Surprise! Your Skin Can Hear

We not only hear with our ears, but also through our skin, according to a new study.

The finding, based on experiments in which participants listened to certain syllables while puffs of air hit their skin, suggests our brains take in and integrate information from various senses to build a picture of our surroundings.

Along with other recent work, the research flips the traditional view of how we perceive the world on its head.

"[That's] very different from the more traditional ideas, based on the fact that we have eyes so we think of ourselves as seeing visible information, and we have ears so we think of ourselves as hearing auditory information. That's a little bit misleading," study researcher Bryan Gick of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, told LiveScience.

"A more likely explanation is that we have brains that perceive rather than we have eyes that see and ears that hear."

With such abilities, Gick views humans as "whole-body perceiving machines."

The research, funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada and the National Institutes of Health, is detailed in the Nov. 26 issue of the journal Nature.

How we perceive

Gick's work builds on past studies showing, for instance, that we can see sound and hear light, even if we don't consciously realize it. Other studies show if you observe another person's lips moving and think that other is speaking, your brain's auditory regions would light up, Gick said.

Scientists had explained such sensing prowess as the result of experience, as we see and hear people speaking all the time and so it'd be only natural to learn how to integrate what we see with what we hear.

The alternative would be an innate ability. And so Gick and his colleague Donald Derrick, also of the University of British Columbia, studied two senses that aren't generally paired - auditory and tactile - to figure out the root of perception.

How skin hears

The team focused on aspirated sounds, such as "pa" and "ta" that involve an inaudible burst of air when spoken, as well as unaspirated sounds, such as "ba" and "da."

Blind-folded participants listened to recordings of a male voice saying each of the four syllables and had to press a button to indicate which sound they heard (pa, ta, ba or da). Participants were divided into three groups of 22, with one group hearing the syllables while a puff of air was blown onto their hand, the other had air blown onto the neck, and the control group heard the sounds with no air.

About 10 percent of the time when air was puffed onto the skin, participants mistakenly perceived the unaspirated syllables as being their aspirated equivalents. So when the guy said "ba," such participants would indicate they heard "pa." The control group didn't show such mistaken perceptions.

A follow-up experiment in which participants got a tap on the skin rather than a puff of air showed no such mix-up between aspirated and unaspirated sounds.

Next, Gick is working with scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, to figure out how the brain allows such multi-sense integration.

- via Yahoo

Become a Martian

The public can assist in analyzing the plethora of Mars data available from missions like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars.

Drawing on observations from NASA's Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

"We're at a point in history where everyone can be an explorer," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own."

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system's grandest canyon, which resides on Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far better maps, smoother zoom-in views, and make for easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

By counting craters, the public also may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on Mars. In the past, counting Martian craters has posed a challenge because of the vast numbers involved. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select.

With a common goal of inspiring digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, NASA and Microsoft unveiled the Web site at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. The site also beckons software developers to win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use.

"Industry leaders like NASA and Microsoft have a social responsibility as well as a vested interest in advancing science and technology education," said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. "We are excited to be working with NASA to provide new opportunities to engage with Mars mission data, and to help spark interest and excitement among the next generation of scientists and technologists."

To encourage more public participation, the site also provides a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community. Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted questions. Other features include interactive tools for viewing Martian regions and movies about people who study Mars in diverse ways....

To enroll as a virtual Martian citizen and start exploring, visit: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov

via Become a Martian.

Iraq was only fourth on WMD risk list, inquiry hears + peak oil, the unspoken "why".

The full extent of how Tony Blair misled the public about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before and after the Iraq War was laid bare yesterday.

The Chilcot Inquiry heard that just ten days before the invasion of Iraq Mr Blair was told Saddam had no way of using weapons of mass destruction.

And weapons experts revealed that the former Prime Minister took Britain to war based on intelligence that his own spies rated just 'four out of ten' for accuracy.

On the eve of the conflict, intelligence chiefs told Mr Blair that the Iraqi dictator had no warheads capable of delivering chemical weapons, dramatically undermining the Prime Minister's case for war.

Yet Mr Blair gave the go-ahead for the invasion despite strong evidence that Iraq was no threat to Britain. Then, after the war, officials had to tell Mr Blair not to 'declare success too rapidly' in the quest to find WMD in Iraq as he continued to make misleading statements claiming that 'massive evidence' had been found.

The revelations reinforce the case that intelligence evidence that Saddam was no threat was ignored by Mr Blair to take Britain to war on a false prospectus. Sir William Ehrman, former Director General of Defence and Intelligence at the Foreign Office, said that on March 10, 2003 - ten days before the start of the war - British spies reported that Iraq had 'disassembled' what chemical weapons it had.

He said: 'On March 10 we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn't yet ordered their re-assembly and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents.' The evidence was summarised in a Joint Intelligence Committee report circulated in Whitehall on March 19.

Sir William blamed 'contradictory intelligence' for the failure to put the brakes on. But Tim Dowse, Foreign Office head of counter-proliferation between 2000 and 2002, also revealed that a month earlier, in February 2003, UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had made clear that he did not believe the mythical weapons existed.

'He raised it at a meeting with ministers,' Mr Dowse said. The most damning testimony concerned Downing Street's decision to write the now infamous dossier in September 2002 to make the case for war. Both WMD experts made clear that 'huge gaps' in intelligence on Iraq were flagged up to ministers, leaving them with no excuse when the caveats were removed from the final dossier.

Sir William said experts concluded that there never was 'an imminent threat' from Iraq, describing it only as a 'clear and present threat'. ...

Asked about suggestions that the 45-minute claim referred to WMDs which could be used by Iraq to strike another nation, Mr Dowse said: 'I don't think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile in that way.' Inquiry panel member Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman pointed out: 'But you didn't say it wasn't.' But Mr Dowse admitted that he had pushed for the inclusion of a paragraph on how some Iraqi missiles could hit British bases in Cyprus.

That became conflated with the 45 minute claim at the time, leaving many members of the public with the impression that weapons of mass destruction could be deployed on longrange missiles to hit British targets. The dossier eventually read that Saddam's 'military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. I am quite clear that Saddam will go to extreme lengths, indeed has already done so, to hide these weapons and avoid giving them up'.

