Chinese New Year for Parents and Kids

Chinese New Year for Parents and Kids - Chinese New Year begins today. The Chinese zodiac is distinguished by 12 animals. 2012 is the Year of the Dragon. Here are activities and ideas for parents to explore Chinese tradition.

• Visit a local Chinese New Year festival or Asian market. WLOX 13 New York lists festivals in several large cities. Many metropolitan areas have a Chinese neighborhood with ethnic markets, events and festival activities. Child Book lists places to visit in each state and Oriental Shopping lists Asian markets. OCA National, the parent site of local Association of Chinese Americans branches, lists some festival events by region.

• Celebrate a lantern festival. Paper globe lanterns are a popular decoration during Chinese New Year, which ends with a lantern festival, says Chinese Fortune Calendar. Lantern Festival lists how-tos for parents to make festive lights with children.

• Make ceremonial foods. The themes of the Lunar New Year -- fertility, prosperity and good fortune -- are reflected in the foods eaten during the holiday. The Chicago Tribune lists general foods and easy ways for parents to enjoy them with children. Dumplings, whole fish, oranges, teriyaki or sweet and sour chicken, spring egg rolls, and stir-fried lettuce symbolize wealth and good luck. Eggs and long noodles mean fertility and longevity.

• Enjoy "dragon" foods. According to Holiday Spot, the dragon is the only mythological beast in the zodiac and the luckiest. The Detroit Free Press recommends eating long dragon beans (string beans will work) and shrimp for the Year of the Dragon.

• Make crafts. Family Fun offers printable crafts like dragon kites and puppets, ribbon dragons, good luck gold fish and paper lanterns for parents. Craft Jr. has a paper dragon activity and Animal Jr. has a dragon mask craft as well as printable masks of all the animals of the zodiac. First-School has several dragon coloring pages and paper lantern crafts.

• Light fireworks. Fireworks were invented in China and form an important part of the Chinese New Year celebration. Be sure to check local ordinances and supervise kids around the fireworks.

• Read stories from modern and ancient China. Apples for the Teacher lists Chinese New Year books for kids with a special emphasis on Year of the Dragon stories. The New York Public Library has a list of recommended reading on Asian history for kids and teens. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Chinese New Year for Parents and Kids

Chinese New Year Primer

Chinese New Year Primer - The Chinese New Year 2012 begins on January 23. This is the year of the Dragon, so believers are looking forward to a year of excitement, unpredictability, exhilaration, and intensity.

Chinese New Year Tradition and Meaning

Chinese (or Lunar) New Year is the Spring Festival and the most important Chinese holiday. It has been celebrated since the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1100 B.C.).

Like many other cultures, the Chinese symbolically sweep away the troubles of the past year and prepare for a new year of prosperity. Housecleaning, clothing choices, special menus, and celebrations are all calculated to bring happiness, wealth and opportunity to the celebrants, China.com notes.

According to history.com, Chinese New Year tradition arose out of superstition that the wild beast Nien arrived at each year's end to maul and kill villagers. The firecrackers and lights that dominate the celebrations originated as tools for scaring away this monster.

Performers take part in a dragon dance in a night parade in Hong Kong Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, celebrating the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year. According to the Chinese zodiac, the year 2012 is called the Year of the Dragon. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

Identifying the Arrival of Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year begins when the new moon is visible in the sky. That's why the date changes each year. The 15-day celebration ends when the full moon rises.

Chinese Zodiac Explained

Things Asian describes the Chinese zodiac as consisting of repeating, 12-year cycles with animal signs representing each year. Beginning with the Rat, the years following are known as the year of the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar. Each animal's characteristics are believed to influence the events of the year, ChineseNewYear2012 notes.

According to Chinese legend, the choice of zodiac animals stemmed from a race hosted by an ancient emperor. The tale describes how each animal's personal attributes determined its place crossing the finish line.

Traditional Asian families will consult the zodiac in making important life decisions, believing the sign under which a person is born influences his personal relationships and fortune.

Here's a brief description of each sign, courtesy of Taiwanese Secrets.

