Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
REAL LIFE JURASSIC PARK COMING SOON!!!! (kind of)
You can bet on Dubai to have a bottomless budget when it comes to creating out-of-the-world attractions to lure affluent tourists. If you sat biting your nails on the edge of your seat while watching the famous movie ‘Jurassic Park,’ then wait till you get to real Jurassic Park that will come alive in Dubai soon. The first-of-its-kind dinosaur park set in the new City of Arabia promises to take you back into the primitive world and give you some thrilling moments of interacting with dinosaurs. The Million dollar park called the ‘Restless Planet’ spanning over 5,00,000 square foot will feature over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of forty different species. The theme park will recreate a virtual earth complete with mountains and oceans using computer graphics and special effects to give the realistic feel. The dinosaurs will come alive thanks to the pneumatic systems and sensors that are incorporated in them. They are programmed to interact with the visitors to give them a memorable experience.
Scheduled to open in the late 2008, the park is sure to increase the in-flow of dollars to the already cash-rich Dubai. Watch the promotional video released by the developers showing a T.rex charging at visitors and pterodactyls flying overhead while you wait restlessly for the project to be completed.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Walk on new water
Desktop fabricator may kick-start home revolution
17:59 09 January 2007
by Tom Simonite
by Tom Simonite
A cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects has been developed by US researchers. They hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication – or "rapid prototyping" – just as early computer kits sparked an explosion in home computing.
Rapid prototyping machines are already used by designers, engineers and scientists to create one-off mechanical parts and models. These create objects by depositing layer upon layer of liquid or powdered material.
These machines typically cost from $20,000 to $1.5 million, says Hod Lipson from Cornell University, US, who launched the Fab@Home project with PhD student Evan Malone in October 2006.
The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.
Many hands
"We are trying to get this technology into as many hands as possible," Malone told New Scientist. "The kit is designed to be as simple as possible." Once the parts have been bought, a normal soldering iron and a few screwdrivers are enough to put it together. "It's probably the cheapest machine of this kind out there," he adds.
The machine connects to a desktop computer running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled syringe. A video shows a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb (16MB, wmv format).
Unlike commercial equipment, the Fab@Home machine is also designed to be used with more than one material. So far it has been tested with silicone, plaster, play-doh and even chocolate and icing. Different materials can also be used to make a single object – the control software prompts the user when to load new material into the machine.
Malone and Lipson hope Fab@Home will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves. This will prompt the emergence of widespread personal fabrication, Lipson hopes.
"We think it's a similar story to computers," he explains. "Mainframes had existed for years, but personal computing only took off in the late seventies." A cheap self-assembly computer called the Altair 8800, launched in 1975, sparked the rapid development of personal computing, he notes: "We hope Fab@Home can do the same for rapid prototyping."
Copy cat
Adrian Bowyer, who is also working on rapid prototyping machines at Bath University, in the UK, agrees that the technology could have mass appeal once the equipment is cheap enough. One of his own machines can even make some of its own parts (see 3D printer to churn out copies of itself).
"Fab@Home is an interesting idea; it should be easy for anyone in the world to build," Bowyer says. "Once you've used one you never want to go back, it's liberating and enormously fun." Bowyer believes the technology could one day even replace traditional models of manufacturing.
Bowyer adds that the Fab@Home machine could probably already be used to make many cheap injection-moulded products already on the market: "I can imagine people swapping plans of things to make online, or paying to download them instead of going to the shop."
Ominous Asteroid Threatens Mars
Dec. 21, 2007 -- Mars could be in for an asteroid hit.
A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a one in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.
"These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.
Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid's orbit, Chesley said.
"We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact," he said.
If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.
In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.
"Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Brief fire breaks out inside White House complex
Last update: 12:53 p.m. EST Dec. 19, 2007
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A brief fire broke out Wednesday morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. No one was seriously hurt and the fire was contained within a half-hour.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A brief fire broke out Wednesday morning in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. No one was seriously hurt and the fire was contained within a half-hour.
The two-alarm blaze started on the second floor of the building. Black smoke, which observers said smelled like plastic, billowed out of the windows overlooking the West Wing of the White House for about 30 minutes.
Firefighters were forced to break windows in the historic building. It appeared that several offices were gutted on the second floor near the ceremonial office of the vice president, but the fire did not appear to have spread to other floors.
Vice President Dick Cheney was not in the building at the time of the fire.
The building, commonly called the Old Executive Office Building, has a long, colorful history. Several presidents had their offices in the building. It also housed the office of the secret White House plumbers, who engineered the break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate that ultimately led President Richard Nixon to resign.
Renovation was ongoing in the building. There was damage to historic areas, officials said.
