Clipmarks | pokkets's clips

Oxygen may ease headache and migraine

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:59:03 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Breathing oxygen as opposed to what? I wonder if it has anything to do with the air being clean. Perhaps fresh air would have a similar effect. Fresh air is getting harder to find these days

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Amy Norton

Some forms of oxygen therapy may help manage two types of debilitating headache pain, a new research review suggests.

A review of nine small clinical trials, headed by Dr Michael Bennett, of Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, found that hyperbaric oxygen therapy showed promise for halting pain during migraine attacks.

It also found that normobaric, or normal-pressure, oxygen therapy, eased pain in people suffering from cluster headaches.

The findings are published in the Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organisation that evaluates medical research

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing pure oxygen in a sealed, pressurised chamber

normobaric oxygen therapy, patients breathe pure oxygen from a portable unit under normal conditions.

Normal-pressure oxygen has long been used for severe headache pain, and there is some evidence that hyperbaric oxygen could be helpful, but few controlled clinical trials have evaluated the therapies.

Ocean Power Catches a Wave

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:36:55 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Europe and New Zealand to install commercial generators; U.S. lags

Sea Monster: A Portuguese utility plans to install wave-power generators like these.

The first commercial ocean energy project is scheduled to launch this summer off the coast of Portugal. Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh's Pelamis Wave Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts through an undersea cable to the Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. Within a year, another 28 generators should come online there, boosting the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may be a trickle of power, but the project represents a new push into wave and tidal power as governments eye the oceans as a way to meet their renewable energy targets.

Engineers have come up with a variety of schemes to harness the power of waves, the flow of currents, and the motion of the tides. The Pelamis generators, part of a class of wave-energy converters called linear absorbers, each comprise three long canisters that look like giant oxygen tanks

Tags: ocean power, wave

That "do you have any Grey Poupon" joke is officially over

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:54:27 GMT

clipped by: enbar
clipper's remarks: I know it's sick and wrong, but this news story really cracked me up

Clip Source: www.sltrib.com

Motorist's quip about 'Grey Poupon' met with cocked, black handgun

A Sandy man took offense to a motorist, who, after getting him to roll down his window, asked, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?"
After hearing the request for Dijon mustard, the 22-year-old driver pulled a black handgun from his glove compartment, cocked the weapon and pointed it at the three people in the other car.
"Here's your Grey Poupon, roll your [expletive] windows up," he responded.

Tags: funny, news, weapons, mustard

Welcome To The Real World

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:12:01 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."
-John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

ndividually we find that we are powerless against corporate media or Big Oil or Washington. Our choices are limited. Our effectiveness diminished. This is not by accident. Unions, social gatherings, clubs that all flourished before the 1960s have all been destroyed by those who find you & me to be a threat.

Today people will tell you that protest are ineffective. And they are. But real change does not come from the ballot box. Great social change like the eight hour work day, child labor laws, a woman's right to vote, civil rights, etc., etc. all came about through blood & sweat & great effort.

Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations; all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we'll begin to change things. --Arthur Scargill

Survival of the common?

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:28:21 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: an interesting article; pointing towards the "natural" preference of quantity rather than quality.

Clip Source: www.ploscompbiol.org

The Ascent of the Abundant: How Mutational Networks Constrain Evolution

Evolution by natural selection is fundamentally shaped by the fitness landscapes in which it occurs.

Yet fitness landscapes are vast and complex

Here, we exhaustively survey the structural landscapes of RNA molecules of lengths 12 to 18 nucleotides, and develop a network model to describe the relationship between sequence and structure.

The “Ascent of the Abundant” and the Evolution of Natural RNA Molecules

results suggest the following hypothesis: the evolution of phenotypes, whether complex whole-organism phenotypes or RNA shapes, may be biased toward abundant phenotypes, even if those phenotypes are not optimal.

Abundant phenotypes are more likely to arise via a random mutation than rare phenotypes, and, once established in the population, are more difficult to escape via subsequent mutations. This gives a new perspective on the widely-accepted hypothesis that large neutral networks facilitate evolution

Tags: evolution, biology

The Future

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:50:40 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: This is a special report that appeared on Forbes on 10.15.07 and has an impressive list of visionaries talking about the future. highly recommended reading. click the names to read the visions

Clip Source: www.forbes.com

hat happened to the future? Weren't things supposed to be cooler by now, smarter, safer? Raised on a steady diet of science fiction, overzealous politicians and corporate hype, Americans expected to be living in The Jetsons -- but instead find themselves stuck in a scarier version of The Waltons.

The truth is that people simply aren't very good at predicting the future. It was only two centuries ago that we began to think we could do it at all, and we're still learning. Hindsight may be 20/20, but foresight remains largely blind.

Visionaries

What were you sure would happen, but didn't? What totally surprised you?

