Wrack washes ashore on Tybee Island, HHI beaches

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TYBEE ISLAND, GA (WTOC) -

A supermoon and a tropical storm has caused a lot of natural debris to wash up on some area beaches.

On Tybee Island, dried marks grasses, known as wrack, and sargrassum seaweed is washing ashore. Officials say that debris is good for the beaches by is making some tourists unhappy.

Tybee officials spent Friday scrapping beaches on the northern end of the island after the Department of Natural Resources told Tybee that they could resume scrapping. They ordered them to stop earlier because of complaints.

Wrack is also washing up on the lowcountry beaches. State officials say it helps stop erosion, especially this time of the year with all of the storms.

Seaweed and wrack can be removed as long as it is below the high tide line.

Copyright 2012WTOC. All rights reserved.

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Wrack washes ashore on Tybee Island, HHI beaches

Near-Earth asteroid twice as big as previously thought | Bad Astronomy

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On June 14, 2012, the asteroid 2012 LZ1 passed the Earth. It missed us by a wide margin, over 5 million kilometers (3 million miles), so there was no danger of impact. While it does get near us every now and again, using current orbital measurements we know were safe from an impact by this particular rock for at least 750 years. Phew.

Good thing, too. New observations using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico indicate LZ1 is bigger than we first thought. Much bigger: its about a kilometer across, when it was thought to be half that size before these observations.

Thats a big difference. The problem is that the size of an asteroid is hard to determine. Even a big one may only appear as a dot in a telescope, so even though we may know its distance and trajectory very accurately, directly measuring its size isnt possible. Usually, the size is estimated by knowing its distance and how bright it appears. In general, a bigger rock will look brighter than a smaller one at a given distance.

But that assumes they both reflect the same amount of light. Most asteroids reflect about 4% of the sunlight they receive (this property is called the albedo), but that depends on their surface. Some have darker surfaces, some brighter. If you dont know how reflective it is, the size can only be estimated.

But the Arecibo telescope can actually directly measure the size of a nearby asteroid. It can send pulses of radio waves at an asteroid and then receive the reflected waves, much like a cop on the side of the road uses radar to measure a cars speed. The method is technical (Emily Lakdawalla has a great explanation on her blog), but it was used for LZ1 to get the new size measurement. The picture above is the actual image generated using Arecibo when the rock was still 10 million km (6 million miles) from Earth. Apparently, LZ1 is much less reflective than assumed earlier, which is why the size was underestimated by a factor of two.

An asteroid this size hitting the Earth would be, um, bad. Thats big enough to be considered a global hazard, causing immense devastation. It might not be an extinction event the dinosaur-killing asteroid was 10 km across, so it had 1000 times the mass of LZ1 but it wouldnt be fun. So Im glad were safe from this guy for some time!

But Ill be honest: LZ1 was only discovered a few weeks before it passed us. Asteroids this size passing near us are pretty rare (we havent had an impact from something this big for many, many millennia) so as usual Im not panicking about this. But it just shows once again that we need more eyes on the sky, more people looking. And we need a plan in place in case we do see one with our name on it.

Related Posts:

- Asteroid 2011 AG5: a football-stadium-sized rock to watch carefully - My asteroid impact talk is now on TED - Another tiny rock will pass Earth tomorrow - Updated movie of asteroid YU55, plus bonus SCIENCE - Just to be clear: asteroid YU55 is no danger to Earth - Armageddon delayed by at least a century this time

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Near-Earth asteroid twice as big as previously thought | Bad Astronomy

2012 Music and Astronomy Under the Stars Events

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Join Dr. Donald Lubowich, coordinator of the Astronomy Outreach Program at Hofstra University, for a series of events bringing astronomy to the public. Concertgoers at several events this summer will get a glimpse of heavens along with their music.

This NASA-sponsored program will include optical and radio telescope observations of the Sun prior to the concerts. Observations of the moon, planets, multi-colored double stars, star clusters and nebulae will be featured at intermission and after the concerts. Videos, posters, hands-on activities and the sounds of the sun will also be available.

For more information and to see a full schedule of events, visit http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/PHYSIC/physic_underthestars.html.

