Sleep researchers want to know how birds are able to migratethousands of miles every year on very little sleep. Theystudied sparrows in their laboratory and found the birdsreduced their sleep time by two-thirds during the periodwhen they would ordinarily be migrating but still functionedwell. But during times when they wouldn’t have beenmigrating, sleep deprivation impaired their performance.
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One reason for the wild summer weather around the globecould be that the sun is experiencing it as well. July of2004 has seen some unusual solar weather. The sunspot countas of July 17 was 142. A few daysago, sunspot 649, larger than Jupiter emitted an X-3 classsolar flare and sent a coronal mass ejection toward earth.
Scientists are unsure about the precise dynamics of howsolar activity affects earth weather, but CMEs are believedto heat the atmosphere, and there is some evidence that theycan caused localized surface heating as well, and may evenbe implicated in wildfires.
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Extreme weather continues to strike without warning aroundthe world and global warming is front page news in manycountries. In the U.S., we have to rely on ourlocal weatherreports, and have no way of knowing that our bizarre,unseasonable weather is being repeated around the globe.There are major floods in areas around the world and Europe,which had a killing heat wave last summer, now has winter inJuly.
Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Taiwan, southern China,India, the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, Japan andNew Jersey have all experienced extraordinary floodingwithin the past two weeks. Last week Edmonton, Alberta,experienced a “once in 200 years” storm with 45 inches ofrain and hail that buried parts of the city under tons of ice.
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We get the most wonderfulCommunionLetters. In our latest one,Chadwrites: “When I was in second grade, I had a very terrifyingexperience. I?m 26 years old now and I still remember theevents like they happened yesterday. Every night, for about2 weeks, I would go to my room and get into bed. I would nosooner lie down, then all of a sudden I would hear a voicein my room. This voice always spoke in a language I couldn’tunderstand and seemed to be coming from some sort ofelectronic device.”
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