The Secret Service quickly ruled out any suspicious source for the fire; the building was quickly evacuated. Only one Marine was slightly hurt when the smoke in upper floors caused him to break a window, according to Washington, D.C. fire authorities.
The building originally housed the State, War and Navy departments between 1871 and 1888. The granite structure, often compared to a giant wedding cake, is one of America's best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture.
There had been talk of tearing the building down, but it was spared and given historic landmark status. To accommodate an ever-growing White House staff, a new executive office building was erected across the street.
Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy
A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.
Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one.
The smaller galaxy is being transformed by the radiation and the jet is being bent before shooting millions of light-years farther in a new direction.
"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere.
Black holes are generally thought of as mysterious cosmic phenomena that swallow matter, but the supermassive ones that occur at the center of many -- possibly all -- galaxies also set loose tremendous bursts of energy as matter swirls around the disk of material that circles the black hole but does not make it in.
That energy, often in the form of highly charged gamma rays and X-rays, shoots out in powerful jets that can be millions of light-years long and 1,000 light-years wide.
Scientists are just beginning to understand these jets, which not only transform matter in their path but also help produce "stellar nurseries," where new stars are formed.
Evans's collaborator, Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said the collision they have identified began no more than 1 million years ago and could continue for 10 million to 100 million more years. Hardcastle called the collision a great opportunity to learn more about the jets.
"We see jets all over the universe, but we're still struggling to understand some of their basic properties," he said. "This system . . . gives us a chance to learn how they're affected when they slam into something -- like a galaxy -- and what they do after that."
The two galaxies are more than 1.4 billion light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy (a light-year equals about 6 trillion miles). But they are close to each other in cosmic terms -- about as far as the distance from Earth to the center of the Milky Way. That the two appear to be moving toward a merger may have played a role in creating such a powerful jet from the larger galaxy's central black hole.
The researchers said that the collision would have no effect on Earth, but the process is one that could play out in our galaxy a billion years into the future.
The galaxy Andromeda is the closest to the Milky Way, and the two are gradually coming closer to each other. In time, astronomers say, the two will merge, and the process may cause the dormant central black holes in either the Milky Way or Andromeda to become active and begin sending out similarly powerful jets.
If a jet were to hit Earth, Evans said, it would destroy the ozone layer and collapse the magnetosphere that blankets the planet and protects it from harmful solar particles. Without the ozone layer and magnetosphere, he said, much of life on Earth would end.
"This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling," Evans said.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the discovery illustrates how researchers can now observe astronomical phenomena using many different tools and understand how they behave at many different points along the electromagnetic spectrum. Only when scientists measure a galaxy at all different wavelengths, he said, "can you really understand what's going on."
In making their discovery, the researchers used data from three orbiting instruments -- the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope -- as well as ground-based observatories including the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and Britain's Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network. The Astrophysical Journal will publish the results next year.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Guess-the-google
About the game
After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it's surprisingly addictive.
The game requires version 8 of the Flash player or higher to run, you can get the latest version here.
I hope you enjoy the game, happy guessing!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Desktop shows real-time view of Earth
I get a kick out of those desktops that constantly change the display to show various pictures and scenes located on the hard drive. While it is interesting to see the latest vacation photos, or kid grinning like a fool, most of us probably want something slightly classier. Earthdesk looks like a typical wallpaper of the Earth in both day and night mode, but as you work throughout the day, you'll notice something — the Earth moves across your screen, with continents going in and out of darkness. The accurate shading of day and night also causes cities around the world to light up.
Earthdesk uses geographic and time zone stats to display real-time global cloud cover (at three hour intervals), allowing you to track hurricanes or see smoke created by major fires. If you are more interested in seeing the big blue marble from a different view, you can switch the map projections to show political, enhanced satellite, and natural maps.
Windows users can span the map across multiple monitor screens, but those using a Mac get an added bonus; you can display multiple maps across multiple screens, meaning you can track that hurricane to see if it is going to hit your political enemies. Earthdesk will only set you back $24.00, and might be a good gift idea for the budding geographer.
Xeric Design via Cool Hunting
Architecture these days has never been more advanced: Buildings are making their own energy and using ice as air conditioning. Creative buildings don't always involve special technology, however. One could build a home shaped like a giant toilet or shoe, for example. We've found nine buildings that are sure to disorient their residents, either by making them feel like mice in giant land, or by making them extremely dizzy. Check them out after the jump.
