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Nita is currently studying at a church-run school, where she is teased by her classmates because of her unusual family setup â€" another reason Parvin wants the tradition abolished. But, with the pull of Bangladesh's dynamic cities causing an exodus of young people from ethnic areas, she also wants her daughter to be proud of her Mandi heritage. "Mandi women have run this tribe for hundreds of years," she says. "Now it's up to Nita's generation to run it better."

After a few years Parvin gave birth to a daughter, Nita, who is now 14. Motherhood has brought powerful emotions to the surface. "When I look at Nita, I can't believe my mother forced me into a marriage that set us against each other like that. I feel angry and sad. How could she do that to her daughter?" Parvin is determined to ensure Nita has more life choices. "I want her to go to college, and to decide who and when she marries."

Parvin Rema, 36, another local woman who shares a husband with her widowed mother, agrees. Parvin and her mother, Joyanti, jointly married an 18-year-old man, Palnat, when Parvin was 13. "I thought my life was ruined when the wedding took place," says Parvin. "My mother was 36. I didn't understand why she wanted such a young husband." But Parvin quickly used her youth to her advantage. "My mother slept with our husband for the first three years. But when I was old enough I made sure he lost interest in her. I cooked him curries and never refused him sex." Parvin's mother, Joyanti, was soon ousted. Their husband started treating her like his mother-in-law rather than his wife â€" he was polite but distant â€" and Parvin took over as the household's alpha female.

There are three of us in this marriage: Parvin Rema, 36 (far right), with her mother, Joyanti, 59, and their mutual husband, Palnat, 42. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner for the Observer

She cites recent cases where young women have bolted from such arrangements, fleeing to Dhaka to work as maids or beauticians. Modern Mandi women, she says, pride themselves on not tolerating any form of abuse. "We don't allow domestic violence or adultery. If a man hits his wife or cheats on her, we make him pay a fine to make amends â€" a few pigs, or a lump sum of cash. It's a very good deterrent." To avoid violating their daughters' rights, widows should find new husbands their own age, she says, and there should be a system to compensate the dead husband's clan if they lose out financially.

The greatest local authority on such matters is female elder Shulekha Mrong, head of the local women's organisation Achik Michik (Mandi Women's Unity). Mrong says that clan matters concerning marriage are extremely involved. "We have many kinds of arrangement to safeguard property-owning female lineages. A widow and her daughter marrying the same man is just one of them, and it's hardly practised any more." Still, she believes it shouldn't exist at all. "The custom is a great injustice to young girls. They're denied freedom of choice, and it's emotionally damaging to be in the same relationship as their mothers."

Orola ignores them both and picks up her young daughter. "Her name is Walni," she says, smiling. "It means 'new dawn' in Mandi."

Little is known of the custom outside Mandi culture. At the local Catholic mission in Pirgacha â€" the community's social hub â€" I find a copy of the first-ever study of the tribe, written a century ago by Major A Playfair, a British colonial officer and keen amateur anthropologist. Entitled simply The Garos (another name for the Mandi), the book contains a meticulous inventory of sacrificial chicken rituals but only the briefest mention of the (undoubtedly more unpalatable) mother-daughter marriages. American anthropologist Robbins Burling, who lived in Modhupur for a year during the 50s, also skated over the custom because there were "no cases" in the particular Mandi village in which he was studying.

Mittamoni, a gaunt woman with her black hair scraped into a tight bun, listens without apparent emotion as Orola talks. Does she feel guilty hearing her daughter's words? "No, I don't," says Mittamoni. "The marriage was necessary for our family's survival. It was the decision of our clan elders, not mine." She insists that she protected Orola until she was "old enough to be a wife", and that sharing a husband wasn't easy for her either. "I had to step aside when Noten became intimate with Orola, and that was difficult." Noten, who is also present but doesn't want to speak, immediately throws his hands in the air, as if to say, "Don't put me in the middle of this." The gesture is so natural he clearly uses it often.

Her resistance faded when she became pregnant. Now she is the mother of three children with Noten: a boy aged 14, and two girls, aged seven and two. Mittamoni has a 17-year-old son with Noten, as well as an older daughter who has already left home. Life is hard and basic, especially since wholesale government plundering of the tribe's ancestral forest has fractured the local economy. Their hamlet has no electricity or running water. The nearest town consists of a row of open-fronted shacks selling rice, cooking oil and candles. Orola and Mittamoni jointly own a few acres of land, from which they make a modest living cultivating pineapples and bananas.

The rivalry destroyed their mother-daughter relationship. "She stopped being my parent. I couldn't turn to her for advice any more." Orola rebelled against her new role, taking off on solo day trips to the district capital of Madhupur to go shopping and watch Bengali movies. "I used some of the family money to buy gold jewellery. I knew I'd never have a man of my own to buy gifts for me, so I bought some for myself."

The three-way marital arrangement was fraught as soon as she was officially a co-wife. "It grew tense when Noten began sleeping with me. My mother knew it was inevitable â€" she pushed me into Noten's bed when I was 15 to consummate the marriage. But he quickly began to prefer me to her." In a whisper â€" Mittamoni is hovering nearby â€" Orola relates how her mother once slipped some wild herbs into her food to upset her stomach. "While I was ill, she took the chance to spend the night with Noten."

The situation was doubly unjust for her, she says, because ethnic Mandi women traditionally choose their own partners. It is women who make the first romantic move, and also propose marriage. Property is passed down the female line, and men live in their wife's household when they marry. She watched her female friends embark merrily on their love lives and felt so isolated that she considered suicide. "I felt trapped, like an animal."

