Saturday, February 26, 2011
MKNEWS: Chinese "snowman" creates new Guinness world recor...
MKNEWS: Chinese "snowman" creates new Guinness world recor...: "Jin Songhao, a 54-year-old man from Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has created a new Guinness World Record of staying bully burie..."
Chinese "snowman" creates new Guinness world recor
Jin Songhao, a 54-year-old man from Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has created a new Guinness World Record of staying bully buried in snow for 46 minutes and 7 seconds.
He created the record at the A ershan Eco-Square of Inner Mongolia, where the temperature was 36 degrees centigrade below zero.
He was buried in full and direct contact with snow, with only the head out. He showed no sign of shivering during the entire process and he even asked the Guinness World Record authenticator to count down before he was pulled out.
The final time of 46 minutes and 7 seconds has been validated by the Guinness World Record representative. Jin began his cold resistance training more than 20 years ago. He could perform a series of cold resistance feats,such as standing barefoot on ice for several hours and taking icy water bath in bitter cold winter. Last year, he stayed fully buried in ice for two hours.
World’s most expensive purse unveiled
The world’s most expensive purse has been unveiled in Dubai. The House of Mouawad designed purse is encrusted with 4,517 diamonds. It took 1100 man hours to make the purse and it is priced at US$ 3.8 million
Designed by the House of Mouawad, the heart shaped bag is encrusted with a 105 yellow, 56 pink and 4,356 clear diamonds. The 1001 Nights Diamond Purse encrusted with a total of 4517 diamonds is only valued at US$ 3.8 million.
Mouawad was quoted saying, “The Mouawad 1001 Nights Diamond Purse is designed to mesmerize with its lavish attention to detail and elaborate workmanship incorporating thousands of diamonds.”
It took 10 artists 1100 hour of work, over a period of four months to handcraft the purse from 18-carat gold. The diamond purse has already found place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Chord Overstreet and Taylor Swift: New Couple Alert?
Are we about to embark on a trip down SwiftStreet?
Cameras caught Taylor Swift and Glee star Chord Overstreet taking in the L.A. Kings game last night. The possibility of these two dating is even more jarring than the fact that people actually attend hockey games in Los Angeles. Who knew?!?No word from either side yet about the meaning behind this possible date, but the two do look awfully cute together, don't they? A friend tells Us Weekly: "Chord is into her. He will definitely pursue this."
Overstreet has recently been linked to Kelly Osbourne and Naya Rivera, while Swift has been linked... eh, just go listen to her latest album and hear for yourself.
Christina Aguilera: The Latest Sign of Trouble
Over the last few months, Christina Aguilera has...
... Divorced her husband.
... Started dating Matthew Rutler.
... Been exposed online.
... Attacked Julianne Hough.
... Shown up at Jeremy Renner's birthday party drunk.
... And forgotten the lyrics to the national anthem. Now, according to the latest issue of Us Weekly, her friends have a new reason to be concerned. An insider tells that magazine how Christina had sex with Rutler had a recent family party and then:
"Aguilera flipped out on her mother, Shelly Kearns. Christina was so wasted before guests arrived that her mother told her to lie down and sober up. Christina yelled, 'Who do you think you are?' Then she called her brother's girlfriend a whore. It was crazy! Nobody can get through to her. They think she's trashy. And her ego is out of control. She's really spiraling... I would be shocked if she's not in rehab in the next month or two."
Let's hope someone can get through to Aguilera soon.
Britney Spears: Pretty Much Loaded
Britney Spears has done well for herself in the last few years.
The singer's conservatorship and marketing machine have made a killing since December of 2008, when the conservators took over $2,826,362.68.Exactly one year later, Britney's assets controlled by the conservators swelled to $27,500,000, thanks largely to Britney's wildly successful Circus Tour.The figures are deceiving in that conservators only control a portion of Britney's total estate - namely her business expenses. She has a lot of money and property in her various trusts and other business entitites the conservators do not control.
