/~\*/~\/*\ EARTH AS ART: Informative and Interesting /~\*/~\/*\

Mount Saint Helens, Washington, USA

Mount Saint Helens is a prime example of how Earth's topographic form can greatly change even within our lifetimes. The mountain is one of several prominent volcanoes of the Cascade Range that stretches from British Columbia, Canada, southward through Washington, Oregon, and into northern California. Mount Adams (left background) and Mount Hood (right background) are also seen in this view, which was created entirely from elevation data produced by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

Tarpum Bay, Bahamas

In this ASTER image, taken on May 12, 2002, the features that look like folded material are carbonate sand dunes in the shallow waters of Tarpum Bay, southwest of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. The sand making up the dunes comes from the erosion of limestone coral reefs, and has been shaped into dunes by ocean currents.

The Shoemaker Impact Structure, Australia

The Shoemaker Impact Structure, Australia, was previously referred to as Teague Ring; it is now named in honor of the late Eugene Shoemaker, a renowned earth and planetary geologist affiliated with Caltech and the US Geological Survey. The precise age of the impact is unknown, but it is estimated between 1000 and 600 million years ago. The structure is 30 km in diameter, and is most easily recognized by the deformation of the resistant ironstones of the Frere Formation, shown in dark green on the image. Low lying areas are salt-encrusted seasonal and dry lakes. This band 3-2-1 ASTER composite was acquired November 4, 2000, covers an area of 44.2 x 45.5 km, and is centered near 25.9 degrees South, 120.9 degrees East.

Australia`s Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef extends for 2,000 kilometers along the northeastern coast of Australia. It is not a single reef, but a vast maze of reefs, passages, and coral cays (islands that are part of the reef). This nadir true-color image was acquired by the MISR instrument on August 26, 2000 (Terra orbit 3679), and shows part of the southern portion of the reef adjacent to the central Queensland coast. The width of the MISR swath is approximately 380 kilometers, with the reef clearly visible up to approximately 200 kilometers from the coast. It may be difficult to see the myriad details in the browse image, but if you retrieve the higher resolution version, a zoomed display reveals the spectacular structure of the many reefs.

Natural Color Mosaic of United States--

This natural-color image combines cloud-free data from over 500 Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) orbits with shaded relief Digital Terrain Elevation models from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and other sources. An astonishing diversity of geological features, ecological systems and human landscapes across North America is indicated within the image, which spans from 56N, 136W at the upper left to 16N 48W at lower right.

Great Wall of China

This ASTER sub-image covers a 12 x 12 km area in northern Shanxi Province, China, and was acquired January 9, 2001. The low sun angle, and light snow cover highlight a section of the Great Wall, visible as a black line running diagonally through the image from lower left to upper right. The Great Wall is over 2000 years old and was built over a period of 1000 years. Stretching 4500 miles from Korea to the Gobi Desert it was first built to protect China from marauders from the north.

Malaspina Glacier, Alaska

Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska is considered the classic example of a piedmont glacier. Piedmont glaciers occur where valley glaciers exit a mountain range onto broad lowlands, are no longer laterally confined, and spread to become wide lobes. Malaspina Glacier is actually a compound glacier, formed by the merger of several valley glaciers, the most prominent of which seen here are Agassiz Glacier (left) and Seward Glacier (right). In total, Malaspina Glacier is up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) wide and extends up to 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the mountain front nearly to the sea. This perspective view was created from a Landsat satellite image and an elevation model generated by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).

Athens, Greece

Home of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Athens, in southeastern Greece, is the capital and largest city in the country. Situated on the Attic plain, it is surrounded by mountains on three sides, and is served by the port of Piraeus 8 km to the southwest. The Acropolis of Athens has been inhabited since Neolithic times. In the 9th century BC, it was incorporated into the city-state of Athens. Athens reached its golden age in the 5th century BC under Pericles, with a population of perhaps 200,000. This perspective view was made from an image acquired April 29, 2004, draped over a digital elevation model (DEM) created from the same Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) scene.

Alluvial Fan, China--

A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province. The left side is the active part of the fan, and appears blue from water currently flowing in the many small streams. The image was acquired May 2, 2002, covers an area of 56.6 x 61.3 km, and is centered near 37.4 degrees north, 84.3 degrees east.

!!!!!!......The dog is on steroids.......!!!!!!!