In his foreword, Mr Blair wrote: 'What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.'via Iraq was only fourth on WMD risk list, inquiry hears | Mail Online.

Shouldn't lies that get people killed be some kind of crime or something? Well, remember that all of this was after Dick Cheney's secret energy meeting, which resulted in a final report on May 16, 2001. I guess if US and UK leaders knew about a coming disaster, they were trying to save their citizens from death and starvation which would result from a lack of Iraq's oil when demand outstrips supply. ... and see this ... and now this:

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," he added.

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.

The IEA acknowledges the importance of its own figures, boasting on its website: "The IEA governments and industry from all across the globe have come to rely on the World Energy Outlook to provide a consistent basis on which they can formulate policies and design business plans."

The British government, among others, always uses the IEA statistics rather than any of its own to argue that there is little threat to long-term oil supplies.

The IEA said tonight that peak oil critics had often wrongly questioned the accuracy of its figures. A spokesman said it was unable to comment ahead of the 2009 report being released tomorrow.

John Hemming, the MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil and gas, said the revelations confirmed his suspicions that the IEA underplayed how quickly the world was running out and this had profound implications for British government energy policy.

He said he had also been contacted by some IEA officials unhappy with its lack of independent scepticism over predictions. "Reliance on IEA reports has been used to justify claims that oil and gas supplies will not peak before 2030. It is clear now that this will not be the case and the IEA figures cannot be relied on," said Hemming. - guarduk

The responsible thing to do would be to tell the world the truth and have everyone cut back on energy use NOW. We should be using our last oil to find alternatives.  The path we are on, blindly using oil like it is unlimited, means we will hit a brick wall and face some serious problems in the next few years. Chaos, collapse of economies, starvation, dogs and cats sleeping together....

One man shows how to move stonehenge sized blocks alone

I think I saw this several years ago, but it is still interesting.

One man can build construction like Stonehenge this video shows it.

Wally Wallington has demonstrated that he can lift a Stonehenge-sized pillar weighing 22,000 lbs and moved a barn over 300 ft. What makes this so special is that he does it using only himself, gravity, and his incredible ingenuity.

He is a retired carpenter with 35 years experience in construction. In his work experience, over the years, many times he had to improvise on tools to get the job done. At one of these times, about 12 years ago, He had to remove some 1200 lb. saw cut concrete blocks from an existing floor. The problem was that he did not have a machine that could reach some of the blocks. The only obvious answer was to break the blocks into smaller pieces with a sledgehammer and load them into a wheelbarrow. To him, that seemed to be too much work at the time, so he improvised. Using a few rocks and leverage, He removed the blocks from below the floor to an area that the machine could reach them for removal. After doing this several times, the technique became very easy and quick. This experience make him consider the possibility that people may have used this technique before modern day equipment was available.

Nine years later, after retiring, he decided to explore this on his own. He brought home a one ton block of concrete from a job. Once he got home, he realized that he had to use his techniques to get the block off the truck. After unloading, he found that his technique allowed him to move the block around the yard with very little effort. At that time, his family became very interested in what their "crazy dad" was up to " this time".

via Mysterytopia: Stonehenge - How is it Built !? Answer is here, finaly!.

From the interesting gizapyramid.com site:

Ancient Construction

I have found that ancient legends from around the world are true. Some megaliths could have been set in place by as few as one man. I could build The Great Pyramid of Giza, using my techniques and primitive tools. On a twenty-five year construction schedule, (working forty hours per week at fifty weeks per year, using the input of myself to calculate) I would need a crew of 520 people to move blocks from the main quarry to the site and another 100  to move the blocks on site. For hoisting I need a crew of 120 (40 working and 80 rotating). My crew can raise 7000 lb. 100 ft. per minute. I have found the design of the pyramid is functional in it’s own construction. No external ramp is needed.

The Forgotten Technology

During the time of my projects, I have videotaped myself for demonstrations for my family and friends. In order to pursue my project further, I am offering edited copies of my home videotapes for sale. The plan is to build a replica of Stonehenge with at least 10 ton blocks on end and 2 ton blocks on top. One man, no wheels, no rollers, no metal, using only sticks and stones. In the future, either myself, sons, or grandsons will be able to show this and other forms of The Forgotten Technology to the world. I believe that I have learned to use the laws of physics to my advantage. If you would like a copy of my tape, send $20 to: W.T. Wallington @ 600 South Main Street, Lapeer, Michigan 48446.

While I doubt Zahi Hawass would agree, it is enjoyable to speculate that there is still a lost secret of levitation that was used in building the pyramids:

Let us first look at some historical records.  Masoudi, an Arab historian of the 10th century wrote that the Egyptians used magic spells to move large blocks.  His account is the following:

"In carrying on the work, leaves of papyrus, or paper, inscribed with certain characters, were placed under the stones prepared in the quarries; and upon being struck, the blocks were moved at each time the distance of a bowshot (which would be a little over 200 feet), and so by degrees arrived at the pyramids."

Was this story made up by Masoudi, or is there some truth in it?  Is it possibly that he was reporting on an early legend that the blocks were moved mysteriously and the story of the inscribed papyrus was added to embellish the story?  Or were the blocks placed on some unknown apparatus (mistaken by the historian to be a piece of papyrus) that would levitate them.  If you strip away all the additions and embellishments to a legend, sometimes you are left with a strand of truth. - gizapyramid

Cup of mint tea is an effective painkiller

A cup of Brazilian mint tea has pain relieving qualities to match those of commercially available analgesics, a study suggests.

Hyptis crenata has been prescribed by Brazilian healers for millennia to treat ailments from headaches and stomach pain to fever and flu.

Working on mice, a Newcastle University team has proved scientifically that the ancient medicine men were right.

The study is published in the journal Acta Horticulturae.

In order to mimic the traditional treatment as closely as possible, the Newcastle team carried out a survey in Brazil to find out how the medicine is typically prepared and how much should be consumed.

The most common method was to produce a decoction. This involves boiling the dried leaves in water for 30 minutes and allowing the liquid to cool before drinking it as a tea.

via BBC News - Cup of mint tea is an effective painkiller.

