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Is this the world's most expensive motorhome?

2012-09-22T23:31:00.002-07:00

IMAGINE pulling up to the caravan park in this - a luxury motorhome worth a whopping £1.2million.

Dubbed a palace on wheels, the 40ft long vehicle has a secret compartment which can store a Ferrari.

It comes with a large fridge-freezer, dishwasher, microwave, Bose-Dolby-home Entertainment Surround System and a widescreen TV.

Luxury motorhome comes with a sofa and widescreen TV
Nice interior ... luxury motorhome comes with a sofa and widescreen TV
SWNS

Invite your campsite pals in for a cuppa on the luxury leather sofas, or cook up some beans on toast in the real wood kitchen.

Tiny caravan loos are a thing of the past - you can clean up in a power shower set in a spacious bathroom.

The Volkner Mobil Performance Bus's made-to-measure interior can take up to 12 months to build.

Wash room ... van has a large shower room
Wash room ... van has a large shower room
SWNS

The hidden garage – designed to accommodate low-slung supercars – opens at the touch of a button on the side of the vehicle.

It makes the cargo floor to drop to the ground allowing another car can be loaded in the automobile equivalent of Russian Dolls.

Prices for the souped-up van start from £750,000 and rise to £1.2million.

Sadly, the £170,000 Ferrari 458's not included.

Share your thought about the Holy Communion.

2012-09-16T07:40:00.001-07:00

Good day Brethren this I need to know, please tell me what you think. My question is the holy communion of the Christian community is it meant to be that because we have different churches and doctrines that the lord tables should not be accepted as the Lord’s Table. Because I heard something from a catholic fellow that he can't partake in the communion except it was in a catholic church I ask myself why that is! so due to wanting to know is reason I asked him but is answer was not scriptural to me so I felt that he has no answer, I just feel that the main reason is that churches are not letting people see more than their personal doctrine. So I ask if anyone can explain the right thing concerning the communion. Thank you.

BBM now an accepted english word.."'BBMing daily'

2012-09-15T15:49:00.001-07:00

By Staff writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 14 Sep 2012
BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) has reached a new milestone. The Collins English Dictionary has said 'BBM' will be included in the latest edition, making the term officially part of the English language.

According to Research In Motion (RIM), this decision is reflective of the messaging service's global popularity. Over 56 million people worldwide use BBM, with 70% of users 'BBMing' daily.
The company adds that the announcement reinforces myriad cultural references to 'BBM'. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt recently said: “All I gotta do is thank a few people on my BBM with my congrats and that's pretty much it,” following his winning the 100m Olympic gold at London.
Other celebrities, including Tinie Tempah and Sean Kingston, have both mentioned BBM in their respective songs, 'Miami to Ibiza' and 'BBM'.

TA McCann, VP, BBM and Social Communities at BlackBerry maker RIM, said: “The inclusion of BBM in the Collins English Dictionary recognises its status as one of the world's most popular mobile social networks. In recent years, the term 'BBM' has transcended its technological origins to become a brand that is part of the everyday language of millions of people all over the world.”

U.S. deploys Marine rapid response team to Yemen as anti-American protests rage across Middle East

2012-09-14T20:46:00.001-07:00

Clashes near the U.S. Embassy in central Cairo between police and Egyptians incensed over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammad entered their fourth day early on Saturday, leaving one protester dead and dozens more injured.

The clashes moved to a main road on the banks of the Nile after authorities closed the street leading to the embassy. The protesters, many of whom are intent upon breaking into the embassy, now are seeking alternative routes to the site.

A 35-year-old protester died from bird shot wounds late on Friday, three days after protesters climbed the embassy’s walls and tore down the American flag.
“God is Greatest” and “There is no God but God,” one group near the front of the clashes chanted as some threw stones on Friday on a street leading from Tahrir Square to the embassy nearby, as police in riot gear fired off rounds of tear gas.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in streets near the mission late into the night, pelting police with stones and petrol bombs as they were pushed back from the embassy perimeter.

The state news agency said 27 people were injured on Friday. Based on figures it announced on other days, that suggested more than 250 people have been injured during clashes this week after Tuesday’s breach of the embassy.

At least four people — all protesters — have been killed and dozens were wounded in the demonstrations in more than 20 countries from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Most were peaceful, but they turned violent in several nations, presenting challenges for the leaders who came to power in the Arab Spring.
REUTERS/Amr Abdallah DalshA protester holds empty tear gas canisters, which was earlier thrown by riot police, during clashes along a road at Kornish El Nile.

The State Department said U.S. Embassy personnel were reported to be safe in Tunisia, Sudan and Yemen — sites of Friday’s violent demonstrations.

President Barack Obama said Washington would “stand fast” against attacks on U.S. embassies around the world. He spoke at a somber ceremony paying tribute to four Americans — including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens — killed earlier this week when the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was stormed by militants who may have used protests of the anti-Muslim film to stage an assault on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

An elite Marine rapid response team arrived in Yemen’s capital of Saana, where local security forces shot live rounds in the air and fired tear gas at a crowd of an estimated 2,000 protesters who were kept about a block away from the U.S. Embassy, which protesters broke into the day before.
AP Photo/Hani MohammedPolice use water cannons to disperse protesters during clashes near the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa Friday.

In east Jerusalem, Israeli police stopped a crowd of about 400 Palestinians from marching on the U.S. Consulate to protest the film. Demonstrators threw bottles and stones at police, who responded by firing stun grenades. Four protesters were arrested.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had tried to pre-empt the violence a day earlier by saying the rage and violence aimed at American diplomatic missions was prompted by “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi went on national TV and appealed to Muslims not to attack embassies. It was his first public move to restrain protesters after days of near silence and appeared aimed at easing tensions with the United States.
AP Photo/Hani MohammedPolice use water cannons to disperse protesters during clashes near the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa Friday.

The United Nations Security Council released a press statement late Friday condemning “in the strongest terms” the violence, saying “the very nature of diplomatic premises is peaceful and … diplomats have among their core functions the promotion of better understanding across countries and cultures.”

But the demonstrators came out after weekly Friday prayers. Many clerics in their mosque sermons urged congregations to defend their faith, denouncing the obscure movie “Innocence of Muslims” that was produced in the United States that denigrated the Prophet Muhammad.

In addition to countries where protests have occurred, U.S. embassies around the world, including in France and Austria, issued alerts Friday advising Americans to review their personal security measures and warning them that demonstrations may occur and may turn violent. Other embassies issuing alerts included Mauritania and India. More than 50 U.S. embassies and consulates had released similar alerts Thursday.

Several thousand people battled with Tunisian security forces outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis. Protesters rained stones on police firing tear gas and shooting into the air. Some protesters scaled the embassy wall and stood on top of it, planting the Islamist flag that has become a symbol of the wave of protests: A black banner with the Islamic profession of faith, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”

Police chased them off the wall and took the flag down. Two protesters were killed and 29 people were wounded, including police.

Protesters also set fire to the American School adjacent to the embassy compound and prevented firefighters from approaching it. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the school in Tunis was badly damaged and is now “unusable.”

The heaviest violence came in Khartoum, Sudan, where a prominent sheik on state radio urged protesters to march on the German Embassy to protest alleged anti-Muslim graffiti on mosques in Berlin and then to the U.S. Embassy to protest the film.

“America has long been an enemy to Islam and to Sudan,” Sheik Mohammed Jizouly said.

With our soul, our blood, we will avenge you, our prophet

On Friday night, a U.S. official said an elite Marine rapid response team was headed to Sudan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployment was not made public.

Soon after, several hundred Sudanese stormed into the German Embassy, setting part of a building aflame along with trash bins and a car. Protesters celebrated around the burning barrels as black smoke billowed into the sky until police firing tear gas drove them out of the compound. Some then began to demonstrate outside the neighboring British Embassy.

Several thousand then moved via a convoy of buses to the U.S. Embassy on Khartoum’s outskirts. They clashed with Sudanese police, who fired on some who tried to scale the compound’s wall.

The police then dispersed the crowd with tear gas, starting a stampede. Witnesses reported seeing three protesters motionless on the ground, although there was no immediate word whether they were dead or alive.

Islamic militants waving black banners and shouting “God is great!” stormed an international peacekeepers’ base in Egypt’s Sinai and battled troops, wounding four Colombians, said a senior official with the multinational force. The base near the border with Gaza and Israel houses some 1,500 members of the force, including U.S. troops.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said it appeared the attack was connected to the wider protests in the region.

One protester was killed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli in clashes with security forces after a crowd set fire to a KFC and a Hardee’s restaurant. Protesters hurled stones and glass at police in a furious melee that left 25 people injured, 18 of them police.

In his bid to head off the violence, Egypt’s Morsi said “it is required by our religion to protect our guests and their homes and places of work.”

He called the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya unacceptable in Islam. “To God, attacking a person is bigger than an attack on the Kaaba,” he said, referring to Islam’s holiest site in Mecca.

Morsi’s speech came after Obama spoke with him by telephone. The Obama administration has been angered by Morsi’s slow response to the attack Tuesday night on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and the Egyptian made little more than vague statements about it for days without an outright condemnation of the security breach, in which police did nothing to stop protesters from climbing the embassy walls.

His silence reflected the heavy pressure that Morsi, a longtime figure from the Muslim Brotherhood, faces from Egypt’s powerful ultraconservative Islamists. They are using the film issue to boost their own political prominence while challenging Morsi’s religious credentials.

Leaders of Egypt’s Jihad group, a former militant organization, held a conference in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and said anyone involved in “defamation” of the prophet should be killed. They called on Morsi to cut relations with U.S.

