Anti-war activist Sheehan joins Occupy Sacramento protest

The Occupy Sacramento movement received one of its biggest endorsements today when anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan urged demonstrators to continue their protest.

On the ninth day of the Sacramento protest, Sheehan told several hundred demonstrators at Cesar Chavez Plaza that the economy has been damaged by wartime expenditures.

“The economic and social justice we seek cannot be achieved without complete and unconditional peace,” she said.

The day was also marked by a march to the Capitol.

In an interview this evening, Sheehan, 54, said she planned to return to the downtown park later tonight in anticipation of being arrested. Police have arrested at least 39 protestors, mostly for sleeping in the park past its closing time.

Sheehan gained international fame as an anti-war activist after her son Casey was killed in the Iraq war in 2004. In recent years, she said, she’s been focusing much of her attention on the connection between the troubled economy and the government’s military expenditures.

“The war economy is literally sucking the lifeblood of our communities,” she said in an interview. …

via Anti-war activist Sheehan joins Occupy Sacramento protest – Sacramento News – Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee.

 

Sprinter, 100, sets record and aims for marathon

Fauja Singh, a 100-year-old British man, has run his way to eight sprinting world records and is aiming to set another, when he takes part in the Toronto Waterfront Marathon.

Mr Singh broke the records for 100-year-old men in all eight sprinting distances on Thursday. The Guinness Book of World Records will be on hand on Sunday to document his attempt at completing a full marathon distance.

Born in India in 1911, he started competitive running at the age of 89, after losing his wife and son.

His translator and coach Harmandar Singh said that ”running has given him a new focus in life”. …

via BBC News – Sprinter, 100, sets record and aims for marathon.

DNA sequenced of woman who lived to 115

The entire DNA sequence of a woman who lived to 115 has been pieced together by scientists.

The woman, who was the oldest in the world at the time of her death, had the mind of someone decades younger and no signs of dementia, say Dutch experts.

The study, reported at a scientific conference in Canada, suggests she had genes that protected against dementia.

Further work could give clues to why some people are born with genes for a long life, says a UK scientist.

It is more than 10 years since the first draft of the human genetic code was revealed.

Since then, perhaps a few hundred individuals have had their genes mapped in full, as the technology to “read” DNA gets better and cheaper.

The woman, whose identity is being kept secret, and is known only as W115, is the oldest person to have her genes mapped.

… She eventually died from a stomach tumour, having been treated for breast cancer at the age of 100.

A test of her mental skills at the age of 113 showed she had the performance of a woman aged 60-75 years.

At post-mortem examination, doctors found no evidence of dementia or the furring of the arteries seen in heart disease.

They are making her gene sequence available to other researchers, to further the cause of science. …

At post-mortem examination, doctors found no evidence of dementia or the furring of t”But in order to really understand the underlying biology of living a long, healthy life, we will need to look at the DNA sequence of hundreds or thousands of people.” …

via BBC News – DNA sequenced of woman who lived to 115.

Phoenix Jones, real-life Seattle superhero, unmasked in court

Fodor appeared in court Friday to find out if he will face charges over allegedly pepper spraying people, who he says where fighting as they left the nightclub, the Seattle Times reports.

The leader of a group of self-proclaimed “superheroes” called the Rain City Superhero Movement (RCSM) never lost his superhero panache in court, even whipping off his shirt to reveal his now famous black and yellow costume after the hearing was over.

Fodor was arrested Sunday this week on four counts of assault following the pepper-spray incident.

The official police report on the incident says the partygoers were not fighting, but walking to their car “dancing and having a good time.”

Fodor spent about seven hours behind bars before posting $3,800 bail.

The RCSM leader, who has been fighting crime on Seattle streets since at least February of this year, has previously been credited with preventing a carjacking. He is married to another masked vigilante he calls PurpleReign.

