Organs Monitoring During DevelopmentHow are you? In biological terms this question could involve a feedback loop that lets the body check in on itself and then act on that information. Although feedback loops are essential and they abound in biology, they aren't well understood. Feedback loops enable an organ such as the liver to detect if it is injured, ascertain if it is growing and developing normally, and if it needs to regenerate itself. When such loops derail, cancer and........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 6:59:58 PM)
Hand-carved Kenyan iPod standDo you appreciate handmade arts and crafts? Are you the owner of a computer, a PDA, or, an iPod? Are you an Apple Computer fan? If so, SafariPod probably has a product that will make you smile. today, and every day. You see, SafariPod is the real thing: a true handmade crafts house. Not a single item here ever touches a machine of any type. Each art object here is not only useful and beautiful, it demonstrates the unique artistry of a specific........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 8:47:58 AM)
Walking Cane Withtelescope 1920This excellent system walking cane boasts an extendable spyglass as the handle that is made of brass. The handle is hand carved out of appealing dark red Mahogany in the shape of two folded hands that are actually holding the removable telescope. At the narrow end the lens cap of the spyglass can be unscrewed and it can be removed from the circular opening in the hands.
The telescope comes in working condition and the view is very good. The........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 8:37:04 AM)
What Can You Turn Me Into?WHAT CAN YOU TURN ME INTO?
I specialize in vampires, skeletons, demons, and zombies, but I can try to do other types of creatures, as well.
Just let me know what you want to become and I'll do my best to bring your spooky fantasy to life (or death!).
WILL I LOOK MODERN OR "OLD-FASHIONED"?
This is really up to you. I can do it either way. I recently did a full-color photo of a person in modern clothes and it turned out quite well! Of........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 8:30:48 AM)
Why are so many people dying on Everest?Why are so many people dying on Mount Everest, asks doctor and climber, Andrew Sutherland in this week's BMJ?
It used to be thought that it would be physiologically impossible to climb Mount Everest with or without oxygen. In 1953 Hillary and Tenzing proved that it was possible to reach the summit with oxygen and in 1978 Messner and Habeler demonstrated it was possible without oxygen.
Although Everest has not changed, and we now have a........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 10:41:16 PM)
How modern were European Neanderthals?Neandertals were much more like modern humans than had been previously thought, according to a re-examination of finds from one of the most famous palaeolithic sites in Europe by Bristol University archaeologist, Professor Joao Zilhao, and his French colleagues.
Professor Zilhao has been able to show that sophisticated artefacts such as decorated bone points and personal ornaments found in the Chtelperronian culture of France and Spain were........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 10:09:39 PM)
One-Two Particle Punch Poses Greater RiskIt doesn't just matter how much radiation an astronaut is exposed to, time and the order in which charged particles strike human cells are important factors as well. That's the main finding of a study simulating radiation exposure conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and reported in the September 2006 edition of Radiation Research. In the study, human cells were three times more likely to develop........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 10:02:15 PM)
Key Player In Immune System RegulationStudies led by Dartmouth Medical School researchers have revealed a crucial link in how the immune system works. According to a research findings published online on August 20 in the journal Nature, the researchers found that mast cells, known for their role in allergy reactions such as watery eyes and runny noses, are connected to the activity of regulatory T cells, which suppress immune responses. The researchers say theirs is the first study........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 9:25:28 PM)
New Water Filtration TechniqueA water filtration technique that normally cleans up agricultural chemicals is also effective at removing a toxin secreted by algae found in lakes and rivers, an Ohio State University study has found.
Engineers here determined that the technique greatly outperformed other methods by removing at least 95 percent of a toxin secreted by Microcystis, a blue-green algae.
Some water filtration plants around the country already use the........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 9:39:55 PM)
Botanical BeachHundreds of tidepools can be found at Botanical Beach in Juan de Fuca Provincial Park; many of these contain this species of surfgrass shown in the photograph, Phyllospadix scouleri.
I wanted to write about both the adaptations (how does a vascular plant survive in a salt water environment?) and sex lives of these dioecious plants (how does the pollen travel from the male to the female plant?), but entertaining texts for these already exist........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 7:25:24 PM)
Strawberry Flowers, ForeverDid anyone remember it was the Wimbledon men's finals yesterday? I disgracefully forgot, and was reminded only as I digested an indulgent dessert of strawberries and cream before going to watch Les Bleus not exactly 'allez' across the football pitch. But I think I kind of made up for it, because for most of the time I was watching the French amble slowly toward defeat, I was thinking more about Wimbledon than about the World Cup: I was........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 7:17:14 PM)
Pearl The RobotPearl, the Nursebot, is a personal robotic assistant that could help more older adults and people with disabilities live independently. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the mobile robot could be used to prompt people with failing memories to take medicine or visit a doctor, to provide remote telepresence for professional careivers or to assist with tasks that would be difficult for people........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 6:08:42 PM)
El Hombre Vs The BabeBaseball purists, especially those of Yankee allegiance, might argue that St. Louis Cardinals homerun-hitting superstar Albert Pujols is simply not in the same league as legendary New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.
