Mycobond™, Envioronment friendly-Packing Materials

A new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country.

The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material.

And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden.

The technology was the brainchild of two former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergraduates, Gavin McIntyre and Eben Bayer, who founded Ecovative Design of Green Island, N.Y., to bring their idea into production.

"We don't manufacture materials, we grow them," says McIntyre. "We're converting agricultural byproducts into a higher-value product."

Because the feedstock is based on renewable resources, he adds, the material has an economic benefit as well: it is not prone to the price fluctuations common to synthetic materials derived from such sources as petroleum. "All of our raw materials are inherently renewable and they are literally waste streams," says McIntyre. "It's an open system based on biological materials."

With support from NSF, McIntyre and Bayer are developing a new, less energy-intensive method to sterilize their agricultural-waste starter material--a necessary step for enabling the mushroom fibers, called mycelia, to grow. McIntyre and Bayer are replacing a steam-heat process with a treatment made from cinnamon-bark oil, thyme oil, oregano oil and lemongrass oil.

The sterilization process, which kills any spores that could compete with Ecovative's mushrooms, is almost as effective as the autoclaving process used to disinfect medical instruments and will allow the Mycobond™ products to grow in the open air, instead of their current clean-room environment.

"The biological disinfection process simply emulates nature," says McIntyre, "in that it uses compounds that plants have evolved over centuries to inhibit microbial growth. The unintended result is that our production floor smells like a pizza shop."

Much of the manufacturing process is nearly energy-free, with the mycelia growing around and digesting agricultural starter material--such as cotton seed or wood fiber--in an environment that is both room-temperature and dark. Because the growth occurs within a molded plastic structure (which the producers customize for each application), no energy is required for shaping the products.

Once fully formed, each piece is heat-treated to stop the growth process and delivered to the customer--though with the new, easier, disinfection treatment, Bayer and McIntyre are hoping the entire process can be packaged as a kit, allowing shipping facilities, and even homeowners, to grow their own Mycobond™ materials.

Based on a preliminary assessment McIntyre and Bayer conducted under their Phase I NSF SBIR award, the improvements to the sterilization phase will reduce the energy of the entire manufacturing process to one fortieth of that required to create polymer foam.

"This project is compelling because it uses innovative technology to further improve Ecovative's value, while also providing the environmental benefits that NSF is looking for," said Ben Schrag, the NSF program officer who oversees Ecovative's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award. "The traction that they have gotten with their early customers demonstrates how companies can build strong businesses around products whose primary competitive advantage lies in their sustainability."

In addition to the packaging product, called EcoCradle™, Ecovative has developed a home insulation product dubbed greensulate™. Comparable in effectiveness to foam insulation, it is also highly flame retardant.

Ecovative is already producing custom protective packaging products for several Fortune 500 companies, though they are leveraging the new disinfection process to produce turnkey systems that they plan to deploy to off-site customers and do-it-yourself homeowners by 2013.

In addition to NSF, Evocative has received support from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

biomechanical model of the human upper body

A comprehensive biomechanical model of the human upper body, which simulates 68 articular bones with 147 degrees of freedom; 354,000 tetrahedral finite elements with the appropriate constitutive behavior to simulate the soft tissues; 814 skeletal muscles, each modeled as a piecework uniaxial force actuator; and a dynamic controller that computes the muscle activations necessary to animate the elaborate musculoskeletal system.

The model--created by electrical engineer and computer scientist Demetri Terzopoulos and his colleagues at UCLA's computer graphics lab, uses a complex mixture of math, biomechanics, anatomy, physics and computing, and is the most-detailed biomechanical human model for computer animation yet.

To read a detailed report of this research, see "Comprehensive Biomechanical Modeling and Simulation of the Upper Body." [Research supported by National Science Foundation grant IIS 08-30183.] (Date of Image: 2008)

Credit: Sung-Hee Lee, Eftychios Sifakis and Demetri Terzopoulos, University of California, Los Angeles

Montana bear attack puts hikers and campers on alert

In a sobering reminder that bears are the bosses of the backcountry, one person was killed and two others injured in a grizzly bear attack Wednesday at the heavily occupied Soda Butte campground just outside Yellowstone National Park.

A Canadian woman who was attacked in the middle of the night was bitten on her arm and leg before she instinctively played dead so the animal would leave her alone.

In this May 4, 2009 file photo, a Grizzly bear is seen in Yellowstone National Park near Mammoth Wyoming.CAPTIONBy David Grubbs, AP
"I screamed, he bit harder, I screamed harder, he continued to bite," said Deb Freele of London, Ontario, who woke up just before the bear attacked. The names and ages of the man killed and another man injured were not released.

Freele told interviewers that survival instinct kicked in, and she realized that the screaming wasn't working. "I told myself, play dead," she said. "I went totally limp. As soon as I went limp, I could feel his jaws get loose and then he let me go."

Last weekend, TV personality and zookeeper Jack Hanna followed his own advice to carry pepper spray while hiking - and used it to avoid a potential grizzly attack in Glacier National Park.

The Columbus Zoo keeper and frequent David Letterman guest says he was with his wife and other hikers when they saw the mother bear and two large cubs coming toward them, reports the Associated Press. The group moved slowly back up the trail to a clearing, and stood still while the mother and one cub passed by. But Hanna says the other cub, weighing about 125 pounds, charged toward them before he sprayed it in the face and it fled.

During my own visit to Glacier earlier this month, the frequent reminders of the potential for bear-related danger ranged from pepper spray on sale at lodge gift shops to ranger admonitions not to hike alone (I did, but kept singing an off-key Motown medley, just in case.) My closest encounter: Spotting a grizzly's backside through a tangle of trees just a few hundred yards from the West Glacier entrance.

