coquina

You need to hire a "palynologist". http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/ppalydef.html#fungspor They specialize in analyzing microscopic items like pollen and fungal spores. The "Nigerian" would likely be carrying something on his body that is found only in his native country. You might also be able to determine his ethnicity via mitochondrial DNA. The time at which the corpse was buried can be determined by various insect larva, although there probably no where near as many in Aberdeen, Scotland as there are in Yorktown, Virginia.

You can improve muscle mass by resistance and isometric exercises that don't put stress on the growth plates of the bones like weight lifting does. One thing that really makes "pretty muscles" is swimming. They become shaped over their whole length rather than having the mass concentrated in the belly. You can also resistance train effectively by standing in a pool up to your chest with a couple of empty gallon milk jugs in your hands. You can use both sets of muscles - one to push the jugs down to your size, and the other to control how fast they rise to the surface. The "water aerobics" and resistance exercises are recommended for people with arthritis who can't bear weight on their joints, so I'm sure they would be OK for young people. Now - I doubt seriously that I could convince my grandson to go play in a pool with two empty gallon milk jugs. It's certainly not as macho as lifting a 200# weight - but results count.

that some people who are not proficient in Science come here because they want to learn about it? Granted, there are some who have their own agenda, from which they will not be dissuaded, but my take on it is to be gentle. If they ask a question that has an obvious answer, just answer it - or give a link, or suggest a term that they can Google to find more information on their own. We have people who are younger than my Grandson asking questions about science. You have the opportunity to turn them on or turn them off. It would be my hope that you would choose to turn them on.

You know what is funny? The moon looks so huge when it is just over the horizon, and much smaller when it is high in the sky, but it is the same size. Someone challanged me on this, and so I took a set of vernier calipers outside and set them to measure the moon's diameter just after moonrise at the Harvest Moon. Then I went back several hours later and held the preset calipers up to the moon and it was still the same dimension.

I don't know all the things you spray for, but among them, you have to spray in the spring to make some of the blossoms fall, or else you have a whole lot of very small apples. You also have to spray just as the fruit starts to form. An insect lays its egg in the remains of the blossom, the fruit forms around it, then the egg hatches and the larva eats its way out of the apple from the inside. Around here, if you don't spray for that particular insect, your apple can look perfect, but when you bite into it, you may look at the apple and see a part of a worm left in it.

The "Mexican Meteorite" is commonly called the Chicxulub Bolide. If you Google that term, as well as "Chicxulub Inpact Crater", you will find a ton of sites about it. A bolide is an object that explodes in the air - it could be either a comet or an asteroid. The speed of these objects can be as high as 70km/second, so they usually vaporize above the ground. I think most geologists now believe that the bolide was the culprit that x'd the dinos and other large animals. They are looking for other craters that are the same age as other geologic time boundaries. One has recently been found off Australia that coincides with the biggest extinction event of all - the Permian. The Chesapeake Bolide hit at the end of the Eocene, and some other craters of the same age have been found in Siberia. It has been hypothesized that it broke apart into 2 or more pieces, as did Shoemaker-Levy. So, I think for the most part, when you state that you believe the Chicxulub Bolide caused the K/T extinction, you are "Preaching to the choir."

Evidence: http://miac.uqac.ca/MIAC/chicxulub.htm

I've bookmarked them and put them in my "Impact" folder.

There was a one word "really" in a previous post - it has been removed and an apology made. I wasn't angry - just pointing out that we don't have the same backgrounds. Yes - some scientists still believe that the dinosaurs died out because of environmental stresses. All geologists were once taught "uniformitarianism" the idea that the processes that shaped the earth over the past were the same as those that are occurring today: http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/U/uniformi.html The alternate hypothesis is "catastrophism", that major, sudden events transformed the surface of the earth. http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/C/catastro.html The real physical damage an impact can do to a planet was shown when the "string of pearls" comet, Shoemaker-Levy, hit Jupiter in 1994. We sat here on earth and watched in safety, but measurements were taken and observations made. The clouds of debris over the surface of Jupiter after each of the twenty-one impacts were greater than the size of the earth. We have large impact craters that we can see and measure - we can correlate the amount of damage based on Shoemaker Levy, so we know it is immense. The other hypothesis that fits in with catastrophism is "punctuated equilibrium" but forth by Stephen Jay Gould, author of "Wonderful Life" and other books. He noticed that through out geologic time there were abrupt ends to one kind of life, followed by a rapid evolution of other kinds. He surmised that before a catastrophic event, most ecological niches were filled, so a significant positive adaptation had to occur for one organism to unseat another, so to speak. However, after a catastrophic event, so much of life was erased that many niches were wide open. After the planet healed a little, the organisms that managed to survive, found another niche to fill as they evolved. I think that both theories are right to some extent. When continents are all piled together in a heap, there is less surface area for contact with the ocean, and the ocean's circulation patterns change too, so the weather patterns are totally different. I suspect that the dino's were on there way out, but the asteroid did them in. Over too hundred impact craters of significant size have been found to date. When we think of what anthropocentric climate forcing (the proper term for "global warming" caused by man) will do to the planet in a couple of thousand years, we have to remember that major impacts occur every 100,000 years or so and we are overdue. That's not to say we shouldn't mind our p's and q's, but I figure we'll get hit just about the time I am ready to retire.