Bully whippet:
The dog in the photo is supermuscular because of naturally occurring mutations that silence both versions of the myostatin gene. Called bully whippets, these dogs are rarely champion racers. However, animals with one mutated and one normal version of the gene are more muscular than typical animals and are among the breed’s fastest racers.
Credit: Stuart Isett, Polaris



Scattered throughout the mammalian menagerie are a few supermuscular freaks: double-muscled cows more ripped than any bodybuilder; racing dogs too burly to run; sheep praised for their massively muscled buttocks; and even one small German boy, born in 2000 with muscles twice the size of those of a normal newborn. All these Herculean creatures share one thing: naturally occurring mutations in a gene that produces myostatin, a protein that blocks growth of skeletal muscle. Disable that gene, and viola--spectacular muscle growth results.
Over the past few years, pharmaceutical companies have been racing to develop ways to mimic myostatin gene mutations in the hope of treating everything from the muscle loss that accompanies muscular dystrophy, cancer, and aging to obesity and other metabolic disorders. Pharmaceutical giants Wyeth and Amgen are expected to release clinical-trial results of myostatin inhibitors for muscle-wasting diseases within the next few months. A smaller company, Acceleron Pharma, based in Cambridge, MA, says that its more broadly acting drug could bring more brawn than can drugs targeting myostatin alone.
"There's been a huge amount of interest for human therapeutics," says Se-Jin Lee, a biologist at John's Hopkins University, in Baltimore. "If you could increase or maintain muscle strength as people age, you could have a tremendous impact on health and well-being."



Lee discovered more than a decade ago that mice lacking myostatin grew muscles twice the size of those of their normal counterparts. But because mice have levels of myostatin 50 to 80 times that of humans, some scientists have doubted how well the results will translate to humans. New findings published in August in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that other molecules are also at work in muscle. Lee found that he could double the extra growth in mice lacking myostatin--effectively quadrupling muscle mass--by turning up levels of another protein. "That means there must be other regulators that have at least as important a function as myostatin in blocking muscle
growth,"


Mighty muscles--------
The image shows the difference between normal mice (left) and mice that lack myostatin and overproduce another protein, giving them four times as much muscle. Scientists are developing drugs that act through similar mechanisms to treat muscle-wasting diseases.

Acceleron's approach attempts to take advantage of that. Rather than designing an antibody to myostatin itself, as is being tested in the Wyeth trials, scientists at Acceleron fused a portion of the receptor molecule that usually binds to myostatin with a tag that allows the drug ACE-031 to roam freely throughout the body so that it can sop up myostatin before it activates the signal to stop muscle growth. Animal studies show that this approach boosts muscle growth more effectively than does merely eliminating myostatin, suggesting that the fusion molecule also binds to other agents that impact muscle development.
Normal mice given the drug show a 30 to 60 percent increase in muscle mass, and mice with a version of muscular dystrophy show increased grip strength, a standard measure of rodent strength. Preliminary results from primate studies show that the animals on the drug bulk up at similar rates to those seen in rodents. "Before I became involved with Acceleron, if someone had told me you could increase muscle mass by up to 60 percent in a month, I never would have believed it,"

!! satellite view of "RAMASETU"~~~

~~~unseen beauty~~~

~~~~PICTURES FROM THE HEIGHT........

!!!!!!! Interesting Equation!!!!!!

Human = eat + sleep + work + enjoy
Pigs = eat + sleepHence,
Human = Pigs + work + enjoy
If,Human - enjoy = Pigs + work
In other words,
Human that don't know enjoy = pigs that work

************ **
Men = eat + sleep + earn money
Pigs = eat + sleep
Hence, Men = Pigs + earn money
If Men - earn money = Pigs
In other words,
Men that don't earn money = Pigs

************ **
Women = eat + sleep + spend
Pigs = eat + sleep
Hence,
Women = Pigs + spend
If, Women - spend = Pigs
In other words,
Women that don't spend = Pigs

************ **
Summary:
Men earn money not to let women become pigs!
Women spend not to let men become pigs!
Men + Women = 2 Pigs
Wish all the pigs happy forever.....

~~~26 Reasons Why A Man Should Have A Dog And Not A Wife~~~

1. The later you are, the more excited your dogs are to see you.
2. Dogs will forgive you for playing with other dogs.
3. If a dog is gorgeous, other dogs don't hate it.
4. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.
5. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.
6. A dog's parents never visit.
7. Dogs do not hate their bodies.
8. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to ge t your pointacross.
9. Dogs like to do their snooping outside rather than in your wallet ordesk.
10. Dogs seldom outlive you.
11. Dogs can't talk.
12. You never have to wait for a dog; they're ready to go 24 hours aday.
13. Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.
14. Dogs like to go hunting and fishing.
15. Another man will seldom steal your dog.
16. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask, "If I died, would youget another dog?"
17. If a dog has babies, you can put an ad in the paper and give themaway.
18. A dog will let you put a studded collar on it without calling you apervert.
19. A dog won't hold out on you to get a new car.
20. If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad. They justthink it's interesting.
21. On a car trip, your dog never insists on running the heater.
22. Dogs don't let magazine articles guide their lives.
23. When your dog gets old, you can have it put to sleep.
24. Dogs like to ride in the back of a pick-up truck.
25. Dogs are not allowed in Bloomingdale' s or Neiman-Marcus. And, last but not least:
26. If a dog leaves, it won't take half of your stuff.