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2012 Music and Astronomy Under the Stars Events

No words | Bad Astronomy

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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

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No words | Bad Astronomy

The swirling maelstrom of the sun, pictured in outstanding detail during the Transit of Venus by one dedicated space …

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By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 12:28 EST, 22 June 2012 | UPDATED: 13:27 EST, 22 June 2012

It is difficult to think of the sun as anything more than how we view it from Earth - a great, bright ball, uniform in appearance as it placidly heats our planet.

But seen in close-up, the view is startling - a raging sea of fire, as the hydrogen fuel of the sun burns away in a five-billion-year explosion.

The artistic, and out-of-this-world photographs were taken by sun enthusiast and solar photographer Alan Freidman, from the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, California.

The sun the day before: Alan set up his solar equipment at Mount Wilson the day before the Transit of Venus and ran a test to make sure that everything had survived the trip and was working well

The detail captured by Alan is stunning: Far from being the placid, uniform ball we see each day, the sun is a raging and turbulent ball of flames

Alan, described as a 'master of solar photography' by Discovery News, took this first image a day before the transit of Venus earlier this month.

He was preparing his equipment in advance of the transit, and his practice runs led to these stunning images.

What we see here are the mingling of the upper layers of the sun - known as the photosphere and chromosphere.

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The swirling maelstrom of the sun, pictured in outstanding detail during the Transit of Venus by one dedicated space ...

Alan Turing – Life and Tragic Death of Enigma and Computing Hero

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Saturday, 23 June will mark 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing, who not only spearheaded Britain's code breaking at Bletchley Park which saw the German Enigma machine cracked, but also researched artificial intelligence and helped to create the world's first commercially sold computer.

Born in Maida Vale, London in 1912, Turing showed signs from a young age that he was a particularly gifted child when it came to mathematics and went on to study the subject at King's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class honours degree at the age of 21.

Bletchley Park and Cracking the Enigma

During the Second World War, Turing joined the war effort at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, where he worked with a team of mathematicians to try and crack the German Enigma code using an electromagnet machine called a "bombe".

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The bombe searched for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message and for each possible setting the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions.

Detecting when a contradiction had occurred, the bombe ruled out that setting and moved on to the next.

Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail. The first bombe was installed on 18 March 1940, but by the end of the war more than 200 bombes were in use.

Artificial Intelligence and the Turing Test

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Alan Turing - Life and Tragic Death of Enigma and Computing Hero

'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

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Charles Darwin and Alan Turing, in their different ways, both homed in on the same idea: the existence of competence without comprehension.

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Some of the greatest, most revolutionary advances in science have been given their initial expression in attractively modest terms, with no fanfare.

Charles Darwin managed to compress his entire theory into a single summary paragraph that a layperson can readily follow.

Francis Crick and James Watson closed their epoch-making paper on the structure of DNA with a single deliciously diffident sentence. ("It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairings we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the replicating unit of life.")

And Alan Turing created a new world of science and technology, setting the stage for solving one of the most baffling puzzles remaining to science, the mind-body problem, with an even shorter declarative sentence in the middle of his 1936 paper on computable numbers:

It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence.

Turing didn't just intuit that this remarkable feat was possible; he showed exactly how to make such a machine. With that demonstration the computer age was born. It is important to remember that there were entities called computers before Turing came up with his idea, but they were people, clerical workers with enough mathematical skill, patience, and pride in their work to generate reliable results of hours and hours of computation, day in and day out. Many of them were women.

Early "computers" at work. (NASA)

Thousands of them were employed in engineering and commerce, and in the armed forces and elsewhere, calculating tables for use in navigation, gunnery and other such technical endeavors. A good way of understanding Turing's revolutionary idea about computation is to put it in juxtaposition with Darwin's about evolution. The pre-darwinian world was held together not by science but by tradition: All things in the universe, from the most exalted ("man") to the most humble (the ant, the pebble, the raindrop) were creations of a still more exalted thing, God, an omnipotent and omniscient intelligent creator -- who bore a striking resemblance to the second-most exalted thing. Call this the trickle-down theory of creation. Darwin replaced it with the bubble-up theory of creation. One of Darwin's nineteenth-century critics, Robert Beverly MacKenzie, put it vividly:

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'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

Acobot Offers Free Live Chat Robot to Nonprofits, Education and Government

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SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Acobot, the chatbot using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist website visitors 24 hours a day, is now free to nonprofit organizations, education providers, and government entities.