Websites 'need to pay for news'

Rupert Murdoch has said it is time for internet search engines and other websites to start to pay for any news reports they currently take for free.

Mr Murdoch, owner of media giant News Corporation, said such sites would soon have to pay for any content taken from his firm's many news providers.

He was speaking at the World Media Summit in Beijing, where his comments were backed by some of his competitors.

Associated Press boss Tom Curley said news providers were being "exploited".

'Act decisively'

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content," said Mr Murdoch, whose company owns newspapers including the Sun and the Times in the UK, and the New York Post and Wall Street Journal in the US.

"If we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators - the people in this hall - who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph."

The BBC's Chris Hogg said Mr Murdoch warned global news executives who had gathered for the summit that many news providers faced going out of business unless they started to charge websites such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook for carrying their content. ...

Mr Curley said news content creators had "been too slow to react to the free exploitation of news by third parties without input or permission".

"Crowd-sourcing web services such as Wikipedia, YouTube and Facebook, have become preferred customer destinations for breaking news, displacing websites of traditional news publishers," he added.

Mr Curley said news providers had to "decisively act to take back control of our content".

"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves - at great human and economic cost - to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it."

Mr Curley said earlier this week that Associated Press was considering selling news stories to some websites, such as Google or Yahoo, exclusively for a certain period, such as half an hour.

via BBC NEWS | Business | Websites 'need to pay for news'.

I guess Murdoch is not a fan of Fair Use. Listen, people avoid mainstream sites because they don't want ads and hype. I am consistently frustrated by having to view spam ads all over a page with the text I want to read threading through a maze of crap. Murdoch just doesn't get it. The days where a few giants had a stranglehold on news is over. They blew it by lying too damn many times and by spamming us relentlessly.  If the big news outlets go to a paid model, the will lose EVEN MORE viewers and then their advertisers will drop them. They should be embracing the current technology, encouraging crowd-sourcing, providing teasers for bloggers and other social sites, with links to the details on their sites for those who are truly interested.  It is a shame that Murdoch had decided to pick a fight with his own consumers. He will not win until he understands what people really want: free interesting verified facts relevant to our lives with limited salient pithy interpretation that holds up under scrutiny.

Gold hits record highs, why I recommend Palladium now

Gold is a new bubble waiting to burst, but not for a while. If, like me, you bought low years ago, congrats! This is not really the time to buy gold. This is the time to buy things that are currently low in cost but will go up in the future.

I posted a tip several months ago about Palladium. Palladium has many uses and the price is good right now. The value, like gold, is still climbing and at $371/oz Palladium is well below its 5 year high of $579/oz.  The US just agreed to curb greenhouse emissions. How does this relate to the price of Palladium? Here's how:

Palladium is the active component in several catalytic formulations for environmental technologies, due to its superior performances in the conversion of some hydrocarbons (for example, methane) and halocarbons, and the thermal stability and low volatility of Pd species. The properties and reactivity of Pd-based catalysts in the conversion of methane catalytic combustion for gas turbine applications, reduction of greenhouse gas (methane, N₂O) emissions, hydrodehalogenation and oxidative destruction of halocarbons and their applications in the elimination of other pollutants from gaseous emissions are reviewed, with emphasis on the structure-activity relationships, reaction mechanism and sensitivity to poisoning. - sciencedirect

Here's the scoop on gold:

Gold climbed to the highest price ever, capping the longest rally in 27 years, as the dollar’s slump deepened and on a report that India’s central bank may add to last month’s 200 metric-ton purchase.

Gold reached a record $1,189 an ounce and has rallied 13 percent since Nov. 2, after India said it bought bullion from the International Monetary Fund. The country, the world’s largest gold consumer, may buy more from the IMF, the Financial Chronicle reported. U.S. Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge of the greenback’s strength, fell to a 15-month low.

“There is a lot of central-bank buying, hedge-fund buying and gold is obviously getting to $1,200 an ounce before the end of the year,” David Lee, a trader at Heraeus Precious Metals Management in New York, said in a telephone interview. The metal has climbed 34 percent this year, heading for the sharpest annual increase since 1979.

Gold futures for February delivery climbed $21.20, or 1.8 percent, to $1,188.60 on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division. Up for a ninth straight session, the most-active contract’s rally is the longest since August 1982. The metal has climbed 14.1 percent this month, heading for the biggest monthly gain since September 1999.

“Funds and central banks around the world are nervous about the future of the U.S. dollar and the world economy, and that’s why they are buying gold,” Lee said by e-mail. “We’ve reached ‘irrational-exuberance’ levels on many commodities,” including gold and copper, he said.

One-Way Trade

“The gold trade is as crowded as a Tokyo subway car at rush hour,” Jon Nadler, a Kitco Inc. senior analyst in Montreal, said by e-mail. “This has been a one-way, dollar- carry-fueled street since Sept. 1, and it has seen the market become decoupled from anything resembling its fundamentals -- kind of like oil became last year.”

Bullion typically moves inversely to the U.S. currency. The dollar index slid as much as 0.9 percent today after Federal Reserve officials described this year’s decline as “orderly.”

“We expect gold to continue to break through new highs” through this year, Scott Licamele, the director of emerging- markets research at Red Star Asset Management, said by e-mail. “The weak-dollar trend will continue as dollar-debasement fears persist.”

In London, gold for immediate delivery rose $17.42, or 1.5 percent, to $1,186.82 an ounce at 7:17 p.m. local time after touching a record of $1,187.38.

‘Going Ballistic’

“Gold is in uncharted territory as it continues to go ballistic,” Ralph Preston, a Heritage West Futures Inc. analyst in San Diego, said by e-mail.

“With today’s push over Monday’s high, look for residual momentum to carry prices to $1,200 an ounce before month’s end, which represents the next psychological stop on this runaway bull train,” Preston said. “I don’t see a bubble. I see a changing world order, and gold is a reflection of that change.”

The central banks of Russia and Sri Lanka have acquired gold recently, prompting analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale and Barclays Capital to forecast more such purchases. Governments are the biggest bullion holders.

