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I tried a few new skins for this blog but based on the comments, this original theme is the most friendly, so the new look is now the old look.

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Police seize ‘ancient’ bus on the road for more than 1.1 million miles

Berlin police have impounded an “ancient” Latvian tour bus they found creaking along the streets of the capital with a whopping 1.8 million kilometres on the odometer, they announced Wednesday.Officers pulled over the double-decker bus at about 3 pm Tuesday in the southwestern district of Wilmersdorf, the police said in a statement. They quickly established it had driven 1.8 million kilometres – enough to circle the earth 45 times or drive to the moon and back – twice.

Even on a cursory examination, they found numerous defects with the old vehicle, including faulty brakes, tyres worn down to the fabric, a cracked windscreen and major rusting to load-bearing parts of the chassis. They also found a spare fuel tank mounted in the luggage compartment.

The driver was the only person in the bus at the time it was pulled over. He was relieved of responsibility of the vehicle, which was immediately impounded.

via Police seize ‘ancient’ bus after 1.8 million kilometres – The Local.

Woman killed by superstitious husband who believed she was possessed by “a demon”

For the past 29 months, Jan David Clark has sat in an isolation cell in the Ector County Detention Center wondering how things could have gone so awry.

Though he admits to killing his wife during an attempted exorcism in February 2008, he maintains he never intended to harm the woman he “loved and spoiled” for 17 years.

“That was not a willing thing that took place,” Clark, 63, recalled in a jailhouse interview Tuesday. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s still a supernatural thing.”

After more than two years of delays, Clark is scheduled to be tried this fall on murder charges in connection with the death of 59-year-old Susan K. Clark. About two dozen subpoenas were mailed Tuesday to various investigators and law enforcement officials, ordering them to appear for trial Sept. 13 in Judge Stacy Trotter’s 244th District Court.

Clark was unaware of the trial date before the interview but said he is more than ready. “I’ve waited long enough,” he said, adding he has not ruled out testifying in his own defense.

Authorities say Clark killed his wife in their Ferguson Avenue home in West Odessa. According to court filings, Clark told investigators he held his wife’s face to the floor of their bathroom when the exorcized spirit from her body entered his, causing him to kill his wife.

Investigators found Susan Clark wrapped in a bed sheet on her back with a cross and a sword atop her body. Preliminary autopsy results revealed she had been suffocated, court documents show.

Clark said he regrets attempting the exorcism alone, noting a group effort would have been more appropriate.

“My intention was to confront a demon I thought she had,” Clark said. “I had a pretty arrogant attitude about the whole thing.”

Clark acknowledged Tuesday that he did not have “all my oars in the water” at the time of his arrest. But he insisted that murder is the wrong charge because he “did not willingly” kill his wife. …

via Clark maintains innocence | clark, innocence, maintains – Local News – Odessa American Online.

Revered Chinese Panda Quan Quan Dies From Gas Poisoning

Chinese police have detained a man in connection with the gas poisoning death of Quan Quan, revered as “the heroic mother” zoo panda who had given birth to seven cubs.

The 48-year-old man, identified only by his surname Yang, had hired workers to disinfect a former air raid shelter he had leased to grow mushrooms, the state news agency Xinhua reported today.

The shelter was near the Jinan Zoo’s panda house in eastern Shandong Province, and toxic gas used by the workers leaked through an air pipe used to cool the pandas, fatally poisoning Quan Quan.

Quan Quan was 21 years old, the equivalent of more than 70 in human terms, the agency said. Once she became ill after inhaling carbon monoxide and chlorine she was taken to a hospital, but died Thursday after three hours of emergency treatment.

According to a spokeswoman for the local civil air defense office, which owns the shelter, it was not aware that the air pipe existed because it “was not included in the facility’s design paper.” …

via Revered Chinese Panda Quan Quan Dies From Gas Poisoning.

Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm

The amount of phytoplankton – tiny marine plants – in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century, research suggests.

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say the decline appears to be linked to rising water temperatures.

They made their finding by looking at records of the transparency of sea water, which is affected by the plants.