Basically, she's even richer than that figure indicates
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Want to feel the love? Text 5683
Typing numbers on a phone keypad that correspond to the letters in a word like "love" can activate the meaning of the word in our minds and make us feel good, a study published Wednesday says.German psychological scientist Sascha Topolinski conducted a series of experiments to determine this, including one where he gave a cell phone with stickers obscuring the letters on the keypad to a group of several dozen professionals and asked them to type number sequences that correspond to words.
The participants in the experiment were told the study was looking at the ergonomics of different number sequences on phone keypads. Ergonomics is the science of fitting workplace environments and tools to users.
Some of the words they typed without realizing were positive, like 54323 for "Liebe," which in English would be 5683 for "love," or 787263 for "Strand," which means "beach."
The study participants also typed "negative" number sequences on the keypad -- things like 7245346 for "Schleim," which is close to its English equivalent, "slime," or 35363 for "Elend," or misery.
After they had tapped out the numbers, participants were asked to rate on a scale of zero to 10 how pleasant an experience they had doing it.
"Participants preferred dialing numbers implying positive words over numbers implying negative words," Topolinski wrote in the study.
"This finding suggests that the affective meaning of emotional words can be induced by merely dialing numbers that imply those words via key concordance," the study says.
Topolinski also looked at whether people's attitudes toward a person or business can be shaped by a phone number.
For that experiment, participants were given four phone numbers that included a numerical combination that corresponded to a business, such as 5683 or "love" for a dating agency, and four that did not.
When they got through to the number, they heard a message on an answering machine along the lines of: "This is Miller's dating agency. Here you'll find love!" and were asked to indicate how attractive the company was to them on a scale from zero (very unattractive) to 10 (very attractive).
"Participants preferred companies with matching phone numbers over companies with mismatching phone numbers," the study says.
And the feel-good factor was not limited to positive concepts in this experiment: the study participants "preferred the mortician whose phone number included 534243 for "Leiche," which means "corpse," over the mortician whose phone number corresponded to an unrelated word, like "Salad."
MKNEWS: Electrode therapy aids severe compulsive disorder
MKNEWS: Electrode therapy aids severe compulsive disorder: " The use of brain surgery to treat psychiatric disorders has long been controversial, but new technologies are emerging that can help p..."
Electrode therapy aids severe compulsive disorder
The field has come a long way since the horrors of the frontal lobotomy and electroshock therapy seen last century, but experts urge caution because they are still learning how these deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapies work.
"As we stick devices into people's brains it turns out that this has become very promising. There are really exciting results but we remain cautious as we move forward," said Michael Okun, neurologist at the University of Florida.
Okun was part of a panel at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington to describe new progress and setbacks in treating Parkinson's disease, obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome.
Psychiatrist Benjamin Greenberg discussed a trial he has been working on for people with what he called "malignant OCD," or a very severe and intractable form of the affliction.
"An example would be a patient who has compulsive urges to check or arrange things to make sure they are just right, or to prevent some sort of imagined harm," he said.
"These patients can become so overwhelmed by these thoughts and behaviors which they know are senseless, but they can't resist them," he said.
"So virtually all their waking hours are occupied by these obtrusive and stressing and obsessive thoughts and these senseless compulsive urges that are designed to neutralize these thoughts."
The technique for OCD, approved in 2009 by the US Food and Drug Administration for extreme cases under its humanitarian device exemption, involves the insertion of a thin electrode deep in the brain.
The electrical current has been shown to reduce OCD symptoms by about 25 percent in some patients. The technique has been tried on just over 50 people in the United States since the research first began in 2000.
"In one sense, brain surgery may be a bridge to psychotherapy," Greenberg said, noting that the technique made severe OCD sufferers more moderate in their compulsions but did not cure them.
"This is reserved for the small proportion of people who are severely disabled and have not benefited anywhere near adequately from very aggressive use of conventional treatments."
About one percent of adults are affected by OCD, experts say. To qualify for treatment with the brain electrodes, patients must show "severe and chronically disabling illness despite at least five years of aggressive treatment," Greenberg said.