Several hundred people, mainly ultraconservatives, protested in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and tore up an American flag. A firebrand ultraconservative Salafi cleric criticized the film in his sermon, saying Muslims must defend Islam and its prophet.

“With our soul, our blood, we will avenge you, our prophet,” they chanted as police fired volleys of tear gas.

Soldiers opened fire to drive away young Muslims in the central Nigerian city of Jos, witnesses and authorities said, and demonstrators in the county’s Muslim north burned a U.S. flag.

Hundreds of hard-line Muslims held peaceful protests against the film throughout Pakistan, shouting slogans and carrying banners criticizing the U.S. and those involved in the film. Police in Islamabad set up barricades and razor wire to prevent protesters from getting to the diplomatic enclave, where the U.S. Embassy and many other foreign missions are located.

About 1,500 protesters in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad shouted “Death to America” and urged President Hamid Karzai to cut relations with the U.S.

Ex-teacher who had sex with student faces 8 more charges

2012-09-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE - The former school teacher accused of having sex with her student now faces an additional eight charges, bringing the total number to nine.

The woman, who is in her early 30s, was originally charged with one count of having sex with a minor under the age of 16 some time in January.

She is now accused of having sex with the same student on three other occasions in January.

Wearing glasses and sporting side-swept hair, the petite woman also faces three counts of digital penetration with the teen in December last year.

She allegedly gave the student oral sex twice in December last year.

Court documents stated that all acts were committed with the student's consent.

Both the woman and teenager cannot be named due to a court order.

Earlier in court, the woman's defence lawyer said his client intends to plead guilty.

Prosecution told the court it will be proceeding on two of the nine charges.

If convicted, the woman faces the maximum penalty of 10 years' jail and a fine, on each count.

Powerful women in politics

2012-09-14T17:17:00.001-07:00

1.Hillary Clinton

In keeping with her reputation as a no-nonsense diplomat, Clinton's spending her final months as Secretary of State as far from the campaign trail as possible given the explicit need to avoid making her position appear political. It's customary for the Secretary of State to stay out of election season. But the past twelve months have been major for the former Presidential candidate. She's navigated treacherous territory when WikiLeaks released sensitive diplomatic cables in November, urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to hand over his power and leave his country and recently warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to chart a different course than his militant father (read: "feed country" should outrank "build nukes" on the nation's to-do list). Oh--and she went viral: the tumblr blog "Texts From Hillary" became an popular meme in April. Clinton has steadfastly said that she plans to move out of public life at the end of the year, but supporters are breathless over the possibility of a 2016 Presidential bid.

2.Dilma Rousseff

Dilma Rousseff made news when she was elected to lead Latin America's largest economy in October 2011, but in many ways the election result was not a surprise. As the first female Chief of Staff under reformist President Lula da Silva, appointed in 2005, she was widely expected to be his successor to continue the Workers Party's economic policies set in motion during his term. It is her rise to that post that is remarkable. She cut her teeth in politics as a student involved in Latin America's labor politics. A member of two radical groups - Colina and VAR Palmares - Rousseff flitted between towns, chased by law enforcement officials and was eventually arrested in 1970 for alleged involvement in drug and weapons trafficking. She was jailed for two years. In 2001, when she was appointed Minister of Energy, Rousseff began to alter her views towards a more a pragmatic and now favors state control of most industries. This Spring, in an attempt to reverse a slowdown of the country's economy, the President accelerated an array of stimulus projects throughout the country which were met with great fanfare by her constituents. A June poll put Rousseff's approval rating at 77%.

3.Yingluck Shinawatra

Thailand's Prime Minister oversees a country of 67 million with a 2011 GDP of $601 billion, the second largest economy in Southeast Asia. One year into her term, Shinawatra's ruling party has had a tumultuous summer. In July the constitutional Court dismissed a complaint that her party's attempt to amend the constitution amounted to plotting to overthrow the monarchy. Had the court sided with the complainants, it could have ordered Shinawatra's party dissolved just a year after the landslide election that brought it to power. Many feared such a ruling would have provoked mass street protests and possible violence similar to those that followed her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's 2006 ousting, when street protesters killed over 100 and took over airports and city centers. The PM was educated in both Thailand and the U.S., where she received a Master's in public administration from Kentucky State University in 1991. She has one child with her common-law husband, Anusorn Amornchat. She's embraced social media--she has roughly 80,000 Twitter followers.

4. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

When Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala left the World Bank in 2011, where she was a managing director and the second-in-command, to become the finance minister of Nigeria, eyebrows were raised. So it was no surprise that she was on the short-list of candidates when the organization conducted an international search for a new leader this April. The top spot went to President Obama's pick Jim Yong Kim, but many say Okonjo-Iweala was by far the most qualified candidate. This is her second stint in the ministry of finance--from 2003 to 2006 she served Nigeria under President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose administration was known for liberalizing the Nigerian economy, building close ties with the U.S. and closer ties with prominent Nigerian businessmen. Okonjo-Iweala's main achievement was to secure a debt write-off of $18 billion from Nigeria's creditors.

China, Japan exchange warnings

2012-09-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

Standoff between ships from both nations increases concern about territorial row

TOKYO - Chinese and Japanese government ships exchanged warnings yesterday in waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea, while Tokyo called on Beijing to protect its citizens amid anti-Japan protests and reported assaults in China.

In an attempt to assert its sovereignty, China sent six surveillance ships into what Japan says are its territorial waters. Japanese coast guard ships radioed warnings to the Chinese vessels, which later sailed out to the area known as the contiguous zone.

Japan controls the islands - called Senkaku by Tokyo and Diaoyu by Beijing - but China does not recognise those claims. State-controlled China Central Television repeatedly played footage of a Chinese Marine Surveillance officer aboard one of the ships radioing the Japanese vessels to demand they leave.

"The actions of your ships violate China's sovereignty and rights," the officer was shown saying.

"Any unilateral act from your side regarding the Diaoyu islands and its affiliated islands is illegal and invalid. Please stop any infringing acts. Otherwise, your side will bear the consequences caused by your actions."

With a typhoon approaching the area, by yesterday afternoon all six Chinese ships had left the 24-mile zone around the islands, said Japanese Coast Guard official Yoshiyuki Terakado.

The growing friction between patrol ships from the two nations is unlikely to lead to an immediate military confrontation between the two nations, which have significant trade and economic ties.

But Mr Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, said "we cannot eliminate the possibility of military conflict".

"Chinese leaders actually talk tough and act carefully, but sometimes it's out of your control. Chinese public opinion has become so powerful," he said.

Mr Brad Glosserman, executive director at Honolulu's Pacific Forum CSIS, also warned that "the dangers of miscalculation are real".

Emotions have been running high since April, when Tokyo's nationalistic governor, Mr Shintaro Ishihara, proposed buying and developing the islands so that they would not fall into Chinese hands. Activists from both sides landed on the islands in August.

To block Mr Ishihara's plan, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's government was left with little choice but to buy the islands. The government does not plan to develop them, but the move has still angered China.

Anti-Japan rallies have since been held in several Chinese cities, a number of private and official cultural exchange programmes were cancelled and government officials have hinted at curbing purchase of Japanese goods. AGENCIES