The Toilet
The World Toilet Association recently had its first general assembly meeting — what better way to celebrate than to build an enormous toilet-shaped home? This house contains four bedrooms and four accompanying bathrooms, each with a deluxe toilet and other attractive amenities like whirlpool tubs and motion sensors that turn on classical music when you enter. It's located south of Seoul in South Korea. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by to explore. For just $1 you can increase your awareness and appreciation of fancy porcelain thrones.
The Basket
Longaberger's 500 employees head to work every morning to be cradled in the cubicles and offices in this enormous basket. This seven-story building with 150-ton handles serves as Longaberger's corporate headquarters and turns 10 years old this year. The company is known for its hand-woven baskets, but we were surprised to find that it also makes wrought-iron furniture and fancy-pants candles. Perhaps they can be inspiration for another office, should the company ever need to expand.
The Cubist-Inspired Guitar
The University of Iowa opened this building last year as part of its school for art and architecture. The Art Building West is shaped like this Pablo Picasso guitar sculpture. Its interior is filled with cubist-style oblique angles. The building is truly a mixture of art and architecture, though whether it makes students of those subjects dizzy during class is another question entirely.
Shoes
This shoe-shaped building was built in 1948, perhaps in some sort of overzealous post-war fit of creativity. Located in Hellam Pennsylvania, it was used for a while as the guesthouse (it has three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen and living room) of Mahlon N. Haines, who was the owner of a local shoe empire. It was an ice cream parlor for many years after Haines death, but is now a museum teaching visitors about the eccentric life of its creator.
This smaller shoe-shaped building was built all the way across the country in Bakersfield, California, in 1947, just one year before its Hellam cousin. It was built to be a shoe repair shop, and later it was sold with the stipulation that it would remain a shoe-related business. The store that the shoe currently houses is called the Big Shoe Repair and was still fixing soles when we called it last week.
Upside-Down HousesHere's a building that's shaped like: a house. A house that's been blown over and uprooted by the Big Bad Wolf, that is. The upside-down house opened this year in the small town of Szymbark, Poland, and has become one the country's major tourist attractions. It's apparently quite disorienting on the inside and was built by a Polish businessman as a kind of protest against governmental actions that are detached from reality — think Poland under the Communists and the world's current treatment of the environment. Poland doesn't have a monopoly on flipped houses, however. There are others, to be found in Japan (top picture) and Florida (right), respectively.
The iPod
We know that iPod obsession knows no bounds, so it was almost inevitable that someone would construct an iPod-shaped building. And where better to put it than in that city of insanely tall and insanely weird buildings, Dubai? The iPad even sits in a dock. Construction for the building began in March, and is set to be completed by the end of 2009.
Skull helmet makes you look badass on your Segway
Tired of looking like a wuss on your Segway? Then put down your bike helmet and put on the Skull Helmet from Santiago Chopper. Owning anything from a place called Santiago Chopper is guaranteed to add +1 to your self esteem, but this brain bucket (that's cool biker slang for "helmet") will "scare the crap out of any onlookers while you're enjoying your mid day [sic] cruise." Also recommended for spastic World of Warcrafters who frequently "biff" or "auger" during extended gameplay sessions as this will prevent the ensuing "cranial disharmony." And since this "lid" is only $149, you can afford to get one for your "betty" too.
Via Notcot
Ancient Cabinet Recovered From Outside the Restaurant Toilet Fetches $2 Million
A 17th century cabinet, featuring a picture of the Pope blessing the crowd in Rome, was sold off to a European private collector at the Sotheby’s for more than $ 2 million. The Exquisite Roman furniture was reunited with its missing gild wood base, which was discovered outside the toilets of a pizza restaurant in Yorkshire. The intricately decorated cabinet went off for around $2,210,000, inclusive of the buyer’s premium. Mario Tavella, head of the furniture at Sotheby’s, who had been on the lookout for the console for the past 20 years, discovered it recently in the York branch of Ask. The console is believed to have been separated from the rest of the cabinet immediately following the Second World War. With a guide price of $14, 00,000 to $ 2 million, the cabinet figured as a unit of Sotheby’s sale of significant Italian and Continental furniture.
Via: Dailymail
You sure must’ve spent a grand deal on drinks, but what you might witness today will prove your other endeavors as peanuts! The London nightclub is all geared up to unveil the world’s most expensive Christmas cocktail that will cost a crashing $71,011 a glass. The Movida nightclub, which is a haven for celebrities, soccer stars and the uber-rich, has gladly taken a limited number of orders for the pricey drink, dubbed as Flawless. A liberal amount of Louis XII cognac, half a bottle of Cristal Rose champagne, little brown sugar, angostura bitters, and a few flakes of 24-carat edible gold leaf, blend together to form the luxurious cocktail. Described as a warming and refreshing drink, it owns its grand cost to an 11-carat white diamond ring settled at the bottom of the crystal glass. A thing like this invites security no doubt, which will be taken care of by two security guards, who will watch over the clients table until they have savored the entire drink. While the customers relish their delicacy, they will be treated to a floor show, besides getting the attention of the entire bar members!
