Bitcoin Forum

British eSports Association is the governing body for eSports and competitive video gaming in the United Kingdom. It was established in July 2016.[1] The organization's chairman is Andy Payne OBE, managing director of the Mastertronic software publishing group and board member of UKIE, the trade body for the UK games industry.[2] The organization is sanctioned by the government of the United Kingdom, specifically through the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and will operate at Pinewood Studios.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence exhibited by machines. In computer science, an ideal "intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal. Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".

A flight suit is a full body garment, worn while flying aircraft such as military airplanes, gliders and helicopters. These suits are generally made to keep the wearer warm, as well as being practical (plenty of pockets), and durable (including fire retardant). Its appearance is usually similar to a jumpsuit. A military flight suit may also show rank insignia. It is sometimes used as a combat uniform in close quarters battle or visit, board, search, and seizure situations, for its practicality.

The Sagamihara stabbings were committed on 26 July 2016 in Midori Ward, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan. 19 people were killed and 26 others were injured, 13 severely, at a disabled care home.[1][3] The suspect was a 26-year-old man, identified as Satoshi Uematsu (植松 聖 Uematsu Satoshi?). He was a former employee of the care facility.[4] He surrendered at a nearby police station with a bag of knives, and was subsequently arrested.[2][3][5] The attack was described as one of the worst crimes committed on Japanese soil in modern history.

Bitcoin is a digital asset and a payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto introduced the idea on 31 October 2008 to a cryptography mailing list, and released it as open-source software in 2009. There have been several high profile claims to the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto; however, none of them have provided proof beyond doubt that back up their claims.

A dietary supplement is intended to provide nutrients that may otherwise not be consumed in sufficient quantities.

Supplements as generally understood include vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, or amino acids, among other substances. U.S. authorities define dietary supplements as foods, while elsewhere they may be classified as drugs or other products.

A cryptocurrency (or crypto currency) is a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of the currency.[1] Cryptocurrencies are a subset of alternative currencies, or specifically of digital currencies.

“I really like Bitcoin. I own Bitcoins. It’s a store of value, a distributed ledger. It’s a great place to put assets, especially in places like Argentina with 40 percent inflation, where $1 today is worth 60 cents in a year, and a government’s currency does not hold value. It’s also a good investment vehicle if you have an appetite for risk. But it won’t be a currency until volatility slows down.” – David Marcus, CEO of Paypal

August 3 is the 215th day of the year (216th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 150 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

Obviously an alt. Random username that makes no sense? Check. Newbie? Check.

Oh lol sorry didn't know that was your alt.

alts are NOT cool

it may or may not be mine

Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking, deep growling vocals and screams, aggressive, powerful drumming featuring double kick or blast beat techniques, minor keys or atonality, abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes and chromatic chord progressions. The lyrical themes of death metal may invoke slasher film-stylized violence,[3] religion (sometimes Satanism), occultism, Lovecraftian horror, nature, mysticism, mythology, philosophy, science fiction, and politics,[4][5] and they may describe extreme acts, including mutilation, dissection, torture, rape, cannibalism, and necrophilia.

There are about 3,000 different types of wildflowers in Florida. This is the third most diverse state in the union, behind California and Texas, both larger states.[67]

On the east coast of the state, mangroves have normally dominated the coast from Cocoa Beach southward; salt marshes from St. Augustine northward. From St. Augustine south to Cocoa Beach, the coast fluctuates between the two, depending on the annual weather conditions

2222-1111

INTRO – WHO AM I? WHAT IS THIS CRAP?

Good questions to ask. I am ME. As for statistics; I’m 31, live near a major city, work in a “white collar” job, have 10 years Navy experience in electronics/computers & radar. As for my experience/reputation as an Anarchist; I’m the guy you look and say “How the fuck does he get away with all that bullshit?”. I have been living on the outskirts of society all my life. At several points in my life, I tried to be “normal”, to be like everyone else, to “fit in”. I finally realized the futility of these efforts. I’m not like everyone else, I’m better! I’ve studied the thinking and beliefs of every group I could find that appeared to live outside the norm. Satanists, Anarchists, Musicians, Witches, Criminals… They’ve all given me pieces of what I am today. I don’t know that I now fit into any certain group. If I do, it would be a very secret and elite group. I know the power of the human mind and body and I know how to use it and control it. I know how to live outside society and I know how to walk right through the middle of it without being noticed. This article (possibly a series of articles) is a compilation of observations, opinions, and, wherever possible, factual information. I don’t expect most people would agree with any or all I have to say here. Most people do not have the level of understanding and knowledge I have obtained. I share this with you in the hopes that those of you who belong in this group will gain some insight and if needed, some direction. Feel free to E- mail me and express your arguments, disagreements or support. Through this manner I may consistently learn and grow more powerful.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump is unwinnable.

Even if she gets enough votes in the right states in November, the former Secretary of State will take on the job of uniting a country where millions of people, both left and right, believe that she should be in jail. Latest polls show that she has about a fifty percent chance of beating Donald Trump.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/delegates-orwellian-supporters/#sthash.6LhQl5za.dpuf

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life.[1] Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology.

121, 1221, 2121, 2211, 1122 - This sign indicates, 'Continue with these thoughts and feelings, as this is the mindset required for you to progress along your current path'. For example, you may see 1212 after thinking, “I'll stay at this job a while longer, until something better comes up”, which could mean that it is a wise train of thought, to be cautious, as your current situation may be uncertain; or that the opportunity you seek may appear from within your current employer.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heads and Tails may refer to:

    Heads And Tails, a solitaire card game which uses two decks of playing cards.

Other

    Heads & Tales, 1972 album by American singer/songwriter Harry Chapin
    Heads and Tales, 1936 memoir by artist Malvina Hoffman

Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal"). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korean: 삼성전자; Hanja: 三星電子 (Literally "3 star electronics")) (stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Suwon, South Korea.[1] Through extremely complicated ownership structure with some circular ownership[3] it is a part of the Samsung Group, accounting for 70% of the group's revenue in 2012.[4] It is the world's second largest information technology company by revenue, after Apple.[5] Samsung Electronics has assembly plants and sales networks in 80 countries and employs around 370,000 people.[6] Since 2012, Kwon Oh-hyun has served as the company's CEO.[7][8]
Samsung has long been a major manufacturer of electronic components such as lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, chips, flash memory and hard drive devices for clients such as Apple, Sony, HTC and Nokia.[9][10]
In recent years, the company has diversified into consumer electronics.[11][not in citation given] It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones and smartphones fueled by the popularity of its Samsung Galaxy line of devices.[12] The company is also a major vendor of tablet computers, particularly its Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab collection, and is generally regarded as pioneering the phablet market through the Samsung Galaxy Note family of devices.[13]
Samsung has been the world's largest television manufacturer since 2006,[14] and world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones since 2011.[15] Samsung Electronics displaced Apple Inc. as the world's largest technology company in 2011 and is a major part of the South Korean economy.[citation needed] In June 2014, Samsung published the Tizen OS with the new Samsung Z.

How could they do this? Some scientists have tried to estimate the number of cells in the human body based upon the weight of the average cell and the weight of the average human body. Doing this simple arithmetic gave them an estimate of approximately 70 trillion cells!

Other scientists instead tried to estimate the number of cells in the human body based upon the volume of the average cell and the volume of the average human body. Calculations based upon volume gave an estimate of approximately 15 trillion cells. That's quite a difference between the two estimates.

Jolla Oy[1] (sometimes referred to as Jolla Ltd.) is a Finnish technology company; a vendor of mobile devices[2] and the developer of Sailfish OS.[3] Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Jolla has its own research and development offices in Helsinki, Tampere and Cyberport, Hong Kong. Jolla was founded in 2011 by former Nokia staff of the MeeGo project team to utilise the MeeGo opportunities and its "endless possibilities".
Pronounced 'yolla', the company name is Finnish for dinghy (a small agile boat or life rescue boat). It was intended as an ironic joke about the "burning platform memo" which contained the metaphor to "jump into the cold sea water" or "burn with burning platform" used in context of the Nokia business activities, in the memo leaked by then-Nokia CEO in February 2011, with Osborne effect-like consequences.[4]

Get you out of a mental rut, give you new thoughts, new visions, new ambitions. Enable you to make friends quickly and easily. Help you to win people to your way of thinking. Increase your influence, your prestige, your ability to get things done.

1211-2121

I even considered getting some kind of thin device and cramming it in there to break up the stubborn poop party in the lower deck.

One of the first mentions about the possibility of a heart transplantation was by American medical researcher Simon Flexner, who declared in a reading of his paper on “Tendencies in Pathology” in the University of Chicago in 1907 that it would be possible in the then-future for diseased human organs substitution for healthy ones by surgery — including arteries, stomach, kidneys and heart.[4]

Norman Shumway is widely regarded as the father of heart transplantation although the world's first adult human heart transplant was performed by a South African cardiac surgeon, Christiaan Barnard, utilizing the techniques developed and perfected by Shumway and Richard Lower.[5] Barnard performed the first transplant on Louis Washkansky on December 3, 1967, at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.[5][6] Adrian Kantrowitz performed the world's first pediatric heart transplant on December 6, 1967, at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, barely three days after Christiaan Barnard's pioneering operation (which used Shumway and Lower's procedure).[5] Norman Shumway performed the first adult heart transplant in the United States on January 6, 1968, at the Stanford University Hospital.[5]

Worldwide, about 3,500 heart transplants are performed annually. The vast majority of these are performed in the United States (2,000–2,300 annually).[1] Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, currently is the largest heart transplant center in the world, having performed 122 adult transplants in 2014 alone. About 800,000 people have NYHA Class IV heart failure symptoms indicating advanced heart failure.[7] The great disparity between the number of patients needing transplants and the number of procedures being performed spurred research into the transplantation of non-human hearts into humans after 1993. Xenografts from other species and man-made artificial hearts are two less successful alternatives to allografts.[2]

Most published surgical methods of HT necessarily divide the Vagus nerve and thus amputate parasympathetic control of the myocardium.

In Kabul, there are 5-star hotels which include; The Serena Hotel, built by The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), and The Marriott Hotel near the U.S. Embassy. The Inter-Continental is also in the process of being redeveloped. The Safi Landmark Hotel is a 4-star hotel located in the Kabul City Center.

The old part of Kabul is filled with bazaars nestled along its narrow, crooked streets. Cultural sites include: the National Museum of Afghanistan, notably displaying an impressive statue of Surya excavated at Khair Khana, the ruined Darul Aman Palace, the tomb of Mughal Emperor Babur at Bagh-e Babur, and Chehlstoon Park, the Minar-i-Istiqlal (Column of Independence) built in 1919 after the Third Afghan War, the tomb of Timur Shah Durrani, and the imposing Id Gah Mosque (founded 1893). Bala Hissar is a fort destroyed by the British in 1879, in retaliation for the death of their envoy, now restored as a military college. The Minaret of Chakari, destroyed in 1998, had Buddhist swastika and both Mahayana and Theravada qualities.

Other places of interest include Kabul City Center, which is Kabul's first shopping mall, the shops around Flower Street and Chicken Street, Wazir Akbar Khan district, Kabul Golf Club, Kabul Zoo, Abdul Rahman Mosque, Shah-Do Shamshira and other famous mosques, the National Gallery of Afghanistan, the National Archives of Afghanistan, Afghan Royal Family Mausoleum, the OMAR Mine Museum, Bibi Mahro Hill, Kabul Cemetery, and Paghman Gardens. The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) was also involved in the restoration of the Bagh-e Babur (Babur Gardens).

Tappe-i-Maranjan is a nearby hill where Buddhist statues and Graeco-Bactrian coins from the 2nd century BC have been found. Outside the city proper is a citadel and the royal palace. Paghman and Jalalabad are interesting valleys north and east of the city.

The title track, Mandylion once again changes the pace of the album and showcases a more ambient as well as fully instrumental sound. The track makes use of a deep sounding flute and synth alongside some sublime vocal parts and plenty of sparkly sounding chimes all to the beat of what sounds like bongo or djembe. This track shows clear influence from bands such as Dead Can Dance.

The next track Sand and mercury keeps the Dead Can Dance vibe going before bursting into a doomy guitar and synth combo. The second half of the song slows down the pace leading to some honest and heartbreaking lines from Anneke and a fitting harmonised guitar outro topped with a reflective Simone de Beauvoir quote read by a .J.R.R. Tolkien – Very touching indeed.

The actual Siege of Kobanî approximately coincided with the American-led intervention in Syria getting serious by starting bombardments on Syrian territory. With the world fearing another massacre in Kobanî, the Americans started to give close air support to the YPG. While most observers expected ISIL to quickly crush the Kurds, the YPG put up a surprising and determined resistance. For months the western media covered a long and fanatical battle between an organization that had just committed genocide (ISIL) and an officially democratic organization (YPG) that employed female fighters and was isolated by Turkey. It was a fight that seemed epic and symbolic of a struggle between good and evil. While it lasted, the YPG was immune to criticism, and when it was over in March 2015 the U.S. and YPG had fought on the same side for half a year.

Business-as-usual is changing. The conventional wisdom that capitalism comes at great cost to society is being challenged. Instead, we’ve observed that the most innovative companies are using those same market drivers – the ones that have until now been a cause of such criticism and skepticism –as drivers for positive change in the world.

Fortune’s new “Change the World” list contributes to this trend. As Fortune Editor Alan Murray explains, “It is meant to shine a spotlight on companies that have made significant progress addressing major social problems as a core part of their business strategy.” We at FSG and the Shared Value Initiative lent our expertise to help collect and vet nominations for the list.

This is the first list of its kind in which companies are recognized – and competitively ranked – on business innovations that positively impact pressing social and environmental issues. The presence of such a list in the pages of Fortune is news itself as when we first wrote about shared value in 2011, companies creating shared value were more the exception than the rule. The Fortune “Change the World” List shows us that the concept of aligning business opportunity and social impact is moving into the mainstream.

On the “Change the World” list, you’ll find familiar companies that we’ve highlighted in the past as well as a few surprises – but to be clear, this is not a “good company” ranking. Murray puts it best: “We recognize these are large global companies with complex operations that may be ameliorating one great global problem even as they contribute to another.”