"Nonprofit, education and government organizations need to improve their online results every bit as much as for-profit business enterprises do," explained Acobot LLC founder and CEO Vic Duan. "However, they rarely have the financial and technological resources to apply new web technologies. Acobot can help these worthy organizations achieve their goals and better serve their website visitors."

The Acobot AI chat technology allows websites to interact with visitors automatically. Site owners can set up Acobot in minutes; once the system is up and running, the robot learns more with each visit, making it better able to "talk" to users and answer their questions with repeated use.

Organizations interested in using AI chat technology to assist their website visitors can obtain their own live Acobot robot at Acobot.com by signing up and indicating that their sites are for non-commercial use. Once signed up, an organization immediately receives a fully functional robot hosted by Acobot.com. There is no limit to the Acobot chat sessions, and the robot is permanently free.

While it aims to help nonprofits, education providers and governments optimize their site visitors' online experience without straining strapped budgets, Acobot admits that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. "The more people use the robot, the more linguistic data we'll obtain," Duan said. "The company uses that data to improve the AI live chat software continuously."

Non-commercial websites can learn more about Acobot AI chat technology, try out the robot, and sign up for free at http://acobot.com.

About Acobot LLC

Acobot develops state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology and helps small to medium-sized businesses and nonprofit organizations improve their online results with AI chat applications.

Contact:

Vic Duan Acobot LLC Tel: (408) 351-6618 info@acosys.com

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Acobot Offers Free Live Chat Robot to Nonprofits, Education and Government

Big Tech: China’s Biggest Challenge Is Aerospace

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Photo illustration: Bartholomew Cooke

From the outside, the only question about Chinas nonstop growth is which milestone the country will roar past next. China is already the second-largest economy in the world, after not making the top 10 just a generation ago. According to some growth-rate predictions, its now within a generation of overtaking the US and becoming number one. And by many measures, its already in first place: New roads built, cars bought, mobile phones in service, Internet users signed onbased on these and other categories, the center of the worlds economic activity has moved to China.

From inside China, things look dicier. The country has plenty of problems: an environmental catastrophe that has made cancer the leading cause of death, tensions that arise in one of the most unequal societies on earth, challenges to the legitimacy of the only major government that does not let its people vote. And while Americans and other outsiders fear that China has devised the economic model of the future, many of the countrys leaders worry that the model has run its course. Even in China there are only so many dams to be built, high-speed railroad lines to be laid, brand-new cities to be populated. China has proven that you can move people en masse from rural poverty to urban factory life in a single generation, by embracing the role of outsourcing workhouse of the world. But Chinese economists fear that this may turn into a low-wage trap that will keep the country from creating the kind of large professional, high-end entrepreneurial, and upper-middle classes that the US has long enjoyed.

Thus the Chinese determination, spelled out in its 12th Five-Year Plan to move up the value chain. Can it succeed? Will the next Apples, Facebooks, and Googles arise in China? How much do the current Pfizers, GEs, and Boeings have to fear?

The answer will be found in apex industries, those clusters of businesses whose vitality signals the presence of surrounding networks of high-value skills, technologies, and operational competencies. Wildlife biologists look for healthy populations of amphibiansnewts, frogsto indicate the broader health of a wetland environment. Similarly, economic analysts can look to the status of pharmaceutical industries (which reflect a strong research culture), university complexes (whose ability to draw and hold the worlds talent reflects the attractiveness of a society), and venture capital and info-tech industries (which depend on openness) to judge overall economic vitality. And in China they should be looking at aerospace.

Aerospace has long been an American bulwark. In most years Boeing is the nations leading exporter. America has more airports, builds more airplanes, trains more pilots, and arranges more of its economy around aviation than any other country, by far. China would very much like a piece of thisto have Boeings, NASAs, Cessnas, and fully fledged GPS systems of its own. The 12th Five-Year Plan lists aerospace as a symbol and target of Chinas high-value ambition. Over the next few years, the country will attempt to re-create all of Americas 100-year aerospace history: from the glamor and popularization of flying in the Lindbergh era of the 1920s, through the airport-building boom of the 1940s and 1950s and the moon race in the 1960s, to the routinization (and immiseration) of airline flight now.

OK, the Chinese hope to skip the immiseration. Otherwise theyre trying to do it all, with 100 airports under construction, several airliner models being developed, and a business-jet culture taking hold.