“Actions from central banks are very important at the moment,” said Eugen Weinberg, an analyst at Commerzbank AG. “The purchase from India was like a seal of prices above $1,000 an ounce. Also, other central banks are buying gold.” - bloomberg

Implant-based cancer vaccine is first to eliminate tumors in mice

A cancer vaccine carried into the body on a carefully engineered, fingernail-sized implant is the first to successfully eliminate tumors in mammals, scientists report this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The new approach, pioneered by bioengineers and immunologists at Harvard University, uses plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens and implanted under the skin to reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors. The new paper describes the use of such implants to eradicate melanoma tumors in mice.

"This work shows the power of applying engineering approaches to immunology," says David J. Mooney, the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. "By marrying engineering and immunology through this collaboration with Glenn Dranoff at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, we've taken a major step toward the design of effective cancer vaccines."

Most cancer cells easily skirt the immune system, which operates by recognizing and attacking invaders from outside the body. The approach developed by Mooney's group redirects the immune system to target tumors, and appears both more effective and less cumbersome than other cancer vaccines currently in clinical trials.

Conventional cancer vaccinations remove immune cells from the body, reprogram them to attack malignant tissues, and return them to the body. However, more than 90 percent of reinjected cells have died before having any effect in experiments.

The slender implants developed by Mooney's group are 8.5 millimeters in diameter and made of an FDA-approved biodegradable polymer. Ninety percent air, the disks are highly permeable to immune cells and release cytokines, powerful recruiters of immune-system messengers called dendritic cells.

These cells enter an implant's pores, where they are exposed to antigens specific to the type of tumor being targeted. The dendritic cells then report to nearby lymph nodes, where they direct the immune system's T cells to hunt down and kill tumor cells.

"Inserted anywhere under the skin -- much like the implantable contraceptives that can be placed in a woman's arm -- the implants activate an immune response that destroys tumor cells," Mooney says.

The technique may have powerful advantages over surgery and chemotherapy, and may also be useful in combination with existing therapies. It only targets tumor cells, avoiding collateral damage elsewhere in the body. And, much as an immune response to a bacterium or virus generates long-term resistance, researchers anticipate cancer vaccines will generate permanent and body-wide resistance against cancerous cells, providing durable protection against relapse.

via Implant-based cancer vaccine is first to eliminate tumors in mice.

Cells defend themselves with protein bodyguards

When cells are confronted with an invading virus or bacteria or exposed to an irritating chemical, they protect themselves by going off their DNA recipe and inserting the wrong amino acid into new proteins to defend them against damage, scientists have discovered.

These "regulated errors" comprise a novel non-genetic mechanism by which cells can rapidly make important proteins more resistant to attack when stressed, said Tao Pan, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. A team of 18 scientists from the University of Chicago and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease led by Pan and Jonathan Yewdell published the findings Thursday in the journal Nature.

"This mechanism allows every protein to get some protection," Pan said. "The genetic code is considered untouchable, but this is a non-genetic strategy used in cells to create a bodyguard for proteins."

Proteins are constructed through a process called translation where cellular elements use the genetic code to guide the assembly of building blocks called amino acids into the correct sequence. First, a copy of the DNA, called messenger RNA, is made and transferred to a cellular structure called a ribosome. Transfer RNAs (tRNA), one for each of the 20 amino acids used in building proteins, read the messenger RNA code and bring the proper amino acids to the ribosome, where they are bonded together to form a complete protein.

Each tRNA can be attached to only one of 20 amino acids, a specificity that prevents errors during the construction of proteins. In artificial laboratory preparations, scientists have observed that only one out of every 10,000 amino acids is placed into a protein incorrectly, and thus protein errors were thought to be exceptionally rare.

But Jeffrey Goodenbour, University of Chicago graduate student and co-lead author along with Nir Netzer of the NIAID, decided to look at how often tRNA errors, called misacylations, occurred in live cells. After developing a novel technique for measuring these errors, published for the first time in this paper, the authors were surprised to find a much higher error rate in those cells for the amino acid methionine. As high as one out of every 100 methionines was incorrectly placed in proteins, they found.

When the cells were stressed by exposure to a virus, bacteria or a toxic chemical such as hydrogen peroxide, that error rate went even higher, as up to 10 percent of methionines placed into new proteins were different from what the gene specified.

"That was 1,000 times more than the textbook says should be there," Pan said.

Further experiments revealed that it was always the same amino acid, methionine, placed incorrectly into new proteins. Methionine is one of only two amino acids to carry sulfur atoms on its side chains, a feature that allows it to neutralize dangerous molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS) that form inside an infected or stressed cell. ROS can damage proteins through a chemical process called oxidation, but methionine can be oxidized (and restored through a process called reduction) without being permanently damaged.

"The idea is that methionine can protect you from having oxidation of the active site of protein, which would ultimately completely block function of the protein," Goodenbour said. "You end up reducing the total reactive oxygen species load in the cell. It's a very interesting mechanism."

Cells normally put methionines near important parts of a protein to protect those segments from being damaged by reactive oxygen species. When the cell is under stress, and the amount of ROS increases, the number of methionine "errors" is ramped up tenfold, allowing new proteins to be even more resistant to attack.

"Think of a boxing match," Pan said. "If you put methionine close to active site, the reactive oxygen species has to get past it to get to the active site residues for oxidization. You've put something right in front of it so a protein can take a hit. If you have a lot of methionines, to knock this protein out will take many, many hits. So this is a strategy used in cells to create a bodyguard for a protein."

Researchers discover biological basis of 'bacterial immune system'

Bacteria don't have easy lives. In addition to mammalian immune systems that besiege the bugs, they have natural enemies called bacteriophages, viruses that kill half the bacteria on Earth every two days.Still, bacteria and another class of microorganisms called archaea (first discovered in extreme environments such as deep-sea volcanic vents) manage just fine, thank you, in part because they have a built-in defense system that helps protect them from many viruses and other invaders.

A team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Georgia has now discovered how this bacterial defense system works, and it could lead to new classes of targeted antibiotics, new tools to study gene function in microorganisms and more stable bacterial cultures used by food and biotechnology industries to make products such as yogurt and cheese.

The research was published today in the journal Cell.

"Understanding how bacteria defend themselves gives us important information that can be used to weaken bacteria that are harmful and strengthen bacteria that are helpful," said Michael Terns, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "We also hope to exploit this knowledge to develop new tools to speed research on microorganisms."

