- Signs of the Times Archive for Fri, 10 Aug 2007 -



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Best of the Web
Slip Sliding Away Down the Behavioral Sink

Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors
2007-08-10 17:48:00

Pinpointing the causes of a nation's decline is not always easy. Picking the moment when it started going down is even more difficult. Perhaps the major difficulty in both of these cases is that everyone has an opinion and a lot of the most powerful and forceful opinions are coming from agents of the decline who may well opine that it is not in decline at all. I can't believe I wrote that last sentence AND left it in. Possibly that is an example of my own individual decline or some latent desire to write a Broadway musical, but I digress.

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Flashback: "Now and Then"

W. David Jenkins and Sara DeHart
POAC
2002-06-06 14:15:00



George W. Bush is not Adolph Hitler. Although we've seen the sentiment in so many different places and in many different ways, the fact still remains that Bush II has not yet achieved Nazi Germany's horror at its apex, but it is like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's sincerely hard to believe that Bush II's "Final Solution" includes the elimination of an entire race. Although we still have reportedly over one thousand people of Arab decent being held without charge or access to legal counsel, these are not the real enemies of Bush's America. Ever since December of 2000 and especially since September 2001, George W. Bush and his administration have made it more and more apparent just who they consider the real enemy. The enemy is anyone who does not agree with or follow Conservative Far Right dogma. He refers to these Americans as "the fringe."


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I'm Perturbed As Heck

Cindy Sheehan
Common Dreams
2007-08-05 21:45:00

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

"I'm human, goddamnit, and my life counts!"

Howard Beale - Network (1971)

If we don't stand up to the people whom we employ and pay and make sure our votes count literally and for what we stand for, then we are doomed to being ruled by the ruthless elite who get their legislative orders from the special interests.




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U.S. News
3 dead in Indiana mine accident

Keith Robinson
Associated Press
2007-08-10 15:39:00

PRINCETON, Ind. - An accident at an air shaft being built in a southern Indiana coal mine killed three people Friday, police said.

Detective Mike Hurt said the people died in a basket used to transport people up and down a 600-foot air shaft, but he could say whether they fell. Authorities did not believe there had been a cave-in or an explosion, he said, and no one else was believed to be injured or trapped.



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3 Dead, 1 Wounded in Los Angeles area Apartment Complex Shooting


abc7.com
2007-08-10 13:42:00

A gunman killed two people and wounded a third before committing suicide during a shooting rampage at an apartment complex in Los Angeles County, police said.

Police fielded a call around 5:30 p.m. of multiple shots fired at a complex in Burbank, said police Lt. Eric Rosoff.

The shooter killed a man and a woman, then wounded another man before turning the gun on himself, said police Sgt. Matt Ferguson. Their identities were not immediately released.

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Bush was treated for Lyme disease, White House says

David Nitkin
Baltimore Sun
2007-08-09 12:28:00

President Bush was treated for Lyme disease a year ago after developing a circular rash characteristic of the ailment, the White House announced yesterday.

Spread through the bite of infected ticks, the disease, if unchecked, can lead to arthritis, numbness, paralysis, fatigue and memory problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But when the problem is detected early, patients usually make a full recovery after a course of antibiotics, health professionals say.

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Abusive 3-hour timeout for autistic child in school raises 'discipline doubts'

JENNIFER JACOBS
Desmoines Register
2007-08-09 22:57:00

Doug and Eva Loeffler stared at the videotape of their daughter.

It showed 8-year-old Isabel, who has autism, in a timeout room in her Waukee elementary school for more than three hours, even after she'd wet her pants and struggled to obey the rules so that she could be let out.

©Desmoines Register


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Woman Murdered Man That Simply Asked For 25 Cents


The Enquirer
2007-08-09 19:12:00

He took a bullet over 25 cents.

Donald Francis, who police believe was homeless, stood outside the Marathon station at Eighth and Linn streets late Monday night, asking people for money.

That annoyed Geraldine Beasley so much, Chief Tom Streicher said, that she shot and killed Francis when he approached her,

"He asked her for a quarter," the chief said Tuesday.

Beasley, 62, of Walnut Hills, complained to someone else at the scene about the panhandling, Streicher said. Then, he said, when Francis asked her for money, she pulled out a gun and fired.