The workout pill: Why exercise is the best medicine

2012-09-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

From dementia and diabetes to high blood pressure – no pill protects us against ill health like exercise does
IT'S 9 am in the office - time for my daily medication. As usual, I slink off to the fire escape for my fix. Twenty minutes later, I'm back at my desk, brimming with vitality and raring to go.
I've taken this medicine regularly now for about eight years, after developing elevated blood pressure in my mid-40s. I'd heard it could help reduce blood pressure and improve circulation. Sure enough, the high blood pressure vanished long ago.
Amazingly, this drug is freely available to everyone on the planet. It's completely up to you when you take it, and how much. And as research is now revealing, the more of it you take, the healthier you will be.
What is this wonder drug? It is plain old physical activity of all sorts - from running marathons to simply walking around your sofa while watching television. We've all heard that exercise is good for us, but what is becoming increasingly clear is the sheer extent of its benefits and why it works.
A plethora of recent studies shows that exercise protects us from heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, obesity, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and depression. It even boosts memory. And it has the potential to prevent more premature deaths than any other single treatment, with none of the side effects of actual medication. "It's a wonder drug," says Erik Richter, a diabetes researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. "There's probably not a single organ in the body that's unaffected by it."
Throughout evolution, humans have been active. Our ancestors chased prey as hunter-gatherers and fled from predators. More recently, they laboured on farms and in factories. But the decline of agricultural and industrial labour, plus the invention of the car, a multitude of labour-saving devices and - most perniciously - TV, computers and video games, mean we've all ground to a sudden and catastrophic standstill.
"We were built to be active, but the way our environment has changed and the way we live our lives has led us to become inactive," says Christopher Hughes, senior lecturer in sport and exercise medicine at Queen Mary, University of London.
Now we're paying the price. In 2009 Steven Blair, an exercise researcher at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, published a study of more than 50,000 men and women showing that a lack of cardiorespiratory fitness was the most important risk factor for early death. It accounted for about 16 per cent of all deaths in men and women over the period of study, more than the combined contributions of obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol, and double the contribution of smoking (see graph).
In other words, physical inactivity is killing us. "Everyone knows too much booze or tobacco is bad for you, but if physical inactivity was packaged and sold as a product, it would need to carry a health warning label," says Hughes.
As we have become inactive, so once-rare diseases have mushroomed. Areport from the organisation Diabetes UK reveals that in 1935, when the world's population was just over 2 billion, an estimated 15 million people globally had type 2 diabetes. By 2010 the world's population had more than trebled and the number with diabetes had shot up to 220 million, with 300 million predicted for 2025. Likewise, results published earlier this year in theJournal of the American Medical Association showed that over a third of US men and women are obese, as are about 17 per cent of US children.
Weekly dose
The good news is that we can do something about it. I started running up and down the fire escape for a few minutes each day in the hope of not having to take cholesterol-lowering statins or drugs for high blood pressure. Now I'm eager to know what my daily routine is doing to my body and, more importantly, how it might be protecting me from disease.
The most robust evidence so far comes from the Exercise is Medicineinitiative pioneered by the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. Researchers there have collated studies over the past decade or so of people who follow the US government's advice on physical activity. This prescribes 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as brisk walking, ballroom dancing or gardening, or 75 minutes of more vigorous activity such as cycling, running or swimming.
Flush your system
What the Exercise is Medicine findings show is that this weekly dose of moderate exercise reduces the risk of premature death through heart disease by 40 per cent, approximately the same as taking statins.
Chi Pang Wen of the National Health Research Institute in Zhunan, Taiwan, offers some insights into precisely how physical activity prevents cardiovascular diseases. "Exercise can stimulate circulation, flush out fatty deposits in the walls of blood vessels and dilate small vessels that could otherwise be the cause of a heart attack or stroke," he says. In April he presented results from a study of over 430,000 Taiwanese men and women, showing that exercise reduced the risk of heart attacks by 30 to 50 per cent.
Exercise also keeps blood vessels clear by helping to destroy the most dangerous fats. Research published in February reveals that it alters the structure of fatty triglyceride particles in the bloodstream, making it easier for enzymes to destroy them before they can gum up the works. Many risks to circulatory health come from such fatty particles, in the form of chylomicrons produced in the gut, or very low density lipoproteins (VLDLs) pumped out by the liver. The bigger the VLDL particles are, the easier they are for enzymes to break down, and the findings show exercise causes the particles to enlarge by about a quarter.
"A single 2-hour bout of exercise reduced triglyceride concentrations in the circulation by 25 per cent compared with no exercise," says Jason Gill, who led the study at the University of Glasgow, UK. His team found a decrease in both types of fat, but it was twice as large for the more insidious VLDL particles.
One of the most startling findings of the Exercise is Medicine initiative is that a modest weekly dose of exercise lowers the chances of developing type 2 diabetes by 58 per cent, twice the preventive power of the most widely prescribed anti-diabetes medication, metformin.
Type 2 diabetes affects adults when they stop responding efficiently to the hormone insulin, which orders muscle and fat cells to absorb surplus glucose from the bloodstream. When insulin loses its punch, glucose continues circulating and creates the potentially fatal sugar imbalances that are the hallmark of diabetes.
How does exercise reverse this? The story dates back to 1982, when Richter found that insulin activity is enhanced by physical activity - at least, in rats. Experiments showed that after the rats ran around for a couple of hours, their cells became up to 50 per cent more responsive to insulin compared with the cells of non-exercising rats. "We confirmed it later in humans," Richter says.
As cells reawaken to insulin, it seems that surplus glucose gets sponged from the circulation. Richter found that the effects lasted for a couple of hours after exercise in rats, and up to two days in humans.
Recently he and colleagues have unravelled more details about how exercise brings this about. They have discovered that both insulin and muscle contractions during exercise activate a molecule in muscle and fat cells called AS160, which helps them absorb glucose. Once activated, AS160 orders the cell to send molecules to the cell's surface to collect glucose and bring it inside. Without these transporter molecules, glucose cannot get through the fatty cell membrane.
That's not the only way exercise also helps cells burn off excess sugar. Muscle cells absorb glucose and fatty acids from the bloodstream to replenish adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the molecular fuel found in most living cells. As ATP is used up, it produces waste products that are sensed by another molecule, AMPK. AMPK then orders cells to recharge by absorbing and burning yet more fat and sugar. In the mid-1990s, Grahame Hardie at the University of Dundee, UK, found exercise accelerates this process because muscle contraction activates AMPK.
Hardie says exercise has the potential to reverse obesity and diabetes and prevent cancer. The findings of the Exercise is Medicine initiative show that taking the US government's recommended weekly dose of exercise halves the risk of breast cancer in women and lowers the risk of bowel cancer by around 60 per cent. This is about the same reduction seen with low daily doses of aspirin.
How exercise does this is not yet clear - not least because so many factors are involved in cancer's appearance and progression, including sex hormone imbalances, the ability of the immune system to clear cancer cells, and damage to genes and DNA generally. However, some clues are beginning to emerge. "Exercise reduces body weight, which is a known risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer," says Lauren McCullough of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
She also thinks that reducing fat deposits in the body results in less exposure to circulating hormones, growth factors and inflammatory substances. "All have all been shown to raise breast cancer risk," she says.
Another clue comes from work by Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who studies bowel cancer. Biopsies from 200 healthy volunteers showed that, compared with exercisers, non-exercisers had more telltale signs of abnormalities in colonic crypts - recesses in the lining of the colon that absorb water and nutrients. Crypts in idle participants had an increased number of dividing cells, and these also climbed higher up the crypt walls, where they had the potential to form pre-cancerous polyps.
Another potential protection against cancer might come back to the ability of exercise to stimulate AMPK. Recent research by Beth Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas showed thatexercise stimulates cells craving extra energy to burn unwanted rubbish, including faulty or mutated DNA that could trigger cancer if it hangs around. More recently, in unpublished work, Levine has discovered the same processes in brain cells, suggesting that exercise might play a role in staving off dementias and neurodegeneration.
As well as potentially staving off dementia, pounding the stairs might even help boost my brainpower and memory. Back in 1999, Henriette van Praag of the US National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, found that mice using a running wheel developed new neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain vital for memory. "We had a doubling or tripling of neurons after they'd been running daily for about a month," she says. Subsequently, van Praag and other groups found the most likely reason: a doubling in the level of a substance in the hippocampus called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which may support growth of new neurons.
More than a decade on, a team led by Art Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated through a brain-imaging study of 120 older adults that exercise increased hippocampus volume by around 2 per cent. It also improved their memory, as measured by standard tests. "The volume increase we saw can make up for approximately two years of normal age-related decrease," says Kramer. "We found that even modest increases in fitness can lead to moderate, 15 to 20 per cent improvements in memory."
The benefits aren't just restricted to adults. Kramer and his colleagues have also found that pre-adolescent children who exercise develop larger hippocampuses.
So if exercise is so beneficial, why won't people take it? At least 56 per cent of US adults don't meet the government's exercise guidelines. "The most common excuse people give in polls is that they don't have time," says Blair. Perhaps that is not surprising when US citizens spend, on average, almost 8 hours a day watching TV, according to a 2008 study.
For those, like me, who don't want the fuss of joining a gym, there is plenty people can do at home or the workplace in their own time and at their own pace. Blair cites a study in which researchers asked half of a group of couch potatoes to walk round their sofa during each TV commercial break. "They burned 65 calories more per hour, and that is 260 calories in 4 hours," he says. Over a week, their exertions met the US government recommendations for exercise.
And overweight people can benefit massively from exercise even if they don't lose weight, Blair points out. One of his studies has shown that for fit fat people, the risk of dying prematurely is half that for unfit lean people.
Once a marathon runner, Blair now walks for an hour a day, and at the age of 73, he has set himself the goal of walking 5 million steps each year, tracking his progress with a pedometer. He is concerned that not enough doctors recognise that lack of fitness is effectively a disease. He wants them to use fitness as a gauge of health, perhaps making their patients do a treadmill test as a matter of routine, rather than considering it as an afterthought.
Figures published in The Lancet last month back up his assertion that no action, other than abstaining from smoking, is as good for health as being physically active. The study also reveals that physical inactivity effectively kills 5 million people a year worldwide, as many as smoking (see map).
As for me, the stair-run does seem to be working, although I don't have health data from eight years ago to confirm my progress. Scans and tests last month showed my blood pressure and bone density are normal, and I have 6 per cent less body fat than is average for my age. Also, only 20 per cent of my fat is the dangerous sort around organs in the abdomen, compared with 30 per cent in most of my peers. My heart fitness, measured on a treadmill, is above average and I have no chronic diseases that I know of. Now, imagine you were offered a pill that did all that. Wouldn't you take it?
Andy Coghlan is biomedical news reporter for New Scientist

FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project

2012-09-09T04:03:00.001-07:00

The Next Generation Identification programme will include a nationwide database of criminal faces and other biometrics

"FACE recognition is 'now'," declared Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in a testimony before the US Senate in July.

It certainly seems that way. As part of an update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has begun rolling out facial recognition to identify criminals.

It will form part of the bureau's long-awaited, $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) programme, which will also add biometrics such as iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification to the toolkit. A handful of states began uploading their photos as part of a pilot programme this February and it is expected to be rolled out nationwide by 2014. In addition to
scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd.

Another application would be the reverse: images of a person of interest from security cameras or public photos uploaded onto the internet could be compared against a national repository of images held by the FBI. An algorithm would perform an automatic search and return a list of potential hits for an officer to sort through and use as possible leads for an investigation.

Ideally, such technological advancements will allow law enforcement to identify criminals more accurately and lead to quicker arrests. But privacy advocates are worried by the broad scope of the FBI's plans. They are concerned that people with no criminal record who are caught on camera alongside a person of interest could end up in a federal database, or be subject to unwarranted surveillance.

The FBI's Jerome Pender told the Senate in July that the searchable photo database used in the pilot studies only includes mugshots of known criminals. But it's unclear from the NGI's privacy statement whether that will remain the case once the entire system is up and running or if civilian photos might be added, says attorney Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The FBI was unable to answer New Scientist's questions before the magazine went to press.