Okun, who has been working with people suffering from Tourette's syndrome, said the world is now in a "bionic age" with about 70,000 people currently walking around with deep brain stimulation devices for various aims.
However, he warned that the technology must be coupled with therapy and rehabilitation.
"This is true of all DBS therapies. It is not a light switch," he said.
"Just because you can make the motor tics go away, it doesn't make the patients necessarily better," he said.
"We have to work hard on the social reintegration aspects and the rehabilitation aspects."
Helen Mayberg, professor of psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said people need to reframe their expectations of what the intervention can and cannot do.
"We have a medical, ethical and societal burden as we get into this field to actually help people become the best they can be," she said.
"Because once your brain is returned to you, you have to re-practice how to use it."(
NASA set for Feb 24 Discovery shuttle launch
The shuttle launch was initially set for November but was scratched after leaks were found in the external fuel tank. An exhaustive review followed and engineers finally found ways to shore up the cracks in January.
The launch date was set weeks ago but NASA confirmed it after a flight readiness review meeting on Friday.
"During the meeting, senior NASA and contractor managers assessed the risks associated with the mission and determined the shuttle and station's equipment, support systems and personnel are ready," the space agency said in a statement.
The launch is scheduled for 4:50 pm (2150 GMT) on Thursday, February 24.
Six astronauts will be on board for an 11-day mission to the International Space Station. The crew will deliver a Permanent Multipurpose Module for extra storage and space for experiments.
"The PMM also carries Robonaut 2, the first human-like robot in space, which will become a permanent resident of the station," NASA said.
Discovery's launch will occur six hours after the planned docking of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 Johannes Kepler to the space station, the US space agency added.
The three US shuttles -- the other two are Atlantis and Endeavour -- are due to become museum pieces once the final shuttle mission takes place.
Endeavour is set for takeoff on April 19 and Atlantis is scheduled for June 28, after which the famed fleet will be retired.
William and Kate to tour Canada after wedding
The visit will be from June 30 to July 8, two months after their wedding in London's Westminster Abbey on April 29.
"Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton have accepted an invitation from the government of Canada to undertake a royal tour of Canada," William's office at St James's Palace said in a statement.
The search and rescue pilot is directly in line to become Canada's king after his father Prince Charles, the heir to the throne in the 16 Commonwealth realms, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was "delighted" by the visit, adding that it was a "testament to our country's very close relationship with the royal family".
The tour by William, 28, and Kate, 29, will include Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and the capital Ottawa, said St James's Palace.
A spokesman for the 16th-century London palace confirmed it would be the couple's first official overseas visit following their marriage.
William, the son of Charles and the late Diana, princess of Wales, last visited Canada when he went to Vancouver aged 15 in 1998 with his father and brother Prince Harry. He was given a pop star's welcome and was mobbed by teenage girls.
The brothers also toured Ontario province with their parents in 1991.
Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, the year after she and Charles divorced.
The St James's Palace spokesman added: "Prince William was keen to be able to visit Canada for himself as an adult, and to be able to show his wife a country that is close to his family's heart."
Canada is a Commonwealth realm, meaning that Queen Elizabeth II is its head of state and sovereign and William would not be visiting as a foreign royal but as a prince of Canada.
Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip went to Canada last July and in 2009 Charles and his second wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall also visited.
Harper said Canada "looks forward to welcoming the young couple".
"Their decision to come to Canada first is a testament to our country?s very close relationship with the royal family -- a bond of loyalty and affection illustrated by the crowds that turned out for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh last year," he said.
"It is my sincere hope that their tour will be the start of a lasting relationship with Canada by the royal couple," he added.
Canada is a common destination with the royals. Queen Elizabeth has toured the realm over 20 times, more than any other country.
It will be seen by commentators as a safe option for a well-received overseas visit by the newlyweds, and a straightforward introduction to royal tours for Middleton.
She will have to get used to the long hours, relentless travelling and varied engagements that are part of the rigours of such trips.
The itinerary is likely to include the usual set pieces of official banquets, welcoming ceremonies involving guards of honour and walkabouts.
It is thought the couple will take part in Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa on July 1.
