Nature Exhibits 12 "Matter Particles"

How many matter particles exist in nature? Particle physicists have been dealing with this question for a long time. The 12 matter particles contained in the standard model of particle physics? Or are there further particles with too high a mass to be produced by the experiments performed so far?

These questions are now answered by researchers of KIT, CERN, and Humboldt University in the current issue of the Physical Review Letters. (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.241802)

Matter particles, also called fermions, are the elementary components of the universe. They make up everything we see on earth or through telescopes. "For a long time, however, it was not clear whether we know all components," explains Ulrich Nierste, Professor at KIT. The standard model of particle physics knows 12 fermions. Based on their similar properties, they are divided into three generations of four particles each. Only the first generation of particles occurs in appreciable amount outside of particle accelerators. Among these particles are the electron, the electron neutrino, and the up-quark and down-quark. Up- and down-quarks form heavier particles, such as protons and neutrons and, hence, all elements of the periodic system.

"But why does nature have second and third generations, if these are hardly needed? And are there maybe more generations of particles?", ask the main authors of the article, Martin Wiebusch and Otto Eberhardt. At least, the latter question is answered: "There are exactly three fermion generations in the standard model of particle physics!"

For their analysis, the researchers combined latest data collected by the particle accelerators LHC and Tevatron with many known measurements results relating to particles, such as the Z-boson or the top-quark.

The result of the statistical analysis is that the existence of further fermions can be excluded with a probability of 99.99999 percent (5.3 sigma). The most important data used for this analysis come from the recently discovered Higgs particle.

The Higgs particle gives all other particles their mass. As additional fermions were not detected directly in accelerator experiments, they have to be heavier than the fermions known so far. Hence, these fermions would also interact with the Higgs particle more strongly. This interaction would have modified the properties of the Higgs particle such that this particle would not have been detected. With the exclusion of the fourth fermion generation the first open question of particle physics is now answered by the measurements made at the new LHC particle accelerator ring of CERN.

"Within the standard model the number of fermions is now firmly established," explains Nierste. However, some interesting questions remain. The properties of the just discovered Higgs particle still have to be determined and it has to be found out why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

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Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a public corporation according to the legislation of the state of Baden-Württemberg. It fulfills the mission of a university and the mission of a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT focuses on a knowledge triangle that links the tasks of research, teaching, and innovation. 

http://www.kit.edu/visit/pi_2012_12398.php

Two Lunar Probes Will Hit Our Moon

NASA Gravity Probes Prepare
to Hit the Moon
NASA production editor, Dr. Tony Philips

Dec. 13, 2012: A pair of NASA spacecraft that have been studying the Moon's gravitational field are being prepared for a controlled descent into a mountain near the Moon's north pole. Impact is expected at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) on Monday, Dec. 17.

"It is going to be difficult to say goodbye to our little robotic twins," says MIT professor Maria Zuber, principal investigator of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission. "Planetary science has advanced in a major way because of their contributions."

The two probes, named Ebb and Flow, are being sent purposely into the lunar surface because their low orbit and low fuel levels preclude further scientific operations.

Ebb and Flow's successful mission to the Moon has yielded the highest-resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding not only of the Moon, but also of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

The spacecraft have been flying in formation around the Moon since Jan. 1, 2012. They were named by elementary school students in Bozeman, Mont., who won a contest.
　
The first probe to reach the Moon, Ebb, also will be the first to go down, at 2:28:40 p.m. PST. Flow will follow Ebb about 20 seconds later. Both spacecraft will hit the surface at 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second). No imagery of the impact is expected because the region will be in shadow at the time. The impact site is located near a crater named Goldschmidt.

Ebb and Flow will conduct one final experiment before their mission ends. They will fire their main engines until their propellant tanks are empty to determine precisely the amount of fuel remaining in their tanks. This will help NASA engineers validate fuel consumption computer models to improve predictions of fuel needs for future missions.