Via: Guardian
The news in the air is that the world’s first luxury underwater hotel, the Hydropolis Undersea Resort, is all set to open its doors in Dubai this December. The £300 million, 220-suite hotel is a one of its kind resort, which will encompass a whopping 1.1-million-square-foot of area offering shopping mall, ballroom, island villas, restaurant, high-tech cinema and surprisingly, a missile-defense system for your security 60-feet underwater. Located 20m beneath the surface of the Arabian Gulf near the scenic Jumeirah Beach coastline, the underwater hotel offers 220 theme suites to the tourists within the submarine leisure complex. The resort is designed with a petal-like retracting roof to organize open-sky events.
William Stout |
Antarctica Then
This artist's illustration shows what the newly discovered dinosaur, Glacialisaurus hammeri, may have looked like in its Antarctic environment during the Early Jurassic, with several pterosaurs in the background and a small mammal-like reptile in the foreground. The new dinosaur genus and species was described by Nathan Smith, a graduate student at The Field Museum in Chicago, and Diego Pol, a paleontologist at the Museo Paleontologico in Chubut, Argentina.
Dec. 14, 2007 -- Using jackhammers, rock saws and chisels at a punishing 14,000 feet, paleontologists working atop a frozen Antarctic mountain have extracted a rock and ice fossil popsicle encasing the remains of a massive, previously unknown dinosaur.
The dino, which represents a new genus and species, lived 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic at what is now Mt. Kirkpatrick, near the Beardmore Glacier. The species adds to a growing number of dinosaurs known to have roamed the now-polar continent.
Named Glacialisaurus hammeri, after noted Antarctica fossil hunter William Hammer, the new dino was identified by a femur leg bone and an incomplete ankle and foot.
"Scaling the material up to similar-sized relatives would suggest that it was around 25 feet long and weighed perhaps 4-6 tons," said Nathan Smith, a graduate student at Chicago's Field Museum and a member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.
Smith, along with paleontologist Diego Pol of Argentina's Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio, describe the anatomy of the new sauropodomorph dinosaur in this month's Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
Sauropodomorphs, with their incredibly long necks, tails and classic dino shape, were the largest animals ever known.
"Throughout the evolution of sauropodomorphs, there appears to be a general trend of increasing body size, and Glacialisaurus would likely fit somewhere in the middle of this evolutionary trend," Smith said.
He explained to Discovery News that this group is generally considered to be plant consumers, although some earlier members -- perhaps even the new dino -- may have eaten almost anything in sight, with plants providing the bulk.
Bones of another Antarctic dinosaur, still under preparation, suggest G. hammeri coexisted for a time with true sauropods, a related but distinct group of dinos.
Smith said this "tells us that animals that probably had overlapping ecological roles were present in the same environment. Either these groups were directly competing with each other for resources, or they somehow occupied slightly different niches within the environment."
That environment, and climate, was very different than it is today, said Thomas Wagner, program director of Antarctic Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supported the research.
Then warmer, Antarctica's Early Jurassic climate likely supported ultra-tall trees that sauropodomorphs, like giraffes on steroids, were adept at eating.
Positioned further north, the continent was also then connected to other landmasses.
Wagner described Antarctica as a Jurassic "freeway," since "it was the route by which dinosaurs and mammals moved from places like Africa to Australia. Then, once it broke away, it may have been a refuge, albeit a cold one."
Even back in G. hammeri's day, Wagner said Antarctica would have forced the dinosaur and its relatives to endure "a long, cold, dark winter, yet similar animals lived in places like China."
"How did they do that?" he wondered.
Both Wagner and Smith hope lengthier fieldwork in Antarctica might solve this question, as well as other dinosaur mysteries concerning the planet's southernmost continent.
Water Strider robot masters its insect cousin's techniques
For anything light enough like leaves or insects such as a water strider, a body of water's surface tension gives the uppermost areas of the liquid a bit of elasticity. In effect, it becomes a virtual solid that can be rested upon and even moved across. The CMU Water Strider by NanoRobotics Laboratory relies on this principle to traverse liquids much like its counterpart.
The goal of the project is to create a 'bot that will be able to access many areas normally out of bounds. What would it be able to accomplish? Well, you probably won't see the robots as fancy pool cleaners anytime soon, but they could certainly be used to remotely monitor water quality or operate where there is enough water to skim around, such as a sewer system.
