Sunday, March 27, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Macro Close Ups with a Reversed Mamiya Sekor 55MM F1.4 on a Canon 400D
Click on the images for super-large view!
Peculiar Rainbow Cloud
With a cursory glance out my window, I realized a strange cloud and was compelled to take a few snapshots of it. By the time I grabbed my camera, the cloud had elongated to what you see in the first picture and continued to do so over the next few minutes until disappearing altogether (Last picture) within a total span of around five minutes.
These clouds remind me of a video I saw on youtube of people who witnessed rainbow clouds before the Sichuan earthquake! Hopefully the same outcome won't happen in this instance!
These clouds remind me of a video I saw on youtube of people who witnessed rainbow clouds before the Sichuan earthquake! Hopefully the same outcome won't happen in this instance!
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| 6:23 EST |
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| 6:26 EST |
These pictures were taken @ Upper West side, New York today (March 23, 2011)
Large wave coming through Marin County bay.
The morning after the Japanese tsunami, I observed this on my patio in Sausalito.
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| Photo taken with my cell phone of a large wave passing through Marin inlet |
Monday, March 21, 2011
Supermoon
A view of the unusually bright "supermoon" in New York taken with my iPod.
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| 137th and Broadway |
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| 152nd and Riverside |
Anyone with clear skies Saturday night saw a spectacular swollen moon, 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than our satellite usually appears.Photos abound from amateur and professional photographers, but we like this picture from NASA, showing a pink-hued moon rising above the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.On Saturday, the moon was 221,565 miles away — the closest it's been to Earth since March 1993.It caused higher and lower tides, which apparently led to some minor problems for ships — five vessels were stranded in the U.K. because of sandbars that were exposed in a particularly low tide. -Popular Science
Japan's Economic Future
The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan ten days ago left cities in ruins and lives shattered. As if the impacts from these natural disasters were not devastating enough, the nuclear energy crisis has piled on even more difficulties to a nation that was already dealing with a remarkably long bout of recessionary years. In the early 1990's, Japan suffered a price bubble collapse on assets. Some have termed the period from 1991-2000 "the lost decade" and some have even grouped the period from 2001-2010 in the 'Lost Decades'.
"The Bank of Japan began increasing interest rates in 1990 due in part to concerns over the bubble and in 1991 land and stock prices began a steep decline, within a few years reaching 60% below their peak."
With a wildly lopsided population ratio, Japan's retirees are quickly approaching the number of young people; a concern about social security and elderly support bears on the minds of the government. The strengthening of the Japanese yen following the credit crunch did not help Japan. Manufacturers looked to other countries, with more affordable firms to produce high-tech chips and electronics (A monopoly Japan once owned). Incidentally, Japan lost its 42 year title as the world's second largest economy to China. Japanese leaders have cycled so frequently within the past decade that it is questionable whether any hope is coming soon. With the new addition of the natural disasters that have shook Japan, it is important to look at the effects they will have on Japans economy in the future.
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A comparative view of the damages the earthquake/tsunami duo had on the world economies. |
The drop in the NIKKEI Index speaks for itself, with many investors withdrawing money from the market. How this disaster plays into the future of Japan's economy deserves an introspective look on the factors that face Japan today, which I may entertain in a future post given the time...
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Hold the Bread!
In a recent article I came across in the Wall Street Journal, a particular article about gluten sensitivity caught my eye. Namely because I follow a gluten free diet and, furthermore, it pronounces some findings that arouse discussion whether gluten effects a larger number of people than previously believed.
Gluten is a protein which is found in wheat, barley, rye and oats. For some reason, this protein has the ability to bring about an autoimmune response in certain individuals which alerts the body to attack the digestive system and the villi along the walls of the intestine (Villi allow for the absorption of nutrients). Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal article Clues to Gluten Sensitivity illustrates, "gluten can set off a distinct reaction in the intestines and the immune system, even in people who don't have celiac disease". So we have a continuum of those who show sensitivity to those who cannot tolerate even the presence of gluten in the air. The only treatment for Celiac sufferers is following a strict gluten-free diet, and no medication exists that reduces the harmful effects of the protein.
