‘The fields of research covered by this conference have been at the forefront of the drive to develop technology to make smaller and smaller structures. We have ventured into size regimes where we are often dependent on microscopes and the skill of microscopists to see the results of our work (and often what went wrong). To highlight the importance of micrographs to the field, the conference holds a micrograph contest. The entries were judged both from the technological and artistic standpoint. Six categories were defined [..]’
‘It don’t get much weirder than this. The universe is about to lose its dimension of time says a group of theoretical astrobods at the University of Salamanca in Spain. And they got the evidence to prove it.
The idea comes from the study of braneworlds: the thinking that the universe we see around us is a 4-dimensional cosmos called a braneworld embedded in a multidimensional universe. The “signature” of our universe is the number of space and time-like dimensions it has: in our case we got 3 space-like dimensions and one time-like dimension. It’s what astrobods call a Lorentzian universe. So far so good: lots of astronutters think the same thing.
But our universe may not always have been like this. Some theorists think it may once have had a Euclidean signature meaning that all the dimensions were space-like. Now Marc “Bars” Mars and a few pals in Spain say that the Universe’s signature might be about to flip from Lorentzian to Euclidean. In other words, our dimension of time is about turn space-like. Gulp!’
A quick little quiz to test your knowledge.
It’s not that hard. I managed to get 100%.. :)
‘A 10-year-old girl today told of her terrifying ordeal trapped down a drain.
Chanelle Edwards got stuck after falling down the grid outside her Liverpool home.
She fell while playing with friends in Lavender Way, Walton, yesterday afternoon.
She was trapped for almost an hour as firefighters armed with drills battled to break the concrete and free her.
Today the St Nicholas Catholic Primary School pupil said she was watching her two-year-old brother CJ play in the street when the toddler strayed dangerously close to the drain.
She said: “I went to help him but I fell in myself. [..]’
This is a fun little problem solving game. Nothing too fancy. Guide your ball into a goal by placing fans or springs and the like around the place to guide it.
‘Two Army colonels are accused of switching identities to try to fool a paternity test, authorities said.
Bruce S. Adkins, 44, is accused of trying to take a paternity test in the place of Scott M. Carlson, 51. Both were charged Thursday with tampering with public records, tampering with evidence, forgery, theft and obstruction of justice, District Attorney David Freed said. [..]
Both men had been members of the class of 2007 at the Army War College in Carlisle. Freed said Carlson appeared at the Cumberland County domestic relations office in March to arrange for a paternity test.
Carlson had been paying a Virginia woman child support for her 9-year-old daughter and she was seeking an increase, Senior Assistant District Attorney Derek Clepper said.
County domestic relations employees became suspicious when another man showed up in April, claimed to be Carlson and wanted to take the paternity test.’
‘It has long been regarded as a potentially troublesome, redundant organ, but American researchers say they have discovered the true function of the appendix.
The researchers say it acts as a safe house for good bacteria, which can be used to effectively reboot the gut following a bout of dysentery or cholera.
The conventional wisdom is that the small pouch protruding from the first part of the large intestine is redundant and many people have their appendix removed and appear none the worse for it.
Scientists from the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role.’
‘DrugLib.com is a comprehensive drug database organized by relevance to specific drugs. It provides a convenient, one-stop access to a wide range of information related to your drug of interest, including drug label & prescribing information (description, clinical pharmacology, side-effects, indications, warnings, etc.), published studies, current clinical trials, alerts and news.’
Seems like a good starting place for any information regarding common prescription medications.
‘An unfortunate, but amazing case: a 25-year-old schizophrenic man shoved a 14.5-cm-long ballpoint pen through his eye socket, all the way to his cerebellum (in the rear of the brain). Hospital staff found him lying in a pool of blood, and the man told doctors he ‘had torn his eyes because it tickled and that 10 years earlier he had shot himself in one eye with an airgun rifle.’ His doctors were puzzled: the man slipped quickly into a coma, but there was no sign of serious trauma to the area other than a small hematoma. A CT scan (above) provided more baffling information, which the doctors initially interpreted as a bullet wound in the left parieto-occipital region. When the patient died 4 days after the injury, the ballpoint pen was discovered wedged deep into the brain. The blunt end of the pen, with cap, had been inserted first, with the cap lodged well into the right lobe of the cerebellum. This is one of the only known suicides on record from “low-velocity” penetrating objects.’