"Our lunar twins may be in the twilight of their operational lives, but one thing is for sure, they are going down swinging," said GRAIL project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Even during the last half of their last orbit, we are going to do an engineering experiment that could help future missions operate more efficiently."

Because the exact amount of fuel remaining aboard each spacecraft is unknown, mission navigators and engineers designed the depletion burn to allow the probes to descend gradually for several hours and skim the surface of the moon until the elevated terrain of the target mountain gets in their way.

The burn that will change the spacecrafts' orbit is scheduled to take place Friday morning, Dec. 14.

"Such a unique end-of-mission scenario requires extensive and detailed mission planning and navigation," said Lehman. "We've had our share of challenges during this mission and always come through in flying colors, but nobody I know around here has ever flown into a Moon mountain before. It'll be a first for us, that's for sure."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/13dec_grail/

Positive Quiddity: Brunswick Stew

Introduction by the Blog Author
Brunswick stew is a secret power food guzzled in copious quantities in the American southeast. It is peculiarly, strangely delicious. It may be the best "heat-and-serve" canned stew available anywhere. Of course, disputes over the origin and proper ingredients abound.

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from Wikipedia:

Brunswick stew is a traditional dish, popular in the American South. The origin of the dish is uncertain, and there are two competing claims as to the place in the South where it originated, in addition to a claim of a German origin.

Ingredients
Recipes for Brunswick stew vary greatly but it is usually a tomato-based stew containing various types of lima beans/butter beans, corn, okra, and other vegetables, and one or more types of meat. Most recipes claiming authenticity call for squirrel or rabbit meat,m but chicken, pork and beef are also common ingredients. Some versions have a distinctly smoky taste. Eastern North Carolina Brunswick Stew has potatoes, which thickens it considerably. Eastern Virginia Brunswick Stew tends to be thinner, with more tomato flavor and less smoky flavor.

The stew essentially resembles a very thick vegetable soup with meat. The key distinguishing factor between soup and Brunswick stew is the consistency. Brunswick stew must be thick; otherwise, it would be vegetable soup with meat added. Most variations have more meat and vegetables than liquid.

The main difference between the Georgia and Virginia versions have been the types of meat used.  The Virginia version tends to favor chicken as the primary meat, along with rabbit. The Georgia version tends to favor pork and beef along with squirrel. As there is no "official" recipe for Brunswick stew, it is possible to find chicken, pork, beef, and other types of meat included in the same recipe. North Carolina natives have been known for their own unique concoction, similarly thick and tomato based, using chicken-breast chunks and pulled Eastern North Carolina-style barbecue (pork) as the meat.

The town of Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia, both claim to be the origin of the stew.

                                                       Brunswick Stew
   
A plaque on an old iron pot in Brunswick, Georgia, states the first Brunswick stew was made in it on July 2, 1898, on nearby St. Simons Island. competing story claims a Virginia state legislator's chef invented the recipe in 1828 on a hunting expedition.


 However, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in her 1942 Cross Creek Cookery, wrote that the stew, said to have been one of Queen Victoria's favorites, may actually come from Braunschweig, Germany.

In areas where Brunswick stew is sold for fundraising, it is made in large iron pots over open flame or gas. Unlike soup, the stew is usually allowed to simmer and cook for long periods of time. This may be attributed to the older tradition of putting game meats into the stew, which might require a longer cooking time to ensure that the meats were tender.

Commercial Stew from Mrs. Fearnow
Mrs. Fearnow's is a popular brand of canned Brunswick stew. In the 1920s Mrs. Lillie Pearl Fearnow began making her stew on Hope Farm in Virginia. Still made with the same recipe, it is now owned by Bost Distributing Company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunswick_stew

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This stuff is good. My son will eat it!!!
Love this stew.
An Amazon.com review written October 1, 2012, by Jaci Pergerson

This stew rocks. My 6 year old loves it. Better than the stew in the refrigerated tub. We plan to have lots on hand this winter for if the power goes out, etc. We haven't seen it in stores for about 3 months but the web site blames the distributor and they say that it will be back soon. Yeah!!!! It is really good and it has been around forever.

