Clipmarks | michellezm's clips

"Miracle Cure For Alzheimer's Disease?"

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:48:02 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: continues:
The new study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect in an Alzheimer's patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of perispinal etanercept, which is etanercept given by injection in the spine. Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF. Etanercept is FDA approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off label in the study.

Griffin and Mark are pioneers in the field of neuroinflammation. Griffin published a landmark study in 1989 describing the association of cytokine overexpression in the brain and Alzheimer's disease.
"It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention," said Griffin. "It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterize the physiologic mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer's research a tre

Clip Source: mysterytopia.com

Miracle Cure For Alzheimer's Disease?

Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

This new study highlights the importance of certain soluble proteins, called cytokines, in Alzheimer’s disease. The study focuses on one of these cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), a critical component of the brain’s immune system. Normally, TNF finely regulates the transmission of neural impulses in the brain. The authors hypothesized that elevated levels of TNF in Alzheimer’s disease interfere with this regulation. To reduce elevated TNF, the authors gave patients an injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept. Excess TNF-alpha has been documented in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer’s.

Amazing Clifftop Monasteries of Meteora, Greece

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:40:00 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.soothbrush.com

Meaning ‘suspended in air’ the name Meteora includes the entire rock community of 24 monasteries. There were no steps and the main access to the monasteries was by means of a net that was hitched over a hook and hoisted up by rope and a hand cranked windlass to winch towers overhanging the chasm. Monks descended in the nets or on retractable wooden ladders up to 40m long to the fertile valleys below to grow grapes, corn and potatoes.

[Video]

Different nesting options :)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:33:36 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A nest of a Bullock's oriole that is made up almost entirely of plastic. Many birds use any available items to build their homes, but some synthetic fibers can be harmful to chicks.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

This nest from an African tailorbird was collected in Tanzania in 1961. The birds use their bills as needles to sew the nest together.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The nest of a banded wren, surrounded by one-inch thorns. At the time the nest was collected, the thorns were full of ants.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The nest of a Say's phoebe, built in a hurricane lamp. This species often reuses the nests of other perching birds as its own.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A nest built in a can by a Bewick's wren that was collected near Los Angeles in 1918.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

These nests are typical of those created out of mud by cliff swallows.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The nest of a Costa's hummingbird, resting on a cactus.

Tags: birds, nests

10 Rare Cloud Formations

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:42:38 GMT

clipped by: Patty2007

Clip Source: listverse.com

10 Rare Cloud Formations

Clip Source: listverse.com

1. Nacreous Clouds

2. Mammatus Clouds

3. Altocumulus Castelanus

4. Noctilucent Clouds

5. Mushroom Clouds

6. Cirrus Kelvin-Helmholtz

7. Lenticular Clouds

8. Roll Clouds

9. Shelf Clouds

10. Stratocumulus Clouds

Tags: clouds

'Deepest ever' living fish filmed

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:14:39 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly
clipper's remarks: video won't clip

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

'Deepest ever' living fish filmed

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

The "deepest ever" living fish have been discovered, scientists believe.

A UK-Japan team found the 17-strong shoal at depths of 7.7km (4.8 miles) in the Japan Trench in the Pacific - and captured the deep sea animals on film.

The scientists have been using remote-operated landers designed to withstand immense pressures to comb the world's deepest depths for marine life.

Monty Priede from the University of Aberdeen said the 30cm-long (12in), deep-sea fish were surprisingly "cute".

The fish, known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, can be seen darting about in the darkness of the depths, scooping up shrimps.

Alan Jamieson, from the University of Aberdeen, said: "It was an honour to see these fish.

Nobody has really been able to look at these depths before - and I think we will see fish living much deeper

50 Great Free Online Libraries

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 06:18:56 GMT

clipped by: karokan
clipper's remarks: Comprehensive list of free online book resources