The FBI hasn't shared details of the algorithms it is using, but its technology could be very accurate if applied to photographs taken in controlled situations such as passport photos or police shots.

Tests in 2010 showed that the best algorithms can pick someone out in a pool of 1.6 million mugshots 92 per cent of the time. It's possible to match a mugshot to a photo of a person who isn't looking at the camera too. Algorithms such as one developed by Marios Savvides's lab at Carnegie Mellon can analyse features of a front and side view set of mugshots, create a 3D model of the face, rotate it as much as 70 degrees to match the angle of the face in the photo, and then match the new 2D image with a fairly high degree of accuracy. The most difficult faces to match are those in low light. Merging photos from visible and infrared spectra can sharpen these images, but infrared cameras are still very expensive.

Of course, it is easier to match up posed images and the FBI has already partnered with issuers of state drivers' licences for photo comparison. Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union urges caution: "Once you start plugging this into the FBI database, it becomes tantamount to a national photographic database."

Drone is Obama's weapon of choice..Is that a good one?

2012-09-09T03:59:00.001-07:00

Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the ideological spectrum. Megan Braun is a Rhodes scholar studying for an M. Phil at St. John's College, Oxford.
(CNN) -- Covert drone strikes are one of Obama's key national security policies. He has already authorized 283 strikes in Pakistan, six times more than the number during President George W. Bush's eight years in office.
As a result, the number of estimated deaths from the Obama administration's drone strikes is more than four times what it was during the Bush administration -- somewhere between 1,494 and 2,618.
Under Obama, the drone campaign, which during the Bush administration had put emphasis on killing significant members of al Qaeda, has undergone a quiet and unheralded shift to focus increasingly on killing Taliban foot soldiers.
Obama revealed: The man, the president

Peter Bergen
To the extent that the targets of drone attacks can be ascertained, under Bush, al Qaeda members accounted for 25% of all drone targets compared to 40% for Taliban targets. Under Obama, only 8% of targets were al Qaeda compared to just over 50% for Taliban targets.
And while under Bush, about a third of all drone strikes killed a militant leader, compared to less than 13% since President Obama took office, according to an analysis of thousands of credible media reports about the strikes undertaken by the New America Foundation.
While Bush sought to decapitate the leadership ranks of al Qaeda, Obama seems to be aiming also to collapse the entire network of allied groups, such as the Pakistani Taliban.
As a result, so-called "signature strikes" have become a hallmark of Obama's drone war. These are drone attacks based on patterns of merely suspicious activity by a group of men, rather than the identification of a particular individual militant.
These have decimated the ranks of low-level combatants, killing somewhere between 1,332 to 2,326 reported militants. In April 2010, a militant told a New York Times reporter, "It seems they really want to kill everyone, not just the leaders."
Obama's drone campaign is quite controversial: Some claim that a substantial number of civilians are killed in the attacks, while U.S. government officials assert that the civilian casualty rate is now zero.
In Pakistan, the program is deeply unpopular and the Pakistani parliament voted in April to end any authorization for the program, a vote that the United States government has simply ignored.
The New America Foundation analysis of the drone campaign in Pakistan found that:
-- The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply since 2008. The number of civilians, plus "unknowns," those individuals whose precise status could not be determined from media reports, reported killed by drones in Pakistan during Obama's tenure in office were 11% of fatalities. So far in 2012 it is close to 2%. Under President Bush it was 33%.
-- Conversely, the percentage of militants killed has been rising over the life of the drone program. The number of militants reported killed by drone strikes is 89% of the fatalities under Obama compared to 67% under Bush.
-- Some of these attacks were designed to help Pakistani interests. In the first eight months of 2009, the U.S. carried out 19 drone strikes targeting affiliates of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, who had carried out an extensive campaign of attacks against Pakistani police officers, soldiers and politicians. Mehsud was eventually killed by a CIA drone strike.
-- Since it began in 2004, the drone campaign has killed 49 militant leaders whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two credible news sources. While this represents a significant blow to the militant chain of command, these 49 deaths account for only 2% of all drone-related fatalities.
Osama bin Laden himself recognized the devastation that the drones were inflicting on his organization, writing a lengthy memo about the issue in October 2010 that was later recovered in the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs. In the memo to a lieutenant, bin Laden advised that his men leave the Pakistani tribal regions where the drone strikes have been overwhelmingly concentrated and head to a remote part of Afghanistan and he also suggested that his son Hamza decamp for the tiny, rich Persian Gulf kingdom of Qatar.
Buzz ramps up over SEAL's bin Laden book
The year 2010 marked the most intense point of the Obama drone campaign, with a record 122 strikes. This combined with the May 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, and the killing of at least 24 Pakistani soldiers in a NATO air strike in November severely damaged the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, and resulted in the eviction of CIA-controlled drones from Shamsi air base in Baluchistan in southwestern Pakistan.
At the same time, Cameron Munter, then-U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, was urging that there be more judicious targeting of the drone strikes as well as increased consultation with the Pakistanis about them.
In the past two years, there has also been increased congressional oversight of the program. The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, explained in a May letter to the Los Angeles Times that "Committee staff has held 28 monthly in-depth oversight meetings to review strike records and question every aspect of the program including legality, effectiveness, precision, foreign policy implications and the care taken to minimize noncombatant casualties."
Some combination of pushback from the State Department, increased congressional oversight, the closure of the CIA drone base in Pakistan and, perhaps, a declining number of targets in the tribal regions and a greater desire to heed Pakistani sensitivities about drone attacks has led to a sharp fall in the number of strikes since 2010.
The number of drone strikes in 2011 fell by 40% from the record number of strikes in 2010. So far this year, the number of strikes has dropped by a further 25%.
This is a welcome development. If the price of the drone campaign that increasingly kills only low-level Taliban is alienating 180 million Pakistanis -- that is too high a price to pay.
While the drone campaign in Pakistan may be on the wane, it is amping up against the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. This year alone, Obama has authorized around 30 drone strikes in Yemen, while Bush only launched one drone attack there during his two terms in office.
Small wonder that as Obama prepares to address the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, he continues to enjoy a considerable advantage over Mitt Romney on national security.
A Reuters poll in August found Obama leading Romney by a comfortable 12 percentage points on national security, which is traditionally regarded as a Republican strength.
Thanks to Fatima Mustafa, Farhad Peikar and Jennifer Rowland for their research help.

tests confirm oil exposed by Hurricane Isaac came from BP spill

2012-09-09T03:45:00.001-07:00

NEW ORLEANS – Laboratory tests show that globs of oil found on two Louisiana beaches after Hurricane Isaac came from the 2010 BP spill.

Tests run by Louisiana State University for state wildlife officials confirmed that oil found on Elmer's Island and Grand Isle matched the biological fingerprint of the hundreds of millions of gallons of oil that spewed from BP's Macondo well.

On Wednesday, BP PLC said oil from its spill had been exposed by Isaac's waves and that the company would work to clean it up.

Ed Overton, the LSU chemist who did the state tests, said the oil found on Elmer's Island had not d
egraded much while oil at Grand Isle had.

"Both were good solid matches on Macondo oil," Overton said.

Two other samples collected from another barrier island did not match the signature of oil from the BP well.

Experts expected that hurricane waves would stir up oil buried along the Gulf Coast and that Isaac, which made landfall on Aug. 28 and soaked the region in the days afterward, apparently did just that. Reports of tar balls washing up on beaches after the storm were reported in Alabama and Louisiana, two states that got hit hard by BP's massive offshore oil spill.

On Tuesday, scouts found what they described as a large tar mat on the beaches of Elmer's Island, prompting state officials to close a 13-mile stretch of beach and restrict fishing along that shoreline.

Still, Overton said the discovery of the buried oil does not mean that the Gulf is seeing a repeat of the summer of 2010, when oil was spewing from an out-of-control well about 55 miles off the Louisiana coast.

"This is not oil everywhere," Overton said. He said the difference between the amounts of oil being exposed now by Isaac and what the Gulf saw in 2010 is "night and day."

Still, he said more oil was likely buried in other places along the coast, perhaps as deep as 3 feet. He said the difficulty for cleanup crews has been finding and removing buried oil.

About 100 pounds of tar balls collected on the Alabama coast after Isaac are being tested at Auburn University, which has a contract with local government to assess the material. Researcher Joel Hayworth said a full chemical analysis isn't yet complete, but the new tar deposits appeared "remarkably similar" in composition and consistency to tar found on state beaches during and immediately after the BP spill.

The tar balls are "clean," he said, virtually identical in size and shape to ones found in 2010 and fragile enough that they fall apart when handled. That indicates material on the bottom of the coast isn't moving much and is very near the surf line, Hayworth said.

"They are resident tar balls that got redistributed by Isaac," Hayworth said.

Relatively pristine tar balls have washed ashore with each tropical system that has hit the Alabama coast since the spill, Hayworth said, indicating the material isn't going anywhere.

"We're in year three and this seems to be the new normal for the Gulf Coast," said Hayworth. "For some unforeseeable time, this is going to be the new normal for the beach."

On Thursday, BP said the company expected to see "residual oil" after Isaac. The company said the tar balls and tar mats found after Isaac were in places where the company had ongoing cleanup operations.

The company said oil found after Isaac would be sampled to see if it matched that from the Macondo well. The company has said some oil may not be from its well. The company cleanup work in Florida and Alabama has resumed while crews were expected to start work Friday in Louisiana. Work in Mississippi has been delayed due to extensive debris in areas where it wants to send teams, BP said.

