Scots could soon be blasting off into space

No legal barriers stand in the way of commercial space flights from an RAF base, a Nationalist politician has revealed.

SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson held talks with UK Science Minister Lord Drayson on Tuesday about the flights from RAF Lossiemouth in his Moray constituency.

Virgin Atlantic has already identified the military establishment as a potential base for the UK’s first commercial space enterprise.

Mr Robertson said: “Scotland offers the right combination of aeronautical, technical and climactic factors to host these flights and RAF Lossiemouth in Moray is acknowledged as the leading site for operations.”

As well as Lord Drayson, Dr Ian Gibson of the British National Space Centre was also at the talks.

“What emerged from our meeting is that there are no serious legislative or regulatory impediments to commercial space flight in the UK,” Mr Robertson added.

“We now hope that the development of technology by Virgin Galactic and other companies is successful. This would provide a platform for domestic satellite launches as well as space tourism.

“Scotland could very well become a European centre for space launches and this offers tremendous opportunities for scientific, economic and tourism development.”

via Scots could soon be blasting off into space | Scotland | stv News.

World’s earliest computer used for love poetry!

The first task for the world’s earliest computer – the Manchester-built Mark One – was to compose romantic verse.

After creating the Mark One’s small-scale prototype, the Baby Computer, in 1948, Manchester University scientists earned world-wide fame.

Then dozens of pioneer software programs were specially written, only to be lost over time.

But German academic David Ward has turned up a light-hearted love-poetry generator program written by Manchester scientist Christopher Strachey in 1952 to test the machine’s ability to randomly select information.

Ward, a German computer ‘archaeologist’ unearthed the program while researching Strachey’s papers at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and then spent three months creating his own version of the ‘software.’

His website allows visitors to generate their own random ‘poetry’.

Also, the expert has created a working replica of the One ‘Baby’ computer which will run the love letter programme for an exhibition in Germany.

via CafeTerra: World’s earliest computer used for love poetry!.

The random love poems generated by this program are more like short strange love letters. I got this one:

DARLING SWEETHEART
YOU ARE MY SEDUCTIVE APPETITE: MY LOVABLE APPETITE. MY ADORABLE ARDOUR TENDERLY LUSTS FOR YOUR LUST. MY DEVOTED LONGING EAGERLY TREASURES YOUR EAGERNESS. YOU ARE MY LOVESICK CHARM.
YOURS FONDLY
M. U. C.

Chicken lays bowling-pin shaped egg

An animal lover has found her chickens are game for anything after one laid an egg resembling a tenpin bowling pin.

Natalie Wiltshire said the bizarre creation was laid by one of her 20 chickens and reckons it is one of a kind.

‘I’ve done a bit of research and there’s nothing to suggest you should ever get eggs in this shape,’ said the 43-year-old.

via Chicken lays bowling-pin shaped egg | Metro.co.uk.

Pet shop receives delivery of dead man instead of tropical fish

When Mark Arabia, owner of the Pets Plus store, went out to the delivery man’s vehicle to collect the $1,000 fish supply he discovered a coffin.

“At first when I looked at it, I said, ‘Fish never come this way’,” he said.

He said he eventually learned that the body inside was that of a 65-year-old man from San Diego, California, who died of early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

The body was supposed to go to a laboratory in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but there was an “unfortunate mix-up” at Philadelphia airport, said US Airways.

The airline, which had brought the body from California, said the problem was caused by a “verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative”, adding that it was “deeply sorry”.

“I think it’s horrible. You can mess up, give us wrong stuff, wrong boxes. I guess this is how they treat bodies at the airport, which is a shame,” said Mr Arabia.

“If it was my family member, I’d really be broken up.”

via Pet shop receives delivery of dead man instead of tropical fish – Telegraph.

Monkey ‘kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree’

The animal threw the missile from the top of a tree after becoming frustrated with his tiring labour, according to reports.Leilit Janchoom, 48, had employed the monkey to pick coconuts which he could then sell for around 4p each.

