Thursday, March 30, 2006

Total Eclipse

















"Solar eclipses are spectacular to watch because of the drama of the sky going dark in the daytime, the blue sky going away, the rapid changes in the sun".

Eclipse Science

"We are studying how the solar corona got to be 2 million degrees [Celsius], what its polarization is, and how features that form on the solar surface propagate into the corona and even out to the Earth," he said.

Observations of the corona are possible from Earth only during the brief moments of a total solar eclipse. The corona is usually hidden by the blue sky as it is about a million times fainter than the photosphere, the layer of the sun seen shining every day.

Solar eclipses are possible only because the sun and the moon appear to be about the same size in the sky. In reality, the sun is about 400 times bigger than the moon, but it is also about 400 times further from the Earth than the moon, according to astronomers.

When the moon's elliptical orbit around the Earth takes it directly between the sun and Earth, it blocks out all or part of the sun, depending on the Earth's distance from the sun. Total eclipses happen, on average, every 1.5 years.

"Having the sun only 9 degrees from the horizon will enable some photos including the sun and the horizon on the same frame with a bigger image of the sun than previously possible," said Pasachoff.

While some astronomers are excited for the sunset spectacle afforded by this eclipse, Pasachoff says that it will make scientific experiments more difficult because sunlight will have to pass through so much of the atmosphere.

Corona Experiments

The first of their experiments is to search the corona for high-frequency solar oscillations—rapid vibrations. Some theoretical models hold that these vibrations enable the corona to reach a temperature of 2 million degrees Celsius (3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit) while the surface of the sun is about 6,000 degrees Celsius (11,000 degrees Fahrenheit).

Using observational data gathered during the 1999 eclipse expedition, Pasachoff and colleagues published a paper in the June 2002 issue of Solar Physics on the detection of coronal oscillations, verifying a set of theories on coronal heating through magnetic waves.

"There are theoretical predictions by other astronomers about models of coronal heating and I, as an observational observer, look for observational tests of those models," explained Pasachoff.

Pasachoff says that sunlight reaches Earth from the corona from three different sources: light actually emitted from the corona; light from the sun that is reflected off coronal electrons towards Earth; and light added to that light from the reflection of dust particles near the orbit of Mercury.

A full image of the corona will allow astronomers to trace the coronal streamers that they see in the outer and middle corona to the streamers' roots on the sun's surface and to see the region of the corona where the solar winds form, said Pasachoff.

By John Roachfor
National Geographic NewsDecember 3, 2002
Full article:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1203_021203_solareclipse.html

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Until When?!

Reuters Photo
Why some ones have no food, no wears, no house?... while Some ones want to eat everything... to have everything.

Isn't enough for us one jeans, one t-shirt, one shoe?
Isn't enough for us one house? One car?

Why we always do everything without thinking that the money we are throwing, may help someone to live.

Is it acceptable?

Future Power!



Where on Earth can our energy-hungry society turn to replace oil, coal, and natural gas?
Freedom!
I stand in a cluttered room surrounded by the debris of electrical enthusiasm: wire peelings, snippets of copper, yellow connectors, insulated pliers. For me these are the tools of freedom. I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work. A meter shows that 1,285 watts of power are blasting straight from the sun into my system, charging my batteries, cooling my refrigerator, humming through my computer, liberating my life.

The euphoria of energy freedom is addictive. Don't get me wrong; I love fossil fuels. I live on an island that happens to have no utilities, but otherwise my wife and I have a normal American life. We don't want propane refrigerators, kerosene lamps, or composting toilets. We want a lot of electrical outlets and a cappuccino maker. But when I turn on those panels, wow!

Maybe that's because for me, as for most Americans, one energy crisis or another has shadowed most of the past three decades. From the OPEC crunch of the 1970s to the skyrocketing cost of oil and gasoline today, the world's concern over energy has haunted presidential speeches, congressional campaigns, disaster books, and my own sense of well-being with the same kind of gnawing unease that characterized the Cold War.

As National Geographic reported in June 2004, oil, no longer cheap, may soon decline. Instability where most oil is found, from the Persian Gulf to Nigeria to Venezuela, makes this lifeline fragile. Natural gas can be hard to transport and is prone to shortages. We won't run out of coal anytime soon, or the largely untapped deposits of tar sands and oil shale. But it's clear that the carbon dioxide spewed by coal and other fossil fuels is warming the planet, as this magazine reported last September.

Cutting loose from that worry is enticing. With my new panels, nothing stands between me and limitless energy—no foreign nation, no power company, no carbon-emission guilt. I'm free!

Well, almost. Here comes a cloud.

