Israeli Company Develops Amazing New Bone Replacement Material - from Coral!

 

An Israeli company, CoreBone has come up with a major breakthrough in bone replacement, used for grafts and implants.

“Bone grafts ideally should have four features,” CoreBone CEO Ohad Schwartz explained to ISRAEL21c. “They must be bioactive, not just a passive scaffold, in order to attract new bone cells; they must be strong enough to support the site, especially for implants; they must allow for being replaced as new bone grows; and they must be porous to enable vascularity,” meaning that blood vessels can grow through them naturally and produce growth of bone from the inside out.

“If you have all those features, you have a very good bone graft,” Schwartz continued. “We have all of those.”

 Corebone has patented a new source for bone replacements using a material that has all these qualities - their own farm-grown coral.

The company grows its corals from selected species using patented technology to provide bioactivity and eliminate biological contamination. Different species are used for different applications. The corals are bred in a  farm in the Arava desert near the Dead Sea, so they aren’t susceptible to marine pollution, contamination and or endangerment from human or marine activity. They also grow 10 times faster than in nature. They also avoid some of the difficulties with some organic grafts from animals or humans, the risk  of rejection and transmission of disease.

 Synthetic, man-made materials used in grafts don't have these problems but are much weaker than natural bone.  The global markets for orthopedic and dental bone-graft substitutes are expected to reach $3.4 billion and $1 billion respectively  in 2017.

“Our product offers the best of both worlds, and therefore it is an optimal solution,” Schwartz explained, adding that a European study found CoreBone to be four times stronger than human bone. Studies have demonstrated that CoreBone’s material has a higher rate of bio-integration and connectivity with the host bone than leading products in the market.

One of the most common dental procedures today is socket preservation after tooth extraction, accounting for 20 million cases in the U.S. alone.

“If you don’t fill the cavity you will have major loss of bone,” Schwartz said. “The usual practice is to fill it with different bone graft granules. We found that one of the corals we grow has the exact shape and dimensions of tooth roots. So we’re using the natural design of the coral to find a solution for a major indication.”

The EU has already approved the new coral for use in for dental and orthopedic procedures. Applications to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are expected by mid-2017. And the cost is expected to be lower than bovine-based grafts now selling for about $100 per cubic centimeter in the United States

“We can offer a very competitive price because nature does the work for us,” Schwartz said.

Who else but those clever Israelis would think to set up a coral farm in the middle of the desert!

(hat tip, TheTower and Israel 21c)

The Latest Faux Issue - Vaccinations

Our president, who ran our debt up to $18 trillion wants to submit as ridiculous budget to congress to raise spending another $4 trillion, something that would have gotten him laughed at and ridiculed in saner times. Not only that, but he threatening to veto any budget that doesn't raise spending.

To add to the mix, the president wants to raise taxes on American corporations, even though they're already close to the highest in the world.He also wants to increase the already high 'death taxes' and toss his green energy cronies another $7.4 billion in subsidies.

Food and utility prices continue to reach record highs as wages stay stagnant, healthcare premiums continue to skyrocket and gas prices, one of the few bright spots in the economy are starting to rise again.

And that's just the domestic side of things.

So instead of any of these issues, what are all the headlines about today? Vaccination. Mandatory vaccination of children.

Before we deal with how ridiculous and manufactured this is, full disclosure, my children were vaccinated.

The Left decided to create an issue out of this just like they did about birth control. And it's similar in that no conservative per se want to ban vaccinations, just like they didn't want to ban birth control. The key words are choice and mandatory.

This absolutely kills me. These are the same people on the Left who applauded amnesty for thousands of illegal aliens who came across the border without  any health checks whatsoever, and they claim to be concerned now about the spread of contagious diseases?



Being pro-vaccination is one thing. Forcing people to doit against their will is quite another.

Here's one of the stupider headlines out there, courtesy of the Soros gally slaves at Talking Points Memo: Doctor: 'I don't care if my kids make others gravely sick' (no link, stupidity is even more contagious these days than most diseases).

Aside from the fact the quote is,shall we say, not exactly a real quote, let's look at the premise. If my children are vaccinated against a certain disease, the chances are they aren't going to catch that disease, nor will other children whom are vaccinated. The kids that stand a far greater chance are those whom aren't vaccinated.