Meanwhile, Britain's press reported that photographer Hugo Burnand had been selected to cover the couple's wedding.
Princess Diana favourite Mario Testino shot the couple's engagement celebrations, but Burnand, who has taken pictures of the Queen, Prince Charles, Michael Jackson and Margaret Thatcher, has reportedly been chosen for the big day.
News of the couple's Canada trip came a day after Diana's brother Earl Charles Spencer announced that he was to tie the knot with Canadian charity boss Karen Gordon, his third marriage.
That wedding on June 18 will be at Althorp in Northamptonshire, central England, the Spencer family home, where Diana is buried.
Peter Phillips, the queen's eldest grandson and William's cousin, married Canadian management consultant Autumn Kelly in 2008.
MKNEWS: Hummingbird drone has successful flight
MKNEWS: Hummingbird drone has successful flight: "Tech company AeroVironment, Inc has announced successful flight trials of the tiny robot spy 'Hummingbird' prototype, which the company has ..."
Hummingbird drone has successful flight
The hand-made prototype aircraft has a wingspan of 16 centimeters (6.5 inches) tip-to-tip and has a total flying weight of 19 grams (2/3 ounce), which is less than the weight of a common AA battery. This includes all the systems required for flight; batteries, motors, communications systems and video camera. The aircraft can be fitted with a removable body fairing, which is shaped to have the appearance of a real hummingbird, the statement said.
The mini spy plane can fly up to 11 miles an hour and took five years to develop at a cost of $4million.
The Nano humming bird is part of the Phase II contract awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program and has both whimsy and espionage potential.
Austria, Australia in mail mix-up
In the latest sign of collective dyslexia about the countries, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd admitted he sometimes gets his Austrian counterpart's post, and vice versa.
"Yes, we do occasionally get each other's correspondence because the rest of the world doesn't know about the extra syllable," Rudd said, during a visit by Austria's Michael Spindelegger.
It is not the first time the countries, which are thousands of kilometres (miles) apart but separated by just two letters when written down, have been muddled up.
During November's G20 meeting in Seoul, a model of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard appeared in Sound of Music-style traditional Austrian dress, before being hastily replaced.
The mix-up was prophetically lampooned in 1994's comedy "Dumb and Dumber", when Jim Carrey's character tells an Austrian acquaintance to "throw a shrimp on the barbie".
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Philippines suffers shortage of science workers
The Philippines has fewer than half of the science and technology workers it needs as more and more of them are seeking jobs abroad, a science ministry official said Monday.
Under UNESCO standards, the Philippines is supposed to have 386 science and technology workers per one million people but it currently has only 165, said Leticia Catris, head of the ministry's Science Education Institute.
An institute survey found a growing number of science and technology workers seeking work abroad every year, said Catris.
"The reason for leaving is that they would earn more abroad than in this country. That is really a sad fact but people realise they have to fend for their families," Catris told AFP.The survey found that 24,502 science and technology workers went abroad in 2009, a figure that has been increasing steadily since 9,877 departed in 1998.
This figure includes scientists, technicians, engineers, computer and information technology personnel, doctors, nurses and even maths and science teachers, said Catris.
The Philippines has identified information technology, particularly call centres and other outsourced business processes as a key industry in the country's economic development.
At least 10 percent of the Philippine population, including many scientists, teachers, doctors and nurses, have gone abroad to seek work due to lack of well-paying jobs at home.
Early balding linked to risk of prostate cancer
A study showing that men who start to go bald at 20 may be more likely to develop prostate cancer in later life suggests they might benefit from early screening or preventative therapy, scientists said on Tuesday.
French researchers compared 388 men being treated for prostate cancer with 281 healthy men and found that those with the disease were twice as likely as the healthy men to have started losing their hair when they were 20.
If the men only started going bald when they were 30 or 40, there was no difference in their risk of developing prostate cancer compared to the healthy group.
"At present there is no hard evidence to show any benefit from screening the general population for prostate cancer. We need a way of identifying those men who are at high risk," said Philippe Giraud of Paris Descartes University, who led the study.
