By Mercedes Kirkel This past week I went on a hike with my good friend, Susan. We chose a trail by the San Francisco Bay that Susan used to frequent but hadn’t been on in a number of years. The weather was beautiful, the wildflowers bursting forth, birds gracing our path, and all seemed […]
Tag: San Francisco (page 1 of 3)
By Mercedes Kirkel INSIGHT #5: BECOMING YOUR OWN GUIDE One of the most important signs of going through the ascension process is that more and more, you begin to trust your own process. Even more importantly, you start to trust yourself as the guide of that process. You shift from feeling worried about what’s […]
By Mercedes Kirkel INSIGHT #3: DON’T ASSUME YOUR PROCESS WILL LOOK LIKE ANYONE ELSE’S Most, if not all, of the difficult symptoms people experience in the ascension process are signs of purification. As our energy system opens to stronger and higher frequencies, any blocks we have in our energy circuits are getting blasted with […]
By Mercedes Kirkel November 13, 2015 My heart is in tremendous pain after hearing about the shootings and explosions in Paris today. There are many layers to my pain, which feels confusing and overwhelming. I want to go numb, curl up in a ball, or leave my body. Writing helps me to sort out the […]
By Mercedes Kirkel My mother is in the hospital and seems like she may be dying. Like many elderly people who seem to be approaching death, her process has been up and down, and none of us really know if this will be “it.” The sense I have is that she’s hovering between the worlds. […]
Daud Scott, Reset.MeThe phrase ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food’ could not hit any harder, especially when it comes to the present discussion related to cancer and our present state of nutrition and health. I do understand that venturing into this discussion may be touchy due to the fact that we have only allowed medical doctors to dictate the present cases, acceptable cures and latest treatments regarding cancer; while the everyday citizen wit [...]
by G. William DomhoffNOTE: WhoRulesAmerica.net is largely based on my book,Who Rules America?, first published in 1967 and now in its7th edition. This on-line document is presented as a summary of some of the main ideas in that book.Who has predominant power in the United States? The short answer, from 1776 to the present, is: Those who have the money -- or more specifically, who own income-producing land and businesses -- have the power. George Washington was one of the biggest landowner [...]
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| Location of the Axial Seamount off the Oregon coast. (NOAA) |
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — An active undersea volcano off the Oregon Coast has apparently begun a new eruption — an event which was predicted by two scientists months ago.
Based on a swarm of thousands of earthquakes and a seafloor drop of 8 feet, the eruption of the submarine volcano called Axial Seamount commenced on April 24.
The apparent eruption was observed by scientists in real time, with the help of high-tech instruments installed by scientists at the University of Washington.
“It was an astonishing experience to see the changes taking place 300 miles away with no one anywhere nearby, and the data flowed back to land at the speed of light through the fiber-optic cable connected to Pacific City — and from there, to here on campus by the Internet, in milliseconds,” Washington oceanogoraphy professor John Delaney said in a statement.
The volcano is located along the boundary between two tectonic plates — the Pacific Plate and the Juan de Fuca plate — about 300 miles west of Oregon.
In a blog post last autumn, Bill Chadwick of Oregon State University and Scott Nooner of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington predicted that the Axial Seamount would erupt within the next 15 months based on a repeated pattern of seafloor elevation changes before, during, and after eruptions dating back to 1998.
Scientists say the activity is not strong enough to be felt on land nor is it likely strong enough to produce a tsunami.
Marco Torres, Prevent DiseaseWith a progressively educated population becoming more aware of the inherent dangers of the conventional food supply, urban farming has become hugely popular. However, more people are also becoming aware of contaminated soil and how heavy metals pose potential risks to their food crops. As backyard gardening continues to explode in popularity, we must ask how contaminated is our soil?Many municipalities in many countries are embracing urban agri [...]
Artist's conceptionExcerpt from bbc.comEfforts to find Europe's lost comet lander, Philae, have come up blank. The most recent imaging search by the overflying Rosetta "mothership" can find no trace of the probe. Philae touched down on 67...
Excerpt from foxnews.com
Despite cost overruns, lawsuits, public opposition and a projected completion date 13 years behind schedule, California Gov. Jerry Brown broke ground Tuesday on what is to become the most expensive public works project in U.S. history: the California bullet train.
Over the next 1,000 days, California is estimated to spend roughly $4 million a day on the project.
The high-speed train, set to be finished in 2033, originally was supposed to deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. That was the promise when voters narrowly approved $10 billion in bonds for the project in 2008. Since then, however, the estimated trip time has grown considerably, and the train has encountered persistent problems -- as experts uncovered misrepresentations in the ballot proposition, and opponents sued to stop the project on environmental and fiscal grounds.