The animal – named Brother Kwan – found the work tedious and strenuous but Mr Janchoom refused to let him rest, dishing out beatings if he refused to climb trees.

It is believed that the monkey eventually snapped, and targeted his owner from a high branch with one of the hard-skinned fruits.

Mr Janchoom, from the province of Nakorn Sri Thammarat in Thailand, died on the spot after being struck by the coconut, according to reports in a local newspaper.

The dead man’s wife said that the monkey had “seemed lovable” when they bought him for £130.

News of the attacks comes after scientists disclosed this week that a chimpanzee at a Swedish zoo became so annoyed at being gawked at by tourists in a zoo that he started creating weapons to hurl at them.

Santino the chimp would calmly collect stones and fashion discs made out of concrete even when the zoo was closed, to throw at visitors when they returned.

Scientists believe his behaviour is the strongest proof yet that humans are not the only creatures which can make plans for the future.

via Monkey ‘kills cruel owner with coconut thrown from tree’ – Telegraph.

Nashville UFO Examiner: MUFON to receive major funding from billionaire backer

Billionaire real estate investor and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow of Las Vegas is now betting his bucks on MUFON to find valuable new knowledge about alien propulsion systems.

Bigelow, who has long been known to give millions of dollars to fund serious UFO research, has just concluded a deal with MUFON whereby he will supply this organization with whatever it needs to be able to go out and bring back the hard evidence, not only to document the reality of UFOs interacting with us, but most importantly to gather the kind of information that will truly advance scientific understanding of this phenomenon.

This may well prove to be a historical occasion for MUFON and for the science of Ufology in general. MUFON since its inception has been a volunteer effort on the part of civilians who devote whatever spare time and energies they can afford in order to fulfill MUFON’s stated mission of scientifically investigating the UFO phenomenon for the benefit of humanity.

Now for the first time MUFON’s members are going to be paid to do their work. MUFON’s agreement with Bigelow is to train and qualify a special rapid response team of Field Investigators who can be deployed within 24 hours to the scene of a major UFO event, the kind designated as Category 2 or 3 in the classification system devised by legendary UFO researcher Jacques Vallee. These are the rarer cases where either physical traces are left or physiological effects are caused in the witness.

Bigelow has hired 50 top-flight scientists to assist MUFON in this endeavor who will function as consultants and do expensive lab analysis of alien materials gathered at the location of a UFO event. Bigelow, who never does anything on a small scale, a few years ago founded BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) with the incredibly ambitious goal of putting a commercial hotel up in orbit around the earth. He thinks that even one category 2 or 3 case if properly investigated can yield significant scientific paydirt.

Whatever high-tech equipment needed by the investigators on the scene will be drop-shipped to them overnight by BAASS. These high-profile cases will be investigated using the strictest methods of scientific protocol.

Bigelow who has been known to keep his findings on the UFO subject secret has agreed per his contract with MUFON to hold nothing back from this organization that is revealed in the BAASS lab analysis of materials supplied by MUFON. This project which just launched on March 1 is code-named SIP (for Star Impact Project) ….

via Nashville UFO Examiner: MUFON to receive major funding from billionaire backer.

And once he discovers that the sky is full of cloaked ships from various governments spying on us?  SIP: PsyOp to get the Chinese, the Russians and “you know who” to back off a bit while our own “UFOs” prepare for … what? Something brewing no matter how you look at this.

Willie Smits: How we re-grew a rainforest

Life could have survived Earth’s early pounding

Microbes living deep underground could have survived the massive barrage of impacts that blasted the Earth 3.9 billion years ago, according to a new analysis. That means that today’s life might be descended from microbes that arose as far back as 4.4 billion years ago, when the oceans formed.

Around 3.9 billion years ago, shifts in the orbits of the gas giant planets are thought to have disrupted other objects in the solar system, sending many hurtling into the inner planets. Geologists call that time the Hadean Eon, and thought its fiery hell of impacts would have sterilised the Earth.