On the other hand, there are parents whom feel that vaccination leads to other diseases and problems.

Since there really isn't totally conclusive research on this either way ( although the evidence,in my view, leans towards the efficacy of vaccinations) really both sets of parent are rolling the dice, and the reality probably is that there's another, unknown genetic or biochemical factor involved.

So why should parents who don't want their kids vaccinated be forced to..and for that matter, just to flip the coin, why should my children be prohibited from being vaccinated if I want them to be?

Nor do I accept the argument that this is a question of 'public risk.'We seem to be asked to accept quite a bit of public risk these days when it comes to what the Left wants - body scans and shoe removal at airports instead of profiling, the confiscation of legal firearms, releasing violent felons back into society, the aforementioned illegal aliens, wholesale social engineering in many if our institutions in the name of 'choice' and 'diversity.'

So what's wrong with giving parents a choice here?

UPDATE: My good friend Snoopy over at Simply Jews makes a point worth considering:

Un-vaccinated kids are endangering not only themselves, which will be less of a problem*. Unfortunately, and I am taking it from a horse mouth, believe me, they are putting into a deadly danger a lot of adults that may die because of the kids.

The reason is that some (not all, but quite a high percentage) of vaccines don't work forever for a person that underwent the vaccination. Many of diseases that we were vaccinated against, are simply out of circulation, considered to be extinct, thus no one is required to repeat the vaccinations at a later stage.

Unfortunately, during the last twenty or so years, it appeared that quite a few diseases thought extinct, are anything but, just hiding in some remote corners of the world and waiting for un-vaccinated kids, who are the surest targets for bugs of all kinds, as it is widely known.

And what do you know - the next victims could be these innocent adults, vaccinated a lot of years ago and considered to be out of the danger zone. This scenario could kill literally millions before an answer to a specific bug is found.

So please consider this warning. The freedom of vaccination goes only so far. In this case, much as I dislike government intervention in anything, I should consider a forced inoculation. Except, of course, the cases where it is impossible for medical reasons.

By the way, I am not at all sure that the whole vaccination story is split by left vs right. Consider this moron Bill Maher:

And there are more of same ilk...

(*) I would say that the grown-ups that consider it their expression of freedom not to vaccinate their kids for (wrong) health, political or religious reasons, are deeply in the wrong - because they take the decision to endanger someone else's life.

Breakthrough! Have The Israelis Developed A Cure For Cancer?

Israeli researchers have developed an  entirely new approach towards fighting cancer - and a brand new drug that uses this approach with what appears to be amazing success.

The new approach is called immunotherapy and involves enhancing the body's natural immune systems to destroy the cancer cells. This is a 180 degree turn from contemporary methods like chemotherapy and radiation therapy,that seek to destroy the cancer cells and unfortunately usually end up destroying useful cells and even damaging organs, and producing harmful side effects as well.

Known as Keytruda, the drug that halted Ben-Shabbat's aggressive cancer is viewed today as the great hope for patients with metastatic melanoma, and just recently received US Food and Drug Administration approval. According to many experts in the field, Keytruda is likely to lead to a significant breakthrough in the treatment of cancer.

Unlike in the past, the innovative treatment does not focus on trying to destroy the malignant tumor by means of dangerous chemical drugs that come with serious side-effects. Instead, it serves to initiate gentle and sophisticated manipulations of the body's natural immune system, with the purpose of spurring it on to attack and destroy the cancerous cells itself. If the new treatment mechanism, known as immunotherapy, lives up to expectations, the world of oncology could undergo a real revolution within just a few years.

"The new drug creates real potential for curing one of the deadliest forms of cancer, at the negligible cost of light and tolerable side-effects," says Prof. Jacob Schachter, head of Sheba Medical Center's Ella Institute for Melanoma. "Moreover, it completely alters the working assumptions in oncology treatment, as its working mechanism is effective in the war against other types of cancer too. There's no doubt today that the holy grail of oncology lies in immunotherapy, which helps the body's immune system to destroy the tumor's cells itself.

"At this stage, we can only imagine the therapeutic potential of a combination of a number of such drugs, each acting on a different system, and some of which are already at an advanced stage of development. Among doctors, too, the scope of the breakthrough has yet to be digested."