"I was too young to remember the wedding. I didn't know it had taken place," Orola tells me while she stirs her pots. Although such an arrangement is not considered incest or even child abuse in Mandi culture, where early marriage is the norm, she was distraught to discover she was forced to share her mother's husband. "The last thing I wanted was to be married to Noten. I wanted a husband of my own."

"My mother couldn't manage her land and household by herself when my father died of fever," explains Orola. "She was still in her mid-20s, so she was entitled to claim a new husband as a replacement from my father's clan." The clan offered their only available bachelor at the time, Noten, who was then aged 17, on the condition he marry Orola, too. Since Mandi marriages represent the consolidation of wealth between two clans, the second, younger wife is a trade to ensure the birth of more children to add to the family's overall wealth and power.

The family's marital arrangement is an open secret in this small Modhupur community, but nobody, Orola says, ever mentions it. "For years I wanted to talk to someone about it because I was lonely. But people think it's un-Christian, so they ignore it." Missionaries have converted the majority of the tribe's local population. Traditional rituals, such as sacrificing goats to restore a sick person's health, are frowned on by the clergy and have waned. "Bridegroom kidnapping", another rare custom in which Mandi women abducted potential suitors and held them hostage until their wedding day, has also died out. A handful of mother-daughter joint marriages have most likely survived because, like most unions worldwide involving multiple spouses, they serve an economic purpose.

Orola is cooking rice and lentils for breakfast on an open fire when we arrive at her hamlet, a cluster of mud houses flanked by scrubby fields. Her family members are all there: her 51-year-old mother Mittamoni, her stepfather and husband Noten, 42, her maternal grandmother and an assortment of children ranging from babies to teenagers, fathered by Noten with both his wives. Everyone is doing household chores in the weak morning sunlight.

Bangladesh is a deltaic country where most of the 160 million people are Bengali Muslims. It is better known for its flood plains and typhoon-lashed coasts, but its southeastern and central hills are home to ethnic minorities who mainly practised animism until Catholic missionaries arrived in the late 19th century. The Mandi, who number 25,000 in the Modhupur region, live a six-hour drive and a world away from the frenetic capital Dhaka.

Then Gain mentioned the mother-daughter joint marriages. He explained that among the Mandi, widows who wish to remarry must choose a man from the same clan as their dead husband to preserve the clan alliance. The only available single men, however, are often much younger men in their late teens. So the custom evolved: a widow would offer one of her daughters as a second bride to take over her marital duties â€" including sex and child-bearing â€" when the girl came of age. "It's not common these days," said Gain. "But it still exists among a few Mandi families."

Disbelief was more or less my reaction a few days earlier when, by chance, I'd first heard about this marriage custom. I was visiting the remote Modhupur region to report a story about Mandi women fighting deforestation. My travelling companion was an eminent Bangladeshi environmentalist called Philip Gain, who had been studying the area for more than 20 years. As we drove through the khaki- coloured hills, we talked generally about how Mandi women were the property-owning heads of their households. Gain, 50, a professorial man in a suit jacket and tie who runs the Dhaka-based activist organisation Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), told me how they shared power with men and had far more independence than women in the majority Bengali population.

Her wedding had taken place when she was three years old in a joint ceremony with her mother. Following tradition in the matrilineal Mandi tribe, an ethnic group of about two million people spread across hill regions of Bangladesh and India, mother and daughter had married the same man. "I wanted to escape when I found out," says Orola. "I was shaking with disbelief."

'My mother and I are married to the same man': matrilineal marriage in Bangladesh

When her widowed mother remarried, Parvin Rema, then 13, was part of the deal â€" one of several such arrangements in Bangladesh. Abigail Haworth talks to mothers and daughters about a particularly knotty relationship


Abigail Haworth
The Observer, Sunday 2 June 2013



All in the family: Orola Dalbot (far right), and her three children with Noten (centre). Orola’s mother, Mittamoni (left) also has a son (standing behind her) and daughter with Noten. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner for the Observer


As a child in rural Bangladesh, Orola Dalbot, 30, enjoyed growing up around her stepfather, Noten. Her father died when she was small, and her mother remarried soon after. Noten was handsome and energetic, with curly dark hair and a broad smile. "I thought my mother was lucky," Orola says when we meet in the dusty, sun-baked courtyard of her family home in the central forest region of Modhupur. "I hoped I'd find a husband like him one day." When she reached puberty, however, Orola learned the truth she least expected: she was already Noten's wife.

Cicada Preparation

So, are you ready to try a cicada? Aspiring gourmands must first collect the raw ingredients. The insects are best eaten just after the nymphs break open their skin and before their exoskeleton turns black and hard, cicada aficionados say.

These newly hatched cicadas are called tenerals. Jadin said they are easiest to collect in the early morning hours, just after the insects emerge from the ground but before they crawl up a tree, where they are harder to reach.

If tenerals are unavailable, the next best menu item is adult females. Their bellies are fat and full of nutritious eggs. (Also see "For Most People, Eating Bugs Is Only Natural.")

Adult males, however, offer little to eat. More crunch than munch, their abdomens are hollow. (This enables the flirtatious tunes they strum on body structures known as tymbals to resonate.) With raw cicadas in hand, preparation is a matter of chef's choice.

Kritsky said, "Most people like them deep fried and dipped in a sauce like a hot mustard or cocktail sauce." Other people boil or blanch them.

Jadin said cicadas take on a "nutty" flavor when roasted. She notes that many cicada recipes call for a lot of spices and sauce, which usually winds up being the dominant flavor.

Now on to the wine: red or white? Jadin, who might be found with a cicada-infused cocktail in hand before the main feast, said neither. "I think anything pairs well with a high-alcoholic Belgian beer, but that's just my opinion."

