A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons. Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people
A unique combination of drugs has made a 15-year-old girl the first known human to survive rabies without vaccination. A team of physicians gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a coma in Jeanna Giese to stave off the usually fatal infection, said Dr Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric disease infection specialist at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin
Anti-war protesters made a mockery of Tony Blair’s key election pledge of security by bursting into a government building just minutes after the Queen had announced new measures to tackle terrorism. As the whole of Whitehall bristled with armed police, three women and a man by-passed supposedly impenetrable security to gain access to the Cabinet Office, which has a direct underground link to No 10 Downing Street
In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls. These are not outcasts from The Island of Dr Moreau, the 1896 novel by HG Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.
Biologists call these hybrid animals chimæras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal foetuses. Chimæras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact — not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments.
But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimæra be before more stringent research rules should kick in?
Me ‘n my iPod had a bit of a crisis on Tuesday. Luckily a bit of help from Mat from the The Little App Factory and their glorious app iPodRip 3.7 came to my rescue.
Software update on my mac comes up informing me of a firmware update for June 04 G5’s and an iPod update. I studiously downloaded and installed these and everything seemed hunky dory. I reconnected my beloved iPod and iTunes starts up, only this time I get an unfortunate dialogue box saying something to the effect of the pod is corrupt, reformat it. Huh? I go, the Finder recognises it just fine. I restart hoping it was a lost gremlin in the works. Nope, reformat your pod and lose all your music. NOOOOO!!
You see I haven’t made recent backup of all my music on my pod, and I don’t want to loose about 10GB of music. BING! I had a light bulb moment. I have iPodRip, I can get all the music from pod using that and back up to my hard drive. I launch iPodRip. AARGGHHH!! It unexpectedley quit everytime I launch it.
Hmmm… no, not good. I look at the Apple discussion forums to see if this behaviour has coincided with my updates but couldn’t find anything. I checkout The Little App Factory site. Nope nothing there, well I’ll fill out the support form, you never know. I figure, they’re a small company probably based in the US so I won’t hear anything till tommorrowish. I can wait. 5 mins later I gets email.
How’s that for response time!
After some concise ‘n helpful goings back ‘n forth, Mat sends me a different version of iPodRip that will enable me to back up my music to my hard drive.
Fan-fucking-tastic! Pod has been reformatted and all musiced up.
Any how, iPodRip is essential for pod owners and has been included in Allume System’s The Big Mix also.
A man-made flood is roaring through the Grand Canyon in a bold experiment to restore the sandbanks of the Colorado river and to save fish and plants that have been disappearing over the past 40 years. The water is being channelled into the river and down the canyon through four giant steel pipes, carrying badly needed natural sediment with it. The US$3.7m venture, supported by more than a dozen US government agencies and groups, ends tomorrow, but how well it works will not be known for months
It ain’t cheap, but Hiroshi Shimizu has finally shown off his latest electric car; Eliica. It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge. Interestingly, Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories
Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in Dallas. It is despicable
, said a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president’s brother
An amateur palaeontologist has unearthed the biggest dinosaur to be discovered in the British Isles — and possibly Europe — from a cliff overlooking an Isle of Wight beach. Scientists who have just finished analysing the dinosaur’s two neck bones believe it grew to about 66 feet long and weighed up to 50 tons. It lived around 130 million years ago when Britain was subtropical and still connected to Europe and North America
The Charité Artificial Disc is a plastic replacement for one of two discs in the lower back. The Artificial Disc is expected to receive United States FDA approval by the end of the year. This is the first major breakthrough in back surgery since the 1940s,
says orthopedic surgeon Richard Guyer of the Texas Back Institute in Plano — via boingboing
Newspaper advertisements congratulating Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan have mistakenly directed fans to a gay porn web site. Telstra indulged in an overenthusiastic display of censorship by redirecting all Bigpond subscribers through to the Australian address
Primus Telecom has launched a new DSL broadband Internet service claimed to deliver high speed services at up to 6Mbps. The new high-speed Internet service is available to Primus customers in major cities around Australia who are in access range of upgraded facilities installed by Primus Telecom
Scientists are trying to use nanotechnology to cure diseases, ameliorate the energy crisis and reduce golf scores. Buffalo, New York-based NanoDynamics has come up with a golf ball that can correct its own flight path so it flies straighter than conventional balls. The ball won’t shift 45° in midair, but the design of the ball — and the materials it’s made of — serve to better channel the energy received from the club head and thus correct a wobble or slight drift
A security expert who audited the Japanese National ID Card system and found it to be terribly designed and implemented was prevented from presenting his findings at a technology conference after the Japanese government intervened and threatened the conference organisers — via boingboing
Instead of screaming Jump
, David Lee Roth will be yelling clear!
The former Van Halen frontman is taking up a new trade — paramedic [BugMeNot]. Roth, 50, has been riding for several weeks with a New York ambulance crew in training to become a paramedic. I have been on over 200 individual rides now,
said Roth. “Not once has anyone recognised me, which is perfect for me
There’s a chainsaw-shaped controller for the Nintendo GameCube, intended for use with the new Resident Evil game. It’s spattered with fake blood and emits chainsaw noises, but it also has all the buttons it needs to sub in for your regular GameCube controller — via boingboing
Proving yet again that little Johnny Coward‘s cult of loony fundies are firmly pushing the agenda, the Government has quietly backed a conservative push inside the UN to adopt a treaty banning all human cloning, including the replication of embryos for research into cures for Alzheimer’s and spinal cord damage. The global ban was proposed by Costa Rica and, aside from Australia, has been supported by the US and 59 predominantly Catholic and developing countries
Nineteen countries, including Australia, have agreed to cancel 80% of the debt Iraq owes them. The deal secured for the Paris Club of creditor nations ends a trans-Atlantic dispute and probably sets the framework for debt pardons from other creditors
The parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair for gross misconduct
over the war against Iraq will be published next Wednesday, the day after the Queen’s speech. It will be the first to be tabled in 198 years, since Lord Melville, a close friend of the then prime minister, William Pitt the younger, faced impeachment for misusing public money in running the Admiralty. Senior parliamentary officials, including legal advisers to the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, on Wednesday night approved the wording of the text as meeting parliamentary rules, allowing the motion to be tabled on the first day of the new session
Where there’s muck, there’s gas. Scientists have created genetically modified yeasts and fungi that can turn agricultural waste into fuel for cars and trucks. In future we may take to the roads in vehicles powered by left over plant remains. The technology — created with European Union money — uses corn stubble and other farm waste as basic ingredients for making ethanol. This can then be used as a substitute for petrol
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