‘<Richad34> Oy I had a bad night
<Richad34> I couldn’t sleep, and had no idea what to do. My parents are still awake, it was midnight, and I was bored.
<Richad34> So then I remembered that I had a drama presentation the next class and I played a rich guy so I needed a suit.
<Richad34> I take out my suit, and get dressed. You know, the works. I even took out my top hat and my cane.
<Richad34> Now it gets a little weird. I had to go downstairs in order to see how I looked as it’s the only place with a full body mirror. My parents sleep on the same floor as me so I didn’t want to wake them up.
<Richad34> So I got this idea. I decided to turn on my TV so that my parents thought people were talking outside, and my footsteps would be noises they were making. I thought it would work, I was tired.
see it here »
‘The Storm worm first appeared at the beginning of the year, hiding in e-mail attachments with the subject line: “230 dead as storm batters Europe.” Those who opened the attachment became infected, their computers joining an ever-growing botnet.
Although it’s most commonly called a worm, Storm is really more: a worm, a Trojan horse and a bot all rolled into one. It’s also the most successful example we have of a new breed of worm, and I’ve seen estimates that between 1 million and 50 million computers have been infected worldwide. [..]
Worms like Storm are written by hackers looking for profit, and they’re different. These worms spread more subtly, without making noise. Symptoms don’t appear immediately, and an infected computer can sit dormant for a long time. If it were a disease, it would be more like syphilis, whose symptoms may be mild or disappear altogether, but which will eventually come back years later and eat your brain.’
The image section of the site has been growing rapidly over the past few weeks. It has been keeping me somewhat busy, but it’s good. :)
I passed the 2,500 image mark some time in the past couple of days, so there’s many hours of amusement there now. I’ve also been adding a few new features, like the stats page. Most of the popular images are hilarious.
I still haven’t gotten around to adding ratings for the images yet, but that’s on its way.
Anyways, if you haven’t already, go and have a look at some random images. There’s fair chance you’ll find yourself amused. [Atleast, I hope there is.. :) ]
He’s the greatest, he’s fantastic.
Where ever there is danger, he’ll be there.
(602kB Flash video)
see it here »
So, according to the wiki there are actually 14 or 15 different commandments listed in the Bible. They’re listed twice, and they say slightly different things in each place, particularly concerning the Sabbath.
Different Christian sects group the commandments together differently, combining them arbitrarily here and there to bring the number down to the official “10”. Some branches of Christianity regard one of the commandments merely as a preface.
And then there’s the Evangelicals:
‘Modern Evangelicalism, under the influence of dispensationalism, commonly denies that the commandments have any abiding validity as a requirement binding upon Christians [..]’
Oh, also, in the proper historical context, “Thou shall not steal” actually means “Thou shall not kidnap”.
Because everyone knows that the wisest people of all are those that stop counting when they run out of fingers. Good effort, fellas. :)
Hooray for live concerts.. And video editing. :)
(4.4meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘A town in southern Spain on Saturday tossed what local officials said was the world’s largest salad, involving 6,700 kilograms (14,740 pounds) of lettuce, tomato, onion, pepper and olives.
It took 20 cooks over three hours to mix all the ingredients needed to make the salad in the town of Pulpi in the province of Almeria, one of Spain’s main fruit and vegetable growing areas.
“Excellent coordination since the beginning made it possible to meet this challenge,” said Lorenzo Navarro, the head of the Association of Businessmen and Storekeepers of Pulpi which organized the event with the town hall.’
‘A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.
Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by Caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said Thursday. [..]
The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted the local social services chief, Marina Alistratova, as saying the family had modest means. She said Khalina’s husband was on contract with a local military unit.
“We have presented them with a good washing machine, a food package and a card,” Alistratova told the newspaper. “We will keep supporting them in the future.”