*Candied Cicadas

1 pound cicadas

1 cup white sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp salt

3 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Spread cicadas in a single layer over a baking sheet. Roast for approximately 15-20 minutes, or until the cicadas start to turn brown and are thoroughly dried out.

Stir together sugar, cinnamon, salt, and milk in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat for eight minutes, or until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage at 236°F (113°C). Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla immediately.

Add cicadas to sugar syrup, and stir to coat well. Spoon onto waxed paper, and immediately separate cicadas with a fork. Cool and store in airtight containers.

Her only true concern is the cicadas that emerge in areas heavily treated with pesticides and herbicides, as the insects could have absorbed the chemicals in their bodies.

"Given that it's likely people won't be feasting on cicadas, just eating a few of them, even if they have [absorbed] chemicals, it's no worse than eating fish from the Great Lakes," Jadin said. "If [people] survived that, they'll probably survive eating a plateful of cicada."

And no, there is no bona fide business out there marketing organic cicadas, she added.

The only consequence of cicada feasting that Kritsky is aware of is overindulgence, especially on the part of the family dog or favorite backyard squirrel. The animals may be enticed to gobble cicadas so quickly that the bugs could block the animals' throats.

"Just imagine how you would react if inundated with thousands of flying Hershey's Kisses," Kritsky said. "You might go nuts. I'd go nuts. That's what happens to dogs or squirrels."

Eaten in moderation, most experts agree that cicadasâ€"like most insectsâ€"are a good source of protein: about the same amount per pound as red meat. However, official studies on cicada nutrition are lacking, noted Jadin.

More of Jadin's ideas include Martha Stewart-inspired Maple Cicada Cupcakesâ€"roast the bugs for 10 to 20 minutes, then stir them into a cupcake batter with a wooden spoonâ€"and Cicada Bahn Mi, a Vietnamese-style sandwich with cicadas first blanched, then sautéed until brown.

Healthy Eating?

Jadin's cookbook begins with a disclaimer from the University of Maryland asking would-be cicada eaters to first consult a doctor because, like with all foods, certain individuals may have an allergic reaction.

More recent research indicates that mercury from sources such as coal-fired power plants accumulates in the bodies of periodical cicadas, which spend 13 or 17 years underground. "Now, whether that is a concern or not, I would say no," Jadin said.

People already eat fish, which are known to have mercury in their bodies, she noted. Federal guidelines recommend limiting fish intake, especially for pregnant women. The same would probably hold true for cicadas, though there are no official guidelines.

"I don't think the average person who wants to go out and enjoy the cicada emergence by having a meal of cicadas or two [has] anything to worry about," she said.

She notes in her book that crawfish, lobster, crab, and shrimp are part of the same biological phylumâ€"arthropodsâ€"as insects. "So popping a big juicy beetle, cricket, or cicada into your mouth is only a step away," Jadin writes.

The entomologist is now a science and technology policy fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. She's been too busy to add recipes to her cookbook, but when asked if she had new ideas for 2013 Brood II emergence, she suggested a cicada-inspired cocktail.

"Right now, craft cocktails are a big deal, so a cocktail with a candied cicada in it would be a good update," she said. The next day, she had the recipe in hand:

Red Eyes

2 shots vodka

½ shot Campari

½ shot extra-dry vermouth

1 shot fresh orange juice

Shake all ingredients together with ice in a shaker and strain into a chilled glass. Garnish with two candied cicadas* on a stick, if desired.

Members of Brood II, one of the largest groups of periodical cicadas, have been crawling out of the ground and carpeting trees from North Carolina to Connecticut since early May. By July, they will be goneâ€"not to be heard from again for 17 years.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground sucking sap from tree roots. The plant-based diet gives them a green, asparagus-like flavor, especially when eaten raw or boiled, according to Kristky, who prefers his Brood II bugs blanched and tossed into a leafy green salad like chunks of chicken.

Gross? Not really, said Jenna Jadin, an entomologist who wrote the online cookbook Cicada-Licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicada in 2004 while a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Skewered scorpions, sea horses, grasshoppers, and cicadas (center) for sale in Beijing in 2009.
Photograph by Victor Fraile, Corbis


John Roach
for National Geographic
Published May 15, 2013


Anyone hoping to spice up their gluten-free diet need look only at the billions of beady-eyed, shrimp-size cicadas currently emerging from the ground in the eastern United States.

"They definitely would be gluten free ... they do not feed on wheat," said Gene Kritsky, a biologist and cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. The bugs are also high in protein, low in fat, and low in carbohydrates, he added. (Related: "Cicadas as Food: Summer's Low-Fat Snack.")

OK pud ingon ani...

Hmm, I wonder hoe a feline Hephaestus looks...

Hmm, I wonder what's hiding behind that verdant canopy yonder...

Sori, naa man diay forbidden word ang image url, mao nga di molutaw...

Quote from: bugsay on June 02, 2013, 11:36:27 AM
inbisibol...

Agoi, sori. Pangitaan sa nakog paagi...

Quote from: hubag bohol on June 02, 2013, 01:55:47 PM
Researchers found that people with high blood pressure in the central arteries -- including the aorta, the largest artery in the human body, and the carotid arteries in the neck -- performed worse on tests of visual processing, and had slower thinking and poorer recognition abilities.

Sa ato pa, mosamot og bagtok ang utok? Hmm, that explains it...

Blood pressure and cognition

The researchers found that high brachial blood pressure was linked to worse performance on the visual processing test, but high central blood pressure correlated to worse performance across several tests, including visual processing, recognition and processing speed.

"This suggests central blood pressure is a more sensitive predictor of cognitive aging," Pase said.