But one thing the “Change the World” companies all have in common is that they recognize the business value in addressing societal needs. In their quest for profits, they are driving innovations that improve health outcomes, make progress on climate change, provide better access to education, and create new economic opportunities for those in poverty. They realize that business can – and must – compete to change the world.

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.
 H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
 David Viscott

Love isn't something you find. Love is something that finds you.
 Loretta Young

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
 Mother Teresa

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.
 Ann Landers

The cyberpunk genre emerged in the early 1980s; combining cybernetics and punk,[49] the term was coined by author Bruce Bethke for his 1980 short story Cyberpunk.[50] The time frame is usually near-future and the settings are often dystopian in nature and characterized by misery. Common themes in cyberpunk include advances in information technology and especially the Internet, visually abstracted as cyberspace, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics and post-democratic societal control where corporations have more influence than governments. Nihilism, post-modernism, and film noir techniques are common elements, and the protagonists may be disaffected or reluctant anti-heroes. Noteworthy authors in this genre are William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Pat Cadigan. James O'Ehley has called the 1982 film Blade Runner a definitive example of the cyberpunk visual style.

The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past. The name comes from the paradox's common description as a person who travels to the past and kills their own grandfather, preventing the existence of their father or mother and therefore their own existence.[1] Any inconsistency in past events may be regarded as a grandfather paradox.

In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks took over much of the Middle East, occupying Persia during the 1040s, Armenia in the 1060s, and Jerusalem in 1070. In 1071, the Turkish army defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV (r. 1068–71). The Turks were then free to invade Asia Minor, which dealt a dangerous blow to the Byzantine Empire by seizing a large part of its population and its economic heartland. Although the Byzantines regrouped and recovered somewhat, they never fully regained Asia Minor and were often on the defensive. The Turks also had difficulties, losing control of Jerusalem to the Fatimids of Egypt and suffering from a series of internal civil wars.[206] The Byzantines also faced a revived Bulgaria, which in the late 12th and 13th centuries spread throughout the Balkans.[207]

The crusades were intended to seize Jerusalem from Muslim control. The First Crusade was proclaimed by Pope Urban II (pope 1088–99) at the Council of Clermont in 1095 in response to a request from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) for aid against further Muslim advances. Urban promised indulgence to anyone who took part. Tens of thousands of people from all levels of society mobilised across Europe and captured Jerusalem in 1099.[208] One feature of the crusades was the pogroms against local Jews that often took place as the crusaders left their countries for the East. These were especially brutal during the First Crusade,[77] when the Jewish communities in Cologne, Mainz, and Worms were destroyed, and other communities in cities between the rivers Seine and Rhine suffered destruction.[209] Another outgrowth of the crusades was the foundation of a new type of monastic order, the military orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, which fused monastic life with military service.[210]

The crusaders consolidated their conquests into crusader states. During the 12th and 13th centuries, there were a series of conflicts between those states and the surrounding Islamic states. Appeals from those states to the papacy led to further crusades,[208] such as the Third Crusade, called to try to regain Jerusalem, which had been captured by Saladin (d. 1193) in 1187.[211][Y] In 1203, the Fourth Crusade was diverted from the Holy Land to Constantinople, and captured the city in 1204, setting up a Latin Empire of Constantinople[213] and greatly weakening the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261, but never regained their former strength.[214] By 1291 all the crusader states had been captured or forced from the mainland, although a titular Kingdom of Jerusalem survived on the island of Cyprus for several years afterwards.

This bomb is far better than any of the simple bombs on this website and all the equipment can be bought in a supermarket. So, have fun!

Step 1 Gathering equipment
First, you will need to get all the things that you are going use. These things will be: an aerosol can, tin foil and sparklers.

Tip
I have tested many types of aerosol cans, but Black and Gold's Air Freshener stands out from the others, by far! It creates a more impressive explosion. You can buy it from almost any supermarket and it is very cheap, ranging from $1-$2. I also recommend that you buy at least 30 sparklers, because the more sparklers you use, the more chance of the bomb being successful.
Step 2 Organizing the equipment
To start, you will need to crush up at least 30 sparklers, but make sure you leave at least one sparkler spare for the fuse. Also, lay out about 50 centimeters (~20 inches) of aluminum foil.

Step 3 Beginning the assembly
Lay out your 50-centimeter piece of foil and find the center of it. Once you have done this, place the aerosol can in the middle and your sparkler dust (which you crushed up earlier) around the aerosol can, making sure that the sparkler dust is spread evenly around the aerosol can. Also, make sure that the sparkler dust is not under the can, otherwise you will have a dud.

Step 4 Preparing the fuse
This is the easiest step. You simply bend the bare wire part of the sparkler upwards.

Step 5 Finishing it off
Place the fuse in the sparkler dust and up against the aerosol can and wrap it all up in the sheet of foil, leaving the end of the fuse clear so that you can light it.

Warning
REMEMBER SAFETY: If you are going to try this, I recommend that you stand a minimum of 100 meters away. From my experience, this bomb will take roughly one minuite to detonate, but this will vary on the length of you fuse and how finely you crushed the sparkler dust. (The finer the sparkler dust is, the faster it will burn. For a bomb like this, you will want the sparkler dust to be in the biggest pieces possible, so that it will burn longer and produce more heat.)

Permaculture is an ecological design system. It is an approach to finding solutions for sustainability in all our undertakings – a way of looking at such questions as “How do I build an ecologically sound home?”, “How do I decrease my own ecological footprint?”, “How do I direct my money to do good work that restores communities and local economy?”, “How do I grow my own food and create life-affirming conditions for other living things, instead of relying on commercial food supply and all its vices?” – to name a few. Permaculture teaches us how to design natural homes, how to create abundant gardens, plant food forests, how to include backyard animals, how to build biodiversity to protect wildlife, regenerate degraded landscapes and ecosystems, harvest rainwater, develop ethical economies and communities, and much more. As an ecological design system, permaculture focuses on the interconnections between things more than individual parts.

There are over 1.3 billion journeys on the tube each year. Yet if you're a regular commuter, you'll know travelling on the London Underground is often fraught with delays and cancellations. If that happens, you may be entitled to a refund. Here's how to claim it.

Also see our TfL Overcharge Refunds guide for how to claim if you couldn't touch out, and Oyster Card Refunds how to claim back credit if you have and old card.

How long do I have to be stuck on the tube for before I can claim? Delays on the tube can be fury-inducing, especially when they make you late. But if your journey is delayed by at least 15 mins, you don't just have to put up with it.

Whether you travelled using an Oyster card, contactless card or paper ticket, you can ask Transport for London (TfL), which runs the tube, for a 'service delay refund'.
To calculate the 15 mins, TfL looks at what time you touch in and out, then compares your journey time to the average.

Is that on every tube? Not exactly. TfL has rules about what's classed as a 'service delay'.

If you’re delayed for more than 15 minutes and for "reasons within TfL's control", then you can get a refund. This includes anything which is TfL's fault – for example, a defective train, faulty track or overrunning engineering work.

But it won't pay up if the reason doesn't count as something within its control, eg, adverse weather, security alerts or a person ill on the train.

In practice, however, we've found TfL is sometimes lenient with these rules, so it may pay up anyway. While there are no guarantees, it's usually worth a punt, as you may get a refund.

Brilliant... so is the process automatic? No. Sadly, TfL's not that nice. You'll need to apply for the refund.
To apply online, go to the TfL website and log in to your TfL or Oyster account (if you don't have an account, you'll need to sign up for free first). Click on 'Service Delay Refunds'. You'll be asked to provide your journey info and either your Oyster card or paper ticket details.
To apply over the phone, call TfL customer services on 0343 222 1234 (this costs the same as a normal 020 number). Give them the same information as mentioned above.
Don’t worry, you won't need to post paper tickets – you just need to enter some numbers from them. If the gate ate your ticket at the end of the journey, you should call customer services.

You have to claim within 28 days of the delay. TfL says it usually takes a couple of days and it processes 'most' refunds within seven days. It will email to tell you if your claim has been successful.
What about if I paid by contactless card or Apple Pay? Not a problem. Sign up or log on to a TfL account as above, and add your contactless card or Apple Pay account. You can register these before or after the delay. Then choose the contactless card/Apple Pay account, and click ‘Claim for a service delay’.

As an aside, you can track your journey history for contactless cards and Apple Pay accounts. Just click the account to see 12 months’ worth.

What can I get back? No matter how and what you paid for your journey, you'll get back the value of a single fare for the distance you travelled at the time you travelled. Even if you have to get off before you intended, the refund’s still based on where you touch in and out.

This applies even if you didn't pay full whack. Let's say you made the journey on a daily or weekly travel card – you'd still get the pay-as-you-go single fare back. If your journey started at peak time, it refunds the peak fare.

For example, if you were delayed when travelling during peak time from Balham to Bank (Zone 3 to Zone 1) using an Oyster card, you'd get £3.30. See the TfL website for full information on fares.

And how do I get it? You have a choice.

You can provide your bank details and get the refund paid into your account. (If you were travelling on a paper ticket, this is your only option.)
You can get the refund in the form of web credit in your online account to use next time you top up or buy a travel card online.
If you have an Oyster card, you can get the refund loaded back onto it as pay-as-you-go credit. This happens when you next touch in at a station of your choice.
The Oyster card needs to be registered before you can receive a service delay refund (you can still do this after the delayed journey).

What if my tube's delayed and I'm late for a flight or a concert as a result? Can I claim for that? No. TfL says it won't provide compensation for anything other than the delayed journey on services.

Can I get off the Underground and take another form of transport if my tube's delayed, but still claim for the delay? If it doesn't count as a 15-minute delay under the touch-in, touch-out rule, you could always call customer services and plead your case, but you're not officially entitled.

I'm not a fan of the tube – what if I'm travelling on another form of public transport in London? You might be in luck – many of the transport systems operated by TfL follow similar rules.

On the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) it works the same as on the tube – you can claim for a delay of more than 15 minutes if the cause is within TfL's control.
London Overground comes under National Rail’s conditions of carriage, so if a cancellation delays you by over 30 minutes you’re eligible for a refund (you must touch in and out).
On the Emirates Air Line, refunds are issued if you are delayed for more than 15 minutes.
For all the above, as with the tube, you can apply for a refund via the TfL website or by calling customer services on 0343 222 1234. Alternatively, if you're delayed on the Emirates Air Line, you can ask for a refund in person at the ticket office immediately after the disruption to your journey.

Sadly, if you're travelling on a bus, you simply can't get a service delay refund – no ifs, no buts. If you're travelling through London with another train operator, for example on Thameslink, you'll need to go straight to the train company to claim. See our Train Delays guide for a full how-to.

Ok, so I know how to claim a refund – but what if I want to complain about TfL? If you've complained to TfL but it still won't budge, a free online complaints tool can help.

Resolver* helps draft your complaint and manage it too. It's free, and offered by a firm called that we like so much we work with it to help people get complaints justice.

If the complaint isn't resolved, Resolver will automatically escalate it to watchdog London Travel Watch, which can ask to TfL to resolve your case. It doesn't have power to force TfL to do anything it doesn't want to do, though.

If all else fails, you could technically take your claim to court. Think carefully about whether you want the hassle of this, though, and whether it's worth it – far better to use this as a last-resort threat.

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/bean.jpg

15 Things You Might Not Know About Mr. Bean

Rowan Atkinson may have more than 50 acting credits on his resume, but to most of the world he’ll always be best known as the ridiculously rubber-faced Mr. Bean. As the iconic British comedy series celebrates its 25th anniversary (complete with a newly remastered DVD set from Shout! Factory), we uncovered 15 things you might not know about Mr. Bean.

1. MR. BEAN BEGAN LIFE ON THE STAGE.

Though it was on January 1, 1990 that Mr. Bean made his television debut on England’s ITV, Rowan Atkinson began developing the character more than a decade earlier, while he was pursuing his master’s degree in electrical engineering. “I was asked in my first term at Oxford to do a sketch in this one-night show at the Oxford Playhouse, and I’d never written anything,” Atkinson recalls in The Story of Mr. Bean, a feature on The Whole Bean DVD. “I’m not really naturally a writer, so I just had to invent sort of 5 minutes of something at 48 hours’ notice. I just stood in front of the mirror and started to mess about with my face. And this strange, surreal, sort of non-speaking character evolved.”

2. ONLY 14 EPISODES WERE EVER PRODUCED.

Even the most dedicated fans have trouble reconciling the fact that only 14 episodes of the live-action series were ever produced. It did, of course, spawn two movies, an animated series (which returned to British television earlier this year), a video game, and some books, including Mr. Bean’s Definitive and Extremely Marvelous Guide to France.

3. THE SERIES WAS BROADCAST IN NEARLY 200 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD.

Because the bulk of the comedy is physical, not narrative, Mr. Bean has not gotten lost in translation. “There doesn’t seem to be a country in the world, or not that I have visited, or indeed none that I have heard of, who don't seem to get him, who don’t seem to understand and enjoy the character of Mr. Bean,” Atkinson told ABC. “I think, and I’ve always assumed, it’s because he’s basically a child trapped in a man’s body."

4. ATKINSON HAS FAITH IN HIS FACE.

While the beginning of Mr. Bean started by looking in the mirror, Atkinson decided to put faith in what he was doing with his face following that first successful performance at Oxford. “In the sketch the following Sunday, I just went through a whole lot of facial expressions,” Atkinson said in a BBC World Service radio interview in January. “I’m not sure whether there was a particular narrative, a logic to it, but I did my best and it certainly solicited laughter. But since then, I’ve hardly ever looked at my face … I hope it’s doing what I think it’s doing.”

5. THE GUY WHO DIRECTED LOVE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED THE CHARACTER WITH ATKINSON.

Atkinson’s creative partner at the time, and the man who helped develop the character of Mr. Bean, was writer-director-producer Richard Curtis. The two collaborated on Not the Nine O’Clock News and Blackadder before Mr. Bean ever hit the airwaves. Curtis would later make the jump to the big screen as the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the writer-director of Love Actually, The Boat That Rocked, and About Time. (Which explains Atkinson’s cameo in Love Actually.)