"If there's something good about this storm, it made it visible where we can clean it up," BP spokesman Ray Melick said on Wednesday.

The spill began after the explosion of the BP-leased drilling rig Deepwater Horizon on the night of April 20, 2010. The blast killed 11 workers and started the nation's worst offshore oil spill. Beaches, marshes and seafood grounds from Louisiana east to Florida were fouled for months.

BP has been running TV ads touting Gulf Coast tourism and urging people to "come on down."

United State sets high alert for West Nile virus!!

2012-09-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

Reported by Tiffany Chao, M.D., ABC News Medical Unit:

Reports of West Nile virus infection in the country now total 1,590, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday - an increase of more than 40 percent in one week alone.

CDC officials also reported during a Wednesday afternoon teleconference that 66 people have died from the disease so far. Of all of the cases reported thus far, 889 - or 56 percent - are classified as neuroinvasive, meaning patients develop meningitis, encephalitis or paralysis.

These figures represent a striking increase from last week's report of 1,118 cases, 629 of which were neuroinvasive, and 41 deaths.

Still, officials say they anticipated that these numbers would go up over time.

"This increase is not unexpected," said Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, director of the division of vector-borne infections diseases from the CDC, during the teleconference. "In fact, the total numbers will continue to rise through October."

He also said that while the overall numbers will continue to accumulate throughout mosquito season, he expects the incidence of infections to have peaked in mid- to late-August. This peak may vary between Northern and Southern states.

CDC officials estimate that, based on current numbers, the final tally of overall U.S. cases will likely be similar to the number of cases seen in 2002 and 2003, during which time more than 3,000 cases of neuroinvasive West Nile Virus and more than 260 deaths were reported.

While all 48 continental states have reported cases of West Nile infections, more than 70 percent of the reported cases are in Texas, South Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Michigan.

Texas has been hardest hit, with 783 reported cases - nearly half of the total number documented thus far. The health department in Texas has been vigilant about preventing further infections through aerial spraying.

"Assuming a normal progression [of cases], this will be our worst year with West Nile," said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. He highlights the grim statistics in Texas. "In 2003, there were 439 neuroinvasive cases, compared 416 already this year. In 2003, there were 40 deaths, and now we're at 31."

Since the CDC does not recommend routine testing of people with West Nile fever, it is likely that there are far more infections than the current numbers suggest. Approximately 80 percent of patients infected with West Nile virus will not develop any type of illness. The remaining 20 percent experience symptoms including fever, headache, malaise, body aches, and occasionally a rash or swollen lymph nodes.

There is no specific treatment for West Nile. The disease itself may run its course in as short as a few days or as long as several weeks.

The virus is most dangerous when it becomes neuroinvasive; in these cases, patients can experience symptoms as severe as coma, seizures, muscle weakness and paralysis. The CDC estimates that only about 1 in 150 people who contract West Nile virus will develop the neuroinvasive form, but nearly all of these patients will require hospitalization.

Of these, those with encephalitis are in the greatest danger, as they are frequently left with severe neurologic deficits. Ten percent of patients who develop encephalitis die. Of the patients who develop paralysis from the disease, one third will recover nearly completely, one third will be left with residual weakness, and one third will not recover.

CDC officials said it is unlikely that Hurricane Isaac will play a role in the severity of the outbreak.

"Based on previous experience, floods and hurricanes do not result in increased transmission of West Nile Virus," said Petersen. He notes that although there will likely be no noticeable effect on the current epidemic, a small increase had been noted in some areas of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, likely because of increased outdoor exposure when houses were severely damaged.

In light of the ongoing risk, the CDC encourages everyone to protect themselves from mosquitoes. While many health departments have made mosquito-control efforts, such as aerial and ground spraying, people are encouraged to protect themselves from mosquito bites using basic techniques.

"Use insect repellents, wear long-sleeved clothing during dawn and dusk, install and repair window screens, use air-conditioners when possible, empty standing water, and support local community mosquito control programs," Peterson says.

There is currently no vaccine to protect humans from the West Nile virus, although four effective vaccinations exist for horses. A few of related vaccines are in early clinical trials (Phase I and II) in humans, which have been successful. However, no vaccine has yet been taken to Phase III clinical trials

A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold

2012-09-02T02:24:00.002-07:00

Sitting in a refrigerator in a Swedish laboratory is what promises to be a cheap and effective cancer treatment. So why are the trials to bring it to market not going ahead?
On the snow-clotted plains of central Sweden where Wotan and Thor, the clamorous gods of magic and death, once held sway, a young, self-deprecating gene therapist has invented a virus that eliminates the type of cancer that killed Steve Jobs.

'Not "eliminates"! Not "invented", no!' interrupts Professor Magnus Essand, panicked, when I Skype him to ask about this explosive achievement.

'Our results are only in the lab so far, not in humans, and many treatments that work in the lab can turn out to be not so effective in humans. However, adenovirus serotype 5 is a common virus in which we have achieved transcriptional targeting by replacing an endogenous viral promoter sequence by…'

It sounds too kindly of the gods to be true: a virus that eats cancer.

'I sometimes use the phrase "an assassin who kills all the bad guys",' Prof Essand agrees contentedly,Cheap to produce, the virus is exquisitely precise, with only mild, flu-like side-effects in humans. Photographs in research reports show tumours in test mice melting away.

'It is amazing,' Prof Essand gleams in wonder. 'It's better than anything else. Tumour cell lines that are resistant to every other drug, it kills them in these animals.'

Yet as things stand, Ad5[CgA-E1A-miR122]PTD – to give it the full gush of its most up-to-date scientific name – is never going to be tested to see if it might also save humans. Since 2010 it has been kept in a bedsit-sized mini freezer in a busy lobby outside Prof Essand's office, gathering frost. ('Would you like to see?' He raises his laptop computer and turns, so its camera picks out a table-top Electrolux next to the lab's main corridor.)

Two hundred metres away is the Uppsala University Hospital, a European Centre of Excellence in Neuroendocrine Tumours. Patients fly in from all over the world to be seen here, especially from America, where treatment for certain types of cancer lags five years behind Europe. Yet even when these sufferers have nothing else to hope for, have only months left to live, wave platinum credit cards and are prepared to sign papers agreeing to try anything, to hell with the side-effects, the oncologists are not permitted – would find themselves behind bars if they tried – to race down the corridors and snatch the solution out of Prof Essand's freezer.

I found out about Prof Magnus Essand by stalking him. Two and a half years ago the friend who edits all my work – the biographer and genius transformer of rotten sentences and misdirected ideas, Dido Davies – was diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumours, the exact type of cancer that Steve Jobs had. Every three weeks she would emerge from the hospital after eight hours of chemotherapy infusion, as pale as ice but nevertheless chortling and optimistic, whereas I (having spent the day battling Dido's brutal edits to my work, among drip tubes) would stumble back home, crack open whisky and cigarettes, and slump by the computer. Although chemotherapy shrank the tumour, it did not cure it. There had to be something better.

It was on one of those evenings that I came across a blog about a quack in Mexico who had an idea about using sub-molecular particles – nanotechnology. Quacks provide a very useful service to medical tyros such as myself, because they read all the best journals the day they appear and by the end of the week have turned the results into potions and tinctures. It's like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black reading the National Enquirer to find out what aliens are up to, because that's the only paper trashy enough to print the truth. Keep an eye on what the quacks are saying, and you have an idea of what might be promising at the Wild West frontier of medicine. This particular quack was in prison awaiting trial for the manslaughter (by quackery) of one of his patients, but his nanotechnology website led, via a chain of links, to a YouTube lecture about an astounding new therapy for neuroendocrine cancer based on pig microbes, which is currently being put through a variety of clinical trials in America.

I stopped the video and took a snapshot of the poster behind the lecturer's podium listing useful research company addresses; on the website of one of these organisations was a reference to a scholarly article that, when I checked through the footnotes, led, via a doctoral thesis, to a Skype address – which I dialled.

'Hey! Hey!' Prof Magnus Essand answered.

To geneticists, the science makes perfect sense. It is a fact of human biology that healthy cells are programmed to die when they become infected by a virus, because this prevents the virus spreading to other parts of the body. But a cancerous cell is immortal; through its mutations it has somehow managed to turn off the bits of its genetic programme that enforce cell suicide. This means that, if a suitable virus infects a cancer cell, it could continue to replicate inside it uncontrollably, and causes the cell to 'lyse' – or, in non-technical language, tear apart. The progeny viruses then spread to cancer cells nearby and repeat the process. A virus becomes, in effect, a cancer of cancer. In Prof Essand's laboratory studies his virus surges through the bloodstreams of test animals, rupturing cancerous cells with Viking rapacity.

The Uppsala virus isn't unique. Since the 1880s, doctors have known that viral infections can cause dramatic reductions in tumours. In 1890 an Italian clinician discovered that prostitutes with cervical cancer went into remission when they were vaccinated against rabies, and for several years he wandered the Tuscan countryside injecting women with dog saliva. In another, 20th-century, case, a 14-year-old boy with lymphatic leukaemia caught chickenpox: within a few days his grotesquely enlarged liver and spleen had returned to ordinary size; his explosive white blood cell count had shrunk nearly 50-fold, back to normal.

But it wasn't until the 1990s, and the boom in understanding of genetics, that scientists finally learnt how to harness and enhance this effect. Two decades later, the first results are starting to be discussed in cancer journals.

So why is Magnus – did he mind if I called him 'Magnus'? – about to stop his work?

A reticent, gently doleful-looking man, he has a Swedish chirrup that makes him sound jolly whatever his actual mood. On the web, the first links to him proclaim the Essand Band, his rock group. 'Money,' he said. 'Lack of.'