"We're talking about real money here," said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of taxpayer watchdog group Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. "This is money that's not available for health care or education, for public safety, or put back in taxpayers' pockets so they have something to spend. This is money being drawn out of the system for a program that is going to serve very few people."
Much about the project has changed since it was sold to the public.
Voters were told the project would cost just $33 billion. Once experts crunched the numbers, however, the price tag soared to $98 billion. It was supposed to whoosh riders from Southern California to the Bay Area in less than three hours, but now it’s more than four hours due to changing track configurations and route adjustments. The train was supposed to get people off the freeway and reduce carbon emissions, but a panel of experts now says any carbon savings will be nominal. (A drive by car takes just over 6 hours. Ed.)
Further, ridership projections have been cut by two-thirds from a projected 90 million to 30 million a year. Fewer riders means higher prices. According to a panel of transportation experts hired by the Reason Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, tickets will exceed $80 -- not $50 -- and the system will require annual subsidies of more than $300 million annually.
"The public has turned sour on this plan but the governor, to paraphrase Admiral Farragut, has taken a position of 'damn the people, full speed ahead'," Vosburgh said.
Undaunted by critics, Brown broke ground in Fresno on Tuesday on the first 29-mile segment of the train's system. Under Brown's direction, the California High Speed Rail Authority has gone to court to seek an exemption from an environmental quality law the state imposes on other projects but not this one. Brown also convinced the state Legislature to dedicate an annual revenue stream from the state's carbon tax, to help pay for the bullet train.
"It's a long project, a bold project and one that will transform the Central Valley," Brown said Monday as he began his fourth and final term as governor.
Once construction begins, supporters say it will be harder to stop the project. Several lawsuits linger, but a bigger question concerns the money: Where will it come from? If every penny committed to the project is added up, the project is still more than $30 billion short. Republicans in Congress are vowing not to commit a dollar more than President Obama approved in 2012.
"For years now, Governor Brown and the high-speed rail authority have turned the idea of high-speed rail into a public albatross far beyond what Californians envisioned or voted for," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement released Tuesday. "Sadly, today's groundbreaking is a political maneuver. Supporters of the railroad in Sacramento can't admit their project is deeply flawed, and they won't give up on it despite the cost. But these political tricks are exactly what the American people are tired of and what the new Republican Congress is committed to ending."
Supporters don't see waste. They argue the project will reduce freeway gridlock, offer competition to air travel and provide an alternative to trucking freight.
Environmentalists also have opposed the project, suing and claiming the construction project would harm 11 endangered species and worsen air quality in the already dirty Central Valley. They lost when a federal judge ruled the project did not have to adhere to the state Environmental Quality Act, unlike other projects. Additional legal challenges remain, but supporters believe once the train leaves the station and ground is broken, there's no going back.
"The legacy of the Brown family is that they have been big thinkers, but also big builders," said Democratic state Assemblyman Henry Perea. "I think this is an opportunity for the legislature to step up, support Governor Brown. "
Excerpt from news.bioscholar.com
A study has shown for the first time that the building blocks of proteins can be assembled without instructions from DNA or messenger RNA (mRNA).
A protein, Rqc2, was found playing a role similar to that of mRNA and specifying which amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, to be added in cell mechanism.
“In this case, we have a protein playing a role normally filled by mRNA,” said Adam Frost, assistant professor at University of California, San Francisco.
“This surprising discovery reflects how incomplete our understanding of biology is,” said first author Peter Shen, a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of Utah in the US.
The researchers added that the findings have implications for new therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Huntington’s.
The researchers described that ribosomes are machines on a protein assembly line, linking together amino acids in an order specified by the genetic code.
A new finding goes against dogma, showing for the first time that the building blocks of a protein, called amino acids, can be assembled by another protein, and without genetic instructions). The Rqc2 protein (yellow) binds tRNAs (dark blue, teal) which add amino acids (bright spot in middle) to a partially made protein (green). The complex binds the ribosome (white). Image Credit: Janet Iwasa, Ph.D., University of Utah
The new study, however, revealed that before the incomplete protein is recycled, Rqc2 can prompt the ribosomes to add just two amino acids (of a total of 20) – alanine and threonine – over and over, and in any order.
The nonsensical sequence likely serves specific purposes. The code could signal that the partial protein must be destroyed, or it could be part of a test to see whether the ribosome is working properly, the researchers noted.
For the study, they fine-tuned a technique called cryo-electron microscopy to flash freeze, and then visualse, the quality control machinery in cells in action.
The findings appeared in the journal Science.
Google's latest prototype of its self-driving vehicle was unveiled Monday, Dec. 22, 2014. (Google photo) Excerpt from mercurynews.comMOUNTAIN VIEW -- Google unveiled its first "fully functional" prototype for its own self-driving car Monday and plans...
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