‘Anika’s Odyssey is a magical adventure deep into a lush and enchanted land. Break away from reality to enter a mystical world inspired by Aotearoa, New Zealand, as you meet the curious spirits and exotic creatures that inhabit this wondrous wilderness.
Anika’s Odyssey is an enchanting point-and-click adventure game, full of a surprises and charm. Help Anika explore her colorful landscape as she journeys to reclaim her beloved friend.’
‘One of the greatest challenges neurologists face is successful delivery of drugs to the brain. This is because a special filtering layer of tissue, called the blood brain barrier, protects the brain and spinal cord. The barrier acts like a molecular sieve, allowing only properly sized molecules through. This means that any medication needing to reach the brain (for example, to kill a brain tumor) needs to be small enough, and even then, it is difficult to target the drug to specifically reach the brain.
Kumar and his colleagues from Harvard Medical School have developed a potentially revolutionary drug delivery method, taking advantage of a known master infiltrator of the brain: the virus responsible for rabies, also known as the rhabdovirus. Rabies viruses travel from the site of infection (a local wound bite) to the nerves, through which it gains access to the brain. [..]’
‘[..] when Ernst Öpik estimated the density of a number of visual binary stars in 1916, he found that 40 Eridani B had a density of over 25,000 times the Sun’s, which was so high that he called it “impossible”. As Arthur Stanley Eddington put it later in 1927:
“We learn about the stars by receiving and interpreting the messages which their light brings to us. The message of the Companion of Sirius when it was decoded ran: ‘I am composed of material 3,000 times denser than anything you have ever come across; a ton of my material would be a little nugget that you could put in a matchbox.’ What reply can one make to such a message? The reply which most of us made in 1914 was — ‘Shut up. Don’t talk nonsense.'”‘
‘A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents.
The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points, The Telegraph reports. Local police said the youngster trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. The teenager told police that he modified track setting for a prank.
“He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks,” said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police. [..]
“He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions,” Micor added.’
‘The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever before.
The black hole is about six times as massive as the previous record holder and in fact weighs as much as a small galaxy. It lurks 3.5 billion light years away, and forms the heart of a quasar called OJ287. A quasar is an extremely bright object in which matter spiralling into a giant black hole emits copious amounts of radiation.
But rather than hosting just a single colossal black hole, the quasar appears to harbour two – a setup that has allowed astronomers to accurately ‘weigh’ the larger one.’
‘The Pentagon’s newest laser weapon has a peak power of more than a million megawatts, so intense that it warps the air around it. When the beam strikes the target it vaporises the impact site, producing a plasma fireball and a highly destructive shockwave.
The end result: a tiny crater barely visible to the naked eye.
That’s because the so-called “laser crazer” is designed not to burn up missiles or tanks, but to scratch lenses. It’s a portable nonlethal weapon designed to take out enemy optical systems at long range — ruining an adversary’s night-vision gear, sniper scopes and binoculars in a fraction of a second — by sandblasting their lenses with ultrashort pulses of laser light.’
‘Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.
In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.
“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.’
‘John cut off his nipples, cast them in resin, and wears them in his ears. This is the body modification equivalent of a fly in amber I suppose.’
‘A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole about 11:30 p.m. Thursday.
Wenatchee police cited the man with first-degree negligent driving. A breathalyzer test showed “a minimal amount of alcohol,” said Wenatchee police Sgt. Cherie Smith.
Witnesses told police the man was northbound on Wenatchee Avenue and drifted into a southbound lane for less than a block. Oncoming traffic stopped and waited for the man to pass, Smith said.
He then totaled his car on a light pole, Smith said.’
‘Earthquake-prediction techniques could help develop a way to forecast epileptic seizures, according to research which found striking similarities between the electrical activity in the brain before and during seizures and seismological data around earthquakes.
Both are usually preceded by small, barely detectable tremors and, as with an earthquake, the longer it has been since a seizure, the longer it will be until the next one. According to scientists, these shared features mean that the patterns are not random and could even be governed by similar mathematical rules.
Epilepsy comprises a set of conditions which disrupt the electrical activity in the brain and the main symptoms are recurrent, unprovoked seizures. It is one of the most common long-term neurological disorders, affecting 456,000 people in the UK and around 50 million worldwide.
The condition can often be controlled by drugs that damp down the brain’s electrical activity, although surgery to remove the affected part of the brain is sometimes used in the most hard-to-treat cases.’
