Monday, June 19, 2006
Longest Known Sperm Create Paradox of Nature
If there was a prize for biggest sperm in nature, it would go to Drosophila bifurca, a tiny fruit fly whose coiled sperm would measure more than 2 inches long if straightened out.
That's 1,000 times longer than an average human sperm.
"To put that into perspective, if humans made sperm that long and you took a six-foot man and stood him on the goal line of a football field, his sperm would stretch out to the 40-yard line," said Adam Bjork, a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University in New York.
Along with Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick, Bjork examined why any animal, let alone a tiny fruit fly, would evolve such lengthy sperm.
The pair's findings, detailed in the June 8 issue of the journal Nature, show that the answer lies in the body of the female fruit flies.
8-year-old in rehab
A PRIMARY pupil had treatment for drug addiction at the age of just eight, it was revealed yesterday.
The child is the youngest in Scotland to be put in rehab for drugs. But two nine-year-olds, two 10-year-olds and three 11-year-olds were among more than 500 under-16s who also had treatment. And it is feared there could be many other children across the country whose addictions are not yet being tackled.
Figures revealed yesterday showed that last year, 548 youngsters under the age of 16 were put in rehab.
The exact type of drugs abused has not been disclosed but the Executive confirmed yesterday they were controlled substances - either illegal narcotics or powerful prescription medicines such as temazepam.
Deputy justice minister Hugh Henry released the figures in a written answer to the Scottish parliament after a string of high-profile cases in which children have died or become ill after taking drugs.
And the fact so many have been referred for rehab suggests far more children have serious addiction problems than previously thought.
Top Ten Things Dad Will Never Say
10. Well, how 'bout that?... I'm lost! Looks like we'll have to stop and ask for directions.
9. You know Pumpkin, now that you're thirteen, you'll be ready for unchaperoned car dates. Won't that be fun?
8. I noticed that all your friends have a certain "up yours" attitude ... I like that.
7. Here's a credit card and the keys to my new car -- GO CRAZY.
6. What do you mean you wanna play football? Figure skating not good enough for you, son?
5. Your Mother and I are going away for the weekend ... you might want to consider throwing a party.
4. Well, I don't know what's wrong with your car. Probably one of those doo-hickey thingies -- you know -- that makes it run or something. Just have it towed to a mechanic and pay whatever he asks.
3. No son of mine is going to live under this roof without an earring -- now quit your belly-aching, and let's go to the mall.
2. Whaddya wanna go and get a job for? I make plenty of money for you to spend.
1. Father's Day? aahh -- don't worry about that -- it's no big deal.
Make mine a large with Insect larvae
Buncombe County environmental health officials are investigating whether Little Caesars restaurant in Enka sold a pizza containing insect larvae.
No final determination has been made, said Eddie Shook, supervisor of the food and lodging section of the department of environmental health.
Samples from pizza brought to the Buncombe County Health Center are being sent to a state lab in Winston-Salem and are expected back in several days, he said Wednesday.
The restaurant has found no basis for the complaint and is working with the health center, said Sid Burleson, director of franchise operations with the Little Caesars in Enka.
The business has an inspection score of 96.5, a grade A, and no history of problems with flies, county environmental health specialist David Mease said. In an April 20 inspection, health officials said they found old food on some utensils and surfaces not used for food preparation that needed cleaning.
David Lee Roth Goes Redneck On The Tonight Show
This is so pathetic but I guess its kind of fitting I always knew he was White Trash.
marijuana does not cause lung cancer
Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.
They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.
Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.
The study results were presented in San Diego Tuesday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society.
The Neverending Story Van
Seems one guy's obsession with The Neverending Story (movie) has become a piece of mobile artwork.
Pics Here
Five Teens Arrested In Doughnut Incident
Five teenagers were arrested early Sunday and charged with throwing doughnuts at a state trooper and his car, fleeing the scene and eventually backing into two troopers with their Jeep, police said.
Trooper Patrick Mulcahy was driving north on Cider Mill Road at 12:45 a.m. Sunday when he and his car were pelted with doughnuts. Mulcahy and Trooper James O'Donnell, who was in a second car with a police canine, stopped and chased the five teens through the woods to their Jeep, which was parked in the lot behind town hall, said Lt. Alaric Fox, commander of Troop C in Tolland.
