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November 18, 2006
Limb regeneration in chicken embryos successful
They then performed the key experiment, successfully testing the ability of an excitatory factor to produce limb regeneration in chick embryos. "The signal restarted the process, and genes that were involved in the initial development of the limb were turned back on," Belmonte says. "It is simply amazing."
The procedure was tricky, however. Belmonte noted that if Wnt signaling is activated for too long of a period in these animals, cancer results. "This has to be done in a controlled way, with just a few cells for a specific amount of time," he says. "The fact is that this pathway is involved in cell proliferation, whether it is to generate or regenerate limbs, control stem cells, or produce cancer."
Scientist regrow chicken wing | Science Blog
Posted by thdyck at November 18, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Robert W. Bussard's inertial electrostatic confinement fusion reactor
As for energy companies "stampeding" to support us - It is clear that a view like this is ignorant of the reality of energy companies. There is only one thing the oil cvompanies want, and that is to sell oil, and more oil. So long as the fields pump, the oil companies will squeeze. They have NO, absolutely NO interest in anything new, ins spite of all their foolish ads in magazines for wind mills and solar-PV roofs. It is all just show and tell. I know these guys, and there is no way they would support anything that might get in the way of oil. The only way to stop oil, from their view, is when it does run out. And then they''ll go for deeper drilling, new fields, Gulf geopressure gas, LNG, etc, etc, and keep raising the price, until finally foolish solar and windmills become competitive.
And we are paying the equivalent of $ 500/bbl oil costs. But Exxon and Halliburton are getting richer all the time.
Yes, we would like to build the demo plant, and yes, it will cost about 150 (DD) to 200 M (pB11), and who knows if any investor singly or a group can or will come up with the money. One of the biggest obstacle is the world-wide tokamak lobby, which perpetuates the fraud that Hirsch, Trivelpiece and I foisted on the country in the 1970's when we started the big tokamak ball rolling.
Posted by thdyck at November 18, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 13, 2006
Call to bridge West-Muslim divide
The chief causes of the rift are not religion or history, they say, but recent political developments, notably the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Their findings were presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at a ceremony in Istanbul on Monday.
No other dispute had such a symbolic or emotional impact on people, he said.
"We may wish to think of the Arab -Israeli conflict as just one regional conflict among many. But it is not," Mr Annan said.
"As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dances halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed."
The Alliance of Civilisations, which includes Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, dismisses the notion that a clash of civilisations is inevitable, but says that swift action is needed.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Call to bridge West-Muslim divide
Posted by thdyck at November 13, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 9, 2006
Who Wants to Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire?
This first-person account of being in a game show is both well-written and interesting...
This summer—the start of my final year in the CNS Ph.D. program—I decided to apply my graduate skills to a decidedly practical purpose and auditioned for a turn in the show's perilous hot seat.
I went to New York, where I passed a multiple-choice audition test. Two weeks later, I received the call to appear on the syndicated version of Millionaire, hosted by the empathic and playful Meredith Vieira. To prepare, I focused first on memory techniques, the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
Seed: Who Wants to Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire?
Posted by thdyck at November 9, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 6, 2006
Africa focus for climate summit
United Nations negotiations on climate change have opened in Nairobi, with the focus expected to be on helping poorer countries adapt to a changing climate.
A UN report released on the eve of the talks forecast dire climate impacts on parts of Africa.
Yields of crops will fall, it said, while rising seas could engulf cities.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Africa focus for climate summit
Posted by thdyck at November 6, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 2, 2006
How to play a WAV sound file automatically in Firefox without Javascript
Here's how to play a .WAV sound file in Microsoft Media Player within Firefox without using Javascript. You embed a Media Player object in the page and then use the embed tag to pass in the file to play. Both the object and the embed tags are required. No player UI will be displayed as width and height are 0. Tested with Firefox 2.0.
<object id="objMediaPlayer" width="0" height="0" classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" standby="Loading file..." type="application/x-oleobject"> <param name="FileName" value="filename.wav" /> <param name="AutoStart" value="true" /> <embed type="application/x-mplayer2" src="filename.wav" width="0" height="0" autostart="true"></embed> </object>
Posted by thdyck at November 2, 2006 | Comments (0) | TrackBack