6. ATKINSON WAS INSPIRED BY JACQUES TATI.

Over the years, Atkinson has repeatedly cited French comedian Jacques Tati as one of the great influences on Mr. Bean. “My interest in physical comedy was from discovering a film by Jacques Tati called Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” Atkinson says in The Story of Bean. “It just struck a chord with me. I so admired it, because it was an uncompromising comic attitude and setting that I really admired.”

7. MR. BEAN DOESN’T SPEAK IN FRENCH EITHER.

Before he made his small-screen debut, Atkinson tried out the Mr. Bean character on the audience at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, Quebec. In order to ensure that the character’s near-silent comedy would translate, he requested to perform for a French-speaking audience as opposed to the English-speaking attendees.

8. HE COULD HAVE BEEN NAMED AFTER ANOTHER VEGETABLE.

It wasn’t until shortly before Mr. Bean hit the airwaves (and after production had already begun) that the character actually got his name. Originally, he was going to be called Mr. White. Then the show’s creators began throwing around some vegetable names, and considered Mr. Cauliflower before deciding on Mr. Bean.

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/mr_bean_turkey_head.jpg

9. MR. BEAN IS THE MAN WHO LIKES TOILETS.

Mr. Bean doesn’t speak often, but when he does the voice he uses is the same one Atkinson used to voice “The Man Who Likes Toilets” sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News.

10. ATKINSON THINKS MR. BEAN IS AN ANARCHIST.

Atkinson often refers to the character of Mr. Bean as “a child in a grown man’s body.” And in a 2003 interview with IGN, he called him “sort of such a natural anarchist. But at the same time, Mr. Bean is a very, very self-contained character because he's so sort-of introspective and so selfish and self-centered that there's no particular need to have another person in the scene to make him funny.”

11. YES, HE REALLY CAN WIGGLE HIS EARS.

Mr. Bean’s legendary ear wiggle is one trait Atkinson has in common with his on-screen alter ego. While promoting Mr. Bean’s Holiday, ABC’s David Stratton asked “perhaps the most crucial question of the entire interview: can you really wiggle your ears?” To which Atkinson simply replied, “Yes, I can.”

12. MR. BEAN PERFORMED AT THE OLYMPICS.

When London hosted the Summer Olympics in 2012, Mr. Bean was on hand for the opening ceremony, where he ushered in the games with a rendition of “Chariots of Fire.”

13. ATKINSON RETIRED THE ROLE IN LATE 2012.

In an interview with The Telegraph in November of 2012, Atkinson admitted that Mr. Bean’s time was coming to an end. “The stuff that has been most commercially successful for me—basically quite physical, quite childish—I increasingly feel I’m going to do a lot less of,” Atkinson said. “Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You’ve got to be careful.”

14. IN 2015, BEAN ROSE AGAIN—FOR A FUNERAL.

Never say never: On March 13, 2015 a brand-new Mr. Bean sketch, “The Funeral,” premiered to celebrate Comic Relief, and in honor of Bean’s 25th anniversary.

15. MR. BEAN’S CREATORS COULD NOT HAVE PREDICTED ITS SUCCESS

When asked about Mr. Bean’s enduring appeal during a BBC World Service radio interview earlier this year, executive producer Peter Bennett-Jones said, “I don’t think anyone could have anticipated quite how successful and long-lived it would be. Coming up to 25 years is an extraordinary thought since we first went on air on January 1, 1990. Mr. Bean’s been very good to us all, so we love Mr. Bean.”

Whenever we ask, “What is love?” it’s usually because a) we’re unsure if a certain special someone really loves us, or b) because a certain special someone just accused us of not really loving them.

When we are truly engaged in giving and receiving love, we don’t ponder such philosophical questions. It’s only when something is lacking that we begin to analyze and contemplate what that thing actually is. For example, nobody sits down to a full meal and asks, “What is a pastrami sandwich?”

So, if we’re even asking the question, “What is love?” it probably means that we don’t feel completely loved, or that someone doesn’t feel completely loved by us.

Is this thread still being checked?

To start, why might you want to custom build a quadcopter or drone as opposed to simply going to the store and buying one. First, when tinkering with things, you're more likely to break it, fry it, or, in our case: crash it! The issue here is that commercially available drones tend to come with a lot of proprietary parts. What this really means usually is that the company has a monopoly on those specific parts and they charge as such. Also, as you decide to change things, if you have custom built your quadcopter, you can switch out motors, propellers, a frame, and all sorts of things easily with a custom build.

Despite it likely being a better choice to build a quadcopter, it can be quite the hurdle to figure out all of the things you need and how to put one together. If you're like me when I first started, you don't know that not all motors spin in the same direction, for example.

The first choice you have to make is what size of quadcopter / drone you want to make. There are various sizes, but the most popular size is the 250 for custom quadcopters, and then 500ish for the commercial drones. The number corresponds to the distance, diagonally between the motors. At first, I chose to go with a 525, but the 525 is quite large, and not as much fun to fly in my opinion. It does more damage if it does crash, and requires a bit more space to safely fly around. The 250 size is a total blast to fly, much easier to do very quick maneuvers with, and doesn't need as much space to fly safely. A 500 is not double the size of a 250, it is more like 4x the size, so keep this in mind. In this tutorial, we'll wind up building a 250, but feel free to build whatever size you want. The actual needed materials and build process is the same. Costs are also ~ the same, so it really does not matter beyond personal preference.

Since the release of Pokémon Go in early July 2016, the app has outperformed all expectations. At the time of this writing, over 7.5 million users had downloaded the game in the United States alone, sending Nintendo's stock climbing by 10% in the first week. What makes Pokémon Go so massively appealing? Let's take a look at some of the factors behind the game's success.

As previously mentioned, millions of people joined up as Pokémon trainers within the first week—according to some estimates, the game has been installed on 1 in every 20 Android devices in the U.S. That huge and immediate fanbase means the app is not just a game, but a social experience. Players have organized huge Pokémon Go outings, including a Poké-walk in Australia that drew over 2,000 people for a day of catching and camaraderie. Trainers marched single-file through the park like leaf-cutter ants, only pausing to hit up Pokéstops or pursue a Pikachu.
Pokémon Go has an element of competitive gameplay adding to the fun. Gyms in the game are not held by fictional characters, but by other trainers. Join one of three teams, and use your Pokémon to attack a Gym in a hostile takeover, or defend it on behalf of your team. Gyms in populated areas may change hands multiple times per day, and everyone understands that's the way things are. Battles are conducted between trainers and the game's AI, and there's no in-game communication system—which means there's very little chance to have hard feelings if your Pokémon is defeated.

We Happy Few takes its cues from the novels like 1984 and Brave New World. This isn’t a criticism; both books are wonderful reads and you owe it to yourself to sit down and begin turning those pages. Currently in Early Access you step into the shoes of Arthur, a man who works in a building where they censor articles to ensure that nothing bad seems to be happening. You see, sometime during World War II the Germans successfully invaded Britain, and to repel those invaders something so horrible was done that the entire population ended up taking a drug called Joy which makes everything seem…wonderful. It also has the rather lovely effect of making them forget things. People wear strange white masks with permanent smiles, and while on Joy they have a spring in their step and a friendly greeting for everyone. Joy alters their perception of the world, as evidenced when Arthur is pressured into hitting what a group of people see as a pinata, but is actually the corpse of a rat which they proceed to consume, believing it to be delicious candy. IN reality Britain is a mess, with huge swathes of it eating horrid, rotten food and barely surviving. It’s a fascinating world with a heavy atmosphere that feels unique within the world of videgames, although I’m sure someone will hastily correct me. People amble around with creepy white masks on, jumping up and down in puddles and going about their lives with such eery cheerfulness. Damn it, people, this is the UK. People aren’t cheerful here.

Thanks to a flashback caused by a newspaper article Arthur stops taking his Joy, becoming what others refer to as a Downer, something which is very much frowned upon by the rest of society. He begins to see the world for what it is before getting chased by the creepy police force and whacked on the head. Somehow he awakens to find himself in the slums rather than dead, without any Joy pills and with little hope of surviving among the other riff-raff. He has a goal, though; escape. To do that he has to work his way out of the slums, blend in with the rest of society and eventually get his freedom.

Late 20th century: World Heritage Site designation

The Bidoul/ Bidul or Petra Bedouin were forcibly resettled from their cave dwellings in Petra to Umm Sayhoun/ Um Seihun by the Jordanian government in 1985, prior to the UNESCO designation process. Here, they were provided with block-built housing with some infrastructure including in particular a sewage and drainage system. Among the six communities in the Petra Region, Umm Sayhoun is one of the smaller communities. The village of Wadi Musa is the largest in the area, inhabited largely by the Layathnah Bedouin, and is now the closest settlement to the visitor centre, the main entrance via the Siq and the archaeological site generally. Umm Sayhoun gives access to the 'back route' into the site, the Wadi Turkmaniyeh pedestrian route.[21]

On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site.

The Bidouls belong to one of the Bedu tribes whose cultural heritage and traditional skills was proclaimed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed[22] in 2008.

In 2011, following an 11-month project planning phase, the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority in Association with DesignWorkshop and JCP s.r.l published a Strategic Master Plan that guides planned development of the Petra Region. This is intended to guide planned development of the Petra Region in an efficient, balanced and sustainable way over the next 20 years for the benefit of the local population and of Jordan in general. As part of this, a Strategic Plan was developed for Umm Sayhoun and surrounding areas.[23]

The process of developing the Strategy considered the area's needs from five points of view:

a socio-economic perspective;
the perspective of Petra Archaeological Park;
the perspective of Petra’s tourism product;
a land use perspective;
an environmental perspective
Petra today[edit]
27 sites in Petra are now available on Google Street View.[24]

In 2016 archaeologists discovered a large, previously unknown monumental structure buried beneath the sands of Petra using satellite imagery.[25][26][27]

n previous Wi-Fi hacking tutorials, I have shown you ways to create an Evil Twin, to DoS a wireless AP, and to crack WEP and WPA2 passwords, but in this tutorial, I will show you something a little bit different.

In many restaurants, hotels, airports, airplanes, and cafes, they have open authentication on the wireless AP, but once you connect to the AP, you are sent to a proxy that asks you for your credentials. This is very common in many commercial establishments around the world. To obtain the necessary credentials, there is usually charge associated with it.

What if you didn’t have a credit card, or forgot your credit card, and needed to access the internet? You still may be able to, if the server accepts ICMP (ping) and you are patient.

In addition, imagine a scenario where you need to stealthily retrieve a file, send a message, or retrieve a message, in say, a cyber espionage or cyber warfare situation, while barely leaving a trace of your activity. This may be your method of choice.

Note: This is a more advanced technique, so if you are new to hacking, work on some of the more basic techniques before trying this.
ICMP: The Internet Control Message Protocol

As you know, ICMP is a protocol that is used detect the presence of a active host. We can determine if a host is active (pay attention, newbies) by simply typing:

kali > ping

There are multiple types of ICMP messages, but this one is echo request (Type 0) and echo reply (Type 8). Although nearly all of us use ping one time or another, keep in mind that there are other types of ICMP that can come in handy when scanning or hacking systems that may block or drop ICMP Type 0.

If a server accepts ICMP (many won’t as a security precaution), you can use ICMP to bypass the need for authentication via the proxy (that webpage that asks you for credentials). Because it is very slow, I don’t recommend this for daily use, but in a pinch, this can be a very innovative way to get your email when you don’t want to buy access to the service, or—you want to access the web without leaving a trace.

On a regular basis, a lot of people contact me about suspecting their partner of cheating and ask me how to hack email password of their account, so as to find out the truth.

If you are in a similar situation or simply want to hack into someone’s email account, this article can surely help you out. Here in this article I will try to uncover some of the real and working methods to hack the password of any email account!
Possible Ways to Hack an Email Account:

While there exists many nasty websites on the Internet that mislead people with fake methods and false promises to obtain passwords, some often present readers with obsolete methods that can no longer be used. However, on this website you will find all the information clear, simple and easy to implement. With my experience of over 10 years in the field of ethical hacking and information security, I can tell you that the following are the only 2 foolproof methods to hack emails:
1. Keylogging: The Easiest Way!

Keylogging simply refers to the process of recording each and every keystroke that a user types on a specific computer’s keyboard. This can be done using a small software program called keylogger (also referred to as spy program).

    How does a Keylogger Work?

    A Keylogger is small software program that can easily be installed by any novice computer user. Once installed, it records all the keystrokes typed on the computer including passwords. It does not require any special knowledge or skill to use keyloggers.
    Can a Keylogger be Detected?

    No! Once installed, it operates in a complete stealth mode and hence remains undetected to the computer user.
    What if I do not have Physical Access to the Target Computer?

    Not to Worry! Some of the best keyloggers on the market support “remote installation” that makes it possible to install it even if the target computer is hundreds of miles away.
    How can a Keylogger Help Me in Hacking Email Password?

    Once installed, the keylogger simply records all the keystrokes typed (including passwords) and uploads the logs to a secret server. You can access these logs anytime by logging into your online account that comes with the keylogger program.