Shade steals across my panels and over my heart. The meter shows only 120 watts. I'm going to have to start the generator and burn some more gasoline. This isn't going to be easy after all.

The trouble with energy freedom is that it's addictive; when you get a little, you want a lot. In microcosm I'm like people in government, industry, and private life all over the world, who have tasted a bit of this curious and compelling kind of liberty and are determined to find more.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Sun Of Our Life

That's true... sometimes the clouds hide the sun rays, but there is no storm that lasts forever...

Sassine El Nabbout MD.

PREPARE YOURSELF


If you want to hide yourself inside your cave while the enemy is coming, you are already dead...

Sassine El Nabbout

Where Am I?

Webshots Photo

When I disappear in the soil, don't say that i died;

I'm always here, in every tree that lived in my neighborhood; In everyone of you...

Sassine El Nabbout MD.


Surgical Beauty…

It seems that the fever of evolution has attacked everyone… being as you are, is a mental retardation… you must be like the others… following the mode… doing strictly like them… with no more creation…
Now you can walk outside and see many girls and boys… they are all similar… same noses, lips, breasts, hair color…
It’s a prototype… created by someone and diffused by the media… the style of beauty… and if you are not like this dumb style, you are not beautiful… you are not sexy or attracting all the boys and girls in the street…
Be like that and even the elders will run behind you… you are the beauty… everyone wants you… that’s how you can feel confidence…
Being you is disgusting… as you are created by god is really disgusting…
“Really god doesn’t understand how you can be beautiful!”…
It seems that you and your lover, your family, your friends understand more than god in beauty…
“He made us like that to be sad from how we look like”…
“He is really unfair”…
“Why her-his lips are more beautiful? Why her-his skin is softer than mine? Why her-his nose is so beautiful and mine is big? I really don’t accept that”…
“God, sorry… but I will do a surgery to correct your faults”…
“You see, because of you I’m paying money, while you could make it to me for free”…
“Anyway, it’s my body, and I’m free to do with it what I want”…
“It is for just being like all these, I accept pain… I pay all what I have even to be beautiful”…
“Having a large hip is bad… fifteen centimeters are the best… even if mine are sixteen centimeters large; I have to lose something”…
“My lips are so small; I have to make them more large and hard”…
“My breasts are so big like mum… I cannot accept this idea… neither my boyfriend”…
“I know that my teethes are good… but I must put this diamond on one of them… it’s the fashion”…

What is this beauty?
What is fashion?
Who put these protocols?
Who said that’s right and that’s wrong?
The media is the mouth of commerce… all is programmed to take easily your money… to waste your time and your power on things that don’t deserve…
You pass hours and hours in front of your mirror, but no one moment for god… isn’t narcissism?!
You pay all what you have on your body, but no one penny to help someone who really need it… isn’t narcissism?!

Everything is done to make you a sex puppet… while you lose your humanity… your heart… your soul…

What is your need? Hiding your inside? Recharging your confidence after a lost love?
No really! Your confidence or your narcissism?!

It’s really a sickness… but the disease is inside you, not in your body…
Accepting yourself is the only way to resolve it…
Without accepting yourself, you can never accept the others, even if they accept you…
Remember, your body is something temporary… fragile… easy breakable… change with time…
Yes, it will change… and the ones, who accepted you for your form, will leave you alone…

I agree, it’s not the only sin… but it is just one more needed paper to get hell’s visa…
You will say: “my body is the temple of god, and I’m making it more beautiful”…
WOW, I can’t believe it… is there someone who thinks like you?!!

They said to you: your beauty is your secret… And I say to you: your heart is your secret…
Destroy your point of weakness… feel confident… you are beautiful even if the six billions human being on earth said the contrary…
You are not only beautiful, but even wonderful and amazing…
That’s how you are in the eyes of who created you…
That’s how you are in the hearts of the ones who really love you… just for being you…

Sassine El Nabbout MD.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Unfair...

Photo By Reuters

While someone’s are paying billions of dollars to give "democracy" to the countries under evolution, I suggest that they give them something to eat before...

When The Snow Melt ...
















Kobayat National Reserve,
Akkar, North Lebanon
Sassine El Nabbout Photo

The snow was here, covering everything...
But who said "no way"...
Life is just full of ways...
And the most beautiful way is the one of love...

I believe that every born from the pure is beautiful...

There is no other way to be beautiful more than what you are seeing now...
No one had wears like that... even the greatest kings...

I wish that my heart is just like one of these flowers...
Like that i know i will make someone happy, even if my life is just some days...

Sassine El Nabbout MD.