While today's campers and hikers are warned to stay away from bears, the approach was far different a few decades ago - as a new documentary, "Glacier's Night of the Grizzlies," makes clear. The film revisits a 1967 incident in which two Glacier campers were killed the same night in different campsites. The attacks were a "deafening alarm telling national parks that humans and wildlife need to be separated," Glacier spokesman Amy Vanderbilt told the Flathead Beacon.

That attempted separation hasn't always gone smoothly: Earlier this month, a Yellowstone visitor was injured by a bison when, according to the Yellowstone Insider, a group of tourists got too close and the startled animal attacked.

Meanwhile, debate is intensifying over a new law that allows people to carry guns in national parks.

Wyoming, Idaho and Montana are home to roughly 1,300 grizzlies. Their numbers have rebounded since the 1970s and, although grizzlies still are listed as a threatened species, it's no longer rare for one lolling roadside to jam up tourist traffic (as they did during my Glacier trip). They've killed 10 people in Glacier and five in Yellowstone in the past century, and those parks average one grizzly attack with injuries a year.

Park rangers are still telling visitors that a pressurized can of hot-pepper oil — bear spray — is their best defense, says the Associated Press. Their reasoning? Studies show that in most cases, putting a cloud of bear spray in a grizzly's face works better than trying to stop a moving 400-pound animal with a perfectly placed bullet.

Animals Laugh

Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.

"Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our 'ha-ha-has' and verbal repartee," says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

chimps play and chase each other, they pant in a manner that is strikingly like human laughter, Panksepp writes in the April 1 issue of the journal Science. Dogs have a similar response.

Rats chirp while they play, again in a way that resembles our giggles. Panksepp found in a previous study that when rats are playfully tickled, they chirp and bond socially with their human tickler. And they seem to like it, seeking to be tickled more. Apparently joyful rats also preferred to hang out with other chirpers.

Laughter in humans starts young, another clue that it's a deep-seated brain function.

"Young children, whose semantic sense of humor is marginal, laugh and shriek abundantly in the midst of their other rough-and-tumble activities," Panksepp notes.

Importantly, various recent studies on the topic suggest that laughter in animals typically involves similar play chasing. Could be that verbal jokes tickle ancient, playful circuits in our brains.

More study is needed to figure out whether animals are really laughing. The results could explain why humans like to joke around. And Panksepp speculates it might even lead to the development of treatments for laughter's dark side: depression.

Meanwhile, there's the question of what's so darn funny in the animal world.

"Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick," Panksepp figures. "Even if adult rodents have no well-developed cognitive sense of humor, young rats have a marvelous sense of fun."

Science has traditionally deemed animals incapable of joy and woe.

Panksepp's response: "Although some still regard laughter as a uniquely human trait, honed in the Pleistocene, the joke's on them."

Continental tests 'self-boarding' at Houston airport

Boarding a plane without an agent to inspect or take your pass has arrived in the USA.
Continental Airlines has confirmed it's testing the procedure at a gate at its hub in Houston Intercontinental. It's the first experiment at what's called "self-boarding" in the U.S.

In self-boarding, passengers — much like customers of the New York City subway— swipe their boarding passes at a kiosk reader at the gate. That opens a turnstile or door to the jet-bridge. Although an agent isn't there to take the pass, one is typically present to handle problems and other customer service tasks.


PHOTO GALLERY: Behind the scenes at Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport

Continental declined to provide further details on its experiment. The Transportation Security Administration, which is in charge of air security, "determined it does not impact the security of the traveling public," says Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman, adding all passengers are screened at airport checkpoints prior to arriving at boarding gates.

Self-boarding is the latest in a series of new technology that airlines are using to automate getting on a flight. Among others: check-in kiosks that print out boarding passes and boarding pass barcodes e-mailed to smartphones.

The practice has been common at many foreign airports for several years. And if the rate of adoption abroad is any indication, self-boarding could soon proliferate here.

Last year, 14 airlines worldwide were using self-boarding gates, including Air France, Korean Air, Japan Airlines and Air New Zealand, according to the International Air Transport Association. The association, an airline trade group, has been pushing members to embrace the practice and develop standard technology. The German airline Lufthansa started using its "quick boarding gates" in 2003. All its gates at Frankfurt and Munich are now automated.

To do this, airlines need to use boarding passes with so-called "two-dimensional" barcodes, which contain more traveler information than magnetic strips or traditional barcodes, says IATA spokesman Steve Lott. Airlines have agreed to phase out magnetic strips by the end of the year.

Lufthansa spokesman Martin Riecken says while loading customers at self-boarding gates is "a little faster" than traditional gates, the airline's primary goal was to free agents from the mundane task of scanning boarding passes. It frees them to handle other customer issues that require individual attention, such as upgrading seats, he says. The number of agents assigned to automated gates isn't different from other gates: one or two agents for short-haul flights, three or four for longer ones, he says.

Lufthansa passengers who don't like self-boarding can still approach agents to have their pass scanned in "the manual line," he says.

"It's a great idea," says aviation analyst Michael Boyd. "Any reduction in human contact between employee and customer is good these days."

Despite technological advancements, agents have more to do now than 30 years ago to get the plane out of the gate, Boyd says. "It takes more manpower. They let technology drive manpower rather than the other way around."

"As long as you have someone to tell grandma where to stick the paper," he says, "you're fine."

Boarding a plane without an agent to inspect or take your pass has arrived in the USA.
Continental Airlines has confirmed it's testing the procedure at a gate at its hub in Houston Intercontinental. It's the first experiment at what's called "self-boarding" in the U.S.