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Monster Truck Crashes Into Crowd Injuring Several People


CBS
2007-08-09 18:37:00

A monster truck stunt went awry in northwest suburban DeKalb Thursday when a truck ripped through a crowd injuring at least ten spectators.

Nine people, including a mother with four children, were taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, hospital officials said.

One spectator signed a release at the scene refusing medical treatment, DeKalb Fire Chief Lanny Russell said.

CBS 2 talked to witness Patrick Sheridan by phone Thursday afternoon. He said, "The truck jumped about 3 times and it was doing fine. The fourth time it jumps almost hit people and they told them to scoot back, so people scooted back about five feet and after he backed up, they scooted back up, then the truck goes and kind of plowed through everything and kind of died after it plowed through a bunch of people."



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UK & Euro-Asian News
MoD gags military as soldiers banned from blogging


thisislondon.co.uk
2007-08-10 13:26:00

The Ministry of Defence has introduced new guidelines to prevent military personnel talking about their experiences as members of the Armed Forces.

Soldiers, sailors and air force members will be prevented from blogging, taking part in surveys, speaking in public or posting on bulletin boards, according to The Guardian.

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Russian doctor gets 3 years for mother and baby death


RIA Novosti
2007-08-10 13:09:00

A court in Russia's Far East sentenced an obstetrician to three years in prison for causing the deaths of a mother and her newborn child, the prosecutor of Amursk said Friday.

Obstetrician Sergei Bagrin treated a 29-year-old woman, who had been admitted to hospital in labor and died from trauma and severe bleeding. Her baby was alive when delivered but suffered from breathing complications and died shortly after birth.


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UK: 'Freddy Krueger killer' found dead


icLiverpool
2007-08-10 11:51:00

A serial killer who fantasised about becoming movie murderer Freddy Krueger has been found dead, Broadmoor Hospital said.

Daniel Gonzalez, 26, was found dead on Thursday and a police investigation has been launched.

A hospital spokesman said: "Police attended the hospital to investigate, as is normal procedure when there is a death in custody. We will not comment further until a post-mortem investigation has been carried out."


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Around the World
Britons Hurt As Ice Hits Tourist Ship


Sky News
2007-08-10 12:33:00

Seventeen Britons have been injured, including three seriously, after their luxury sightseeing boat was hit by ice falling from a glacier in the Arctic.

Huge blocks of ice crashed into the water near the vessel and some fell on the deck causing the ship to be tossed back and forth by the waves.

©Unknown
The sightseeing ship


All 50 passengers on the Alexey Maryshev, a former Russian fishing trawler converted into a tourist boat, were British.

The incident happened on Wednesday night off the Svalbard Islands, 300 miles north of Norway.

Passengers had booked the trip through UK specialist tour company Discover The World.


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Canada: Manhunt on for gunmen in Vancouver shooting


CTV
2007-08-09 12:25:00

In one of the worst acts of violence to ever hit Vancouver, two people were killed and six injured in a brazen early-morning shooting spree inside a Chinese restaurant.

Two masked gunmen opened fire inside the Fortune Happiness restaurant, apparently targeting a table where the eight victims were seated.


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YouTube video helps catch New Zealand computer thief


Associated Press
2007-08-10 12:22:00

Video site YouTube proved its worth as a law enforcement tool when a New Zealand thief was convicted of stealing after being caught on video posted on the Internet site, news reports said Friday.

The man was taped slowly circling a store, stealing a laptop computer and slipping it into his overcoat and stepping out of the store in the South Island town of Greymouth, local media said.

The whole performance was posted on YouTube set to "The Pink Panther" music track, and attracted 500,000 hits from round the globe.

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'Fifty dead' in Philippines clash


BBC News
2007-08-10 04:56:00

More than 50 people have been killed in clashes between troops and Islamist militants in the southern Philippines, military officials say.

©AP
Troops have been fighting militants in Jolo for several months


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South Africa: A President in denial on AIDS, a ravaged nation denied hope

Katherine Butler
The Independent
2007-08-10 02:01:00

Thabo Mbeki's stance on Aids has left South Africa with the world's worst HIV epidemic. Yesterday, he silenced the woman fighting to end the suffering of millions

The fight against Aids in South Africa, the epicentre of the global pandemic, has been dealt a devastating blow.


