What happens when you brake too hard?
Submitted by frostfire on Mon, 2008-05-26
Monday, May 26, 2008
Biggest Drawing in the World Created Using a GPS Briefcase & DHL
Biggest Drawing in the World Created Using a GPS Briefcase & DHL
Artist Erik Nordenankar created a portrait of himself drawn on the Earth using DHL to deliver a briefcase containing a GPS device that tracked it’s movement around the globe which was traced to create the biggest drawing in the world.
This video shows how Erik created the drawing using his briefcase “pen and paper”.
Pork Stone… Get Your Pork Stone
Pork Stone… Get Your Pork Stone
What you see below might look like a regular Chinese meat market with potential customers looking over a fresh haul of pork, but that would be false.
It is actually attendees of the Suzhou Int’l Expo for Natural and Weird Stones.
Yup, besides the physical appearance, these are just really cool and weird stones, that happen to look like pieces of pork in an everyday market.
The “pork stone” is formed when natural stone mixes with other types of minerals to form multi-colored layers, which you can get for your kitchen table at about $17/kg.
(Link)
Skip the pretzels: starving may fend off jet lag
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Starving yourself before a long flight may help prevent jet lag, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Normally, the body's natural circadian clock in the brain dictates when to wake, eat and sleep, all in response to light. But it seems a second clock takes over when food is scarce, and manipulating this clock might help travelers adjust to new time zones, they said.
"A period of fasting with no food at all for about 16 hours is enough to engage this new clock," said Dr. Clifford Saper of Harvard Medical School, whose study appears in the journal Science.
He said a person from the United States traveling to Japan must adjust to a 11-hour time change.
"Because the body's clock can only shift a small amount each day, it takes the average person about a week to adjust to the new time zone. And, by then, it's often time to come home," Saper said in a statement.
Saper and colleagues knew that when food is scarce, animals are able to override their normal biological clock to improve their chances of finding food.
Studies have shown that mice fed only during the time when they normally sleep shift their body clocks to this new schedule. "They would be awake and alert and ready to go an hour or two before a meal was due to appear to have maximal chance of getting the food," Saper said in a telephone interview.
"This is built into the brain. The problem is, nobody knew how it worked," he said.
He and colleagues set out to find this mechanism. They used a group of mice that had been genetically engineered to lack a master gene called BMAL1 that regulates the body's clock. They put this gene into the shell of a hollowed-out virus that acted as a vector to deliver the gene only to brain cells they were interested in studying.
When they put it into a small region of the hypothalamus known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which serves as the body's primary clock, the mice adjusted to a light-based schedule for waking and sleeping, but not eating.
"If you don't wake them up they will starve to death," Saper said.
However, when they restored the gene only in a section of the hypothalamus called the dorsomedial nucleus, which helps organize waking and feeding schedules, the mice adjusted to the eating schedule, but not daylight.
Saper said when food is scarce, this second clock can override the body's primary clock. He said these same clock genes are known to be in all mammals, including humans.
While skipping meals ahead of a long flight or night shift has not been proven to work in humans, it may be worth a try.
"I'm certainly going to do it the next time I go to Japan," he said.
(Editing by Maggie Fox)
1957 Thorazine ad promises "control of the agitated, belligerent senile"
Thorazine advertisement, circa 1957Doctor, what can you do for Pop?
Deeply involved in the problem of the hostile, agitated senile are members of the family... and you, their physician.
In discussing the use of 'Thorazine', Pollack(1) observes:
"Older persons with such disorders can be treated at home by the general practitioner with much benefit and with great relief to the family."
With 'Thorazine', senile patients become calm, agreeable and sociable. They begin to eat and sleep better, often gain weight and improve physically.
for prompt control of the agitated, belligerent senile...
THORAZINE*
Ampuls for immediate effect -- carry them in your bag
Also available: Tablets, Syrup and Suppositories
Smith, Kline & French Laboratories, Philadelphia
1. Pollack, B.: Geriatrics 11:253 (June) 1956.
*T.M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. for chlorpromazine. S.K.F.
Historic pictures sent from Mars
Historic pictures sent from Mars
 The probe has sent back pictures of a flat landscape with few rocks |
A Nasa spacecraft has sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.
The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.
The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.
It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.
A signal confirming the lander had reached the surface was received at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).
Engineers and scientists at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when the landing signal came through.
"Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars," a flight controller announced.
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Reaction from Nasa's Mission Control when the Phoenix probe landed
The final seven minutes of the probe's 10-month journey to Mars were regarded as the hardest part of the mission.
The probe had to survive a fiery plunge through the planet's thin atmosphere, slowing from a speed of nearly 21,000km/h (13,000 mph).
Soft landing
It released a parachute, used pulsed thrusters to slow to a fast walking speed, and then descended the last few metres to the Martian soil to land on three legs.
The Nasa team monitored each stage of the descent and landing process through radio messages relayed to Earth via the Odyssey satellite in orbit around Mars.
"In my dreams, it couldn't have gone as perfectly as it did tonight," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at JPL.
Nasa found out more about the landing when pictures from the probe reached the Earth.
The first images showed the "Arctic plain" where Phoenix came to rest - a region of Mars that has never been seen up close before.
Other shots confirmed that the probe's solar arrays had unfurled successfully, and that it had landed safely on its legs.
Phoenix carries seven science instruments
The spacecraft will begin its three-month science mission in the next few days.
 The probe's solar arrays were unfurled successfully |
It will use a robotic arm to dig through the protective Martian topsoil and lift samples of both soil and ice to its deck for scientific analysis.
Dr Tom Pike of Imperial College, London, is part of the British team involved in the project.
"The main goal of the mission is to get below the surface of Mars to where we are almost certain there is water," he told BBC News.
He said orbiters flying around Mars had surveyed the landing site in great detail and found signs that water ice is buried 10cm or less below the surface.
"Water, of course, is of critical importance because it is one of the building blocks - one of the essential habitats we need - for life," he said.
High failure rate
Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. There has been about a 50% failure rate on all Mars missions since Russia launched the first one in 1960.
 The probe's feet sat neatly on the surface, according to this picture |
Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.
In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.
A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.
Phoenix uses hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.
The probe was launched on 4 August 2007 on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Phoenix landed further north than previous missions
Sunday, May 25, 2008
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