Can't decide for which platform: Final Fantasy XIII
Wii Motion+ plus attachment for 20$ which will make the Wii a bit more stable and will become available in June 8. The new game Wii Sports Resort (sequel to Wii Sports) coming out in July 26 for 50$. [Article].
The X-effect one article that kept me wanting more... I think that intermingling genes (making male-hybrids) like that of course is going to deteriorate the production of spermatogenisis. But learning of this for future is a good thing. As many species are suffering from infertility problems. I can't wait for the research to begin and see if the cause of infertility is the X-chromosome not shutting down and thus preventing the male Hybrids, that have been altered already [15 generations], from being fertile. This sort of article do really make me think so very much what is going on through out the species. [X chromosome exposed].
I'm aware that I know little about science and which I was totally a loser at in high school but reading research being done about this is so interesting. And reading about the Story of the X [http://www.physorg.com/news159105336.html] is amazing. So much study has been done for the Y that is about time the X get some spotlight. The evolution of the X is quite interesting and I'm amazed that we have the change to learn what many others in years a past didn't.
How do you know if your male or female? Finding it out is quite interesting... It's not the ration of the X but the dose/number in the short and specific time frame when the embryo is being developed that the signals are convey to make it male or female.
The secrets to staying young may be in the cellular level which may or may not be good for the ones already born. But there are so many other ways to combat the aging process which I find interesting but for a personal purpose don't care to much about it. I really wonder why we care to stay young for crying out loud. We are born we live our young, adult and old age and die. That are the facts of every species in this world. Enjoy what you have why is the need to enhance and maintain the youth? I really don't get it. Aging gracefully is another thing but staying young just for selfish reasons is disgusting in my books.
Can't wait for StarCraft II. I want it... need to get this. I love the original and can't wait for this one to come out... Was watching Miss Congeniality with Sandra Bullock and still like the song: One in A Million by Bosson, really like the chorus but the rest not really. wonder if iTunes has it, buy, heee. On Xbox I want Sid Meier's Civilization: Revolution and Beautiful Katamari.
Alicia Silverstone is one my faves :) she's been in 3 Aerosmith videos on of them was with Liv Tyler 'Crazy.' Has been in Clueless which is my one of my fave movies. And Miss Match - tv show.
I want this songs: * Asia Engineer - Kimi wa Kimi no Mama de.... * I RAVE U feat. DJ OZMA * Saving Jane - Girl Next Door * 坂詰美紗子 [Misako Sakazume] - さよならもありがとうも言えない * エイジア エンジニア/君は君のままで
Boys before flowers is so good... I can't wait for the ending... was watching Happy Together on utube. Hye Sun [JanDi] is so cute... and Hyung Joon is so yummy. Freaken funny show... :) And the second CD is out. Yah! Want to get my hands out new songs that really are great!
some tweets that I sorta deleted or were never sent cuz I/[s]he not follow or someone else's that I found interesting: @novaspivack wow, that's a lot... I read all my tweets/chirps & very happy w/ my #. :) would spend all my day reading, no way. :) about 4 hours ago from web in reply to novaspivack
@novaspivack very good article. & OMG joining Twine. I post all my stuff on my blog still. yes, I read ur articles on ur site :) thx @techie1 1:30 AM Mar 17th from web
left message where can't quite remember... Good to know if I ever decide to go public with my profile. Most of the stuff doesn't really apply cuz I have no idea what #Trythis1, hashtags or DMs. There are so many APIs is not funny. You just have to use good reasoning as to how to handle yourself on Twitter. I have no good suggestions. I still have no idea how to use Twine, ain't it funny! Ciao-Meow...
mental note: the excel commercial is so cute... well more like the little food: donut, cup of Joe and an onion are so cute... :) adorable...
Yah, my posts seem to be sucky. I sure have no life. If I do this I think by the time it gets to #1day, I'll be so heart broken from all the boring crap I post and give up on my blog. LOL... I should write from my heart but too scared of what would come out of me. The heart feels ...........................
Here's another boring one for the archives... Woke at 8:54am... Had a coffee and a mini raisin brioche snail. BFG went out to a meeting. Called him to get some bread for Egg-wiches. He also got V8 my fave and Ferrero Rocher [which I hide so he doesn't eat them all but somehow if he doesn't find them he goes and buys more, lol]. I guess it doesn't work to hide them. Plus, it aggravates me when he eats them in the bedroom he always stains the sheets... aarrghh, and they ain't cheap. Now we only have 2 sets that haven't been chocolatized by him!
Tweeted a bit... nothing much... read a good article at cracked.com that Twinkiebeyond posted. I also passed by but nothing yet... Still read the article about the 5 biggest spending catastrophes but that was yesterday! Pretty sad... :(
Boys Before Flowers [ep17] was sorta a down. Nothing much happened, except bitchy girl found about j n j. #18 will set up the next 6 episodes left. I love to be engrossed in fantasy at times.
Yesterday, passed a chunk of my time reading up on some coding. and will probably dig out some of my old code books. Crap feel like I'm at school again. lol... I'm so in love with Miss $ - Don't Cheat! Those words just resound in my bones.
Been wanting to game but... the feeling is not there. I have plenty of new games but still the craving isn't there...
The day passes and life goes on... [thoughts run through me but they remain secrets...]
What can Apple teach Sony & Nintendo I can just imagine Apples: dudes [nintendo n sony] let's talk. I may be able to teach u 1 or 2 things... oh good funny article... iphone/ipod will/may beat u in 09. due to new game app... quick do something...
When I read about these fuckers! I want them to disappear and die. These men are disgusting. I want to cry, die and kill these bastards... How dare they think that the children want such disgusting things happening to them. I hate them and they should just screw themselves... What is the government, police and every other protection agency doing about these sickos?!
Reading this article and finding out all this out, I feel sick to my stomach. I'm truly scared of having children, with people like that walking the earth. How scary is that... My boyfriend is disgusted and says they should be shot!
What can we do as ordinary citizens to stop such hideous crimes from happening to the minors who need protection from this.
Is Recycling Worth It? PM Investigates its Economic and Environmental Impact Americans haul 82 million tons of trash to recycling centers each year. But does it pay off—for the environment or the economy? PM has some real answers. By Alex Hutchinson - Photographs by Greg Miller Published in the December 2008 issue. The modern era of recycling began in the meandering wake of the Mobro 4000. The infamous garbage barge spent much of 1987 traveling up and down the eastern seaboard looking for a place to dump its 3000-ton load of New York trash. It was refused at every port. By the time the spurned vessel returned to Long Island, still ferrying its fetid cargo, it had become the poster child for what was trumpeted as a national crisis: dwindling landfill space. Faced with the scale of their own refuse, Americans took action. Nascent recycling programs blossomed into major operations. Municipalities invested in trucks for curbside pickups and in facilities to handle mountains of castoff material. Kindergartners were taught the virtues of separating clear glass from green. Almost overnight, it seemed, recycling was embraced by the public as a kind of all-purpose absolution for our environmental sins.
Yet doubts remained. Some critics wondered if, far from being an environmental panacea, recycling is actually a giant placebo that makes us feel virtuous but wastes both money and resources. Take the much- maligned plastic water bottle. It’s almost always made from petroleum, a resource that certainly seems worth conserving, and if you chuck it in the trash, the container will live on in a landfill for centuries. But how much diesel fuel does the truck that collects these bottles burn? How much energy does the recycling plant consume; what fumes does it emit into the atmosphere? And what does it all cost, anyway?
How Recycling Works At a single-stream sorting facility, such as San Francisco's Recycle Central, a series of conveyor belts, giant magnets... (Diagram by Superfuture) The economic case for recycling certainly got off to a difficult start. The sudden rise of curbside recycling in the late 1980s created a new source of “raw” materials that industry wasn’t yet equipped to exploit. Prices reflected that. Rumors spread that cities were paying exorbitant costs to get rid of recyclables—or were simply dumping them in landfills. When demand finally did pick up, it reached an unsustainable high: In the Pacific Northwest, for example, the price of a ton of mixed recyclables spiked from $33 in 1994 to $170 in 1995 and then plummeted back to $40 in 1996. This volatility in the recycling market discouraged further investment and provided more ammunition for skeptics.
In an influential 1996 New York Times Magazine article entitled “Recycling is Garbage,” John Tierney summed up the skepticism by asserting there was no landfill shortage and that the depletion of natural resources wasn’t a concern: “The [1970s] oil scare was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages,” he wrote. In fact, the whole concept of recycling was fraught with trade-offs, he argued: “Saving a tree is a mixed blessing. When there’s less demand for virgin wood pulp, timber companies are likely to sell some of their tree farms—maybe to condominium developers.”
Over the following decade, the price of recyclables inched upward, but the fear that recycling might be an expensive boondoggle remained unchanged. In 2004, magicians-turned-debunkers Penn and Teller filmed an episode of their television show that echoed Tierney’s criticisms from eight years earlier. “The recycling industry creates pollution, has to be subsidized by the government because it’s cost-ineffective, and is completely unnecessary,” they declared. Meanwhile, recycling advocates were claiming exactly the opposite.
Current conditions are very different from those in 1996, or even 2004. The price of raw materials has skyrocketed in the past few years, and concerns about energy security and global warming now weigh more heavily in the debate. Still, the same two basic questions about recycling persist: Is it good for the environment? And does it make economic sense? The Environmental Debate According to one calculation, all the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side—not that big (unless you happen to live in the neighborhood). Or put another way, it would take another 20 years to run through the landfills that the U.S. has already built. So the notion that we’re running out of landfill space—the original impetus for the recycling boom—turns out to have been a red herring. Recycling critics also question the wisdom of deploying fleets of large, fuel-hungry trucks that duplicate the routes already driven by garbage trucks to take recyclables to reprocessing facilities that burn energy and emit pollution. And the resources saved aren’t always that rare: The virgin material conserved by recycling glass is mainly sand, and we’re a long, long way from a “peak sand” crisis.
To resolve the environmental debate once and for all, experts have begun to conduct detailed life-cycle analyzes on recycled goods, calculating the energy consumed from the moment they’re picked up by recycling trucks until they are processed into brand-new products. When compared with the amount of energy required to send the same goods to landfills or incinerators and make new products from scratch, the results vary dramatically, depending on the material.
Aluminum, for example, requires 96 percent less energy to make from recycled cans than it does to process from bauxite. At the other end of the spectrum, recycled glass uses only about 21 percent less energy—but it still comes out ahead, according to a study by Washington-based environmental consultant Jeffrey Morris. Recycled plastic bottles use 76 percent less energy and newsprint about 45 percent less, he found. Across the board, the key factor is the energy intensity of extracting virgin materials, which is an order of magnitude higher than that of recovering the same material through recycling. “Even if you doubled the emissions from collecting recyclables, it wouldn’t come close,” Morris says. Overall, he found, it takes 10.4 million Btu to manufacture products from a ton of recyclables, compared to 23.3 million Btu for virgin materials. And all of the collecting, hauling and processing of those recyclables adds just 0.9 million Btu.
That doesn’t mean the system is always efficient. The best recycling is closed-loop: Steel cans and glass bottles are recycled into more cans and bottles, which are in turn recyclable. But some materials are currently “downcycled” into less desirable products that can be recycled no further. Soft-drink bottles made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), for example, often end up as polyester fibers in clothing or carpets. It is possible to make new PET bottles from recycled stock, but the process is currently more expensive than making them from petroleum. Supply and demand also come into play: Britain imports so much wine that recycled green glass is simply used as construction aggregate; recycling it consumes more energy than just sending the bottles to a landfill.
The Economic Debate Thanks to life-cycle assessments, there’s no longer any serious debate among policymakers about whether recycling makes sense environmentally. The economic debate, however, still rages. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a clear picture of how much municipal recycling programs cost compared to landfilling or incineration, because of hidden subsidies and long-term price guarantees given to all types of waste disposal. But it’s fair to say that, at this point, it generally costs a little more to recycle waste than it does to dump it.
Recycling economics are fundamentally local, since hauling and tipping fees—paid to trucking operations and processing facilities that handle waste—vary from about $24 per ton in the south central and west central regions of the U.S., to more than $70 in the Northeast, according to the most recent figures from the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA). Other local costs also differ dramatically. Taking some very rough estimates for illustration, it might cost $150 a ton to collect and process mixed recyclables. The price those recyclables fetch reached about $100 a ton earlier this year—so if the cost of taking that material to a landfill is more than $50 a ton, the recycling program will be a money saver. With a national average tipping fee of $34.29, most curbside programs still cost money.