In self-boarding, passengers — much like customers of the New York City subway— swipe their boarding passes at a kiosk reader at the gate. That opens a turnstile or door to the jet-bridge. Although an agent isn't there to take the pass, one is typically present to handle problems and other customer service tasks.


PHOTO GALLERY: Behind the scenes at Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport

Continental declined to provide further details on its experiment. The Transportation Security Administration, which is in charge of air security, "determined it does not impact the security of the traveling public," says Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman, adding all passengers are screened at airport checkpoints prior to arriving at boarding gates.

Self-boarding is the latest in a series of new technology that airlines are using to automate getting on a flight. Among others: check-in kiosks that print out boarding passes and boarding pass barcodes e-mailed to smartphones.

The practice has been common at many foreign airports for several years. And if the rate of adoption abroad is any indication, self-boarding could soon proliferate here.

Last year, 14 airlines worldwide were using self-boarding gates, including Air France, Korean Air, Japan Airlines and Air New Zealand, according to the International Air Transport Association. The association, an airline trade group, has been pushing members to embrace the practice and develop standard technology. The German airline Lufthansa started using its "quick boarding gates" in 2003. All its gates at Frankfurt and Munich are now automated.

To do this, airlines need to use boarding passes with so-called "two-dimensional" barcodes, which contain more traveler information than magnetic strips or traditional barcodes, says IATA spokesman Steve Lott. Airlines have agreed to phase out magnetic strips by the end of the year.

Lufthansa spokesman Martin Riecken says while loading customers at self-boarding gates is "a little faster" than traditional gates, the airline's primary goal was to free agents from the mundane task of scanning boarding passes. It frees them to handle other customer issues that require individual attention, such as upgrading seats, he says. The number of agents assigned to automated gates isn't different from other gates: one or two agents for short-haul flights, three or four for longer ones, he says.

Lufthansa passengers who don't like self-boarding can still approach agents to have their pass scanned in "the manual line," he says.

"It's a great idea," says aviation analyst Michael Boyd. "Any reduction in human contact between employee and customer is good these days."

Despite technological advancements, agents have more to do now than 30 years ago to get the plane out of the gate, Boyd says. "It takes more manpower. They let technology drive manpower rather than the other way around."

"As long as you have someone to tell grandma where to stick the paper," he says, "you're fine."

4-time Texas lotto winner

BISHOP, Texas (AP) — The odds that Joan Ginther would hit four Texas Lottery jackpots for a combined nearly $21 million are astronomical. Mathematicians say the chances are as slim as 1 in 18 septillion — that's 18 and 24 zeros.
Just as unlikely? Getting to know one of the luckiest women in the world.

"She wants her privacy," friend Cris Carmona said.

On a $50 scratch-off ticket bought in this rural farming community, Ginther won $10 million last month in her biggest windfall yet. But it was the fourth winning ticket in Texas for the 63-year-old former college professor since 1993, when Ginther split an $11 million jackpot and became the most famous native in Bishop history.

But she's a celebrity who few in this town of 3,300 people can say much about.

"That lady is pretty much scarce to everybody," said Lucas Ray Cruz, Ginther's former neighbor. "That's just the way she is."

At the Times Market where Ginther bought her last two winning tickets, the highway gas station is fast becoming a pilgrimage for unlucky lottery losers. Lines stretch deep past a $5.98 bin of Mexican movie DVDs, and a woman from Rhode Island called last week asking to buy tickets from the charmed store through the mail.

She was told that was illegal. The woman called back to plead again anyway.

The Texas Lottery Commission has seen repeat winners before, but none on the scale of Ginther. Spokesman Bobby Heith said the agency has never investigated Ginther's winnings — three scratch-off tickets and one lottery draw — for possible fraud but described the verification system as thorough. Her other winnings — both from scratch-off tickets — were $2 million in 2006 and $3 million in 2008.

So how did Ginther do it, then?

Good luck pinning her down to ask.

Ginther has never spoken publicly about her lotto winnings and could not be found for comment. She now lives in Las Vegas after moving away from Bishop, and an answering machine message for a telephone number listed at her address says not to leave a message.

She asked the few people who've exchanged more than brief pleasantries with her not to grant interviews and sneaked into lottery headquarters in Austin to collect her winnings with the least publicity the state offers jackpot winners.

But spend a few hours in her hometown — and equal time scouring public records — and a contrasting profile emerges.

Her home address in Las Vegas is on a street called Paradise Drive. When USA TODAY asked readers in 2000 to sound off on airline service, Ginther groaned over a flight attendant who carted away her cheese and crackers and a sundae too soon. Two years later, she grumbled to the Las Vegas Review-Journal about a proposed monorail running through her exclusive condominium towers.

"I moved here because I wanted to have a beautiful home with a great view and that's what I have. I didn't expect to have a monorail come down here with thousands of tourists every day," Ginther told the newspaper, in what might have been the only time she was directly quoted in the media.

Nitpicking first-class service, and mad the view in her luxury home might be spoiled?

Bishop residents may not know much about Ginther — but they know that's not her.

Here around the cotton farms and boarded-up downtown, Ginther, who over the years regularly visited the town to see her father who died in 2007, is called benevolent as much as she's called lucky. They say she bought the church a van. Gave money to the family that runs the Days Inn off the highway. When she moved, she donated her home to charity.

Sun Bae, who owns the Time Market and sold Ginther her last two winning tickets, said she drives around in a bland Nissan sedan but once bought a nicer car for someone down on their luck. Bae said Ginther doesn't even own a cellphone.

"She is a very generous woman. She's helped so many people," Bae said.