The Last Algonquin

by Theodore L. Kazimiroff

Published by Walker Books

Story Synopsis

           Like E.T. the last Algonquin was a being stranded in an alien culture. The last of his tribe and living in prehistoric fashion, he chose to live out his life as an Indian, completely separate from modern day culture. Like E.T. he chose to reveal himself to a small boy. There is something infinitely sad about the extinction of the last of its kind, whether it is an animal species or even of a primitive human tribe with its own distinctive culture. What has gone can never be recalled. His name was Joe Two Trees. This is the amazing true story about an ancient Algonquin brave whose hunting grounds had once been between Manhattan Island and the lands around it, and who lingered into the 20th century.
           In the 1850s Joe Two Trees and his parents were the last of an Algonquin clan living in the area that is now part of a New York City park. Theirs and another family were the only ones who did not move north or west when the clan was displaced by European settlers. When Joe was 15 his parents died, and every Indian that he had known was either dead or vanished. He believed he was the last Indian alive. Left alone, he set out to enter the white man's world into Manhattan. He was dumbfounded at the paved streets, horse drawn wagons, and more people than he had ever seen before. He tried to understand the whites who increasingly surrounded him. It wasn't long before he was robbed, and almost killed, so he abandoned city life for the countryside, living off the land, wandering from place to place with his dog looking for his people. For eight years he tried to figure out how to best make it in a white man's world. Joe worked as a farm hand, and as a laborer in Pennsylvania coal mines. He found friends, an African slave and an Italian shopkeeper, and even romance. But he suffered bigotry and again nearly died from a group beating he received simply for being different. Joe chose, therefore, to live alone as an Indian. He returned to his Hunter Island home in the Bronx, dazed and depressed, a man living outside of his time. 
           Two Trees lived in the woods in a kind of bower made of vines and branches.  This is still a sparsely populated area, which may explain how a young Boy Scout, the author’s father, came to meet the old Indian, wrinkled and lean to the point of boniness.  His clothes were made of fur, cloth and leather.  He lived on plants and fruits in his garden and the fish in nearby waters.  He used predatory insects like the praying mantis to keep his plants free of insect pests.  A great black dog and his memories of his people kept him company. 
            It was 1924 when young 12-year-old Kazimiroff, while exploring the woods, met Joe. A friendship grew up between the white boy and the old Indian. 
            “Often in loneliness Two Trees would go to the old places of his tribe, but there was only the white boy.”  He taught the boy how to fish, make clay pots and arrowheads, and over a period of time recounted to him his own story and that of the Algonquin, of whom he was the last.
            The Last Algonquin is a narrative, detailed in its revelation of the ancient Indian ways, and more vivid in its picture of the collision between the primitive and the contemporary.  In such a clash there can be only one result.
             Joe Two Tree’s journey is a fascinating yet melancholy tale which might never have been told but for the white boy’s curiosity. One hopes Joe Two Trees has joined his ancestors in the world of spirit.
             It is the story of one man's quest for dignity and peace.

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"A beautiful and affecting story - a quest, a mythic adventure and journey" New York Times
"This classic will live forever" Michael Blake - Academy Award winning screenwriter Dances with Wolves
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Contact: Phil Moyer - Arizona Film Productions PH# 928-300-4919

www.thelastalgonquin.com - philmoyer7@yahoo.com

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr (9 November 1913 – 19 January 2000) was an Austrian-American actress, celebrated for her great beauty, who was a major contract star of MGM’s "Golden Age." When she worked with Max Reinhardt in Berlin, he called her the "most beautiful woman in Europe" due to her "strikingly dark exotic looks," a sentiment widely shared by her audiences and critics. She gained fame after starring in Gustav Machaty’s Ecstasy, a film which featured closeups of her character during orgasm in one scene, as well as full frontal nude shots of her in another scene, both very unusual for the socially conservative period in which the bulk of her career took place.