'Bagpipe lung' announced as cause of man's death - two years later

By the time the man arrived at the lung disease clinic in Manchester, England, it was almost too late.
It was April 2014 and the 61-year-old had spent the past seven years finding it harder and harder to breathe.
Once able to run 10 kilometers, he could now barely walk 20 meters.
His lungs were operating at a third their proper capacity.
Doctors were stumped.
Five years earlier, the man had been diagnosed with a serious inflammation of the lungs, known as hypersensitivity pneumonitis, or HP.
HP has a variety of other names, each one of which offered a possible solution to the medical mystery: farmer’s lung, hot tub lung, humidifier lung and, perhaps oddest of all, pigeon fancier’s lung.
When doctors tried to pin down the cause of the man’s malady, however, it eluded them.
He didn’t smoke. His home wasn’t hiding any mold. He didn’t have connective tissue disease, which can cause breathing problems.
And he did not fancy pigeons.
The only clue physicians at the University Hospital of South Manchester could see was that the man’s symptoms had rapidly improved when he moved to Australia for three months, only for his breathing to deteriorate once again as soon as he returned to the United Kingdom.
In September 2014, five months after first arriving at the clinic, the man returned — in worse shape than ever.
He was breathing rapidly but suffering from hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen in his blood. When doctors listened to his lungs, they heard crackling like an old vinyl record.
An X-ray suggested pneumonia, a blood clot in the lungs or an exacerbation of the still mysterious HP. A CT scan ruled out a clot but showed that the lung scarring that had started seven years earlier had gotten worse.
Doctors gave him a cocktail of drugs to treat what they thought was bacterial pneumonia. When those didn’t work, they added Posaconazole therapy, used to treat pneumonia caused by fungi.
Despite their efforts, the man died on Oct. 10, 2014.
An autopsy didn’t explain much. It merely showed that his lungs were badly scarred, which was attributed to the years of inexplicable HP. The medical examiner chalked the cause of death up to “acute exacerbation of ILD,” or interstitial lung disease, a broad category.
Now, however, nearly two years after the man’s death, doctors say they have solved the medical mystery.
In a report published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, a team of five UHSM researchers coined a new term for the man’s condition.
“Bagpipe lung.”
According to the paper, when doctors initially tried diagnosing the man’s illness, they overlooked his daily hobby: playing the bagpipes.
Tests conducted on the man’s bagpipes found a slew of fungi and yeast living inside the musical instrument.
Inside the air bag was a mixture of Paecilomyces variotti, Fusarium oxysporum, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Penicillium species. In a petri dish, they formed a psychedelic swirl of green, orange and red mold.
There was pink yeast on the instrument’s mouthpiece as well as fungi on the neck, chanter, chanter reed, chanter reed protector, bass drome and tenor drome, researchers found. Even the bagpipe carrying case had mold inside.
The moist, airtight bagpipes made an ideal home for the spores.
Unknown to the piper, who was not named in the study, every time he played his instrument, he was inhaling a mixture of mold that caused his illness.
His brief recovery in Australia had coincided with him leaving his bagpipes home in the U.K.
“It sounds like a Monty Python skit or an Agatha Christie story gone wrong,” William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, told USA Today.
This mystery, however, had been all too real.
“If that had been identified earlier, and he had stopped playing the bagpipes or cleaned them regularly, he may well have just gotten better,” Jenny King, the study’s lead author, told the newspaper.
The study noted similar illnesses befalling saxophone and trombone players, although they were fortunate enough for their instruments to be identified as the cause before it was too late.
According to the Guardian, however, it wasn’t the first time that bagpipes have been identified as a health hazard.
In 2013, professional piper John Shone fell seriously ill with similar symptoms of breathlessness and weakness. Doctors discovered the fungus lurking inside his instrument just in time.
“It was very much life-threatening,” Shone told the Guardian. “I was near death.”
Part of the problem may stem from the use of modern materials in bagpipes, as old-fashioned leather pipes were often used along with a “seasoning” bag that had antiseptic properties, Shone said. Although airtight, leather bagpipes are also porous enough to let moisture escape, normally preventing mold growth, added Ian Clabburn, chairman of the Bagpipe Society, in an interview with the Telegraph.
The “bagpipe lung” case hold lessons for both doctors and musicians, according to the study.
“This case highlights the importance of a careful clinical history including hobbies,” researchers wrote. “Thorough clinical history exploring occupation, environmental triggers and pastimes is very important in cases of HP.”
Wind instrument players, meanwhile, need to regularly clean their instruments.

Copyright: Washington Post

Airlander 10: World's largest aircraft crashes as it attempts to take to the sky

The bottom-shaped ship had been attempting its second flight when it ran into problems

Airlander 10, the world's largest aircraft, has crashed during its second test flight.

The huge ship – nicknamed "The Flying Bum" because of its pert, round back – crashed as it landed at its base at Cardington Airfield this morning, at the end of its second attempt to fly. Its official name is the Martha Gwyn – however, it gained notoriety not just because of its huge size but the interesting shape of its back.

"We're debriefing following the second test flight this morning," a spokesperson for the ship's makers, HAV, said. "All crew are safe and well and there are no injuries."

    This morning's #Airlander incident. pic.twitter.com/GwFqbQ1QIN
    — Airships.net (@Airships) August 24, 2016

It isn't clear if the ship itself took any damage during the crash.

The ship appears to have run into problems as it was making its way back onto the ground, when it flew into a telegraph pole and began running into problems.

"A line that was hanging down from the plane hit the telegraph pole about two fields away," one eyewitness said. "Then, as it came in to land, it seemed to nose dive and landed on the cockpit, smashing it up."

The 302-foot long ship made its maiden voyage last week.

The ship is on sale for £25 million. The makers hope that it can be sold for a variety of uses – including surveillance, communications and deliveries.
Gadgets and tech news in pictures

Airlander 10 can carry a ten tonne payload and is supposed to be abel to stay in the air for up to five days. The company hopes to be building ten of them per year by 2021.

Dear Umbra,

The microbeads issue has me wondering if silicone-based personal lubricants may pollute water. Any idea?

Patrick
New York, New York

A. Dearest Patrick,

I’ve been asked many a question about personal lube, but up ‘til now, the curiosity has always been about health effects: Is the slick stuff safe for me and my partner? And while this is an important and worthy question, I applaud you for taking it one step further and considering the effects your bedroom activities may have on the ecosystem as a whole. That’s the kind of consideration and caring that I’ll bet make you a popular date indeed.

Like humans, fruit flies sleep at night, caffeine affects their sleep, and if they get a lousy night's sleep it can affect their memory performance. But what can they tell us about the connection between sleep deprivation and metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity? A lot, according to a new study that is the first to identify that a conserved gene -- translin -- works as a modulator of sleep in response to metabolic changes.


Spearheaded by researchers at Florida Atlantic University, findings from this study are published in the April 4 issue of Current Biology, which establishes that translin is an essential integrator of sleep and metabolic state, with important implications for understanding the neural mechanism underlying sleep deprivation in response to environmental challenges.

Acute sleep loss in humans is associated with increased appetite and insulin insensitivity, while chronically sleep-deprived individuals are more likely to develop obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Conversely, metabolic state has a potent impact on modulating sleep and our body clocks.

"In humans, sleep and feeding are tightly interconnected, and pathological disturbances of either process are associated with metabolism-related disorders," said Alex C. Keene, Ph.D., corresponding author and associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences on FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus in Jupiter. "Despite the widespread evidence for interactions between sleep loss and metabolic dysfunction, little is known about the molecular basis of this interaction and how these processes integrate within the brain."

When fruit flies are hungry, they sleep less because they will sacrifice sleep for their quest to search for food. Keene and his collaborators used fruit flies in their study and created various scenarios between sleeping and foraging to test each gene one at a time to determine which gene didn't affect their sleep. They carried out a nervous system-specific RNAi screen to identify the genes required to keep hungry flies awake. What they discovered is that translin, when knocked down in neurons, causes starving flies to sleep as soundly as they would on a full stomach. They also observed the same inability to suppress sleep while in starvation mode in the flies that carried a null mutation in translin.

Fruit flies were placed on specific diets as the researchers measured their sleep, and glycogen, triglycerides and free glucose levels. They broke down the starvation response in the fruit flies into separate mechanisms for hunger and sleep-suppression.

"While many genes have been identified as genetic regulators of sleep or metabolic state, mounting evidence from our study indicates that translin functions as a unique integrator of these processes," said Kazuma Murakami, co-first author and a Ph.D. student in the FAU/Max Planck Florida Institute Integrative Biology and Neuroscience (IBAN) program. "We also have been able to show that this gene is not required for general modulation of sleep. Furthermore, we now know that the energy stores in mutant flies are normal and that the starvation-induced sleep suppression phenotype is not due to increased nutrient storage."

Results of this study provide important evidence that translin is not required for the perception of starvation or to stimulate hunger-related behaviors, but is required to stimulate wakefulness in the absence of food.

"The identification of genes regulating sleep-feeding interactions will provide important insight into how the brain integrates and controls the expression of complex behaviors," said Keene.

Sunday


I'm not sure why I'm writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I've just noticed some odd things. It's not that I don't trust the computer... I just... need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can't be deleted or... changed... not that that's happened. It's just... everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things...

I'm starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that's the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven't been out in a few days, because I've been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don't think that's it.

I'm not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can't even define what it is. Maybe I just haven't talked to anyone in awhile. That's the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they've simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend, saying he'd talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I'd call with my cell phone, but reception's terrible down here. Yeah, that's it. I just need to call someone. I'm going to go outside.

Read the full story here = http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Psychosis (http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Psychosis)

2121-2211

Something random and unexpected, lol.

We've all experienced love. We've loved (and been loved by) parents, brothers, sisters, friends, even pets. But romantic love is different. It's an intense, new feeling unlike any of these other ways of loving.

Why Do We Fall in Love?

Loving and being loved adds richness to our lives. When people feel close to others they are happier and even healthier. Love helps us feel important, understood, and secure.

But each kind of love has its own distinctive feel. The kind of love we feel for a parent is different from our love for a baby brother or best friend. And the kind of love we feel in romantic relationships is its own unique type of love.

Our ability to feel romantic love develops during adolescence. Teens all over the world notice passionate feelings of attraction. Even in cultures where people are not allowed to act on or express these feelings, they're still there. It's a natural part of growing up to develop romantic feelings and sexual attractions to others. These new feelings can be exciting — or even confusing at first.

In this article we talk about soil pH, what is and how to modify its value.

 

In fact, one of the most important parameters to calculate before growing a specific plant in a specific soil is the PH value, i.e. the measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of the soil, which is defined as the negative logarithm ( base 10 ) of the activity of hydronium ions ( H+ or, more precisely, H3O+aq ) in a solution. In fact, depending on their peculiarities, different plants need different pHs.

 

Soil pH strongly influences microbiological activity, mineral elements availability and, ultimately, the adaptability of the different plant species. The most of bacteria – from which nitrogen fixation, nitrification, some organic matter decomposition process depend – prefer a sub-acid or slightly alkaline environment ( pH 6.8÷7.2 ); the deviation from such conditions negatively affect both nutritive elements availability and humidification process. Mushrooms prefer an acid environment and with such conditions they ensure the demolition of organic compounds. Actinomycetes develop mainly in slightly alkaline dry, loose ( and thus rich in oxygen ) soils ( pH 7÷7.5 ), because – with such conditions – they are able to compensate for the lack of activity of mushrooms and other bacteria, in drought periods.

 

Soil pH influences the solubility of various mineral elements causing their accumulation in forms more or less available for plants, as well as their leaching to deeper layers. Thus, knowing pH value gives useful indications about mineral elements availability in the soil, deriving both from origin minerals decomposition and any spread fertilizers. The most known and important case for soil fertility is the one of phosphorus; in the soil it can be found in the form of poorly soluble phosphates. Their solubility depends on pH: if the reaction is acid it means there are iron and aluminum phosphates, the availability of which increases as pH increases; instead if the reaction is alkaline there are calcium phosphates, the availability of which decreases as pH increases. The result is a higher solubility of phosphates ( and thus of phosphorus ) for pH values near neutrality.

 

The most of horticultural crops can easily grow with a sub-acid pH ( between 6 and 6.7 ) or with a neutral one. Yet there exist garden plants and some vegetables too with different needs; for this reason it could be better to “modify” soil pH in order to adapt it to the kind of crop, especially if we talk about pot crops.
Soils which have a pH between 6.8 and 7.2 is considered neutral and is the best soil for the most of horticultural crops. In fact many microelements can be absorbed optimally in this type of soil, while this does not happen in strongly acid or strongly alkaline ones, except for few microelements.

 

Soils which have an acid pH – between 5.4 and 5.9 – are generally not very fertile; such conditions usually also inhibit bacterial and fungal activity, which are fundamental to decompose organic substances. Moreover, elements like calcium or magnesium are insoluble and thus unusable by plants. Other elements scarcely present in an acid soil are boron and phosphorus. Instead, elements highly available and soluble are aluminum, iron and manganese which, if present in too large quantity, could lead to nutritional imbalances and plants problems.
Instead, a soil with an alkaline pH – between 8.2 and 8.8 – is usually rich in limestone; generally such soils are clayey. In alkaline soils insoluble elements ( the ones not available for plants ) are iron, sulfur and potassium. Limestone, similarly to what happens in acid soils, slows microbial and microorganisms activity, which help to decompose organic matter.

 

In the case of an excessive soil acidity, we can try to remedy correcting it administering some substances with an alkaline pH, like – for example – limestone rocks, calcium carbonate and marl.
The correction with addition of quicklime could be of particular interest. To do it, we need to spread in our vegetable garden small heaps of this substance and then let them fade a little bit. Afterwards we need to uniformly spread this substance on the soil and then bury it.
Besides positively modify pH in too acid soils, lime also brings other benefits.
In fact, it stimulates organic matter mobilization helping to speed up mineralization process with a resulting increase of productions. Yet, on the other hand, it quickens the depletion of soil’s organic reserves.

 

Instead if we need to reduce the pH in a too alkaline soil, we can try to remedy administering both organic substances and gypsum. Among the organic substances, manure can be successfully used to this purpose, thanks to its slightly acid pH, as well as other benefits that usually brings to soils. Correcting alkaline soils through gypsum, namely calcium sulphate, is often suggested because this substance – if added in a solution – brings sulfuric acid ions . We need to keep in mind that – due to its calcium content – gypsum shows effects similar to lime on soils, namely it quickens organic matter mineralization, increasing productions, but also quickening the depletion of organic reserves.

 

For Cactaceae family it is usually suggested a soil with a pH near 6.5; to reduce pH in a quick and DIY way we can prepare a solution with water and cooking vinegar, using a teaspoon vinegar for 1 liter of water. In alternative we can use: lemon or orange juice, beer, wine, conifers parts ( needles or twigs ) or tomatoes. All of these things have an acid pH, so they can be successfully used for this purpose, as well as coffee grounds, which can be left to dry and then directly mixed to the compound.

There's an Earth-like planet in our galactic neighborhood — and it may have conditions for life

Pale blue dot, meet pale red dot.

Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor.

Proxima b, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, could be one of the first planets where humans might find life outside our solar system.

“It’s the closest star. It has a potentially habitable world. I just think it’s amazing,” said Cornell astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who was not involved in the discovery. “This is just such a great, exciting time to live in because we’ll figure out how we fit into all of this — and hopefully, also, if we’re alone in the universe.”