According to Marian Rewers from the National Institute of Health, 1 in 105 people in the United States have Celiac disease, affirming the statistic of approximately 1% reported by the WSJ. That makes it a relatively common diet disorder, and as it may be expected with recent trends in health awareness, gluten sensitivity awareness has been on the rise. Recently, it has become more common to see items marked as gluten free in popular grocery stores.
The list of symptoms that stem from gluten sensitivity is colossal and ranges from minor bloating and anemia all the way to cancer and everything in between. According to Ms. Beck, "more than 100 symptoms have been loosely linked to gluten." What makes this especially troubling is that people suffering an ailment may go see their doctor to treat a particular symptom and never realize that the cause of the ailment may actually be caused by their intake of gluten-containing foods. Furthermore, testing for gluten autoimmunity is a difficult task that is often times a hit or miss. It is not often for doctors to test for gluten sensitivity and in many cases is given the cold shoulder. "Patients have been told...it was all in their heads," says Cynthia Kupper, executive director of the nonprofit Gluten Intolerance Group of North America.
This raises the question of whether or not the true number of those with gluten autoimmunity is grossly underrepresented; in fact many people do not find out of their sensitivity to gluten within their entire lifetime-- and if they do, it is common that people find out only when they reach their 50s, 60s and even 80s-- enduring the damage gluten has done over those years which can never be retrieved.
Needless to say, "the incidence of celiac disease is rising sharply-and not just due to greater awareness. Tests comparing old blood samples to recent ones show the rate has increased four-fold in the last 50 years". The cause of this remarkable increase could be attribitable to the fact that a staggering 97% of the population are undiagnosed, and according to Kurt G. Harris of the American Society of Neuroradiology, "30% of the population has the genetic HLA haptotype that is susceptible to celiac disease." Harris admits, "we don't know how big the iceberg is with these diseases, but the tip seems very large."
Gluten is a protein which is found in wheat, barley, rye and oats. For some reason, this protein has the ability to bring about an autoimmune response in certain individuals which alerts the body to attack the digestive system and the villi along the walls of the intestine (Villi allow for the absorption of nutrients). Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal article Clues to Gluten Sensitivity illustrates, "gluten can set off a distinct reaction in the intestines and the immune system, even in people who don't have celiac disease". So we have a continuum of those who show sensitivity to those who cannot tolerate even the presence of gluten in the air. The only treatment for Celiac sufferers is following a strict gluten-free diet, and no medication exists that reduces the harmful effects of the protein.
According to Marian Rewers from the National Institute of Health, 1 in 105 people in the United States have Celiac disease, affirming the statistic of approximately 1% reported by the WSJ. That makes it a relatively common diet disorder, and as it may be expected with recent trends in health awareness, gluten sensitivity awareness has been on the rise. Recently, it has become more common to see items marked as gluten free in popular grocery stores.
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| Clues to Gluten Sensitivity, Scan from the The Wall Street Journal (March 15, 2011) |
The list of symptoms that stem from gluten sensitivity is colossal and ranges from minor bloating and anemia all the way to cancer and everything in between. According to Ms. Beck, "more than 100 symptoms have been loosely linked to gluten." What makes this especially troubling is that people suffering an ailment may go see their doctor to treat a particular symptom and never realize that the cause of the ailment may actually be caused by their intake of gluten-containing foods. Furthermore, testing for gluten autoimmunity is a difficult task that is often times a hit or miss. It is not often for doctors to test for gluten sensitivity and in many cases is given the cold shoulder. "Patients have been told...it was all in their heads," says Cynthia Kupper, executive director of the nonprofit Gluten Intolerance Group of North America.
This raises the question of whether or not the true number of those with gluten autoimmunity is grossly underrepresented; in fact many people do not find out of their sensitivity to gluten within their entire lifetime-- and if they do, it is common that people find out only when they reach their 50s, 60s and even 80s-- enduring the damage gluten has done over those years which can never be retrieved.
Needless to say, "the incidence of celiac disease is rising sharply-and not just due to greater awareness. Tests comparing old blood samples to recent ones show the rate has increased four-fold in the last 50 years". The cause of this remarkable increase could be attribitable to the fact that a staggering 97% of the population are undiagnosed, and according to Kurt G. Harris of the American Society of Neuroradiology, "30% of the population has the genetic HLA haptotype that is susceptible to celiac disease." Harris admits, "we don't know how big the iceberg is with these diseases, but the tip seems very large."
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