Clipmarks | alientwilight's Pops

Nanobots Gone Wild

Thu, 29 May 2008 17:58:07 GMT

clipped by: samannzinnia
clipper's remarks: Many of these nanoparticles have specific jobs to do, and they might wreak havoc if they were to do those jobs in our bodies. On the other hand, nanoparticles might cause mutations that humans need to move up to the next level in our evolution. Who knows? That's is what the government is trying to find out.

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

EU to Pace Nanotechnology

By Matthew Dalton

BRUSSELS -- Mounting concern and new scientific evidence that nanoparticles could threaten human health are ratcheting up the pressure on European officials to produce regulations governing the use of the technology.

Nanoparticles are molecules of usually harmless substances that have been manipulated into special shapes to give them desirable properties such as strength or flexibility.

Companies already sell hundreds of products containing nanomaterials and say they believe these products are safe. But a major study released this month found that at least one nanomaterial, carbon nanotubes, appears to mimic the behavior of cancer-causing asbestos in the lung.

Tags: nanoparticles, nanotechnology, humans, science, research, health, technology, molecules

Great tit upsets smokers...

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:37:57 GMT

clipped by: queerty
clipper's remarks: They are calling them the "Butt Bin" family!

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Smokers visiting a nature reserve in Kinross have been told to make alternative arrangements after a Great Tit built a nest in a cigarette bin.

Despite a range of ready-made nest boxes around Vane Farm at Loch Leven the bird has opted for the bin outside the visitors' centre door.

Luckily the nest was spotted by a visitor who saw the bird emerge from the box before it was used by a smoker.

The RSPB said there are currently about four baby Great Tits in the nest.

Raymond Welsh, the visitor centre and coffee shop manager, said the birds were proving to be a huge attraction.

He said: "A couple on holiday from England told me that a tit was nesting in the cigarette box.

"At first I thought they were mistaken and that the birds were just looking for food.

"Then I looked in the box and there she was sitting quietly on her nest.

"It's just great that nature is everywhere."

Phone home: Purported UFO video to be shown Friday

Thu, 29 May 2008 17:46:13 GMT

clipped by: reimers
clipper's remarks: "No one will be allowed to film the segment with the extraterrestrial because there is an agreement in place limiting that kind of exposure during negotiations for the documentary," he said.

Clip Source: www.rockymountainnews.com

A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.

Jeff Peckman, who is pushing a ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver to prepare the city for close encounters of the alien kind, said the video is authentic and convinced him that aliens exist.

"As impressive as it is, it's still one tiny portion in the context of a vast amount of peripheral evidence," he said Wednesday. "It's really the final visual confirmation of what you already know to be true having seen all the other evidence."

When Peckman went before city officials this month to discuss his proposed ET initiative, he promised to show the video.

Peckman said the general public will have to wait to see it because it's being included in a documentary by Stan Romanek.

New way to detect cancer earlier

Thu, 29 May 2008 00:58:31 GMT

clipped by: bookchick49

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Bicarbonate 'could detect cancer'

The naturally-occurring chemical bicarbonate, used to make baking soda, could help detect cancer using sensitive scanning, research suggests.

Bicarbonate is involved in the body's balancing of acid and alkali.

But cancerous tissue is known to turn it into carbon dioxide.

Almost all cancer has a lower pH, meaning it is more acidic than surrounding tissue.

Currently, there is no way to safely measure differences in pH in patients, but spotting these areas of acidity could be used to find cancers when they are very small.

"So if clinical trials show that this technique is as safe and effective in cancer patients as we expect, this could be a very useful tool in the early detection of cancer and may save many lives."

Japan says sorry for planting drugs on passenger

Thu, 29 May 2008 11:50:28 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Bloody idiots. The aftermath of a clip placed last week.

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

Japan has said sorry for planting cannabis on an incoming Hong Kong passenger to test out one of its sniffer dogs, a news report said today.

