“Babies born with conditions such as cleft palates and extra
fingers and toes now account for up to 6 per cent of births each year,
according to statistics published yesterday. And the number of babies
born with disabilities has increased by 40 per cent since 2001 –
a period that has coincided with China’s meteoric economic growth
– to between two and three million a year. Up to 12 million more
develop defects in childhood.”
—
“Officials said that the increase reported by the National Population
and Family Planning Commission may, in part, reflect an improvement
in the collection of data from rural areas. In addition, families were
becoming less reluctant to report defects that in the past had been
concealed out of shame.”
—
“The top five birth conditions among Chinese babies are cleft
palate, neural tube defects, extra fingers or toes, congenital heart
disease and water on the brain. It was not clear which, if any, could
be linked to polluted water and air. Mr Li said: “We need time
to carry out research on what kind of pollution may lead to which kind
of defects.”
“The official Xinhua news agency has said that Shanxi, home to
four of the most polluted cities in China and a centre of noxious emissions
from coke and chemical industries, leads the world for incidence of
cleft palates and extra fingers among babies. Poor nutrition and marriage
between close relatives in Shanxi are also cited as reasons for the
high number of such defects in the province. ”
“The IgNobel "Peace Prize" - The Air Force Wright
Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio for instigating research and development on
a chemical weapon, the so-called "gay bomb," that "will
make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other".”
“Military chiefs are excited because the bottles, which
can distill either 4,000 litres or 6,000 litres without changing the filter,
will have huge benefits for soldiers who hate drinking iodine-flavoured
water.”
—
“Conventional filters can cut out bacteria measuring more than 200
nanometres but not viruses, which typically are 25 nanometres long.
“Mr Pritchard's bottle can clean up any water - including faecal
matter - using a filter that cuts out anything longer than 15 nanometres,
which means that viruses can be filtered out without the use of chemicals.”
“LIFESAVER systems have developed “instructicons”,
unique icons designed to be universally understood.
Instructicons use no words or numbers, just simple, easy to understand
icons.”
From the Lifesaversystems.website:
“using chemicals to sterilise water is not always effective, and
you will still be drinking a poisonous cocktail with some dead pathogens
in it”
“LIFESAVER bottle uses a highly advanced ultra-filtration system,
originally developed for industrial applications. LIFESAVER bottle will
remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, parasites, fungi and all other microbiological
waterborne pathogens. It does all this without the aid of any foul tasting
chemicals like iodine or chlorine relying instead on a membrane with
a filter size of 15 nanometres to remove all waterborne pathogens.”
Prices: Up to 4000 litres £195.00 + VAT; up to 6000 litres £230.00
+ VAT
[Included with a LIFESAVER bottle with either a 4000Ltr or 6000 Ltr
cartridge: 1x Activated Carbon cartridge, 1x Pre-filter, 1x Carry strap,
1x 5ml pot Silicone grease (WRAS approved), 1x Instruction manual. Once
the bottle has been used, then maintained correctly, it could last for
up to 5 years dependent upon conditions.]
“100% ELECTRIC POWER - Lightning technology delivers ultra smooth,
full power immediately from zero rpm. True to its name, the Lightning
GTSE can be charged in approximately 10 minutes for over 250 miles of
motoring, making long journeys a breeze. Full regenerative braking means
the battery receives charge every time you decelerate.
“UNCOMPROMISING PERFORMANCE - 0-60mph in just 5 seconds will
be standard for the Lightning and we believe the sport version will
provide an incredible 0-60mph in less than 4 seconds. A real driver's
car!”
—
“ top speed capability of more han 130mph...”
Battery life claimed as 12 years instead of 3-4 years
for most batteries.
“Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages
because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant
women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and
Assessment Programme (Amap).
“The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess
of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening
their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in
Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the
imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north.
“In the communities of Greenland and eastern Russia monitored so far,
the ratio was found to be two girls to one boy. In one village in
Greenland only girls have been born.