'Lack of how much money? Give me a figure,' I pressed. 'What sort of price are we talking about to get this virus out of your freezer and give these people a chance of life?'

Magnus has light brown hair that, like his voice, refuses to cooperate. No matter how much he ruffles it, it looks politely combed. He wriggled his fingers through it now, raised his eyes and squinted in calculation, then looked back into his laptop camera. 'About a million pounds?'

More people have full-blown neuroendocrine tumours (known as NETs or carcinoids) than stomach, pancreas, oesophagus or liver cancer. And the incidence is growing: there has been a five-fold increase in the number of people diagnosed in the last 30 years.

In medical school, students are taught 'when you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras' – don't diagnose a rare disease when there's a more prob-able explanation. It leads to frequent misdiagnoses: until the death of Steve Jobs, NETs were considered the zebras of cancer, and dismissed as irritable bowel syndrome, flu or the patient getting in a tizz. But doctors are now realising that NETs are much more prevalent than previously thought. In a recent set of post-mortem investigations, scientists cut open more than 30,000 bodies, and ran their hands down the intestines of the dead as if they were squeezing out sausage skins. One in every 100 of them had the distinctive gritty bumps of NETs. That's two people in every rush-hour tube carriage on your way home from work, or scaled up, 700,000 people in Britain, or roughly twice the population of the city of Manchester. The majority of these tumours are benign; but a small percentage of them, for reasons that no one understands, burst into malignancy.

Many other cancers, if they spread, acquire certain features of neuroendocrine tumours. The first person to own a successful anti-neuroendocrine cancer drug – it doesn't even have to cure the disease, just slow its progress as anti-retrovirals have done with Aids – will be not only healthy but also Steve Jobs-rich. Last year the pharmaceuticals giant Amgen bought a cancer-assassinating version of the herpes virus for $1 billion. That Magnus's virus could be held up by a minuscule £1 million dumbfounded me.

'That's a banker's bonus,' I said. 'Less than a rock star's gold toilet seat. It's the best bargain going. If I found someone to give you this money, would you start the clinical trials?'

'Of course,' replied Magnus. 'Shall I ask the Swedish Cancer Board how soon we can begin?'

I do not have a million pounds. But for £68 I flew to Uppsala. I wanted to pester Prof Essand about his work, face to face, and see this virus, face to petri dish. I wanted to slip some into my mittens, smuggle it back to England in an ice pack and jab it into Dido.

Magnus's work is already funded by the Swedish Cancer Society and the Swedish Children Cancer Society (neuroblastoma, the most common cancer in infants, is a type of neuroendocrine tumour). A virus that he previously developed (against prostate cancer) is about to enter human trials in Rotterdam, supported by a European Union grant.

The difficulty with Magnus's virus is not that it is outré, but that it is not outré enough. It is a modified version of an adenovirus, which is known to be safe in humans. It originates from humans, occurring naturally in the adenoids. The disadvantage is that it is too safe: the immune system has had thousands of years to learn how to dispatch such viruses the moment they stray out of the adenoids. It is not the fact that Magnus is using a virus to deal with cancer that makes his investigation potentially so valuable, but the novel way he has devised to get round this problem of instant elimination by the immune system, and enable the virus to spread through tumours in other parts of the body.

The closer you get to manipulating the cellular forces of human existence, the more you sound like a schoolboy babbling about his model aeroplane. Everything in the modern genetics lab is done with kits. There are no fizzing computer lights or fractionating columns dribbling out coagulations of genetic soup in Magnus's lab; not a single Bunsen burner. Each narrow laboratory room has pale, uncluttered melamine worktops running down both sides, wall units above and small blue cardboard cartons dotted everywhere. Even in their genetics labs, Swedes enjoy an air of flatpack-ness. The most advanced medical lab in the world, and it looks like a half-fitted kitchen.

To make and test their virus, Magnus buys cell lines pre-fab (including 'human foreskin fibro-blast') for $50-100 from a company in California; DNA and 'enzyme mix' arrive in $179 packets from Indiana; protein concentrations are tested 'according to the manufacturer's instructions' with a DIY kit ($117) from Illinois; and for $79, a parcel from Santa Cruz contains (I haven't made this up) 'horseradish peroxidase conjugated donkey anti-goat antibody'.

In a room next to Magnus's office, a chatty woman with a ponytail is putting DNA inside bacteria. This God-like operation of primal delicacy involves taking a test tube with a yellow top from a $146 Qiagen kit, squirting in a bit of liquid with a pipette and putting the result in a box similar to a microwave: 'turn the dial to 25 kilovolts and oophlah! The bacteria, they get scared, they let the DNA in. All done,' the woman says. As the bacteria divide, the desirable viral fragments increase.

What costs the £1 million (less than two per cent of the price of Francis Bacon's Triptych 1976) that Magnus needs to bring this medicine to patients is not the production, but the health-and-safety paperwork to get the trials started. Trials come in three phases. What Magnus was suggesting for his trifling £1 million (two Mont Blanc diamond-encrusted pens) was not just a phase I trial, but also a phase II, which, all being well, would bring the virus right to the point where a big pharmaceuticals company would pay 10 or 100 times as much to take it over and organise the phase III trial required by law to presage full-scale drug development.

'So, if Calvin Klein or Elton John or… Paris Hilton stumped up a million, could they have the virus named after them?'

'Why not?' Magnus nodded, showing me the bacteria incubator, which looks like an industrial clothes washer, only less complicated. 'We can make an even better one for two million.'

There are reasons to be cautious. A recent investigation by Amgen found that 47 of 53 papers (on all medical subjects, not just viruses) by academics in top peer-reviewed science journals contained results that couldn't be reproduced, even though company scientists repeated the experiments up to 50 times. 'That's why we have to have such a careful peer-review process,' Dr Tim Meyer, Dido's energetic, soft-spoken oncologist, warns. 'Everybody thinks that their new treatment for cancer is worth funding, but everybody is also keen that only good-quality research is funded.' Similar to Prof Essand in youth but less polite of hair, Dr Meyer is the co-director of the Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre at University College London. Beside his office, banks of white-coated researchers are bent over desks, busy with pipettes and microscopes. His team pursues an exciting brew of new anti-cancer ideas: antibody-targeted therapy, vascular therapy, DNA binding agents and photodynamic therapy. Each of these shows remarkable promise. But even for such a brilliant and innovative team as this, money is not flowing.

Everyone in cancer science is fighting for ever-decreasing small pools of cash, especially now the government has started tiptoeing into charities at night and rifling the collection boxes. It is big news that Dr Meyer and the UCL team won a grant of £2.5 million, spread out over the next five years, to continue his institute's cutting-edge investigations into cancers that kill off thousands of us every week: leukaemia; melanoma; gynaecological, gastrointestinal and prostate cancers. Without this money, he would have had to sack 13 members of staff. The sum of £2.5 million is roughly what Madonna earns in 10 days.

He peers at Magnus's pairs of photographs of splayed rodents with glowing tumours in one shot that have vanished in the next. He knows the Uppsala neuroendocrine team well and has great respect for them. 'It may be good,' he agrees. But until Magnus's findings are tested in a clinical trial, nobody knows how good the work is. Astonishing results in animals are often disappointing in humans. 'We all need to be subject to the same rules of competitive grant funding and peer review in order to use scarce resources in the most effective manner.'

Back at home with whisky and fags, I nursed my entrepreneurialism. There are currently about half a dozen cancer research institutes in Europe developing adenoviruses to treat cancer – all of them pathetically short of cash. Enter the Vanity Virus Initiative. Pop a couple of million over to Uppsala University, and you will go down in medical books as the kind heart who relieved Ad5[CgA-E1A-miR122]PTD of its hideous hump of a moniker, and gave it the glamour of your own name. What's the worst that can happen? Even if Magnus's innovations don't work in clinical trials the negative results will be invaluable for the next generation of viruses. For the rest of time, your name will pop up in the reference sections of medical papers as the (insert your name here) virus that enabled researchers to find the cure for cancer by avoiding Magnus's error.

On my third glass of whisky, I wrote an email to Dr Meyer suggesting that he issue a shopping list each year at the time that bankers receive their bonuses, which could be circulated in the City. The list would itemise the therapies that his Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre have selected for support, and quantify how much would be needed in each case to cover all outstanding funds and ensure that the work is branded with your name.

The corridors connecting the different research departments of the Uppsala medical campus are built underground, in order to protect the staff from death during the Swedish winters. Professors and lab technicians zip back and forth along these enormous rectangular tunnels on scooters, occasionally scratching their heads at the tangled intersections where three or four passageways meet at once, then pushing off again, gowns flying, one leg pounding the concrete floor like a piston, until they find the right door, drop the scooter and rise back upstairs by lift. Suspended from the ceiling of these corridors is a vacuum tube that schluuuuups up tissue samples at top speed, and delivers them to the appropriate investigative team. Magnus led me along these tunnels to the Uppsala University Hospital, to visit the chief oncologist, Kjell (pronounced 'Shell') Oberg – the man who will run the trial once the money is in place.

'The trouble with Magnus's virus is Magnus is Swedish,' he says, wincing and clutching the air with frustration.

'It is so,' Magnus agrees sorrowfully. Swedishly uninterested in profiteering, devoted only to the purity of science, Magnus and his co-workers on this virus have already published the details of their experiments in leading journals around the world, which means that the modified virus as it stands can no longer be patented. And without a patent to make the virus commercial, no one will invest. Even if I could raise the £2 million (I want only the best version) to get the therapy to the end of phase II trials, no organisation is going to step forward to run the phase III trial that is necessary to make the therapy public.