Calculating the actual odds of Ginther hitting four multimillion-dollar lottery jackpots is tricky. If Ginther's winning tickets were the only four she ever bought, the odds would be one in 18 septillion, according to Sandy Norman and Eduardo Duenez, math professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Exactly how often Ginther plays is unknown. But Norman and Duenez said that a habitual player winning four times over a 17-year span is much less far-fetched.

At the Times Market, Bae and store regular Gloria Gonzalez said they've certainly watched Ginther buy her share of tickets over the years. And not just for her.

Gonzalez said when her elderly father would sit at the store's window booth and scrub through dollar scratch-offs, Ginther would surprise him with a $50 ream of tickets.

"Win, win, win," Ginther would chant, rooting him on.

After all, the only way to win is to keep playing. Ginther is smart enough to know that's how you beat the odds: she earned her doctorate from Stanford University in 1976, then spent a decade on faculty at several colleges in California.

Teaching math.

The EMS Service Dogs

Emergency Services has introduced trained dogs to help cut costs.

Canines have been used for police work, search and rescue, tracking, service dogs, and a variety of other tasks. Now they're assisting Paramedics and doing so at a much lower cost.

See the example below ...



Breathe, Damn You, Breathe!!!


sources: >>>
--
Mr. Sushil Jawale
Research Scholer
Dept. of zoology
Dr.B.A.M.University
Aurangabad (M.S.)
India .
Mob.no. 9021245178.

Black Mother Gives Birth To White Baby

The stunned black dad of a newborn, white, baby girl declared yesterday—“I’m sure she’s my kid…I just don’t know why she’s blonde.”

British Nmachi Ihegboro has amazed genetics experts who say the little girl is NOT an albino.

Dad Ben, 44, a customer services adviser, admitted: “We both just sat there after the birth staring at her.”

Mum Angela, 35, of Woolwich, South London, beamed as she said: “She’s beautiful—a miracle baby.”

Ben told yesterday how he was so shocked when Nmachi was born, he even joked: “Is she MINE?”

He added: “Actually, the first thing I did was look at her and say, ‘What the flip?’”

But as the baby’s older brother and sister—both black—crowded round the “little miracle” at their home in South London, Ben declared: “Of course she’s mine.”



Blue-eyed blonde Nmachi, whose name means “Beauty of God” in the Nigerian couple’s homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela have any mixed-race family history.

Pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could have explained the baby’s appearance.

Ben also stressed: “My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn’t been, the baby still wouldn’t look like that.

“We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages—not saying anything.”

Doctors at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup—where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth—have told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.

Ben, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and works for South Eastern Trains, said: “She doesn’t look like an albino child anyway—not like the ones I’ve seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby.”

He went on: “My mum is a black Nigerian although she has a bit fairer skin than mine.

“But we don’t know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist.

“But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?”


CHECK OUT THE VIDEO HERE

Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain’s leading expert, yesterday called the birth “extraordinary.”

He said: “In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child—and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.

“This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing.”

Prof Sykes said BOTH parents would have needed “some form of white ancestry” for a pale version of their genes to be passed on.

But he added: “The hair is extremely unusual. Even many blonde children don’t have blonde hair like this at birth.”

The expert said some unknown mutation was the most likely explanation.

He admitted: “The rules of genetics are complex and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”

The amazing birth comes five years after Kylie Hodgson became mum to twin daughters—one white and the other black— in Nottingham.

Kylie, now 23, and her partner Remi Horder, now 21, are both mixed race.

Even so the odds were estimated at a million to one.

The Sun told in 2002 how a white couple had Asian twins after a sperm mix-up by a fertility clinic.

Yesterday three-day-old Nmachi’s churchgoing mum Angela admitted that she was “speechless” at first seeing her baby girl, who was delivered in a caesarean op.

She said: “I thought, ‘What is this little doll?’

“She’s beautiful and I love her. Her colour doesn’t matter. She’s a miracle baby.

“But still, what on earth happened here?”




Her husband told how their son Chisom, four, was even more confused than them by his new sister.

Ben said: “Our other daughter Dumebi is only two so she’s too young to understand.

“But our boy keeps coming to look at his sister and then sits down looking puzzled.

“We’re a black family. Suddenly he has a white sister.”

Ben continued: “Of course, we are baffled too and want to know what’s happened. But we understand life is very strange.

“All that matters is that she’s healthy and that we love her. She’s a proud British Nigerian.”

Queen Mary’s Hospital said: “Congratulations to Angela and her family on the birth of their daughter.”

Courtesy: The Sun

$50m to lie

An Iranian scientist who claims he was abducted and taken to the United States by the CIA returned to Tehran yesterday to a hero's welcome and said that he had been pressured into lying about his country's nuclear programme.

Shahram Amiri said that he was on the hajj pilgrimage when he was seized at gunpoint in the city of Medina, drugged and taken to the US, where he says Israel was involved in his interrogation. In the US, officials were reported to have admitted that Mr Amiri was paid more than $5m (£3.2m) by the CIA for information about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The US claims to have received useful information from him in return for the money, but is clearly embarrassed by his very public return to Iran. The offer of a large bribe is reportedly part of a special US programme to get Iranian nuclear scientists to defect.

Flashing a victory sign, Mr Amiri returned to Tehran International Airport to be greeted by senior officials and by his tearful wife and seven-year-old son, whom he had not seen since he disappeared in Saudi Arabia during a visit 14 months ago. Iran said it was demanding information about what had happened to him.

The US says that he entered the US of his own free will and had relocated to Tucson, Arizona. The US is claiming that Mr Amiri, who had worked for Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, re-defected because pressure was placed on his family back in Iran, something he denied yesterday. Officials suggested that Iran had used his family to get him to leave the US.