Other authors on the Cell paper include Rebecca Terns, a senior research scientist in biochemistry and molecular biology at UGA; Caryn Hale, a graduate student in the Terns lab at UGA; Lance Wells, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and Georgia Cancer Coalition Scholar at UGA and his graduate student Peng Zhao; and research associate Sara Olson, assistant professor Michael Duff and associate professor Brenton Graveley of the University of Connecticut Health Center.

The system, whose mechanism of action was uncovered in the Terns lab (Michael and Rebecca Terns are a husband-wife team), involves a "dynamic duo" made up of a bacterial RNA that recognizes and physically attaches itself to a viral target molecule, and partner proteins that cut up the target, thereby "silencing" the would-be cell killer.

The invader surveillance component of the dynamic duo (an RNA with a viral recognition sequence) comes from sites in the genomes of bacteria and archaea, known technically as "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" or more familiarly called CRISPRs. (A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same forward and backward.) CRISPR RNAs don't work alone in fighting invaders, though.

Their partners in invader defense are Cas proteins that arise from a suite of genes called "CRISPR-associated" or Cas genes. Together, they form the "CRISPR-Cas system," and the new paper describes this dynamic duo and how they protect bacteria from viruses.

"You can look at one as a police dog that tracks down and latches onto an invader, and the other as a police officer that follows along and `silences' the offender," said Rebecca Terns. "It functions like our own immune system, constantly watching for and neutralizing intruders. But the surveillance is done by tiny CRISPR RNAs rather than antibodies."

What the team discovered was that a particular complex of CRISPR RNAs and a subset of the Cas proteins termed the RAMP module recognizes and destroys invader RNAs that it encounters.

"This work has uncovered intriguing parallels between the bacterial CRISPR-Cas system and the human immune system, suggesting a novel way to target disease-causing bacteria," said Laurie Tompkins, Ph.D., who oversees genetic mechanisms grants at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences. "It may be possible to turn CRISPR-Cas into a suicide machine, killing pathogenic bacteria by an attack on their own molecules, similar to the self-destruction seen in human autoimmune diseases."

More Hacktivism: 9/11 Pager data, where are the UFO leaks?

From 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (US east coast time), WikiLeaks is releasing over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

The messages are being broadcast to the global community "live", sychronized to the time of day they were sent. The first message is from 3AM September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, and the last, 24 hours later.

Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults to their operators as the World Trade Center collapsed.

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of our time. We hope that its revelation will lead to a more nuanced understanding of the event and its tragic consequences.

An index of messages released so far is available here.

Twitter users should refer to #911txts. We will give status updates at twitter.com/wikileaks.

Observations may be posted to reddit. Please vote for important material.

via 9/11 Pager data.

Wikileaks has 14,263 Followers. About Wikileaks:

Wikileaks is a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances - the internet, and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered.

Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to stronger scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency can provide. Wikileaks provides a forum for the entire global community to relentlessly examine any document for its credibility, plausibility, veracity and validity. ...In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.

We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government. - wikileaks

Have there been any UFO leaks? Not yet, AFAIK, but if Gary McKinnon had downloaded the images of the craft he supposedly saw when he hacked into a NASA computer, Wikileaks would have been the place to post them.

For ufologists... the idea that someone in government, abroad or here, eventually, might disclose the cover-up about UFOs that they contend is rampant, and can do so anonymously, should come as heaven-sent... - wikileaks

He said he investigated a NASA photographic expert's claim that at the Johnson Space Center's Building 8, images were regularly cleaned of evidence of UFO craft, and confirmed this, comparing the raw originals with the "processed" images. He claimed to have viewed a detailed image of "something not man-made" and "cigar shaped" floating above the northern hemisphere, and assuming his viewing would be undisrupted owing to the hour, he did not think of capturing the image because he was "bedazzled", and therefore did not think of securing it with the screen capture function in the software at the point when his connection was interrupted.^[39] McKinnon stated the image was approximately 256 megabytes in size, yet that the craft's details were still distinct in the greatly inferior 4-bit color and low resolution he had to reduce the viewing image to appear across his mere 56k modem connection (approximate transfer rate 5.4kbps). - wiki

A person could submit documents to wikileaks here: https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Leak but, of course, a person with proof of aliens would want to do something like that from an unmonitored public computer such as in a busy library to avoid being traced.  On the disinfo side of the coin, there is no reason someone could not fake some documents and leak them to "prove" something outlandish.... then again, the point of wikileaks is that you'd have a lot of people reviewing the leaked document(s) to determine if the veracity.

'Police targeting people for their DNA'

Police forces have been arresting people simply to add them to the controversial DNA database as a result of lax rules that have developed with almost no public scrutiny, the Government's independent DNA watchdog warns today.

The Human Genetics Commission (HGC) also says there is little evidence that the national DNA database, the largest of its kind in the world, is of any use in solving crimes. In its two-year report examining the database, published today, it concludes that allowing police to add anyone arrested to the DNA database damages the assumption of innocence.

The report received testimony from one senior police source, a retired chief superintendent, who said it was "the norm" for officers to arrest someone to obtain their DNA profile.

"It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons, if not the reason, for the change in practice is so that the DNA of the offender can be obtained," said the source, whose identity has been kept secret. "It matters not whether the arrest leads to no action, a caution or a charge, because the DNA is kept anyway."

The HGC calls for a debate on the rules on taking DNA samples and adding them to the database, which currently holds the data of around 5 million people. It adds that an independent body is needed to oversee the database. The commission also recommends that all police officers be added to the database to foster trust with the communities they serve.

It notes that there is "very little concrete evidence" as to how useful the database is in investigating crime, adding that the database is having a "disproportionate effect" on some groups. Young black men are "highly over-represented", it says, with more than three-quarters of those aged 18-35 on the database.

Professor Jonathan Montgomery, the chairman of the HGC, said "function creep" of the database had been allowed to take place almost unchecked, as it evolved from a database of offenders to a database of suspects with hardly any legal foundation or scrutiny.

via 'Police targeting people for their DNA' - Crime, UK - The Independent.

In my view each person owns his or her unique DNA, along with all the rights to it, so police who collect and store it are committing a crime of biological property theft.