Joel A. Barker
Wendell Bell
Stuart Brand
David Brin
Pat Cadigan
James Canton
Ed Cornish
Esther Dyson
Scott W. Erickson
Frank Feather
Jacque Fresco
Harry Harrison
Hazel Henderson

Sohail Inayatullah
William Knoke
Richard Lamb
John Mahaffie
Syd Mead
John Naisbitt
Nicholas Negroponte
Bob Rogers
Rudy Rucker
Paul Saffo
Robert Sawyer
Stephen Wolfram

Tags: visionaries, future

Earthquake 'not to blame' for mud volcano

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:58:35 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

A devastating Indonesian mud volcano could not have been caused by a remote earthquake, say researchers.

Experts estimate the mud volcano in East Java is now spewing 50 Olympic swimming pools of mud a day

Instead, they say, the Lusi eruption that began more than two years ago was most likely caused by the mining company failing to properly reinforce a problematic gas well.

"None of the known methods by which an earthquake could have triggered this are plausible," says petroleum geologist Dr Mark Tingay of Curtin University in Western Australia.

Since May 2006 the Lusi mud "volcano" has been burying villages around the east Javanese city of Surabaya.

Some scientists, including UK geologist Professor Richard Davies of the University of Durham and colleagues believe that drilling for gas by the company Lapindo Brantas caused the explosion.

"The magnitude of the Yogjakarta earthquake was at least ten times too small to have triggered off any mud volcanic eruption at the Lusi site,

Cuckoo chicks are masters of deception

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:19:08 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Stephen Pincock

The chicks of a species of Australian cuckoo can adjust their call in order to fool other species into rearing them, despite never having heard the cry, researchers have found.

The Horsfield's bronze-cuckoo could have a range of call options genetically pre-programmed, researchers say

Like their European counterparts, Australian cuckoos are well known for laying their eggs in the nests of other birds.

Once the chicks hatch, they 'kick' out the host's eggs and set about convincing their foster parents to feed them by imitating the calls of the host's offspring.

But researchers from the Australian National University and the University of Cambridge, report in the latest issue of the journal Evolution, that one species of cuckoo can modify its call depending on which species it has hooked up with.

Chicks that hatch in a fairy-wren nest are known to copy that species' short 'cheep cheep'

chicks that hatch in the nests of thornbills imitate the thornbill's long, rasping whine

What the World Eats (2)

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:55:26 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: What's on family dinner tables in fifteen different homes around the globe?
from the book "Hungry Planet"

Clip Source: www.time.com

What the World Eats

Poland: The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna

Food expenditure for one week: 582.48 Zlotys or $151.27
Family recipe: Pig's knuckles with carrots, celery and parsnips

Clip Source: www.time.com

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo

Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Family recipe: Okra and mutton

Clip Source: www.time.com

Mongolia: The Batsuuri family of Ulaanbaatar

Food expenditure for one week: 41,985.85 togrogs or $40.02
Family recipe: Mutton dumplings

Clip Source: www.time.com

Mexico: The Casales family of Cuernavaca

Food expenditure for one week: 1,862.78 Mexican Pesos or $189.09
Favorite foods: pizza, crab, pasta, chicken

Clip Source: www.time.com

China

Food expenditure for one week: 1,233.76 Yuan or $155.06
Favorite foods: fried shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce

Clip Source: www.time.com

Great Britain

Food expenditure for one week: 155.54 British Pounds or $253.15
Favorite foods: avocado, mayonnaise sandwich, prawn cocktail, chocolate fudge cake with cream

Archaeologists google an ancient find

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:44:10 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: Some things are much easier to see from the air. It would be better than flying a plane over Afghanistan.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Dani Cooper

Indiana Jones's next adventure may well be in front of a computer if Hollywood scriptwriters decide to embrace a new approach to archaeological research in war-torn zones.

A satellite image of the Bust citadel in Afghanistan (Source: Google Earth)

David Thomas, a PhD student in La Trobe University's archaeological program in Melbourne, has used Google Earth to safely uncover historic sites in a remote part of war-torn Afghanistan.

Using the free internet resource, Thomas found up to 450 possible archaeological sites in Registan, which borders Helmand and Kandahar provinces in southern Afghanistan.

The decision to use Google Earth was "partly born out of adversity", Thomas says when a planned field trip was cancelled because of security concerns.

Google Earth allows archaeologists to overcome the perils of war zones.

Thomas's approach has reaped a huge bounty of new details about known archaeological sites, and uncovered hundreds of previously unknown sites in the country.

Spider helps track disease outbreaks

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:19:50 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: A 'Spider' being "The Web-walking part of a search engine that collects pages for indexing in the search engine's database. Also called a bot.":answers.com
I thought I'd better put that in, because when I first saw the title, I had visions of biologists, out in the wild, catching spiders to be tested for disease.
Now if you want to find out about disease outbreaks, you can just google them before the WHO Centres of disease control have any idea.
Maybe WHO should google not yahoo.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

A new website is helping scientists track viruses and disease outbreaks by searching within the virtual world.