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Plane Crashes Off French Pacific Island

By RAY LILLY
Associated Press
2007-08-09 23:44:00

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -An airplane carrying 20 people crashed into the sea Thursday after taking off from a French Pacific island, killing some aboard and raising fears that no one survived, an aviation official said.

The Tahiti-bound Twin Otter DHC6 turboprop, carrying 19 passengers and a pilot, went down around noon just off the French Polynesian island of Moorea, said a local Civil Aviation Authority spokeswoman.

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Big Brother
UK: ID cards marked for fast rollout

Sarah Arnott
Computing
2007-08-09 18:24:00

Treasury report will call for rapid take-up by citizens, say sources

Identity cards should be rolled out to citizens as quickly as possible, an influential Treasury-backed report will recommend to ministers this month.

Sir James Crosby's review of private sector uses of the proposed biometric ID scheme was due to be published with the Budget in March. According to insiders, the former HBOS chief executive's report will be circulated internally in the coming weeks and is to be published when Parliament reconvenes in early October.

'Probably the strongest theme will be a recommendation to establish a critical mass of cardholders very fast, to enable both public and private sectors to get the benefits of the scheme and start building ID checks into business models,' said a senior source.

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Pearl Jam Responds to AT&T Censorship

Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam Ten Club News
2007-08-09 18:17:00

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the "Blue Room" Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

- "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and

- "George Bush find yourself another home."

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.



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AT&T censors Pearl Jam's anti-Bush lyrics

Jonathan Cohen
Reuters
2007-08-09 18:12:00

Pearl Jam fans and Internet watchdogs were up in arms Thursday after it was revealed that AT&T Inc. censored portions of the rock band's live concert cybercast on Sunday.

While performing "Daughter" during the annual Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, the band segued into a portion of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," during which frontman Eddie Vedder sang, "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush, find yourself another home." Those lyrics were missing from the broadcast.



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Axis of Evil
Capitalism: A System Run By and For Psychopaths


aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com
2007-02-25 03:01:00

Regardless of whether they are characterized as compensated psychopaths, partial psychopaths, subclinical psychopaths or subcriminal psychopaths, these psychopaths cause others to suffer immeasurably from their own psychopathy, and conveniently for them they do it without a trace of their always nonexistent conscience. Dr. Robert D. Hare, the world's foremost expert on the psychopath, has described psychopathy as "a socially devastating disorder defined by a constellation of affective, interpersonal, and behavioral characteristics."


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Army to Expand Recruiting Incentives

By KIMBERLY HEFLING
Associated Press
2007-08-09 23:16:00

WASHINGTON - Need a down-payment for your home? Seed money to start a business? The Army wants to help _ if you're willing to join up. Despite spending nearly $1 billion last year on recruiting bonuses and ads, Army leaders say an even bolder approach is needed to fill wartime ranks.

Under a new proposal, men and women who enlist could pick from a "buffet" of incentives, including up to $45,000 tax-free that they accrue during their career to help buy a home or build a business. Other options would include money for college and to pay off student loans.

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Middle East Madness
Flashback: Comfortably Numb

Kelly Gallaher
Youtube
2007-05-29 04:49:00

A searing look at the realities of the war in Iraq by Kelly Gallaher. With photos ranging from personal blogs to Pulitizer Prize winners, all the photos are real and heartbreaking. The use of the music "Comfortably Numb" performed by Dar Williams was inspired by the absence of visual representation of the Iraq war from newscasts and newspapers, leaving mainstream America both comfortable and numb to the grim horror of war taking place while we go about our lives. Ironically, while this film was being edited for use on YouTube and MySpace, the military restricted access to these websites for soldiers stationed in Iraq.

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British losses soar as they prepare to leave Basra city

Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
2007-08-10 02:36:00

Two more British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq yesterday, raising the death toll in the UK's least successful military campaign since Suez in 1956. In both cases the British casualties were low but British forces wholly failed to achieve their objectives.

Two Irish Guardsman were killed and two were seriously wounded in the early hours of yesterday when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb near the Rumaila oilfields west of Basra. The deaths bring to 168 the number of British personnel who have died in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.

Comment: It is also likely that the Black ops are busy making sure that more British die so that their leaders can say "See, what happens if we pull out. We have to stay, otherwise they will just kill each other".