Learning while you sleep may work after all

Cosmos magazine describes an interesting study that appears in Science, but John Rudoy, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, in Chicago, USA.

... Half of the sound cues were then played to the participants once they had reached the 'deep sleep' stage of their nap, as determined by electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings.

When tested post-nap, it was found that participants were able to place the sound-cued objects more accurately than those not played during their nap. However, in the control experiment, in which participants were played the additional sounds without any sleep, there was no marked improvement. ... - cosmos

The article goes on to say that the practical application of this is yet to be determined. I wonder if I can use this to improve my pitch recall. If I study during the day, then play a tape loop all night that plays a note and then tells me what that note is, would I be able to wake up and have absolute pitch awareness?

Seems worth a try.

 

Learn while you sleep? Might be possible after all...

Listening to specific sounds during sleep may help you strengthen memories of information learned while awake, a study published in the U.S. journal Science has found.

The findings suggest that our mind continues to receive and interpret external signals outside of the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep - when dreaming occurs - and during deeper stages of sleep, generally associated with low levels of brain activity.

If this is the case, individuals wanting to consolidate certain memories over others, such as students cramming for an exam or learning a foreign language, could find a whole new avenue open up to them.


"This study tells us something about how memories are processed during sleep," said the study's lead author, John Rudoy, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, in Chicago, USA.

"From previous scientific literature it seemed that memories could be strengthened by a period of sleep," he said. "This shows that the strengthening process is specific - certain memories can be strengthened in favour of others - and that it can be influenced by external stimuli."

For the study, 12 participants were shown 50 images of objects, such as a cat or a kettle, with corresponding sounds, such as a meow and a whistle. Each image had a unique location on a computer screen, which participants memorised before being taken into a dark room to nap.

Sound cues

Half of the sound cues were then played to the participants once they had reached the 'deep sleep' stage of their nap, as determined by electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings.

When tested post-nap, it was found that participants were able to place the sound-cued objects more accurately than those not played during their nap. However, in the control experiment, in which participants were played the additional sounds without any sleep, there was no marked improvement.

"This study is interesting because it relates back to the sorts of things people have thought about in the past, like helping kids by playing them their timetables at night," said John Rostas, neuroscientist from the University of Newcastle, in New South Wales, Australia. "It puts some scientific objectivity and solidarity behind something that has long been speculated about without much evidence."

While Rostas sees a high likelihood that similar techniques could be used for practical purposes in the future, he thinks it might be a long way off yet.

"There is still the problem that the stimulus has to be selective," he said. "Say you're trying to teach a child mathematics, or something equally complex, what aspect of the stimulus would you be playing while they sleep? This study is an example of proof of concept. In theory it could be possible, but the question is how to apply it in practice."

"We are working with some other scientists to look into further aspects of this phenomenon, but it's very early in the process," added Rudoy, who pointed out that there are still a number of unanswered questions, such as how long the increased memory capacity would last, and whether the same results could also come from spoken words, rather than simple non-linguistic sounds.

"The answers to these questions could help us understand just how the technique could be applied practically," he said.

- cosmos

Design fixed for 1,000mph car

The UK team aiming to smash its own land speed record by driving a car beyond 1,000mph (1,610km/h) has settled on a final design for the vehicle.

It calls for a major re-configuration of the vehicle's two power units, with a Eurofighter jet engine now being positioned above a hybrid rocket.

The car, known as Bloodhound, will be built in Bristol's docklands.

The team expects to start running the vehicle on the Hakskeen Pan, Northern Cape Province, South Africa, in 2011.

The dried-out lake bed had the perfect surface for the record attempt, said Bloodhound's driver, Wing Commander Andy Green.

"It's hard enough to support a six-tonne car on metal wheels but soft enough to allow the wheels just to sink in maybe 10mm," he told BBC News.

The project was launched into the public domain in October 2008. Since then, intensive efforts have been under way to finalise the car's design - one that maximises the vehicle's performance and stability.

The original plan was to position a small (200kg) rocket above a heavier (1,000kg) EJ200 Eurofighter Typhoon engine loaned to the team by Britain's Ministry of Defence.

However, as the design staff worked through the modelling, it became clear that additional thrust was going to be needed to overcome the aerodynamic drag. This called for a bigger (400kg) rocket.

This in turn introduced instabilities that could only be solved by flipping the positions of the two power units.

"We have switched the architecture of the rocket and the jet engine and the reason for that was we were seeing some quite high lift loads at the rear end of the car," explained chief designer John Piper.

"The change, though, has had some beneficial side-effects, he added.

"We can now get a good chassis structure across the top which means we can now have a really good mounting for a single fin, whereas before with the rocket on top it was right in the way of where the fin would go. That meant we were going to have to have two fins, one on each side; and they were occupying the space where ideally we'd like to put in parachute cans.

via BBC News - Design fixed for 1,000mph car.

British intelligence fingers US Citizen in India Bombing

British intelligence tipped off the American authorities over a suspect in the Mumbai bombings, the Daily Telegraph has learned.

David Coleman Headley, also known as Daood Sayed Gilani, made frequent visits to the Indian city where he mixed with the Bollywood set as a cover for his activities, it is claimed.

He joined a local gym in the upmarket Breach Candy area and stayed at the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the targets, in April and May 2007.

According to a US indictment, Headley, 49, was a freelance reconnaissance agent for terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks a year ago.

Intelligence sources have told the Daily Telegraph that British officers collected the vital information that identified Headley, a US citizen living in Chicago who was arrested in October. They declined to give further details.

British intelligence was also responsible for the arrest of another US terrorist suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24, who was allegedly planning attacks on the New York subway when he was arrested in Denver in September.

Investigators in India are still trying to piece together Headley's activity in the country around the crucial period, when he posed as a businessman running an immigration service.

He is said to have befriended a man called Rahul who has identified himself to Indian police as Rahul Bhatt, a young actor from one of Bollywood's leading families.

Apart from his visit to the Taj Mahal hotel in 2007, when he stayed in the heritage building attacked by the terrorists the following year, he also visited New Delhi, staying in the city's Paharganj area, in October 2007 and March 2009.

