Data acquired from various scientific disciplines in the past five years have converged to elevate the status of panspermia as one of the major contenders in theories of the origins of life on Earth. We review the trends that point towards a vindication of the idea that biomaterial from comets may be distributed widely throughout the universe and might even be reaching us in the present day.

We study spherically symmetric dynamical horizons (SSDH) in spherically symmetric Einstein/matter spacetimes. We first determine sufficient and necessary conditions for an initial data set for the gravitational and matter fields to satisfy the dynamical horizon condition in the spacetime development. The constraint equations reduce to a single second order linear “master” equation, which leads ...

To say that the once very limited indications for colchicine have undergone a subtle but definite and dramatic change in recent years would not be an overstatement. This old drug, which has been known for centuries, was used for relieving and preventing acute attacks of gouty arthritis for over 200 years, but until recently, no other clinical uses had been established. The 1985 edition of Good-...

The quasi-local theory of black-holes uses isolated horizons, rather then entire space-times. Each isolated horizon is described by its geometry: the induced metric and parallel transport. The space of the geometries is infinite dimensional. On the other hand, the isolated horizons defined by the Kerr metric form a 2-dimensional subfamily. In this letter we derive geometric conditions on an iso...

The topologies of event horizons are investigated. Considering the existence of the endpoint of the event horizon, it cannot be differentiable. Then there are the new possibilities of the topology of the event horizon though they are excluded in smooth event horizons. The relation between the topology of the event horizon and the endpoint of it is revealed. A torus event horizon is caused by tw...

Mechanics of non-rotating black holes was recently generalized by replacing the static event horizons used in standard treatments with ‘isolated horizons.’ This framework is extended to incorporate dilaton couplings. Since there can be gravitational and matter radiation outside isolated horizons, now the fundamental parameters of the horizon, used in mechanics, must be defined using only the lo...

We examine in an experiment the causes, consequences and possible cures of myopic loss aversion (MLA) for investment behaviour under risk. We find that both, investment horizons and feedback frequency contribute almost equally to the effects of MLA. Longer investment horizons and less frequent feedback lead to higher investments. However, when given the choice, subjects prefer on average shorte...

[1] We characterized the effect of large-scale (>20 mm) soil physical structure on the age and recalcitrance of soil organic carbon (SOC) in upper (A) and lower (B) horizons of grassland soils from California’s Central Valley. The radiocarbon content of SOC from surfaces and interiors of large-scale soil structural units (‘‘peds’’) was measured in order to characterize the spatial distribution ...

This study investigated the effects of grassland conversion to croplands on soil organic carbon (SOC) in a typical grassland-dominated basin of the Inner Mongolia using direct field samplings. The results indicated that SOC contents decreased usually with increasing soil depth, with significant differences between the upper horizons (0-30cm) and the underlying horizons (30-100cm). Also, SOC den...