Embarrassed officials had to issue a public appeal to the passenger to return the 142 grams of cannabis after the sniffer dog failed to detect it and the customs officer forgot which bag he planted the drugs in.

The incident on Sunday, in which a passenger on a Cathay Pacific flight into Tokyo was targeted collecting a suitcase from the airport carousel, brought an outcry from the Hong Kong government and tourism officials.

The drugs - worth almost $US10,000 ($A10,436.23) - were eventually recovered on Monday evening from the passenger in a Tokyo hotel, but it is not known if the passenger was traced or whether he or she alerted officials.

In a statement in today South China Morning Post, a spokesperson for Japan's customs authorities said the department felt "great regret and we offer our deepest apologies."

Tags: bloody, idiots

Baby defies the odds to survive ectopic birth

Thu, 29 May 2008 11:31:54 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Lovely story

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Dhurga Thangarajah. (Louisa Rebgetz)

Doctors are stunned at the birth of what they are calling a miracle baby in the Northern Territory.

Dhurga Thangarajah is one of very few, if any, to survive an ovarian - or ectopic - pregnancy.

Ovarian pregnancies are a one in 40,000 occurence and are usually terminated before ten 10 weeks.

But what could have been a tragedy turned into a dream come true for the baby's parents.

When the baby's mother, Meera, had an ultrasound more than half-way through her pregnancy the complication wasn't picked up.

The severity of the case was only realised when she went for a caesarean at the Royal Darwin Hospital this morning.

Dhurga means goddess in Hindu, a name her father says suits their new arrival.

Tags: humans

Flirting and the Purpose of Life

Thu, 29 May 2008 09:45:55 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: www.edstrong.blog-city.com

Flirtation is a game we play, a dance for which everyone knows the moves. "People can flirt outrageously without intending anything,"

"Flirting captures the interest of the other person and says 'Would you like to play?'" And one of the most exhilarating things about the game is that the normal rules of social interaction are rubberized. Clarity is not the point.

"Flirting opens a window of potential. Not yes, not no," says Perper. "So we engage ourselves in this complex game of maybe."

Flirting "is a way of testing one's mate-value and the possibility of alternatives--actually trying to see if someone might be available as an alternative,"

To evolutionary biologists, the advantages of this are clear: mates die, offspring die. Flirting is a little like taking out mating insurance.

these little acts "contact-readiness" cues,

are a crucial part of what's known in human-ethology circles as the "heterosexual relationship initiation process"

Tags: flirting

What is wrong with this idiot????

Thu, 29 May 2008 14:03:42 GMT

clipped by: mooner-one

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

Some Call It Faith
An American President Steps Over the Line (Again)

How do you live with yourself if you’re responsible for the deaths of 4,000 American soldiers and uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?

His 2008 Memorial Day radio address gave away the game in one sentence

Right at the end of a few minutes of the usual patriotic vacuities, he asks all Americans to remember the soldiers who paid the ultimate price, who were “delivered out of the agony of war to meet their Creator.”

A statement which basically says, “4,000 soldiers have died, but that’s OK because however awful their deaths were, they’re now a lot better off than they were before (and than we are who are still struggling along on Earth) because, well, they’re face-to-face with the Big Guy Himself. So, not to worry.”

But here, in this one sentence, he revealed in total clarity, the extent to which he has bought into the most simplistic, bedrock faux reality of the right-wing religionists.

America on the Downward Slope: (Bush taking slaps in the face.)

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:52:39 GMT

clipped by: thinkingblue
clipper's remarks: BUSH: "My message to him is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay." (Later, a National Security Council spokesman had to offer a correction, insisting the threat was aimed only at Iran, not Maliki.) Then, to add insult to injury, just a week after Bush and Karzai met in Washington, Ahmadinejad headed for Kabul with a high-ranking Iranian delegation to pay his respects to the Afghan president "in open defiance of Washington's wishes." Think slap in the face.