I went on a hunt at Ft. Eustis, Newport News, VA. In the morning, I was amongst the 1/2 of the hunters who hunted, so I was in a tree stand. I didn't have what I thought was a "clear kill" so I didn't shoot. In the afternoon, I "drove". The people who participated in the hunt had been divided in half - one half hunted the other drove. "Driving" consisted of standing arm to arm (literally), screaming and hollering and running the deer under the stands so the hunters could shoot them. They killed 4 dogs that day. It was the last day that I ever "hunted". I would hunt, and kill, if I needed to eat, and I know how to go about it. I am very glad that I have never been forced to it.

Point taken.

You aren't the first person to have such ideas. Check out Hitler and Aryan Supremacy.

There was an article in Discover Magazine called "The Day North America Burned". It was several years back, but it discussed the angle of impact based on the seismic plots of the crater and the fact that there is a "barren zone" throughout North America just above the boundary. In this immediate area, the KT boundary is disrupted by the Chesapeake Bay Impactor, but I have seen description of cores outside the immediate area that describes the area as "barren, with a few pieces of carbon". edited to add - In addition to the debris thrown into the atmosphere by the impact, the clouds of smoke added to the sunblocking effect. Some geologists think the Deccan Traps, located in India and of about the same age, also had an effect on the extinction, and some think the impactor caused the eruptions on the other side of the globe that formed the traps. http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/europe_west_asia/india/deccan.html

In that case, please refer to your Machinery's Handbook. Mine is the 24th edition, page 598 Allowances & Tolerances For Fits - Limits and Fits

It damages the growth plates of the bones. Generic item on growth plate injuries: http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/926048658.html Apparently there is still some controversy, but most agree that resistance strength training is OK, maximal weightlifting is not. http://www.lsus.edu/weightlifting/Papers%20Presented2.htm

I learned about the dominant eye thing when I was heavily involved in archery. Although I am left handed, I had been taught to shoot a bow right handed. I had to compensate by altering where I aimed. I later crushed the finger in my left hand and was in a cast for six months. I learned to use my right hand, and can now use either for most chores, but I am still wired for lefthandedness. Back to the homosexual gene bit. It's sort of like weight - I have a genetic tendency to be fat - it runs in my father's family. I was obese before I was a year old and remained that way until I was 53. At that point, my health was going downhill and every bone I had ached. I became motivated and lost 110#, and I fight every day to keep it off. I have to eat less and exercise more, to maintain a weight of 155. I do that because my health demands it. However, if it was just a matter of how other people perceived me, I would still be fat. I would not lose weight to satisfy someone else's whim that "you can't be too rich or too thin". In my humble opinion, there is no reason for a person to ignore their sexual preference to suit what society perceives to be "right".

That's one reason your doctor tells you to drink plenty of liquids. The more mucous you are able to make, and the more runny it is, the easier it is for your body to flush out the organisms. This helps prevent secondary bacterial infections.

I was interested in finding out whether this was true, since I also belong to a forum for the "involuntarily unspoused", many of whom had there loved one cremated. What I learned was that crematories that service private individuals are only large enough to hold one body at the time. The only place where I found a reference to multiple cremation was here: http://www.louisville.edu/medschool/anatomy/1-bequeathal/bequeathal.html at a medical school where multiple cadavers may be cremated and buried in the university cemetery.

is there anything online about it?