Mathematically talented, Lamarr also co-invented—with composer George Antheil—an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.

Early life
Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of assimilated Jewish parents. Her mother, Gertrud (née Lichtwitz), was a pianist and Budapest native who came from the "Jewish haute bourgeousie," and her father, Lemberg-born Emil Kiesler, was a successful
bank director.

She learnt ballet and piano at age 10.

Early film career and marriage
In early 1933 Lamarr starred in Gustav Machaty’s movie, Ecstasy, (Extase in German and Czech), which was filmed in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Lamarr’s role was that of a neglected young wife married to an indifferent older man. The film became notorious for Lamarr’s face in the throes of orgasm filmed in close-up and her full nudity in scenes where she is seen swimming and running through the woods. Friedrich Mandl, her first husband objected to what he felt was exploitation of his wife, and "the expression on her face" during the simulated orgasm. He purportedly bought up as many copies of Ecstasy as he could find in an attempt to restrict its public viewing. In an autobiography of Lamarr written in later years, she insists that all sexual activity in the film was simulated; the orgasm achieved using "method acting reality." The authenticity of passion was attained by the film director’s off-screen manipulation of a safety pin strategically poking her bottom.

The 19-year old Lamarr had married Mandl, a man 13 years her senior, on August 10, 1933.  Friedrich Mandl, reputed to be the third richest man in Austria, was a munitions manufacturer. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr described Mandl as an extremely controlling man who prevented her from pursuing her acting career and kept her a virtual prisoner, confined to their castle home, "Schloss Schwarzenau." Though half-Jewish, Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist governments of Italy and Germany, selling munitions to Mussolini. In Ecstasy and Me, Lamarr wrote that both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini attended the lavish parties they hosted in their home.

Mandl had Lamarr accompany him to business meetings where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences became Lamarr’s introduction to the field of applied science and the ground that nurtured her latent talent in the scientific field.

Lamarr’s marriage to Mandl became insupportable for her and she devised a ruse to separate herself from both the marriage and the country. In Ecstasy and Me, she claimed to have disguised herself as her own maid and fled to Paris. Rumors stated that Lamarr persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner, then disappeared.
　
Hollywood

　
                                                Hedy Lamarr

First she went to Paris, then met Louis B. Mayer in London. Known as "the Ecstasy lady," after hiring her, he insisted that she change her name to Hedy Lamarr, choosing the surname in homage to a beautiful film star of the silent era, Barbara La Marr, who had died in 1926 from tuberculosis. She received good reviews for her American film debut in Algiers (1938) with Charles Boyer, who asked that Lamarr be cast after meeting her at a party. In Hollywood, she was invariably cast as the archetypal glamorous seductress of exotic origins. Lamarr played opposite the era's most popular leading men. Her many films include Boom Town (1940) with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, Comrade X with Gable, White Cargo (1942), and Tortilla Flat (1942) with Tracy and John Garfield, based on the novel by John Steinbeck. In 1941, Lamarr was cast alongside two other Hollywood stars, Lana Turner and Judy Garland in the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl.
　
The Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum Invention
Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experimented with automated control of musical instruments, including his music for Ballet Mecanique, originally written for Fernand Legar’s 1924 abstract film. This score involved multiple player pianos playing simultaneously.

Lamarr took her idea to Antheil and together, Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, US Patent 2,292,387 was granted to

Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey," Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. Although a presentation of the technique was soon made to the U.S. Navy, it met with opposition and was not adopted.


The idea was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in development, the patent was little-known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for this contribution. It is reported that, in 1998, Ottawa wireless technology developer Wi-LAN, Inc. "acquired a 49 percent claim to the patent from Lamarr for an undisclosed amount of stock" (Eliza Schmidkunz, Inside GNSS), although expired patents have no economic value. Antheil had died in 1959.