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Iran backs Iraqi PM but wants US troops out


AFP
2007-08-10 02:25:00

TEHRAN - Iran on Thursday gave visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki its full support for restoring security in Iraq but told him a pullout of US forces was the only way to end the violence.

The embattled Maliki held two days of talks with Iranian leaders including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vice President Parviz Davoudi on his visit to a country blamed by the United States for much of the bloodshed in Iraq.

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Bush: More threats on Iran, "there will be a price to pay"

Matt Spetalnick
Reuters
2007-08-09 18:43:00

U.S. President George W. Bush insisted on Thursday that Iran is a destabilizing force in Iraq despite Tehran's assertion to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that it is helping secure his country.

Calling Iran a "very troubling nation" that must be isolated, Bush warned during a White House news conference: "When we catch you playing a nonconstructive role (in Iraq), there will be a price to pay."

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The Loan Gunmen
SEC combing Wall St books for subprime losses

Joe Giannone and Lilla Zuill
Reuters
2007-08-10 15:49:00

U.S. regulators are scrutinizing the books of Wall Street's largest investment banks amid questions they are hiding losses from subprime mortgages, people familiar with the inquiry said.

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Profiting From The Meltdown

Robert Lenzner,
Forbes
2007-08-10 15:41:00

A consortium of the nation's leading investment banks have quietly created an index that is not only protecting them against the recent market meltdown but also promising to make them bundles of money in the process.

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Australian Stocks Slump Most in 6 Years on U.S. Subprime Rout

Emma O'Brien
Bloomberg
2007-08-10 13:19:00

Australian stocks plunged the most since Sept. 2001 on concern losses linked to U.S. mortgages will spread. Macquarie Bank Ltd. led declines after BNP Paribas SA barred withdrawals from funds that owned subprime loans.

Banks also dropped on concern U.S. housing market concerns will tighten global credit conditions and slow economic growth.

''The credit issue is increasingly looking to be more serious than a week ago and that obviously has investors around the world and in Australia worried,'' said Shane Oliver, who helps manage $83 billion at AMP Capital Investors in Sydney. ''The risk of a full-blown credit crunch has gone up and that's what markets have reacted to.''

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Japan, Australia central banks inject liquidity

V. Phani Kumar
MarketWatch
2007-08-10 13:15:00

The central banks in Japan and Australia Friday reportedly injected liquidity into their respective local markets to soothe nerves in the financial markets, following similar moves overnight by the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

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Countrywide CEO Exercises Options


AP
2007-08-09 12:09:00

The chairman and chief executive of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. exercised options for 92,000 shares of common stock under a prearranged trading plan, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday

In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Angelo R. Mozilo reported he exercised the options for shares on Wednesday for $14.69 apiece and then sold all of them the same day for $28.74 apiece.

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Countrywide Hit by Credit Market Woes

James R. Hagerty
The Wall Street Journal
2007-08-09 12:04:00

Countrywide Financial Corp. and other mortgage companies are facing "unprecedented disruptions" in debt and mortgage-finance markets that could hurt earnings and the company's financial condition, the Calabasas, Calif., lender said in a regulatory filing.

The statement was a supplement to the standard "risk factors" listed in Countrywide's 2006 annual report.

The company, the largest U.S. home mortgage lender in terms of loan volume, said reduced demand from investors is prompting it to retain more of its loans rather than selling them. The company also has been shoring up its finances. "While we believe we have adequate funding liquidity," it said in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, "the situation is rapidly evolving and the impact on the company is unknown."

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The Living Planet
Cities incite thunderstorms, researchers find


Princeton University
2007-08-10 13:58:00

Summer thunderstorms become much more fierce when they collide with a city than they would otherwise be in the open countryside, according to research led by Princeton engineers.

Alexandros A. Ntelekos and James A. Smith of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science based their conclusion on computer models and detailed observations of an extreme thunderstorm that hit Baltimore in July of 2004.

Their modeling suggests that the city of Baltimore experienced about 30 percent more rainfall than the region it occupies would have experienced had there been no buildings where the city now sits.

While thunderstorms are thought of as being purely forces of nature, the Princeton research suggests that man's built environment can radically alter a storm's life cycle.


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1 of deep ocean's most turbulent areas has big impact on climate


Florida State University
2007-08-10 13:13:00

More than a mile beneath the Atlantic's surface, roughly halfway between New York and Portugal, seawater rushing through the narrow gullies of an underwater mountain range much as winds gust between a city's tall buildings is generating one of the most turbulent areas ever observed in the deep ocean.