"Americans wanted me to say that I defected to America of my own will, to use me for revealing some false information about Iran's nuclear work," Mr Amiri said at Tehran airport.

"I was under intensive psychological pressure by [the] CIA... the main aim of this abduction was to stage a new political and psychological game against Iran."

Iran and the US have been engaged in a semi-covert war involving defections, seizures and kidnappings in recent years, of which the case of Mr Amiri is only the latest example.

It reached its peak in Iraq in 2007 when the US abducted Iranian consular officials from the northern city of Arbil and Iran seized a British navy patrol boat in the Gulf. Last year, Iran seized three Americans hiking in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming they had strayed over the Iranian border, while other accounts said they had been forced into Iran at gunpoint.

Mr Amiri had appeared in three contradictory videos; in the first he claimed to have been kidnapped and tortured and in the second, he said he had come to the US to write his PhD.

In a third video he denounces the second one. On Monday he arrived unannounced at the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington and asked for an air ticket to return to Iran.

At his press conference at Tehran airport, Mr Amiri stressed that he had acted under compulsion. "Israeli agents were present at some of my interrogation sessions and I was threatened to be handed over to Israel if I refused to cooperate with Americans," he said. "I have some documents proving that I've not been free in the United States and have always been under the control of armed agents of US intelligence services."

He says he was offered $50m to stay in the US. Mr Amiri denied that he had ever had any information about the Iranian nuclear programme. "I am an ordinary researcher... I have never made nuclear-related researches. I'm not involved in any confidential jobs. I had no classified information."

Mr Amiri had worked at Iran's Malek Ashtar University, an institution closely connected to the country's elite Revolutionary Guards.

US officials said that Mr Amiri may not be able to access his $5m, because of sanctions on Iran. The Washington Post said yesterday that the Iranian scientist had been working with the CIA for a year and officials were "stunned" by his request to go home this week. The officials added that he had provided useful information, though not directly on whether Iran was trying to make a nuclear device.

source:-

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/cia-offered-me-50m-to-lie-about-nuclear-secrets-says-iranian-scientist-14878887.html##ixzz0u9LJqdLG

Frog Killer Caught

A killer has been caught in the act: the first before-and-after view of an infectious disease that led to an amphibian die-off has been released by the scientists who tracked it.

The results are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Like a wave, incidence of the fungal disease that wipes out Central American frogs--chytridiomycosis--advances through the region's highlands at a rate of about 30 kilometers per year.

After the disappearance of Costa Rica's golden frogs in the 1980s, Karen Lips, a biologist at the University of Maryland, established a monitoring program at untouched sites in neighboring Panama.

Of the 63 species she identified during surveys conducted from 1998 to 2004 in Omar Torrijos National Park, located in El Copé, Panama, 25 species disappeared from the site in a subsequent epidemic.

As of 2008, none of these species had reappeared.

Were there additional species in the park not previously known to science?

To find out, the authors used a genetic technique called DNA barcoding to estimate that another 11 unnamed or "candidate" species were also present.

Combining field research and genetic information, the authors discovered that five of these unnamed species were also wiped out.

"Frog and salamander extinction due to the chytrid fungus is increasing worldwide," says Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

"These methods will allow a rapid measure of their diversity, so that we can monitor, and possibly mitigate, that extinction."

"It's sadly ironic that we are discovering new species nearly as fast as we're losing them," says Andrew Crawford, former postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and member of the Círculo Herpetológico de Panamá, now at the University of the Andes in Colombia.

"Our DNA barcode data reveal new species even at this relatively well-studied site, yet the field sampling shows that many of these species new to science are already gone."

An epidemic that wipes out a whole group of organisms is like the fire that burned the famous library of Alexandria, the scientists say.

It destroys a huge amount of accumulated information about how life has coped with change in the past.

Species surveys are like counting the number of different titles in the library; a genetic survey is like counting the number of different words.

"When you lose the words, you lose the potential to make new books," says Lips.

"It's similar to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The areas where the disease has passed through are like graveyards. There's a void to be filled--and we don't know what will happen."

"This is the first time that we've used genetic barcodes--DNA sequences unique to each living organism--to characterize an entire amphibian community," said Eldredge Bermingham, STRI director and a co-author of the paper.

"The before-and-after approach we took with these frogs tells us exactly what was lost to this deadly disease--33 percent of their evolutionary history."

The Bay and Paul Foundation also funded the field work for the study. Collection permits were provided by Panama's Environmental Authority, ANAM.

NASA's Nebula Cloud Computing Technology To Play Key Role

NASA's Nebula Cloud Computing Technology To Play Key Role In New Open Source Initiative WASHINGTON --

The core technology developed for NASA's Nebula cloud computing platform has been selected as a contributor for OpenStack, a newly-launched open source cloud computing initiative. It will pull together more than 25 companies to play a key role in driving cloud computing standards for interoperability and portability.

Cloud computing is a way to deliver computing resources, such as software, storage and virtual computing power, as services over the Internet. NASA launched the Nebula cloud computing platform to provide agency researchers with a range of services powerful enough to manage NASA's large-scale scientific data sets. Nebula offers unparalleled compute capability, storage and bandwidth to users at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"We hope that OpenStack will form the foundation of a new open source cloud ecosystem," said NASA chief technology officer for Information Technology Chris C. Kemp. "With Nebula technology at the core of OpenStack, NASA will be uniquely positioned to drive standards that will ensure products and services powered by OpenStack will meet federal interoperability, portability, and security requirements."