To expand upon these findings, Pase said he wants to look at whether reducing central blood pressure -- which can be done by quitting smoking, doing regular exercise or limiting salt intake -- might protect people against mental deterioration.

How it all works

A beating heart pumps blood in spurts, but the central arteries are flexible, expanding and contracting to maintain steady bloodflow to the brain.

As people age, the central arteries stiffen, and with less elasticity, the brain receives more high-pressure blood, which may damage cognition, Pase said.

In the study, Pase and his colleagues looked at whether associations between blood pressure and cognition were stronger for measurements taken in the arm, or the central arteries. The researchers examined 493 Australians between ages 20 and 82. The participants were mostly Caucasians, and all were nonsmokers with no history of stroke or dementia, Pase said.

Study participants performed tasks to measure various types of cognition, such as visual processing, working memory, recognition abilities and processing speed. The researchers also took blood pressure measurements from the arm and central arteries.

Typically, blood pressure measurements are taken from the brachial artery in the arm, but looking at the health of the central arteries may be a more sensitive way to assess cognitive abilities, said study researcher Matthew Pase, of the Center for Human Psychopharmacology at Swinburne University in Melbourne. The central arteries directly control bloodflow to the brain.

"If we can estimate the blood pressure in central arteries, we might be able to better predict cognitive function and cognitive decline," Pase said.

Pase presented the findings here on May 24 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science.

Posted: 05/31/2013 12:30 pm EDT
By: Denise Chow, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 05/30/2013 12:58 PM EDT on LiveScience


WASHINGTON -- High blood pressure, particularly in the arteries that supply blood to the head and neck, may be linked with declining cognitive abilities, according to a new study from Australia.

Researchers found that people with high blood pressure in the central arteries -- including the aorta, the largest artery in the human body, and the carotid arteries in the neck -- performed worse on tests of visual processing, and had slower thinking and poorer recognition abilities.

Despite these seemingly successful explanations, many physicists worry that there is little to be gained by adopting the multiverse worldview. Parallel universes cannot be tested for; worse, an unnatural universe resists understanding. “Without naturalness, we will lose the motivation to look for new physics,” said Kfir Blum, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study. “We know it’s there, but there is no robust argument for why we should find it.” That sentiment is echoed again and again: “I would prefer the universe to be natural,” Randall said.

But theories can grow on physicists. After spending more than a decade acclimating himself to the multiverse, Arkani-Hamed now finds it plausible â€" and a viable route to understanding the ways of our world. “The wonderful point, as far as I’m concerned, is basically any result at the LHC will steer us with different degrees of force down one of these divergent paths,” he said. “This kind of choice is a very, very big deal.”

Naturalness could pull through. Or it could be a false hope in a strange but comfortable pocket of the multiverse.

As Arkani-Hamed told the audience at Columbia, “stay tuned.”

In a paper posted last month to the physics preprint website arXiv.org, Bousso and a Berkeley colleague, Lawrence Hall, argue that the Higgs mass makes sense in the multiverse scenario, too. They found that bubble universes that contain enough visible matter (compared to dark matter) to support life most often have supersymmetric particles beyond the energy range of the LHC, and a fine-tuned Higgs boson. Similarly, other physicists showed in 1997 that if the Higgs boson were five times heavier than it is, this would suppress the formation of atoms other than hydrogen, resulting, by yet another means, in a lifeless universe.

In the multiverse scenario a vast and diverse array of bubble universes fluctuate into existence inside a larger vacuum. A small fraction of the universes have physical properties conducive to life.

Life in a Multiverse

The Big Bang, in the Bousso-Polchinski multiverse scenario, is a fluctuation. A compact, six-dimensional knot that makes up one stitch in the fabric of reality suddenly shape-shifts, releasing energy that forms a bubble of space and time. The properties of this new universe are determined by chance: the amount of energy unleashed during the fluctuation. The vast majority of universes that burst into being in this way are thick with vacuum energy; they either expand or collapse so quickly that life cannot arise in them. But some atypical universes, in which an improbable cancellation yields a tiny value for the cosmological constant, are much like ours.

“It was definitely an aha-moment for me,” Bousso said. But the paper sparked outrage.

“Particle physicists, especially string theorists, had this dream of predicting uniquely all the constants of nature,” Bousso explained. “Everything would just come out of math and pi and twos. And we came in and said, ‘Look, it’s not going to happen, and there’s a reason it’s not going to happen. We’re thinking about this in totally the wrong way.’ ”

The multiverse turned into slightly more than just a hand-waving argument in 2000, when Bousso and Joe Polchinski, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found a mechanism that could give rise to a panorama of parallel universes. String theory, a hypothetical “theory of everything” that regards particles as invisibly small vibrating lines, posits that space-time is 10-dimensional. At the human scale, we experience just three dimensions of space and one of time, but string theorists argue that six extra dimensions are tightly knotted at every point in the fabric of our 4-D reality. Bousso and Polchinski calculated that there are around 10500 different ways for those six dimensions to be knotted (all tying up varying amounts of energy), making an inconceivably vast and diverse array of universes possible. In other words, naturalness is not required. There isn’t a single, inevitable, perfect universe.

Most particle physicists hoped that a more testable explanation for the cosmological constant problem would be found. None has. Now, physicists say, the unnaturalness of the Higgs makes the unnaturalness of the cosmological constant more significant. Arkani-Hamed thinks the issues may even be related. “We don’t have an understanding of a basic extraordinary fact about our universe,” he said. “It is big and has big things in it.”