Those numbers are changing rapidly, though. This past summer, the price for virtually all recyclables hit record highs, boosted by larger market forces. Plastics are made from oil, which has caused the price for recyclable plastic to double in the past two years. Glass is made of cheap sand, but it also contains energy-intensive soda ash, so the price of recycled glass has risen in lock step with energy prices. But the biggest factor, says industry veteran Jerry Powell, the editor of Resource Recycling Magazine, is “the recycling market’s most famous five-letter word, C-H-I-N-A.” With its ravenous demand for raw materials, China benefits from ultracheap shipping in container ships that would otherwise sail back to Asia empty. “China is a tree-poor country,” says Chaz Miller of the NSWMA, “so our recycled paper has become their forest, in a way.”
Just as crucially, while the current record-high prices may not endure, few fear the precipitous plunge that rocked the recycling market in 1995. Buyers are seeking long-term contracts with a guaranteed steady supply, which helps smooth the market fluctuations.
If recycling is truly becoming profitable, then that should end the debate—we can simply let the market decide what to recycle. The problem, according to University of Michigan professor Richard Porter, author of The Economics of Waste, is that recycling markets don’t function smoothly. If you drink a bottle of water, the apparent cost to you of throwing out the empty or recycling it are identical: zero. One way to create incentives for recycling is a “pay as you throw” policy, where homeowners pay for garbage collection based on the size of their garbage cans. More than 7000 communities, serving about a quarter of the U.S. population, have introduced this policy with success—their recycling rates are about 30 percent higher as a result. New Technology From a consumer’s point of view, one of the biggest knocks against recycling is the mind-numbingly complex rules about which plastics can be recycled when and in what forms. So those of us who don’t live in San Francisco can only envy that city’s residents, who since April have been instructed to toss any and all rigid plastic (and any other recyclables) into the same bin. From there, it goes to the city’s state-of-the-art Recycle Central facility, where each day 700 tons of flowerpots, Mr. Potato Head toys and other items are swiftly sorted into the appropriate piles by an array of technological wizardry—magnets for steel, eddy currents that repel aluminum, spinning disks and vacuum tubes that suspend gravity for plastics—along with a phalanx of eagle-eyed humans wearing thick gloves.
This single-stream sorting technology isn’t perfect. At some facilities, plastic bags snarl the conveyer belts, and broken glass contaminates other materials. But it represents the most important trend in recycling technology—and it’s improving. Even though a typical single-stream facility costs $8 million to $10 million, more than double the price of a dual-stream facility (where paper is collected separately), they have increased in number from 70 in 2001 to 160 in 2007.
One major advantage of single-stream is convenience: When Madison, Wis., changed from dual-stream to single-stream in 2005, the recycling rate leaped by 25 percent in the first year, while the projected annual cost increased by less than $3 per household. It’s a pattern that is being repeated elsewhere: About 700 of the country’s 10,000 curbside programs have made the switch.
Another benefit is efficiency, since collection costs typically eat up 50 to 60 percent of the budget. “That means efficiencies at the curb are crucial,” says Lori Scozzafava of the Solid Waste Association of North America. Houston, which boasts the nation’s worst recycling rate (2.6 percent), has a voluntary recycling program that forces its trucks to drive long distances between pickups. Single-stream collection, on the other hand, speeds up the process dramatically, especially with new trucks that empty bins automatically. Besides saving money in the long run, this increased efficiency, along with the greater volumes that people recycle, is allowing more types of plastics to be recovered.
The Verdict Even after the environmental and economic questions have been answered, the decision about how much to recycle depends on how you reconcile those two factors. “High recycling rates are usually a function of, first, a political decision, and second, the strength of local markets,” Miller says. San Francisco’s 70 percent recycling rate isn’t enough for Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wants to ramp it up to 75 percent—even if that means making recycling compulsory. Houston’s willingness to squander resources with its paltry recycling rate is also as much a political decision as it is an economic one.
Most cities lie somewhere between those two extremes. For them, recycling is generally desirable, but it’s not automatically good and efficient and cheap. It takes significant up-front capital investment to implement a state-of-the-art single-stream recycling program. For that reason, the newfound stability of the recycling market is just as important as the high prices, because it allows cities to plan investments around future revenue streams. “Chicago used to pay haulers to take its recycled materials,” says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Coalition. Now, it has invested $24 million to buy recycling carts for 600,000 homes and will deliver the recyclables to a single-stream processing facility—which will now pay the city instead of being paid.
Ultimately, every community will develop its own unique program. “The bigger the city,” Porter says, “the more you can recycle.” The dividing line between environmental and economic factors will also begin to blur. On the Chicago Climate Exchange, the world’s first greenhouse-gas trading market, the price for a ton of avoided carbon-dioxide emissions peaked at over $7 this summer. Morris has created a model for municipal waste decision-makers that assigns values to environmental impacts ranging from toxins to acid rain and greenhouse gases. Most telling, though, is a recent study that found that about 90 percent of the material going to landfills has a market value. Given today’s economy, we won’t keep burying that value for long.
Microsoft confirms that all versions of IE have critical new bug
This sucker "OLEDB32.DLL" is causing major freakers on IE, aaahhh... Want to freaken kick this m-f pc to the curb and get me a mac... But why do I say this and do nothing. WTF is wrong with me sticking to ms should go to mac. Ok, I have made up my mind and will try to see if I can order it and maybe get it by early Jan/09. Links to article that tell you about IE vulnerability [OLEDB32.DLL] and what/how to do:
Just saying this for developers but if you know your PC inside and out... and know the platform very well then this could be useful and may help you to understand more what's going on. I have Vista so I read like there's no tomorrow when it comes to this 'efing OS... aaaahh... If it's over your head which is was for me a few years ago when I looked into this library don't bother... It took me sometime to understand much of this gibberish... Now try to explain it to BFG, and to him it sounds like an alien language. All I say to him is don't touch, IE at all or anything that has to do with the OS, I'll handle it. Cuz any pc problems in my house are my issue. YEAH right I'll pay for someone to mess with my machine. Too many bad experiences have taught me to learn and do myself! Don't let some idiot touch your machine! Well, that's my opinion.
Microsoft has been developing Windows 7 under a shroud of secrecy worthy of Apple, and it's led to a rash of rumors and unfounded expectations.
So let us state for the record: Windows 7 doesn't have a new kernel, it doesn't run in the cloud and it's not based on Midori (a research project focused on writing an OS in managed code).
In fact, Windows 7 uses the same driver model as Vista – and even refers to itself as version 6.1. We've got our hands on the Milestone Three (M3) pre-beta release of Windows 7, so read on to find out exactly what to expect from Microsoft's newest OS.
Windows 7's philosophy You can get a good idea about future versions of Windows by looking at the progress of Office under Steven Sinofsky, now Senior Vice President of the Windows and Windows Live engineering group. The changes that he's made to the Windows team aren't just about what new features go into Windows; they're about the whole way that Windows is developed.
These changes are definitely a response to what happened with Vista, which he sees as a learning experience: "As engineers, you have to have some things that don't go as well as you would have liked and you have to go and learn what to prevent. We just really weren't ready when the product [was released]. We did a lot of work, we just didn't do enough and we didn't do the right kind of work, so we had to go and improve that."
The improvements that Sinofsky speaks of are centred within three key areas: the process of developing Windows; the concepts behind 7's key design principles; and the rebuilding of relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that were soured by Vista. Culturally, the Windows team is working in a very different way to previous incarnations. Instead of one team creating Tablet PC features, another team working on Media Center features and yet another team working on core Windows pieces (with none of those teams getting together and interoperating correctly at the end), one team now owns an entire feature across all the platforms from start to finish.
The new development process is more structured and more realistic about what can be achieved in three years, and key to this new process is ensuring that every feature included in each of the internal milestones is usable by the end of it. Compare that concept to what happened to the 'three pillars' of Vista. Indigo – the Windows Communication Foundation –does what was promised, but so far it's used mainly by Microsoft's own business applications. The Windows Presentation Foundation that shipped in Vista was ripped out and rewritten at the last minute because it was deemed not to work well enough. And WinFS – the long-awaited Object File System for creating an database of metadata and extensible schemas for different types of data – was shuffled off into SQL Server because Search fulfilled the needs of most users.
Principles for 7 The vision for Windows 7 doesn't sound like a snappy marketing slogan yet. Even Mike Nash, the Vice President for Windows Product Management, doesn't have one. He says: "The things you do today on Windows, Windows 7 makes easier; and the things you always dreamed of doing [are made] possible."
It's back to basics on the engineering side, says Gabriel Aul, the Program Manager in charge of Windows Performance. "Quality is a fundamental. Device compatibility is important. Other things are important too – like aesthetics, ease of use and the Help content – but this is really the foundation everything else has to build upon." That might sound obvious, but it's something that Microsoft needs to promise – and deliver.
What will 7 look like? This time, a key concern for Microsoft in terms of design is the Windows user experience. To make this happen, there's been a bit of a re-shuffle; Sinofsky isn't the only person to move from the Office team to Windows. Julie Larson-Green, the person responsible for introducing the ribbon interface to Office 2007, is now Corporate Vice President of Program Management for the Windows Experience. A handful of accessories (including WordPad, Movie Maker and Paint) will get a version of the ribbon, but it's not the look of Office 2007 that you'll see in Windows 7: it's the principle of putting new features in the right place and making existing features easy to find.
The changes to the new Windows 7 user interface will be subtle, but they reflect a handful of design principles aimed at countering the perception that PCs are confusing and difficult to use. For example, there are six different methods that you can use to open up your email client in Vista, including icons on the desktop, in the taskbar and in the system tray as well as on the Start menu. Windows 7 replaces the majority of those with an icon on the taskbar that launches Outlook and gets you back to it once it's open. This concept is repeated for many applications, de-cluttering the desktop. And if you hover your cursor over the program's icon, you'll get a preview of the running program that can show the multiple windows inside the app. So you can see all of the tabs in IE8 without having to switch into the browser itself, for example.
Another addition to the user interface is the Jump List, which shows recent documents. If the app supports it, the Jump List can provide shortcuts to documents that you open often, your most frequently used tasks in an application (such as composing an email) and even the last track that you heard in Windows Media Player. Microsoft decided not to include an extra icon to get to the Jump List; it turned out to be distracting and easy to click when you didn't want to. This sort of decision is symptomatic of the principle that Windows 7 should be quieter than previous Windows OSes.
Examples of the new 'quieter' Windows model are everywhere. System messages go into the new Solution Center instead of popping up and getting in your way; applications can only show balloon messages in the notification area; and new icons that try to put themselves into the notification area are kept in a hidden list until you choose to put them in the tray. The UAC is still there, but it's now much less intrusive, and there's a slider that allows you to choose what you get elevation requests for. Other changes to the user interface are focused on making Windows 7 more intuitive to use. Small changes to the Explorer window mean that you can see more pictures in the same space. Move the mouse into the right-hand corner of the screen and your windows turn transparent so that you can see the desktop (which can now have gadgets all over it instead of just in the sidebar). Drag a window to the top of the screen and it maximises; drag it to the side and it takes up half of the screen so that you can easily see two windows side by side. These features are only partly about the way Windows 7 looks; a lot of them are about getting Windows out of the way.
Under the bonnet Windows 7 uses the same kernel as Windows Server 2008 R2 (which is based on the kernel used in Vista, Server 2008 and Vista SP1), but that doesn't mean that there haven't been any changes. Similarly, Mac OS X and the iPhone may use the Mach kernel that Rick Rashid (the head of Microsoft Research) wrote 25 years ago, but that doesn't mean that Apple's operating system and revolutionary smartphone are at all comparable to the technology that the code was originally written for. The code within both kernels has been replaced and updated over the years.
The Windows 7 kernel has been through a code verifier that proves around 100 key properties, and it's been updated based on those tests. Low-level kernel locks that could block the Start menu and taskbar have been minimised to improve the speed of the user interface, and a new 'pre-wait' state for threads means that they're not held up by the dispatcher lock. There's also finer granularity in the page file database, which means that threads aren't waiting for memory locks as often.
These changes matter more for parallel multithreaded applications on massively multiprocessor and multicore systems with many gigabytes of memory (like Intel's Larrabee) than for standard desktop software; this is how Windows 7 will scale up to 256 processors. There are fewer changes than Microsoft made to the kernel between XP and Vista, but they're significant for the future.
What Microsoft isn't doing is throwing away the whole kernel – or the whole Vista code base – and starting from scratch. To avoid the same compatibility issues that Vista faced, Microsoft isn't changing the driver model, the graphics sub-system or the componentisation model for Windows 7. Drivers now run in a sandbox, so that a driver hanging won't affect other drivers or apps, but they don't need to be rewritten to support this. The version number is even staying at 6.1, so software vendors have fewer changes to make in installers. "That's not a statement about the amount of energy put in to this release or the scale or scope of the release," Sinofsky points out. "I don't think it's necessary to break everything to have a big change."
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: techradar
PDFs have always been one of my biggest computing nemesis: they slow my machine down to a crawl when opened and eat up a lot of disk space when saved. Gmail has just added a solution to address this: its own viewer that lets you view PDFs in your Web browser. It’s blazing fast, includes a search feature, and lets you download or print the PDF if you really need to.