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum technology, such as Bluetooth, COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections, and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones. Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent Secrecy Communication System (1598673) seems to lay the communications groundwork for Kiesler and Antheil's patent, which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes.
Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was reportedly told by NIC member Charles F. Kettering and others that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds.
　
Later years
White Cargo, one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM, contains, arguably, her most memorable film quote delivered with hints of a provocative invitation: "I am Tondelayo. I make tiffin for you?" Lamarr made 18 films from 1940 to 1949 even though she had two children during that time (in 1945 and 1947). After leaving MGM in 1945, she enjoyed her biggest success as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, the highest-grossing film of 1949, with Victor Mature as the Biblical strongman. However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (1951), her career went into decline. She appeared only sporadically in films after 1950, one of her last roles being that of Joan of Arc in Irwin Allen’s's critically panned epic The Story of Mankind (1957).
Lamarr became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 10, 1953.
In 1966, Lamarr was arrested for shoplifting in Los Angeles. The charges were eventually dropped. In 1991, she was arrested on the same charge in Florida, this time for $21.48 worth of laxatives and eye drops. She pleaded "no contest" to avoid a court appearance, and in return for a promise to refrain from breaking any laws for a year, the charges were once again dropped.

According to her autobiography, Ecstasy and Me (1966), once while running away from Friedrich Mandl, she slipped into a brothel and hid in an empty room. While her husband searched the brothel, a man entered the room and she had sex with him so she could remain hidden. She was finally successful in escaping when she hired a new maid who resembled her; she drugged the maid and used her uniform as a disguise to escape. Lamarr later sued the publisher, saying that many of the anecdotes in the book, which was described by a judge as "filthy, nauseating, and revolting," were fabricated by its ghost writer, Leo Guild. She was also sued in Federal Court by Gene Ringgold, who asserts that the actress's autobiography contains material from an article he wrote about her for the magazine Screen Facts in 1965. The publication of her autobiography Ecstasy and Me (1967) took place about a year after accusations of shoplifting, and a year after Andy Warhol’s short film Hedy (1966), also known as The Shoplifter. The shoplifting charges coincided with a failed return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor. Ecstasy and Me begins in a despondent mood, with this reference:
　

"On a recent evening, sitting home alone suffering and brooding about my treatment at the police station because of an incident in a department store, and being replaced by Zsa Zsa Gabor in a motion picture (imagine how that pleased the ego!) I figured out that I had made – and spent – some thirty million dollars. Yet earlier that day I had been unable to pay for a sandwich at Schwab’s drug store."

The 1970s were a decade of increasing seclusion for Lamarr. She was offered several scripts, television commercials, and stage projects, but none inspired her interest. In 1974, Lamarr filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit to the tune of $10 million for the unauthorized use of her name in the Mel Brooks satire Blazing Saddles; the case was settled out of court. Tired of the life of a celebrity and with her eyesight failing, Lamarr retreated from public life and settled in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1981.

For several years beginning in 1997, the boxes of CorelDRAW’s software suites were graced by a large Corel-drawn image of Hedy Lamarr. The picture won CorelDRAW's yearly software suite cover design contest in 1996. Lamarr sued Corel for using the image without her permission. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in 1998.

Tributes and References
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd

An Off-Broadway play, Frequency Hopping, features the lives of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil. The play was written and staged by Elyse Singer in 2008, and the script won a prize for best new play about science and technology from STAGE.

The 2010 New York Public Library's exhibit: "Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library" includes a photo of a topless Lamarr (ca. 1930) by Austrian-born American photographer Trude Fleischmann.

The story of Hedy Lamarr's frequency-hopping spread-spectrum invention, was explored in an episode of the Science Channel show Dark Matters: Twisted But True, a series which explores the darker side of scientific discovery and experimentation, which premiered on September 7, 2011. Her story was also featured in the premiere episode of the Discovery Channel show We Invented the World.