He is reported to have rented an apartment close to his gym in Mumbai from April 2008, where his landlady has described him as a "sweet and charming man".

Headley's associate, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, a Canadian living in Chicago, stayed in a guesthouse in south Mumbai close to the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, another target, until November 21 last year, five days before the attacks, when he returned to North America.

Headley himself was in Pakistan at the time of the attacks working on another plan he called the "Mickey Mouse Project". Headley and Rana both attended the Hasan Abdal Cadet College in Pakistan and were members of an internet group called the Abdalians.

Five Pakistani army officers were arrested this week in connection with their activities. One Pakistani officer, referred to in US legal documents as "Individual A," is said to have acted as Headley's link to Let and another group called Harakat ul- Jihad Islami, both of which are associated with al-Qaeda.

While investigations continue into Headley's activities in India he has been charged in Chicago with a number of other terrorist offences.

He is accused of plotting an attack on the culture editor and cartoonist who published cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark. - telegraph

More on Headley. (Note: "carrying out a recce" = conducting a reconaissance mission.)

David Coleman Headley personally visited every target site of the 26/11 terror strikes last year, carrying out a recce on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a police source said today. ...

“He (Headley) mapped the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Taj and Trident hotels and Nariman House. We are interrogating (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son) Rahul to find out when he went to Leopold Café. That he did is certain — when he did that is what we need to know,” a top officer said.

Headley had visited the Mumbai home of Rahul, who contacted police after learning of the terror suspect’s arrest by America’s Federal Burau of Investigation (FBI) last month.

The source said Headley, a Pakistani-born US national, and his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana stayed in Hotel Outram, a seedy motel in Mumbai’s Fort area, for about a fortnight in July 2008.

Born Daood Gilani, Headley, who changed his name and passport in 2006, posed as a Jewish American during his Mumbai stay. A source close to Rahul too confirmed that Headley had claimed to be a Jew. ...

The FBI seized a book called How to Pray Like a Jew from him at the time of his arrest in Chicago. He had prepared himself thoroughly to pose as a Jew,” the officer said.

I found no pictures of Headley.  How do they know he was "posing" as Jewish?  I find no such book title, but I suspect it was this book: "To Pray As A Jew: A Guide To The Prayer Book And The Synagogue Service".

Interestingly...

It turns out that US investigators had Headley under surveillance a month before the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. They monitored him for a year before the FBI arrested him at the Chicago airport on October 3 as he planned to leave for Philadelphia en route to Pakistan. - indiaexpress

It seems some Pakistani army officers were working with a senior al-Qaida member on the Mumbai and other terror attacks.

Five Pakistani army officers have been detained for questioning over possible links to two U.S. terror suspects accused of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper, intelligence officials said Tuesday. The detentions underscore long-standing allegations that elements in Pakistan support a militant group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is devoted to fighting the country's arch enemy, India. The group is blamed for last year's terror attacks in Mumbai and other strikes in India in recent years. Last month's arrests of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana in Chicago have cast a fresh spotlight on the group. U.S. prosecutors said the two men were believed to be working with an unidentified senior member of the outfit and a senior al-Qaida operative. Two Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking anonymously because they are not allowed to release their identity, said phone records showed the five Pakistani officers had contacted Headley and Rana. They say the five include a retired brigadier general and two active lieutenant colonels, but did not provide more details. - yahoo

Is the unnamed retired general Mahmood Ahmed, the once head of Pakistani intelligence, the man who paid the lead 9/11 terrorist $100,000 and was (bizzarely enough) meeting with the heads of the US Senate and House intelligence committee in Washington DC on the morning of the US terror attacks of 9/11/2001? No, no. Ahmed wasn't a brigadier general. A brigadier is a one star general. Ahmed was higher.  He was a Lt. general (a three star general) as in ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, now retired. According to wikipedia, "He is now a member of Tablighi Jamaat and preaching the teaching of Islam."

About "the Mumbai bombings":

The attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) began on November 26, 2008, and over the next three days, at least 173 people were killed, including 5 British nationals, with several hundreds injured. The famous Taj Mahal Palace hotel, scene of much of the carnage, was severely damaged by fire caused by the bombs. - noinvite

Ten heavily armed terrorists that India says came from Pakistan sneaked into Mumbai Nov 26 (2008) via the sea route and attacked various installations in the city, holding it to ransom for over 60 hours before they were neutralised. More than 170 people, including 26 foreigners, lost their lives in the carnage, while over 300 were injured. - indiainfo

The FDIC Reserve is gone. Blame our maniacal optimism.

The cash reserves needed for the FDIC to keep paying depositors at failed banks has all been used up. Don't panic (yet anyways), the FDIC has an open credit line to the Treasury Department (uh, that means us tax payers) that will keep the FDIC floating in cash to keep paying out money to Grandma and Grandpa at the failed banks.

You see, the FDIC is supposed to be self maintaining, it charges banks a fee to have their deposits insured. Think of it as the banks paying an insurance premium. That money goes into the FDIC kitty and is used to pay depositors when a bank fails. That is all well and good except when the financial system blows up like it has over the past 2 years.

As of today's quarterly report issued by the FDIC they are now broke, and I mean that in the literal sense.

FDIC deposit insurance fund now -$8.2B v $10.4B last quarter

Yep, they are broke, no money left in the cash drawer. So what now? As long as the FDIC has an open credit line with the Treasury then any bank that fails it will be the taxpayers who reimburse Grandma and Grandpa.

Think of it this way: you have a checking account at (let's pick a name out of the air) #tyBank and they get closed by the FDIC. Your very own money will be reimbursed to you via the FDIC insurance fund, but you will actually be paying yourself back in part because taxpayers will be on the hook to keep the FDIC floating in funds. So in the end you still lose some money. - ats

Verified the Deposit Insurance Fund figures here, page 15: http://www2.fdic.gov/qbp/2009sep/qbp.pdf

This happened in 1992 after the SNL bailout as well. How did this happen? It happened because we as a species are a bunch of damn fools. I tend to agree with Barbara Ehrenreich's main point:

November 24, 2009 "In These Times." -- In her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan/Holt, October 2009), Barbara Ehrenreich traces the origins of contemporary optimism from nineteenth-century healers to twentieth-century pushers of consumerism. She explores how that culture of optimism prevents us from holding to account both corporate heads and elected officials.Manufactured optimism has become a method to make the poor feel guilty for their poverty, the ill for their lack of health and the victims of corporate layoffs for their inability to find worthwhile jobs. Megachurches preach the “gospel of prosperity,” exhorting poor people to visualize financial success. Corporations have abandoned rational decision-making in favor of charismatic leadership.