The way it works is pretty simple. If you’re the recipient of a PDF, you’ll now get a “View” link along with the previously existing “Download” link. When clicked, the “View” link opens up a new tab, which promptly loads the PDF in Google Docs, without opening up any desktop software (ie – Adobe Reader). Other features of the viewer include options to zoom in and out, as well as quick paging via next/previous arrows.
As the recipient of a lot of PDF files, I’m pretty stoked about this addition to Gmail. On the other hand, it’s a bit of a blow to startups Scribd and Docstoc perhaps, who offer their own solutions for web-based PDF viewing [http://mashable.com/2008/06/11/docstoc-oneclic].
Also, and I’ll assume this is just temporary and give Google the benefit of the doubt, but the new PDF viewer doesn’t seem to work in Firefox, but works perfectly in Chrome.
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: mashable.com
Heee... how funny is this... the freaken cartoon on this article [see] reminds me of one night that BFG said exactly that to me by I responded that he go to bed... heee...
There's a xkcd comic that shows a person resisting going to bed because "someone is wrong on the Internet," which has become an Internet meme because it strikes a chord with so many of us. Admit it: we've all done it before, probably multiple times. But when we think of the type of person who does this, most of us think of men. That stereotype, it turns out, is not quite as true as we think. According to new survey results from Intel, women are more likely than men to willingly sacrifice sex for two weeks than risk losing Internet access for that long. And you thought headaches were a problem.
According to the survey of 2,119 adult Internet users, commissioned for Intel by Harris Interactive (full results will be published next week), 95 percent of all respondents said it was at least "somewhat" important to have devices that allow them to get online. 65 percent said that they simply could not live without Internet access, period. Clearly, this is a crowd that loves their Internet. But it wouldn't take much for this luxury-turned-utility to interrupt people's lives in the bedroom, it seems, and in trends that seem to be moving in opposite directions.
Almost half (46 percent) of all women said that they would choose the Internet over sex for two weeks. Broken down, the numbers are even more scary for the male side of the population: 49 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 34 would rather have the Internet than some tender lovin', and 52 percent between age 35 and 44 felt the same way. It looks like the numbers only go down in the upper age groups, who don't tend to spend as much time on the Internet in the first place.
Truer than we'd like to admit Men have trouble resisting the succubus that is the online world either, but in lower numbers (30 percent overall). 39 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 34 said they would sacrifice sex for the Internet for two weeks, while a mere 23 percent of those between 35 and 44 said so.
Sex wasn't the only thing people ranked below Internet access in Intel's survey, though. Cable TV subscriptions, dining out, shopping for clothes, and gym memberships all lose out to the Internet when push comes to shove. In fact, TV seemed to be one of the most expendable of the non-people-related options, with 58 percent of all adults (male and female) saying they would rather give up TV for two weeks than live without Internet for even a single week.
In the spirit of things we would rather give up in order to stay online for two weeks, the Ars staff has come up with a list of things that we would sacrifice to keep our Internet on * Phone service * Shaving * Bathing (Nate only) * Air conditioning (in the summer, that is) * TV (broadcast, cable, or even online) * Caffeine What are some of yours?
Was watching House tonight ant there was a case that House was seeing in the Clinic and it was about parthenogenesis [virgin birth, asexual reproduction] which occurs in rarely nature to [ex. bees, reptiles fish and even in some plants], but more rarely in humans which always results in a female child due to the XX chromosome. But a hermaphroditic species can have both female and male off-springs as they have both XY chromosomes . Which can also, happen 1 in 5 million. The discovery.com has information reptiles and other species... Very cool... Found some articles:
Virgin birth, scientifically known as parthenogenesis, has previously been proven in certain amphibians, reptiles, birds and bony fish. It's now suspected that most, if not all, female sharks possess the ability.
"Parthenogenesis may not have evolved in sharks," Demian Chapman, who led the research, told Discovery News. "It may just be an occasional mistake that sometimes occurs when eggs are left unfertilized."
Chapman, a shark scientist with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, explained that during egg production, a female shark produces four cells. Only one of these becomes the egg. Another of the four is called "the sister polar body," which is a close genetic match to the egg.
During parthenogenesis, according to Chapman, "the sister polar body fuses with the egg and injects its chromosomes into it."
"Therefore, it acts like a sperm and triggers the development of an embryo," he said.
The discovery in this case is bittersweet, since the virgin shark in question, a female blacktip shark named "Tidbit," died after living for eight years without a male companion at the Virginia Aquarium.
An autopsy upon her death revealed that she was pregnant with a single offspring. DNA testing of the unborn offspring showed that it contained no genetic material from a father.
A paper outlining the findings appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Fish Biology.
Chapman and his team made a similar discovery just last May, when a hammerhead residing at an Omaha, Neb., zoo became pregnant after not being in contact with male sharks for at least three years. DNA fingerprinting techniques were used in that case as they were for Tidbit.
The method is identical to how researchers handle human paternity testing.
Female sharks can store sperm for long periods of time, which is why the scientists needed to confirm, through the DNA analysis, the lack of paternal input.
Despite the novelty of the phenomenon, virgin births are inferior to regular shark births in two major respects.
First, the female appears to only be able to produce a single offspring in this manner. Females that mate can have litters ranging from a few to more than 100 shark pups, depending on the species.
Second, the offspring of a virgin birth has "reduced genetic diversity when compared to its mother or any other shark produced by sex," Chapman said, adding that the process is "no great white hope for depleted shark populations."
He hopes that future conservation efforts will focus on "robust shark populations with balanced gender ratios, rather than hoping for a bailout from some interesting quirk of reproduction."
Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, told Discovery News that he supports the new findings since "the research methods are sound and the conclusion of a parthenogenetic birth in this shark species is proven."
Hueter said it's still possible that virgin births are more of "an egg developmental aberration rather than a physiological response to a lack of a mate," but he predicts "time will tell as more research is focused on this interesting subject."
Such revelations may come sooner rather than later, as Chapman is now analyzing the DNA of an offspring from yet another suspected virgin shark birth.
- Korean Cloned Human Cells Were Product of "Virgin Birth". Fraudulent cloned cells were likely the first example of a human egg turned directly into stem cells By JR Minkel: Researchers say they have confirmed suspicions that embryonic stem cells claimed to be extracted from the first cloned human embryo by discredited South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang actually owe their existence to parthenogenesis, a process in which egg cells give rise to embryos without being fertilized by sperm.
A series of genetic markers sprinkled throughout the cells' chromosomes show the same pattern found in parthenogenetic mice as opposed to cloned mice, according to a report published online today in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
The result suggests that, although Hwang deceived the world about achieving the first human cloning, his group was first to succeed in performing human parthenogenesis, which may offer a way of creating cells that are genetically matched to a woman for transplantation back into her body to treat degenerative diseases.
"I think this is an extremely important—and solid—paper," says stem cell researcher Robert Lanza, vice president of research and scientific development at Applied Cell Technology, a regenerative medicine company headquartered in Alameda, Calif., who did not take part in the study. "It conclusively proves that the stem cell line in question was not cloned as claimed, but rather was generated through parthenogenesis."
The result follows on the heels of an announcement last month by another California stem cell company, International Stem Cell Corporation (ISC) in Oceanside, that it had successfully achieved human parthenogenesis for the first time. Last year, Italian researchers claimed to have achieved the same feat but have yet to publish their results.
"The fact that this has now been achieved by two independent groups gives me a far greater degree of confidence," Lanza says.
The new finding brings a measure of closure to a story that first rocked the science world in February 2004, when Hwang and colleagues at Seoul National University announced they had cloned a female donor's cell by transferring its nucleus into one of her egg cells stripped of its nucleus in a procedure known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), and harvested embryonic stem cells from the resulting fusion. They published the result the next month in Science.
The claim went up in smoke in January of 2006 after a probe by the university concluded that Hwang had fabricated the evidence, which followed a similarly damning assessment of a landmark paper from the previous year in which the group falsely reported creating 11 cell lines genetically matched to their donors.
Unsolved Mysteries
A cloned cell should be identical to its donor, but the probe found that of 48 common genetic variations, or markers, present in the 2004 cells, eight did not match their apparent donor. Investigators raised parthenogenesis as the most likely explanation but could not be certain.
Later, during a chance discussion with European colleagues, stem cell researcher George Daley of Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute learned that they had received samples of the cell line before the work was retracted. "We had read the suspicions that the cell was a parthenote, but also realized that it had never really been proven," Daley says.
To settle the case, they analyzed the genetic sequence of the cell line at 500,000 locations across the genome.
The DNA of any two people will differ on average at one of every 1,000 subunits, or base pairs, Daley says. When a chromosome from a sperm cell joins with that of an egg, these single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs or "snips") tend not to match each other.
The same goes for cloned cells. But in contrast, pairs of matching chromosomes in parthenogenetic cells tend to match one another in the middle and differ near the ends because of a genetic mixing process called recombination. In their paper, Daley and colleagues report that the SNPs in the Korean cell line do indeed match toward the center of the chromosomes, similar to five parthenogenetic mouse cell lines that the team created for comparison.
In a separate analysis, they also found that three regions lacked the chemical modifications, or imprinting, that paternal genes impose on a fertilized embryo to prevent those genes from being activated.
Jeffrey Janus, president and director of research for ISC, agrees that "Dr. Hwang's cells have characteristics found in parthenogenetic cells" but remains cautious, saying "it needs more study."
The Irony of It All
Stem cell experts say that Hwang and his team probably had no clue what they had achieved, because if they had they would have claimed credit for it.
"I think this … is every bit as exciting as the SCNT they were claiming," says stem cell researcher Kent Vrana of Pennsylvania State University, who pioneered parthenogenesis in monkeys. "Parthenotes by their very nature are nonviable embryos, so you're not destroying embryos, which has some ethical advantages."
Vrana says the Korean team used a procedure common in attempts to induce parthenogenesis and SCNT alike, in which they injected egg cells with calcium and a protein synthesis inhibitor to mimic what happens when sperm fertilizes an egg.
To achieve SCNT, they first had to extract each egg's DNA and then inject the donor cell nucleus. Daley says the Korean scientists must have inadvertently left the DNA intact in one of the 242 egg cells they injected. "They claimed they verified the removal of the DNA,'' Daley says, "but obviously they didn't."
The injection of the donor nucleus could have failed if the injecting needle pulled it back out when withdrawn from the egg or if the egg somehow rejected the introduced nucleus, Vrana says.
Hwang's group purported to rule out parthenogenesis as an explanation in part by showing that two genes normally activated by paternal DNA were inactive in the cells. But Daley says such experiments are easy to misinterpret and are less conclusive than sequencing SNPs.
"I think they were just so blinded by what they hoped to accomplish, they missed it," Vrana says.
As a result, in late June, more than a year after Science retracted the 2004 paper, researchers at ISC were able to claim the discovery of human parthenogenetic cell lines as their own in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells. The group reported growing multiple parthenogenetic embryonic stem cell lines by incubating eggs in a warm, low-oxygen culture medium.
Before today's announcement, the work was already "awfully convincing," Vrana says, and surprisingly successful: out of some 50 donated eggs, the company grew six cell lines. Parthenogenesis in monkeys typically works only once every 90 eggs, he says.
Banking on Parthenotes
The therapeutic potential of parthenogenetic cells remains to be seen. The lack of imprinting from the paternal DNA may cause the cells to behave abnormally as they develop. Furthermore, they must have matching immune proteins to be transplanted back into a donor.
In principle, tissue banks of parthenogenetic cell lines could include enough different immune protein combinations to treat up to half of the U.S. population—men as well as women—Lanza says. But he adds that if human parthenotes routinely contain as many genetic mismatches as the Korean cells, the number of eggs needed to create such a bank could be prohibitively large.
Daley says his group hopes to acquire donated eggs from women with inherited diseases and use parthenogenesis to create cell lines to study those disorders. In the future, researchers will have to determine whether similar cells are safe and effective when transplanted.
"We're a long, long way," Daley says, "from realizing therapeutic uses of these cells."
- Virgin Births Lead to Transplantable Stem Cells. Stem cells created from unfertilized mice eggs are successfully transplanted without immune rejection By JR Minkel: In the future individual egg cells may serve as the source for stem cells that doctors can transplant back into people if necessary to treat nerve damage and debilitating diseases, if researchers can extend a new procedure used on mice for making transplantable stem cells.
"This is just a small step along the way, but it's an important one," says stem cell researcher Paul Lerou of Children's Hospital Boston and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. Lerou and his colleagues extracted stem cells from embryolike clusters of cells grown from the unfertilized eggs of female mice that the researchers coaxed into dividing. They injected the stem cells back into related mice, where they grew without being rejected by immune cells, the group reports in a paper published online December 14 by Science.