Click on through for a video of the CMU Water Strider in action.
use Zeus's lightning bolt to open your letters
So there you are, walking down the street, when you hear a voice in your head. And instead of the regular voice, the one that tells you that you want a cheeseburger or that you should buy more video games, this one is an unfamiliar one telling you to watch a new TV show. Are you going crazy? Perhaps, but that's not the cause of this. Nope, it's just a new form of advertising. Awesome! Yes, there's a new add in Soho in Manhattan that uses a speaker beaming down an "audio spotlight" that only you can hear, making it sound like it's coming from inside your own head. Is nothing sacred? If advertisers can start beaming sound into our heads from afar, what's next? In-dream advertising? I weep for the future.
Ancient Roman Glue Sticks Around
by Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
Dec. 14, 2007 -- Roman warriors repaired their battle accessories with a superglue that is still sticking around after 2,000 years, according to new findings on display at the Rheinischen Landes Museum in Bonn, Germany.
Running until Feb. 16, 2008, the exhibition "Behind the Silver Mask" presents evidence that the ancient adhesive was used to mount silver laurel leaves on legionnaires' battle helmets.
"It's a sensational find and a complete stroke of luck that we were still able to find traces of the substance after 2000 years," Frank Willer, the museum's chief restorer, told Discovery News.
Willer found traces of the superglue while examining a helmet unearthed in 1986 near the German town of Xanten, on what was once the bed of the Rhine.
"The helmet, which dates from the 1st century B.C., was given to the museum for restoration. I discovered the glue accidentally, while removing a tiny sample of metal from the helmet with a fine saw. The heat from the tool caused the silver laurel leaves on the helmet to peel off, leaving thread-like traces of the glue behind," Willer said.
Willer was amazed to discover that despite such a long exposure to water, time and air, the superglue did not lose its bonding properties.
He said that other Roman battle accessories kept by the museum have traces of silver decorations which most likely had been glued to the iron with the same adhesive and technique. Unfortunately, the objects are too deteriorated to find traces of the superglue.
However, the helmet unearthed at Xanten featured enough material to determine how the adhesive was made.
"Analysis shows that the Roman glue was made of bitumen, bark pitch and animal grease," Willer said.
The finding confirms studies done by researchers at the University of Bradford and Liverpool, U.K., in the 1990s.
Analysis carried at that time on an ancient Roman jar, showed that when Roman people broke their pots, they glued them back together with a compund "derived largely from birch bark."
So far, the German researchers have failed to remake the Roman superglue.
"We think that some inorganic material such as soot, sand and quartz, might have been added to make the mixture stickier," Willer said.
A birthmark is a blemish on the skin formed before birth. They are part of the group of skin lesions known as naevi. The cause of birthmarks is unknown, but may include cellular damage due to radiation or chemicals. Some types seem to run in families.
In Italian, Spanish and Middle Eastern cultures they are called voglie in Italian, antojos in Spanish or wiham in Arabic, both of which translate to "wishes" because, according to folklore, they are caused by unsatisfied wishes of the mother during pregnancy. For example, if a pregnant woman does not satisfy a sudden wish or craving for strawberries, it's said that the infant might bear a strawberry mark.
description of different types of birthmarks
Thursday, December 13, 2007
the Japanese Defense Pole
In Japan, guns are illegal, so people don't see them around all too often. Instead of fearing a mugger with a gun, they fear muggers with knives. The best way to keep a dude with a knife from cutting you? Keep him at a distance. That's the idea behind these Sasumatas, strange self-defense poles that are found hanging around Japanese schools. If a bad man tries to come at you, simply push him against the wall with a Sasumamta. It's a sort of logical yet also sort of ridiculous way to defend yourself, and I imagine that if I was in a school with these hanging on the walls we'd get into Sasumamta fights all the time.
Scientists Clone Glow-in-the-Dark Cats
Dec. 13, 2007 -- South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.
In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.
A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.
"It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement.
"The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," it added.
The cats were born in January and February. One was stillborn while two others grew to become adult Turkish Angoras, weighing 3.0 kilograms (6.6 pounds) and 3.5 kilograms.
"This technology can be applied to clone animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," the leading scientist, Kong, said.
"It will also help develop stem cell treatments," he said, noting that cats have some 250 kinds of genetic diseases that affect humans, too.
The technology can also help clone endangered animals like tigers, leopards and wildcats, Kong said.
South Korea's bio-engineering industry suffered a setback after a much-touted achievement by cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk turned out to have been faked.
The government banned Hwang from research using human eggs after his claims that he created the first human stem cells through cloning were ruled last year to be bogus.
Hwang is standing trial on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
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