This mania for looking on the bright side has given us the present financial collapse; optimistic business leaders -- assisted by rosy-eyed policymakers -- made very bad decisions. - infoclearinghouse

The solution is not pessimism, it is rational, incremental determination. Step by step we can recover. 

Lucky, the world's oldest sheep, dies

The 23-year-old ewe, recognised by the Guinness Book of Records, died peacefully on her farm at Lake Bolac, 57 miles west of Melbourne, after a short illness. Lucky's owner Delrae Westgarth says her beloved sheep had found the recent hot weather in Victoria hard to endure.

"It's a relief," said Mrs Westgarth. "She was good up to that first lot of heatwaves we had. But she went downhill a bit from then." The Westgarths, who rescued Lucky as a newborn lamb after she was abandoned by her mother, recently invested in air-conditioning for their elderly pet, but even this couldn't save her.

"We brought her into the shed where she was reared and put air conditioners on her," according to Mrs Westgarth. "That kept her going a bit longer." Mrs Westgarth and her husband Frank admitted that looking after their pet sheep – a Polwarth-Dorchester cross -- had become almost a full-time job.

After her teeth fell out, Lucky had to be handfed with crushed grain and milk.

In her old age Lucky became increasingly cantankerous, fighting with the other sheep and destroying the couple's flowerbeds. Recently, the old ewe was allowed inside the house to watch television.

"When she got too old we brought her into a paddock on her own so she could eat by herself, [and] so the other sheep wouldn't pinch all the tucker," says Mrs Westgarth.

The couple, who admit they have enjoyed Lucky's celebrity status over the years but say they have no plans to replace the world's oldest and surely most cosseted farm animal.

via Lucky, the world's oldest sheep, dies - Telegraph.

Jetman attempts first intercontinental flight, doesn't make it, will try again

Yves Rossy, who calls himself "Jetman", is poised to make the first intercontinental flight powered by a jet-pack when he attempts to fly across the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa to Europe on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Swiss adventurer powered into the record books a year ago when he crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover with a jet-propelled wing on his back.

He will now attempt the 23-mile crossing between Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain.

"It is going to be historic," Mr Rossy said ahead of the record attempt. "No one has ever done this before."

The daredevil, who also claims the nickname "Fusionman" - because he believes he combines the skills of man and bird - will leap from a plane on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar and attempt to soar across north Atlantic waters at the mouth of the Mediterranean.

Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth.

The journey, which is dependent on good weather, is expected to take less than fifteen minutes to complete.

Mr Rossy, who is a professional airline pilot, will be accompanied by a fleet of helicopters and aircraft to film

via Jetman attempts first intercontinental flight - Telegraph.

A Swiss man has failed in his attempt to become the first person to fly solo across the Strait of Gibraltar using a single jet-propelled wing.

Yves Rossy, known as Jetman, ditched in the water and was rescued minutes after setting off from above Morocco.

Organisers said he had deployed his parachute after the wing malfunctioned, possibly owing to engine failure.

The 50-year-old became the first person to cross the Channel using a jet-powered wing in September 2008.

Wednesday's 38km (23 mile) flight had been billed as the first crossing of its kind over the north Atlantic between Africa and Europe.

It appeared to begin well as Mr Rossy launched himself from a small plane about 1,950m (6,500ft) above Tangier in Morocco.

Thumbs-up

The former fighter pilot had planned to cut his engines, open a parachute and land in Atlanterra, southern Spain, after a flight lasting up to a quarter of an hour.

But within minutes it was clear all was not well and Mr Rossy plunged into the sea.

He was unhurt when fished from the water by a helicopter, but had been taken to hospital as a precaution, said organisers.

"The good news is that he is fine," Stuart Sterzel, spokesman for sponsors Webtel.mobi, told reporters near Atlanterra. "He gave the thumbs-up sign through the door of the helicopter."

He added that Mr Rossy would probably attempt the crossing again in the new year. - bbc

Three buildings collapsed on 9/11, fire brought down Building 7 says report

NO PLANE flew into Building 7 at the World Trade Centre. But seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed in flames on September 11, 2001, this third skyscraper fell too.

Like its larger neighbours, it fell rapidly, vertically, almost symmetrically, like an implosion. It took 5.4 seconds for its 47 storeys to complete their fiery descent.

Building 7 has preoccupied conspiracy theorists ever since. Many believe it was brought down by controlled explosions. And if it was, so were the Twin Towers. And if they're willing to believe that, it is not such a big leap to conclude that the whole atrocity was a US Government plot. They have not been silenced by an official report that concludes their theories are bunkum. It didn't help that it was released almost seven years later, in August last year.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology spent three years investigating Building 7. It names fire as the culprit. Fire - fuelled by office furnishings, aided and abetted by the thermal expansion of structural elements.

"Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down," said the lead investigator, Shyam Sunder. The conclusion that this was an ''extraordinary event'' - the world's first known total collapse of a tower caused by fire - only emboldened the doubters.

Explosives? The institute concludes that the smallest blast capable of crippling the third tower's critical column would have produced a "sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile''. No witness reported it.

The 9/11 Truth Movement points to the discovery of thermite, a potential explosive. The institute replies that the same metal compounds would have been present in the construction.

The institute's finding is less sensational, but perhaps more alarming for people who frequent towers. Debris from the collapse of the first tower ignited fires on at least 10 floors of Building 7. These uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of steel beams on lower floors, damaging floor framing on multiple floors.

''Eventually, a girder on floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans … Floor 13 [collapsed], beginning a cascade of floor failures …''

The really scary part? This happened at hundreds of degrees below what had been anticipated in fire-resistance ratings. The institute recommended urgent evaluation of towers, improved thermal insulation and resistance for building materials, and structural systems to prevent ''pan-caking'' or progressive collapse.

- smh