In principle the method could make it easier to create human stem cells and potentially carry out still far-off treatments for spinal cord injuries and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. "I think it's very attractive and this paper shows it has the potential to do really great things," says molecular biologist Kent Vrana of Penn State University.
Researchers have previously proposed growing embryonic stem cells using so-called therapeutic cloning, in which the nucleus of a donor's body cell is placed in an egg cell stripped of its nucleus. The problem is that the process would likely require at least 100 donated egg cells to work even once, judging from the number of eggs needed to clone animals.
To avoid this, Lerou's team in essence tricked unfertilized egg cells from mice into dividing the same way that a growing embryo would. Researchers induce this effect, called parthenogenesis, by exposing ovulating or immature eggs to a chemical that prevents them from splitting their two sets of chromosomes into two daughter cells with one set each. The process works about 70 percent of the time in mice and nonhuman primates, Lerou says.
Normally, such cells would be genetically mismatched with cells like those of their donor. Specifically, the donor would have genes for two different proteins called major histocompatibility complexes (MHC), one on each chromosome 17 in its genome. The so-called parthenote embryo, however, would have identical pairs of chromosomes, so it would have only one MHC. If a cell's MHCs do not match those of the rest of the organism, the immune system will attack and reject those cells in much the same way it rejects a transplanted organ that comes from an incompatible donor.
A parthenote's chromosomes are not completely identical, however. An egg cell starts off containing both sets of chromosomes, each of which is copied and one of which then gets expelled. Before that expulsion, the different chromosomes mix together a bit so that a chromosome that would normally have one MHC protein sometimes gets the other one instead, giving the parthenote two different MHCs.
The researchers hypothesized that they could make compatible matches if they were able to isolate the few cells in the bunch with both MHCs. Toward that end, they analyzed the genomes of individual cells from their parthenotes and, lo and behold, found a few with both proteins. When they transplanted those cells into mice that also had a mixed set of MHC proteins, the parthenote cells took hold and grew into the three major kinds of embryonic tissue.
"It's pretty solid data," says stem cell researcher Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University. "If that is going to hold true in humans we don't know, but it is very encouraging." He cautions, however, that stem cells of any origin must still prove stable when transplanted to hold any hope of treating disease. One possible hitch: Parthenotes might not grow properly, because they lack important contributions from male genes.
I stumbled upon this really great article for BFG and me, through digg at zenhabits. even printed it out!
11 Ways to Cure Someday Syndrome Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alex Fayle of the Someday Syndrome blog. • Someday Syndrome: not doing what you want to because you don’t know what it is, because you’re procrastinating about it, or because you have too much stuff getting in your way. Everyone suffers from Someday Syndrome at some point in their lives, often catching it repeatedly. For me, most recently, I’d been saying that I really should give running a try without doing anything about it. You probably have something similar going on in your life – a project, a task, a goal - that you just haven’t got around to doing yet. Right? I could quote Nike and say: Just Do It, but if it were that simple Someday Syndrome wouldn’t exist. In my own case, it wasn’t until my body rebelled and refused to sleep from lack of exercise that I finally got started. I decided that here had to be an easier way than waiting for pain to push me into getting over myself and getting on with my goals. So I came up with this: 11 ways to cure Someday Syndrome so that others don’t need to suffer through a cure. 1. Be you. This is The Happiness Project’s number one Happiness Commandment. I hate team sports, so there’s no way I’d play football (soccer). Running allows me to exercise when I want and I can do it on my own or with a friend. Perfectly me. Maybe you’re not doing something because in reality, it doesn’t fit with who you are. If so, dump the idea and the expectations that likely came along with it, and go find something that suits you better. 2. Clear out the junk. If you don’t know what would suit you better, it could be because your mind and emotions are all cluttered up. I mean, seriously, if your mind’s in chaos, how could you possibly make a clear decision on getting rid of your some days? The clutter I’m talking about includes the negative thoughts (like me thinking that I’d never be able to run more than 30 seconds without dying), or negative attitudes (I’m too lazy to run). There are some great tools available in the Simplicity category of ZenHabits. Use them. 3. Know what you want. And why you want it. If you are going cure Someday Syndrome, you’ll need to know details about that desire and the reasons behind it. And if you don’t know what that is, the blogosphere is full of blogs ready to help you figure out your dreams - Someday Syndrome and ZenHabits are two examples, but you can find others on the PluginID website on Glen’s Personal Development page. 4. Make a grand plan. I say “grand” because this is the big picture plan. Don’t get carried away. Planning can feel like action, but really it’s no different than talking. Until you actually do something, you’re still procrastinating. I have a goal of running 20K next November. That’s enough for now. Starting is more important than getting into detailed plans. 5. Take one step at a time. The only details you need to choose at this point is first steps. I get overwhelmed by details. When I look past the big picture I don’t just see a few details – I see all of them, therefore I focus on just the next two or three things that I’m going to do. I know what I need to do to get started (the first two months of training). That’s enough. 6. Ignore the rest. That’s right. Ignore everything else in the goal except what you’re working on. We often use comparisons of where we are now to where we want to be as a form of procrastination. While checking in is always a good thing, we can do it when each small task is completed, and not in the middle of a task. On my running days, when I’m in the middle of my current workout, I don’t think about what’s coming up next week. Why would I want to freak myself out? 7. Get help. Daniel Gilbert in his book Stumbling on Happiness, says that the best route to figuring out if our goals will actually make us happy is to talk to others who have done it. I also try to be lazy when I can be, so if someone else has done the work (like this Couch-to-5K Running Plan), then there’s no need to waste my time coming up with something new, now is there? 8. Don’t compare. Be careful when you get help, because the dream-shattering tendency to compare lurks nearby. Leo talks about the bad side to comparisons in his post: Life’s Enough. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others. Enough said. (Yes, I’m taking my own advice about Getting Help and moving on.) 9. Be uncomfortable. Judith Sills in her book The Comfort Trap, or What If You’re Riding a Dead Horse? talks about how we might be terribly unhappy, but we’re comfortable so we don’t do anything about the unhappiness. Happiness is a risk, but the current situation even if it’s painful is safe. Which would you prefer? Comfortably in pain and unhappy or uncomfortably blissful? I live my life the second way and would recommend that you always choose the uncomfortable option. 10. Celebrate the process as well as the end. I don’t mean celebrations like Dash’s Grade 3 “graduation ceremony” from The Incredibles. I mean acknowledge your progress. I Tweet my runs and mention them on my Facebook status. I also talk with other runners and we talk progress and tips. And in turn this sharing inspires others and helps them move past their own Somedays and toward achieving their goals. 11. Don’t stop at the easy point. Wait a second. Most lists are only ten points. Why does this one have eleven? Because it’s important to push yourself just a little bit further than you think you can go. Although my big goal is running 20K within a year, I’ve committed to running 7K on December 31st. So, while you’re celebrating and taking it one step at a time, come up with one unexpected action you can take that’ll add energy, excitement and a bit of fear to your goal. Believe me, that bit of fear will probably be the best motivator you’ve ever found. For more from Alex Fayle, check out his blog, Someday Syndrome (or subscribe to his feed). — If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. I’d appreciate it. :)
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from zenhabits
We don’t know how we’ve managed to live this long without a set of vinyl Gmail stickers for our computer. Finally, our prayers have been answered, and Google’s offering to give away these priceless keepsakes for free. Just send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address at this page, and you’ll get back a set of Gmail stickers.
The stickers include the Gmail “mvelope” icon, a set of Gmail hotkey reminders to stick on your keyboard, and one of three (collectible!) nameplate stickers. You’d better hurry, though, because knowing the way us nerds snap up anything Google or pseudo-ironic, these suckers are probably going to go fast.
To redeem your free stickers, you have to mail a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE ftw!) to the following address:
Send me some Gmail stickers already P.O. Box 391420 Mountain View, CA 94039-1420
Is anyone else as excited to receive your Google stickers as we are? Let us know in the comments. And if anyone gets the unicorn faceplate, hold onto it—we’ll trade you. Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from http://www.maximumpc.com/
Twitter mashups and tools put a unique spin on the way we use Twitter. By “mashing” information from Twitter with other applications, you get an unmatchable user experience that can be both fun and useful. Enjoy these top 19 Twitter mashups.
1) Twitter Burner.com - Tweetburner is a twitter mashup that allows you to create tiny URLs and also allow you to track how many times they where clicked on it. Ideal for someone who lets out a lot of links on twitter.
2) Twalala.com - Get ready to take control of your twitterstream. twalala is a client for Twitter that allows you to control what you see, and more importantly, what you don’t see in your twitterstream. Using twalala, you can filter tweets out of your stream by keywords and phrases or mute individuals who get a bit too chatty. Finally, Twitter with a mute button.
3) Twitspy.com lets you see what people are posting on Twitter in realtime by spying on the Twitter public timeline. Twitspy also tracks website links within tweets.
4) Twitterstats.com - In your Tweets, Graphin’ Your Stats! Weekly Stats. Graph your Twitter Stats including. Tweets per hour; Tweets per month; Tweet timeline;
5) Twittervision.com is a web mashup combining Twitter with Google Maps to create a real time display of tweets across a map.
6) mail2twitter.com is a free service that allows you to post tweets through e-mail, and the most important, from any email-enabled mobile device.
7) TwitterCounter.com -Add a daily updating TwitterCounter to your blog so everybody can see how popular you are
8) Twit Pic.com, Share photos with your friends on twitter with twitpic. No signup required, just login using your twitter account.
9) Twittercal.com - It’s a free service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar. Add events in a snap from your favorite Twitter client.
10) Geotwitter.org - This mashup uses the Google Maps API and Twitter API. The most recent updates are fetched from the public timeline and mapped once every minute. If you have any comments suggestions or ideas feel free to leave a note on our blog.
11) TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets of Twitter. (previously known as TwitterNotifier)
12) TwittyTunes is a FoxyTunes companion Firefox extension - it allows you to post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click.
13) Twitbin.com - Send and receive messages to all your fellow twitterholics, right from your firefox browser.
14) TwitterBar - allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar; clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over it to see how many characters you have left.
15) StockTwits.com is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service for financial investors.
16) Twitterholic.com - Provides a list of the 100 best twitterers based on their followers, the people they follow and the number of their updates
17) TwitterFeed.com - Feed your blog to twitter, post RSS to twitter.
18) TwitterBuzz.com shows you what people using Twitter, a micro-blogging service, are linking to.
19) Twitter Map - Provides users with the ability to update their locations on a Google Map and send a tweet with it
These great Twitter mash-ups and tools represent some of the best ways twitter data can be used to create a great twittering experience.
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: digitallabz.com
A previously unknown mutation discovered in a common roundworm holds the promise of new treatments for obesity in humans, McGill University researchers say. Their study was published Dec. 3 in the journal Nature, and was funded by the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
In lean times, a normal Caenorhabditis elegans worm goes into a form of suspended animation called "dauer" that slows its metabolism and allows it to survive for extended periods without food.
"When they go into dauer, these worms radically alter their metabolism," said Dr. Richard Roy, a cancer researcher at McGill's Department of Biology specializing in the control of cell division. "They shut down everything energy-consuming, which includes foraging, cell division and reproduction."
Unlike other "hibernating" organisms, C. elegans maintains a degree of mobility during dauer by stocking up on energy in the form of fats – or lipids – which they store in special cells or reserves.
"This allows them to live up to six months without eating, instead of the two weeks they would otherwise have," Roy explained. A worm with the newly discovered mutation, however, will usually die within a week of going into dauer
"These mutants somehow cannot shut down the process of cell division, which is why we noticed them in the first place," Roy said. "However, that's not what kills them. They cannot adjust their metabolism correctly. They store up their six-month lipid reserves, but as soon as they shift into dauer they use them up within a few days. This is because they lack an enzyme that blocks the activity of a very important triglyceride lipase. Without this regulation the lipase burns up all the fat it encounters and destroys the worm's energy reserves."
This discovery was a near-accidental by-product of Roy's regular line of research, searching for cells that abnormally disobey cellular signals in a cancer context, and he gives graduate student and study first author Patrick Narbonne much of the credit.
"Patrick was absolutely brilliant. He was so observant that he noticed these animals were dying way too early, and he also realized that they were not dying because of the cell-division issue."
Roy and Narbonne believe this discovery, which will require considerable additional research, may have significant long-term implications for human health.
"I think we should start looking at the enzymes involved in this cascade, particularly in obese individuals. They are likewise accumulating lipids, but in a reverse situation to C. elegans, this enzyme isn't recognizing it, or something is blocking its function. We're making the case that we can uncouple this enzyme from its normal regulation. If we could develop drugs to do that selectively in fatty tissue, we'd be able to chew up all the fat."