OpenStack is the first large-scale open source cloud project of its kind and is expected to gather significant momentum in the cloud and open source communities.

"Nebula technology was selected for inclusion in the OpenStack project because of its massively scalable architecture and the high quality of its code" said Jim Curry, director of OpenStack.

The announcement coincides with O'Reilly Media's Open Source Developers Conference, which is taking place in Portland, Ore., this week.

"Participating in OpenStack will allow NASA to tap into a well-established community of open source developers and enable us to benefit from crowd-sourced development efforts." said Raymond O'Brien, Nebula's program manager.

Nebula is an agency-wide program and was one of three flagship initiatives highlighted in NASA's Open Government Plan. For more information on Nebula:

http://nebula.nasa.gov

Boy drinks water at mosque, Pak Hindus attacked

Islamabad: Several Hindus were attacked and forced out of their homes in Terrorist County Pakistan's southern Sindh province after a boy of the community drank water from a cooler outside a mosque.

About 60 Hindu men, women and children were recently forced to abandon their homes at Memon Goth in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, after influential tribesmen of the area objected to the boy drinking water.

"All hell broke loose when my son, Dinesh drank water from a cooler outside a mosque. Upon seeing him do that, the terrorist Pakistani's started beating him up," a Hindu man named Meerumal told The News daily.

"Later, around 150 tribesmen attacked us, injuring seven of our people who were taken to the Jinnah Hospital," he said.

The Hindus have taken refuge in a cattle pen but now about 400 Hindu families have been warned that they must leave the area. "Our people are even scared of going out of their houses. We are also putting up with living in the filthy cattle pen because we cannot go home for fear of being killed," said Heera, who was injured in the attack by tribesmen.

"A trivial incident led to riots between the people in the area. As Terrorist County Pakistan community happened to be illiterate, the matter just flared up," said the chief of Memon Goth police station.

However, the police officer dismissed claims that the Hindus in the area didn’t have security and insisted the minority community could go back to their homes any time they wanted.

Sindh's Minority Affairs Minister Mohan Lal has assured the Hindu community that it will receive full government protection.

"I have directed the police to ensure that these people go back to their houses safely," he said.

Sources


Press Trust Of India

http://ibnlive. in.com/news/ boy-drinks- water-at- mosque-pak- hindus-attacked/ 126509-2. html?from= tn

BODY SCANNERS @ airport

Opposition to new full-body imaging machines to screen passengers and the government's deployment of them at most major airports is growing.
Many frequent fliers complain they're time-consuming or invade their privacy. The world's airlines say they shouldn't be used for primary security screening. And questions are being raised about possible effects on passengers' health.

"The system takes three to five times as long as walking through a metal detector," says Phil Bush of Atlanta, one of many fliers on USA TODAY's Road Warriors panel who oppose the machines. "This looks to be yet another disaster waiting to happen."


BODY SCANNERS: Concerns about privacy and health set off debate

The machines — dubbed by some fliers as virtual strip searches — were installed at many airports in March after a Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has spent more than $80 million for about 500 machines, including 133 now at airports. It plans to install about 1,000 by the end of next year.

The machines are running into complaints and questions here and overseas:

•The International Air Transport Association, which represents 250 of the world's airlines, including major U.S. carriers, says the TSA lacks "a strategy and a vision" of how the machines fit into a comprehensive checkpoint security plan. "The TSA is putting the cart before the horse," association spokesman Steve Lott says.

•Security officials in Dubai said this month they wouldn't use the machines because they violate "personal privacy," and information about their "side effects" on health isn't known.

•Last month, the European Commission said in a report that "a rigorous scientific assessment" of potential health risks is needed before machines are deployed there. It also said screening methods besides the new machines should be used on pregnant women, babies, children and people with disabilities.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in October that the TSA was deploying the machines without fully testing them and assessing whether they could detect "threat items" concealed on various parts of the body. And in March, the office said it "remains unclear" whether they would have detected the explosives that police allege Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate on a jet bound for Detroit on Christmas.

TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee says the agency completed testing at the end of last year and is "highly confident" in the machines' detection capability. She also says their use hasn't slowed screening at airports and that the agency has taken steps to ensure privacy and safety.

The TSA is deploying two types of machines that can see underneath clothing. One uses a high-speed X-ray beam, and the other bounces electromagnetic waves off a passenger's body.

Passengers can refuse screening by the machines and receive a pat-down search by a security officer, screening by a metal detector, or both, the TSA says.

Blood shortage in D.C. area reaches critical levels

Blood shortage in D.C. area reaches critical levels
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
July 8, 2010 The Washington area is suffering a critical shortage of a crucial blood type as the D.C. Council plays catch-up with Maryland and Virginia to allow 16-year-olds to donate blood with a parent's consent.

The summer months, when many residents head out off to the beach or somewhere cooler, are often the slowest time for blood donations even as the need rises, officials said.

The American Red Cross said this week that the supply for the universal donor blood type 0 negative has reached critically low levels in the Washington area. Type O negative is considered the universal blood type, as it can be used by people in any blood group.

A bill proposed by D.C. Councilman Harry Thomas is designed to help alleviate the shortage.

Since February, the D.C. City Council has been examining the possibility of allowing the D.C. Health Department to pass regulations that would change the minimum blood donation age from 17 to 16. Current regulations allow 17-year-olds to donate blood without a parent's consent; the change would allow 16-year-olds to donate with a parent's consent. Virginia, Maryland and 35 other states already allow 16-year-olds to donate.

"Donations have been dropping," said Wendy Paul, associate director of transfusion medicine at Children's National Medical Center. "By lowering the age we'll increase the donor pool and put new, young donors into the pipeline."