It's an argument that science may never fully resolve, but researchers at Washington University in St. Louis can now offer at least some hard numbers on how Pujols compares to the Babe in terms of the perceptual and motor skills........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 5:53:16 PM)
'Father of molecular medicine,' Vernon Ingram dies at 82Vernon Ingram, an MIT biology professor known as the "father of molecular medicine," died Aug. 17 from injuries suffered during a fall. He was 82.
A memorial service has been scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 10th at 2 p.m. in Wong Auditorium (E51). A reception will follow at Ashdown House.
Ingram was best known for his discovery, during the 1950s, that a single amino acid substitution is responsible for the molecular abnormality that leads to........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 5:42:42 PM)
Why soldiers were not expressing war traumas?After the Second World War, Finnish psychiatrists felt that soldiers had readapted to civilian society very well. The reason was not that Finnish soldiers were exceptionally strong, but that war psychiatrists put the blame for long-term psychological problems on the soldiers themselves. Thus explains researcher Ville Kivimäki, who is involved in the research project "The War That Follows Peace" funded by the Academy of Finland.
Soldiers very........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 5:00:39 AM)
Self-inflicting injuries in teensIn a survey of more than 6,000 15 and 16-year-old school pupils, scientists observed that girls are four times more likely to have engaged in deliberate self-harm in comparison to boys, with 11 per cent of girls and 3 per cent of boys reporting that they had self-harmed within the last year.
Prior estimates for the amount self-harm in the country were based on the 25,000 'presentations' at hospitals in England and Wales each year that are........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 8:09:43 PM)
Push For Breast Cancer CureFour men are testing their physical and mental as they skate board 8000 kilometers across Canada to raise awareness and raise funds for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Read the story of these brave men.
We're still out here! And we're really covering some ground. Shattering records left right and centre! We actually covered 125k each day three days running. WILD. Never imagined we'd be doing these distances. Really, we're skating so........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 7:16:30 PM)
Time For A Fresh LookWe may be taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, our brains decide whether a person is attractive and trustworthy within a tenth of a second, according to recent Princeton research.
Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov has found that people respond intuitively to faces so rapidly that our reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction -- and that our intuitions about attraction and trust........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 6:50:27 PM)
Path To Long Lasting HappinessCan you think of being permanently happy and cheerful? That's what a team of scientists did. A new breed of permanently 'cheerful' mouse is providing hope of a novel therapy for clinical depression. TREK-1 is a gene that can exert influence transmission of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is capable of playing an important role in mood, sleep and sexuality. By breeding mice with an absence of TREK-1, scientists were able create a........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 6:29:25 PM)
"Frozen" Natural Gas Discovered Below SeafloorAn international team of research scientists has reported greater knowledge of how gas hydrate deposits form in nature, subsequent to a scientific ocean-drilling expedition off Canada's western coast. A natural geologic hazard, gas hydrate is largely natural gas, and thus, may significantly impact global climate change. The research team, supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), published their peer-reviewed findings, "Gas........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/21/2006 10:14:45 PM)
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UK And US Companies Sold Mobile Phone TappingReporters Without Borders has learned that a British company, Silver Bullet, and a US company, Verint Systems (a subsidiary of Comverse Technology), sold equipment for intercepting mobile phone calls to the Vietnamese intelligence services. The source of this information, the UK-based Jane's Defence Weekly, said a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries acted as intermediary in some of the sales.
"We are appalled to learn that our phone........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 9:22:28 AM)
Apple Announces Recall of BatteriesThe U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announces the following recall in voluntary cooperation with the firm below. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.
Name of Product: Rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries with cells manufactured by Sony for certain previous iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 notebook computers only.
Units: About 1.1 million battery packs (an additional 700,000 battery packs........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 9:02:24 AM)
Fiberglass MascotsA home for storefront fiberglass mascots from around the world. The Big Boy. The Doggie Diner. The ubiquitous Col. Sanders statues outside of KFC outlets in Japan.
From Tulsa to Tokyo and everywhere in between, feel free to post your photos of fiberglass mascots here.........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 8:40:52 AM)
Hummingbird HawkmothHummingbird Hawkmoth (macroglossum stellatarum).
Spotted between showers yesterday in Cambridgeshire. Only the second time I've seen one of these. They really are like humming birds.........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/27/2006 8:19:48 AM)
Mountain Climate Change May Predict Water ResourcesNew research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting.
The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.
Researchers from Newcastle University, UK,........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 10:34:31 PM)
HIV Drug To Prevent Cervical CancerScientists at the University of Manchester are in the process of developing a topical therapy against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which is responsible for pre-malignant and malignant disease of the cervix as well as other genital malignancies.
In the UK a number of thousands of women undergo surgery to remove premalignant lesions of every year. Instead they may be able to apply a simple cream or pessary to the affected area. The........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 10:13:38 PM)
Microscopic passengers to hitch rideWhen space shuttle Atlantis rockets into space later this week, it will take along three kinds of microbes so researchers can study how their genetic responses and their ability to cause disease change.