"This study fascinates me," said Dr. Robert Sladek, one of Canada's most prominent diabetes researchers, affiliated to the McGill Department of Human Genetics and the McGill and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre. "It will be exciting to see whether this pathway that controls energy storage and lifespan in worms plays a similar role in humans. The implications for patients with obesity and diabetes might be quite far-reaching."
ABOUT McGILL UNIVERSITY: McGill University, founded in Montreal, Que., in 1821, is Canada's leading post-secondary institution. It has two campuses, 11 faculties, 10 professional schools, 300 programs of study and more than 33,000 students. McGill attracts students from more than 160 countries around the world. Almost half of McGill students claim a first language other than English – including 6,000 francophones – with more than 6,200 international students making up almost 20 per cent of the student body.
ABOUT THE CANADIAN CANCER SOCIETY: The Canadian Cancer Society is a national community-based organization of volunteers whose mission is to eradicate cancer and to enhance the quality of life of people living with cancer. It is the largest national charitable funder of cancer research in Canada. Last year, the Society funded close to $49.5 million in leading-edge research projects across the country. To know more about cancer, visit the website at www.cancer.ca or call the toll-free, bilingual Cancer Information Service at 1 888 939-3333.
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: eurekalert.org
New trojan in mass DNS hijack Single box pollutes entire LAN By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author Posted in Security, 5th December 2008 20:05 GMT
Researchers have identified a new trojan that can tamper with a wide array of devices on a local network, an exploit that sends them to impostor websites even if they are hardened machines that are fully patched or run non-Windows operating systems.
The malware is a new variant of the DNSChanger, a trojan that has long been known to change the domain name system settings of PCs and Macs alike. According to researchers with anti-virus provider McAfee's Avert Labs, the update allows a single infected machine to pollute the DNS settings of potentially hundreds of other devices running on the same local area network by undermining its dynamic host configuration protocol, or DHCP, which dynamically allocates IP addresses.
"Systems that are not infected with the malware can still have the payload of communicating with the rogue DNS servers delivered to them," McAfee's Craig Schmugar writes here of the new variant. "This is achieved without exploiting any security vulnerability."
The scenario plays out something like this:
* Jill connects a PC infected by the new DNSChanger variant to a coffee shop's WiFi hotspot or her employer's local network.
* Steve connects to the same network using a fully-patched Linux box, which requests an IP address.
* Jill's PC injects a DHCP offer command to instruct Steve's computer to rout all DNS requests through a booby-trapped DNS server.
* Steve's Linux box can no longer be trusted to visit authoritative websites. Although the address bar on his browser may show he is accessing bankofamerica.com, he may in fact be at an impostor website.
The only way a user might know the attack is underway is by manually checking the DNS server his computer is using (e.g. by typing "ipconfig /all" at a Windows command prompt). There are several countermeasures users can take, Schmugar said, the easiest being hard-coding a DNS server in a machine's configuration settings.
(In Windows, this can be done by going to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections and right clicking on Local Area Connection and choosing properties. Scroll down to Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button. Then type in the primary and secondary for your DNS service. We're partial to OpenDNS, whose settings are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.)
In an interview, Schmugar said the DHCP attack doesn't exploit a vulnerability in either user machines or network hardware, allowing it to work with a wide variety of home and enterprise routers. It involves a ndisprot.sys driver that is installed on the infected box. Once there, it monitors network traffic for DHCP requests and responds with bogus offers that contain the IP address to the rogue DNS server.
DNSChanger has already been viewed exploiting router weaknesses to change DNS settings, but the ability to poison other machine's DHCP connections appears to be new, said Eric Sites, VP of research at Sunbelt Software. For the moment, the new variant doesn't appear to be widely circulated, but the prospect of a trojan that can poison other machines' DHCP connections suggests this one is worth watching. ®
BERKELEY — University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.
In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.
Child wired for EEG to test brain functionElectroencephalography, or EEG, uses electrodes on the scalp and held in place by a cap to measure underlying brain activity. (Lee Michael Perry/UC Berkeley) Brain function was measured by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) - basically, a cap fitted with electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain - like that used to assess epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain tumors.
"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."
Previous studies have shown a possible link between frontal lobe function and behavioral differences in children from low and high socioeconomic levels, but according to cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama, first author of the new paper, "those studies were only indirect measures of brain function and could not disentangle the effects of intelligence, language proficiency and other factors that tend to be associated with low socioeconomic status. Our study is the first with direct measure of brain activity where there is no issue of task complexity."
Co-author W. Thomas Boyce, UC Berkeley professor emeritus of public health who currently is the British Columbia Leadership Chair of Child Development at the University of British Columbia (UBC), is not surprised by the results. "We know kids growing up in resource-poor environments have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating. But the fact that we see functional differences in prefrontal cortex response in lower socioeconomic status kids is definitive."
Boyce, a pediatrician and developmental psychobiologist, heads a joint UC Berkeley/UBC research program called WINKS - Wellness in Kids - that looks at how the disadvantages of growing up in low socioeconomic circumstances change children's basic neural development over the first several years of life.
"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."
Kishiyama, Knight and Boyce suspect that the brain differences can be eliminated by proper training. They are collaborating with UC Berkeley neuroscientists who use games to improve the prefrontal cortex function, and thus the reasoning ability, of school-age children.
"It's not a life sentence," Knight emphasized. "We think that with proper intervention and training, you could get improvement in both behavioral and physiological indices."
Kishiyama, Knight, Boyce and their colleagues selected 26 children ages 9 and 10 from a group of children in the WINKS study. Half were from families with low incomes and half from families with high incomes. For each child, the researchers measured brain activity while he or she was engaged in a simple task: watching a sequence of triangles projected on a screen. The subjects were instructed to click a button when a slightly skewed triangle flashed on the screen.
The researchers were interested in the brain's very early response - within as little as 200 milliseconds, or a fifth of a second - after a novel picture was flashed on the screen, such as a photo of a puppy or of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
"An EEG allows us to measure very fast brain responses with millisecond accuracy," Kishiyama said.
The researchers discovered a dramatic difference in the response of the prefrontal cortex not only when an unexpected image flashed on the screen, but also when children were merely watching the upright triangles waiting for a skewed triangle to appear. Those from low socioeconomic environments showed a lower response to the unexpected novel stimuli in the prefrontal cortex that was similar, Kishiyama said, to the response of people who have had a portion of their frontal lobe destroyed by a stroke.
"When paying attention to the triangles, the prefrontal cortex helps you process the visual stimuli better. And the prefrontal cortex is even more involved in detecting novelty, like the unexpected photographs," he said. But in both cases, "the low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well. They were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."
"These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, no neurological damage," Kishiyama said. "Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as efficiently as it should be. This difference may manifest itself in problem solving and school performance."
The researchers suspect that stressful environments and cognitive impoverishment are to blame, since in animals, stress and environmental deprivation have been shown to affect the prefrontal cortex. UC Berkeley's Marian Diamond, professor of integrative biology, showed nearly 20 years ago in rats that enrichment thickens the cerebral cortex as it improves test performance. And as Boyce noted, previous studies have shown that children from poor families hear 30 million fewer words by the time they are four than do kids from middle-class families.
"In work that we and others have done, it really looks like something as simple and easily done as talking to your kids" can boost prefrontal cortex performance, Boyce said.
"We are certainly not blaming lower socioeconomic families for not talking to their kids - there are probably a zillion reasons why that happens," he said. "But changing developmental outcomes might involve something as accessible as helping parents to understand that it is important that kids sit down to dinner with their parents, and that over the course of that dinner it would be good for there to be a conversation and people saying things to each other."
"The study is suggestive and a little bit frightening that environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development," said Silvia Bunge, UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology who is leading the intervention studies on prefrontal cortex development in teenagers by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Boyce's UBC colleague, Adele Diamond, showed last year that 5- and 6-year-olds with impaired executive functioning, that is, poor problem solving and reasoning abilities, can improve their academic performance with the help of special activities, including dramatic play.
Bunge hopes that, with fMRI, she can show improvements in academic performance as a result of these games, actually boosting the activity of the prefrontal cortex.
"People have tried for a long time to train reasoning, largely unsuccessfully," Bunge said. "Our question is, 'Can we replicate these initial findings and at the same time give kids the tools to succeed?'"
This research is supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health.
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it will allow trace amounts of melamine in infant formula. Earlier this week, the agency said it found the industrial chemical in at least one brand of formula sold in the U.S.
The new stance partly reverses the agency's October assessment that it was safe to consume food and beverages with melamine levels below 2.5 parts per million, with the exception of infant formula. The FDA said at the time that it couldn't determine if there was a safe level of melamine and melamine-related compounds in infant formula.
But Friday, the FDA said it "concluded that levels of melamine alone or cyanuric acid alone, at or below one part per million in infant formula do not raise public health concerns." Melamine is a chemical approved for use in plastics and the liners of some food containers in the U.S. It isn't approved for use in food. Cyanuric acid is a melamine byproduct.
Earlier this week, the FDA said it found traces of melamine in a liquid form of Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron made by Nestlé SA's Nestlé USA unit and traces of cyanuric acid in Infant Formula Powder, Enfamil LIPIL with Iron from Mead Johnson Nutritionals, a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Both companies have said their own tests haven't found such chemicals.
"The domestic supply of infant formula is safe," Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's food-safety division, said Friday. The agency, he said, has determined that trace amounts of melamine and cyanuric acid separately are unlikely to cause health problems in babies. The two chemicals together, however, cause crystals to form in urine and lead to kidney damage. Dr. Sundlof said no amount of the two chemicals together will be allowed in infant formula.
The combination of the chemicals in contaminated infant formula caused severe kidney problems for thousands of babies in China this year. Dr. Sundlof said melamine and cyanuric acid together also caused last year's kidney problems and deaths in cats and dogs that ate pet food contaminated with the chemicals.
The FDA started testing U.S. infant formula after the problems in China, where milk was watered down and melamine was added. In tests, melamine appears to boost the protein content of milk.
The FDA tested products from the U.S.'s five FDA-approved makers of milk-based infant formulas: Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers, Nestlé, PBM Products LLC and Solus Products LLC.
The FDA said the bulk of tests in 87 formula samples came back negative for both melamine and cyanuric acid. The agency is still waiting for results from 13 samples.
Dr. Sundlof said the amount of melamine found in one sample of Good Start formula -- at 0.137 parts per million -- is 10,000 times below the levels found in some Chinese infant formula and well below the one part per million level set by the U.S. on Friday for formula. The level of 2.5 parts per million set in October for melamine and melamine-related compounds for other food and drinks remains unchanged.
Write to Jennifer Corbett Dooren at jennifer.corbett-dooren@dowjones.com
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: www.online.wsj.com
A MUM has been arrested after allegedly burning the word "wimp" into her six-year-old daughter's neck with a cigarette - because the youngster tripped and fell.
The girl told police in rural Moundsville in West Virginia, US, that Tammy Smith branded her in a fit of rage.
A teacher at the girl's school noticed the burn and took photographs of the injury before alerting police and social services.
A shocked police spokesman said: "Even the 'i' was dotted."
Smith was charged with five counts of child abuse. She faces up to five years in prison on each charge.
Single box pollutes entire LAN By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author Posted in Security, 5th December 2008 20:05 GMT
Researchers have identified a new trojan that can tamper with a wide array of devices on a local network, an exploit that sends them to impostor websites even if they are hardened machines that are fully patched or run non-Windows operating systems.
The malware is a new variant of the DNSChanger, a trojan that has long been known to change the domain name system settings of PCs and Macs alike. According to researchers with anti-virus provider McAfee's Avert Labs, the update allows a single infected machine to pollute the DNS settings of potentially hundreds of other devices running on the same local area network by undermining its dynamic host configuration protocol, or DHCP, which dynamically allocates IP addresses.
"Systems that are not infected with the malware can still have the payload of communicating with the rogue DNS servers delivered to them," McAfee's Craig Schmugar writes here of the new variant. "This is achieved without exploiting any security vulnerability."
The scenario plays out something like this:
* Jill connects a PC infected by the new DNSChanger variant to a coffee shop's WiFi hotspot or her employer's local network.
* Steve connects to the same network using a fully-patched Linux box, which requests an IP address.
* Jill's PC injects a DHCP offer command to instruct Steve's computer to rout all DNS requests through a booby-trapped DNS server.
* Steve's Linux box can no longer be trusted to visit authoritative websites. Although the address bar on his browser may show he is accessing bankofamerica.com, he may in fact be at an impostor website.
The only way a user might know the attack is underway is by manually checking the DNS server his computer is using (e.g. by typing "ipconfig /all" at a Windows command prompt). There are several countermeasures users can take, Schmugar said, the easiest being hard-coding a DNS server in a machine's configuration settings.
(In Windows, this can be done by going to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections and right clicking on Local Area Connection and choosing properties. Scroll down to Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button. Then type in the primary and secondary for your DNS service. We're partial to OpenDNS, whose settings are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.)