To explain this absurd bit of luck, the multiverse idea has been growing mainstream in cosmology circles over the past few decades. It got a credibility boost in 1987 when the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, calculated that the cosmological constant of our universe is expected in the multiverse scenario. Of the possible universes capable of supporting life â€" the only ones that can be observed and contemplated in the first place â€" ours is among the least fine-tuned. “If the cosmological constant were much larger than the observed value, say by a factor of 10, then we would have no galaxies,” explained Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist and multiverse theorist at Tufts University. “It’s hard to imagine how life might exist in such a universe.”

Dark Dilemma

The energy built into the vacuum of space (known as vacuum energy, dark energy or the cosmological constant) is a baffling trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times smaller than what is calculated to be its natural, albeit self-destructive, value. No theory exists about what could naturally fix this gargantuan disparity. But it’s clear that the cosmological constant has to be enormously fine-tuned to prevent the universe from rapidly exploding or collapsing to a point. It has to be fine-tuned in order for life to have a chance.

A few physicists â€" notably Joe Lykken of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., and Alessandro Strumia of the University of Pisain Italy â€" see a third option. They say that physicists might be misgauging the effects of other particles on the Higgs mass and that when calculated differently, its mass appears natural. This â€œmodified naturalness” falters when additional particles, such as the unknown constituents of dark matter, are included in calculations â€" but the same unorthodox path could yield other ideas. “I don’t want to advocate, but just to discuss the consequences,” Strumia said during a talk earlier this month at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

However, modified naturalness cannot fix an even bigger naturalness problem that exists in physics: The fact that the cosmos wasn’t instantly annihilated by its own energy the moment after the Big Bang.

If no new particles appear and the Higgs remains astronomically fine-tuned, then the multiverse hypothesis will stride into the limelight. “It doesn’t mean it’s right,” said Bousso, a longtime supporter of the multiverse picture, “but it does mean it’s the only game in town.”



Brookhaven Forum 2013 David Curtin, left, a postdoctoral researcher at Stony Brook University, and Alessandro Strumia, a physicist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Italy, discussing Strumia’s “modified naturalness” idea, which questions longstanding assumptions about how to calculate the natural value of the Higgs boson mass. (Photo: Thomas Lin/Simons Science News)

Physicists have gone through three generations of particle accelerators searching for new particles, posited by a theory called supersymmetry, that would drive the Higgs mass down exactly as much as the known particles drive it up. But so far they’ve come up empty-handed.

The upgraded LHC will explore ever-higher energy scales in its next run, but even if new particles are found, they will almost definitely be too heavy to influence the Higgs mass in quite the right way. The Higgs will still seem at least 10 or 100 times too light. Physicists disagree about whether this is acceptable in a natural, stand-alone universe. “Fine-tuned a little â€" maybe it just happens,” said Lisa Randall, a professor at Harvard University. But in Arkani-Hamed’s opinion, being “a little bit tuned is like being a little bit pregnant. It just doesn’t exist.”

“Naturalness has a track record,” Arkani-Hamed said in an interview. In practice, it is the requirement that the physical constants (particle masses and other fixed properties of the universe) emerge directly from the laws of physics, rather than resulting from improbable cancellations. Time and again, whenever a constant appeared fine-tuned, as if its initial value had been magically dialed to offset other effects, physicists suspected they were missing something. They would seek and inevitably find some particle or feature that materially dialed the constant, obviating a fine-tuned cancellation.

This time, the self-healing powers of the universe seem to be failing. The Higgs boson has a mass of 126 giga-electron-volts, but interactions with the other known particles should add about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 giga-electron-volts to its mass. This implies that the Higgs’ “bare mass,” or starting value before other particles affect it, just so happens to be the negative of that astronomical number, resulting in a near-perfect cancellation that leaves just a hint of Higgs behind: 126 giga-electron-volts.

What the LHC does or doesn’t discover in its next run is likely to lend support to one of two possibilities: Either we live in an overcomplicated but stand-alone universe, or we inhabit an atypical bubble in a multiverse. “We will be a lot smarter five or 10 years from today because of the LHC,” Seiberg said. “So that’s exciting. This is within reach.”

Cosmic Coincidence

Einstein once wrote that for a scientist, “religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law” and that “this feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work.” Indeed, throughout the 20th century, the deep-seated belief that the laws of nature are harmonious â€" a belief in “naturalness” â€" has proven a reliable guide for discovering truth.

In such a picture, not everything about this universe is inevitable, rendering it unpredictable. Edward Witten, a string theorist at the Institute, said by email, “I would be happy personally if the multiverse interpretation is not correct, in part because it potentially limits our ability to understand the laws of physics. But none of us were consulted when the universe was created.”

“Some people hate it,” said Raphael Bousso, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley who helped develop the multiverse scenario. “But I just don’t think we can analyze it on an emotional basis. It’s a logical possibility that is increasingly favored in the absence of naturalness at the LHC.”

Physicists reason that if the universe is unnatural, with extremely unlikely fundamental constants that make life possible, then an enormous number of universes must exist for our improbable case to have been realized. Otherwise, why should we be so lucky? Unnaturalness would give a huge lift to the multiverse hypothesis, which holds that our universe is one bubble in an infinite and inaccessible foam. According to a popular but polarizing framework called string theory, the number of possible types of universes that can bubble up in a multiverse is around 10500. In a few of them, chance cancellations would produce the strange constants we observe.

“There are frustrating theoretical problems in quantum field theory that demand solutions, but the string theory ‘landscape’ of 10500 solutions does not make sense to me. Neither does the multiverse concept or the anthropic principle,” said David J. Gross, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.

