Clipmarks | Deepti's clips

Bet you didn't know....

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:48:00 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Keith Richards is evacuated from suburban London to escape German buzz bombs, 1944

Joan of Arc begins to hear voices, 1424

Marie Antoinette is packed off to be married to the heir to the throne of France, 1770. She is stripped naked and carefully inspected at the French border

Allen Stewart Konigsberg changes his name to Woody Allen. He sees his first Bergman film, Summer With Monika, 1952

Kurt Cobain leaves home and finds work as a hotel cleaner but is fired for sleeping in the rooms, 1984

Zsa Zsa Gabor is chosen to be Miss Hungary, 1936

Joan of Arc is burned at the stake, 1431

Clyde Barrow meets Bonnie Parker, 1930

Anne Boleyn marries Henry VIII, 1533

Adolf Hitler grows his famous mustache, 1919

Einstein completes his General Theoryof Relativity, 1915

Marilyn Monroe dies in her Brentwood, California, home of an overdose of barbiturates, 1962

Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car accident in Paris, 1997

Coco Chanel introduces Chanel No. 5 perfume, 1921

Columbus sails the ocean blue, 1492

Tags: history, events, figures, years

Twins who swapped roles charged with fraud

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:34:20 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

An Italian woman who worked as a part-time judge as well as a lawyer was substituted by her identical twin sister in court so she would not lose out on legal fees when she had two simultaneous engagements

The 54-year-old twins from northern Italy have now been charged with fraud and will go on trial in January, Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported Friday on its website.

One of the twins, identified only as Gabriella, worked primarily as a lawyer but also as an honorary judge, a part-time, paid position that entails helping full-time judges when their case load is heavy

When Gabriella was called to be a substitute judge she sent her sister twin Patrizia to stand in for her at an existing engagement as a defense lawyer elsewhere in the Milan area

The problem was that sister Patrizia was not a lawyer like sister Gabriella but charged the clients anyway

The clients discovered the sister act and are now suing both for damages. Prosecutors have charged both with fraud

Tags: twins, swap, fraud, judge, lawyer

New way to make stem cells is safe

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:20:42 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: Hochedlinger's team used a much more harmless virus, called an adenovirus, to carry into the cells the four transformative genes, called Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc.

They used mouse skin cells and also liver cells from fetal mice and got both types to look and act like iPS cells

As the cells divide, they dilute the virus until it disappears, he said. But the genetic changes remain.

To test the cells they made chimeras --- a blend of two separate animals. They injected their newly made cells into mouse embryos and when the pups were born, they carried visible evidence that the cells had indeed transformed them

And so far, these chimeric mice have not developed any tumors

If it works, some day doctors may be able to make tailor-made transplants to treat diseases in people by removing a few cells, transforming them in the lab and transplanting the new tissue or organs back in

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Researchers have developed a safer way to make powerful stem cells from ordinary skin cells, taking one more step toward so-called regenerative medicine

They used a common cold virus to carry transformative genes into ordinary mouse cells, making them look and act like embryonic stem cells

If the same can be done with human cells, it may offer a safe way to test cell therapy to treat diseases such as sickle cell anemia or Parkinson's, Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston reported in the journal Science

In the past year, several teams of scientists have reported finding a handful of genes that can transform ordinary skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which in turn look and act like embryonic stem cells

To get these genes into the cells, they have had to use retroviruses, which integrate their own genetic material into the cells they infect. This can be dangerous and can cause tumors and perhaps other effects

Tags: stem cells, research, safe, human cells, virus

Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking a Decision...

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 09:29:37 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

Is your freedom of choice an illusion?

Your brain knows what you're going to do 10 seconds before you are aware of it, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes and his colleagues reported recently in Nature Neuroscience

Last year In the journal Current Biology, the scientists reported they could use brain wave patterns to identify your intentions before you revealed them.

Their work builds on a landmark 1983 paper in the journal Brain by the late Benjamin Libet and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco, who found out that the brain initiates free choices about a third of a second before we are aware of them.

Together, these findings support the importance of the unconscious in shaping decisions. Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and his co-workers at the University of Amsterdam reported in the journal Science that it is not always best to deliberate too much before making a choice

Tags: thought, decision, brain, thinking, studies

How To Spot a Persian Prostitute...

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:29:18 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.slate.com

Given the Islamic dress code, how do Persian prostitutes signal their trade?

