stuffed rabbit, flatbreads made of cricket and mealworm, and jellyfish. Lots of jellyfish.
There was jellyfish crudo with a Greek salad at the top of the meal. There was a jellyfish jelly, with redwood tip infusion and pine syrup at the end of the meal.
Why jellyfish? Because it’s considered invasive and therefore plentiful, Ms. Zurkow reasoned. It’s also zero fat and good protein. “American dream food,” she added, also only half in jest.
They had planned to serve dinner al fresco in the courtyard of a downtown Los Angeles test kitchen.
But nature had other ideas.
That day, the first Friday of July, air from the Mojave blew westward and stalled, compressed and extra hot, over Los Angeles. Downtown hit a high of 108 degrees. It was too hot to eat outside.
“Even if you’re talking about climate change, you can’t torture invited guests,” Ms. Zurkow said. “We had to move the dinner into the kitchen.”

AC

Tour de France 2018

Tjolahej, Tjolahopp



söndag, juli 29, 2018

Tour de France. Målgång idag.


Etapp 21: Houilles - Paris (Champs-Élysées) (116 km)

 Eurosport f.o.m. kl. 16:15

lördag, juli 28, 2018

Panamakanalen glömmer man aldrig

Tour de France idag


Inte långt från Biarritz

Stockholms skärgård, juni 2018


Samsung mobilkamera

Vackert

Khatia Buniatishvili


Se --> www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Buniatishvili-Khatia.htm

Olga Kern


Se-->  www.allmusic.com/artist/olga-kern-mn0001566870e-->

What the ‘Blood Moon’ Lunar Eclipse Looked Like



Där jag bor har det bara varit mulet en kväll/natt under senare tid. Det var i går kväll och i natt ;)

fredag, juli 27, 2018

Från min tid som ynklig soldat

GunnarWiklund, min bäste kompis under
 lumpartiden inför vår kamera Anm.: här skojar 
(inte ovanligt i hans fall)Gunnar.




En förfärlig historia iscensatt av överkänsliga, bortskämda personer

Anne Sofie von Otter: Han blev djupt deprimerad

 Kulturhuset Stadsteaterns tidigare vd Benny Fredriksson drabbades av en djup depression och posttraumatiskt stressyndrom, PTSD, efter artiklarna där han anklagades för en hårdhänt ledarstil. Det säger Anne Sofie von Otter i en första intervju med tyska tidningen Die Zeit efter makens självmord, skriver SvD.
– Jag frågade honom rakt ut, tänker du på självmord, överväger du det? Det förnekade han. Men han var trasig, riktigt sjuk.
Rapporteringen har av Kulturhuset Stadsteatern beskrivits som ”ett gränslöst drev” och von Otter säger i intervjun att flera av anklagelserna var absurda.
– Benny jagade inte kjoltyg, han stirrade inte på kvinnors bröst eller rumpor. Det fanns andra saker, att han var en tuff chef, att han kunde skrika ibland, att han var otålig ibland – det kan stämma.
Anne Sofie von Otter berättar att familjen åkte på en längre resa till Asien och hur hennes make snabbt blev sämre på slutet. Benny Fredriksson tog sitt eget liv den 19 mars. Han blev 58 år gammal.

Jobbigt ? Här tips för att underlätta det hela

How to Have Sex in a Canoe

By Malia Wollan, July 26

Take some basic precautions. First, make room. Stow your paddles, handle ends down, behind the stern seat. Take out the removable center thwart, if there is one; you don’t want to get stuck under it in the event of a flip. (One old boat in the museum’s collection, called a “girling canoe,” features a detachable thwart and a record player.) To maintain balance, relax your body. “Let your hips roll with the canoe,” Raffan says. Be mindful of the fact that sound carries particularly well across still water. To avoid someone rushing to rescue you, keep some body parts visible above the gunwale. “A canoe with nobody in it raises alarm,” Raffan says. Beginners should try such activities only on still water. You may decide to remove your life jacket, which is probably fine as long as you’re a capable swimmer. Before disrobing, consider that black flies and mosquitoes are most active around twilight.

 Raffan’s first date with his wife of 38 years was a seven-week canoe trip in northern Canada. As long as you can keep your balance, a canoe can serve as a venue for that human-on-human kind of courtship. “It bonds people together in ways that linger,” he says. But in your pursuit of carnal pleasure, don’t forget about the actual canoeing , which offers a different kind of corporeal satisfaction, attainable without a partner. Sometimes Raffan goes out alone on a lake at night, the stars of the Milky Way bright above him. “That’s an orgasmic experience of its own,” he says, “when you situate your frailty as a human being, and the narrowness of your concerns, in the cosmos.”

torsdag, juli 26, 2018

Stockholms mellanskärgård julikväll 2018


Samsung-mobil-kamera

Big



The sun may appear to be the largest star in the sky but that's just because it's the closest. On a stellar scale, it's really quite average — about half of the known stars are larger; half are smaller. The largest known star in the universe is UY Scuti, a hypergiant with a radius around 1,700 times larger than the sun. And it's not alone in dwarfing Earth's dominant star. 

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