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Friday, March 16, 2007

The European Space Agency‘s Mars Express spacecraft has discovered ice deposits in the south pole of Mars that are larger than the state of Texas.

Scientists say that there is enough water in the deposits to cover the entire planet with up to 36 feet of water if the ice was to melt. Some sections of the ice deposits are up to 2.3 – 2.5 miles deep. The ice is composed of carbon dioxide, a little bit of dust, and water (90 percent of the water is estimated to be frozen).

What has caught the attention of the scientists working on the Mars Express project is that this may help reveal whether or not there is any (microbial) life within the ice.

Another perplexing question that scientists are trying to solve is what happened to all the water that produced all the channels on the surface of Mars.

Jeffrey Plaut, who is from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and who is also leading the study, noted that, “We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go? Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it’s still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we’ve seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history.”

Currently, only 10 percent of the water is remaining and is located at the poles of Mars. It has been suggested that some of the remaining 90 percent of the water that disappeared could either be underground or could have simply left the atmosphere into space.

Friday, April 11, 2008

New ‘deadly’ sexual enhancement products have been found in Singaporean markets and can cause serious side effects on users.

The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) announced the presence of the illegal drugs, known as Power 1 Walnut, Santi bovine penis erecting capsule, Zhong Hua Niu Bian and fake Cialis, which have been discovered over the past 3 months. Santi bovine penis erecting capsule has been found to contain high amounts of glibenclamide, a potent drug used to treat diabetes. The tablets also contain sildenafil and tadalafil – potent western medicines used to treat erectile dysfunction. Zhong Hua Niu Bian also contains sildenafil and glibenclamide.

High consumption of the tablets can be potentially deadly as the glibenclamide in the capsules can lead to drastically reduced blood sugar levels which can lead to seizures, stroke, coma or death. Consuming half of a Power 1 Walnut capsule has led to unconsciousness and frothing at the mouth.

Consumption of Power 1 Walnut has led to the death of a middle age man last week who fell into a coma. Currently, one death and two cases of coma have been reported from the total of 89 hospitalised cases linked with the consumption of the illegal drugs. It has been revealed that patients obtained the drugs by purchasing them from illegal peddlers located in various parts of Singapore.

The HSA has advised people to stop consuming the drugs and to report on any cases of consumption to them.

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Wednesday, February 23, 2005A compound in the common daisy-like plant feverfew kills human leukemia stem cells and could form the basis for newer, more effective drugs for the disease.

American researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York say that it could take months to develop a useable drug from the compound, parthenolide.

However, they are working to do so with chemists at the University of Kentucky who have identified a water-soluble molecule with the same properties. The US National Cancer Institute has also accepted the work into its rapid access program, which aims to speed experimental drugs into human clinical trials.

“This research is a very important step in setting the stage for future development of a new therapy for leukemia,” says Rochester researcher Craig Jordan. “We have proof that we can kill leukemia stem cells with this type of agent, and that is good news.”

Parthenolide appears to target the roots of myeloid leukemia, stem cells, while current treatments including the relatively new drug Gleevec don’t. So, “You’re pulling the weed without getting to the root,” says Jordan.

Used for centuries to fight fevers, inflammation and arthritis, feverfew earned interest from the Rochester researchers after other scientists showed that it could prevent skin cancer in animal models.

So the researchers investigated how a concentrated form of the plant component parthenolide would affect leukemia cells and normal cells.

Comparing the impact of parthenolide to the common chemotherapy drug cytarabine, they found that parthenolide selectively killed leukemia cells while sparing normal cells better.

While the findings suggest that parthenolide is a good starting point for new drugs, people with leukemia aren’t being encouraged to take high doses of feverfew as they could not take enough of the remedy to halt the disease.

The research is reported in the journal Blood.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Kurdish Ubuntu, a Linux distribution, was promoted this week with a reception in Diyarbakir. Ubuntu was the first Linux distribution to implement Kurdish localization^[1]. Kurdish localization in Linux is an important milestone for Turkey due to ethnic conflicts.