Location, location, location

in contemporary Iran, the holy city of Qom is known (unofficially) as a place of "both pilgrimage and pleasure

Sometimes a male go-between offers "introductions," at which point the prostitutes pull aside their headgear so the potential client can get a glimpse, but the whole process is fairly subtle. For an outsider, it's difficult to pick a street girl out of a crowd

Back in 2002, the Iranian newspaper Entekhab estimated that there were nearly 85,000 prostitutes in Tehran alone

The penalties for prostitution are severe—ranging from whipping to execution. But there's a loophole in Islamic law called sigheh, or temporary marriage

An Iranian who's wary of arrest can simply escort a prostitute to a registry, obtain a temporary contract from a Muslim cleric, and then legally satisfy his sexual needs

impermanent partnership with a preset expiration date

Tags: women, prostitute, iran, islam

Stonehenge - pilgrimage site for sick

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:52:49 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Archaeologists probing the secrets of Stonehenge, Britain's most famous prehistoric monument, said on Monday it may have been an ancient pilgrimage site for the sick who believed its stones had healing qualities

Archaeologists from Britain's Bournemouth University, who carried out the dig in April -- the first at Stonehenge since 1964 -- believe the bluestones were revered as healing stones

The archaeologists said in the statement that radio-carbon dating put the construction of the circle of bluestones at between 2,400 B.C. and 2,200 B.C., a few centuries later than originally thought

But they found fragments of charcoal dating from before 7,000 B.C., showing humans were active in the area much earlier than previously thought

The dig, carried out over two weeks, revealed that centuries after it was built, Stonehenge exercised a fascination for Romans in Britain

Other theories about Stonehenge are that it was a religious site or that it acted as a calendar

Tags: stonehenge, pilgrimage, sick, healing, humans, history

What Happens if You Fall Into a Black Hole?

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:18:17 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: If you fell into a large enough black hole, your last moments would be a little bit like being on the inside of a distorted, one-way mirror. No one outside would be able to see you, but you'd have a view of them. Meanwhile, the gravitational pull would bend the light weirdly and distort your last moments of vision

Clip Source: www.slate.com

If you were caught by the pull of a black hole, you would be sent into free fall toward its center. The pulling force would increase as you moved toward the center, creating what's called a "tidal force" on your body. That is to say, the gravity acting on your head would be much stronger than the gravity acting on your toes (assuming you were falling head-first). That would make your head accelerate faster than your toes; the difference would stretch your body until it snapped apart, first at its weakest point and then disintegrating rapidly from there as the tidal force became stronger than the chemical bonds holding your body together. You'd be reduced to a bunch of disconnected atoms. Those atoms would be stretched into a line and continue in a processional march

If you fell into a truly gigantic black hole, the rate of change—and resulting tidal force—might not be enough to rip your body apart until after you'd crossed the event horizon

Tags: black hole, space, science

"Living goddesses" have rights too

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:33:42 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the government to ensure basic health care and education for virgin girls worshipped as "living goddesses" in a centuries-old tradition in the Himalayan nation

A few children, some as young as three or four, in the Kathmandu valley are picked by Buddhist priests as kumaris, or "living goddesses". They are then confined to temples until puberty, visited by thousands of devotees

Critics say the tradition violates the children's rights and leaves them unprepared to face real life when they return to their families after reaching puberty

Many cultural traditions are being changed or challenged as modernity gradually arrives in one of the world's poorest countries

The court has ordered the government to submit a detailed report within one year about the reforms and facilities provided to former kumaris, as well as existing ones

Tags: nepal, culture, supreme court, children

Stone Age graveyard shows Sahara was once green

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:05:08 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: The Sahara is the world's largest desert and has been for tens of thousands of years, but changes in the Earth's orbit 12,000 years ago brought monsoons further north for a while

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

A Stone Age graveyard on the shores of an ancient, dried-up lake in the Sahara is brimming with the skeletons of people, fish and crocodiles who thrived when the African desert was briefly green

The 10,000-year-old site in Niger, called Gobero after the Tuareg name for the area, was discovered in 2000 but the group has only now gathered enough information to make a full report

The team stumbled onto the assortment of human and animal bones and artifacts while looking for dinosaur fossils

The site contains at least 200 graves that appear to have been left by two separate settlements 1,000 years apart

The older group were tall, robust hunter-gathers known as Kiffians

A second group

were Tenerians, smaller, shorter people who hunted, herded and fished

The team sampled tooth enamel from the skeletons, pollen, bones and examined soil and tools to date the site, artifacts and remains

Tags: sahara, africa, discovery, excavation

Elephant seals join fight against climate change

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:27:20 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Elephant seals swimming under Antarctic ice and fitted with special sensors are providing scientists with crucial data on ice formation, ocean currents and climate change

The seals swimming under winter sea ice have overcome a "blind-spot" for scientists by allowing them to calculate how fast sea ice forms during winter

The elephant seals have provided scientists with a 30-fold increase in data recorded in parts of the Southern Ocean, said the study by a team of French, Australian, U.S. and British scientists and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The experiment involved 85 seals with sensors attached to their heads

