Conquering cancer with implants?
The 8.5-millimeter biodegradable disk can be “inserted anywhere under the skin—much like the implantable contraceptives that can be placed in a woman’s arm,” Mooney said. “The implants activate an immune response that destroys tumor cells.” When the disks were implanted in mice with melanoma, the treatment led to remission and longer lives in “a substantial portion of the population,” the authors reported.
Are these practical demonstrations of the so-called “smart drugs” I’ve been reading about for years? I hope so…
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Evidence of life on Mars
We feel vindicated. We’ve shown the alternate explanation is absolutely incorrect, leading us back to our original position that these structures are formed by bacteria on Mars,” Dr Mackay said.
Thirteen years (and peer-reviewed studies) later, NASA is about to formally announce what it first announced in 1996; they have evidence of bacterial life once existing on Mars.
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Dilbert
He was probably a terrorist. They do all have beards. And webbed feet, I’m given to understand.
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Huge Ocean May Once Have Dominated Mars’ Northern Hemisphere
The new map, created by a computerised analysis of satellite data, shows that some regions of Mars had valley networks almost as dense as those on Earth. “It is now difficult to argue against runoff erosion as the major mechanism of Martian valley networks,” said Professor Wei Luo, from Northern Illinois University in the US, who led the research.
I cannot wait until our robot probes retrieve core samples from the subsurface of the now-dry Martian ocean beds (Northern or Southern hemispheres, I don’t mind, they were once equally as wet and today offer vast tracts of permafrost), and confirm the existence of long-frozen extra-terrestrial bacteria.
It’s gonna happen.
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An Australian double standard
A majority of the world is casually religious, not deeply or profoundly. I’d go further: most of the people in this world are stupidly religious, with ingrained beliefs that they did not acquire through thought or study, but through regular indoctrination from childhood on.
I know PZ Myers is a controversial chap, and I’m aware he angers and stirs-dissent amongst fellow critical-thinking non-believers… I gotta say, though, I keep finding ways I just outright agree with his opinions on oh-so-many things.
This is one of them.
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Pale Blue Dot
PALE BLUE DOT: As the Voyager 1 spacecraft roamed ever deeper into the solar system, astronomer Carl Sagan thought it would be worthwhile to have the NASA probe take a look back at Earth before the planet receded completely from view. “Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager could see, nearby planets and far-off suns,” Sagan recalled in his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot.
“But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.” In 1990 he got his wish: Voyager 1 turned to see the lonely pixel (0.12 pixel, actually), photographing Earth from six billion kilometers away. The planet is visible as a dot in the rightmost diagonal ray of light—Sagan attributes the rays to sunlight reflected off the body of the Voyager spacecraft.
The only thing more awesome than this is the notion that, one day, if we work hard enough, human eyes will enjoy the same view first hand.
And the only thing more humbling than this image is the fact that, once day, that pixel will be gone.
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Herschel telescope 'fingerprints' colossal star
VY Canis Majoris is some 4,500 light-years from Earth and could explode as a supernova at any time.
It is colossal. If it was sited at the centre of our Solar System, it would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn.
If space exploration doesn’t knock you sideways in awe, you’re just missing one of the most incredible ongoing-achievements of our species.
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What Really Happens When They Check in The Back
This is true. As a student I worked in a shoe shop. If we took a dislike to a customer and they asked us to “check in the back” for a different size or style or colour or whatever we’d just stand in the stock room reading a magazine or drinking coffee before emerging with a grim shake of the head – “I’m sorry, we don’t have that…”
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When did this happen?
I know OS X changed the mouse icon in System Preferences if a Magic Mouse was connected… which is a nice touch (pun intended)… and this happened on my Mac Pro when I connected my Magic Mouse.
But I just noticed the icon has also changed on my MacBook Pro – which has never had a connection to the Magic Mouse. I’m guessing this is a blanket change then, across all Macs running 10.6.2?Posted via email from liamcassidy | Comment »