I only became interested in geology due to the impact crater. (I understand Australia has several). Check this USGS page: http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/crater/ for an overview, look here: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/ Geologists have always known this area didn't fit the norm. For example, in the forties and fifties, there was a USGS Geologist named Cedarstrom - in the days before core samples could be taken, he would sit beside a well that was being drilled and record information found in the tailings. He consistantly found old sediments mixed in with new ones and called the strata that they came from the Mattaponi, named for a local Native American tribe. However, some of his recordings were really askew - cretaceous on top of eocene for example. He knew something crazy was going on, and even suggested an impact crater, but he was fired from USGS for not keeping his records straight. In the early '90's, a core well was drilled in the area, and unmistakable breccia turned up in it over 400' down. The investigators then knew they were almost certainly dealing with an impact crator. Oil companies had been exploring in the area, and Dave Powars was able to obtain the seismic studies. When they were all assembled they showed that there is absolutely a very large impact crater here. If you look at the overview article, you can see pictures of the breccia in the cores. It is bounded by listric faults in the surface where underlying compaction has created subsidence on the surface. Here is a picture of Cornwallis's cave. http://www.virginiagarden.com/water/cave.jpg It is on the southern side of the York River. As you look at it, the left side of the picture faces east, towards the bay and the Atlantic. The right side faces west - towards the mountains. This is a totally aseismic area - the strata you see in the picture is the Coquina facies of the Yorktown Formation (hence my name). It should be horizontal, or perhaps dipped slightly seaward. Can you see that there is a very significant dip to the west? When you look at this on a topo CD so that you can exaggerate the elevation by 8x and rotate the picture, you can see that there is a huge block that fell into a creek just a mile or so to the west. It is part of the listric fault system that bounds the crater. Oh yeah - after Dave Powars and Scott Bruce determined for sure that the crater was there, they tracked down Cedarstrom. He was 93 and in a nursing home. But they were able to get across to him that he was right all those years ago, and that there was a clear reason for the subsurface disconformities.

S/he asked a question under "homework help" titled "Volcanoes" and stated that s/he lives in Hawaii. We had already discussed that there is a mantle plume there, which burns a hole through the crust as the plate moves above it, and that therefore, the lavas are basaltic. I had explained that basaltic rocks are "mafic" - high in iron and magnesium. When s/he asked about a specific mineral that would be fairly easy to identify, I suggested olivine. From my reading it seems to be common in basalt, and it should be fairly easy to identify. I was hoping Ophiolite would put his oar in too. Although I have a lot of interest in geology I live on the Coastal plain of Virginia - there is 2000' feet of sediment between the surface and chrystalline basement, so surface rocks of any kind are downright scarce.

Read this: http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/vwlessons/volcanic_rocks.html and then this: http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/olivine/olivine.htm Also: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/geology/min_olivene.html Shape: Orthorhombic (usually a many-sided prism that has an overall sphere shape) Luster: Greasy Color: Green (but sometimes yellow or brown) Streak: White Hardness: 6.5-7 on Mohs Hardness Scale Cleavage: Yes, but the crystals do not break easily along it Fracture: Conchoidal, brittle To find the color of the "streak", rub the mineral on an unglazed porcelain tile. The Hardness, according to the Mohs hardness scale: http://www.amfed.org/t_mohs.htm Since the hardness of olivine is given as 6.5 to 7, It is kinda hard to test it by hardness, but it should scratch most glass, and if you rub it with a hardened steel file, it will probably scratch it. Hope this helps.

She was 42 when I was born, but she was so interested in everything. She particularly loved animals, and whenever anything was orphaned or hurt, she rescued it. Lot's of the other parent's wouldn't let baby wild things in their homes, but mom did, and pretty soon all the neighborhood kids were bringing critters to our house. My mom would always say, "Well, it may well die, because it is so tiny and hurt, but we have to give it a run for its money." We raised baby rabbits on pablum, baby birds on hard boiled eggs and canned dog food, & baby kittens whose eyes were not open, but whose mom had been run over. As I got older, my dad contributed too - he was building parts for space research for NASA Langley Research center. When I went to high school, I had a wonderful teacher for Advanced Biology. Her name was Hilda Ramer, and she didn't go to college until her own children were out of school. She didn't believe it was important to memorize everything, but to know where to find the answers. I went to college with the intention of majoring in biology, but my dad's health was failing and he convinced me to come into the family machine shop business instead. Although I always watched the science shows on TV, I didn't really become involved with science again until 1996. That was when we got internet access and I found a science forum, much like this one called, "the Why Files". There was a geologist there, and I asked him about the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater (over which I live). I became fascinated with Geology, and learned a lot about that too. Long story - but then, I've been around awhile.