Between 2004 and 2005, the seals swam up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) a day, supplying scientists with 16,500 ice profiles. The seals dived to a depth of more than 500 meters (1,500 feet) on average and to a maximum depth of nearly 2 km (a mile)

Tags: climate change, study, seals

Proposed Legislation in Iran Would End Death by Stoning

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:15:44 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.feminist.org

Iran's state media announced Wednesday that Iran has suspended the use of stoning as a way to carry out the death penalty. According to AFP, Iran's judiciary drafted legislation that would end stoning as a death penalty, the current Islamic punishment in Iran for adulterers

In 2002, Ayatollah Shahroudi, the head of Iran's judiciary banned the practice of stoning but did not remove the laws from the books. Execution by stoning continued, including the stoning of Jafar Kiani in 2007, which sparked international outrage

BBC News reports that eight women and one man are currently awaiting death by stoning in Iran

The majority of those sentenced to death by stoning are women. Women are not treated equally with men under the law and by courts, and they are also particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because their higher illiteracy rate makes them more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit

Tags: iran, stoning, legislation, legal system, punishment

Even viruses get sick

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:35:37 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Even viruses can go down with a viral infection, French scientists reported on Wednesday, in a discovery that may help explain how they swap genes and evolve so rapidly

A new strain of giant virus was isolated from a cooling tower in Paris and found to be infected by a smaller type of virus, named Sputnik, after the first man-made satellite

Sputnik was able to achieve a remarkable degree of gene mixing by "looting" genes from its host virus and other organisms

The finding may shed light on how viruses mutate so quickly -- a feature that can make them difficult to tackle with drugs and vaccines

It also lends weight to the argument that viruses are true living organisms, despite not having cells

Viruses are already known to infect and sicken bacteria but this is the first example of a virus infecting one of its own kind

Tags: virus, viral, infection, mutation

Egypt to test fetuses for Tutankhamun family tree

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:32:43 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Egyptian scientists are doing DNA tests on stillborn children found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the hope of identifying their mother and grandmother, who may be the powerful queen Nefertiti

Archaeologists assume they are the children of the teenage pharaoh but their mother has not been identified

Many scholars believe their mother to be Ankhesenamun, the boy king's only known wife. Ankhesenamun is the daughter of Nefertiti, renowned for her beauty

The DNA tests and computerized tomography (CT) scans, to be performed at Cairo University, should be finished by December, Hawass said

Egypt has been trying to check the identity of all its royal mummies using DNA and CT scans. Tutankhamun's was one of the first mummies to be examined with the technology in 2005

Tags: egypt, mummy, tests, dna, tutankhamun, pharaoh

Universe's first star born tiny, grew huge: study

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:27:50 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: The processes churning inside the stars synthesized the universe's first heavy elements. In dying, these stars may have blasted this stuff back into space to become building blocks of future stars and planets composed of many more elements

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

The first object to brighten the dark, primordial universe after the Big Bang was the tiny seed of a star that rapidly grew into a behemoth 100 times more massive than the sun

This first generation of stars apparently lived hard and died quickly. While our sun may live 5 billion years, this first generation of stars likely lasted only a slim fraction of that -- about 1 million years

Scientists think the universe was born in a Big Bang explosion 13.7 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. But they have struggled to understand how the first stars formed in the aftermath of this cataclysm

Japanese and U.S. astronomers ran a sophisticated computer simulation that showed how some of the hydrogen and helium gases strewn throughout the young universe came together to form the first generation of stars

While none of the stars survive today, their influence remains

Tags: star, huge, big bang, universe, study

plant refugees

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:09:03 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: The researchers used two different climate models that predict changes in temperature and rainfall through 2100 to make their projections -- one that assumes higher and another that assumes lower greenhouse gas emissions.

What the models did suggest, however, is that reducing greenhouse gases would have a significant impact on native species

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Climate change may turn many of California's native plants into "plant refugees" in the next century as they seek more suitable habitats, U.S. researchers said

They said changes in climate arising from heat-trapping greenhouse gasses would affect hundreds of native plant species including the state's famed Coast Redwoods, which are among the tallest trees on earth

The researchers tracked 5,500 plants native to California and used computer models to predict how climate change would affect their distribution

They concluded that a warming climate and changes in rainfall would force many plants to range north or to higher elevations or possibly become extinct in the next 100 years

Brent Mishler of the University of California, Berkeley said conservationists will need to keep in mind what plants are at risk of becoming plant refugees. "Planning for refugees will become a new but important concept for natural reserves to think about,"

Tags: plants, refugees, environment, research, habitat