In peril is the notion of “naturalness,” Albert Einstein’s dream that the laws of nature are sublimely beautiful, inevitable and self-contained. Without it, physicists face the harsh prospect that those laws are just an arbitrary, messy outcome of random fluctuations in the fabric of space and time.

The LHC will resume smashing protons in 2015 in a last-ditch search for answers. But in papers, talks and interviews, Arkani-Hamed and many other top physicists are already confronting the possibility that the universe might be unnatural. (There is wide disagreement, however, about what it would take to prove it.)

“Ten or 20 years ago, I was a firm believer in naturalness,” said Nathan Seiberg, a theoretical physicist at the Institute, where Einstein taught from 1933 until his death in 1955. “Now I’m not so sure. My hope is there’s still something we haven’t thought about, some other mechanism that would explain all these things. But I don’t see what it could be.”

“The universe is impossible,” said Nima Arkani-Hamed, 41, of the Institute for Advanced Study, during a recent talk at Columbia University. (Photo: Natalie Wolchover/Simons Science News)


With the discovery of only one particle, the LHC experiments deepened a profound problem in physics that had been brewing for decades. Modern equations seem to capture reality with breathtaking accuracy, correctly predicting the values of many constants of nature and the existence of particles like the Higgs. Yet a few constants â€" including the mass of the Higgs boson â€" are exponentially different from what these trusted laws indicate they should be, in ways that would rule out any chance of life, unless the universe is shaped by inexplicable fine-tunings and cancellations.

The spectacular discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012 confirmed a nearly 50-year-old theory of how elementary particles acquire mass, which enables them to form big structures such as galaxies and humans.

“The fact that it was seen more or less where we expected to find it is a triumph for experiment, it’s a triumph for theory, and it’s an indication that physics works,” Arkani-Hamed told the crowd.

However, in order for the Higgs boson to make sense with the mass (or equivalent energy) it was determined to have, the LHC needed to find a swarm of other particles, too. None turned up.

Is Nature Unnatural?
Decades of confounding experiments have physicists considering a startling possibility: The universe might not make sense.
by: Natalie Wolchover
May 24, 2013



Is the universe natural or do we live in an atypical bubble in a multiverse? Recent results at the Large Hadron Collider have forced many physicists to confront the latter possibility. (Illustration: Giovanni Villadoro)


On an overcast afternoon in late April, physics professors and students crowded into a wood-paneled lecture hall at Columbia University for a talk by Nima Arkani-Hamed, a high-profile theorist visiting from the Institute for Advanced Study in nearby Princeton, N.J. With his dark, shoulder-length hair shoved behind his ears, Arkani-Hamed laid out the dual, seemingly contradictory implications of recent experimental results at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

“The universe is inevitable,” he declared. “The universe is impossible.”

Hmm, or should it be brinkduckship?

Kaon tag binangkal!

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Monday asked China to withdraw its ships from Ayungin Reef because that area of South China Sea is within the country’s national territory, which is 196 kilometers from Palawan province and well within the 370-kilometer EEZ.

The Aquino government on May 10 protested the presence of 30 Chinese fishing boats, accompanied by patrol vessels, at Ayungin, but China insisted that it had “indisputable sovereignty” over Ayungin and other parts of the Spratly archipelago in the middle of the West Philippine Sea.

Pamalakaya also said the plan of the government to impose fish ban in 10 out of 13 major fishing grounds all over the archipelago to push the national stock assessment program further complicates the sorry state of small fishermen across the country.

BFAR earlier bared these 13 fishing grounds namely Lingayen Gulf, northern Zambales, Visayan Sea, Camotes Sea, Honda Bay, Babuyan Channel, Lagonoy Gulf, Sorsogon Bay, Hinatuan and Dinagat Bay and Davao Gulf.

Pamalakaya earlier dared Aquino to file appropriate charges against China at the United Nations (UN) over Beijing’s refusal to leave Ayungin Reef and Panatag Shoal, which are part of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

According to Pamalakaya’s computation, the owners of the eight fishing vessels could earn as much as $1.274 billion or $160 million per fishing vessel in just six months from tuna poaching in Aurora and other tuna-rich waters of the Philippine territory.

The controversial Benham Rise is an undersea region that has untapped potentially rich mineral and gas deposits. It is located off the coast of Aurora province, opposite the disputed waters of South China Sea.

The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) announced yesterday that more than 60 fish-aggregating devices will be installed at Benham Rise starting May 30.

He noted that a 3,000-ton tuna factory ship seen in the area, accompanied by support fishing fleets, can catch as much as 150 metric tons of tuna on a 24-hour operation. By industry standard, a single factory ship could harvest 50,000 metric tons of tuna per year.

Pamalakaya noted reports that eight Japanese tuna fishing vessels regularly poach in the waters of Aurora province daily from January to July and that this means a total haul of 27,000 tons of tuna per factory ship during the period or 216,000 metric tons of tuna for all eight fishing vessels.

France also reported that “the same foreign fishing vessels have even entered the municipal fishing grounds and the Philippine Coast Guard is not doing anything to stop these foreign ocean grabbers exploring the fishery resources of BenHam Rise.”

“And now Pres. Aquino is offering BenHam Rise to small Filipino fisherfolk even if the real score is that foreign fishing monopolies have successfully invaded BenHam Rise long before,” said Pamalakaya.

Pamalakaya vice chair Salvador France lamented that “the government has been tolerating the tuna fishing expeditions of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan over the last five years.”

He noted that Pamalakaya members from Aurora reported that foreign factory ships from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are often seen in the waters off the province.

“Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean industrial fleets are seen catching first rate tuna off the waters of Aurora, which is part of Asia Pacific Ocean,” he said.