Writing On Sand

There is a story of two friends who were walking through a desert.At a certain point of the journey they had an argument, and onefriend slapped the other one right across the face. The one who gotslapped was very hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "Today my closest friend slapped me?."
The two friends kept on walking until they found an oasis, wherethey decided to go into the water. The one, who had been slapped,got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but his friend savedhim.After the friend recovered from near drowning, he carved outon a stone: " Today my closest friend Saved My Life."
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him,"After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on astone, why?"
The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But,when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it instone where no wind can ever erase it."

Author Unknown.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

So What?

“The world now has a record 793 billionaires, up 15 percent from a year ago, with a rising number in India, Russia, Brazil and the Middle East as well as more women, Forbes magazine said on Thursday”. Reuters
So what do I have to say? Alleluia?!...
One hundred more billionaires & more than five billions poor?
What is that comedy?
One billion, two, fifty! Then what?
They are not our gods… neither their money is…
What will that change?
Will that protect them against death?
They will die as we will… a wonderful ceremony on the cemetery will change nothing… the presence or absence of all the presidents of the globe will not make a value for afterlife…
Maybe their money can buy for them an eternal respirator, but not a soul…
Maybe their money will buy other’s respect, but not love…
So what?
Will their money allow them to eat tomatoes, that grew on the mountain dew in the lost island of the pacific?…
Will their money give them all the jewels on earth?... no one needs jewels to live as they are not the words of god…
So what?
Power?
Does someone have really a power without god?
Do they have control on their cells… heart… brain… I guess not…
So what?
What does the money means without life?...
Can someone tell me?...

Sassine El Nabbout MD.

I Miss U Lebanon

Cedars Majesty
Kobayat National Reserve
Akkar, North Lebanon
Sassine El Nabbout Photo

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Thoughts...

One day they run away, fast… fearful… without a goodbye… even without one word…
They left thinking that being far will delete the past, and construct a new future…
Yes they left, but they didn’t forget…
Every moment was still written in their heart…
Simply they couldn’t… they separate as a body, but not as a soul…
Yes, they were still feeling near… even that they were alone…
They thought they are far, but they were still following each other by prayers and love…
Their thoughts were hiding the real feelings…
How do I know that?!...
I saw them… When they heard each other, they didn’t stop crying…

Saturday, March 04, 2006

THE KILLER FLU



In Southeast Asia a virus that kills chickens is now also killing people. The race is on to keep the bird flu from ravaging the world.

Little Ngoan was buried behind her parents' hut three weeks ago. Her grave, a bulky concrete tomb like others dotting the Vietnamese countryside, rests on high ground between a fishpond and yellow-green rice fields. At one end her family laid out her cherished possessions: a doll's chair, a collection of shells, plastic sandals. They painted her tomb powder blue.
While Ngoan's parents are off helping with the rice harvest, other relatives share their memories. "She was so small, just ten years old," says her grandmother, sitting on a hammock. "She was very gentle and a good student. If you look at her older sister"—the 17-year-old hangs back shyly—"you can imagine what she was like." Ngoan's grandfather, silent with grief, lights a stick of incense at her grave.

The loss of a beloved child has hit this family hard. But ordinarily, the wider world would pay little attention to a child's death from infectious disease in this remote corner of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Old scourges like dengue fever and typhoid still take a toll here, and HIV/AIDS is on the rise.... (Full Article @ http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0510/feature1/)

www.nationalgeographic.com

WHO Statement


Avian influenza and food safety27 February 2006 -- WHO Director-General Dr LEE Jong-wook reconfirmed today that when poultry products are safely handled and properly cooked, humans are not at risk of becoming infected with the H5N1 virus through food. Although the virus is known to have infected 173 people, not one of these cases has been linked to the consumption of properly cooked poultry or poultry products.

www.who.int

Will The United Kingdom Thrown Fall?


National Geographic
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, first identified in China, has reached nearby France where in the past week two dead ducks were diagnosed as carrying the virus. The British government now says that bird flu is likely to arrive in the country.
English legend says that a terrible evil will befall the kingdom if the Tower of London loses its ravens, which have lived at the landmark for more than 300 years.
"The legend goes back to the early part of Charles II's reign," said the Tower's raven master, Derrick Coyle, who looks after the birds.
King Charles II, who reigned from 1660 to 1685, decreed that at least six ravens should always be kept at the 11th-century fortress that sits on the River Thames.
The Tower, one of Europe's top tourist attractions, also houses the Crown Jewels.
Coyle, 61, says the ravens have been confined for both their own safety and that of the nation.
The Tower's current resident ravens—Baldrick, Branwen, Gwyllum, Hugine, Munin, and Thor—are usually seen strutting about the Tower's green where they are popular with sightseers.
"A lot of visitors are asking where the ravens are, but when we explain the reason why they've been put away, they completely understand," the raven master said.
The birds, whose wings are clipped to prevent them flying away, have been moved to aviaries in one of the royal palace's towers.
"They're being kept in a big airy room with lots of light and fresh air. They're doing very well in there," Coyle said.
James Owen
for National Geographic News
Updated February 27, 2006

