Deadly "Superbug" Found on US Beaches

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a so-called superbug that causes hard-to-treat skin infections and serious illnesses such as pneumonia, has been found in sand and water samples taken from five beaches along Washington’s west coast. A previous study also found it in ocean water near a South Florida beach. This antibiotic-resistant strain of staphylococcus is usually found in hospitals but increasingly has been spreading in settings such as schools, locker rooms, and gyms. While doctors are not recommending that people avoid beaches, they say beachgoers should cover any open cuts or scrapes before playing in the sand and shower afterward

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Circus Founder Heads to Space

Circus entrepreneur Guy Laliberte, who founded the Cirque du Soleil theatre company in the 1980s, has become the first clown to go into orbit. He reportedly paid $35 million for his spot on the Soyuz TM-16 spacecraft, which will take him to the International Space Station for a 12-day stay. Laliberte undertook this mission to publicize the world's growing shortage of clean water.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Exploding Foreign Object In Bone's Sky




Explosion loud enough as much as four times that occur in the air, Thursday (8 / 10), approximately at 11.00 Wita, startling residents in the village of Palette, Awampone District, northern Bone, South Sulawesi.

Origin explosion in Bone, South Sulawesi, is unknown until now. Alleged explosion of a foreign object or a meteor burst. Really from outer space?

"The data we get from the central office monitoring the sky no information meteors fall today," said Abdul Rahman, the researcher Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN)

He admitted, LAPAN also did not know the origin of the explosion.

"Not to be verified artificial objects or natural objects that exploded in Bone, South Sulawesi. We also do not know exactly what time the incident occurred," he said.

Previously, Head of Planetarium Boscha, when contacted Moedji Raharto separate small states the possibility the blast came from a foreign object or a meteor.

The reason is, when that hour,it is very rare foreign objects can through a tool of earth orbit, where the Earth's head position was directly face-to-face with the sun.

However, different studies revealed by Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics (BMKG) Makassar. BMKG predict explosion originated from a force 1.9 earthquake on the Richter Scale

"This vibration magnitude 1.9 on the Richter scale. The explosion in the vicinity of the Gulf of Bone. Or is at 4.6 degrees south latitude and 120.09 degrees eastern longitude," said South Sulawesi BMKG staff Widiada Made told reporters, Thursday (8 / 10 / 2009).

In addition, he said, the explosion occurred at a depth of one kilometer and 62 kilometers in Wajo City. Four of the six seismograph in South Sulawesi province arrested tremor that occurred at the Wita 10:34.

"Until now we still do not know the cause. If because fault vibration should exceed 2 on the Richter scale, but it is not," he said.

Not yet certain, and then what kind of objects that explode ...?

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Autism More Prevalent Than Thought

Data from two new US government studies indicate that about 1 percent of all children between the ages of 3 and 17 have autism or a related disorder. This number is significantly higher than previous estimates and may suggest an increased awareness of these disorders, which are characterized by impaired social and communication skills. Interestingly, nearly 40 percent of the children who had once been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder were no longer considered autistic at the time of the survey. Experts doubt that this many children are recovering—in fact, many believe that autism cannot be cured at all—and instead suggest that improper diagnoses may account for that finding.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Gene Therapy May Heal Donor Lungs

Lung specialists are hopeful that a new technique that repairs lungs deemed too damaged for transplantation will increase the supply of organs available to patients who need them. While more research is needed to see if the repairs will hold up inside a human body, the results of laboratory testing have been promising. The technique, an out-of-the-body gene therapy treatment, promotes the production of interleukin-10, a substance that helps reduce damaging inflammation in the lungs. Human lungs subjected to the treatment showed significant improvement in their ability to take in fresh oxygen and expel carbon dioxide.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Woooowww hooo hooo...just wondering if Kittymen read this one =/

Town makes it illegal to own more than 3 cats

DUDLEY, Mass. – It's now illegal in one Massachusetts town to own more than three cats without getting a special license. Voters at a town meeting in Dudley on Monday night added language to a town bylaw that makes it illegal to own more than three cats without a $50 residential kennel license. Dudley is about 60 miles southwest of Boston.
The article was in response to a neighborhood feud over the 15 cats owned by Mary Ellen Richards.
The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester reports that one neighbor claimed the cats have ruined his yard.
Richards has put her home up for sale and says she plans to move to a "more cat-friendly community."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_odd3_cat_limit

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Most Distant Object Observed by Astronomers

A gamma-ray burst (GRB) from an exploding mega-star 13.1 billion light-years away from Earth has been observed by astronomers, becoming the most distant object ever detected. GRBs are the most violent explosions known, and though this one only lasted about 12 seconds, the afterglow was observable for 10 days. Prior to this observation, the most distant object ever detected was 12.9 billion light-years from Earth. The discovery is particularly exciting for scientists since the event happened in the so-called "cosmic dark ages," which started just 400,000 years after the big bang marked the origin of the universe.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

New Ancient Crocodiles Discovered

Scientists have unearthed fossils belonging to five different species of ancient crocodile, three of which were previously unknown. The first, Kaprosuchus saharicus, nicknamed "BoarCroc," was a 20-foot-long carnivore equipped with three sets of dagger-shaped fangs as well as an armored snout for ramming. The other two newly-discovered species, Araripesuchus rattoides and Laganosuchus thaumastos, nicknamed "RatCroc" and "PancakeCroc" respectively, are 3-foot-long specimens. The reptiles lived about 100 million years ago on the supercontinent of Gondwana—a landmass that later broke apart to form the southern continents.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Man Buys Galileo's Tooth and Fingers