• Rat: Charming, hard-working, timid, reserved and honest.
• Ox: Calm, trustworthy, ill-tempered, eloquent, stubborn, and distant.
• Tiger: Courageous, powerful, dreamers, sensitive, and anti-authoritarian.
• Rabbit: Talented, tasteful, honest, lucky, tender with family, distant with strangers, sometimes moody and arrogant.
• Dragon: Energetic, robust, stubborn, honest, trustworthy, and courageous, yet fears rejection.
• Snake: Serious, introverted, wise, egotistical, charitable, and keep their own counsel.
• Horse: Optimistic, intuitive, sociable, attractive, intelligent, free, and good at managing money.
• Sheep: Honest, generous, sympathetic, artistic, compassionate, and distractible.
• Monkey: Inventive, intelligent, narcissistic, and good at attracting money.
• Rooster: Sociable, brave, overly-ambitious, eccentric, nonconformist and proud.
• Dog: Giving, compassionate, loyal, honest, just, demanding, and trustworthy.
• Boar: Fun, honest, thoughtful, loyal, outspoken, extroverted, lazy, financially wasteful. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Chinese New Year Primer

Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?

Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?. How the Moon was created and came to orbit the Earth has long puzzled scientists.

The most commonly held theory is that when the solar system was first formed, an object collided with Earth, knocking off a chunk of rock that fell into orbit around it.

But now two scientists have come up with a new explanation. They believe the Moon did not break away from the Earth because of an impact or an explosion in space, but because of a nuclear explosion on Earth itself.

Similarities: Lunar samples from moon landings have shown that the material of the moon is nearly identical to Earth's

Their idea is based on the fission theory which was first outlined in the 19th century.

The fission theory suggested that the Earth and Moon were both created out of the same blob of spinning molten rock - with a part becoming separated which later became the moon.

However, aside from an impact, scientists couldn't explain how the blob which became the moon spun off.

Rob de Meijer at University of the Western Cape and Wim van Westrenen at VU University in Amsterdam believe the Moon was blasted out of the Earth by a nuclear explosion on our planet.

In their research paper, 'An alternative hypothesis for the origin of the Moon', they explain that if the moon had been separated from the Earth by an impacting external force, the moon would be composed of whatever knocked into it and the Earth.

'Models of solar system evolution show that it is highly unlikely for the chemical composition of the Earth and impactor to be identical,' they state.

Yet recent lunar samples show that the moon is almost identical in chemical composition to the Earth - suggesting there was no impactor involved.

'A more likely possibility for the large degree of compositional similarity... is that the moon derives directly from terrestrial material,' the research paper states.

Full moon: Look to the skies tonight for a lunar spectacle

They believe that the energy that caused the moon to break into orbit around Earth was
'supplied by a supercritical georeactor in Earth’s core-mantle boundary producing sufficient heat to vaporize and eject part of the bulk silicate earth'.

Clay Dillow from Popular Science supports the theory. He states: 'According to their explanation, the centrifugal forces on Earth concentrated heavier elements like uranium and thorium near the surface around the equatorial plane.

'Enough of these elements in high enough concentrations could set off a runaway nuclear chain reaction, similar to the kind that cause nuke plant meltdowns.

'In this way, a natural-born nuclear georeactor was pushed to supercritical levels and: BOOM! The moon was cleaved from the Earth and rocketed into orbit by a massive nuclear explosion.

'It’s a tough theory to test, but we do know that nuclear georeactors existed, their legacy left behind in the uranium we mine from the Earth today. '

De Meijer and van Westrenan conclude that proving their theories will depend on future moon missions returning lunar samples from greater depths.

● MARS AND MOON PROVIDE SPECTACLE TONIGHT

The Red Planet will pair up with the full Moon in the night sky tonight to provide a grand celestial spectacle.

Sky watchers will be able to gaze on the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year tonight. They will also be treated to a particularly dazzling Mars.

Our planetary neighbour, now 62 million miles from Earth, has been at its brightest for two years, this week.

This is because the Red Planet is in opposition, which means Mars and the Sun are on directly opposite sides of Earth. Our moon is in opposition during the full moon.