The most ambitious of these efforts, a moon shot, reveals the least about the countrys high-value potential. In a sense, its a flying version of the Three Gorges Dam, one more massive public-works effort. The more significant apex-industry test is whether the Chinese system can integrate the complex array of tasks necessary to build safe airplanes and manage safe airlines, at much higher volumes and on tighter schedules than they currently do (like those in the US and Europe). Targets include shared public and private responsibility for safety, shared military and civilian control of airspace, international standards applied in a domestic setting, and the balance between strict by-the-book procedure and individual initiative that keep aerial challenges like the Miracle on the Hudson landing from turning into tragedies.

This industry is the perfect test case of economic maturity, a longtime Boeing and FAA employee named Joe Tymczyszyn told me in Beijing, where he has moved to help the Chinese develop their aerospace industry. So to truly understand how close China is to realizing its potential, keep your eye on the skies.

James Fallows (jamesfallows@theatlantic.com) is the author of the new book China Airborne.

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Big Tech: China’s Biggest Challenge Is Aerospace

Budget Travel: Travel News From Around The World

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THE CHINESEhave again begun lowering the value of their currency, the Yuan, to bolster their rapidly declining export industry and their incoming tourism. (ADRIAN KORTE)

The most important recent travel news has been about currency rates, and has to do with a considerable decline in the worth of (A) the Chinese Yuan, and (B) the euro. Violating every promise, the Chinese have again begun lowering the value of their currency to bolster their rapidly declining export industry and their incoming tourism. If the Yuan continues to lose value at its current rate, China will become an even greater bargain than before. (What's bad news for the world's economy is good news for the tourist.) And have you looked at the euro lately? It's recently selling at $1.23, and although airfare to Europe is high, the cost of living once there is declining. You might want to reconsider your decision to avoid a trans-Atlantic trip this year.

CHINA ON BUS

The other big news has been the move by the Department of Transportation to put 26 so-called Chinatown bus companies out of business because of alleged safety violations (unlicensed drivers working too many hours a day, poorly maintained buses). Left untouched were such apparently reliable firms as BoltBus and MegaBus, and you might want to keep those names in mind for your own next trip in the Northeast and the Midwest (a very few also operate in the far West), where Chinatown buses (so named because they usually drive from one Chinatown to another) offer fares as low as $10 per one-way trip.

SENIOR SECURITY

Also making travel headlines: A recent decision by the Department of Homeland Security to permit people over the age of 75 to keep their shoes on and avoid pat-downs, if they also are willing to undergo swabs with a chemically treated cloth that detects traces of explosives, as multiple passes through an electronic security gate. The new rule is an experiment only, in only four airports (including that of Orlando), and I hope it doesn't represent an unwise surrender to anti-TSA hysteria.

PFDs

I'm also seeing a great deal of Internet comment about the lack of sufficient life preservers and other safety equipment on ferries and tourist boats. Too often, travelers blithely sign on for brief seagoing excursions, unaware that they will be in danger if the boat or ferry capsizes or sinks.

BARGAINS TO CUBA

I recently wrote about the decision of YMT Vacations to offer air-and-land packages to Cuba, including eight nights of accommodations, for $1,999 plus $299 in taxes and fees. I should have added a phone number for booking the bargain: 800-922-9000. FriendlyPlanet.com comes in second with an eight-night program selling for $2,799.

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Budget Travel: Travel News From Around The World

Aeroplan Welcomes Avianca-TACA and Copa Airlines as its Newest Travel Partners

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MONTREAL , June 21, 2012 /CNW Telbec/ - Aeroplan today announced the addition of Avianca-TACA and Copa Airlines to its roster of travel partners. Starting today, Aeroplan Members can accumulate and redeem Aeroplan Miles for travel with both airlines, bringing the total number of airline partners to 33.

"We are very pleased to be adding Avianca-TACA and Copa Airlines to Aeroplan's expansive network of premium airlines and providing our members more opportunities to earn miles or book reward flights to Latin America, one of the world's most attractive emerging travel markets," said David Houston , Vice President, Partnerships, Aeroplan.

Avianca-TACA, a Star Alliance member, offers the widest network in Latin America with services to more than 100 destinations in the Americas and Europe , offering connections to more than 750 destinations in the world through partner airlines around the globe. Its multi-hub operations offer travel options through Bogot, San Salvador , Lima and San Jose .