'Is that because pharmaceuticals companies are run by ruthless plutocrats who tuck into roast baby with cranberry sauce for lunch and laugh at the sick?' I ask sneerily.

'It is because,' Kjell corrects me, 'only if there's a big profit can such companies ensure that everyone involved earns enough to pay their mortgage.'

There is no ready source of public funds, either. For reasons understood only by Wotan and Thor, the Swedish government refuses to finance clinical trials in humans, even when the results could potentially slash the country's health bill by billions of kronor.

All is not lost, however. Kjell does not have to wait until the end of the trials – which could take as much as 10 years – for the full, three-phase process before being able to inject Magnus's virus into his patients, because as soon as the test samples are approved and ready for use, he can by European law start offering the medicine, on an individual basis, to patients who sign a waiver confirming that they're prepared to risk experimental treatments. Within 18 months he could be starting his human case-studies.

At several moments during my research into this cancer-delaying virus from the forests of Scandinavia I have felt as though there were someone schlocky from Hollywood operating behind the scenes. The serendipitous discovery of it on the internet; the appalling frustration of being able to see the new therapy, to stand with my hand against the freezer door knowing that it is three inches away, not well-guarded, and that it might work even in its crude current state, but that I may not use it; the thrill of Kjell Oberg's powerful
support; the despair over the lack of such a silly, artificial thing as a patent. Now, Dr Leja steps into the narrative: she is the virologist whose brilliant doctoral thesis first put me on to the cancer-eating-virus-left-in-a-freezer, and whose name heads all the subsequent breakthrough research papers about this therapy. She turns out to be 29, to look like Scarlett Johansson and to wear voluptuous red lipstick.

Justyna Leja slinks up from her chair, shakes my hand and immediately sets off into a baffling technical discussion with Magnus about a good way to get the patent back for the virus, by a subtle manipulation that involves something called a 'new backbone'. She also has in mind a small extra tweak to the new-backboned microbe's outer coat, which will mean that the virus not only bursts the cancer cells it infects, but also provokes the immune system to attack tumours directly. It will be easy to see if it works in animals – but is it worth lumbering the current virus with it for use in humans, who tend to be less responsive? The extra preparatory work could delay the phase I and II trials for a further year.

Back at his lab, Magnus opened up the infamous freezer. I took a step towards the plastic flasks of virus: he nipped the door shut with an appreciative smile.

'What would you do,' I asked bitterly, returning my hand to my pocket, 'if it were your wife who had the disease, or one of your sons whose photograph I saw on your desk?'

He glanced back at the freezer. Although his lab samples are not made to pharmaceutical grade, they would be only marginally less trustworthy than a fully-sanctioned, health-and-safety certified product that is between 1,000 and 10,000 times more expensive.

'I don't know,' he groaned, tugging his hair in despair at the thought. 'I don't know.'

To donate money to Professor Magnus Essand's research on viral treatments for neuroendocrine cancer, send contributions to Uppsala University, The Oncolytic Virus Fund, Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden, or visit www.uu.se/en/support/oncolytic. Contributions will be acknowledged in scientific publications and in association with the clinical trial. A donation of £1 million will ensure the virus is named in your honour

Birds hold funerals for their dead!! Discovered by a Scientists

2012-09-02T02:14:00.002-07:00

London: Scientists have discovered that when a North American bird species encounter a dead bird, they call out to one another, surround the body and stop search for food. Researchers from the University of California found that the Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica), a species of scrub jay native to western North America often fly down to the dead body of a bird and gather around it, BBC Nature reported. The behaviour may have evolved to warn other birds of nearby danger, researchers believe. Teresa Iglesias and colleagues conducted experiments, placing a series of objects into residential back yards and observed how western scrub jays in the area reacted.

Birds hold funerals for their dead?
The objects included different coloured pieces of wood, dead jays, as well as mounted, stuffed jays and great horned owls, simulating the presence of live jays and predators. The jays reacted indifferently to the wooden objects. But when they spied a dead bird, they started making alarm calls, warning others long distances away. The jays then gathered around the dead body, forming large cacophonous aggregations. The calls they made, known as "zeeps", "scolds" and "zeep-scolds", encouraged new jays to attend to the dead. The jays also stopped foraging for food, a change in behaviour that lasted for over a day. When the birds were fooled into thinking a predator had arrived, by being exposed to a mounted owl, they also gathered together and made a series of alarm calls. They also swooped down at the supposed predator, to scare it off. But the jays never swooped at the body of a dead bird. The birds also occasionally mobbed the stuffed jays; a behaviour they are known to do in the wild when they attack competitors or sick birds. The results show that "without witnessing the struggle and manner of death", the jays see the presence of a dead bird as information to be publicly shared, just as they do the presence of a predator, researchers wrote. Spreading the message that a dead bird is in the area helps safeguard other birds, alerting them to danger, and lowering their risk from whatever killed the original bird in the first place, researchers were quoted as saying by the BBC. Other animals are also known to take notice of their dead. Giraffes and elephants, for example, have been recorded loitering around the body of a recently deceased close relative, raising the idea that animals have a mental concept of death, and may even mourn those that have passed. The findings were published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Students lose sleep as UK univ loses licence

2012-09-02T02:04:00.000-07:00

A number of students from Oman may have to return back from Britain after the country's Border Agency revoked the London Metropolitan University's licence to admit students from non-European Union countries.

The London Metropolitan University, popularly known as London Met, had the privilege to sponsor students from outside the European Union. However, during a recent survey by the Border Agency it was found that more than a quarter of its foreign students did not have the permission to stay in the United Kingdom.

"This means it's no longer on the register of licensed sponsors, and it can no longer sponsor
students outside the European Economic Area (EEA) with Tier-4 visa,- according to the
Border Agency.

The 2,500 foreign students, including those from Oman having valid visas, have been given 60 days to find a place at another university to continue their studies or leave the UK. And this 60-day deadline will start from the date the British Border Agency contacts the students.

A university official confirmed that a large number of students from the Middle East, including from Oman, are under the sponsorship of the university. "But we will not able to tell you the exact numbers,- he said.

Most of the students from Oman had enrolled themselves to study Masters Degree in Information Technology (IT) and Criminology in London Metropolitan University.

Speaking to Times of Oman, Dr Izzeldin S Hussein, a visiting professor of London Metropolitan University based in Oman, said students have to spend around 9,000 Sterling Pounds (RO6,000) every year for their studies. "While some courses are for three years, others are for six years,- he said.

This decision has put the fate of Omani students in a bind. "I am afraid I'll not able to complete my degree if I lose my visa. I am now desperate to get admission in another college,- an Omani student of London Metropolitan University, said on the condition
of anonymity.

He admitted that all the students were in "great stress-.
"We are not sure about our future,- he said.

However, Aashti Bawa, International Students' Officer at Goldsmiths Students' Union, who is also an international student from Oman, supported UKBA's decision. "It is the university's responsibility to ensure that students with valid visas are attending classes. This lackadaisical approach has put the future of all foreign students in danger,- she said. Bawa, born in India and brought up in Oman, went to the American International School before heading for the UK.

A spokesperson of the London Metropolitan University also said they are working closely with the UK Border Agency and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to help find "alternative institutions- for the students to complete their courses.

Man with world's largest Penis in security scare at airport..who fault?

2012-09-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

A MAN who has the world's largest penis was stopped by security at an airport after guards feared he had a suspect package hidden in his trousers.

Well-endowed Jonah Falcon, 41, from New York, was stopped at San Francisco International Airport by eagle-eyed officials from the US Transportation Security Administration.

He was extensively frisked and had white powder sprinkled on his pants to check for traces of explosives after a "very noticeable" bulge in his clothing was interpreted as a potential "biological threat".

Mr Falcon has previously featured in a HBO documentary about the size of his manhood, which measures 9 inches limp and 13.5 inches when aroused.

He said: “I had my ’stuff’ strapped to the left. I wasn’t erect at the time.

”One of the guards asked if my pockets were empty and I said ’Yes.’ I said, ’It’s my d**k.’

“He gave me a pat down but made sure to go around my penis with his hands.

“They even put some powder on my pants, probably a test for explosives. I found it amusing.”

Mr Falcon, who was also led through an X-Ray body scanner and passed a metal detector, added: “Another guard stopped me and asked if I had some sort of growth.

The traveller aroused suspicions at San Francisco airport on his way to New York.

He said: “I’m just going to wear bike shorts from now on. That way, they’ll know. “You’d think they would have had experience with hung guys before, but I guess not.”

Mr Falcon became a minor celebrity in the US in 1999 due to the size of his willy after being profiled in Rolling Stone magazine and appearing on HBO. But he later struggled to find work after a brief spell as a computer games reviewer. You can see a library interview with him in the video player below.

Offcials from the Transportation Security Administration did not return calls in the US when contacted about the willy incident at San Franciso International Airport.

Gay man gets 'maternity' leave in Brazil..(LOL)

2012-09-01T05:25:00.000-07:00

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil’s social security agency has, for the first time, given a four-month "maternity" leave to a gay man so that he can care for his adopted child.

Lucimar da Silva requested the full four-month leave two years ago when he and his partner adopted their child, according to Pink News. Prior to the groundbreaking decision, Brazilian law required the mother of a child be granted four months leave and the father of a child be given five days...well the world is become alot suprising! i guess...But

Nine Samsung devices that Apple wants to ban

2012-09-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

A jury decided that more than 25 Samsung phones and tablets contained contained technology that violated Apple patents. Now Apple wants to make sure than 9 of them won't get sold in the US.

A prayer for em's Blog reader..