In an interview, Schmugar said the DHCP attack doesn't exploit a vulnerability in either user machines or network hardware, allowing it to work with a wide variety of home and enterprise routers. It involves a ndisprot.sys driver that is installed on the infected box. Once there, it monitors network traffic for DHCP requests and responds with bogus offers that contain the IP address to the rogue DNS server.
DNSChanger has already been viewed exploiting router weaknesses to change DNS settings, but the ability to poison other machine's DHCP connections appears to be new, said Eric Sites, VP of research at Sunbelt Software. For the moment, the new variant doesn't appear to be widely circulated, but the prospect of a trojan that can poison other machines' DHCP connections suggests this one is worth watching. ®
For reasons he can't explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.
At first, he frightened passengers and airport authorities asked the Japanese Embassy to investigate why the foul-smelling man refused to leave. Now, he's somewhat of a celebrity, capturing Mexico's collective imagination with nearly daily television news reports on his life at the food court.
Tourists stop to pose with him for photographs or an autograph.
The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald's, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn't know how much longer he'll remain.
"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station.
"I don't have a reason."
The embassy can't force him to leave and since Nohara's visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.
During his stay, Nohara's wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn't had a shower in months.
"He's a calm person, a nice man," said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor.
"He just sits here and eats all day."
Various stalls in the food court give Nohara free snacks and drinks, sometimes even throwing in hats or coffee mugs with store logos for free publicity during his frequent television appearances.
Strangers often buy him pastries or hamburgers; he prefers the latter.
He sits with the interpreter, talking and laughing for hours, at a small table covered with cups of cold coffee, packets of ketchup and sandwiches wrapped in foil.
Stroking his facial hair, Nohara said the 2004 film "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man stuck in a New York City airport, was not his inspiration. But he acknowledged the similarities.
Unhappy people glue themselves to the television 30 percent more than happy people.
The finding, announced on Thursday, comes from a survey of nearly 30,000 American adults conducted between 1975 and 2006 as part of the General Social Survey.
While happy people reported watching an average of 19 hours of television per week, unhappy people reported 25 hours a week. The results held even after taking into account education, income, age and marital status.
In addition, happy individuals were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read a newspaper more often than their less-chipper counterparts.
The researchers are not sure, though, whether unhappiness leads to more television-watching or more viewing leads to unhappiness.
In fact, people say they like watching television: Past research has shown that when people watch television they enjoy it. In these studies, participants reported that on a scale from 0 (dislike) to 10 (greatly enjoy), TV-watching was nearly an 8.
But perhaps the high from watching television doesn't last.
"These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise," said researcher John Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In this scenario, even the happiest campers could turn into Debbie-downers if they continue to stare at the boob-tube. The researchers suggest that over time, television-viewing could push out other activities that do have more lasting benefits. Exercise and sex come to mind, as do parties and other forms of socialization known to have psychological benefits.
Or, maybe television is simply a refuge for people who are already unhappy.
"TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skills or resources for other activities can engage in it," Robinson and UM colleague Steven Martin write in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research.
They add, "Furthermore, chronic unhappiness can be socially and personally debilitating and can interfere with work and most social and personal activities, but even the unhappiest people can click a remote and be passively entertained by a TV."
The researchers say follow-up studies are needed to tease out the relationship between television and happiness.
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google [creative labs places emphasis on consumers needs] by Simon Canning THE newly named strategic planning director of Google's Creative Lab in New York says the web giant will place greater emphasis on consumers' needs rather then simply inventing things and throwing them into the market in the future. Stuart Smith, a former planning director at advertising agency Wieden and Kennedy in London who worked on brands such as Nike and Honda, joined Google's recently formed advertising division two months ago and is now working on ideas to expand the brand.
Smith, who was in Sydney last week to meet local agency planning directors, says Google remains driven by engineers but there has to be a shift in the development process, which will be led by the Creative Labs group.
"What typically happens is it is just a load of engineers producing a load of things and then refining until it finds an audience," Smith says. "What they have never really done is to look at audiences and understand audiences and say 'perhaps there is a need over here -- let's meet that need'.
"Now I think they have seen an opportunity to come at it from an audience perspective and that is part of what any planners' job is -- to understand audiences."
He says the challenge is Google's wide variety of audiences, from consumers through to the advertising industry.
He admits that within the advertising industry there has been trepidation about the creation of Google Creative Labs. Some wondered if it would put agencies out of business by taking over their role.
But Smith says the Lab's role is to promote Google and its products, bringing advertising clients with them along the way.
"Our jurisdiction is to come up with ideas to promote the Google brand -- initiatives, projects, ideas, whatever it may be to help people stay in love with the Google brand," he says.
At the same time, he believes Creative Labs will bring a new level of creativity to the Google brand. "Google is an incredibly metrics-based organisation -- everything has to be measured, everything has to have a number against it. Our section, we are hoping, will have a bit more creative freedom to create things on a whim. The creative process isn't quite as quantifiable as the rest of the Google business."
The creation of the Labs division and the hiring of a planner whose career has been in the advertising industry represents a learning curve for Google, Smith believes.
"It's an interesting question," Smith says.
"I think there might be a healthy tension between those two perspectives.
"You have got creative people who don't necessarily like to be evaluated in quite that particular fashion and then an organization that has always done that and been very successful at it.
"Particularly going into a recession, it is going to be very interesting because we are going to have to justify our actions."
Smith expects many of the ideas to come out of Creative Labs to be driven by altruism.
Project 10/100, for example, aims to come up with ideas that help the most people in a single action, and the Vote Hour asked CEOs to give people time off to vote in the recent US election.
Smith believes the division will play an important role in communicating the positive elements of Google while acknowledging that some parts of the community harbour concerns about its scale and influence.
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Woman Addicted to Surgery Injects Oil Into Her Face Hang Mioku, who had her first plastic surgery at the age of 28, is a cosmetic surgery addict who has let her obsession with surgeries ruin her life. After her first plastic surgery, her addiction led her to Japan where she received additional operations on her face, which eventually became enlarged and deformed.
Eventually the surgeons she was visiting told her that they would no longer perform operations on her and suggested she seek help for her addiction.
Upon, returning home to Korea, Mioku was so deformed that her own family could no longer recognize her. After searching for someone who would perform more surgeries on here, she found a local Korean doctor who provided her with silicone, which she would self inject into her face with a needle.
Mioku was so addicted to plastic surgery, she would even inject cooking oil into her face when the silicone supply ran out.
Recently, Mioku was featured on a Korean TV show for her addiction and deformities. Many viewers sent in money to help her get additional surgeries to help reduce the size of her face. Having seen the error in her decisions, Mioku only wishes she could go back and have her original face back.
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Public release date: 17-Nov-2008 Contact: Dr. Mark Huebener - mark@neuro.mpg.de - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Forgotten but not gone -- how the brain takes care of things Thanks to our ability to learn and to remember, we can perform tasks that other living things can not even dream of. However, we are only just beginning to get the gist of what really goes on in the brain when it learns or forgets something. What we do know is that changes in the contacts between nerve cells play an important role. But can these structural changes account for that well-known phenomenon that it is much easier to re-learn something that was forgotten than to learn something completely new? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have been able to show that new cell contacts established during a learning process stay put, even when they are no longer required. The reactivation of this temporarily inactivated "stock of contacts" enables a faster learning of things forgotten. (Nature, November 12, 2008).
While an insect still flings itself against the window-pane after dozens of unsuccessful attempts to gain its freedom, our brain is able to learn very complex associations and sequences of movement. This not only helps us to avoid accidents like walking into glass doors, but also enables us to acquire such diverse skills as riding a bicycle, skiing, speaking different languages or playing an instrument. Although a young brain learns more easily, we retain our ability to learn up to an advanced age. For a long time, scientists have been trying to ascertain exactly what happens in the brain while we learn or forget.
Flexible connections
To learn something, in other words, to successfully process new information, nerve cells make new connections with each other. When faced with an unprecedented piece of information, for which no processing pathway yet exists, filigree appendages begin to grow from the activated nerve cell towards its neighbors. Whenever a special point of contact, called synapse, forms at the end of the appendage, information can be transferred from one cell to the next - and new information is learned. Once the contact breaks down, we forget what we have learned.
The subtle difference between learning and relearning
Although learning and memory were recently shown to be linked to the changes in brain structure mentioned above, many questions still remain unanswered. What happens, for example, when the brain learns something, forgets it after a while and then has to learn it again later? By way of example, we know from experience that, once we have learned to ride a bicycle, we can easily pick it up again, even if we haven't practiced for years. In other cases too, "relearning" tends to be easier than starting "from scratch". Does this subtle difference also have its origins in the structure of the nerve cells?
Cell appendages abide the saying "a bird in the hand …"
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now managed to show that there are indeed considerable differences in the number of new cell contacts made - depending on whether a piece of information is new or is being learned second time around. Nerve cells that process visual information, for instance, produced a considerably higher number of new cell contacts if the flow of information from their "own" eye was temporarily blocked. After approximately five days, the nerve cells had rearranged themselves so as to receive and process information from the other eye - the brain had resigned itself to having only one eye at its disposal. Once information flowed freely again from the eye that had been temporarily closed, the nerve cells resumed their original function and now more or less ignored signals from the alternative eye.
"What surprised us most, however, was that the majority of the appendages which developed in response to the information blockade, continued to exist, despite the fact that the blockade was abolished ", project leader Mark Hübener explains. Everything seems to point to the fact that synapses are only disabled, but not physically removed. "Since an experience that has been made may occur again at a later point in time, the brain apparently opts to save a few appendages for a rainy day", Hübener continues. And true enough, when the same eye was later inactivated again, the nerve cells reorganized themselves much more quickly - because they could make use of the appendages that had stayed in place.
[Store room for future learning: nerve cells retain many of their newly created connections and if necessary, inactivate only transmission of the information. This makes relearning easier.]
Useful reactivation Many of the appendages that develop between nerve cells are thus maintained and facilitate later relearning. This insight is crucial to our understanding of the fundamental processes of learning and memory. And so, even after many years of abstinence, it should be no great problem if we want to have a go at skiing again this winter. Original work: Sonja B. Hofer, Thomas D. Mrsic-Flogel, Tobias Bonhoeffer, Mark Hübener Experience leaves a lasting structural trace in cortical circuits. Nature, November 12, 2008
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mothers force to make grim decision which child lives or dies [poverty] (CNN) -- Some mothers choose what their children will eat. Others choose which children will eat and which will die. A food riot erupts in Haiti. Food scarcity is now hitting more affluent countries, experts say.
A Haitian boy begs for food. One child dies from hunger every six seconds, an aid agency says.
Those mothers forced to make the grim life-or-death choices are the impoverished women Patricia Wolff, executive director of Meds & Food for Kids, encounters during her frequent trips to Haiti.
Wolff says Haitians are so desperate for food that many mothers wait to name their newborns because so many infants die of malnourishment. Other Haitian mothers keep their children alive by parceling out food to them, but some make an excruciating choice when their food rationing fails, she says.
"It's horrible. They have to choose among their children," says Wolff, whose nonprofit group was formed to fight childhood malnutrition. "They try to keep them alive by feeding them, but sometimes they make the decision that this one has to go."
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that "I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies." Four decades later, King's wish remains unfulfilled. The global food market's shelves are getting bare, hunger activists say -- and it will get worse.
Food riots erupted across the globe this year in countries such as Egypt and India. Food pantries in the United States also warned that they were running out of food because of unprecedented demand. The news from the World Food Programme is even grimmer: A child dies of hunger every six seconds, and hunger now kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
As World Hunger Relief Week is marked, more people are asking: Why are so many people starving and what, if anything, can be done to eradicate hunger?
The end of food?
Wolff thinks hunger can be conquered. Her group produces "Medika Mamba," energy dense, peanut butter food that's designed to ensure Haitian children survive childhood. Medika Mamba is easy to make, store, preserve and distribute, she says.
"It just takes the will to do it," she says of eliminating hunger. "Look at what we did for Wall Street. We didn't have enough money for infrastructure, schools, but all of a sudden, we had all of this money for Wall Street."
Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System," says the right to food should be seen as a human right. But, he says, powerful corporate food distributors control too much of the world's food supply to ensure a robust global food supply.
Patel says "2008 was a record year in terms of harvest. There's more food per person in 2008 than there's ever been in history. The problem is not food, but how we distribute it."
Other causes for the rise in global hunger have been documented. They include:
• Surging oil costs have made it more expensive to harvest, fertilize, store and deliver food.
• The rise in droughts and hurricanes worldwide has wiped out crops and made farming more difficult.
• The world is running out of the raw materials -- water, oil, good farmland -- needed to keep the food system intact.
"A lot of people have begun to understand at various levels that the food system, as it is, can't go on," says Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Food."