What made this little regional diplomatic dance all the more curious was the fact that Karzai and Maliki are such weak (and weakening) American-backed leaders --
thinkingblue: Everyday in one form or another there is an item of horrifying news coming out of this Iraq occupation by the US. If that isn't enough for Congress to start thinking and acting upon withdrawal then, I guess, nothing will..

Clip Source: www.tomdispatch.com

Pick up the paper any day and you'll find

headlines inside the fold

reflecting the seeping away of American power. The President of the planet's "sole superpower" and his top diplomats and commanders have been denouncing Iran for months as the evil hand behind American disaster in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan arrived in Washington

promptly described Iran as "a helper and a solution" for his country,

Bush insisted

"I would be very cautious about whether or not the Iranian influence in Afghanistan is a positive force."

the same moment, Iraq's

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki paid an official visit to Iran,

looking for support in case the U.S. turned on his government.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

met

Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and called for cooperation.

all President Bush could do was issue a vague threat: "

I will have to have a heart to heart with my friend, the prime minister,

I don't believe

Iranians

are constructive....

when we catch you playing

non-constructive

Tags: iraq, afghanistan, bush, political, politics, withdrawal, war, america

1 in 4 Americans read no books last year

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:36:31 GMT

clipped by: thekay

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

One in four read no books last year

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year

women and older people were most avid

religious works and popular fiction were the top choices

a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven

tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious

West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book

Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions

Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently

Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books

men tend to prefer nonfiction

Tags: reading habits, reading preferences

The Size of our World

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:36:54 GMT

clipped by: This Little Bird

Clip Source: www.rense.com

The Size Of Our World

Tags: universe, earth, size, planets, planet, star, stars, scale, world, astronomy

Amazing Space Pictures

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:54:31 GMT

clipped by: vonilei
clipper's remarks: I could spend days at this site....so many beautiful pictures!

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Tags: space, stars, nebulae, astronomy

Free Online Tutorials for Computer Skills

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:39:55 GMT

clipped by: adamfalls

Clip Source: www.gcflearnfree.org

Your source for free computer training.Sign In

Tutorials

Learn the skills you need at your own pace -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- with any of these free online tutorials. Start learning today!

Video modules now available!

The Basics

Internet

Office 2003

Office 2002(XP)

Office 2000

Office 97

Open Source

Life Skills

Tags: free, tutorial, computer, skill, video, microsoft, excel, powerpoint, firefox

Latest fashion: pierced eyeballs

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:03:30 GMT

clipped by: kwonsu

Clip Source: www.metro.co.uk

EYE SURGEONS IN Holland have found a way to implant tiny pieces of jewellery - in your eyeballs.

Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewellery called "JewelEye" in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam.

The bits of jewellery are about 4mm wide and come in half-moon or heart shapes.

They are put into the eye's mucous membrane under local anaesthetic. It costs between £270 and £540.

'In my view it is a little more subtle than (body) piercing. It is a bit of a fun thing and a very personal thing for people,' said Gerrit Melles, director of the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery. The piece of jewellery is inserted in the conjunctiva -- the mucous membrane lining the inner surface of the eyelids and front of the eyeball - in sterile conditions using an operating microscope in a procedure taking about 15 minutes.

Tags: fashion, pierced, eyeballs, weird

health benefits of sex

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:43:49 GMT

clipped by: burnbright

Clip Source: www.momscape.com

Quick quiz: Would you rather run 75 miles or have sex three times per week for a year? Research shows that both activities burn the same number of calories. (7,500, to be exact).

In women, for example, the sexual act triggers the release of oxytocin. Oxytocin promotes feelings of affection and triggers that nurturing instinct. In men, sex encourages the flow of testosterone, which strengthens bones and muscles and helps transport DHEA, a hormone that may be important in the function of the body’s immune system.

sex in a loving relationship helps the immune system by increasing the flow of certain chemicals in the body.

men who have sex at least three times each week may have a decreased risk of developing prostate problems.

A promiscuous sexual relationship may actually produce an opposite effect by introducing a sense of anxiety and fear.

Tags: sex, health