Monkey Deodorant Smells Sweet

What may be the most natural cologne in the world was recently discovered in a Mexican forest. The ingredients? Monkey spit and chewed up leaves.

According to a paper in this month's issue of the journal Primates, male Mexican spider monkeys chew the leaves of three aromatic plants: the Alamos pea tree, which has fragrant leaves and flowers, a flowering trumpet tree, and wild celery.

The ritual, which typically takes anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes, was deemed monkey "self-anointing" by Matthias Laska, a professor of zoology at Linkoping University in Sweden.

Laska and his colleagues observed the behavior 20 times in two male spider monkeys that were part of a free-ranging group at the Parque de Flora y Fauna Silvestra Tropical in Veracruz, Mexico.

The researchers determined the monkeys always applied just one plant species at a time. The application was routine, not unlike a man who regularly spritzes on deodorant or cologne.

"In the majority of cases, the arm that did not hold the scent-bearing material was held high or grabbed a branch above the animal," Laska and his team wrote.

While this is the first reported case of such behavior in wild Mexican spider monkeys, similar routines have been spotted among both male and female capuchin monkeys, owl monkeys, other spider monkeys and lemurs. In most of these cases, the scientists speculated that the leaf mash might have been used to mitigate topical skin infections or repel bugs.

Laska and his team, however, found that of the plants used by the Mexican spider monkeys, only wild celery is known to have insect-repelling compounds and anti-fungal properties. The other plants simply smell good.

The scientists, therefore, concluded that self-anointing "may play a role in the context of social communication, possibly for signaling of social status or to increase sexual attractiveness."

In other words, monkeys could do it for the same basic reasons people use cologne.

While the chemistry behind this remains a mystery, the odors may mimic those of fragrant, naturally occurring primate steroids, which are presumed to act as sex-stimulating pheromones. Laska conducted an earlier study that found spider monkeys are particularly gifted at sniffing out such scents.

But not all monkeys want to smell like flowers and celery.

Mary Baker, assistant professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College, observed capuchin monkeys applying citrus and tobacco leaf mashes to their bodies.

Christina Campbell, a scientist at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California at Los Angeles, observed the same behavior in black-handed spider monkeys in Panama.

Campbell told Discovery News that "in general, I agree with the (new) findings," but she hasn't yet ruled out other possible reasons for scent rubbing.

"I think the behavior may be some kind of signaling, although I am not convinced," she said. "I also wonder whether it may function to stimulate or clean the gland that they rub the plant mixture on."

Laska hopes future studies will resolve such questions about the fragrant ritual.

source:Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006

No takers for Mardi's end-products

CHEWY fruit strips, herbs with health properties and superior animal feed. These are only some of the products which the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) has developed, but not many people know about them.

The reason? Many of these products remain in the laboratory instead of reaching end users as they do not get commercialised and patented.

Mardi’s mission is "to develop and promote leading-edge technologies for the advancement of food and agriculture industries" but what good is research if there are no takers for the end-products?

The institute’s director-general Dr Abdul Shukor Abdul Rahman said Mardi’s three main outputs were products, processes and information.

However, these have to be innovated or they would be worthless to the end-user.

"The value chain of bringing in any findings from the laboratory to the table starts with research, development and commercialisation," he said.

Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, Mardi will receive continuous funding from the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry for its research and development.

In 2006 alone, RM125 million was allocated for 85 projects. Mardi also gets funding from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, totalling some RM45 million last year.

With more than 95 products and technologies ready to be commercialised and another 71 which have the potential for commercialisation, it would seem that it is indeed money well spent.

However, very few of the products developed by Mardi have been patented and commercialised.

One example is the transgenic papaya — Mardi’s solution for the devastating papaya virus problem (Papaya ringspot virus) which has plagued papaya plantations around the world.

Unfortunately, the transgenic papaya is still confined to the greenhouse and is not allowed to be grown outside as it is awaiting biosafety clearance.

So, just how much of Mardi’s technology has actually been patented?

Abdul Shukor admitted that gaining property rights was important but the patenting process took a long time — five to six years.

Furthermore, he said, patenting a product was not under Mardi’s jurisdiction but it had to go through Sirim which was the patent agent.

"Also, it is very costly to get a product patented overseas but the government has already taken that into consideration."

Over the past 10 years, Mardi has put in 14 applications to have its products or technology patented.

Out of these, one has been granted and one has been rejected while the others are still pending.

Abdul Shukor said Mardi would apply for more patents in the future, not just in Malaysia, but in other countries where he felt that their products could be "duplicated or copied".

Products which have yet to be patented are being value-added to ensure they are competitive enough for the international market.

Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers vice-president Datuk Paul Low said one of the reasons behind the lack of takers for Mardi’s inventions was that most local agriculture-based manufacturers were very small companies.

"To my knowledge, there are not that many agriculture-based players in Malaysia with enough funding to commercialise Mardi’s inventions, except for the government," he said.

Low said big, multinational companies like Nestle had their own research division and did not need to rely on Mardi.

"Research must be done in collaboration with the industry. The end-products must have the potential for commercialisation. If not, nobody would want to take it."

Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) senior patent examiner Kamal Kormin said it takes a long time to grant patents because patent examiners had to do a worldwide check to see if anybody else had patented the product or technology.