But a new study by Oleg Abramov and Steve Mojzsis of the University of Colorado in Boulder suggests hardy life-forms could have survived if they were buried underground. They will report the results on 23 March at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

Sterilisation point

Using a computer model, they sent 200 million billion tonnes of mass – in rocks with the same mass distribution as those in today’s asteroid belt – slamming into the planet.

The biggest impacts would have done the most damage – a 500-kilometre-wide blockbuster would have spread a 350-metre-deep layer of 1200 °C ejecta over the planet.

Yet heat from the impacts would not have penetrated very deeply into the underlying solid crust. The layer heated to the sterilisation point, about 110 °C, would be only about 300 metres thick. High-temperature ‘extremophile’ microbes, like those in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, would have survived at greater depths, down to their limit of about 4 km.

Moreover, the impacts might have helped provide a refuge for these heat-loving microbes by creating cracks in the rocky crust that water could flow into.

via Life could have survived Earth’s early pounding – space – 10 March 2009 – New Scientist.

Alcohol in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze

Alcohol may taste sweeter if you were exposed to it before birth, suggests a study in rats. The findings may shed new light on why human studies have previously linked fetal alcohol exposure to increased alcohol abuse later in life, and to a lower age at which a person first starts drinking alcohol.

Alcohol’s taste is a mixture of sweet and bitter components. To test whether prenatal alcohol exposure could affect the perception of these components, Steven Youngentob at the State University of New York in Syracuse and John Glendinning at Columbia University in New York measured how avidly rats consumed ethanol, sweet water or bitter water.

They found that young rats whose mothers had consumed alcohol during pregnancy preferred ethanol and consumed more of the bitter water than the offspring of mothers that didn’t consume alcohol. Rats that had been exposed to alcohol in the uterus also seemed to be more attracted to the smell of alcohol.

Prenatal exposure seems to reduce the perceived bitterness of alcohol, making it seem sweeter, says Youngentob.

Both of these differences seemed to disappear once the rats reached adulthood – but only if they hadn’t tasted alcohol during their youth. If prenatally exposed rats did consume alcohol in their youth, these preferences seemed to become set for life.

“The take-home message is to keep kids away from alcohol for as long as possible – particularly if they have had prenatal exposure,” says Youngentob.

via Alcohol in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze – life – 09 March 2009 – New Scientist.

Girl recovering after removal of 6 organs, tumor

Seven-year-old Heather McNamara was heading home Tuesday, a month after surgery that temporarily removed organs from her digestive tract to allow removal of a tennis ball-size tumor.

According to her surgical team at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, the operation — referred to as an “auto-transplantation” because the patient’s own organs (instead of those from a donor) were reimplanted within four hours after being extracted — is the first of its kind to be performed on a child.

“If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing left,” Dr. Tomoaki Kato of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia, told CNN, remembering his thoughts during the surgery. “We were confident, but also prepared,” he recalled.

In a 23-hour operation involving three different carefully coordinated surgical teams, doctors first removed the stomach, liver, spleen, pancreas, large intestine and small intestine along with the entwined tumor, placed the organs on ice with preservation solution, and then proceeded to extract the tumor while simultaneously preparing the body to receive the reimplanted organs.

The patient’s father, Joseph McNamara, was kept on standby as a live donor in the event Heather needed an emergency liver transplant during the operation. Fortunately, such measures were not required.

Dr. Devon John, a transplant surgeon at New York University School of Medicine, told CNN that he was impressed by the surgery. “The operative approach and treatment of this rare and significant tumor is a tour de force … requiring a well-planned, multidisciplinary approach to managing the patient and performing the operation itself,” said John, who was not involved in the surgery.

He also said that because Heather is a child, her blood vessels are smaller, which made the surgery more difficult: “It’s challenging in an adult, and much more so in a 7-year-old because there is much less wiggle room.”

via Girl recovering after removal of 6 organs, tumor – CNN.com.

Amazing.