The decline – about 1% per year – could be ecologically significant as plankton sit at the base of marine food chains.

This is the first study to attempt a comprehensive global look at plankton changes over such a long time scale.

“What we think is happening is that the oceans are becoming more stratified as the water warms,” said research leader Daniel Boyce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

“The plants need sunlight from above and nutrients from below; and as it becomes more stratified, that limits the availability of nutrients,” he told BBC News.

Phytoplankton are typically eaten by zooplankton – tiny marine animals – which themselves are prey for small fish and other animals.

via BBC News – Plankton decline across oceans as waters warm.

Quantum fractals at the border of magnetism

U.S., German and Austrian physicists studying the perplexing class of materials that includes high-temperature superconductors are reporting this week the unexpected discovery of a simple “scaling” behavior in the electronic excitations measured in a related material. The experiments, which were conducted on magnetic heavy-fermion metals, offer direct evidence of the large-scale electronic consequences of “quantum critical” effects.

The experimental and theoretical results are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by physicists at Rice University in Houston; the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, both in Dresden, Germany; and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria.

“High-temperature superconductivity has been referred to as the biggest unsolved puzzle in modern physics, and these results provide further support to the idea that correlated electron effects — including high-temperature superconductivity — arise out of quantum critical points,” said Rice physicist Qimiao Si, the group’s lead theorist.

“Our experiments clearly show that variables from classical physics cannot explain all of the observed macroscopic properties of materials at quantum critical points,” said lead experimentalist Frank Steglich, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.

The experiments by Steglich’s group were conducted on a heavy-fermion metal containing ytterbium, rhodium and silicon that is known as YbRh2Si2 (YRS). YRS is one of the best-characterized and most-studied quantum critical materials.

Quantum criticality refers to a phase transition, or tipping point, that marks an abrupt change in the physical properties of a material. The most common example of an everyday phase change would be the melting of ice, which marks the change of water from a solid to a liquid phase. The term “quantum critical matter” refers to any material that undergoes a phase transition due solely to the jittering of subatomic particles as described by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Heavy-fermion metals like YRS are one such material class, and considerable evidence exists that high-temperature superconductors are another.

Scientists are keen to better understand high-temperature superconductivity because the technology could revolutionize electric generators, MRI scanners, high-speed trains and other devices. …

via Rice University | News & Media.

Meet the Zedonk, a Zebra Donkey hybrid

In all his years running the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve, C.W. Wathen has never seen it happen. But five days ago, a zedonk was born.

“The animals have been running (in the fields) together for more than 40 years, but this is the first time that this has happened here,” said Wathen, the preserve’s founder and general manager. “We never suspected that they (had mated), so it was quite a surprise when the zedonk was born.”

The animal is a mix between a zebra and donkey. With black stripes prominently displayed on her legs and face, her zebra heritage is readily apparent, but her slender face and spindly legs are more donkeylike.

“White tigers are more of our calling card, but this is one of the most unique animals that has ever been born here,” Wathen said.

While she was born to a donkey mother, the baby zedonk’s instincts are all zebra.

“Usually, a foal will lay over on its side, sunning itself,” Wathen said. “But the zedonk sits up at all time — like she’s on alert looking out for predators. She’s still got some of her wild instincts.”

Although it’s uncommon for donkeys and zebras to mate, it isn’t unheard of. In 2005, a zebra gave birth to a zedonk in Barbados, according to the news website, Science Daily. And in the 1970s, three zedonks were born at a European zoo to a donkey mother, according to the Colchester Zoo’s website.

In about two weeks, the 5-day-old zedonk will begin roaming the property with the rest of the animals — including a camel, a donkey sibling, her zebra father and a 40-year-old miniature donkey.

Once the zedonk gets a little older, Wathen said she’ll be able to go out for off-site visits like some of the other animals on the preserve.

“The kids (visiting the preserve) have been going crazy about the zedonk,” he said. …

via gainesvilletimes.com. Local news, sports and lifestyles from Northeast Georgia.