But a 2008 American Red Cross study said looking to younger donors, who are most susceptible to complications, can result in turning teens off from donating if they faint from their first time.

The study found that 10.7 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds suffered from adverse reactions when they donated blood. That that's three times as many as adults ages 20 and over, the study said.

Paul, however, noted that though there exists a statistical difference between the reactions of young teens and adults, there is little difference between 16- and 17-year-olds.

"In many cases the bad reactions are just a bad case of nerves," Paul said.

For 14-year-old Michael Ogunjimi, of the District, the age change could mean blood is always available when he needs a monthly transfusion so he can live with sickle cell anemia. The blood disease, which primarily affects African-Americans, is deadly without regular infusions.

The age change "will give hope to someone like me," Ogunjimi told council members during a public hearing Tuesday afternoon. "I thank God I am alive today. I am always grateful to people in our community who give blood."

fklopott@washingtonexaminer.com

To donate » Contact the American Red Cross at 800-GIVE-LIFE (448-3543)


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Blood-shortage-in-D_C_-area-reaches-critical-levels-97964409.html#ixzz0u6souNpJ

Unique Mercury Shivling at Sinhagad, Pune -India

The unique Shivalinga is a symbol for earth peace. The Shivlinga weighs over a tonne and is around 30 inches in height. Yogiraj Siddhanath indicates that the Earth Peace Temple Shivling is possibly the largest known unbroken Shivling – akhand Shivalinga. Mercury when purified and brought to a solid state is called the ‘Philosophers Stone’ or Paras Mani (Mercury Gem).






The Earth Peace temple is located in a forested area at Donje-Golewad in Sinhagad and is around 35 km from Pune city. It is a non-denominational temple and people of all races and religions are welcome. The temple was opened during the Shivratri in 2008.

Toyota: 270,000 Cars Have Faulty Engines

(WASHINGTON) — Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday about 270,000 cars sold worldwide, including luxury Lexus sedans, have potentially faulty engines, in the latest quality issue to confront the Japanese automaker after a string of massive recalls.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. government's auto safety agency, said Toyota had not formally notified it about a recall. Japan's top-selling daily Yomiuri said the company will inform the Japanese transport ministry of a recall on Monday but the paper cited no sources.

Toyota spokesman Hideaki Homma in Japan said the company was evaluating measures to deal with the problem of defective engines that can stall while the vehicle is moving. He would not confirm a recall was being considered.

The world's largest automaker has scrambled to repair its reputation following the recall of 8.5 million vehicles around the globe because of problems with sticking accelerator pedals and gas pedals that can get trapped in floor mats.

Toyota was slapped with a record $16.4 million fine in the United States for acting too slowly to recall vehicles with defects. Toyota dealers have repaired millions of vehicles, but the automaker still faces more than 200 lawsuits tied to accidents, the lower resale value of Toyota vehicles and the drop in the company's stock.


U.S. regulators are working with scientists from NASA to investigate what caused some of the vehicles to suddenly accelerate. That review is expected to be completed by late August. NHTSA officials are also reviewing whether Toyota waited nearly a year in 2005 to recall trucks and SUVs in the U.S. with defective steering rods, a case that could lead to additional fines.

In the latest safety concern, about 90,000 vehicles with the engine problems were sold in Japan and the remaining 180,000 vehicles were sold overseas. They include the popular Crown and seven models of luxury Lexus sedans. It was not immediately clear which vehicle models sold in the U.S. were affected.

Toyota said it has received around 200 complaints in Japan over faulty engines. Some drivers told Toyota that the engines made a strange noise. Homma said there have been no reports of accidents linked to the faulty engines.

Toyota spokesman Ed Lewis said the company had not formally notified the U.S. highway safety agency about the issue. He could not confirm any plans for a recall in the United States.

In the aftermath of the recalls, Congress is considering an upgrade to auto safety laws to toughen potential penalties against automakers, give the U.S. government more power to demand a recall and push car companies to meet new safety standards.

Toyota said last week it will recall 17,000 Lexus luxury hybrids after testing showed that fuel can spill during a rear-end crash. Shares of Toyota rose 5 cents to $68.62 in midday trading Thursday.

Associated Press Writers Shino Yuasa in Tokyo and Dan Strumpf in New York contributed to this report

Multi-vitamins Improve Mood And Mental Performance

While the importance of taking nutrient supplements is well-known for the elderly, very few studies have investigated the link between vitamin intake and cognitive function among healthy adults under the age of 55.

To explore the relationship a research team from Northumbria University recruited 215 healthy men between the ages of 30 and 55 who were all employed full-time and had them blindly receive either a proprietary multi-vitamin or a placebo for a period of one month.

The investigators tested each participant both before and after the study with a variety of mood, stress and health questionnaires. They also analyzed their mental capabilities by having them undergo simple arithmetic examinations.

At the point of follow-up, the participants who took daily multi-vitamins reported considerable improvements in mood, stress levels and cognitive function. The control group participants experienced no significant benefit.

"The assumption was made here that the men tested enjoyed typical nutritional status," said lead author David Kennedy.

"However, the very fact of being able to improve mood, ratings of mental health and vigour and aspects of task performance by simple supplementation with B vitamins, vitamin C and minerals indicates that the cohort must have been suffering from less than optimal micronutrient status at the outset."

Shocking Truth <>No One Ever Dies of Cancer

Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases of our time. That’s because it strikes people of any age, race or social background. Cancer finds you whether you lead a healthy or unhealthy lifestyle; whether you’re physically fit or out of shape; whether you exercise regularly or are a couch potato; whether you’re rich or poor, male or female; whether you’re a vegetarian or a meat lover; and whether you’re an adult, adolescent or child.