“The scientists measured the man-made chemicals in women's blood that
mimic human hormones and concluded that they were capable of
triggering changes in the sex of unborn children in the first three
weeks of gestation. The chemicals are carried in the mother's
bloodstream through the placenta to the foetus, switching hormones to
create girl children.”
“Professor Dunne, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in
Oxfordshire, said: "To put that in perspective, it [the laser] is
10,000 times the power of the entire UK National Grid. And then you’re
going to focus that down onto a spot that’s 10 to 100 times smaller
than the width of a human hair. The pressure is equivalent to 10
Nimitz class aircraft carriers sitting on your thumb. Some pretty
crazy things are going to happen, and that’s what we’re about.”
how fusion works
“Nuclear fusion involves merging two types of hydrogen atom – deuterium and tritium – to make helium, as well as neutrons that release vast quantities of energy. Almost limitless amounts of deuterium fuel can be made cheaply from seawater, tritium being produced as a byproduct in the reactor itself. Nuclear fusion produces only rudimentary radioactive waste, similar to that from hospital X-ray machines, and none of the high-level waste from fission reactors.
“The extremely high temperatures at which the reaction takes place cost large amounts of energy to generate, and require magnetic containment facilities, as terrestrial materials would melt in contact with the reaction. Lasers can be used to create these temperatures efficiently, at the point of fusion, so that containment of the reaction becomes less of a problem.”
google earth goes into space - who lives there? - the auroran
sunset
Google has expanded Google Earth to look at space as
well. Here is their short introductory video.
Now some screenshots:
In this screenshot, the planet, constellation and general astronomy
views are displayed together. You can modify the displays as you wish. The screenshot
also shows many of the ‘goodies’ available.
The multiple occurences of planets “is because Google Earth
is using place marks to represent the different positions of the planets
in time. If place marks overlap then whenever you click on one it'll
briefly move the other icons out of the way, leaving a line pointing
at the original position of the place mark.” Ray
Bellis.
Messier refers to objects in the Messier Catalogue. This was started
by Charles Messier and was first published in 1774. The list now includes
103 objects in space.
You can click on any object (Messier, NGC, green star or blue nebula
squirl) for pop-up windows giving information and, sometimes, photos
from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Evening primrose seen in ultraviolet light,
as a bee would see it -
complete with bull’s eye landing target.
Credit: Online Photograph,Encyclopedia
Britannica Online
Bees tend to see more in the ultraviolet [UV] areas
of the light spectrum.
These photos show a little of what that means for the
world of the bees and the plants they visit.
A bee’s eye is compound. It has been said
of the compound eye:
“it is only a small exaggeration to say that evolution seems
to be fighting a desperate battle to improve a basically disastrous
design” [Dan-Eric Nilsson].
“The bee’s eyes are so bulbous they dominate its head.
Were they any larger, [the bee] would fall out of the sky.”
—
“Many insects tend to see shorter [ultraviolet] wavelengths of
light than vertebrates do, probably so they can keep their receptors
[ommatidia] as narrow as possible.”
—
“Animals with compound eyes are generally small. The smaller you
are, the stronger you are, relative to your weight. Compound eyes may
look ungainly, but a small animal is not going to be much inconvenienced
by having big eyes (and there is one obvious advantage of having two
colossal bulbous eyes - they let you see in every possible direction,
with virtually no blind spots).
“Being small has other consequences. If you are very small, you
are unlikely ever to need to see very clearly, because small things
that are far off are probably of no interest. An approaching predator
is likely to be much bigger than you, and easily spotted from a distance,
even with quite bleary vision. Prey, on the other hand, are likely to
be quite close by.”
—
“[...] another reason why compound vision is a popular evolutionary
choice: even the crudest compound eye handles movement well. The very
fineness of human eyesight means that moving images blur badly, whereas
insects, with their crude, pixellated vision, are extremely resistant
to motion blur.” [Quotes from pp.106-111, The
Eye]