Clip Source: www.attiaspace.com

Research & Education

50 Great Free Online Libraries

1. California Digital Library

2. The Online Books Page

3. Free Books

5. Research Assistance

6. BookRags - E-Books and Book Notes

7. All Bookstores.com

8. FreeTech Books

10. Free E-Books.net

11. MindView

12. The eBook Directory

13. University of Virginia's E-Book library

14. BizzyDays Ebook Publications

15. Web Source

16. free-ebooks-4u.com

17. Prosperity Point

18. Free eBooks and Best Sites

19. Free Electronic Books

20. CIW Free E-Books

21. My Free EBooks

22. Free E-Books

23. A Good Read

24. Blackmask Online

25. EBookstand

26. Bibliomania

27. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts

28. The eText Archive

29. Free Books 5000

30. Classic Bookshelf

32. Samizdat Press

33. Page by Page Books

34. bartleby.com

35. Free Books 4 Doctors

36. InformIT Online Books

37. Chapter-a-Day - Free Books in Your E-Mail!

42. BeyondBooks.com

47. Free-Ed.Net

48. Free Joke Books

52. Great Books Index

54. Internet Medieval Sourcebook

55. Books by David Irving

56. Be Successful!

Tags: lists, ebooks, resources

Earth From Above - Stunning!

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:09:48 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Another Boston Globe must see.

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Earth From Above comes to NYC

Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand will bring his work back to the United States - to New York City for the first time in 2009. Aiming to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living, Arthus-Bertrand has been photographing unique views of our planet, seen from the sky, since 1994 - and has produced an exhibit of over 150 4-ft. by 6-ft. prints which will be on display in New York City at the World Financial Center Plaza and along the Battery Park City Esplanade from May 1, 2009 to June 28, 2009. When completed in New York City, the Earth From Above exhibit will also move on to California in 2010. Photographs and captions all courtesy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand. (38 photos total)

bales of cotton

Sand dune in the heart of vegetation

Flock of sheep

Mountainous countryside

"Tree of life"

Dun Eochla fort on Inishmore Island

Iraqi tank graveyard

The Athabasca Oil Sands

Village of Bacolor under a layer of mud

Waste from the copper mine

graves

50 people who have wrecked Britain (1-20)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:25:05 GMT

clipped by: michellezm
clipper's remarks: By Quentin Letts. Makes for an interesting read

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

So much money, so many high-tech advances - yet today Britain is such an unhappy country, so drained of community, so robotic as it staggers towards oblivion. Who landed us in this mess? Who are the halfwits, the mooncalves, the clotpolls whose touches and yanks on the national tiller steered us onto the rocks?

It's time to name and shame the guilty. This is my personal roll call of the people who made our country the ugly, ignorant, beer-ridden and brawling place it is today.

1 Jeffrey Archer

2 Richard Beeching

3 Howard Schultz

4 James Callaghan

5 Diana

6 Greg Dyke

7 Charles Saatchi

8 Graham Kelly

9 Anthony Crosland

10 John McEnroe

11 Stephen Marks

12 John Prescott

13 Frank Blackmore

14 Sir Jimmy Saville

15 Edward Heath

16 Janet Street-Porter

17 Margaret Thatcher

18 Alan Titchmarsh

19 Topsy and Tim

20 Tim Westwood

Here are the fools, knaves and vulgarians who ripped up British honour and glory and set in its place the tawdry and the trite

50 people who wrecked Britain (21-35)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:28:56 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Now, in a wonderful new book, the Mail's peerless sketchwriter Quentin Letts offers his own roll call of the 50 prime suspects he blames for wrecking our country.

His outrageous pen portraits, some comical, some steaming with anger, spare no one - from the ayatollah of atheism, Richard Dawkins, to the Tory minister who destroyed our fishing industry.

Here, we count down from No 21 to No 35...

21 Tony Blair

22 Richard Brunstrom

23 Paul Burrell

24 Sir Alex Ferguson

25 Kenneth Baker

26 The Very Rev. Ronald Jasper

27 Sir Denys Lasdun

28 Helen Willetts

29 Dame Suzi Leather

30 Richard Dawkins

31 Geoffrey Rippon

32 Julia Smith

33 'Webonymous'

34 Michael Martin

35 Harold Wilson

Abridged extract from Fifty People Who Buggered Up Britain by Quentin Letts

Avarice

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:09:17 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Clip Source: www.davidsongalleries.com

Clip Source: normandie.blog.lemonde.fr

Clip Source: www.mimifroufrou.com

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Clip Source: beingsven.files.wordpress.com

Clip Source: www.geocities.com

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Clip Source: www.whale.to

Clip Source: paulitics.files.wordpress.com

Clip Source: honors.rit.edu

Clip Source: dlibrary.acu.edu.au

Clip Source: lateforlife.com

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Clip Source: www.silverbearcafe.com

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Clip Source: blogs.reuters.com

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

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Avarice.

Money, thou bane of blisse, & sourse of wo,
     Whence com’st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
     I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poore and dirtie in a mine.