Therefore the Sun's light reflects off the whole surface of Mars instead of just part of it and it is particularly bright from our perspective.

As Earth is closer to the Sun is goes round its orbit faster than Mars. It means around every two years they are in opposition

From our perspective, Mars rises in the east just as the sun sets in the west.

At around 9pm, Mars will be above and to the left of the Moon, about the length of an outstretched fist away.

A standard SLR camera fitted with a telephoto lens is all you need to capture the scene, says Robin Scagell, from the Society for Popular Astronomy.

'Mars is looking really quite red and impressive at the moment, and the Moon will be full,' he said.

'It's going to be a great sight and rather fun to look for.'

The forecast for the UK tonight is mainly clear, although there could be cloud over North-East England and Northern Ireland.( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Was the moon created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?

Mammoths roasted in prehistoric barbecue pit

Mammoths roasted in prehistoric barbecue pit. Archaeologists have just uncovered a 29,000 B.C. well-equipped kitchen. Central Europe's prehistoric people would likely have been amused by today's hand-sized hamburgers and hot dogs, since archaeologists have just uncovered a 29,000 B.C. well-equipped kitchen where roasted gigantic mammoth was one of the last meals served.

The site, called Pavlov VI in the Czech Republic near the Austrian and Slovak Republic borders, provides a homespun look at the rich culture of some of Europe's first anatomically modern humans.

Jiri Svoboda and Antiquity

Archaeologists have uncovered a 29,000 B.C. well-equipped "kitchen" where roasted gigantic mammoth was one of the last meals served. Here, some remains of the prehistoric BBQ — a mammoth bone — is excavated.

While contemporaneous populations near this region seemed to prefer reindeer meat, the Gravettian residents of this living complex, described in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, appeared to seek out more super-sized fare.

"It seems that, in contrast to other Upper Paleolithic societies in Moravia, these people depended heavily on mammoths," project leader Jiri Svoboda told Discovery News.

Svoboda, a professor at the University of Brno and director of its Institute of Archaeology, and colleagues recently excavated Pavlov VI, where they found the remains of a female mammoth and one mammoth calf near a 4-foot-wide roasting pit. Arctic fox, wolverine, bear and hare remains were also found, along with a few horse and reindeer bones.

The meats were cooked luau-style underground. Svoboda said, "We found the heating stones still within the pit and around."

Boiling pits existed near the middle roaster. He thinks "the whole situation — central roasting pit and the circle of boiling pits — was sheltered by a teepee or yurt-like structure."

It's unclear if seafood was added to create a surf-and-turf meal, but multiple decorated shells were unearthed. Many showed signs of cut marks, along with red and black coloration. The scientists additionally found numerous stone tools, such as spatulas, blades and saws, which they suggest were good for carving mammoths.

Perforated, decorative pebbles, ceramic pieces and fragments of fired clay were also excavated. The living unit's occupants left their fingerprints on some of the clay pieces, which they decorated with impressions made from reindeer hair and textiles.

Some items might have held "magical" or ritualistic significance, according to the scientists. One such artifact looks to be the head of a lion.

"This carnivore head was first modeled of wet clay, then an incision was made with a sharp tool, and finally the piece was heated in the fire, turned into some kind of ceramic," Svoboda explained. "We hypothesize that this may be sympathetic magic."

"Sympathetic magic" often involves the use of effigies or fetishes, resembling individuals or objects, and is meant to affect the environment or the practitioners themselves.

Archaeologist Erik Trinkaus of Washington University supports the new study, saying the site was "excavated meticulously" by Svoboda and his team.

"This is one more example, in this case from modern detailed excavation and analysis, of the incredibly rich human behavior from this time period," Trinkaus told Discovery News. ( Discovery Channel )

READ MORE - Mammoths roasted in prehistoric barbecue pit

Mammoth skeleton unearthed in Serbia

Mammoth skeleton unearthed in Serbia. Well-preserved bones is believed to be about one million years old - A well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth that is believed to be about one million years old has been unearthed in eastern Serbia, archaeologists said Thursday.