Fodor spoke briefly to the media after the hearing Friday, saying:

I will continue to patrol with my team, probably tonight. … In addition to being Phoenix Jones, I am also Ben Fodor, father and brother. I am just like everybody else. The only difference is that I try to stop crime in my neighborhood and everywhere else. …

via Phoenix Jones, real-life Seattle superhero, unmasked in court – BlogPost – The Washington Post.

Dutch Scientist: Why those “Faster-Than-Light” Neutrino’s aren’t

Don’t fire up your spaceship’s FTL drive just yet, folks. Those neutrinos that CERN scientists thought they saw traveling faster than the speed of light a few weeks ago look like they may have only been moving at close to light speed.

Last month, a team of international researchers shocked the scientific world with the news that particles they had been firing for several years from the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland at detectors at the OPERA facility in Gran Sasso, Italy placed about 450 miles away appeared to be arriving at their destination faster than the time it would take light to get there.

The particles, traveling through air, water, and rock, shouldn’t have hit the Gran Sasso detectors sooner than about 2.4 thousandths of a second after being fired, which is the time it would take light to travel the distance between the two points. Yet the CERN researchers reported that their neutrinos were getting to the target 64 nanoseconds faster—meaning that they were traveling faster than light, supposedly impossible according to the Theory of Special Relativity.

Now other scientists say that a failure to fully account for the effects of relativity is what caused the original researchers to supposedly mis-measure the time it was taking the neutrinos to travel using a GPS satellite, despite the CERN team saying they had factored relativity into their calculations.

A new paper by Dutch researcher Ronald A.J. van Elburg lays out the case that the GPS satellite measuring the neutrinos’ movements was also moving relative to the CERN and OPERA facilities as it orbited the Earth. Briefly, van Elburg asserts that the effects of relativity as they pertain to the GPS satellite’s measurements require two corrections to the perceived time of travel.

Lo and behold, it turns out that applying that double correction shaves 64 nanoseconds off the neutrinos’ travel time, according to van Elburg, “[t]hus bringing the apparent velocities of neutrinos back to a value not significantly different from the speed of light.” ….

via Boo! Hiss! Dutch Scientist Rains on Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Parade | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Nguyen Thi Phuong: Vietnamese woman ages 50 years in ‘a few days’

These pictures may look like an attractive woman in her 20s and her grandmother.

But they are said to be the same person – apparently taken just days apart.

The young Vietnamese woman at the centre of the improbable medical case, Nguyen Thi Phuong, claims the transformation may have come about because of an extreme allergy to seafood.

Nguyen, 26, says she developed this puffy face and sagging skin in 2008 but was too poor to seek treatment. Earlier this month, doctors said they would examine her free of charge.

Nguyen’s husband, carpenter Thanh Tuyen, insists the story is true and his love has not faded for his once-beautiful wife. …

via Nguyen Thi Phuong: Vietnamese woman ages 50 years in ‘a few days’ | Mail Online.

 

Cars burn, police and demonstrators injured as Rome rocked by most violent protests for years

Rome has been rocked by the most violent protests it has witnessed for years as a demonstration against “corporate greed” turned into a riot.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Italian capital to protest peacefully, but several dozen mask-wearing anarchists broke free from the main demonstration to rampage through the city.

Police fired tear gas and water cannons as rioters smashed shop and bank windows, set fire to cars and hurled bottles. Some protesters carried clubs, others wielded hammers. They destroyed bank cash machines, set bins on fire and assaulted at least two news crews from Sky Italia.

At least 70 protesters were injured and three were reported to be in critical condition. Twenty five of the injured were treated at a field clinic near St John Lateran square, where most of the clashes between protesters and police occurred, while the rest were taken to hospitals around the city. More than 30 policemen were hurt.

“Those who are carrying out what is nothing less than urban guerrilla warfare are hurting the cause of people around the world, who are trying to freely express their discontent with the world economic situation,” said Pierluigi Bersani, head of the Democratic Party, the largest in the opposition.

“Unacceptable violence and devastation is happening right now on the streets of Rome.” …

via Cars burn, police and demonstrators injured as Rome rocked by most violent protests for years – Telegraph.