The 'Microbe' experiment, part of the STS-115 space shuttle mission scheduled for launch Aug. 27, will study three common microorganisms -- Salmonella typhimurium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans -- that have been identified as........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 9:50:38 PM)
Ether returns to oust dark matterFrom his office window, Glenn Starkman can see the site where Albert Michelson and Edward Morley carried out their famous 1887 experiment that ruled out the presence of an all-pervading "aether" in space, setting the stage for Einstein's special theory of relativity. So it seems ironic that Starkman, who is at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is now proposing a theory that would bring ether back into the reckoning. While this........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 5:11:06 AM)
Critical Step in DNA MutationResearchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have made an important step toward solving a critical puzzle relating to a chemical reaction that leads to DNA mutation, which underlies a number of forms of cancer. The research, which uncovers knowledge that could be critical to the development of strategies for cancer prevention and therapy, appears in the August 2006 edition (Volume 128, issue 33) of the Journal of the American Chemical........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/24/2006 4:39:42 AM)
The Sundew With DewWow! That is the coolest looking flower. You've captured the dew marvelously.
Hmmm.........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 7:49:07 PM)
Space Age To Surgery EquipmentThough robots were once the stuff of Star Wars and The Jetsons, commercially available systems have made robotic surgeries common in hospitals. Located just feet away from the surgeon, the systems are minimally invasive and offer surgeons better dexterity.
Department of Defense-funded researchers want to take that capability to the next level so surgeries can commence on battlefields with the surgeon's work being done by a robot that's miles........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 6:47:36 PM)
Green AppleA fluorescent dye injected into a tank of stirred liquid creates a pattern that resembles a green apple. The demonstration, conducted by Rutgers scientists from the NSF Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Composites, shows how liquids mix in a typical pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. Engineers will use such studies to help drug makers improve product uniformity.
Credit: M. M. Alvarez, T. Shinbrot, F. J. Muzzio, Rutgers........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 6:04:14 PM)
Astronomers 'See' the InvisibleBy observing a rare head-on collision of galaxies at 10 million miles per hour, astronomers have made the first direct detection of "dark matter"--the mysterious, invisible stuff that comprises at least one-quarter of the universe.
Researchers have known for 70 years that there is much more mass in galaxies than can be seen. For example, spiral galaxies rotate at speeds that are only possible if the total mass of the galaxy is several times........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 5:57:22 PM)
Sturgeon's general warningThey take a long time before they mate and, once old enough, don't mate every year. Even so, sturgeons are heavily sought after for their eggs, which are made into caviar.
For these and other reasons, many sturgeons - a variety of ancient, bottom-feeding fish - are in trouble.
Trent Sutton, a fisheries biologist at Purdue University, has helped to ensure that a local variety of sturgeon, the shovelnose, does not become endangered or........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/23/2006 5:05:02 AM)
high-friction micro-fibersInspired by the remarkable hairs that allow geckos to hang single-toed from sheer walls and scamper along ceilings, a team of scientists led by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, has created an array of synthetic micro-fibers that uses very high friction to support loads on smooth surfaces.
High friction materials can prevent sliding under high loads or steep inclines. The scientists observed that the synthetic array of........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 8:37:58 PM)
carbon fiber to make tiny video displaysEngineers who develop microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) like to make their tiny machines out of silicon because it is cheap, plentiful and can be worked on with the tools already developed for making microelectronic circuits. There is just one problem: Silicon breaks too easily.
For decades, scientists have been trying to make video displays using tiny mirrors mounted on silicon oscillators. But silicon won't oscillate fast enough and........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 7:59:10 PM)
Challenging Privately Funded Breast Cancer ResearchNew research by a Queen's University researcher questions the effectiveness of privately funded efforts to stop the epidemic of breast cancer among North American women.
"Breast cancer has been transformed into a market-driven industry," says Kinesiology and Health Studies researcher Samantha King. "It has become more about making money for corporate sponsors than funding innovative ways to treat breast cancer".
Dr. King's research, just........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 7:54:02 PM)
Close-up on Cuvier crater ridgeThis high-resolution image, taken by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment (AMIE) on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows the young crater 'Cuvier C' on the Moon.
Click for high resolution image
AMIE obtained this sequence on 18 March 2006 from a distance of 591 kilometres from the surface, with a ground resolution of 53 metres per pixel. The imaged area is centred at a........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 7:00:53 PM)
New Methods for Screening NanoparticlesScientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a screening method to examine how newly made nanoparticles - particles with dimensions on the order of billionths of a meter - interact with human cells following exposure for various times and doses. This has led to the visualization of how human cells interact with some specific types of carbon nanoparticles. The method is described in a review article........Go to the Science-blog (Added on 8/22/2006 5:07:45 AM)
Nicotine Withdrawal Begins QuicklySmokers who have tried to quit are well aware of the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal: cravings for cigarettes, mood disturbances, appetite increase and sleep problems. However, it had not previously been known when withdrawal symptoms first appear. Thomas H. Brandon, Ph.D., Director of H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute's Tobacco Research & Intervention Program and his research team from Moffitt and the University of South........Go to the My-media-blog (Added on 8/21/2006 9:53:46 PM)
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