This is a bit old, and I’ve posted very similar variations of the theme from the same people before. But it’s still kinda amusing none the less. :)
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‘from 1915 onwards these huge eerie concrete structures started popping up along the uk coast, all built with one purpose: to provide the military with an early warning system in relation to incoming aircraft. their construction was pretty much limited to the uk and arrived just before radar technology as we know it became widespread.’
‘Some big guy picks up a cheerleader and holds her over his head but he loses balance and not only drops her but falls on top of her as well.’
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‘A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.
Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.
“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday.
The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.’
‘A 20-year-old Burleson man was arrested Friday night after police say he drove a pickup truck into a home while intoxicated.
Bryan Scott Moron was taken into custody after he lost control of a white Chevrolet truck and struck a mailbox on Parkridge Blvd., then continued ahead and drove into a home.
The arresting officer said Moron failed sobriety tests. The arrest report shows Moron had a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit.
Moron reportedly works as a server at a local restaurant.’
‘Malaria has long been endemic to Kenya’s humid coast and swampy lowland regions, but it has only rarely reached Njoki’s village on the slopes of Mount Kenya (see Kenya map).
In recent decades, however, scientists have noted an increase in epidemics in the region, as well as in sporadic cases like Njoki’s.
Many medical and environmental experts attribute the spike in malaria to climate change, in the form of warmer temperatures and variations in rainfall patterns. (See a map of global warming’s effects.)
“We are now finding malaria in places that we did not expect to find it, particularly the highland regions that used to be too cool for malaria,” said Dorothy Memusi, deputy director of the Malaria Division in Kenya’s Ministry of Health.’
He’s probably lucky they didn’t give his a shot of the taser aswell. That seems to be all the rage these days. :)
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‘A man who believed he bore the biblical “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.
The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies arrived Saturday. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.
“It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,” sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn’t bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.”‘
‘An Iraqi soldier has opened fire on American troops, killing two and wounding three others, US and Iraqi officials have said.
The incident happened during a joint patrol in the north on 26 December, but fuller details have only now emerged.
An Iraqi general said the patrol had come under fire from gunmen in the city of Mosul, but his soldier had “abused” the situation and shot the Americans. [..]
He said the Iraqi serviceman had been “an insurgent infiltrator”. He was arrested and is being questioned.’
‘Friends and family of a 21-year-old who police say was killed and mutilated by her boyfriend tried on Monday to put aside the grisly details of her death, while police said the man described his actions as being compelled by God.
Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, made his initial court appearance on Monday after being charged with capital murder in the death of Jana Shearer. Police say they found an ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop at the crime scene, and a hunk of flesh on a plate and impaled on a fork at the kitchen table.
“You can’t sleep. You can’t think straight anymore,” said Amy Gage, Shearer’s friend and neighbor. “Then you just keep finding out more and more. It’s the most difficult thing anyone can go through.”‘
‘A Russian man has been charged with killing two friends with an axe after he walked in on them cutting up his pet dog for food at his home in eastern Siberia, local prosecutors said today.
Alexander Yermilov, 40, “caught two friends with the body of his beloved dog, which they had cut up for meat” when he returned to his home one evening in December, the prosecutor’s office in the town of Chita said in a statement.
“Flying into a rage, the dog’s owner grabbed an axe from the floor and began to strike his uninvited guests on the head,” the statement said.
Yermilov then called the police to explain what had happened. He has been charged with two counts of murder and is in police custody, the statement said.’
‘A Superior man convicted of having sexual contact with a dead deer has been sentenced to another nine months in jail.
Bryan James Hathaway, 21, had his probation revoked last month for using alcohol and marijuana, lying to his probation agent, and having unapproved contact with a minor child and sexual relations with another adult. [..]
He was found guilty in April 2005 of felony mistreatment of an animal after he killed a horse with the intention of having sex with it. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and two years of extended supervision on that charge as well as six years of probation for taking and driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent.
Hathaway had just been released from prison for the killing the horse when the deer incident happened. He is appealing his conviction on the deer charge.’
‘Two New York men wheeled the corpse of their friend around midtown Manhattan in an office chair in a failed attempt to cash his $US355 ($405) Social Security cheque, police said.
Virgilio Cintron, 66, had died of natural causes when two of his friends, David Dalaia and James O’Hare, both aged 65, brought him to a cheque-cashing store in the Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood.
“They were trying to pass him off as still being alive,” police spokesman Paul Browne said.’
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