The discovery comes four months after the announcement of Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative to build and send tiny spacecraft to the nearest star system within the coming decades. Now the project has a tantalizing planetary target.

“The technology today is sufficient to begin thinking about these things,” said Pete Worden, Breakthrough Starshot’s executive director and the former head of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We are really excited, and, to use the U.S. term, pumped, about this discovery. We’re on our way.”

Proxima b orbits Proxima Centauri, the third wheel to the binary star pair known as Alpha Centauri AB. As its name suggests, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system, sitting a relatively close 4.2 light-years away. But as an M-dwarf — a dim, red, low-mass star — it can’t be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It has just 12% of the sun’s mass and 0.15% of its luminosity.

The newly discovered planet is estimated to hold at least 1.3 Earth masses, which means it’s probably a rocky world like our own. And though it lies a mere 4.3 million miles or so from the surface of its star — about nine times closer than Mercury is to the sun — Proxima Centauri is so dim that water, theoretically, could remain stable on the planet’s surface, assuming there’s a protective atmosphere.

Scientists discovered Proxima b thanks to what’s known as the radial velocity method, which takes advantage of the Doppler effect. As a planet moves around its star, it tugs just a little bit, causing the star to wobble back and forth. When the wobble brings the star closer to us, the light reaching us is squeezed, making it bluer. When the star is pulled slightly away from us, the light is stretched, making it redder. That color shift allows astronomers to determine the mass of the planet tugging on it.

In some ways, this is simpler to do with M dwarfs; because of their size, they’re more easily pulled this way and that by their planets. And since Proxima b completes an entire orbit in just 11.2 Earth days, the tugging should be easy to pick out. Plus, as the star closest to us, Proxima Centauri is one of the best-studied red dwarfs to date.

And yet it took years to find the planet. That’s partly because M dwarfs are very noisy, variable stars whose activity can drown out the Doppler signal. Observations made years earlier revealed hints of the planet but could not decisively prove its existence.

“The data collected for this research [span] 16 years,” said study coauthor Pedro Amado, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada, Spain. “The first datasets did not show anything, but as our analysis technique improved and we added data from more precise instruments, a periodic signal started to show up.”

This year, a team of astronomers known as the Pale Red Dot campaign studied Proxima Centauri with the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS instrument, a spectrograph installed on the 3.8-meter telescope at La Silla in Chile. Using other telescopes, they monitored the star’s brightness to make sure that its own variability wasn’t producing the tantalizing exoplanetary signal.

They found that, at times, Proxima Centauri was moving toward or away from Earth at roughly 3 mph — a typical human walking pace. An unseen planet, they realized, must be tugging on this star.

“All the pieces together is what allows us to be very, very sure that we have it right this time,” said study leader Guillem Anglada-Escuse, a planet hunter at the Queen Mary University of London.

As it happens, there was another signal mixed into the data — one that might hint at the existence of a larger, more distant planet circling Proxima Centauri.

Could life exist on Proxima b? There are several unknowns that make it impossible to say right now, according to scientists. The planet is tidally locked to Proxima Centauri, so one side may permanently face the star while the other remains shrouded in darkness. But if there is an atmosphere, it should redistribute heat across the surface, the researchers said.

As an M dwarf, Proxima Centauri is prone to frequent flares and bursts of X-rays that would send down 400 times the X-ray flux that Earth receives from the sun, according to the study. Those X-rays could eat away at the atmosphere, even if one exists.

And it’s also not clear whether water could have survived on the planet over the eons. The answer depends on how violent the star was in the past and where the planet originated — both of which remain a mystery.

“This is the biggest question mark for the question of whether it’s an Earth-like planet or not,” said study coauthor Ansgar Reiners of the University of Goettingen in Germany. “This will be subject to further studies.”

Fortunately, Proxima Centauri and its planetary companion are so close that it should be relatively easy to start probing these questions. Some teams already have started.

If there were life on this planet, it probably survived either underground or deep within its hypothetical oceans, said Kaltenegger, the director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, which is dedicated to the search for habitable worlds. But there’s a chance that organisms evolved to handle the extreme radiation that may reach the surface, she added, perhaps by using biofluorescence.

The discovery signals a shift in the hunt for exoplanets, from broad surveys such as NASA’s Kepler and K2 missions toward in-depth profiles of individual planets, said MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, who was not involved in the work.

“Exoplanets,” she said, are “the gift that keeps on giving.”
How scientists use satellite data to track poverty in Africa
Caption How scientists use satellite data to track poverty in Africa
Watch a time-lapse video of the Perseid meteor shower from Joshua Tree
Caption Watch a time-lapse video of the Perseid meteor shower from Joshua Tree

There’s only a 1.5% chance that Proxima b’s transiting across its star’s surface is visible from Earth, which means researchers will probably not be able to study its atmosphere for a while. But as ever more-powerful telescopes come online, it may be possible to take images of this nearby star system.

Plans to visit Proxima b remain an exceedingly distant prospect. With current technology, it would probably take tens of thousands of years to get there — and more than four years just to send a message back.

In April, physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced the $100-million Breakthrough Starshot program that aims to build nanosatellites capable of accelerating to 20% of the speed of light. At that rate, it would take roughly 20 years to reach our nearest neighbors — and it could take much longer for that technology to be designed and built.

In the meantime, scientists will probably have their hands full studying Proxima b from Earth.

“Our picture of the galactic neighborhood has changed,” Reiners said. “We have a new neighbor, and there will likely be a whole branch of science aiming to understand its nature.”

My garden hedge is full of empty nests. The blackbirds have fledged, twice, and so have the dunnocks. Successfully fending off sparrowhawks and cats, their exhausted parents are now enjoying a well-earned holiday. In the fields beyond our home, though, parents still slave away, feeding baby bullfinches, linnets and yellowhammers tucked in the hedges that grace our countryside.

As well as the usual predators, every August these declining species have had to fend off another ravenous monster: the hedge-trimmer. This summer and last, however, the cutting machines are silent because the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has taken an excellent, science-led policy decision: to protect these birds by extending the farmland hedge-cutting ban by a month, to 31 August.

This ban is not responsible for the overgrown lanes vexing rural holidaymakers, because roadside hedges can still be cut for safety reasons (blame austerity for wild roadsides), but it is vexing many farmers. August is a convenient time for hedge-cutting because the ground is dry and the work doesn’t obstruct more important tasks, such as sowing crops.

The science, however, is unequivocal: more than 40,000 nesting records collected by volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology prove that finches and buntings nest through August. Ground-nesting skylarks and corn buntings are also destroyed by hedge-cutters driving along field margins.

As farmers press to repeal the ban, the wildlife campaigner Mark Avery says its survival will be a test of both the new Defra secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and whether we are in danger of slipping into a post-science era of countryside management.

I hope this wild-hedged August will show farmers that they can save money by cutting back on contractors and help birds, insects and mammals. We need to escape the tyranny of the tidy hedge.

Lynx effect

I expected the story of the lynx fleeing Dartmoor zoo to run and run, but it’s ended with Flaviu being trapped on Dartmoor and “grumpily” returned to captivity.


It’s not a romantic climax, but not tragic either. Benjamin Mee, the zoo’s owner, is right when he says the lynx would’ve been shot had it remained in the wild. For anti-rewilders, Flaviu’s killing of four lambs during her short freedom is a valuable propaganda victory. However, it’s not so simple because captive-bred Flaviu has not learned to kill wild food, and so does not represent wild lynx behaviour.

If lynx are brought back, they will mostly trouble Britain’s burgeoning deer population. Nevertheless, the grudging acquiescence of local farmers must be won – via compensation, perhaps – if the recently proposed Kielder Forest reintroduction is to be a success.

Avalanches in slow motion

I can still picture the horror on Robbie Chater’s face when I asked him whether the Avalanches were working on a follow-up to their amazing debut album, Since I Left You. His reply went something like: we’ve just spent four years making this, please don’t make me think about the next one. I don’t have it verbatim because it’s on a lost cassette tape dating from 2001. During that Guardian interview on Melbourne’s sunny Fitzroy Street neither of us imagined their second record would take another 15 years. The backstory to the Avalanches’ new album, Wildflower, is spectacular – and so is its warm, beautiful and complex music. Whether it’s accidental, perfectionism or an act of defiance, their slowness sets a superb example.

Since you can't change what you don't measure, the seedstock industry is seeking new ways to measure valuable traits fot commercial cattlemen.
Genetic predictions in the form of EPDs (expected progeny difference) have been fully implemented for 30 years. Centered on growth traits, these predictions have led to tremendous genetic improvements not imagined when the only selection tool was visual appraisal. The industry went on to tackle carcass traits with EPDs, and for the last 20 years, seedstock producers have enjoyed similar genetic progress.

However, many areas of harder-to-measure traits such as reproduction have lagged far behind despite their economic importance, and objectively describing traits like disease resistance and soundness have also been sorely lacking. Genomics have also become extremely important tools to the industry, but have strained our EPD models based on 30-year-old technology, which has not allowed genomics to fully reach the potential that they can play in objective selection. This article will cover the advances in objectively describing fertility and novel traits as well as the new EPD models, which will finally fully leverage the information genomics have to offer. Fertility traits Reproductive traits have been shown to be the most economically-important traits to commercial producers, and the seedstock industry is just beginning to objectively describe reproduction. This is because in order to describe female reproduction, breed associations need to have an inventory-based breed registry which annually accounts for the production of every female in every calving season. This has long been talked about, but implemented slowly by many associations.

Red Angus has been the notable exception going to mandatory total herd reporting in 1995, which featured a spring and fall calving inventory. This allowed the Red Angus Association to release the industry’s first reproductive sire summary in 2002, which among other genetic predictions, featured EPDs for heifer pregnancy and Stayability. Even with this history, Dr. Mark Enns of Colorado State University says, “We have just scratched the surface on reproduction and fitness traits.”


The first female reproductive EPD was Stayability, which is defined as a female already in the cow herd producing a calf at six years or older. The first model was very simplistic with only two meaningful data points; having a calf before six years of age, and then again at six or older. This meant with the Stayability EPD, sires were quite old before high accuracy was achieved, past the sire’s normal productive lifespan. This model has been incrementally advanced in recent years, which has allowed accuracy to build earlier in an animal’s life. However, new models for producing Stayability or longevity EPDs have been sorely needed.

The research community has answered this need by introducing a new statistical model using a procedure called random regression, which will greatly advance the well-understood Stayability EPD or allow the calculation of longevity EPDs. This statistical model tests the reproduction of a cow each year during her productive lifetime and allows for unknown values when inventory-based reporting is not fully implemented. A number of breeds are on the cusp of implementing this new procedure, which will greatly advance the industry’s genetic description of sustained fertility.

International Genetic Solutions (IGS), which calculates multibreed EPDs for 12 breed associations, plans on implementing a multibreed Stayability EPD on the same base and scale in the coming year. Included in IGS’ effort are Simmental, Red Angus, Shorthorn, Gelbvieh, Limousin, Chinana and Maine-Anjou, as well as their Canadian counterparts. Hereford and Angus are looking at calculating longevity EPDs, and Brangus and Beefmaster are considering a Stayability EPD in the future.

Where Angus and Hereford plan on a longevity EPD, and the breeds associated with IGS will continue with the well-understood Stayability EPD, both methods will be based on an economicallyimportant trait that accounts for any reason a cow leaves the herd and/or fails to report a calf. The primary reason will always be reproduction, but can also include production or soundness issues, so they are currently investigating feet and leg scoring and other fitness traits, which they hope to add as correlated traits.

Another relevant fertility trait being pursued is heifer pregnancy. This is described as a heifer that is exposed to become pregnant successfully entering the herd. With the implementation of inventorybased systems, heifer pregnancy EPDs have been implemented by Angus and Gelbvieh following Red Angus’ lead, and it is on the drawing board for other breeds like Hereford. IGS is also working on a multibreed heifer pregnancy EPD and expects to release it in the near future.

As breeds like Angus gather more phenotypes, genomics will play an increasing role in adding information to the accuracy of the trait. For instance, due to the larger phenotypic database in Angus’ latest genomic recalibration, the correlation between genomic information and phenotypic data jumped from .45 to .62, which means genomics will add significantly more accuracy to their heifer pregnancy EPD.

Novel traits

A number of breeds are currently looking at a host of novel traits including soundness and disease resistance. Perhaps none is more economically important than the disease resistance work being conducted by a group of universities.

According to Enns at Colorado State University, bovine respiratory disease (BRD) causes over $1 billion in losses to our industry annually. Luckily, BRD susceptibility is a heritable trait (.18 to .21), so genetic progress can be made on lowering BRD incidence. The genomic companies are also working with the universities to identify gene markers to add to their seedstock panels, which will increase the accuracy of a BRD EPD. The methodology for producing BRD EPDs is also straightforward, so the key to producing an EPD is the collection of phenotypes. A whitepaper has been presented to Beef Improvement Federation (BIF), and proposed guidelines for collecting data will be approved this year. Once the breed associations have the guidelines for collecting data, an EPD and genomic enhancement can be achieved in the next couple of years. To get a jump on the collection of field data many of the breed associations are collecting BRD data in their structured progeny tests on many of their high-use sires.



Feet and leg scoring has been receiving increased interest by many breed associations. For example, Gelbvieh, Simmental, and Red Angus have an active multi-year research project going on with Kansas State University to determine the heritability of the trait and candidate gene markers. Angus is leading the industry in collecting field data and hopes to come out with a genetic prediction as soon as this fall. All of their goals are to add it to their Stayability/longevity models to help add accuracy to the genetic predictions. Other associations are looking at a longer horizon before they produce feet and leg predictions.

Using genetic predictions, teat and udder quality has long been objectively selected for in the dairy industry, so the methodology is well understood. In beef breeds, Hereford has led the industry in the production of these EPDs, and they have found the traits to

be moderately heritable and teat and udder scores to be highly correlated. Red Angus is also among the many breeds currently working on the traits and is in the process of calculating genetic parameters at Colorado State University needed to produce a genetic prediction. Simmental and Gelbvieh are also active in this effort. Breeds hope to incorporate the genetic predictions as correlated traits to add accuracy to their Stayability model.