Two fingers and a tooth once belonging to Galileo Galilei have been found by an art collector who purchased them a recent auction, where they were being sold as unidentified artifacts contained in a 17th-century wooden case. The newly-recovered body parts, along with another finger and a vertebra, were separated from the rest of the Galileo’s remains by scientists and historians during a reburial ceremony 95 years after his death. The relics were then passed from collector to collector until they went missing in 1905.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Auschwitz "Arbeit Macht Frei" Sign Stolen

Polish police have reported that the infamous iron sign from the entrance to Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp where more than a million people perished during World War II, has been stolen. The wrought iron sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei", meaning "Work Sets You Free," was made by Polish prisoners and first erected in 1940. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners passed under the sign as they entered the camp during the Holocaust; most were either murdered or worked to death. The sign's theft comes just days after the German government pledged 86 million dollars (60 million euros) to an endowment fund to help preserve the camp.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Christmas "Miracle": Mom and Baby Die and Revive

On Christmas Eve, Tracy Hermanstorfer died while giving birth to her son, but a few minutes after he was delivered, she began breathing again; and now both mother and child are recovering well. During the delivery, it appears that Hermanstorfer stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors then performed an emergency cesarean section in an effort to save the baby, only to find that he, too, was not breathing. As the doctors worked to resuscitate the newborn, which they were able to do successfully, the mother regained her pulse. It is not clear what prompted the mother's heart to restart

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Tomorrow there will be an inauguration/opening celebration---->Burj Dubai

Taken from the webpage:

A Wonder Comes to Life, Join in the celebration


Under the kind patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President & Prime Minister of the UAE, and the Ruler of Dubai, Emaar is pleased to invite you to the inauguration of Burj Dubai. Come and participate in the celebration of belief and the illumination of vision on the 4th Anniversary of His Highness’s Accession as the Ruler of Dubai.

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World's Oldest Footprints Found in Poland

Fossils from a disused quarry in southeastern Poland have yielded the oldest evidence of four-legged animals walking on land, pushing back the timeline of vertebrate evolution by millions of years. The footprints were made by tetrapods-four-legged vertebrates-about 397 million years ago, some 18 million years earlier than they were thought to have emerged. The creatures probably resembled crocodiles, may have been up to 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long, and are believed to have lived an amphibian-like existence.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Physically Fit Students Score Higher

Physically fit students tend to do better academically than their less fit peers. In a recent study of US middle and high school students, researchers found that those who took more time to complete a one mile run/walk fitness test tended to have lower scores on standardized math, reading, and language tests. The research team also found that nearly two thirds of the students fell below the state fitness standard for their age and gender. In recent years, schools across the US have cut physical education programs, but if future studies confirm that there exists a cause-and-effect link between poor fitness and reduced academic performance, they may have to reevaluate this approach.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Iceberg Rams Glacier, Dislodging New Iceberg

A huge Antarctic iceberg weighing several hundred billion tons has dislodged a large iceberg, measuring 965 square miles (2,500 square kilometers), from the Mertz Glacier. According to estimates, the new iceberg holds roughly the equivalent of a fifth of the world's annual total water usage. The area where these two icebergs are now drifting is an important zone for the creation of dense, salty water that is a key driver of global ocean circulation, and some scientists are concerned that this will disrupt ocean currents

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Acupuncture Eases Depression in Pregnant Women

An estimated 3 to 5 percent of pregnant women are diagnosed with depression, and while antidepressant medications are an option, there are concerns regarding the safety of their use during pregnancy. Now, it appears that a certain type of acupuncture may provide expectant mothers with an alternative treatment. In a recent study, researchers found that pregnant women who received "depression-specific" acupuncture were more likely to experience a reduction in their depression symptoms than those who underwent massage or acupuncture sessions that did not target depression.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Survival Differences on Sinking Ships

A comparison of the survivors of two of the worst ship sinkings in history--both of which involved similar vessels, passenger populations, and death tolls--has given researchers new insight into human selfishness and altruism. While survivors of the Lusitania were generally young, fit people age 16 to 35 who could rush to the lifeboats, survivors of the Titanic disaster were more often women, children, and those accompanying a child. Researchers say that since the Lusitania went down in just 18 minutes, survival instincts led people to behave selfishly. The Titanic, on the other hand, slowly sank over the course of nearly three hours, allowing for the emergence of social norms and selfless behaviors.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

World's Shortest Man Dies

The world's shortest man, He Pingping, who was just 2 feet 5 inches (74.6 centimeters) tall, has died at the age of 21. Born in 1988 in Wulanchabu, China, with a form of primordial dwarfism, a rare type of dwarfism believed to affect only about 100 people worldwide, he earned official recognition as the world's shortest man in 2008. According to his father, at birth, He was no bigger than the palm of his hand. His death is believed to have been caused by a heart condition

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

Saturn's Rings Far From Peaceful

Scientists have long thought that Saturn's rings are stable and slow to evolve, but new images from NASA's Cassini orbiter have revealed that they are actually quite fluid and changing. They show that collisions are fairly routine, that chunks of ice leave trails of debris in their wakes, and that, at times, rings will rapidly rearrange themselves. The images also indicate that though the rings are largely composed of water ice, which is white in color, the ice of Saturn's rings is red, colored by an unknown contaminant.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010

To Up Fat Burn, Skip Eating before Workout

Though many professional athletes eat before training, new research suggests that working out on an emptier stomach may actually help people burn more fat. In a recent study, European researchers found that cyclists who trained without eating first burned significantly more fat than those who ate. Another study, published in April, found that those who did not eat before working out burned a higher proportion of fat to carbohydrates than those who did, despite the fact that they performed worse in intensive cycling sessions than participants who ate before the workouts.

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LETS BEGIN IN 2010