The driver backed the Jeep out and hit both troopers, police said. The four teens in the Jeep were arrested. The fifth was found later that morning, police said. All were released to their parents that morning.
Jeffrey Hoffelder, 18, of Tolland, a passenger in the Jeep, was charged with criminal trespass, criminal mischief, interfering with police and throwing objects at a moving vehicle. His bail was set at $1,500. The other four are juveniles.
O'Donnell sustained a sprained knee and was treated at Rockville General Hospital and released, Fox said. Mulcahy had minor injuries.
Ayatollah's grandson calls for US overthrow of Iran
The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime.
Hossein Khomeini's call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran's Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah's death.
"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted its leaders."
China Makes Ultimate Punishment Mobile
Zhang Shiqiang, known as the Nine-Fingered Devil, first tasted justice at 13. His father caught him stealing and cut off one of Zhang's fingers.
Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape. He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.
The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.
Truly Disturbing
I was watching a news segment on a couple of 13 year old neo nazi fascist brats twin sisters named Lynx and Lamb who have formed a racist hate based band called Prussian Blue. Normally I don't believe in killing children but for these little bitches I would make an exception.
Here is a link to there website in case you feel the urge to send some hate mail. I know i will.
Prussian Blue
Here is a link to there website in case you feel the urge to send some hate mail. I know i will.
Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.
Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.
But Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.
Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year.
Army plea as toxic toads march on
Officials in Western Australia have called for the army to be deployed to stop an invasion of cane toads.
The toxic amphibians have spread in plague-like numbers across tropical Australia since being introduced to the country in the 1930s.
They were first brought to Australia from Hawaii to eradicate cane beetles, but they have had a devastating impact on native wildlife.
There could be as many as 100 million cane toads in tropical Australia.
Arctic seed bank readied for 'doomsday' scenario
Norway will begin construction of a "doomsday vault", a vast top-security seed bank in a mountain near the North Pole to ensure food supplies in the event of environmental catastrophe or nuclear war.
Built with Fort Knox-type security, the $A4 million depository will preserve around two million seeds at sub-zero temperatures, representing all known varieties of the world's crops.
"This facility will provide a practical means to re-establish crops obliterated by major disasters," Cary Fowler, executive secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said in a statement.
He says crop diversity is imperilled not just by a cataclysmic event, such as a nuclear war, "but also by natural disasters, accidents, mismanagement, and short-sighted budget cuts".
The vault will be built deep in permafrost in the side of a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg will take part in a ceremony of laying the first brick, together with leaders from other northern European countries.
A metre of reinforced concrete will fortify the chamber walls.
Arctic permafrost will act as a natural coolant to protect the samples, which will be stored in watertight foil packages should a power failure disable refrigeration systems.
Mel Gibson Driven Out Of Malibu By White Trash Neighbors
Pity poor Mel Gibson, who invested millions of dollars for the safety and privacy afforded by a mansion in a gated section of one of Southern California's most exclusive neighborhoods, only to have white trash move in next door and destroy his property values:
The gazillionaire, who lives next door to [Britney] Spears in a gated community in Malibu, California, is reportedly packing up his wife and 10 thousand kids and putting his $24 million mansion on the market to get away from the beleaguered pop star.
Spears, who has been visited by police and family services this year, also has a steady stream of fans gathering outside the gates.
"People are always hanging around outside the gates and he is worried his kids might get hurt," a source reportedly said.
Beck Puts On A Show For The Hippies
As Beck took the stage at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, he had dancers in bear suits and a band that played on water glasses and dinner plates.
He also had a puppet alter-ego take a swipe at "sweaty hippies stinking of patchouli" — a friendly jab at his audience and the jam-band culture that has supported Bonnaroo over its first five years.
The camping and music festival on a 700-acre Tennessee farm still has its neo-hippies and free spirits, but Bonnaroo has grown into something more than a celebration of endless guitar solos.
Rather than be pigeonholed into the jam-band scene, Bonnaroo has diversified its lineup to include major artists in rap, blues, indie rock and this year, classic rockers like Tom Petty and Elvis Costello.
"At first it was a jam band festival. But is it still?" said Mike Gordon of the former jam band Phish. "There still is a lot of jamming. I think it's grown in respect. It's not considered a niche festival anymore."
Or perhaps it just proves that hippies will listen to anything — as long as it's not heavy metal or punk.