In the West, certain breeds run at altitude are susceptible to high altitude disease, more commonly known as brisket disease, which can be fatal and may also be associated with feedlot death in cattle nearing market readiness. Colorado State University has been actively engaged in working with Angus cattle on producing an EPD on the indicator trait pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) because cattle with higher PAP scores are more likely to suffer from brisket disease. PAP is a heritable trait (.25 to .40), so genetic advancement can be made through a genetic prediction. The technology to produce a PAP EPD has been fully developed and as soon as the affected breeds collect field data, EPDs should become available in a timely manner.

Genomics and EPDs

The seedstock industry is in the process of making a quantum leap in methodology on how it incorporates genomics into genetic predictions. Currently the breeds with genomically-enhanced EPDs (GE- EPDs) include Angus, Beefmaster, Brangus, Charolais, Gelbvieh, Hereford, Limousin, Red Angus, Santa Gertrudis and Simmental. The primary method used to achieve GE- EPDs is a two-step method.

Other breeds and universities are working on environmental adaptability traits. Hair shedding is necessary for productive cattle especially in hot environments and for cattle grazing fescue. Angus Genetics Incorporated (AGI) is currently researching hair shedding and has already found it to be very heritable (.42). This means genetic improvement can be made on the trait and EPDs can easily be produced once field data is gathered. Other universities are looking to see if there is any value in regional EPD calculation, and Mississippi State University is investigating the effect of hair color on productivity in hot environments. This whole area of environmental adaptability has significant potential to improve the objective description of cattle.



First a molecular breeding value (MBV) is calculated and then the MBVs are used to enhance the EPDs calculated from the existing EPD models. This is because genomics have been treated as an add-on to how EPDs have traditionally been calculated. This has many drawbacks, but has been the most expedient way to achieve GE-EPDs.

Currently there are four major companies calculating EPDs: Agriculture Business Research Institute (ABRI) in Australia calculates EPDs for several U.S. breeds including Hereford, Salers, and South Devon; AGI, which does Angus, Charolais, and Senepol as well as Canadian Black Angus and Charolais; IGS, which does the genetic predictions for 12 American and Canadian breed associations; and Livestock Genetic Services, LLC (LGS), which calculates genetic predictions for Brangus, Beefmaster, Santa Gertrudis, Braunvieh, and Akauski.

IGS and ABRI achieve GE-EPDs by blending the MBVs into the EPDs post analysis. The major drawback of this method is that it does not allow the genomic information to flow up and down the pedigree to parents and progeny. AGI uses the MBV as a correlated trait much as birth weight is a correlated trait with weaning weight, which allows genomic information to flow up and down the pedigree. This is a step forward, but does not make full use of all the information genomics have to offer.

The answer to these drawbacks is to design completely new models with genomics as a main component. This has already been achieved in dairy, swine, and poultry, and has been implemented in beef by LGS with American (Bos Indicus influenced) breeds. This new “One Step” process is very computationally intensive. With One Step, all the markers from a genomic panel are added to an EPD equation, significantly increasing the size of the mathematical problem to be solved. For each animal you still have all the phenotypic and pedigree data, but add approximately 50,000 markers per animal that is genotyped, exponentially increasing the size of the mathematical problem to produce EPDs.

The One Step method described above was first pioneered in beef by John Genho’s company, LGS. According to Genho, the major advantage of One Step is that through genotypes the actual pedigree relationship becomes known. For instance, theoretically full siblings can be 0-100 percent related according to the way genes are randomly passed from a sire and dam to their progeny. With genomics, the amount of relationship is known, which according to Genho, makes single step GE-EPDs much more precise.

The concept of EPD precision can be demonstrated by a genetic prediction calculated from two contemporary groups of equal size, but one containing biased data and the other with unbiased data. Each will come up with an EPD for the trait in question with the same accuracy since the same amount of information went into the calculation. However, with Charolais.

Hardware hardships

One of the challenges of using these new ways of calculating EPDs is that the calculations are massive, but with new computer hardware this is now possible.

IGS, which calculates GE- EPDs for more breeds than any other company, and ABRI are taking a whole new approach to One Step genomically-enhanced EPDs using a model called BOLT (Biometry Open Language Tools) developed by THETA Solutions, LLC, founded by geneticists Drs. Bruce Golden and Dorian Garrick. Their method is much more computationally intensive, utilizing equations that were only thought to be practical with small data sets and nothing as large as a breed database. Interestingly enough, they solved this problem using processing units designed for computer games—called graphic processing units or GPUs—which have huge processing capabilities. When they stack multiple GPUs, it exponentially increases computing power, but the key is to have software that can use the multiple processors simultaneously to solve an equation. The power of this hardware is demonstrated by being able to calculate traditional EPD procedures in less than 24 minutes instead of the 24 hours IGS now takes. With this processing power these much more intensive computations associated with BOLT can be achieved.

Like the Georgia methodology, the BOLT software takes advantage of the actual genotypic relationship between animals, but also allows markers to be weighted or discarded depending on their effect on a trait, which further improves a genetic prediction’s precision as well as accuracy. In addition, the BOLT software computationally gives a more reliable estimate of accuracy and can even produce accuracies for indexes.

ABRI and IGS plan on implementing the BOLT software this fall. Although it does not have the track record in production like the Georgia model, BOLT is fully developed and tested, and due to the speed of calculation will easily allow for more frequent evaluations, daily if desired. Angus already does weekly analysis, so implementing One Step will not be a concern from a data management perspective. However, IGS plans on going to a more frequent analysis when it implements BOLT, as does Hereford, making database management the step they are working on now. This is especially challenging for IGS, which deals with 12 breed associations running a multibreed breed analysis producing EPDs on the same base and scale for all breeds in order to facilitate planned crossbreeding systems.

Merging and cross referencing these divergent breeds’—and their hybrids’—databases from 12 different breed associations is a tremendous logistical problem. IGS is currently testing a web portal system and universal animal identification system. The EPD analysis will be done weekly, and various breeds can update their EPDs as frequently as they desire. Red Angus and Simmental have committed to weekly runs starting sometime this year while others might choose to have their EPDs calculated less frequently. Hereford at ABRI will also be using BOLT and in the next year expects to move from a monthly to a weekly analysis.

Summary

The future of objective selection is exciting and foretells heights previously unimagined. Traits of significant economic importance related to soundness and fertility are on the cusp of being fully objectively described with EPDs. A genetic prediction for something like bovine respiratory disease will have a huge economic impact on the industry and is just one of a number of novel traits on the threshold of having EPDs. New models will allow the industry to fully leverage all the information genomics have to offer. This will lead to a more profitable and sustainable industry.

PewDiePie's popularity has allowed him to stir support for fundraising drives.[124] In February 2012, PewDiePie ran for King of the Web, an online contest. He lost the overall title, however still became the "Gaming King of the Web" for the 1–15 February 2012 voting period.[125] During the following voting period, PewDiePie won and donated his cash winnings to the World Wildlife Fund.[126][127] He has raised money for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.[16][126]

PewDiePie also began a "Water Campaign" charity, where his fans could donate money to Charity: Water, in celebration of reaching ten million subscribers.[128] PewDiePie also contributed one dollar to the charity for every 500 views the video announcing the campaign accumulates, up to a maximum of $10,000.[129] PewDiePie had the stated goal of raising US$250,000, at the end of the drive, the amount raised was $446,462.[126][130][131] In June 2014, PewDiePie, announced that a fourth charity drive for "Save the Children" raised over $630,000, surpassing a $250,000 goal.[132] In an interview with the Swedish magazine Icon, he has expressed desire to continue these drives as time goes on, and also credited John and Hank Green as two individuals who gave him the idea of making unique videos for charity.[13] These videos are purchased by game manufacturers and advertisers, for prices ranging up to $50,000.[13]

If you like to put hot spices or hot sauce on your food, you may be doing yourself a favor. Capsaicin, the alkaloid responsible for the spicy flavor in hot peppers, may offer benefits in the treatment of some diseases, according to an article published in 2011 in the journal "Molecules." Peppers that contain capsaicin include jalapenos, habaneros, cayenne, serrano, cherry peppers and even bell peppers. Eating peppers in the capsaicin family can benefit you because they play a role in digestive health, cardiovascular health and in long-term cancer prevention.

They Increase Circulation
When you eat hot peppers, the capsaicin in the peppers stimulates your nerves in a way that favors increased blood flow. This effect was tested on rats in a 1993 study published in the "American Journal of Physiology." Researchers increased the blood pressure in the veins of rats, inducing hypertension. One group of rats was injected with capsaicin and another group was given a placebo. A control group was administered nothing at all. When all the rats were tested for their cardiovascular health, the capsaicin rats' blood circulated similarly to the control group, whereas the placebo group had constricted blood flow. This shows that hot peppers increase circulation and might benefit people with high blood pressure.

They Lower Cholesterol
Another way hot peppers can improve your heart and circulatory health is by regulating cholesterol levels. In a 2013 study published in the "European Journal of Nutrition," capsaicin was found to reduce cholesterol and improve the lipoprotein profile in hamsters that were fed a high-cholesterol diet. It was found that capsaicin had the effect of decreasing cholesterol absorption, allowing excess cholesterol to be eliminated from the body. This suggests hot peppers may play a role in helping you keep your cholesterol levels in a healthy range.

They Improve Digestion
In traditional medicine, hot spices have been used as digestive stimulants and to cure digestive ailments. A 2010 study published in the journal "Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism" looked at the effect of capsaicin on the activities of antioxidant enzymes in the stomach and intestines. Researchers found that it improved the functioning of all these antioxidant enzymes, showing capsaicin can protect the stomach and intestines while favoring digestion.

They May Help Prevent Cancer
Studies have also shown that capsaicin plays a role in cancer prevention. Researchers have demonstrated capsaicin hinders the growth of prostate tumors, meaning that spicing your food could prevent the onset of prostate cancer. In a 1997 study reported in "Anticancer Research," scientists introduced tobacco to hamsters to induce cancerous lung tumors. They gave one group capsaicin and the other group a placebo. The capsaicin group experienced less tumor growth in the lungs than the placebo group, suggesting that hot peppers may also help prevent lung cancer in those who smoke or live in polluted areas.

How DNA left at crime scenes could help 'recreate' faces of criminals after gene breakthrough

The faces of murderers and rapists could be "recreated" from DNA left at the scene of the crime, according to new research.

Scientists have identified genes that shape the extraordinary variation in the human face.

Many features, such as nose size and face width, stem from specific mutations, say researchers.

Previous studies have suggested they are controlled by genes, but this one is the first to shed light on how variants contribute to the range of different forms we see.

The findings, published in PLOS Genetics, may also help researchers to learn how facial birth defects arise.

And they could even have applications in forensics, helping police construct more accurate faces of dangerous criminals being hunted for murders, rapes and robberies.

The discovery of the genes that determine human face shapes could provide valuable information about a person's appearance using just DNA left behind at the scene of a crime.

The face shapes are based on a DNA analysis of 20 facial characteristics measured from 3D images of 3,118 healthy volunteers of European ancestry and almost a million mutations, or SNPs (single base pair) variations.

Dr John Shaffer, of the University of Pittsburgh, said: "There is a great deal of evidence genes influence facial appearance.

"This is perhaps most apparent when we look at our own families, since we are more likely to share facial features in common with our close relatives than with unrelated individuals.

"Nevertheless, little is known about how variation in specific regions of the genome relates to the kinds of distinguishing facial characteristics that give us our unique identities, e.g. the size and shape of our nose or how far apart our eyes are spaced.

"In this paper, we investigate this question by examining the association between genetic variants across the whole genome and a set of measurements designed to capture key aspects of facial form.

"We found evidence of genetic associations involving measures of eye, nose, and facial breadth.

"In several cases, implicated regions contained genes known to play roles in embryonic face formation or in syndromes in which the face is affected.

"Our ability to connect specific genetic variants to ubiquitous facial traits can inform our understanding of normal and abnormal craniofacial development, provide potential predictive models of evolutionary changes in human facial features, and improve our ability to create forensic facial reconstructions from DNA."

Facial width, the distance between the eyes, the size of the nose and the distance between the lips and eyes all had statistically significant associations with certain SNPs.

The researchers also considered results from two similar studies and confirmed certain previous findings.

Until recently, virtually nothing was known about the genes responsible for facial shape in humans.

Dr Seth Weinberg, co-author, added: "Our analysis identified several genetic associations with facial features not previously described in earlier genome wide studies.

"What is exciting is many of these associations involve chromosomal regions harbouring genes with known craniofacial function.

"Such findings can provide insights into the role genes play in the formation of the face and improve our understanding of the causal factors leading to certain craniofacial birth defects."

Several of the genetic regions contributing to face shape detected contain genes known to play a role in facial development and abnormalities.

In the future, the scientists hope to identify genetic risk factors that lead to anomalies such as cleft lip and palate.

But they warned it is important to keep in mind these findings likely represent only a small fraction of the genes influencing the size and shape of the human face.

Many of the genes influencing facial features are likely to have small effects, so successfully mapping a large number of these genes will require much greater sample sizes and a more comprehensive approach to quantifying those of interest.

While it's certainly impressive that Elon Musk has bachelor's degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, it's an absurd understatement to say that prepared him to run SpaceX, his spacecraft company.
Jim Cantrell, who was an aerospace consultant at the time, became SpaceX's first VP of business development and Musk's industry mentor when the company launched in 2002. He says that Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights.

Cantrell's first contact with Musk was a cold call in 2001. As he explains to Esquire:

"I had the top down on my car, so all I could make out was that some guy named Ian Musk was saying that he was an Internet billionaire and needed to talk to me. I'm pretty sure he used that phrase, 'Internet billionaire.'"

Musk learned about Cantrell through Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society. Musk knew that Cantrell was an expert in Russian rockets and wanted to learn how he could get a spacecraft to Mars.

After reading Cantrell's response in the Quora thread "How did Elon Musk learn enough about rockets to run SpaceX?," we asked him to share some insights into his time with Musk.

Below, he explains the two-part learning process that Musk used to teach himself rocket science.

He committed textbooks to memory.

"He is the smartest guy I've ever met, period," Cantrell tells us. "I know that sounds overblown. But I've met plenty of smart people, and I don't say that lightly. He's absolutely, frickin' amazing. I don't even think he sleeps."