Global Warming May Dry Up Africa's Rivers

Many climate scientists already predict that less rain will fall annually in parts of Africa within 50 years due to global warming.
Now new research suggests that even a small decrease in rainfall on the continent could cause a drastic reduction in river water, the lifeblood for rural populations in Africa.
A decrease in water availability could occur across about 25 percent of the continent, according to the new study.
Hardest hit would be areas in northwestern and southern Africa, with some of the most serious effects striking large areas of Botswana and South Africa.
Geologists Maarten de Wit and Jacek Stankiewicz of the University of Cape Town in South Africa conducted the research. Their findings appear in the current edition of the online journal Science Express.
To predict future rainfall, the scientists compared 21 of what they consider to be the best climate change models developed by research teams around the world. On average, the models forecast a 10 to 20 percent drop in rainfall in northwestern and southern Africa by 2070.
The researchers then juxtaposed these rainfall predictions with measurements of Africa's rivers to gauge the future of Africa's water supply.
With a 10 percent drop in rainfall, parts of Botswana (map) would be left with just 23 percent of the surface-water flow it has now, their study showed.
With a 20 percent decrease, Cape Town would be left with just 42 percent of its river water, and "Botswana would completely dry up,'' de Wit said.
In parts of northern Africa, river water levels would drop below 50 percent.
"It's like erasing large sections of the rivers from the map,'' de Wit said of the findings.
Areas in Danger
DeWit and Stankiewicz said they happened upon the results unintentionally while working on a mathematical model to study African river drainage.
The pair developed a measure called drainage density, the total length of a river per unit area, such as square mile.
"If you increase precipitation by [a factor of] two, you would have to add in more riverbeds to get rid of that water. So you would have a higher drainage density,'' de Wit said.
"If you decrease the drainage, you don't need as many riverbeds to get rid of it all."
Equipped with this data, the team then plugged in the climate change models, which all predict various decreases in rainfall.
They found that areas that receive "intermediate" amounts of rain—between 400 and 1000 millimeters (16 and 39 inches) a year—were the most vulnerable to a drop or rise in rainfall.
In those regions the total length of rivers shrinks or expands sharply with rainfall, de Wit explained. About 25 percent of Africa and 75 percent of its countries have some land in this category.
If an area that now receives 600 millimeters (24 inches) of rain per year got just 550 milliliters (22 inches) of rain in the future, the river drainage would drop by up to 25 percent.
A further reduction in rainfall to 450 millimeters (18 inches) would cut river drainage by half.
Less river water would have serious implications not just for people but for the many animal species whose habitats rely on regular water supplies.
"The Cape [of Good Hope in South Africa] is a biodiversity hotspot," de Wit said. "Will it be there in 50 years?''
Less Water, More Conflict
Unlike other continents, Africa does not have a large mountain range that produces snowmelt, rivers, and precipitation, de Wit explained.
"In Africa surface water is extremely important. Most of the people outside urban areas are still reliant on surface water for daily use,'' he said.
If de Wit's estimates are correct, the situation for rural Africans is grave, said Adil Najam, a professor of negotiation and diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Many people in Africa spend more time and money on acquiring water than nearly any other resource, he said.
If water becomes more scarce or expensive, people will do what they must to obtain it.
"Water is nonnegotiable. If you are poor, you don't stop drinking water,'' Najam said.
Less river water may heighten international conflicts, he added, because many African rivers cross international boundaries.

Adrianne Appelfor
National Geographic News
March 3, 2006

No Comment

Kobayat National Reserve, Akkar
Sassine El Nabbout Photo

Thursday, March 02, 2006

A Lebanese Artist



Dr Hicham Mansour, son of the “Miyyeh w Miyyeh”; grew with the famous olive trees of the south of Lebanon; in a wild peacefull nature that is the main source of his beautiful art.I invite you to visit his webpages and see mainly his paints and e-arts; without missing his extreme love to the national legend “Fairuz” and the writer of the Fifth Wind Land.
http://www.artist.fictioncity.com
http://www.lebanon.thechurchzone.com
Enjoy