In fact, the turbulence packs an energy wallop equal to about five million watts -- comparable to output from a small nuclear reactor, according to a landmark study led by Florida State University researcher Louis St. Laurent and described in the August 9 edition of the journal Nature.

The study -- an international collaboration of scientists from the United States and France -- documents for the first time the turbulent conditions in an undersea mountain range known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It provides never-before-seen evidence that deep water turbulence swirling in the small passageways of such mountains is generating much of the mixing of warm and cold waters in the Atlantic Ocean.


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Heavy snowfall causes $250 million damage in Chile


RIA Novosti
2007-08-10 12:56:00

Heavy snow in Chile, the worst in eight years, has caused an estimated $250 million worth of damage, Spain's news agency EFE said Friday citing local authorities.

"The losses, so far, total some $250 million and at least 38,000 jobs have been lost temporarily," the news agency said citing Luis Schmidt, the head of the National Agriculture Society.

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Floating Arctic ice shrinking at record rate

Andrew C. Revkin
International Herald Tribune
2007-08-10 11:21:00

The area of floating ice in the Arctic has shrunk more than in any summer since satellite tracking began in 1979, and it has reached that record point a month before the annual ice pullback typically peaks, experts said.

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Greenhouse gas warming might thin heat-trapping clouds, reducing the predicted impact by as much as 75%: UAH Scientists


UAH Press Release
2007-08-10 11:00:00

The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged this month in new research from The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center.

That was not what he expected to find.

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South Asia floods toll passes 2,000 mark


AFP
2007-08-10 02:01:00

The death toll from the worst monsoon floods to hit South Asia in decades passed 2,000 Thursday even as torrents of muddy water receded from millions of acres of farmland and rains shifted west.

Thousands of villages remained under water and threatened by disease, while millions were still displaced, mainly in India and Bangladesh, where the severe floods also destroyed valuable crops.

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Health & Wellness
Some women benefit more from exercise when emphasis is on health, not appearance


The Ohio State University
2007-08-10 13:38:00

A new study suggests that women with chronic issues with their body-image are more likely to benefit from an exercise class where the instructor emphasizes the health benefits of the workout over improved appearance, even if those women chose the class in hopes of improving their physique.

Researchers studied nearly 100 college-aged women who had social physique anxiety - a disorder in which someone chronically worries that others are critiquing his or her body.


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Genetic variation helps to understand predisposition to schizophrenia


American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
2007-08-10 13:34:00

Scientists have provided new insight into how a gene is related to schizophrenia. In a study to be published in the August 17 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Amanda J. Law, Medical Research Council Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and Visiting Scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with colleagues at NIH describe for the first time a genetic variation that causes a gene to be overexpressed in the human brain. These results may provide a new way to design better drugs to treat schizophrenia.

"Although the exact causes of schizophrenia are yet to be determined, scientists agree that the disease is in part due to genetic variations," Law says. "These variations are not simple to understand because they don't directly disturb the function of proteins. In our study, we identified some clues as to what goes wrong with one of these DNA variations."


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Virus Outbreak Contained in Uganda

By KATY POWNALL
Associated Press
2007-08-09 23:29:00

KAMPALA, Uganda - An outbreak of a deadly Ebola-like disease at a mine in western Uganda has been contained, health officials said Thursday.

The Marburg virus, a rare hemorrhagic illness, killed a 29-year-old last month. The country had not seen a Marburg outbreak for 30 years.

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Science & Technology
Emory physicist opens new window on glass puzzle


Emory University
2007-08-10 13:47:00

When most people look at a window, they see solid panes of glass, but for decades, physicists have pondered the mysteries of window glass: Is glass a solid, or merely an extremely slow moving liquid" An Emory University research team led by physicist Eric Weeks has yielded another clue in the glass puzzle, demonstrating that, unlike liquids, glasses aren't comfortable in confined spaces.

The Emory team's findings are reported in the paper "Colloidal glass transition observed in confinement," published in the Physical Review Letters July 13. The Emory research adds to the evidence that some kind of underlying structure is involved in glass transition, Weeks says. "This provides a simple framework for looking at other questions about what is really changing during the transition."