Cantrell tells us that he soon discovered that he and Musk shared an affinity for applied knowledge, and he loaned him some textbooks to study (they "were never returned, by the way!" Cantrell says). The books were "Rocket Propulsion Elements," "Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion," "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics," and the "International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems."

He doesn't know exactly how Musk would read or take notes, but he knows that he practically memorized them.

"He would quote passages verbatim from these books. He became very conversant in the material," Cantrell says.

He built a network of the smartest people.

Musk "knows everything about what he's building," Cantrell says, but of course even he understands that he can't master everything. That's why he used Cantrell's network in the aerospace industry to gather some of the best in the business. "It was like spaceapalooza!"

For example, they hired the rocket engineer Tom Mueller, who Cantrell says is the smartest propulsion expert out there. Musk respected his deep knowledge and let him take care of things that he'd learned from years of research.

In the same way that Musk absorbed books, he tried doing that with other people's expertise. "It was as if he would suck the experience out of them. He truly listens to people," Cantrell says.

Musk would absorb this information and then hold his own in conversations - and he didn't hold back. Cantrell says that Musk took a tech entrepreneur's approach to the industry and believed that many of the opinions of industry mainstays were stupid.

"He insulted a lot of people in those days! I wasn't insulted, but I was taken aback. He's an original thinker," Cantrell explains.

Cantrell left SpaceX in 2002 because he says he simply did not share Musk's intense passion for his mission to land on Mars. But he tells us that he did it out of respect for Musk's passion and has no regrets about his decision.

He's currently working on a book about the early days at SpaceX, and he thinks that Musk's genius blend of capitalism, curiosity, and motivation will make him a true pioneer.

"He's used a billion dollars to do what NASA couldn't do with $27 billion," Cantrell says. "Boy, it's inspiring."

NASA's Juno probe gets its first close look at Jupiter

Soaring about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above the planet's clouds, NASA's Juno space probe had its closest-ever look at Jupiter Saturday.

The pass was the first of 36 planned orbital flybys, NASA said in a statement. Soaring at 130,000 miles per hour (208,000 kilometers per hour), it was the nearest the spacecraft will get to Jupiter during its main mission, which should end in February 2018.

Juno launched from Florida on Aug. 5, 2011, and in July, became the first probe to orbit Jupiter since NASA's Galileo mission ended in 2003.

The nerve wracking five year journey into space, and Juno successful attempt to enter into orbit around Jupiter, were hailed by scientists as an immense opportunity to discover more about the mysterious gas planet.

It's thought that new moons beyond the 67 we know about could be found. By mapping the planet's magnetic fields, scientists are also hoping to unearth new clues about how our solar system was formed.

About the size of a basketball court, the Juno probe had all its scientific instruments on and turned to Jupiter Saturday, attempting to gather as much data as possible. Images captured by JunoCam during the trip will be released shortly, including shots of Jupiter's north and south poles.

"We are in an orbit nobody has ever been in before, and these images give us a whole new perspective on this gas-giant world," Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, said in the statement.

"We are getting some intriguing early data returns as we speak," he added. "It will take days for all the science data collected during the flyby to be downlinked and even more to begin to comprehend what Juno and Jupiter are trying to tell us."

After its 20-month-mission ends, Juno will be plunged into Jupiter's clouds by NASA engineers. But for now, it has plenty of work left to do.

As I’ve written before I believe Computer Vision will become a major factor as a Human-Computer Interface (1) as sensors and cameras help us make sense of our physical world.
There is so much in the media about “The Internet of Things” that it has lost meaning and for many for some strange reason it became a short-hand for wearables. Wearables are clearly an important market but to me a much broader use case is bringing real-world objects into the computing world and there is no better mechanism than Computer Vision.
That’s why today I’m so excited to finally be able to tell you about Density, a company I led a $4 million financing (2) along with Jason Calacanis (We’re teaming up on the board together! It’s been so great to collaborate and work towards this common purpose) and with Jonathan Triest at Ludlow Ventures, Amit Kapur at Dawn Patrol and several others.

As you can gather from the Giphy image above, Density anonymously tracks the movement of people as they move around work spaces. It’s a small and elegant device that hangs about doorways and provides “anonymous people tracking as a service.”
We’re essentially a data platform and envision others building applications to take advantage of this information. At its most basic level it creates simple records of ingress and egress through doorways (people moving in and out) and each movement becomes a record in a database that can be tracked in realtime.
The basic use-cases of this simple data are obvious.
You can track how many people are in a room to make sure there are no safety concerns or the people aren’t violating their insurance policy.
You can track meeting rooms in a large campus to find out which rooms get used most often and at which times of the day.
You could track the flow of people onto a subway or train line to better predict the frequency and length of trains required by time of day.
A mobile marketing company could track campaigns and then measure increases in retail traffic driven into local stores.
It could also be used with elderly parents to track whether they’re doing ok and potentially even alert automatically to a fall or to a person with Alzheimers crossing an off-boundary barrier.
Businesses could use people tracking to show you wait times so you could decide whether you want to impromptu come update your driver’s license and these same businesses could use people tracking to make peak staffing decisions.
and so on.
But as you may gather from the Giphy above, the simple use case is greatly expanded by the elegance of the Density solution. The software and computer vision recognize when it’s a human passing by the laser and can filter out other movements like doors opening or other objects passing by (dogs, for example).
Each human is captured in a polygon shape at a precise moment in time. As she moves around the room each micro-movement becomes a new row in the database with the coordinates and time sequence. So a single human flowing through a room could of course produce thousands of rows in a database and computer applications can make sense out of this data and machine learning algorithms could of course start to make informed decisions about things like “way finding” signage placement, where crowd risks may be building, etc.
That the computer vision has the ability to track the “flow” around a room and not just a static count is a big deal and the fact that we provide this data cheaply and anonymously we believe will lead to the creation of a massive market with applications supporting many use cases. Density is simply the data & analytics platform. Our goal is to massively drive down the costs of capture for people flows and create unlimited potential for organizations to understand this and draw insights that help better plan spaces.
Of course if an organization buys Density sensors that data isn’t available more broadly to the market unless they opt in to sharing with others. The initial usage of Density will be single organization but we think it likely that over time organizations will opt into sharing data across companies in limited and controlled situations.
Why Density?
The investment thesis for me combines my belief in computer vision as a next-gen I/O (3) along with my thesis that The Innovator’s Dilemma or Deflationary Economics drive all of the largest success on the Internet (4).
Today’s people tracking solutions are hugely expensive and mostly used in retail environments. The costs have greatly limited adoption and we think that’s about to change in a massive way.
The team insisted on anonymity because it believes the right low-cost, widely available tracking devices shouldn’t be recording people’s identities, which would both limit adoption and also increase costs dramatically.
At the earliest stages when I invest my decision is 70% team / 30% market (5). I have to believe that I’ve met a team of extremely bright, highly competitive and deeply passionate founders who have an idea for a product that has the potential to transform a market.
I look for somebody who is almost mission-driven to see the product in the market more than to make a quick buck and I look for a founder who is frugal, grounded and has a strong sense of what he or she believes uniquely about what is wrong with a market and how it can be fixed.
I always tell people that it’s important who introduces you. I was talking to my friend Jonathan Triest at Ludlow and told him I had freed up a bit of time and was looking for an early-stage company, technically-minded company to back. We had done a few deals together in the past year so I wanted to know what he had seen recently.
He described Density’s team and product and I asked for an immediate introduction — he told me they had already started fund raising and I hate meeting people late in a process.


From the first meeting I had with the founder & CEO — Andrew Farah — and his team of Syracuse grads, I knew they had the right vision, temperament and motivations for building out this market.
I brought a group of them immediately down to LA to meet the rest of my partners. We of course had a healthy internal debate about whether the device was accurate enough since it originally relied upon infrared and couldn’t track with enough precision.
On the other side we debated whether a higher-end solution with video cameras was the way to go and what the demand would be for anonymity versus solutions that can help with security / identification.
We ultimately concluded that exceptionally talented teams like Density would make the right product design decisions and we shouldn’t second-guess today’s products versus the capabilities of the team to make the right product selection choices as they went from prototype to finished product.
And of course within a few months of having raised the funds the team perfected the product design and moved away from infrared towards laser and improved the efficacy, the data collection and the accuracy all while holding costs constant.
That’s why in early-stage investing you back great teams and don’t get too hung up on today’s exact product specification — you’re more looking for how they’ve made their design choices to date, what other options they considered and how they reached their initial conclusions. You’re also testing their mental flexibility in considering alternate solutions so that you know ultimately they’ll make the highest quality decisions based on the data they gather in their journey.
I can’t emphasize this enough — ultimately investors need to trust founding teams to make these hard decisions because the team lives in the trenches day-in and day-out and investors can fool themselves into thinking they know the right answer through intuition or meeting 10 companies in a space. Nothing beats the team on the ground and if you don’t trust them to make the hard calls — then don’t back them. Our role is sparring partner. Our role is to make sure your team is asking itself the hardest questions. In the end, the vote is yours.
What Next Density?
Today we’re formally announcing the product is available to the first companies and developers who order it (we have limited inventory) and it will become more generally available in Q1 of next year. It’s not a consumer product — it’s for people with technical capabilities. We’ve had it in private Beta for the past 6 months with companies like Uber, with major universities, with a major airline and many other companies.

Mediterranean diet better for the heart than taking statins, major study suggests

A Mediterranean diet could be better than statins at reducing the risk of an early death for millions of Britons, research suggests.

Leading heart experts said patients should be prescribed the diet - rich in fruit, vegetables, fish, nuts, whole grains and olive oil - before being put on drugs.

In the first major study to look at the impact of the Med diet on survival of heart patients, experts found it cut the chances of early death by 37 per cent.

Previous research has found just taking statins cuts mortality by 18 per cent. Experts said the figures were not directly comparable, and that many heart patients could get maximum benefit by doing both.

But they said the results were so remarkable that the state should consider handing out free fruit and vegetables, or subsidising such produce, to encourage the public to change its eating habits. Seven million people in Britain live with heart disease.

The diet regime is already known to have a powerful protective effect against a number of diseases, including diabetes and cancer.

Experts hailed the new findings, presented at the world's biggest heart conference in Rome, Italy, as “extraordinary”, showing that the diet was “more powerful than any drug”.

High consumption of vegetables had the greatest impact on survival, followed by oily fish intake, amount of fruit eaten and consumption of mono-unsaturated fat, found in olive oil.

Professor Giovanni de Gaetano, head of the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the IRCCS Neuromed Institute in Italy, said: "We found that among those with a higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet, death from any cause was reduced by 37 per cent in comparison to those who poorly adhered to this dietary regime.

"The Mediterranean diet is widely recognised as one of the healthier nutrition habits in the world.

"In fact, many scientific studies have shown that a traditional Mediterranean lifestyle is associated with a lower risk of various chronic diseases and, more importantly, of death from any cause.

"But so far research has focused on the general population, which is mainly composed of healthy people. What happens to people who have already suffered from cardiovascular disease? Is the Mediterranean diet optimal for them too?”

He said the research suggested exactly this, with the Med diet showing a "powerful" effect, cutting deaths from all causes.

Doctors should "consider diet before drugs" and the state should subsidise fruit and vegetables to encourage Britons towards healthier diets, he said.

“The National Health Service pays for drugs, but it doesn’t pay for vegetables,” he said. “The state should consider contributing towards those foods that make up the Mediterranean diet.”

Bitcoin Tipping Platform Zapchain to Shut Down

Another bitcoin-based content monetization startup has announced it will shut down.

Social network Zapchain, launched in 2014 as part of accelerator Boost VC's fourth batch of startups, has told users that it will cease services effective 31st August. The announcement comes less than a year after the startup raised $350,000 in seed funding.

The decision, made public on the company's website, marks the end of a project that was once one of bitcoin’s fastest-growing projects, and comes amid a decline in the number of consumer-facing startups seeking to launch services on the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin tipping platform ChangeTip, for example, announced it had sold its staff to Airbnb in April, and that it was searching for a buyer of its intellectual property. No details have yet been provided on whether Zapchain will seek similar sales.

Despite these challenges, however, the concept that blockchains could come to serve a vital part of content monetization lives on, most recently with the controversial success of social media platform Steemit, though it uses an alternative to the bitcoin blockchain.

Representatives from Zapchain could not be reached at press time.

The Anthropocene epoch: scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age

Experts say human impact on Earth so profound that Holocene must give way to epoch defined by nuclear tests, plastic pollution and domesticated chicken

Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared, according to an official expert group who presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town on Monday.

The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration.

The current epoch, the Holocene, is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilisation developed. But the striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the global mass extinction of species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene must give way to the Anthropocene.

“The significance of the Anthropocene is that it sets a different trajectory for the Earth system, of which we of course are part,” said Prof Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester and chair of the Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA), which started work in 2009.

“If our recommendation is accepted, the Anthropocene will have started just a little before I was born,” he said. “We have lived most of our lives in something called the Anthropocene and are just realising the scale and permanence of the change.”

Prof Colin Waters, principal geologist at the British Geological Survey and WGA secretary, said: “Being able to pinpoint an interval of time is saying something about how we have had an incredible impact on the environment of our planet. The concept of the Anthropocene manages to pull all these ideas of environmental change together.”

Prof Chris Rapley, a climate scientist at University College London and former director of the Science Museum in London said: “The Anthropocene marks a new period in which our collective activities dominate the planetary machinery.

“Since the planet is our life support system – we are essentially the crew of a largish spaceship – interference with its functioning at this level and on this scale is highly significant. If you or I were crew on a smaller spacecraft, it would be unthinkable to interfere with the systems that provide us with air, water, fodder and climate control. But the shift into the Anthropocene tells us that we are playing with fire, a potentially reckless mode of behaviour which we are likely to come to regret unless we get a grip on the situation.” Rapley is not part of the WGA.

Martin Rees, the astronomer royal and former president of the Royal Society, said that the dawn of the Anthropocene was a significant moment. “The darkest prognosis for the next millennium is that bio, cyber or environmental catastrophes could foreclose humanity’s immense potential, leaving a depleted biosphere,” he said.