An average weight for newborn babies is around 7 pounds, 1 ounce, according to international statistics.’
Hmm.. This video makes me look at my bike helmet and an empty drink bottle sitting next to me with interest. :)
(753kB Flash video)
see it here »
‘Fewer people are reporting sightings of the Loch Ness monster, amid concerns scepticism about its existence could threaten tourism in the region.
There have only been two reports of sightings this year, compared to three in 2006 and much lower than a decade ago, when the annual number sightings was consistently in the double digits.
“It’s becoming a potential crisis,” said Mikko Takala, 39, a founding member of the Loch Ness Monster Fan Club who runs four webcams on the lake’s north shore.
advertisement [..]
There have been more than 4000 purported sightings of “Nessie” since a surgeon vacationing at the lake in the 1930s released a photo allegedly capturing the legendary monster on film.
Since then, the monster has been a key tourism draw, bringing an estimated £6 million a year into the Highland economy.’
‘The 22 members of the Patriots — ages 11 to 14 — were working out again Thursday afternoon. They were in the park Wednesday evening when they saw the crime take place.
“I just seen these two guys walking up to an old man and pull him down from his camera strap, and the old man started hitting him [and] called us to help,” remembered 13-years-old Patriot team member Lafaele “Junior” Siliake.
Police say two teenage boys, 15 and 17 years old, knocked down a 71-year-old man and ran off with his camera. Taylor Leota led the charge as the whole football team took off after the two suspects.
“At first they were jogging,” explained the 13-year-old Leota. “After they see the team coming, they started sprinting. I would have been scared too seeing a football team chasing me; especially one of us.”‘
‘American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing Iran’s violations of international law that some fear could be used to justify military strikes against the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.
Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin “searching for things that Iran has done wrong”, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Some US diplomats believe the exercise — reminiscent of attempts by vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to build the case against Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war — will boost calls for military action by neo-conservatives inside and outside the administration.’
‘According to Brook Park police, a couple of pranksters could face felony charges after spraying “Fart Spray” into a local restaurant.
Two men pulled up to the drive-thru window at the Rally’s on Snow Road in Cleveland and sprayed a bottle of the offensive product.
The manager of the restaurant wasn’t sure what the substance was.
As a precaution, he threw away more than $1,000 worth of food, and three of his employees wound up going to the Southwest Medical Center to be checked out.’
‘There was a bone of contention about her gender..’
(18.8meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph.
But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West. Instead, the first artificial satellite in space was a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age.
And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket, according to Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program.’
‘Three out of four people arrested and detained by police in Darwin are under the influence of illicit drugs, research shows.
Australian Institute of Criminology data reveals 73 per cent of Darwin detainees tested positive to cannabis in July and August, steadily increasing from 46 per cent in January last year.
Another 8 per cent tested positive to methylamphetamine, the drug commonly known as speed.
The data, compiled under the AIC’s Drug Use Monitoring in Australia program (DUMA), shows a steady increase in the number of offenders testing positive to cannabis.
Drug Free Australia executive officer Jo Baxter said there was a common misconception that cannabis was a “soft” drug.’
‘A woman who spent 70 years in institutions after she was wrongly accused of theft has been reunited with her long-lost family.
Jean Gambell, now 85, was working as a cleaner in a doctor’s surgery when she was accused of stealing 2s 6d – equivalent to twelve-and-a-half pence.
The cash later turned up but by then Jean had been sectioned.
Her two brothers found the sister they had thought was dead when a care home questionnaire came to their house.’
‘A Glendale couple said they couldn’t afford a baby sitter, so they strapped their 14-month-old son in his stroller at home while the couple went out, police alleged.
Rachel Anderson and her live-in boyfriend, Mitch Laputka, were ordered to stand trial Thursday on charges they neglected baby Gabriel so badly that his body was covered with diaper rash, his body temperature was 12 degrees below normal and he stopped breathing, requiring 21 minutes of CPR to revive him. Police said the couple admitted to leaving the boy home alone because they wanted to party.’