Every time an American bites down on a steak or hamburger, they're contributing to global hunger, Roberts says. As other countries become more affluent, they're copying our meat-heavy diet. The problem: It takes so much grain and other resources to produce meat, he says.
"If the rest of the world were to eat like we do, the planet would collapse," Roberts says. "There's been this unspoken assumption that the rest of the world won't eat meat like we do. That doesn't go over well in countries like China."
Fixing our food system would be similar to weaning ourselves of our addiction to oil, Roberts says. It's going to require innovation, heavy business involvement and changes in public policy.
People are going to have to find ways to grow food with less fertilizer and water, and use less energy to store and transport food, he says.
Much of this innovation will have to be driven not just by activist and aid workers, but by savvy business people, he says.
"It's going to have to be profitable or the market won't be interested in it," Roberts says. "And if the market isn't interested in it, it's not going to happen."
In the meantime, Wolff offers some of her own solutions. She says the practice of big foreign aid agencies shipping in food to poor countries like Haiti needs to be modified. Food has become too expensive to produce, ship and store, she says.
"You can't count on big aid agencies showing up to save everybody," she says. "Not everybody can do it, and when they do it, it's not soon enough and not long enough."
She suggests that more groups teach local farmers in poor places how to produce their own crops. In Haiti, for example, her group employs 22 Haitians who make Medika Mamba and teaches other farmers how to grow crops for the mixture.
"Instead of throwing fish in the crowd, we should be teaching people how to fish," she says.
Until that day takes place, Wolff, who is a pediatrician in St. Louis, Missouri, will continue to make her trips to Haiti, where mothers are forced to make their grim choices.
"It's the most difficult thing I've ever done," she says. "You realize how absolutely blessed you are by the fate of your soul coming down the chute in the United States of America," she says. "You wonder: Why did this happen to me and not to them?'
(CNN) -- Nearly half the respondents in a survey of U.S. primary care physicians said that they would seriously consider getting out of the medical business within the next three years if they had an alternative. Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.
Experts say if many physicians stop practicing, it could be devastating to the health care industry.
The survey, released this week by the Physicians' Foundation, which promotes better doctor-patient relationships, sought to find the reasons for an identified exodus among family doctors and internists, widely known as the backbone of the health industry.
A U.S. shortage of 35,000 to 40,000 primary care physicians by 2025 was predicted at last week's American Medical Association annual meeting.
In the survey, the foundation sent questionnaires to more than 270,000 primary care doctors and more than 50,000 specialists nationwide.
Of the 12,000 respondents, 49 percent said they'd consider leaving medicine. Many said they are overwhelmed with their practices, not because they have too many patients, but because there's too much red tape generated from insurance companies and government agencies.
And if that many physicians stopped practicing, that could be devastating to the health care industry. Video Dr. Gupta: Watch more on the looming doctor dearth »
"We couldn't survive that," says Dr. Walker Ray, vice president of the Physicians Foundation. "We are only producing in this country a thousand to two thousand primary doctors to replace them. Medical students are not choosing primary care."
Dr. Alan Pocinki has been practicing medicine for 17 years. He began his career around the same time insurance companies were turning to the PPO and HMO models. So he was a little shocked when he began spending more time on paperwork than patients and found he was running a small business, instead of a practice. He says it's frustrating.
"I had no business training, as far as how to run a business, or how to evaluate different plans," Pocinki says. "It was a whole brave new world and I had to sort of learn on the fly."
To manage their daily work schedules, many survey respondents reported making changes. With lower reimbursement from insurance companies and the cost of malpractice insurance skyrocketing, these health professionals say it's not worth running a practice and are changing careers. Others say they're going into so-called boutique medicine, in which they charge patients a yearly fee up front and don't take insurance.
And some like Pocinki are limiting the type of insurance they'll take and the number of patients on Medicare and Medicaid. According to the foundation's report, over a third of those surveyed have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients That can leave a lot of patients looking for a doctor.
And as Ray mentioned, med school students are shying away from family medicine. In a survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September, only 2 percent of current medical students plan to take up primary care. That's because these students are wary of the same complaints that are causing existing doctors to flee primary care: hectic clinics, burdensome paperwork and systems that do a poor job of managing patients with chronic illness.
So what to do? Physicians don't have a lot of answers. But doctors say it's time to make some changes, not only in the health care field but also with the insurance industry. And they're looking to the new administration for guidance. advertisement
One of President-elect Barack Obama's health care promises is to provide a primary care physician for every American. But some health experts, including Pocinki, are skeptical.
"People who have insurance can't find a doctor, so suddenly we are going to give insurance to a whole bunch of people who haven't had it, without increasing the number of physicians?" he says. "It's going to be a problem."
A Northern Territory woman has endured a nightmare operation at Alice Springs Hospital after she became conscious during stomach surgery but remained paralyzed by the unaesthetic.
Rebecca Jones, 24, told the Northern Territory News she could feel every cut of the surgeon's knife during the operation last month but was unable to scream for help as the anaesthesia had paralysed her.
Ms Jones, who was being operated on for gallstones, said she could not open her eyes but could hear and feel everything.
"I thought the doctors had woken me up because the surgery was over — I quickly realized that was not the case," she was quoted by the Northern Territory News as saying.
Ms Jones realized her predicament when she took a breath and found she couldn’t move, but eventually moved her hand to get the attention of surgery staff — to no avail.
"(Someone) said, 'she's just moved her hand' but they kept going," she said.
The hospital's general manager Vicki Taylor admitted to the NT News that Ms Jones had been awake during the operation but denied medical staff knew of her pain.
Ms Jones is now considering legal action against the hospital.
Skinny models are a 'turn off' in advertising, claim scientists It has been a golden rule of advertising from its inception - thin models sell more products to women. The only trouble is, it is not true, claims new research. By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent Researchers have found that skinny models are actually a turn off to consumers in TV commercials and other advertising.
They found that images of super-thin models carry no edge in encouraging young women to buy and for the majority of adult women ads showing skinny girls actually discouraged sales.
So-called plus-size models, on the other hand, actually encouraged them to buy.
In the study psychologist Phillippa Diedrichs, of the University of Queensland, Australia, created a series of ads for underwear, shampoo and a party dress.
Each ad was made twice, once using a skinny size eight model and another featuring a size 12 woman.
When the ads were shown to 400 young women, they produced no difference in the likelihood for them to buy.
However, when women aged between 18 and 25 saw the adverts they felt better - and more likely to buy - after viewing the images of the larger models.
Miss Diedrichs said: "For anything to change, research has to be convincing, not just to government and health researchers, but also to people in advertising who actually make the decisions.
"Often people make the argument that thinness sells, and that's why they use slim models.
"But we can change the images we see and still sell products but also make people feel better about themselves."
The Unilever soap brand Dove has based its image on a campaign using "real women" and highlighting how much imagery in advertising is manipulated.
But critics point out that the same firm uses more traditional imagery to promote other brands, such as Lynx deodorant, which features skinny models.
There have been concerted campaigns against the ultra-thin "size zero" with fashion weeks in Madrid and Milan banning models from the catwalk who were of a weight deemed unhealthy by the Body Mass Index measure.
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: www.telegraph.co.uk
We Used To Recycle Everything; What Happened? Throughout history, since the dawn of man, we have been a recycling people. We reused anything and everything multiple times before discarding of it - if there was anything left at all. When we were lucky enough to get our hands on something useful, we were careful with it so as to make it last as long as possible. Hunters used every part of an animal. Houses were made from any scrap material that could be rounded up, as it was easier than building one from scratch. Children played with the same toys their entire childhood. Things were cherished - nothing was thrown away unless it was absolutely destroyed. No one bought the “new” version of something before the “old” version was used up. How times have certainly changed…
Now we throw everything away - and most of it still works! We replace perfectly fine household electronics because ours is not the “new” kind, we buy new cell phones every few months, we only keep cars for a few years (which I have certainly been guilty of!), and we are sold so many single-use items that I don’t even know if anyone knows how to use a washable mop/sponge/diaper anymore. We buy cheap clothing by the bundle and it only lasts a few months before it is either out of style or torn to shreds. Products are bought, used for a short time, and thrown away. Most everything we buy cannot be recycled, so it ends up in an overcrowded landfill that we then bury or burn, contributing to the decline in the quality of our environment. It’s a never-ended cycle that seems to get worse by the year - I am hopeful that so many people taking a newly found interest in the green movement that we can reverse the trend before we take it too far.
There are still some smaller industries and companies who do their best to recycle and reuse everything. Take a small farm for example - the farmers grow crops, which feed both them and their animals. The animals digest their food, leaving behind animal poop that is can be used as compost to regrow more crops, which feed more animals…you get the picture. And even better than that, some farmers are using the animal waste to actually make electricity and reusable water - an Alberta farm is the future site of IMUS, which is a new technology that will turn manure into a source of electricity, heat, fertilizer and reusable water – all while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. And companies like Patagonia (who I buy my fleeces from) and Act2 turn old plastic bottles (and their own old garments) into clothing and consumer goods. This is very good progress, and every day more and more companies are seeing the benefits of recycling and going green, both for the environment and their bottom line!
We used to be a nation (and world, for that matter) of recyclers, but it has become to easy to just “buy a new one” because the “one” we have is out of style or has a little wear and tear. I think we need to encourage more of us to go back to the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra that we have followed since the beginning of time - even if we didn’t know it then. There is no way we can continue to buy and throw away at the rate that we are - all that stuff has to go somewhere. (Want to know where? Check out the book “Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash” which is a staple on my bookshelf.) Let’s start building quality products again so when we buy something we know it will last a very long time, and let’s start reusing what we already have access to. Enough with the single-use plastic crap that every store is full of - let’s bring back quality goods!
Article is not in anyway written by me... Its originally from: www.thegoodhuman.com
Why is society so disgusting... why are people only interested in money... Everything I see disgusts me about human beings. I really wish the world would start a new... without us in it. We destroy everything and are the most selfish animal of them all. I hate the fact that so much is so wrong. I am one person that can't do nothing to change this pathetic society, I live in. Sad that children get raped, killed and much more. People take advantage of each other. We are all screwed up in many levels.
Thai-born Yu-Hsi Fu got a life sentence [which in Finland means she will due a minimum of 11yrs] for killing her 3 children [twin daughters 8yrs. and son 1yrs] due to custody battle with her Finnish husband. She was found to be sane at the time of the murders. 'tuft' a comment or on this story pointed out that in Canada a woman who kills their child under the age of 1yrs could get up to5 yrs max but because people would feel sorry for her she could get 2yrs house arrest instead. Imagine that... SICK!! So, the final straw that got me disgusted was the fact that you can decide to kill your kid if you find it to be too much to be a hassle. How can that be... Why don't women just take precautions as to not to have children until they know well that they take it serious and want to be 120million% to be mothers! I still am in the fence about having a child. It doesn't make me less of a woman or that I hate children is that I have found its takes great responsibility to care for another human being. I don't know if I'm prepare for that... I'm still on think mode and until then I take care of myself with so much protection and prevention methods. You can decide when is the best time in your life to have one... :) I feel happy with where I'm at, for now no need for children! :)
One of the things I haven't bought is a bead sander/polisher I think they're drummels but I may be wrong... there's so many out there... I was reading at beadsandbeading about the alphadisc [found that you can use one of the car polish pads to clean of stuff, good tip!] and watched a youtube video about how to use it and different techniques... got me going on the youtube scene again... started watching tutorials on how to sand metal clay and which tools were not good and thought about would those be too hard for pc? Wonder [in this video she talks about a good rotary tool to use that won't burn out, gonna see the black n decker one...hmm...]... ah, as PMC is like harder right and its metallic... anyone? Hope to know... Sorry... la, la... me w/ my blah.. Sorry...
Funny = my dad collects bottles sounds so much better than an alcoholic...
http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.p hp?cat=audio&file=rec0115_224950Boku _no_Hana___Michiko_Goi.mp3 http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharonsolly/2721833752/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_qM5I25zG0&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odSlgnIrjW4&feature=related mitsumi takahashi maeko - http://www.maeko.org/ zulieka - http://zulieka.blogspot.com/ Claire Bell new site - http://clairebell.wordpress.com/
Nintendo Wii Fit women and the $41m damage bill - video. Using CSS to Fix Anything: 20+ Common Bugs and Fixes. Apple's open secret: SproutCore is Cocoa for the Web. Cormier and Holmes at hoco@island.net. At the Synergy conference Dan Cormier and Tracy Holmes unveiled a practical new tool for polymer clay artists that is bound to be the next must-have supply on your tool list. The Sh.A.R.K consists of a magnetic adjuster and a magnetic ruler designed to fit onto an Atlas 150 Pasta machine - Cormier says to “think of it as a moving wall”. This tool makes your pasta machine adjustable and allows you to sheet clay in any width within the rollers. Sh.A.R.K = Sheet (SH) Adjuster (A) Ruler (R) Kit (K)
Barnaby Barford wasn’t thinking about polymer clay when he created these bone china coffee cups. He designed the stamp cups in an effort to create a more pleasing pattern than the always-annoying coffee stain ring that cups and mugs leave on furniture. If you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em, right? Clever, clever, clever! You can buy the cups here. A bit pricey, yes, but do you see the polymer clay possibilities? Still chuckling? More from this designer here.
