Month: September 2008
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Water Bears Can Even Survive Unprotected In Space
From Scientific Blogging: The dried-up tardigrades were aboard the FOTON-M3 spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in September 2007 and were exposed to open space conditions i.e. to vacuum, UV radiation from the sun and cosmic radiation in a low Earth orbit of around 270km altitude. After their safe return to Earth, it […]
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Prions jump species barrier : Nature News
From Nature News: Infectious prion proteins from hamsters can change normal proteins from mice into new, infectious forms of prion – simply by mixing the proteins together in a test tube. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston suggest their discovery could be turned into a useful test for whether a given […]
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Roman Conquerors Destroyed HIV Resistance in Early Europe
From New Scientist: It appears that the Roman Empire left a legacy that may still affect modern Europe – those living within its conquered lands are more susceptible to HIV. It could explain why a gene that confers resistance to HIV varies in frequency across the continent. The gene in question codes for a protein […]
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People Who Live Without TV Are Politically Polarized
From Metafilter: A recent study of those who live without found that about two-thirds fall into either the “crunchy granola set” or the “religious right, ultraconservative” camp, said researcher Marina Krcmar, a professor of communication at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University. [Out There: People Who Live Without TV, LiveScience]
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My Sarah Palin Conspiracy (With an Assist from Sam)
Andy: oh yes [Palin cancels appearance at RNC Tuesday night] – yup it is on the Gnews http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&nolr=&q=palin+cancels&btnG=Search Sam: jesus Andy: I wonder if they are going to switch her out. and it wasn’t even: OH SHE GON BE AT GUSTAV Sam: i don’t see how it’s not a legitimate concern to her base… hwo […]
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Are All Guys Named Tucker Complete Assholes?
Basically McCain’s spokesman boils down to WHY DO YOU HATE MOTHERHOOD SO MUCH? From TPM: I just saw McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on CNN with a new line on Gov. Palin’s foreign policy experience: McCain and Palin have more combined military command experience than Obama and Biden put together. [video]
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Palin Tried to Fire Librarian for Not Banning Books
It just gets better and better: She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to […]
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Logic Gates with Dominos
Super-geeky-ness: While cleaning out some old papers, I spotted strange doodles on the back of one of my computer science assignments from high school. After a minute I realized they were plans for logic gates made out of dominoes. So, like any self-respecting geek, I got some dominoes and built them [Neil Fraser: News: Domino […]
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Growing Your Own Food On One Square Yard Of Land
This reminds me of a book dad had called ‘Square Foot Gardening’ or something like that: This garden is so small that just about anyone could find this much space. I spent about 30 dollars on the whole thing, and have gotten about 10 pounds of squash, a bazzilion tomatoes, bunches of green onions, and […]
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Hoosier Excavators Uncover Ancient Settlement
Archaeologists said that what excavators found near Brookville, Ind., is so significant that it could help rewrite history books. The workers uncovered what seems to be evidence of an unknown previous settlement that dates back thousands of years. Some of the evidence that have been uncovered so far dated back 600, 1,000 and even […]