"We were originally thinking about how we could expand disease surveillance and pick up outbreaks earlier than traditional methods," says Dr John Brownstein of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who created HealthMap in September of 2006 with Clark Friefeld, a software developer at Harvard Medical School.

HealthMap gathers information from the Internet and filters it, removing, for example, duplicated or irrelevant information

program identifies about 95% of all disease outbreaks, sometimes days before the World Health Organization or the Centres of Disease Control announce them

"This will definitely save lives," said Dr Larry Madoff, editor of ProMED, an infectious disease monitoring website run by the International Society for Infectious Disease.

"This is a good step forward," says Madoff. "[HealthMap] helps us predict how disease outbreaks will happen."

Northern star breathes new life

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:40:04 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Darren Osborne

A star destined for a slow death that sits high above the North Pole, is puzzling astronomers after recent observations have revealed that it's breathing strong again.

Researchers from Australia, Scotland and the United States have found that the 'north star' Polaris, which was fading over the past century, has reversed and is increasing in activity.

Their findings, which will appear in the next issue of The Astrophysical Journal, was recently presented at the Cool Stars 15 conference at the University of St Andrews.

Polaris belongs to a group of stars called cepheids. These stars, which are in the later stages of their life, pulsate, resulting in a noticeable change in their brightness.

The strength of Polaris' pulses has decreased during the past 100 years

its relative change of brightness dropping from 10% to just 2%

To the researcher's surprise, the north star has picked up its activity, currently displaying a variation in brightness of 4%.

What the World Eats (1)

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:06:29 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: What's on family dinner tables in fifteen different homes around the globe
see also What the World Eats (2)

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/633A2B98-B0BE-4C2D-B5C7-19507606A388/

Clip Source: www.time.com

What the World Eats

What's on family dinner tables in fifteen different homes around the globe?

from the book "Hungry Planet"

Clip Source: www.time.com

Ecuador: The Ayme family of Tingo

Food expenditure for one week: $31.55
Family recipe: Potato soup with cabbage

Clip Source: www.time.com

Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City

Food expenditure for one week: 37,699 Yen or $317.25
Favorite foods: sashimi, fruit, cake, potato chips

Clip Source: www.time.com

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina

Food expenditure for one week: $341.98
Favorite foods: spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken

Clip Source: www.time.com

Bhutan

Food expenditure for one week: 224.93 ngultrum or $5.03
Family recipe: Mushroom, cheese and pork

Clip Source: www.time.com

Chad

Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

Volcanoes trigger for mass extinction

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:54:11 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: There's more than one way to become extinct.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Ninety-three million years ago a series of volcanoes erupted on the ocean floor starving the oceans of oxygen and wiping out swathes of marine life, according to a new report.

Black shale rocks off the coast of South America and in central Italy provide clues to what occurred

The answer to the catastrophe, contend scientists from the University of Alberta, Canada, lies in fire fountains that erupted on the ocean floor, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere too.

The report appears in the latest edition of Nature.

in a geological instant, a mass extinction, helped by a suddenly sluggish shift in ocean circulation, occurred. The remains of dead sea organisms

became transformed into oil

One possibility is that the volcanoes

seeded the upper level of the ocean with micronutrients, he says

Tiny plantlife on the sea surface, called phytoplankton, gorged on the food, storing up carbon as they grew. They then sank to the sea floor and decayed, stripping the ocean of oxygen.

Tips from Thomas Edison on Living Optimistically

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:26:32 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes
clipper's remarks:

Dr. Martin Seligman, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, and author of Learned Optimism, has studied optimists and pessimists for 25 years. His research has found:

Optimists

* Less depression than pessimists
* Better results than pessimists in most areas of life
* Longer lifespan
* Healthier than pessimists
* Better than pessimists at work and in school
* More friends and better social lives

Pessimists

* More depression than optimists
* Inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks
* Feels bad subjectively–blue, down worried, anxious
* Poor physical health
* Self-fulfilling; pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges and thus fail more frequently, even when success is attainable
* Even when pessimists turn out to be right, they still feel worse than deluded optimists

Clip Source: lifedev.net

Brighten up your life: 3 Tips from Thomas Edison on Living Optimistically

Clip Source: lifedev.net

1) There is no such thing as a failure- there are only unexpected outcomes which will provide valuable guidance for future work

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. -Thomas Edison

2) Decide with full commitment to accomplish something

Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point when it looks impossible, and gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison

3) Look on the bright side of everything

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. -Napoleon Hill

Tags: thomas edison, edison, tips, list, optimism, happiness, howto