Politics

Better go order me a 10' Supreme Feast Article from Reuters

September 01 2003 at 01:12PM St Ives, England - Two British pilots were making final preparations on Monday to take the world's biggest manned helium balloon to the edge of space. Colin Prescot, 53, and Andy Elson, 48, hope to set a world record by piloting their 387m-tall craft, QinetiQ 1, to 39 600m. They plan to drift there for an hour and conduct experiments on the stratosphere before returning to earth and, they hope, a place in history books. "I'm feeling calm but very pleased," Prescott said of a good weather forecast for Tuesday's launch as the balloon was being put on a ship for lift-off near St Ives in Cornwall, south-west England. Pilots wil…

Stalking dementia TYLER HAMILTON TECHNOLOGY REPORTER It begins with forgotten words and acquaintances, fragmented sentences and broken trains of thought. In its more advanced stages, close family members and daily surroundings become lost in a haze of confusion, to the point where even routine tasks are a challenge and 24-hour care is required. The person within the individual fades away. The emotional and financial burdens on families grow unbearable as memory loss, depression and paranoia draw loved ones into full-scale dementia. More than five million people across North American have Alzheimer's disease, with up to a million new patients diagnosed…

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_history_030826.html As if executing a cosmic air kiss, Earth and Mars will come as close as they desire in the wee hours of Wednesday during an historical event that has captivated the attention of skywatchers around the globe. The two planets will be separated by 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) at 5:51 a.m. ET (1051 GMT) on Aug. 27. Sorry for the short notice, should have posted this sooner

NewScientist 11:54 15 August 03 NewScientist.com news service "Human" embryonic stem cells have been harvested from cloned embryos created by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs, claims a soon-to-be published report by Chinese scientists. The goal of the experiments by Hui Zhen Sheng of Shanghai Second Medical University was to create a new source of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). These have the ability to transform into any tissue, making them potential sources of replacement cells for the treatment of many diseases. However, at present, these can only be derived from fertilised human embryos, resulting in widespread controversy. The embryos must be destr…

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030804/030804-4.html

WOW!!!!

An unidentified 12-year-old died Friday after being infected with an amoeba while swimming in a Florida lake. Man, if that doesn't suck nothing does. Just one more thing we have to worry about. Oh well. If the super virus's weren't enough. Heres a link: http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/conditions/07/26/dangerous.amoebas/index.html

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Full article at: http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=3323895

NASA has announced Dec. 18th as a target date for the next shuttle launch, and then complete five more launches by February 2005 to complete the U.S. core of the international space station. NASA has put in place many new policies including no nighttime launches and external fuel take redesign to prevent foam damage. "We are going to be deliberate to ensure that we return to flight in a safe manner," said Michael Greenfield, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Technical Programs. "We will take as long as it takes." full story at space.com

Yet another worm is on the loose and its taking advantage of the MS03-026 vulnerability. Intentions of the worm This worm tries spreads by exploiting a hole in Microsoft Windows. It instructs a remote target system to download and execute the worm from the infected host. Once running, the worm terminates and deletes the W32/Lovsan.worm.a process and applies the Microsoft patch to prevent other threats from infecting the system through the same hole. When the system clock reaches Jan 1, 2004, the worm will delete itself upon execution. You can find more information here: http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100559.htm

- BBC See also http://www.space.com/spacewatch/moon_mars_030811.html for better coverage of the full display - Moon, Mars and Stars

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0619_030619_killerasteroids.html "It is almost certain that Earth will be hit by an asteroid large enough to exterminate a large percentage of our planet's life, including possibly over a billion people, according to researchers. " Damn, this is crazy. Read the article.

Source: Beeb I thought this might be of interest as I know some people were recently discussing the use of organic materials for processing in computers (sorry - can't find the thread now).