2012-09-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

This prayer i pray with sincerity, that God bless you all in Jesus name! (Amen)...

Nigerians to reap benefits of democracy in 2013-Jonathan

2012-08-30T10:13:00.001-07:00

President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday promised Nigerians improved standard of living by 2013 in his bid to deliver democratic dividends.   Jonathan made the promise at the official inauguration of the SAB-Millers Brewery, in Onitsha, Anambra. 

He noted that in spite of the challenges facing the country, the private sector was still making massive progress.   The President said that the Federal Government would continue to support the private sector operators and provide

infrastructure to assist them.     ``I want to commend this company for what it has done; I also want to commend others for what they are doing considering that fact that with this period as a nation, we know we have our challenges.   ``But this administration is totally committed to change things; we have challenges in terms of road infrastructure, in terms of power; we have that also in security and others.   ``I know all these are major handicaps to the development of industry in the nation; but even under these situations the companies are trying and doing well.   ``We promise you that we would change things and make sure that private sector blossoms in this country because that it is the only way we can create

jobs.   ``Our transformation agenda is going on in partnership between government and the private sector; that’s’ why even in our economic management team we have people from the Federal Government; state governors are there, Gov Peter Obi and Gov Nyako and of course key captains of industry from the private sector robustly represented.   ``Because government alone cannot develop a nation.’’     Jonathan also noted that Nigeria’s population of 160 million people, 70 per cent of which was made up of the youth, made it an attractive investment destination for investors.   He praised Gov. Peter Obi for deploying his private sector experience to attract investment to the state.   ``I promise SABMiller breweries investors that they would not regret their investment in the country as young people under the age of 35 constitute 70 percent of the country’s population and we are not under any restrictions to what they could eat or consume.’’    Gov. Obi promised that the

people of the state would support and stand with Jonathan having overwhelmingly voted for him in the 2011 Presidential elections.   The governor said with the level of private sector investments springing up, the state was fast becoming the home of Africa’s greatest entrepreneurs.   Mr Mark Bowman, Managing Director of SAB-Miller Africa, expressed gratitude to the Anambra and the Federal Governments for creating the enabling environment for the brewery to strive in the country.   ``We are grateful for the support and infrastructures you have assisted us with and we promise that the company would deliver on its promises of job creation.''   It will be recalled that SAB-Miller Breweries had invested $100 million (N15 billion) on

building a green-field brewery in Onitsha in 2011.   The brewery is the highest direct investment by any group or company in the history of the South-East geo-political zone.   The factory, which is expected to produce beer and malt for a start, had 12.5 per cent share owned by indigenous entrepreneurs and 10 per cent share owned by Anambra Government.   The brewery is expected to directly employ over 750 youths and indirectly engage 4,500 people, especially through its subsidiary distribution company Interfact Nigeria Ltd.   The brewery would be taking advantage of the largest market in West Africa – Onitsha Main Market - as well as 1.5 million residents excluding thousands of visiting traders daily.   Meanwhile, Anambra Government had announced that it would provide tax cuts and infrastructures to the brewery and other industries within the Onitsha industrial harbour.

The safest car in the world (Volvo V40)...

2012-08-30T10:00:00.002-07:00

The Volvo V40 has added to the company’s reputation for building some of the safest cars on sale by scoring five stars in the Euro NCAP crash test. Not only that, but the premium hatchback recorded the highest score of any car to undergo the tests.
Like all cars tested by Euro NCAP, the V40 was assessed in four areas (adult occupant protection, child occupant protection, pedestrian protection and safety assist) with the scores combined to give an overall grade.
In total the V40 recorded 98 per cent for adult occupant protection, 75 per cent for child occupant and 100 per cent for safety assist. Thanks to the car’s standard fit pedestrian airbag, it also scored 88 per cent for pe
destrian protection. The pedestrian airbag is mounted under the car’s bonnet and lifts the bonnet if it detects a pedestrian has been struck, providing improved protection for the head. The airbag also covers the car’s A-pillars.
Other cars to score the full five stars in the latest round of Euro NCAP testing were the Audi A3, Kia Cee’d and new Renault Clio, as well as the Ford B-Max, which features sliding rear doors.

Apple,Samsung and Nokia who stand strong in the Mobile Market?

2012-08-30T04:20:00.002-07:00

This picture show that samsung copies its design from apple and nokia is struggling. how true can this be? well this big dogs always know how to fight back. so i love the competition it brings about more innovation in the tech world..So you guys have a great time with the competition...

Samsung ATIV S is world’s first Windows 8 smartphone

2012-08-30T03:43:00.001-07:00

Microsoft’s next version of the OS — Windows 8 is due for launch on 26 October. But yesterday, Samsung became the first company to launch a new smartphone with the Windows 8 OS at the IFA in Berlin. The device is called ATIV S, a rather dull name, but still the smartphone might be a new choice for consumers stuck between Android and iPhone.

For Microsoft, there’s a lot riding on Windows 8 which is expected to be a significant upgrade from Windows 7. The software giant hopes that the launch of Windows 8 tablets and smartphones will help it make some inroads into the market for which it has been a relative late-comer.

So what are the key features of the new Samsung smartphone with Windows 8? First, the device is quite thin w
ith a great aluminium finish and is only 8.7mm thick. The screen is the same size as its popular Galaxy S III device, measuring almost 4.8 inches with an HD Super AMOLED display made from Corning Gorilla Glass 2.

The ATIV S is shown at the IFA. AP

Taking advantage of the fact that Windows 8 supports both dual-core and multi-core processors, the new phone comes with a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and 1GB of onboard RAM thus ensuring it will be faster than all previous versions of Windows 7 smartphones.

It also a 8MP autofocus rear camera (same as the Note II and S III, thus putting it in the same level of smartphones as those on top) and a 1.9MP front-facing camera. The device comes with two storage capacities – 16GB or 32GB – and both models have a MicroSD slot for expanded storage. The smartphone also comes with a 2300mAh battery.

As far as technical specs go, the Windows 8 smartphone is on par with a lot of other high-end devices. The big factor will be how Windows 8 fares for users. Currently Microsoft needs to ensure that app developers start taking the OS seriously.

Without apps, Windows 8 has very little chance of competing with Android or iOS. Analysts are speculating however, that the Apple-Samsung verdict will be beneficial to Windows, whose OS bears no similarities to either Android or iPhone, thus encouraging more app developers to start paying more attention to it. For key features of Windows 8

Toilet maker showcases poo-powered motorbike

2012-08-30T03:36:00.000-07:00

Japan's best-known toilet maker has put a "poop-powered" motorbike on display at its showroom, saying it can drive 300 kilometres on a full load of gas made from animal waste.

Billed as the world's first waste-powered vehicle, the three-wheeler has a toilet in place of a regular seat and huge paper roll at the back.

But manufacturer TOTO was quick to point out that the vehicle's driver would not supply the "gas".

"The biogas it uses as fuel is not made from human waste. It's made from livestock waste and sewage," company spokesman Kenji Fujita said.

"We hope to raise awareness among customers about our green campaign through development of environmentally
-friendly products such as water-saving showerheads and water-saving toilets."

The unique motorcycle proved a popular oddity with visitors to TOTO's showroom in a Tokyo suburb on Thursday.

"Customers seem very interested in the vehicle, some are taking photos," a showroom official said.

The company - which makes toilets equipped with an array of features including heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, and ambient background music - has no plans to commercialise the motorcycle.

NIH Scientists Identify New AIDS-Like Disease In Asia

2012-08-30T02:50:00.004-07:00

Researchers have identified an AIDS-like condition in Southeast Asia that is caused by an antibody that compromises the immune systems of HIV-negative people.
AsianScientist (Aug. 23, 2012) – Researchers in the United States have identified an antibody that compromises the immune systems of HIV-negative people, making them susceptible to infections with opportunistic microbes such as nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM).

The study findings appear online today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Based on clinical studies conducted at hospitals in Thailand and Taiwan, the researchers found that the
majority of study participants with opportunistic infections made an antibody against interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), a cell-signaling molecule thought to play a major role in clearing harmful infections.

Nontuberculous mycobacteria are close relatives of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and can cause severe lung disease. These and other opportunistic infections are common in people with immune deficiency diseases, such as AIDS, but they are rare in people with healthy immune systems.

The first cases were reported in 2004, when researchers in Southeast Asia reported several cases of NTM infections in people with no known problems with their immune systems. The cause of the condition is unknown, but it does not appear to be contagious.

Led by Dr. Sarah Browne of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Dr. Peter Burbelo of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the study enrolled 203 people, ages 18 to 78 years old.

Of these participants, 52 had NTM infections, 45 had other opportunistic infections with or without NTM co-infection, 58 had tuberculosis, and 48 were healthy volunteers. All participants were HIV-negative.

Examination of participant blood samples for antibodies to cell-signaling molecules such as IFN-gamma showed that 88 percent of the people with NTM or other opportunistic infections had antibodies that blocked their own IFN-gamma (called autoantibodies).

The autoantibodies inhibited IFN-gamma function, hindering the immune system’s ability to clear infection, causing a syndrome that made these study participants more vulnerable to opportunistic infections.

Clues such as the average age of disease onset (50 years) and similarity in ethnic background (Asian, or Asia-born) have led the researchers to speculate that the antibodies are “triggered” as a result of combined genetic and environmental factors. More work is needed to determine why people in Southeast Asia appear to be predisposed to the development of this autoimmune condition.

The study authors also believe that it may be possible to treat the underlying problem by targeting the cells that make the IFN-gamma autoantibodies.

The article can be found at: Browne SK et al. (2012) Adult onset immunodeficiency in Thailand and Taiwan.