And the thing that terrifies people the most is that the medical establishment doesn’t know exactly what causes cancer, nor do they know its cure.

In my opinion, doctors are more afraid of cancer than patients are. That’s because they know that chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are NOT the answer to cancer.

Case in point: Oncologist Dr. Tullio Simoncini states that according to his polls and questionnaires, "75 percent of doctors say they’d refuse chemotherapy if they were struck with cancer due to its ineffectiveness and its devastating side effects." The medical journal, Clinical Oncology, published the results of a study in December 2004, wherein it was shown that chemotherapy has a success rate of just more than 2 percent for all cancers [That's a FAILURE rate of 98 percent.]

Headlines are sprinkled with news that one celebrity or prominent figure has “died of cancer”—and there’s hardly a month that goes by when someone we know tells us that a relative of theirs or a loved one has “died of cancer.”

But here’s the shocking truth that most people don’t know: No one actually dies of cancer.

Some people die from complications caused by conventional cancer therapies… but it’s never cancer that kills them. Oftentimes, conventional cancer therapies have been shown to be more dangerous than the disease—that they cause more harm than good.

So what exactly happens when someone is reported as having “died of cancer?” It means that someone’s immune system stopped working. It’s rarely the presence of cancer cells or tumors that kill a patient. Cancer cells come and go. Every human being has cancer cells existing in the body, but those cells usually don’t multiply into the full-blown disease… unless the body’s immune system is compromised in some way.
There’s even evidence that, left unattended, some cancers just disappear on their own. Dr. Per-Henrik Zahl and his colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, Norway, compared the incidence of breast cancer rates in nearly 120,000 women between the ages of 50 and 64 who had a mammogram every two years over a six-year period, to the breast cancer rates in 110,000 women of the same age who had a mammogram just once at the end of the six-year period. They found that the cumulative incidence of invasive breast cancer was significantly higher in the group that had biennial mammograms than those who only had a one-time prevalence mammogram at the end of the observation period. This has raised the possibility that cancer tumors might spontaneously regress if left undetected.

In Nov. 24, 2008, The New York Times reported that cancer researchers have known for years that it’s possible for some cancers to go away on their own. There were instances of melanomas and kidney cancers that just vanished spontaneously. Neuroblastoma, a rare childhood tumor, has also been shown to go away without treatment.

If such spontaneous remission were indeed possible this might cause a major shift in the way cancer is treated. Since most cancers that are detected are often treated, one might wonder what would happen if cancers were left alone and untreated.

Metaphysical scientists believe that whatever one focuses on grows. Therefore, when cancer is detected, diagnosed and treated, all focus is centered on the disease and the cancerous condition may well become exacerbated rather than healed.

New York Times best selling author Gregg Braden, who is internationally recognized as a pioneer in bridging science and spirituality, stated: “Everywhere we look, consciousness will put something there for us to see. If you are awake and conscious, you are creating. So, what does it mean when you are trained to look for something you don’t want? What does it mean to keep looking for a lump in a breast?”

That’s certainly food for thought.

The fact remains that the human body is designed to heal itself.

But the body heals itself automatically ONLY when it’s supplied with everything it needs to do its job—AND when there are no barriers that keep it from functioning properly. The most essential element that the body needs in order to function is oxygen. Sadly, most people living in modern societies are deficient of oxygen. As for the greatest barrier that keeps the body from functioning properly, that is… stress.

It stands to reason that when you keep your body oxygenated, and minimize stress, that could possibly be the recipe for spontaneous remission of almost any disease.

Many natural health practitioners believe that cancer treatments offered by orthodox medicine are extremely damaging to the body—especially the immune system, which is the only system in the body that can restore the body to health and optimum functioning.

Therefore, people don’t actually “die of cancer.” Rather, they die because of immune system failure. Oftentimes, their immune system is suppressed and severely compromised because of unhealthy lifestyles or treatments—and this renders the body incapable of healing itself the way it was designed to do.

Conversely, if the immune system is strengthened and optimized, there’s almost no disease that the body cannot heal.

men can be victims of forced marriage too."

British officials have been dealing with several cases of young Indian-origin women being forced into marriages against their will, but recent cases show a sharp increase of men facing such ordeals.

Britain has set up a Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) that deals with cases of British citizens being forcibly taken to the Indian sub-continent and married against their will for cultural, immigration or family reasons.

The unit has rescued several young women, but it is estimated that most cases go unreported. Latest figures show that during the last year, the unit registered a 65 per cent rise in the number of calls from men.

The unit received the most calls from men linked to Pakistan, followed by India and Bangladesh. It also received calls from British men with links to the Middle East, Africa and eastern Europe.

A spokesman said: "The calls we receive are the tip of the iceberg. It now seems likely that men account for one in five of all the forced marriages that take place to British citizens."

In June, the FMU took a call from a young man in Leicester whose family had allegedly locked him in his bedroom after discovering that he was gay.

He told the FMU that his family were downstairs, discussing whether to take him to India and either kill him, abandon him there or marry him off.

Last year, the FMU gave advice and support to 1,682 men and women regarding suspected forced marriage.

More than 220 calls and emails involved male victims, up from 134 in 2008. As of the end of May this year, there have been 88 calls from men for help.

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said: "Boys and men who are forced into marriage find it harder to ask for help than women, but we are urging males affected by forced marriage to speak out and seek the help that is available to them."

He added: "Of course, women make up the majority of forced marriage victims, and over 1,400 reports of women facing this abuse were dealt with by the FMU last year.

But people often don't realise that men can be victims of forced marriage too."