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'It might be life Jim...', physicists discover inorganic dust with life-like qualities


Physorg.com
2007-08-10 13:31:00

Could extraterrestrial life be made of corkscrew-shaped particles of interstellar dust? Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space are revealed today in the New Journal of Physics.

The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks. They also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on earth.

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Swarming Starlings Help Probe Plasma, Crowds and Stock Market


The University of Warwick
2007-08-10 12:45:00

Researchers at the University of Warwick's Physics Department's Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics have found a powerful technique that could be used to detect precisely when ordered patterns form in everything from plasma in the solar wind and fusion reactors, to crowds of people, or flocks of birds. The technique could even be used to find unusual patterns in stock market behaviour.

The researchers began their work in a research group interested in plasmas. These are difficult to study at the best of times because the opportunities to view plasma in the solar wind are limited by the small number of satellites observing such things and plasmas in nuclear fusion reactions are obviously not easily accessible.


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Double-nosed dog and the Bolivian Amazon Crater


BBC News
2007-08-10 12:37:00

Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog.

He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia.

©BBC
Xingu is said to be intelligent and fond of salty biscuits.


The chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society said the dog, named Xingu, was "not terribly handsome".

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Dinosaur mass grave discovered in Switzerland


Reuters
2007-08-10 12:42:00

An amateur paleontologist in Switzerland may have unearthed Europe's largest dinosaur mass grave after he dug up the remains of two Plateosaurus.

The dinosaurs' bones came to light during house-building in the village of Frick, near the German border.

"A hobby paleontologist looked at a construction site for a house and happened to discover the bones," said Monica Ruembeli from the Frick dinosaur museum.

The finds show that an area known for Plateosaurus finds for decades may be much larger than originally thought.


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Our Haunted Planet
Meteor crash rocks southwestern Hungary


All Hungary News
2007-08-10 11:07:00

The southern Transdanubia area of Hungary at the border of Tolna County was shaken by the sound of an explosion Sunday afternoon when a melon-sized meteor apparently hit the ground in Bonyhád. Astronomers are analyzing the impact crater, which is two meters deep and seven meters in diameter, reports fn.hu.

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Meteorite falls from sky, startles Arizona residents

Beth Duckett
The Arizona Repulic
2007-08-09 22:33:00

SCOTTSDALE - Stanley Fosha is looking for what woke him early Wednesday morning with a giant flash of white light and a thunderous boom.

The sky erupted around 2:15 a.m. near his home at 56th Street and Pinnacle Vista Road in Scottsdale, he said.

"I seriously thought someone was in my back yard taking a picture," Fosha said. "It sounded like someone taking a sledgehammer and banging a big metal drum."

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Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
Drink-Drive Suspect Eats His Socks


Sky News
2007-08-10 12:39:00

A suspected drunk driver has shocked police in Canada by using some strange tactics to avoid a breath test.

The 19-year-old man drank contact lens solution and tried to eat his socks when he was stopped by an officer in Walkerton, Ontario.

The suspect has been found sitting in his car with the lights off on a country road.

He was arrested when a police officer approached the vehicle and concluded the man was drunk.

As the officer prepared breath test equipment, the suspect grabbed a contact lens case in his car.


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Rural climate change sceptics shock kayaker


ABC Australia
2007-08-10 11:36:00

A man paddling and pulling his kayak from Brisbane to Adelaide to promote the need for action on climate change says he is disappointed with the sceptical nature of outback Australians.

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Beheaded snake sends man to hospital


AP
2007-08-10 02:29:00

PROSSER - Turns out, even beheaded rattlesnakes can be dangerous. That's what 53-year-old Danny Anderson learned as he was feeding his horses Monday night, when a 5-foot rattler slithered onto his central Washington property, about 50 miles southeast of Yakima.

Anderson and his 27-year-old son, Benjamin, pinned the snake with an irrigation pipe and cut off its head with a shovel. A few more strikes to the head left it sitting under a pickup truck.


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Man Living in Car Since '00 Upsets City


Associated Press
2007-08-09 23:11:00

PITTSBURG, Kan. - Steve Graham might not be in the doghouse over a dispute with his wife, but as far as his neighbors are concerned, he's not far from it. For the past seven years, Graham, 55, has been living in his car parked in the backyard of a house he and his wife, La Donna Graham, own.


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