Kurdish Ubuntu was prepared by a team of hardworking translators working on the Rosetta web application [1]. In his talk at the reception, the mayor of Sur (a town in Diyarbakir) said that “Whatever language it is in, we wanted it [our service] to be accessible multilingually because multilingualism is our wealth. Our work is being conducted on Kurdish, English, and Turkish language support. … If we can integrate multilingualism, multi-identities, and multi-culturalism in this nation, this region will be a place of peace instead of conflicts.” Mehmed Uzun, a Kurdish writer, speaking about the Kurdish language, told the attendees that “Our most important problem is that the language is not standardized. The Kurdish language should be standardized.” Ubuntu was later distributed to the reception’s attendees.

• The boot screen of Kurdish Ubuntu

• Splash screen of Kurdish Ubuntu

• Desktop screen

• Applications Menu (Internet)

• Applications Menu (Office)

• System Menu (Preferences)

• Firefox web browser start page

• OpenOffice.org word processing application

• Evolution (office tool and email client)

Monday, January 30, 2006File:02gaza.jpg

In a reaction to the ongoing controversy over the September publication of cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, gunmen from the Fatah assaulted a European Union (EU) office in the Gaza Strip on Monday, prompting Denmark to warn citizens to avoid travel to Saudi Arabia.

The Danish newspaper issued an apology to Arab countries later Monday through Petra, a Jordanian news agency, for publishing the series of 12 cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammad, some of which characterized him as a sort of terrorist.

The EU office was assaulted in an ordeal that lasted approximately 30 minutes. No one was reported injured and no shots were fired. The gunmen, a group of approximately 15 masked men armed with anti-tank launchers, automatic weapons, and hand grenades, burst into the office of the international observers and then withdrew several minutes later, remaining outside to keep the offices closed.

The gunmen demanded apologies from both Denmark and from Norway, where the cartoons were republished this month, threatening that citizens of those countries would be prevented from entering the Gaza Strip.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The United States House of Representatives has passed The Affordable Health Care for America Act or HR 3962, a bill which would ensure that 95–96% of US citizens receive affordable health care.

HR 3962 was passed with 220 yeas and 215 nays. Democrats in the house needed at least 218 votes to pass the bill. 39 Democrats voted against the bill, which contained the Stupak amendment. This amendment curtailed women’s abortion rights. One Republican, Representative Joseph Cao of Louisiana, voted for the bill.

The US Senate has drafted their own health care bill, S. 1679. It is not yet known when the Senate will vote on their version of the bill, but in the end both versions must be merged into one with both the House and Senate voting again.

The health care program associated with HR 3962 is estimated to cost over US$1 trillion over ten years, according to the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who states that it will result in “[…] not one dime added to the deficit.”

US President Barack Obama says that he is “confident” that the Senate will be able to come to an agreement and pass a completed bill. Obama added that he hopes to sign a “comprehensive health insurance reform into law by the end of the year.”

Thursday, August 14, 2014

On Tuesday many internet routers, used to find the pathways to different parts of the web, reached their memory limit of 512,000 entries in the tables they use to store the routes, causing problems for many users.

A router is used to direct a user towards the area of the internet where they will find the content they are looking for, e.g. a web page. The recent problem was caused by the arbitrary memory limit built into the design of many aging routers. A limit was needed to prevent the cost of hardware from becoming prohibitively expensive in the days when physical data storage was still comparatively expensive. This small amount of memory in turn limits the number of directions which can be stored on a single router leading to different parts of the internet. When this limit was reached, it caused outages of services among Internet Service Providers. Many routers, including older ones provided by Cisco Systems Inc., are limited to storing a total of 512,000 routes or paths.

This limit was reached on Tuesday, reported to have been triggered by Verizon publishing another 15,000 paths. Those affected included eBay, LastPass, and clients of the web hosting company Liquid Web, who lost much of their services until Verizon withdrew some of these new paths. Problems nevertheless continued throughout the day, even after the withdrawal.

A longer term fix is possible, but it would require manually replacing old routers with newer, more capable ones. It is hard to tell what issues would temporarily cascade though the internet by taking down routers from part of the internet for maintenance. Many experts have warned that problems could continue until these difficult fixes have been implemented, although the recent switch to a newer form of IP Addresses, IPv6, will temporarily help the issue. Wired News reported that Andre Toonk, a network engineer, had stated that the number of network outages on the internet, typically around 1,500, yesterday peaked at 2,587, enough to become clearly noticeable.