But Lord Rees added that there is also cause for optimism. “Human societies could navigate these threats, achieve a sustainable future, and inaugurate eras of post-human evolution even more marvellous than what’s led to us. The dawn of the Anthropocene epoch would then mark a one-off transformation from a natural world to one where humans jumpstart the transition to electronic (and potentially immortal) entities, that transcend our limitations and eventually spread their influence far beyond the Earth.”

The evidence of humanity’s impact on the planet is overwhelming, but the changes are very recent in geological terms, where an epoch usually spans tens of millions of years. “One criticism of the Anthropocene as geology is that it is very short,” said Zalasiewicz. “Our response is that many of the changes are irreversible.”

To define a new geological epoch, a signal must be found that occurs globally and will be incorporated into deposits in the future geological record. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs 66m years ago at the end of the Cretaceous epoch is defined by a “golden spike” in sediments around the world of the metal iridium, which was dispersed from the meteorite that collided with Earth to end the dinosaur age.

For the Anthropocene, the best candidate for such a golden spike are radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests, which were blown into the stratosphere before settling down to Earth. “The radionuclides are probably the sharpest – they really come on with a bang,” said Zalasiewicz. “But we are spoiled for choice. There are so many signals.”

Other spikes being considered as evidence of the onset of the Anthropocene include the tough, unburned carbon spheres emitted by power stations. “The Earth has been smoked, with signals very clearly around the world in the mid-20th century,” said Zalasiewicz.

Other candidates include plastic pollution, aluminium and concrete particles, and high levels of nitrogen and phosphate in soils, derived from artificial fertilisers. Although the world is currently seeing only the sixth mass extinction of species in the 700m-year history of complex life on Earth, this is unlikely to provide a useful golden spike as the animals are by definition very rare and rarely dispersed worldwide.

In contrast, some species have with human help spread rapidly across the world. The domestic chicken is a serious contender to be a fossil that defines the Anthropocene for future geologists. “Since the mid-20th century, it has become the world’s most common bird. It has been fossilised in thousands of landfill sites and on street corners around the world,” said Zalasiewicz. “It is is also a much bigger bird with a different skeleton than its prewar ancestor.”

The 35 scientists on the WGA – who voted 30 to three in favour of formally designating the Anthropocene, with two abstentions – will now spend the next two to three years determining which signals are the strongest and sharpest. Crucially, they must also decide a location which will define the start of the Anthropocene. Geological divisions are not defined by dates but by a specific boundary between layers of rock or, in the case of the Holocene, a boundary between two ice layers in a core taken from Greenland and now stored in Denmark.

The scientists are focusing on sites where annual layers are formed and are investigating mud sediments off the coast of Santa Barbara in California and the Ernesto cave in northern Italy, where stalactites and stalagmites accrete annual rings. Lake sediments, ice cores from Antarctica, corals, tree rings and even layers of rubbish in landfill sites are also being considered.

Once the data has been assembled, it will be formally submitted to the stratigraphic authorities and the Anthropocene could be officially adopted within a few years. “If we were very lucky and someone came forward with, say, a core from a classic example of laminated sediments in a deep marine environment, I think three years is possibly viable,” said Zalasiewicz.

This would be lightning speed for such a geological decision, which in the past would have taken decades and even centuries to make. The term Anthropocene was coined only in 2000, by the Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen, who believes the name change is overdue. He said in 2011: “This name change stresses the enormity of humanity’s responsibility as stewards of the Earth.” Crutzen also identified in 2007 what he called the “great acceleration” of human impacts on the planet from the mid-20th century.

Despite the WGA’s expert recommendation, the declaration of the Anthropocene is not yet a forgone conclusion. “Our stratigraphic colleagues are very protective of the geological time scale. They see it very rightly as the backbone of geology and they do not amend it lightly,” said Zalasiewicz. “But I think we can prepare a pretty good case.”

Rapley also said there was a strong case: “It is highly appropriate that geologists should pay formal attention to a change in the signal within sedimentary rock layers that will be clearly apparent to future generations of geologists for as long as they exist. The ‘great acceleration’ constitutes a strong, detectable and incontrovertible signal.”
Evidence of the Anthropocene

Human activity has:

    Pushed extinction rates of animals and plants far above the long-term average. The Earth is on course to see 75% of species become extinct in the next few centuries if current trends continue.

    Increased levels of climate-warming CO2 in the atmosphere at the fastest rate for 66m years, with fossil-fuel burning pushing levels from 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution to 400ppm and rising today.

    Put so much plastic in our waterways and oceans that microplastic particles are now virtually ubiquitous, and plastics will likely leave identifiable fossil records for future generations to discover.

    Doubled the nitrogen and phosphorous in our soils in the past century with fertiliser use. This is likely to be the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5bn years.

    Left a permanent layer of airborne particulates in sediment and glacial ice such as black carbon from fossil fuel burning.

Dogs understand both words and intonation of human speech

Study finds that dogs process speech in a similar way to humans, and that what you say and how you say it both matter when conversing with canines

It is both what you say and the way that you say it that matters when it comes to communicating with man’s best friend, research has revealed.

Scientists from Hungary scanned the brains of dogs while each was played the sound of their trainer’s voice, and discovered that our canine companions only experience a sense of reward when both the words and intonation indicate praise.

The team also found that dogs process speech in a similar way to humans, processing meaningful words with their left hemisphere and intonation with a region in their right hemisphere.

Study raises possibility that two populations of grey wolves, separated by thousands of miles and years, may have resulted in modern domestic dogs

“The results were very exciting and very surprising,” said lead researcher Attila Andics from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Writing in the journal Science, Andics and colleagues describe how they trained 13 dogs over a period of months to lie motionless inside an fMRI machine, in order to probe how they process human speech.

The researchers used the scans to look at how their brain activity changed as they were played recordings of their trainers’ voices through a pair of headphones. Four different recordings were played with either praise words (such as “well done!”) or neutral words (such as “however” or “nevertheless”) coupled with either a high-pitched intonation indicative of praise, or a neutral intonation.

The results revealed that compared to neutral words, praise words resulted in an increase in activity in the left hemisphere of the brain for both types of intonation, suggesting that, like humans, dogs use the left side of their brain to process words that they have recognised and attach meaning to. On the other hand, differences in intonation but not word type, resulted in a change in activity in an area within the auditory region of the right hemisphere.

“It is actually the very same part of the brain in this right auditory brain region that we found in dogs and also humans in an earlier study that responds to the emotional content of a sound,” said Andics. “It is not a mechanism that is only there for language stimuli, it is the same mechanism dogs use for processing emotional sounds in general.”

26-year study of canine sperm shows an overall decline in quality, and may also shed light on fertility changes seen in male humans

The researchers also looked at the reward centre in the doggy brain, an area that responds to activities or experiences deemed pleasurable.

The results reveal that the reward centre only shows an increase in activity when both praise words and praise intonation are used.

“From this research, we can quite confidently say if they only hear you then it is not only how you say things but also what you say that matters to them,” said Andics.

But, says Andics, whether a dog can really tell if you are calling it a smelly hound in a jolly voice is another matter, as there are typically other cues, such as body language and facial expression at play.

The research, says Andics, offers new insights into the evolution of language.

“The neural mechanism humans have for processing meaning in speech, so for processing word meaning and intonation, are not uniquely human - they seem to be there in other species,” said Andics. That, he adds, suggests that our use of words was down to a novel idea, rather than new brain mechanisms. “It is not the result of a special new neural mechanism but the result of an innovation,” said Andics. “We invented words as we invented the wheel.”

Hear me now? 'Strong signal' from sun-like star sparks alien speculation

Astronomers engaged in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) are training their instruments on a star around 94 light years from Earth after a very strong signal was detected by a Russian telescope.

An international team of researchers is now examining the radio signal and its star, HD 164595 -- described in a paper by Italian astronomer Claudio Maccone and others as a "strong candidate for SETI" -- in the hopes of determining its origin.

"The signal from HD 164595 is intriguing, because it comes from the vicinity of a sun-like star, and if it's artificial, its strength is great enough that it was clearly made by a civilization with capabilities beyond those of humankind," astronomer Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, which searches for life beyond Earth, tells CNN.

Whenever a strong signal is detected, "it's a good possibility for some nearby civilization to be detected," Maccone tells CNN.

But experts say it is highly unlikely to be a message from alien beings.

"Without corroboration from an independent observatory, a putative signal from extraterrestrials doesn't have a lot of credibility," Vakoch says.

Advanced civilization?

Paul Gilster of the Tau Zero Foundation, which conducts interstellar research, said that if the signal was artificial, its strength suggested it would have to come from a civilization more advanced than our own.

Such a civilization would likely be Type II on the Kardashev scale, an attempt by the Soviet astronomer of the same name to categorize various technological stages of civilizations.

"The Kardashev scale is based basically on the energy that that civilization might be able to funnel for its own use," says Maccone.

At present, our own species is somewhere near Type I on the scale, whereby a civilization is able to harness all the energy available to it on its own planet, including solar, wind, earthquakes, and other fuels.

A Type II civilization would be able to harness the entirety of the energy emitted by its star, billions of billions of watts.

Doing so would require a colossal undertaking, likely the construction of some kind of superstructure, such as a giant sphere or swarm of super-advanced solar panels popularized by astronomer Freeman Dyson that could catch and store all radiation put out by the sun.

Scientists believe superstructures are probably our best chance of detecting alien life unless they are actively trying to communicate with us.

A Dyson sphere was one of the solutions suggested to the peculiar light fluctuations detected around Tabby's Star, which caused great excitement when they were detected last year.

Maccone is working on developing an alternative mathematical measure of how advanced civilizations are, based on the amount of knowledge and information available to them, that "might help us in the future classify alien civilizations" that we detect.

Why do people believe the end of the world is near?

People who believe in religions , like me, have a reason to believe that the world will end one day, apparently because their religious scriptures tell them so but why would some people all of a sudden claim that the world will end on a certain date or time?

Why would someone commit suicide in order to avoid the end of the world?
Why would someone give all of his money to charity only to discover that the world wont end now?

Every now and then some people start to claim that the world will end on a certain date then attract a large number of supporters who start doing all kind of extreme behavior just because of believing that end is near.

Yesterday i came across a site that said that the world is going to end in 8 days. The site was a commercial one and it was Selling survival kits, rations and all kinds of goods that a person might need when the world ends!

The first question that came to my mind was, what on earth is the site owner going to do with the money if the world was really going to end according to his beliefs?


Why do people believe in superstitions about the end of the world

This site i was just talking about and other sites sold products worth millions of dollars. Some people are capitalizing on the fears of others and that's why its important to find out why do some people strongly believe in such superstitions.

1) To be among the chosen or in other words to feel superior: The desire to feel superior to others is more strong among some humans than others. Whens some people fail to feel superior in a direct way by playing with the normal rules they start to seek twisted methods to feel superior to others. When a person believes that the world will end on a certain day he instantly feels superior to all of those who are uninformed.
2) Because they eagerly want it to end: Some people believe that they are losers, failures and unlucky fellows. For those people the end of the world can be a very good thing since it will put an end to all the rules that classified them as losers or failures. In other words, some people believe in the end of the world just because they need to believe that it will end soon.
3) The conspiracy theory makes them feel important: Usually when a person claims that the end is near he also claims that the government knows it all. This kind of conspiracy theory makes the person feel worthy and very important because after all if the whole world is conspiring against him then he must be a very important person. In other words, many of those who believe in such superstitions only want to feel worthy. In the Solid Self confidence program i said that people who fail to feel worthy in the usual ways might start to seek unusual ways to feel superior such as claiming that they were abducted by aliens (they were chosen among the whole world).
4) To feel in control: In my previous article Why do people believe in superstitions i said that one of the strong forces that motivate people to believe in superstitions the is lack of control over their own lives. By believing that the end of the world will happen on a certain date a person can become much more in control of his fate

Why superstitions will never end

What do you think will happen when a person who believed that the world will end on a certain date finds out that it didn't end? Will he give up on superstitions?

No he wont simply because he has a psychological need that forces him to believe in them. In other words that person will shortly fall prey to another superstition and will start believing in it as well.

Don't wonder how people manage to forget about a prophecy that didn't happen and to believe in another one that quick. In my article How people twist the facts to support their beliefs i said that people discard the data that goes against their beliefs even if it was real and keep the data that supports them even if they weren't sure of it.

Superstitions will always be there because some people need to believe in them.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.

The Solid confidence program was launched by 2knowmyself.com; the program will either help you become more confident or give you your money back.

New Solar System objects revealed - BBC News

Astronomers in the US have uncovered previously unknown objects in the outer reaches of the Solar System.

They include an icy body with an orbit that takes it so far from the Sun that it is probably influenced by the gravity of other stars.

The discoveries were found during an effort to locate a possible ninth planet, whose presence has been inferred indirectly.

The study is set to be published by The Astronomical Journal.

Co-authors Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo have submitted the details of their discoveries to the Minor Planet Center, which catalogues such objects, along with asteroids and comets.

Their search was carried out using several observatories around the world, including the the four-metre Blanco telescope in Chile and the eight-metre Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

One of the new objects, known for now as 2014 FE72, is the first distant Oort Cloud object found with an orbit entirely beyond Neptune.

Its orbit takes it some 3,000 times further than the Earth is from the Sun.

The Oort Cloud is the large shell of objects that occupies the outermost region of the Solar System.

Dr Sheppard, from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington and Dr Trujillo, from Northern Arizona University, have been analysing how the new planet-like bodies fit into larger theories about a ninth planet lurking in the Solar System's furthest reaches.

The evidence for this planet has largely been deduced by peculiarities of distant Solar System objects.

One of the new celestial bodies, 2013 FT28, shares characteristics of its orbit in common with the bodies whose positions and movements lent support to the planet nine idea - but it also shows some differences.

Based on analysis of other small bodies in the outer Solar System, astronomers have proposed that - if it exists - the ninth planet is several times more massive than Earth and is at least 200 times further than the distance between the Sun and Earth.

The new work should help constrain the location of this proposed ninth planet.

"The smaller objects can lead us to the much bigger planet we think exists out there," said Dr Sheppard.

"The more we discover, the better we will be able to understand what is going on in the outer Solar System."

Pluto, discovered in 1930, was previously known as the ninth planet. But its planetary status was removed in 2006, following the discovery of an object of comparable size in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies just beyond Neptune.

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