Copa Airlines is also a Star Alliance member and is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world, with more than 290 daily scheduled flights among 63 destinations in 29 countries carried out with an average on-time performance above 90% and one of the youngest and most modern fleet in the Americas. Through its hub in Panama City, Copa Airlines is able to consolidate passenger traffic from multiple points and provides unique service to many destinations such as Santiago de los Caballeros in Dominican Republic , Asuncion in Paraguay and Guanacaste, Costa Rica and Iquitos, Peru from June/ July 2012 .

About Aeroplan Aeroplan, Canada's premier coalition loyalty program, is owned by Aimia Inc., a global leader in loyalty management.

Aeroplan's millions of members earn Aeroplan Miles with its growing network of over 75 world-class partners, representing more than 150 brands in the financial, retail, and travel sectors.

In 2011, approximately 2.3 million rewards were issued to members including more than 1.5 million flights on Air Canada and Star Alliance carriers which offer travel to more than 1,000 destinations worldwide. In addition to flights, members also have access to over 1,000 exciting specialty, merchandise, hotel, car rental and experiential rewards.

For more information about Aeroplan, please visit http://www.aeroplan.com or http://www.aimia.com.

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Aeroplan Welcomes Avianca-TACA and Copa Airlines as its Newest Travel Partners

Triton Agreement with Chinese Provinces

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TIBURON, Calif., June 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Triton Distribution Systems, Inc. (TTDZ.PK) announced today that the Company has finalized an agreement via its wholly owned subsidiary Privileged, Inc. and under a separate newly formed division named Privileged World Travel an agreement with a consortium of Chinese Provinces affiliated with the main Chinese Federal Government. Privileged World Travel will provide exclusive travel services to 1,000,000 Chinese tourists visiting the United States in the fiscal year 2012-2013.

It is estimated that 13,000,000 Chinese will be authorized to visit the United States in the next 12 months of 2012-2013 fiscal year. Destinations in the United States include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston and Miami.

Privileged World Travel will provide also additional services to the Chinese Tourists such as health insurance with the possibility of hospitalization if needed while in the United States, Club membership in Privileged Travel Club with discounts in transportation, lodging, restaurants, theaters, etc., etc. while visiting.

It is estimated that the net profit expected from this agreement will reach approximately $50.00 per person or $50 Millionin total.

Mr. Gregory Lykiardopoulous, Triton Distribution Systems, Inc. CEO said; " This latest development of our sister company will open the doors to other Asian countries to use our elite travel club facilities and services. We are very excited with this agreement and we are looking forward to the challenges in providing good services to our visitors and in showing our countries most prestigious and sophisticated tourist destinations."

ABOUT TRITON DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS, INC. http://www.tritonds.com

Triton is a low-cost, business to business internet based travel distribution and procurement solution. Triton provides the electronic distribution of travel inventory from airlines, car rental companies, hotels, tour & cruise operators and other travel vendors to global travel agencies and their clients.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release includes forward-looking statements. While these statements are made to convey to the public the company's progress, business opportunities and growth prospects, readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements represent management's opinion. The company's operations and business prospects are always subject to risk and uncertainties.

Contact: Triton Distribution Systems, Inc. 415-381-4806

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Triton Agreement with Chinese Provinces

Obama faces growing GOP super PAC financial power

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The national campaigns backing President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are drawing even in their fundraising prowess, but new financial filings released show that the "super" political committees supporting the GOP candidate and his party are widening the money gap over struggling pro-Democratic party organizations.

The main pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, on Wednesday reported raising $8 million in May, giving it a total of $64 million so far. The group spent more than $55 million to defeat Romney's opponents during the GOP primary, and it is now reaping high-dollar financial aid from both veteran Romney supporters and from donors who once backed his rivals.

A political committee backing Obama, Priorities USA Action, posted its strongest one-month total by raking in $4 million in May, a sign that Democrats had begun digging deep into their wallets after months of hesitance. But the pro-Obama group was still left in the dust not only by the Restore committee's strong performance but also by the latest tally from American Crossroads, a Republican super PAC formed by GOP strategist Karl Rove. It raised $4.6 million in May.

After early months that saw Obama reach impressive fundraising totals echoing his campaign's record-breaking $750 million haul in 2008, the changing calculus raises the prospect that he could become the first incumbent president outspent by his challenger. Romney's national campaign joined with the Republican Party in May to raise more than $76 million, outpacing Obama and the Democrats' $60 million haul during the same period.

Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash but are not allowed to coordinate their efforts with the candidates they support. The national presidential campaigns can devote their cash both to media and Web ads and to turn out party faithful, but the super PACs tend to spend most of their war chests on media campaigns.

The latest financial filings for the pro-Romney Restore committee show that while he was consolidating his position as the GOP favorite, backers of some of his opponents were shifting their financial allegiance to his cause even as some of his loyal super PAC backers dug deeper to bankroll the committee's tough media ads now targeting Obama.

The biggest contributions to Restore Our Future in May came from a trio of firms linked to a Houston-based businessman who previously supported a Romney rival, Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The disclosures show that three companies based at the same post office box office in Dayton, Ohio, each gave $333,333 to the pro-Romney super PAC. Corporation records show the firms are headed by Houston businessman Robert T. Brockman, who missed giving the super PAC a rounded-off $1 million donation by a single dollar.

Brockman heads the Reynolds and Reynolds Co., an Ohio-based firm that provides computer and software systems for auto dealerships. Brockman's personal website lists him only as chairman and CEO of the Reynolds and Reynolds Co., but his name is not listed with any of the Dayton donations. Calls to Brockman at his office in Houston were not immediately returned to The Associated Press.

Although super PACs are required to divulge all their donations, loose disclosure rules allow contributors to withhold their names and mask their donations by setting up limited liability corporations or other front companies. One of Restore's first donors, Edward Conard, made a $1 million contribution last year behind a front company, W Spann LLC, until public pressure forced him to acknowledge his name and affiliation with Romney's former private equity firm, Bain Capital.

Brockman's firm, Reynolds and Reynolds, was one of more than 60 companies that wrote to three Obama administration Cabinet officials last October, urging them not to overburden employers with "unnecessary expenses" as part of the new health care law. In the Oct. 21, 2011, letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Reynolds and Reynolds and the other firms they included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also urged an extension of a deadline for them to provide health benefit summaries to U.S. agencies.

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Obama faces growing GOP super PAC financial power

Cryo-Save Group N.V. awards researcher at grand opening of its new headquarters

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The leading international family stem cell bank, Cryo-Save, celebrates the grand opening of its brand new headquarters office in Zutphen, the Netherlands, by honoring PhD. T.H.J. Nijhuis with the Young Investigator Award on June 22nd.

Cryo-Save`s headquarters, located in Zutphen, the Netherlands, is celebrating the grand opening of its brand new, fully-renovated headquarters. On June 22nd, Arnoud van Tulder, CEO of Cryo-Save, and attorney-at-law C. Bieze, deputy in the province of Gelderland, will officially open the company`s new global headquarters office.

To mark the occasion, the company will grant PhD. T.H.J. Nijhuis, winner of the Cryo-Save Young Investigator Award, a prize of 5,000 euros. Mr. Nijhuis has focused his most recent research on umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells and pursues his work at the Erasmus Medical Center, part of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Arnoud van Tulder, CEO of Cryo-Save, says "We are proud to name Mr. T.H.J. Nijhuis, as the winner of the Cryo-Save Young Investigator Award. Research is a cornerstone of the stem cell industry, and it`s advancements like that of Mr. T.H.J. Nijhuis that makes us so optimistic for the future."

As part of Cryo-Save`s educational and community outreach efforts, the Cryo-Save Young Investigator Award is yet another example of how the company supports the advancement of stem cell use in the medical field. Cryo-Save seeks to improve and expand stem cell knowledge among the general public and professional health community, as they see in stem cell therapy a huge potential in the treatment of various diseases.

More information:

Ccile Kastler - Communications Manager

cecile.kastler@cryo-save.com - tel. +41-(0) 79 827 80 98

Cryo-Save: http://www.cryo-save.com/group

Cryo-Save, the leading international family stem cell bank, stores more than 200,000 samples from umbilical cord blood, cord tissue and adipose tissue. There are already many diseases treatable by the use of stem cells, and the number of treatments will only increase. Driven by its international business strategy, Cryo-Save is now represented in over 40 countries on 3 continents, with ultra-modern processing and storage facilities in Belgium, Germany, Dubai, India and South Africa.