By Ding Cervantes
May 30, 2013


SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga- Pres. Aquino’s advice to small fishermen to fish at the 13-million hectare BenHam rise in Aurora province is a “big mockery”, the fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) said yesterday.

“Pres. Aquino is not in touch with reality,” Pamalakaya said in a statement, as it noted that “the BenHam Rise is frequented every year from January to July by foreign large-scale industrial fishing fleets “to fish for tuna.”

The President’s proposal was made amid territorial conflicts in the Western Philippine Sea which have kept off small Filipino fishers.

My dear friends, in 1519, Alonso Álvarez de Piñeda, commissioned by the Spanish governor of Jamaica to explore and chart the coast of Texas, entered the bay of what would latter be called the city of Corpus Christi.

As the Spanish explorers disembarked and prepared themselves for the first Mass by the missionary that accompanied them, they marveled at the beauty of the area.

It was the Feast of Corpus Christi, and in accordance with a Spanish custom, Piñeda named the bay in honor of the feast that they celebrated that day.

Our belief in the Real Presence must permeate all of our actions when we are in church.  Sacred silence, reverent genuflections and proper attire for worship are all manifestations of deep reverence and faith.

We must also keep in mind the grave importance to receive Holy Communion in the state of grace.  There is a direct connection between the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Confession.  It is a sacrilege to receive Holy Communion while being in the state of mortal sin.

"To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment.  St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: 'Whoever, therefore, eats of the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself' (1 Cor 11: 27-29).  Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of reconciliation before coming to communion" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1385).

All of a sudden I realized, this is where the Bible belongs.  This was the setting in which this precious family heirloom was meant to be read, proclaimed and expounded.  Then we moved into the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where all my covenant conclusions converged.

I wanted to stop everything and shout, 'Hey, can I explain what's happening from Scripture?  This is great!'  Instead I just sat there, famished with a supernatural hunger for the Bread of Life.

After pronouncing the words of consecration, the priest held up the Host.  I felt as if the last drop of doubt had drained from me.  With all of my heart, I whispered, 'My Lord and my God.  That's really you! And if that's you, then I want full communion with you.  I don't want to hold anything back' (Rome Sweet Home, pp. 87-88).

All of a sudden lots of ordinary people began coming in off the streets; rank-and-file type folks.  They came in, genuflected, knelt and prayed.  Their simple but sincere devotion was impressive.

Then a bell rang and a priest walked out toward the altar.  I remained seated; I still wasn't sure if it was safe to kneel.  As an evangelical Calvinist, I had been taught that the Catholic Mass was the greatest sacrilege that a man could commit - to re-sacrifice Christ - so I wasn't sure what to do.

I watched and listened as the readings, prayers and responses - so steeped in Scripture - made the Bible come alive.  I almost wanted to stop the Mass and say, 'Wait.  That line is from Isaiah; the song is from the Psalms.  Whoa, you've got another prophet in that prayer'.  I found numerous elements from the ancient Jewish liturgy that I had studied so intensely.

There is no doubt that Jesus was not speaking symbolically.  "I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world" (John 6: 51).

Dr. Scott Hahn, the famous former Protestant minister that converted to Catholicism wrote in his conversion story one of the most beautiful testimonies about the Eucharist that I have ever read.  Here are his words, written in his book that he co-authored with his wife Kimberly.

"Then one day, I made a 'fatal blunder' - I decided that it was time for me to go to Mass on my own.  Finally I resolved to darken the doors of Gesu, Marquette University's parish.  Right before noon, I slipped quietly into the basement chapel for daily Mass.  I wasn't sure what to expect; maybe I'd be alone with a priest and a couple of old nuns.  I took a seat as an observer in the back pew.

As early as 110 A.D., St. Ignatius of Antioch said: "Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God.  They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1).

Around the year 151 A.D., St. Justin wrote to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius these words: "We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus" (First Apology 66).

Jesus, the Son of God; Jesus the Messiah; Jesus the Lord and Savior of the universe said: "This is my body"; "This is my blood".  Faith is a vision superior to reason, but it does not contradict reason, precisely because faith relies upon the authority of God who does not deceive, nor can be deceived.  Jesus is the truth and thus is incapable of lying.

The Fathers of the Church give witness to the fact that Jesus did not give us a symbol of Himself, but rather He empowered His Church to continue His presence throughout the world.  J.N.D. Kelly, a renowned Protestant scholar who studied the history of the early church extensively, affirmed that this is true when he wrote: "Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior's body and blood" (Early Christian Doctrines, 440).

Transubstantiation cannot be proved through scientific experimentation.  If we were to respectfully examine a consecrated host using a microscope, the physical attributes of bread would be obvious.  If we were to do to the same with the precious blood, the physical attributes would be that of wine.

Transubstantiation belongs to the reality of faith.  Faith does not contradict reason.  Instead, the gift of faith that we receive at Baptism, gives us a superior vision.

Transubstantiation means "change of substance", or "change of reality."  When the priest repeats the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, the bread is no longer bread, and the wine is no longer wine.  Instead, the entire substance of the bread and the entire substance of the wine have been changed into the substance of The Body and Blood of Christ. 

Transubstantiation occurs only by the power of God, and in a way that we cannot empirically detect.  We know that transubstantiation takes place through the certainty of faith.

At every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we participate in a marvelous miracle, the miracle called Transubstantiation.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this miracle when it says:

"The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend. In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really and substantially contained. This presence is called real - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as of they could not be real too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present" (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1374).

SUNDAY HOMILY: The Happy Priest - The Treasure of the Eucharist
By Fr. James Farfaglia
6/2/2013
Catholic Online


Our belief in the Real Presence must permeate all of our actions when we are in church.  Sacred silence, reverent genuflections and proper attire for worship are all manifestations of deep reverence and faith. We must also keep in mind the grave importance to receive Holy Communion in the state of grace.