Santa Claus, an Ordained Anglican Bishop, Rips Catholic Church

Talk about piling on — now even Santa Claus is taking shots at the Catholic Church.

An explanation, of course, is in order. It’s not the jolly old elf who lives at the North Pole with toy-crafting elves and flying reindeer. No, Virginia, this is a decidedly more politicized Claus, an ordained bishop from Nevada with the likeness and legal name of his famous doppelganger.

And this Santa Claus is angry. Last week, in a scathing, widely distributed press release, Claus called out the church for its failure to institute sufficient reform in the wake of clergy sex abuse scandals. He also suggested that he may sue the church to force change.”Bishop Santa intends ‘to explore and utilize a variety of legal means,’” the statement read in part, “‘to hold the Roman Catholic Church, especially the pope and Vatican, accountable for the suffering of many thousands of vulnerable children at the hands of clergy, straight and gay, young and old, celibate or not.’”

But sue the Catholic Church? Who is this Santa Claus?

According to Washoe County, Nev., he’s 63-year-old Thomas O’Connor, a Lake Tahoe man who legally changed his name to Santa Claus (no middle initial) in 2005. A look at his website — yes, Virginia, Claus has a website — reveals that he was recently elevated to the title of missionary bishop in the Apostles’ Anglican Church, an ecumenical Christian denomination based in Ohio and Michigan.

AOL News spoke with the presiding bishop of the Apostles’ Anglican Church, Bishop Lawrence Cameron, and confirmed that Claus is, indeed, a bishop. As a missionary bishop, Claus does not preside over a geographical territory or diocese.

AOL News also contacted representatives for two of the nation’s largest governing bodies of Anglicanism — the Anglican Church in North America and the Episcopal Church — and neither had heard of Claus’ organization.

In an interview with AOL News, Claus explained why a man of his name and position would target the Catholic Church. “No one’s stepped up to the plate. Of all people, why not Santa Claus?” …

via Santa Claus, an Ordained Anglican Bishop, Rips Catholic Church.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacks Octopus Paul

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world.

He claims that the octopus is a symbol of decadence and decay among “his enemies”.

Paul, who lives at the Oberhausen Sea Life Centre, in Germany, won the hearts of the Spanish by predicting their World Cup victory.

He became an international star after predicting the outcome of all seven German World Cup matches accurately.

However, the Iranian president accused the octopus of spreading “western propaganda and superstition.” Paul was mentioned by Mr Ahmadinejad on various occasions during a speech in Tehran at the weekend.

“Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values,” he said.

via Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacks Octopus Paul – Telegraph.

I suspect something is getting lost in translation.

Popular people live longer

Healthy ‘social connections’ – with relatives, friends, neighbours or workmates – can improve our odds of survival by 50 per cent, the study found.

But being a hermit can be as unhealthy as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, being an alcoholic, doing no exercise – and can even be twice as bad for us as being obese.

Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad, from the Department of Psychology at Brigham Young University, said: “The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organisations and the public.

“When someone is connected to a group and feels responsibility for other people, that sense of purpose and meaning translates to taking better care of themselves and taking fewer risks.”

The researchers looked at data from 148 previous studies that measured human interaction and tracked health outcomes for a period of seven and a half years on average.

Because information on relationship quality was unavailable, the 50 per cent increased odds of survival may underestimate the benefit of healthy relationships.

Professor Holt-Lunstad said: “The data simply show whether they were integrated in a social network.

“That means the effects of negative relationships are lumped in there with the positive ones. They are all averaged together.”

Study co-author Professor Timothy Smith, who works alongside Professor Holt-Lunstad, said the results did not just stem from elderly people living longer – with men and women of all ages benefitting from close relationships.

The Professor also said that modern conveniences and technology have lead some to think that good friendships aren’t necessary – but that this was not the case.

He said: “This effect is not isolated to older adults. Relationships provide a level of protection across all ages.

“We take relationships for granted as humans we’re like fish that don’t notice the water.

“That constant interaction is not only beneficial psychologically but directly to our physical health.”

via Popular people live longer – Telegraph.

Caught on video: Girl climbs into arcade claw machine, survives.