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Cryo-Save Group N.V. awards researcher at grand opening of its new headquarters

Tenzin Norbu: The Spirituality of Patience

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Patience is the Mahayana Buddhist virtue that overcomes anger. According to this religious point of view, an angry mind is the result of ignorance, and when we act out of anger, we always cause ourselves spiritual harm. We often harm others when we act out of anger, but we always harm ourselves. So, from this spiritual perspective, we need to eliminate anger from our minds. We do this not by suppressing our anger, but by eliminating the ignorant way we conceive of those persons and things that cause us to become angry. Suppressing anger can cause psychological problems, but eliminating the causes of anger always results in psychological and spiritual health.

We become angry because of a deluded view we have of ourselves and the persons or things toward which our anger is directed. The deluded view, in general, is that the world consists of independent, discreet objects, which we divide into ourselves and others. We think that each of these things has an identifiable nature, but this is not the case; we are simply projecting onto an ever-changing reality, a world made up of what we think are permanent things with permanent characteristics. When we become angry, we are viewing a thing as permanently bad and hateful by nature -- it is as if this thing is pervaded by badness. We also project the characteristic of being "permanently me" onto a collection of body parts and mental states that is continually changing. We vigorously defend our sense of having a permanent self and become angry with anything we view as causing harm to this self.

This false way of viewing a world of permanent things is called a "delusion" in Buddhism. When we let go of the deluded view that we have a permanent and independent self and the deluded view that there are things pervaded with badness, we eliminate our anger. Although this is easier said than done, it can be done -- this is what Mahayana Buddhist practice aims to accomplish. When we eliminate this deluded way of viewing a world of permanent things, we become a Buddha and experience true and lasting happiness. Someone who has the aspiration to become a Buddha in order to lead all others to this true and lasting happiness is called a Bodhisattva. The practice of patience, along with five other virtues, is the path to becoming a Buddha.

A Bodhisattva cultivates patience by meditating to eliminate the beliefs that lead to anger, as well as to cultivate the beliefs that lead to being patient. He or she then integrates the results of meditation into daily life, and this process of meditation and integration eliminates anger and develops the virtue of patience. Meditation of the type I am discussing is more than what is commonly called "mindfulness." Mindfulness meditation and mindfulness practice attends to what is going on in one's mind. Being attentive to what is going on in your mind cannot by itself eliminate anger. You also have to assess whether the state of mind is positive or negative and employ methods that eliminate the negative states of mind. Mindfulness practices often include the technique of just allowing the negative states of mind to pass rather than acting on them, but it is far more effective to eliminate the patterns of thought that result in anger. To do this, meditation practices must include contemplation of the reasons why anger is a delusion and the disadvantages of anger. This type of contemplative meditation gives us additional ammunition in the battle to eliminate anger. We need to give ourselves the mental resources that allow us to let go of our anger and eventually eliminate it.

In your daily life, remind yourself that anger is a delusion, and that there are many disadvantages of being angry. I have already explained why anger is a delusion. Now, let's look at some of the disadvantages of anger.

Anger is a very unpleasant and disagreeable emotion to experience. No one would choose to experience anger for its own sake. Anger is not necessary in order to motivate us to protect ourselves and those we love from the harmful acts of others. It is possible to love someone aiming to do you harm and still prevent the harm. When you do this, you protect both yourself and your adversary from the harmful effects of their bad behavior. Anger causes us to act in ways that we often eventually regret, because we are not in full control of ourselves when we are angry. We cannot think clearly when we are angry, so we make serious mistakes in thinking and doing as a result.

Anger causes us to distance ourselves from others, because we appear repulsive and threatening when we are angry. Anger is the root cause of all wars, and wars cause widespread death and destruction. Anger can cause us to say hurtful things, even to those we dearly love. Anger can cause us to kill those we love, and it can even lead to suicide. Anger has serious negative karmic effects, such as consuming virtuous potentials in our minds and ripening as future suffering. There are many other disadvantages of anger. There are, also, many advantages of being patient, and you can include contemplating them during your meditation sessions to develop patience.

To complete your practice of using contemplative meditation to develop patience, you must integrate the results of meditation into your daily activities. When you encounter a situation that is similar to what has caused you to become angry in the past, remind yourself that anger springs from a deluded view of the object of your anger and that there are no advantages to being angry. You can rethink your view of the object of anger so that it doesn't appear repulsive, and this will help you let your anger go.

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Tenzin Norbu: The Spirituality of Patience