The Feast of Corpus Christi reminds us that we possess an immense treasure.  When a Catholic priest takes a little piece of unleavened bread and repeats the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, "This is my body", and when he takes a small of amount of wine in a chalice and says, "This is my blood", the bread is no longer bread and the wine is no longer wine.

It's highly unlikely that a rat, squirrel, lizard or any other organism could survive on the cold, dry Martian surface today, researchers say, though some scientists think the Red Planet may still be able to support microbial life in select underground pockets.

Things were likely different in Mars' wetter and warmer past, however. Curiosity's observations led mission scientists to announce earlier this year that microbes could have survived on the Red Planet billions of years ago.

Pareidolia refers to the tendency of the human brain to perceive animals or other familiar shapes in vague or random images. The phenomenon has fueled a great deal of excited speculation about the Red Planet over the years, most famously after some people saw a humanoid face on Mars in photos taken by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.

And just this March, UFO Sightings Daily reported that an apparent animal, perhaps a rat or a lizard, lurked in another one of Curiosity's photos.

The Mars rat has now gone viral, jumping from the pages of UFO Sightings Daily to more mainstream publications such as Discovery News, Fox News and a host of other outlets (including, of course, SPACE.com).

The rodent has even picked up its own Twitter account, @RealMarsRat. Just 49 people were following the rat as of Friday afternoon (May 31), but that's still pretty good for a rodent.

While some people seem to really believe that a squirrel is crawling around on the Red Planet (or was in September, anyway), the Mars rodent is actually an example of a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia.

"It's a cute rodent on Mars. Note its lighter-color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach," Scott Waring wrote at UFO Sightings Daily  back in December. "Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors."

In an update to that post, Waring raised the possibility that NASA flew the rat/squirrel to Mars  secretly, as part of an experiment testing out the Red Planet's ability to support life as we know it.

"Why would they not tell us about it?" Waring wrote. "Because the squirrel would be expected to die eventually and that would get PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] to fight against them in a court of law."

by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 31 May 2013 Time: 07:07 PM ET



Once seen, it cannot be unseen. The "Mars rat" captured by Curiosity's lens.


A Mars rock that bears a passing resemblance to a rodent is scuttling across the Internet with gusto, even inspiring some fans to set up a Twitter account in its name.

UFO buffs spotted the purported "Mars rat" in a panoramic photo snapped in September 2012 by NASA's Curiosity rover. Zooming in on a portion of the image reveals what appears to be a rodent crouching between two rocks, its nose to the ground.

Wa na lang unta huwata ni Manang nga di na siya kaantos. Tua, dedbol si bana unya siya, kriminal...

Matud pa nasuko ang lalaki tungod kay dili gusto nga makigdungan kaniya si Navarro.   Atol sa pagresponde sa kapolisan didto pa ang mga pagkaon nga angay unta nilang saw-an sa panihapon.  Wala magdahom ang kapuyo nga mabuhat kadto sa kapuyo.  Matud pa ni Cuyos nga sa milabay’ng semana nahiubos ang lalaki tungod kay wala man kini tuguti sa iyang kapuyo nga muadto sa ilang panimalay sa Pasil nga mao usab ang na-ingnan sa ilang panag-away.         

Giingong usa palang ka bulan nga nagpuyo ang duha apan kagabii wala damha nga ang wala lang pagduyog ni Navarro kang Peñafort sa panihapon moresulta kini sa paghikog.   Gamit ang kalibre .9mm nga gipusil sa iyang tampihak maoy hinungdan sa hinanaling kamatayon sa lalaki. EIM(BANAT NEWS)

Ni Lesley Caminade-Vestil ug Chelsea Quijano (Banat) | Updated June 2, 2013 - 12:00am


CEBU, Philippines - Tungod kay wala pakigdungan og panihapon sa iyang kapuyo, nagpusil sa kaugalingon ang usa ka lalaki pasado alas-8 sa miaging gabii diha sa Upper Villa Bulsita barangay Bulacao dakbayan sa Sugbu. Ang naghikog nailhan nga si Emmanuel Pogoy Peñafort, 28, molupyo sa maong dapit ug giingong nagpusil sa iyang ulo gamit ang usa ka Black Widow revolver.  Sa pakighinabi sa Banat News ni SPO4 Rey Cuyos, ang imbestigador sa Homicide Section nga sa wala pa mahitabo ang insidente giingong padung na manihapon si Peñafort apan mitumaw ang panaglalis tali niini ug kapuyo nga si Maria Charice Navarro.

Quote from: Mike Ortega Ligalig on June 02, 2013, 07:32:39 AM
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman. â€" George Soros

Hmm, unsa na kaha diay siya ron...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfOu_hSJZY#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXU3RfB7308#

Quote from: islander on May 31, 2013, 10:48:46 AM
anhi na sigurong panahona magbangi si hubag ug bugsay.  hubag is noranian, bugsay is vilmanian.

Agoi, nangita na pud og bugno, ay, abi kay nahilom na ang iyang manunggoy, este, manok...

While the Vatican dismissed the gesture as Francis simply praying for a sick person, the exorcist interpretation has invited more speculation about the Catholic leader, whom an Associated Press report asserted was obsessed with Satan.

Last week the Catholic archdiocese of Madrid reinforced the claim of exorcist leader Amorth that more demon fighters were needed. It said that the one exorcist it had was not enough and planned to train more.

The AP noted that only a bishop-authorized priest can do an exorcism, which involves blessings and "an interrogation of the devil."