Source :NST (7th January 2007)

Vertical Farming

The Problem

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

A Potential Solution: farm vertically

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.


It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted. Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones into semi-arid deserts. Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which 60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans are protected against the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors of the “great outdoors” and can do no more than hope for a good weather year. However, more often than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate regime, that is not what follows. Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. Don’t our harvestable plants deserve the same level of “comfort” and protection that we now enjoy? The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.
Advantages of Vertical Farming
Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of
evapotranspiration
VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible
parts of plants and animals
VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
VF creates new employment opportunities
We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on
earth
VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical
LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water
and land for agriculture

source: http//www.verticalfarm.com

The Secrets of DNA

Introduction

Major Milestone in the History of Humanity

Introduction: Major Milestone in the History of Humanity The data Bank of Life: DNA The Question That Demolishes the Theory of Evolution: How did the DNA Originate? The Question That Demolishes the Theory of Evolution: The Theory of Information and the end of Materialism The Ape-Man Similarity is A Fabrication Darwinist-Materialist Misconceptions About The Human Genome Project The Latest Fossil Claim of the Theory of Evolution has also Become History

Today is the day of a major milestone in history. The materialist philosophy, once imposed on the mass of humanity under the guise of science, is ironically being defeated today by science itself.

Materialism, the philosophy which holds that everything is composed of matter and which denies the existence of God, is actually the contemporary version of paganism. Ancient pagans used to worship non-living beings like wooden or stone totem poles and considered them divine beings. Materialist philosophy, on the other hand, bases its claim on the belief that man and all other beings are created by atoms and molecules. According to this superstitious view, non-living atoms somehow organized themselves and over time acquired life and consciousness finally bringing man into being.

This superstitious belief of materialism is called "evolution". The belief in evolution, first introduced in the pagan cultures of the ancient Sumerians and then the ancient Greeks, was in a way revived in the 19^th century by a group of materialist scientists and brought onto the world agenda. Charles Darwin is the best known of these scientists. The theory of evolution he advanced wasted the time of the world of science for 150 years, and despite its widely acknowledged flawed nature, has been hitherto sustained for purely ideological reasons.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers evidently received their concepts of evolutionary cosmogony from the even more ancient religious leaders of Egypt and Babylonia or Sumeria. The Sumerian tablets at the left are based on the superstitious belief of that time and refer to the imaginary stages in man's creation.

However, as mentioned earlier, today, materialism is collapsing with a big boom. It is often stated that there were three important materialist theorists who steered the 19^th century: Freud, Marx and Darwin. The theories of the first two were examined, tested, and, proving to be invalid, subsequently rejected in the 20^th century. Nowadays, the theory of Darwin is also collapsing.

Some important developments in June 2000 accelerated this great collapse of materialism.

First, scientists carrying out experiments to exceed the speed of light made a discovery which turned all scientific premises upside down. In an experiment in which the speed of light was exceeded many times, the scientists observed with astonishment that the effect of the experiment occurred before its cause. This was the defeat of the claim of "causality" that was put forward on the basis of materialist views, in the 19^th century. The subject was outlined in a newspaper under the headline "It has been proved that effect without cause is possible and that the end of an event can happen before its beginning". Indeed, the occurrence of the effect of an action before the action that seems to be its cause, is scientific evidence that all events are created individually. This totally demolishes the materialist dogma.

A few weeks later, it was revealed that Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird presented as "the most important fossil evidence" by Darwinists for more than a century, was actually not evidence for, but a blow to the theory. When another fossil, some 75 million years older than this fossil which was allegedly the "primitive ancestor of birds", and no different from modern birds, was discovered, evolutionists were shocked. On June 25th, 2000, even a journal which used to present Archaeopteryx as the "primitive ancestor of birds" was obliged to report the news item headlined "The Ancestor of Birds Proved to be a Bird".

Finally, the Human Genome Project, an attempt to draft a rough map of the human genome, was concluded and the details of the "genetic information", which highlighted how superior God's creation of living beings is, have been revealed to mankind. Today, everyone who considers the results of this project and finds out that a single human cell contains enough information to be stored in thousands of encyclopaedia pages, grasps what a great miracle of creation this is.

Charles Darwin Sigmund Freud Karl Marx

Nevertheless, evolutionists try to misinterpret this recent development, which, in truth, works against them, and present it as evidence for "evolution". Unable to explain even how the DNA chain of a tiny bacterium originated, evolutionists try to deliver messages such as "human genes resemble animal genes". Such messages are inaccurate and have no scientific value. They are designed to mislead society. Meanwhile, some press institutions, both because of their ignorance on the subject and their prejudiced approach, suppose that the Human Genome Project provides "evidence of evolution" and try to present it that way.

In this booklet, the abovementioned evolutionist misconceptions are explained and the irrational and shallow nature of the objections raised to creation are clarified. In addition, the severity of the blow the recent findings have struck against Darwinism is explicitly revealed.

When you read this book, you, too, will see that materialist philosophy which rejects God is about to meet its end and that in the 21^st century, humanity will return to the real purpose of their creation by being relieved of deceits such as evolution.

more at http://www.evidencesofcreation.com/dna01.htm

by Harun Yahya