"Balding at the age of 20 may be one of these easily identifiable risk factors and more work needs to be done now to confirm this," he said in a statement.
Giraud, whose findings were published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology, said men identified as at higher risk of prostate cancer could be selected for earlier screening, or for chemo-prevention therapy using so-called anti-androgenic drugs like Merck's Proscar, or finasteride.
Finasteride is used to treat both prostate enlargement symptoms and baldness. It blocks the conversion of testosterone to an androgen hormone called dihydrotestosterone, which is thought to cause hair loss.
GlaxoSmithKline has a drug in the same class called Avodart, or dutasteride, and is currently seeking approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a license for use in men at higher risk of developing prostate cancer. But an FDA panel advised last month that GSK's application should be rejected.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men after lung cancer and kills an estimated 255,000 men each year.
Androgenic alopecia, also known as male pattern baldness, affects around 50 percent of men in their lifetime.
Previous studies have established a link between baldness and androgenic hormones, and androgens also play a role in the development and growth of prostate cancer.
Giraud and Michael Yassa of the University of Montreal in Canada, who also worked on the study, asked men to fill in a questionnaire about their history of prostate cancer, if any, and to indicate any hair loss they had at ages 20, 30 and 40 using pictures graded from stage I (no hair loss), to stage IV (receding hairline and balding from the top of the head).
The men's doctors also provided patients' medical histories, including any diagnosis of prostate cancer, age at diagnosis, stage of the disease and treatment. The study ran for 28 months.
"The data revealed that any balding at stages II-IV was associated with double the risk of prostate cancer later in life. This trend was lost at ages 30 and 40," said Yassa.
"Further work should be done, both at the molecular level and with larger groups of men, to find the missing link between androgens, early balding and prostate cancer."
French researchers compared 388 men being treated for prostate cancer with 281 healthy men and found that those with the disease were twice as likely as the healthy men to have started losing their hair when they were 20.
If the men only started going bald when they were 30 or 40, there was no difference in their risk of developing prostate cancer compared to the healthy group.
"At present there is no hard evidence to show any benefit from screening the general population for prostate cancer. We need a way of identifying those men who are at high risk," said Philippe Giraud of Paris Descartes University, who led the study.
"Balding at the age of 20 may be one of these easily identifiable risk factors and more work needs to be done now to confirm this," he said in a statement.
Giraud, whose findings were published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology, said men identified as at higher risk of prostate cancer could be selected for earlier screening, or for chemo-prevention therapy using so-called anti-androgenic drugs like Merck's Proscar, or finasteride.
Finasteride is used to treat both prostate enlargement symptoms and baldness. It blocks the conversion of testosterone to an androgen hormone called dihydrotestosterone, which is thought to cause hair loss.
GlaxoSmithKline has a drug in the same class called Avodart, or dutasteride, and is currently seeking approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a license for use in men at higher risk of developing prostate cancer. But an FDA panel advised last month that GSK's application should be rejected.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men after lung cancer and kills an estimated 255,000 men each year.
Androgenic alopecia, also known as male pattern baldness, affects around 50 percent of men in their lifetime.
Previous studies have established a link between baldness and androgenic hormones, and androgens also play a role in the development and growth of prostate cancer.
Giraud and Michael Yassa of the University of Montreal in Canada, who also worked on the study, asked men to fill in a questionnaire about their history of prostate cancer, if any, and to indicate any hair loss they had at ages 20, 30 and 40 using pictures graded from stage I (no hair loss), to stage IV (receding hairline and balding from the top of the head).
The men's doctors also provided patients' medical histories, including any diagnosis of prostate cancer, age at diagnosis, stage of the disease and treatment. The study ran for 28 months.
"The data revealed that any balding at stages II-IV was associated with double the risk of prostate cancer later in life. This trend was lost at ages 30 and 40," said Yassa.
"Further work should be done, both at the molecular level and with larger groups of men, to find the missing link between androgens, early balding and prostate cancer."
Demi Moore Bikini Pictures Prove She's Still the MILF to Beat
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