The discovery was made during excavation two days ago at an open-pit coal mine near Kostolac power plant, said Miomir Korac, from Serbia's Archaeology Institute.

Srdjan Ilic / AP

An archeologist works on a recently unearthed skeleton of a mammoth at the open pit coal mine.

The skeleton was found 89 feet below ground, he said. The mammoth was more than 13 feet high, 16 feet long and weighed more than 10 tons.

"It is very well-preserved with only slight damage to the skull and the tusks," Korac told the AP. "There have been practically no major tectonic disruptions here for at least a million years."

Korac said the mammoth was a so-called southern mammoth, or mammuthus meridionalis, originating from northern Africa. Experts will continue research to find out more about the environment it lived in.

Another mammoth skeleton, from a much later period, was discovered at a factory in Serbia in 1996 and was named Kika. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Mammoth skeleton unearthed in Serbia

Stellar Fossils from Milky Way's Past Revealed

Stellar Fossils from Milky Way's Past Revealed. A cluster of ancient stars is likely the relic of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way during its early days, scientists now find.

Called Terzan 5, the globular star cluster lies within the Milky Way's central bulge of stars that protrudes up and down from the galaxy's flattened disk. A globular cluster can host a collection of 10,000 to 1 million-plus stars bound together by gravity. The traditional view of the 150 or so clusters in our galaxy has been that the stars of each one, typically ancient in cosmic terms, were born at about the same time from one cloud of gas and dust.

New observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope show that's not the case for Terzan 5, whose stars break out into two populations with different ages and chemical compositions, which can indicate where the star's material originated.

The findings will be detailed in the Nov. 26 issue of the journal Nature.

Scientists had already known about another anomalous cluster, Omega Centauri, which has two distinct star groups in its grasp, suggesting the cluster was a remnant of a disrupted dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way. (Omega Centauri is our galaxy's largest globular cluster known, thought to contain some 10 million stars.)

In another paper published this week in Nature, a team of scientists led by Jae-Woo Lee of Sejong University in Korea finds various other globular clusters contain two star populations and could be relics of more massive dwarf galaxies.

Both new findings will help astronomers piece together our galaxy's past, including how it formed some 13.7 billion years ago and then evolved at least in part by gobbling up other galaxies.

"The history of the Milky Way is encoded in its oldest fragments, globular clusters and other systems of stars that have witnessed the entire evolution of our galaxy," said University of Bologna researcher Francesco Ferraro, who led the team studying Terzan 5.

Odd cluster

Specifically, when looking at data collected on Terzan 5, Ferraro's team found one group of stars dating back 12 billion years, while the youngest stars were born some 6 billion years ago. The two populations have different abundances of iron, with the younger group having three times more of the heavy element.

Iron and other heavy elements are mostly produced in supernovae explosions, the guts of which form seeds for new star formation. Each generation of stars, theory holds, have more heavy elements than their predecessors.

"The supernovae explosions are so violent that they tend to eject the gas outside the entire stellar system," Ferraro told . "Then in order to retain the gas the stellar system must be very massive." Ferraro added a typical globular cluster doesn't have enough mass, or gravity, to retain the supernova's ejected material.

As such, the team says their findings indicate Terzan 5 is not a genuine globular cluster.

Piecing together the past

Here's what Ferraro and colleagues think must have happened: Some 12 billion years ago, Terzan 5's first clump of stars formed, then some exploded. Then, about 6 billion years ago, the iron-enriched gas from the explosions helped to generate a second group of stars.

Since supernovae explosions tend to kick gas out from the clusters in which they originate, the researchers think Terzan 5 must have been much more massive, by a factor of 500 to 1,000, in the past compared with today.

The team also found the oldest stellar population in Terzan 5 has the same chemical composition as the Milky Way's central bulge.

Taken together, the results provide insights as to how the bulge, though not the entire galaxy, formed.

"Hence the bulge may have formed through the early aggregation of individually pre-formed and somewhat internally evolved stellar systems," Ferraro said. "Thus suggesting that the inner bulges of spiral galaxies can originate by accretion of small sub-structures." ( space.com )

READ MORE - Stellar Fossils from Milky Way's Past Revealed