According to actress Anne Hathaway, the portrayal of Catwoman in the 2012 Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises was based on Hedy Lamarr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

Positive Quiddity: Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler (nee Krzyżanowska, also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, Nom de guerre Jolanta; 15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008) was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground during World War II, and as head of children's section of Zegota, an underground resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw. Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota members, Sendler smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and with housing outside the Ghetto, thereby saving those children from being killed in the Holocaust.

The Nazis eventually discovered her activities, tortured her, and sentenced her to death; but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognized by the State of Israel as a Righteous among the Nations. Late in life she was awarded Poland’s highest honor for her wartime humanitarian efforts and also was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with support from President Lech Kaczynski, but did not win. She appears on a silver 2009 Polish commemorative coin honoring some of the Holocaust-resisters of Poland..

During the German occupation of Poland, Sendler lived in Warsaw (prior to that, she had lived in Otwock and Tarczyn while working for urban Social Welfare departments). As early as 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, she began aiding Jews. She and her helpers created over 3,000 false documents to help Jewish families, prior to joining the organized Żegota resistance and the children's division. Helping Jews was very risky—in German-occupied Poland all household members risked death if they were found to be hiding Jews, a more severe punishment than in other occupied European countries.

In August 1943, Żegota (the Council to Aid Jews) nominated her (by her cover name Jolanta) to head its children's section. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, something the Nazis feared would spread beyond the Ghetto. During these visits, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people and so as not to call attention to herself.


She cooperated with others in Warsaw's Municipal Social Services department, and the RGO (Central Welfare Council), a Polish relief organization that was tolerated under German supervision. She and her co-workers organized the smuggling of Jewish children out of the Ghetto. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhus outbreak, Sendler and her co-workers visited the Ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages. She also used the old courthouse at the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto (still standing) as one of the main routes for smuggling out children.

The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, or Roman Catholic convents such as the Little Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Conceived Immaculate at Turkowice and Chotomow. Sendler cooperated very closely with social worker and catholic nun, mother provincial of Franciscan Sisters of the Family of mary – Matylda Geter. She rescued about 2,500 Jewish children in different education and care facilities for children in Anin, Bialoleka, Chotomow, Miedzylesie, Pludy, Seiny, Vilnius and others. Some children were smuggled to priests in parish rectories. She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when the war was over, they would be returned to Jewish relatives.

In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. Żegota saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued her work for the Jewish children. After the war, she and her co-workers gathered together all of their records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Zegota colleague Adolf Berman and his employees at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of their parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had otherwise gone missing.

Awards
In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations. Tree of Irena Sendler planted at Yad Vashem stands at the entrance to the Avnue of thed Righteous.

She was also awarded the Commander's Cross by the Israeli Institute. Only in that year did the Polish communist government allow her to travel abroad, to receive the award in Israel.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime efforts. On 10 October 2003 she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration, and the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart," given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C. She was also awarded the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (November 7, 2001).

On 14 March 2007, Sendler was honored by Poland’s Senate. At age 97, she was unable to leave her nursing home to receive the honor, but she sent a statement through Elżbieta Ficowska, whom Sendler had helped to save as an infant. Polish President Lech Kaczynski stated she "can justly be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize." On 11 April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile as the oldest recipient of the award.

In May 2009, Irena Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award. The award, named in honor of the late actress and UNICEF ambassador, is presented to persons and organizations recognised for helping children. In its citation, the Audrey Hepburn Foundation recalled Irena Sendler's heroic efforts that saved 2,500 Jewish children during the German occupation of Poland in World War II.

Sendler was the last survivor of the Children’s Section of the Zegota Council to Assit Jews, which she had headed from August 1943 until the end of the war.

Irena Sendler died in Warsaw on May 12, 2008.

In Her Own Words
"Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory."