Surely thou didst so little contribute
     To this great kingdome, which thou now hast got,
     That he was fain, when thou wert destitute,
To digge thee out of thy dark cave and grot:

Then forcing thee by fire he made thee bright:
     Nay, thou hast got the face of man; for we
     Have with our stamp and seel transferr’d our right:
Thou art the man, and man but drosse to thee.

     Man calleth thee his wealth, who made thee rich;
     And while he diggs out thee, falls in the ditch.

George Herbert

Tags: avarice, george herbert

The brain parasite that influences human culture

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:04:07 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Spread by cats

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

We like to think that we are masters of our own fates. The thought that others might be instead controlling our actions makes us uneasy. We rail against nanny states, we react badly to media hype and we are appalled at the idea of brainwashing. But words and images are not the only things that can affect our brains and thoughts. Other animals - parasites - can do this too. According to research by Kevin Lafferty from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, could be influencing human culture across the globe.

spread by cats

in another animal, it travels to the brain and changes the host's behaviour to maximise its chances of ending up in a cat

For rodents, this means being eaten

infected individuals are less fearful of cats

Humans

tend to show long-term personality changes that are small but statistically significant

higher level of neuroticism

To establish the true direction of causality

need to find out how the parasite manipulates the mind

Iceland in Meltdown Disaster

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:47:47 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Man-made global economics change.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The party's over for Iceland, the island that tried to buy the world

Almost overnight, its population became the wealthiest on Earth.

The bars and restaurants of Iceland's capital are packed, the Range Rovers and BMWs are parked nose to tail all along the streets of the central 101 district, and music is pumping from a black stretch Hummer limousine cruising by.

Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland's currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country's three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won't send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.

Icelanders drink more Coca-Cola than anyone else in the world.

Tags: iceland, economics

The Colors of the Moon

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:33:53 GMT

clipped by: Jorjor
clipper's remarks: We're accustomed to thinking of the Moon in terms of greyscale. Here's a different take on it.

Clip Source: www.rc-astro.com

About This Photograph

Is the moon really this colorful? In a way, yes. The lunar surface actually does have quite a bit of color, although in reality it is very subtle. In this photograph, the color saturation has been enhanced to bring out the differences in the colors of the various areas of the surface. The hues are correct, just much more vivid than we usually see them.

Aside from making an interesting aesthetic presentation, the colors also give clues as to the mineralogy of the moon's surface. Also, at the sites of many impact craters we can see that deeper material exposed (and in some cases scattered) by the impact is of a different composition than the material on the surface.

Technical Details

Optics:20" f/8 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien Cassegrain w/ Field Corrector.Mount:Software Bisque Paramount ME.Camera:SBIG STL-11000XM.Filters:SBIG Standard RGB.Dates/Times:18 April 2005.Location:Dimension Point Observatory, Mayhill, New Mexico.

Tags: astronomy, photography, moon

Autumn in Canada

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:35:19 GMT

clipped by: Lifestar
clipper's remarks: Simply beautiful ^_^

Clip Source: www.linternaute.com

Old Blighty, the birthplace of English

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:31:33 GMT

clipped by: iskandar
clipper's remarks: "Collins' editors know that old words die hard — and that some people will vilipend (regard with contempt) any execution without a fair trial. So they've offered the chance of a reprieve. They have made public 24 words that face deletion because editors could find no example of their use in their database of English-language books, newspapers, broadcasts and other media. If, by February 2009, a word reappears in that database with at least six "high quality" citations, it could be spared from the semantic dustbin. "We're looking to see if dropping a little stone in the pond of language actually does generate ripples," says Brookes."

Clip Source: www.time.com

Hangman, Spare That Word: The English Purge Their Language

For feminists examining muliebrity (the condition of being a woman), or soothsayers putting out their latest vaticination (prophecy), the available lexicon may soon get slimmer. The lexicographers behind Britain's Collins English Dictionary have decided to exuviate (shed) rarely used and archaic words as part of an abstergent (cleansing) process to make room for up to 2,000 new entries. "We want the dictionary to be a reflection of English as it is currently spoken," says Ian Brookes, managing editor of Collins, "rather than a fossilized version of the language."

Here in Old Blighty, the birthplace of English, the dictionary's compilers face passionate resistance from language lovers who believe that any cull reduces the richness and variety that make language powerful — and leaves us all a bit dumber.

Tags: english, dictionary