Virtually anyone can be a Democrat. Just simply quit thinking and vote that way. But if you want to be a GOOD Democrat, there are some prerequisites you must have first. Compare the below and see how you rate. 1. You have to believe the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding. 2. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex. 3. You have to believe that guns, in the hands of law-abiding Americans, are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology, in the hands of Chinese communists. 4. You have to believe that there was no art before Fed…

Obesity in old age tied to increased Alzheimer's risk Link found for women aged 70 Study tracked people for 18 years ROB STEIN SPECIAL TO THE STAR WASHINGTON—Overweight, elderly women are more likely than those who stay trim to be stricken by Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported yesterday, presenting the first strong evidence linking the burgeoning weight crisis with the increasingly common brain affliction. While previous studies had raised the possibility that excess flab may increase the risk of dementia, a new study that followed several hundred elderly Swedish people for 18 years clearly showed that women who were heavy at age 70 were markedly …

From BBC: The Universe may be teeming with starless galaxies inhabiting its most isolated regions, says an Australian scientist. Graduate researcher Brad Warren, of the Australian National University, has identified galaxies in our local region of space that are mostly gas with very few stars. "If you look for gas with a radio telescope you see an enormous blob of gas. If you look for stars through an optical telescope you only see a small smudge of stars on the sky," he told BBC News Online. For some reason these galaxies have failed to form stars out of their hydrogen gas. The search is on to find out why. Read More...

About 2,000 professional astronomers from around the world are gathering in Australia for two weeks of debate about the state of the universe. Their meeting, which begins in Sydney on Sunday, is the 25th general assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Much of the conference will deal not so much with what lies in the stars, but what lies between them - the so-called dark matter of outer space which makes up the biggest proportion of the universe that can't be seen with normal telescopes. Closer to earth, scientists will discuss progress in exploring the planets, the search for inter-terrestrial life and the European projects to build what could be…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3053137.stm LOL

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3043731.stm In what yould be an extraordinary breakthrough, Quantum entanglement between two particles has been observed in a silicon chip over a distance of 0.7 mm, potentially paving the was for a new generation of supercomputers. I would like to comment more, but without the original article, I can't say much. If someone could get the science article, that would be lovely.

"In a discovery that is likely to impact fields as diverse as atomic physics, chemistry and nanotechnology, researchers have identified a new physical phenomenon, electrostatic rotation, that, in the absence of friction, leads to spin. Because the electric force is one of the fundamental forces of nature, this leap forward in understanding may help reveal how the smallest building blocks in nature react to form solids, liquids and gases that constitute the material world around us." University of California Press Release

The mechanism by which HIV-1 eludes the human immune system is through a coat of human sugars. The antibody 2G12 has interlocking Fab arms which recognize the structural difference associated with the virus, effectively defeating the virus. The antibody, which was discovered 12 years ago, is found in a very few number of people found to be immune to HIV-1. This latest research, led by the Scripps Research Institute, identifies the precise mechanism by which 2G12 is effective, which may provide a template for synthesizing a vaccine. The paper appears in the June 27th, 2003 issue of Science. Abstract: Human antibody 2G12 neutralizes a broad range of human immunodef…

"Albert Einstein may have been right that gravity travels at the same speed as light but, contrary to a claim made earlier this year, the theory has not yet been proven. A scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) says the announcement by two scientists, widely reported this past January, about the speed of gravity was wrong.Stuart Samuel, a participating scientist with the Theory Group of Berkeley Lab's Physics Division, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, has demonstrated that an "ill-advised" assumption made in the earlier claim led to an unwarranted conclusion. "Einstein may be correct about the speed of gravity but the experim…

From NewScientist.com: "The phenomenon that leads to "virgin births" in some species looks like a promising source of embryonic stem cells. Researchers are on the brink of obtaining human stem cells this way for the first time, and animal experiments suggest such cells are indistinguishable from normal stem cells. In parthenogenesis, an unfertilised egg keeps two sets of chromosomes and begins developing as if it had been fertilised. Some insects and reptiles can reproduce this way but even though an electric or chemical stimulus can induce parthenogenesis in mammals, the resulting embryos die after a few days. And that, according to its proponents, is the beauty o…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2889127.stm The magnetic field appears to be behaving rather strangely at the moment, though from comments in this report, magnetic field flips which occur every 250k years or so don't appear to have any major impact on life..... of course it could be the myterious and infamous planet X having its influence, but I wouldn't count on it.