Politics

It's been widely thought of whether everyone has a soulmate or whether it's simply a means of reproduction for finding a mate. This article details what types of chemicals are involved during the love process, and its effects on us. Included in the article are viewpoints and facts presented by various people. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1069069224695 Source: Toronto Star

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, launched in June 2001 at a cost of $145 million, looked back to the very beginning of the universe by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation, the energy which keeps the temperature of a vacuum at 2.725K, just above absolute zero. Temperature changes in the CMB were mapped within 35 millionths of a degree, making the pictures 35 times sharper than COBE, MAP's predecessor. The new findings were measured using very different frequencies: K-Band, Ka-Band, Q-Band, V-Band, and W-Band. Age of the Universe The first frame of the picture on the left of of the cosmic microwave background radiation just 379,000 years after the…

The Blaster Virus is due to be triggered tomorow morning to attack Micro$oft on 16/8/03 Saturday. It will also slow down the net and create all the typical virus symptoms on Home computers as well. DO NOT download the patch on the MS site, it will get in that way! a Google search for "Blaster Virus" will tell you more than I can.

"LONDON (Reuters) -- The universe may be finite, spherical and patched together like a soccer ball, according to U.S. and French researchers. Jeffrey Weeks, a MacArthur Fellow based in Canton, New York, and researchers from the University of Paris and Observatory of Paris studied astronomical data which suggests the universe is finite and made of curved pentagons joined together into a sphere. In research reported in the Thursday edition of the science journal Nature, the scientists said data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, which maps background radiation left over from the Big Bang, is not consistent with an infinite universe. "Since anti…

The Nobel prize winners were announced recently, and not for the first time there has been some controversary involved [link]. Both the prize for Medicine and for Physics were awarded for contributions to the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Paul Laterbur, and Peter Mansfield, were awarded the prize for Medicine, while the prize for Physics went to Vitaly Ginsburg, Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett. But a US researcher claims "the Nobel committee is rewriting history" [link]. Raymond Damadian is the founder and director of Fonar Corp., which produces MRI scanners. He owns a patent based on his discovery in 1970 that normal and cancerous tissue coul…

According to Nature, a group of physicists from Oxford have proposed a plan to achieved superposition in a large object. And by large, they're referring to a mirror the size of a bacterium. Quantum superposition has been acheived in the past with atoms, but an effect called "decoherence" theoretically prevents the same effect in macroscopic objects. "William Marshall of the University of Oxford and his coworkers outline a scheme for evading decoherence to achieve a quantum superposition of states in an object with around a hundred trillion atoms. This is about a billion times larger than anything demonstrated previously." According to the article, many experiments …

An intact specimen of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni was caught recently in the waters around Antarctica. It is only the seventh specimen of this species ever found, and only the second found outside of a sperm whale. It was first identified in 1925, but virtually nothing is known about it. The mantle of the half-grown squid is 2.5 meters, by comparison the mantle of the giant squid Architeuthis only grows to about 2.25 meters. They estimate a full grown specimen has a mantle around 4 meters long. Full BBC article here

Before taking control of Iraq: We go to war independant of what the UN says. after they went to war: "Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity, and the responsibility, to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation." Since when are the results of his decisions the responsibility of the UN ??? If he was a child you would let him learn the hard way so he wouldn't make the same mistake twice but there are two things why you can't really do that now. 1) a lot of people in iraq suffer from his decision. (This was never his concern the oil was his primary target.) 2) I would be surprised if he learns from…

From BBC.co.uk: The Hubble telescope has discovered the smallest, most distant objects in the solar system - three ice bodies which are relics of the formation of the solar system. Such bodies can become comets if they approach the sun, as the heat form the soalr wind blasts away their surface as a billowing gas. The article states: "The planets formed over four billion years ago from a cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the nascent Sun. Tugged by gravity, the fragments of ice and dust stuck together to form lumps that grew from pebbles to boulders to city- or continent-sized so-called planetesimals. Around 1950, astronomers Gerard Kuiper and Ke…

NASA today announced a major milestone in the development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the selection of a beryllium-based mirror technology for the telescope's 6.5-meter primary mirror. The JWST prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif., recommended to NASA the mirror technology, supplied by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colo., be selected for the JWST primary mirror. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2003/27/text

From BBC.co.uk: Britain is preparing to repel an invasion of midges carrying the bluetongue virus, a disease which can rapidly lead to the death of up to 70% of sheep in an infected herd. The bluetongue virus has been a problem in Africa for many years but recently has begun to spread North as the range of the Culicoides midges which carry it has increased. Efforts are underway to develop more effective vaccines to protect the national stock of sheep in the event that the virus reaches the UK. The virus exists in a wide band up to 40 degrees North and 35 degrees South, but recent outbreaks in Europe as far North as 44 degrees indicate that the range of the carr…

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).