— From Letter to the Polish Parliament by Irena Sendler　
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler

Thunderstorms Create Anti-Matter

NASA Captures Earthly Anti-Matter Explosions
GalaxyDaily.com December 7, 2012

Lightning in the clouds is directly linked to events that produce some of the highest-energy light naturally made on Earth: terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs). An instrument aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was recently fine-tuned to better catch TGFs, which allowed scientists to discover that TGFs emit radio waves, too. The outbursts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last only a few thousandths of a second, but their gamma rays rank among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth. The enhanced GBM discovery rate helped scientists show most TGFs also generate a strong burst of radio waves, a finding that will change how scientists study this little understood phenomenon.

NASA’s scientists also observed antimatter structures formed above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon which until recently was not seen before. Scientists believe the antimatter explosions are formed due to a short burst of energy inside the storms such as the lightning. It is thought that about 500 such antimatter beams are generated daily in terrestrial gamma-ray flash but most of them remain unobserved. The antimatter beams were detected by Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope which is used to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy light form. If antimatter hitting Fermi Telescope collides with a matter particle, both particles quickly annihilate each other releasing gamma beams.

So far Fermi has recorded gamma radiation with energies of 511,000 eV, a signal showing that an electron has collided with its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Fermi GRT’s discovery was a great one regarding the fact that people invested billions in facilities for production of antimatter.

Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms. Before being upgraded, the GBM could capture only TGFs that were bright enough to trigger the instrument's on-board system, which meant many weaker events were missed.

"In mid-2010, we began testing a mode where the GBM directly downloads full-resolution gamma-ray data even when there is no on-board trigger, and this allowed us to locate many faint TGFs we had been missing," said lead researcher Valerie Connaughton, a member of the GBM team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

The results were so spectacular that on Nov. 26 the team uploaded new flight software to operate the GBM in this mode continuously, rather than in selected parts of Fermi's orbit. Connaughton's team gathered GBM data for 601 TGFs from August 2008 to August 2011, with most of the events, 409 in all, discovered through the new techniques. The scientists then compared the gamma-ray data to radio emissions over the same period.

Lightning emits a broad range of very low frequency (VLF) radio waves, often heard as pop-and-crackle static when listening to AM radio. The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), a research collaboration operated by the University of Washington in Seattle, routinely detects these radio signals and uses them to pinpoint the location of lightning discharges anywhere on the globe to within about 12 miles (20 km).

Scientists have known for a long time TGFs were linked to strong VLF bursts, but they interpreted these signals as originating from lightning strokes somehow associated with the gamma-ray emission.  "Instead, we've found when a strong radio burst occurs almost simultaneously with a TGF, the radio emission is coming from the TGF itself," said co-author Michael Briggs, a member of the GBM team.

The researchers identified much weaker radio bursts that occur up to several thousandths of a second before or after a TGF. They interpret these signals as intracloud lightning strokes related to, but not created by, the gamma-ray flash.

Scientists suspect TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under certain conditions, the field becomes strong enough that it drives a high-speed upward avalanche of electrons, which give off gamma rays when they are deflected by air molecules.

"What's new here is that the same electron avalanche likely responsible for the gamma-ray emission also produces the VLF radio bursts, and this gives us a new window into understanding this phenomenon," said Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla., and a member of the study team.

Because the WWLLN radio positions are far more precise than those based on Fermi's orbit, scientists will develop a much clearer picture of where TGFs occur and perhaps which types of thunderstorms tend to produce them.

The GBM scientists predict the new operating mode and analysis techniques will allow them to catch about 850 TGFs each year. While this is a great improvement, it remains a small fraction of the roughly 1,100 TGFs that fire up each day somewhere on Earth, according to the team's latest estimates. Likewise, TGFs detectable by the GBM represent just a small fraction of intracloud lightning, with about 2,000 cloud-to-cloud lightning strokes for every TGF.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

[The Daily Galaxy via NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/12/image-of-the-day-nasa-captures-earthly-anti-matter-explosions-video.html