Stamp Cups Designed with Valeria Miglioli for Thorsten Van Elten. Those irritating ring marks that mugs and cups leave..... well, you can turn them into a nice floral pattern now with a set of Stamp Cups. The pattern on the base of the cup match up so you can join as many marks as you want. Set of 2 Cups Earthenware
Stamp Mugs Designer: Valeria Miglioli & Barnaby Barford Price: $59.00 Shipping: Ground Shipping to US & CAN is included*.
Studio™ by Sculpey® is opening the door to a new world of creating with oven-bake clay. Specially formulated to capture and build upon the best qualities of today’s oven-bake clays, Studio is easy to condition by hand and extremely durable after baking. It is the only oven bake clay that will hold its shape perfectly during modeling and will not break or crack when baking large pieces. It is available in 34 rich, home décor colors and bakes to a luxurious, suede-like finish.
Found a new song I really like by Közi [MaliceMizer] called Honey Vanity, got the lyrics and wish to get the song...
Been thinking of my friend in Japan Kazu... I want to send him something but I don't know what he will like... I miss him, he was such a great help in Japan... I remember asking him to dye his hair and the next time I met him... He'd done it... He helped me so very much! Miss you tons my friend... Some day I will see again...
WTF now there's a site called candy doll w/ young girls dressing and posing weird like anime characters... This is too much... OK for fun but when you're selling it to old sometimes pedos then no freaken' way!
I truly love Izakayas [Japanese pub]: "Izakaya: The Japanese Pub Cookbook. This is the first publication in English to delve into every aspect of the Izakaya, or Japanese “pub” ― a unique and vital cornerstone of Japanese food culture.
Uninhibited and welcoming, the pub serves mouth-watering, nutritious and inexpensive small-plate cooking, along with free-flowing drinks. Like the Spanish tapas bar, it is a mainstay of the nation’s native cuisine, a vital venture for socializing and, in these health-conscious times, an increasingly influential culinary force.
Eight different Tokyo pubs are introduced. Some of them have long histories; some are more recent players on the scene. All are deeply familiar to the author, who has chosen them for their quality, ambiance, and the variety they represent.
Also included are detailed recipes for 60 quintessential Izakaya dishes-delicious standards and specialties ranging from those often found on the traditional Japanese “comfort food” menu to highly innovative creations that reflect the living energy of pub culture.
You will also find a wide range of information-izakaya history, profiles of Japanese ingredients and spices, a guide to the many varieties of sake, cocktails and other alcoholic drinks that are served, “how-to “advice on menu ordering, and much more.
More than a cookbook or a guidebook, this is a beguiling window onto a major food culture, and will be a source of inspiration to every food lover-home chef, hungry gourmet, or professional restaurateur. Author Mark Robinson is an editor and journalist who has written regularly from Tokyo on food and culture for publications including the Financial Times and the Times (UK), the Australian Financial Review Magazine, and others. Born in Tokyo and raised mostly in Sydney, he returned to Japan in 1988.
Additional Information: ISBN : 978-4-7700-3065-8 Kodansha Int’l"
The song was initially planned to be used as an image song that would appear in the movie's trailer, but after listening to the finished work, Oshii felt it matched the film so well that he decided to use it during the ending credits as the theme song. The director is known for avoiding the use of existing music in his works, but he made a rare exception this time, even going as far as redoing the credits to better incorporate the song.
"The Sky Crawlers" is also unusual for Oshii due to its choice of voice cast. He normally uses professional seiyus, but in April it was revealed that Rinko Kikuchi, Ryo Kase, Chiaki Kuriyama, and Shosuke Tanihara are lending their voices to the film.
"Konya mo Hoshi ni Dakarete" is the final track on Ayaka's sophomore album, "Sing to the Sky," which goes on sale June 25. "The Sky Crawlers" will hit theaters more than a month later on August 2."
The Sky Crawlers (スカイ・クロラ) by mamoru oshii [trailer].
wii game interview and video on the Sky Crawlers by Namco Bandai [Japanese].
ayaka's 2nd album [Sing to the Sky] has been confirmed for release on June 25th, 2008! (finally!!^^) Anyway, here are the track lists for the album: 1. POWER OF MUSIC 2. Ai wo Utaou (愛を歌おう) 3. SKY 4. Jewelry day 5. Good Night Baby (グンナイベイビー) 6. For today 7. Why 8. Gold Star (ゴールドスター) 9. Mahoutsukai no Shiwaza (魔法使いのしわざ) 10. Te wo Tsunagou (手をつなごう) 11. Ai mo Uso mo Shinjitsu (愛も嘘も真実) 12. CLAP & LOVE 13. Kimi ga Iru Kara (君がいるから) 14. Okaeri (おかえり) 15. Kon'ya mo Hoshi ni Dakarete (今夜も星に抱かれて) 16. WINDING ROAD (ayaka x Kobukuro) (bonus track) The album comes in 3 different packages. You can pre-order it here (pick and choose):
Micheal's Store 2210-F Bank St Ottawa ON K1V 1J5 (613) 521-3717 2685 Iris St Ottawa ON K2C 3S4 (613) 726-7211 4220 Innes Rd Orleans ON K4A 5E6 (613) 590-1813
Indo food! rijstaffel sop labu kuning gado gado rendang w/ gule tahu, telor blado, tempe bacem, lodeh, kacang teri, acar, sambalterasi, nasi putih, kerupuk another order of tempe bacem and for dessert I had Bubur Ketan Hitam
Just called BFG and told him that he has to pick up the food! J I am starving! Been spending the afternoon atrestomtl giving my feedback on restos. I couldn’t believe they don’t have a few restos I’ve gone too. I of course suggested them! I wish they sold Kobe beef here but the best thing to it is Alberta beef which can be purchased from Le Bifthèque. I called to make sure that’s where they still get it, cuz you never know they might change it to the US or QC. The site is great for the specials and to get the information for menu, etc....
actresses/singers who committed suicides: Lee Eun-ju - in 2005killed herself by slitting her wrists then hanging herself... she was 24... bouts of depression, mental illness and insomnia due to nude scenes from K-drama The Scarlett Letter...
Jung Da Bin - 정다빈 / Jung Da-bin (Jeong Da-bin) - committed suicide, a month after U;Nee and in the same manner [hanging], in her boyfriend's apartment... no note was left but left a blog post before her suicide... may have been due to bouts of depression, career going down, criticism over her plastic surgeries and mother's uterine cancer... U;Nee Hangul: 유니, born Heo Yoon (hangul: 허윤;) in Jan. 2007, killed herself by hanging may have been due to drepession, low album sales and criticisms for her image...
Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa (Mongolian language: Шаарийбуугийн Алтантуяа; Sometimes also Altantuya Shaariibuu;) - Mongolian pretty translator blown up w/ C-4 before getting shot twice in the head.
May 14 A song w/ wine What song will make your wine taste better?
May 13 what is wrong with the customer service now a days! I can't believe the nerve of some people. How can you do that to someone! I am so angry at the fact that the airline has such asses as employees! If it had been me I would have sued [for more then 2 mil.] not only the airline but the flight attendant, for say it was OK and then going and bitching to the pilot that she/he wanted the seat back, & the pilot, for being a prick and asking a paying customer to hang out in the toilet w/o a seat belt.
Learn some manners!
what are these shows good for! they will, most likely, not learn nothing and go back to their cushy lives and forget about that! let's see if any, keep helping out those in need after the cameras have left, that I would like to see. Aahh, but society is so dysfunctional like that! but will see... shouldn't put all my ducks in one basket, yet!
Is he totally crazy... how about if he had gotten into an accident and hurt or even worse kille someone! bad man!
Obama has led a fairly pleasant existence, with most of its suffering and conflict taking place within his own head as he tries to turn himself into an authentic angry black man.
Wow! Einstein thought of the belief in god as a childish superstition and that Jewish people are not the chosen one, even though he himself is one... He also decline to be the 2nd president of Israel, that I didn't know... He has the same birthday as OCM and me!!!
I can't believe the nerve of some people... How can you do that to someone! I am so angry at the fact that the airline has such asses as employees!!! If it had been me I would have sued [for more then 2 mil.] not only the airline but the flight attendant, for say it was OK and then going and bitching to the pilot that she/he wanted the seat back, and the pilot, for being a prick and asking a paying customer to hang out in the toilet w/out a seat belt. How come people are so cruel but I can't expect all human beings to have a heart or a sense of decency!!! Oh, so angry!!
Dead Bodies I may think of this when the time comes... getting dissolved instead of getting cremated... just read an article on the discovery channel about this. Apparently is environmentally green as the coffee color liquid [human] can be pour down the drain, doesn't emit gas emissions and take up too much space like crematoriums do! :) I hope this process is used, if its really found safe!
Goodbye to HELLO! Sad I had signed up to hello about 3-4yrs ago... now they have killed it! too bad it was fun to use when uploading to my blog! bye hello!!! mountain view has the domain now...
left comment: what?!!!?? I have my phone and DS Lite blinged out!!! and it's not ugly! It's a matter of personal taste/fashion, to do this... Why do you have to be so mean and say its an ugly fashion?! :(
crochet v-stitch pattern [video] by tjw1963 and her blog. Hers: Formula/Multiple for the pattern is 3+1. DC in 4th Chain from hook, Ch 3, DC in same chain. Skip 2 CH, DC, CH 3, DC. Repeat to the end. Ch 3 to start the next row, DC, Ch 3, DC in Center of next Stitch, Repeat across; DC in last stitch of the row below.
makes ruffles [video] I wonder what the sewing machines are? Happy to learn to crochet... Even though it's in Portuguese! She [Elaine 33yrs old] is amazing has over 12yrs of experience in crochet! I need to look into all her videos she has done over 300.... NYA!!! She was even interviewed! crochet bag [info in Portuguese].
Anime = Minamike a blog post and on utube a video. Looking at the latest camcorders at cnet.com! Reading the latest j-gossip! Articles been reading for the past few hours. List of Japanese television dramas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
I don't know what to believe about the Tibet/China war, so many different people saying so much! The only one I can believe is me and what I think to make sense of all the hostility that is happening in our world now. If things don't change something will have to give and that can be either negative or positive depending on which side you are standing on. I for once in my life, I' m happy that I live in a country that is free and doesn't oppress me in that way. We are oppress in other ways but not to the extent of loosing your lives for freedom. We human beings are too selfish to stand up in the billions... If that would occur I know that change would happen, but since we are only made of words and not really of action to do the RIGHT/CORRECT thing. We will always be manipulated and used as we have always been! I for one cry and feel pity for the people who have no heart and who have nothing in their world to make them happy except for the evil things they do, did and will do...
I saw the soldier video of throwing the puppy [Monroe family threatened over puppy throwing video. ] my heart ache for a lost life and for the soldier. Lost in his world of torment... How is this man going to live with himself? Well, he will forget the ordeal and move on... Hopefully, he is not a psycho who will kill a person because of all the hardship he' s endured in battle. I find that if you don't have a sound mind, you are not meant to be a soldier or be in any position that gives you power... As you will do something unforgivable in others eyes. What may seem to a joke to others, to me it' s the most heinous thing. I wonder of the children, women and old people whose lives revolved around the war and if they should encounter someone like that soldier what would/will happen? War is wrong! I was a child when I had my first and only experience [I can still remember all the bodies in the river... the body near the store with all its guts pouring out of him... the soldiers marching and guns blazing in the dead of night... ooh the stories I could tell...]. It was not a wonderful thing at all... They had said that the soldiers were the protectors but no way. They were the perpetrators. They killed innocent people and in front of children like me... I had been taken out of the secluded touristic area by a local nanny and experience what it would be like to be living in a war. It traumatized me to be a better person and to see thing in a different light. I guess that' s why during my teenage years I was what you called a good/bad girl! Good that I didn't hurt others or me, no drugs, no stupid shit that goes on these days w/ other teens. Bad because I did have my stubbornness [want it now or else] & selfishness within me but had a guilty conscious at times for doing the wrong thing... I don' t use and abuse others and try to live my life in a good sound way... Try to be nice to others even though they are not to me... I try to see past all that is negative and see the positive in life. I have tried to commit suicide 3 times I don't deny it but its because living in this disgraceful and pathetic world gives me the creeps, sometimes. I seen what the rich care for and what the poor want to achieve. The poor want what the rich have and the rich are in constant search for the next thrill! I'm tired of the 'I have to look my best or I'll die' factor! It's all about the egoist in all of us!!!!