And it's a breakthrough that is likely to revolutionize oncology:

Unlike chemotherapy, which is designed to destroy the malignant cells by means of chemical drugs, immunotherapy does not go to work on the tumor itself, but rather the healthy cells of our immune system. The new therapy centers on the knowledge that cancer cells are produced in our bodies all the time, and are immediately destroyed by the immune system. In other words, our bodies have the ability to destroy such cells, but sometimes lose this ability for some reason. Immunotherapy is designed to act in various ways to restore this lost ability.



"Every second, our bodies produce defective cells that do not follow the regular rules of the body," says Dr. Gal Markel, chief scientist at Sheba's Ella Institute. "One of the jobs of the immune system is to locate these defective cells and to destroy them. This process occurs on a daily basis in each and every one of us, but sometimes things go wrong. For various reasons – genetic or environmental – irregular cells that are a little more durable can be produced."

According to Dr. Markel, the immune system studies the new cell and adapts itself in an attempt to destroy it, but the cells, too, respond accordingly, and thus survive. This process, in which cancerous cells remain under the control of the immune system in some kind of mutual balance of terror, can continue for years.

This means that when I, as a doctor, see a patient who has just been diagnosed, his immune system has already lost the ability to control the cancer. When a woman feels a lump in her breast, it's a sign that her cancer cells have already defeated her immune system, and that the delicate balance between the system and the rogue cells has been upset. The moment this happens, the cancer begins to run rampant."


Cancer research up until now has always focused on trying to destroy the cancerous cells and/or find out what causes the immune system stop destroying the dangerous cells.

What the Israelis found out is how to overcome the immune system's natural restraint mechanism and get it to focus on the cancer cells that have managed to fool the immune system into not attacking them as it would a virus or infection.

"The efforts to activate the immune system by force failed because the fundamental problem does not lie with the system itself, but in the fact that the cancer can withstand it," says Dr. Markel, who delivered an address on the subject last week at the TEDMED conference on innovativeness in the field of medicine. "An instance in which a cancerous tumor develops is not an instance in which the immune system has stopped functioning, as was thought in the past, but rather a case of the cancer managing to effectively avoid it. The big revolution offered by the new drugs, some of which are still in the developmental stage, is that they help the immune system in various ways to snare the cancerous cells that try to slip under the radar."

Keytruda, the drug that was recently FDA approves has the ability to neutralize the immune system's natural brakes and rev up its cancer fighting ability.

"There are other elements that help the cancer cells to survive in the body, but the brakes are a critical element," Prof. Schachter explains. "Once they are out the way, the system begins to function like crazy. The new drug is more effective than the old one; it has fewer side-effects; and it works very quickly. Within weeks, the tumors shrink and the patients go back to living normal lives."

Not the end of the tunnel, as Dr. Markel says, but the light at the end can already be seen.

I demand that every BDS screecher, every Hamas and 'Palestine groupie' and every 'anti-Zionist' avoid this drug. Just boycott it,along with all the other innovations that have come out of this amazing country.

What a paradox - that a nation that has brought so much good to the world and humanity is the one that is regarded as illegitimate and worthy of destruction by so many people.

Selah.

 

Amazing Israel Makes Drought A Thing Of The Past

One of the major problems in the Middle East is water and the lack of it. All over the region,there's a struggle to have enough clean water for the needs of growing populations while still maintaining enough for agriculture and industrial use.

When drought hits, it can become a matter of life and death.

Except in one country - Israel.

The Israelis have always been a water conscious society. As a small country surrounded by genocidal enemies, they had to make every bit of land count, and that meant making every drop of water count too, especially given the periodic attempts by the neighboring Arab countries to dam off water sources from reaching Israel and its major source of fresh water, Lake Kinneret.

The Israelis became world leaders in irrigation technology, built a major water carrier and followed up with state-of -the-art desalinization projects...and all without billions in petro-dollars to fund it. And it's paid off. Just a few years ago, the Israeli government was running ads on television featuring celebrities like model Bar Rafeali, singer Ninet Tayeb and actor Moshe Ivgy on the dangers of drought and urging people to conserve water at all costs.Now those ads are off the air.

 

Alex Kushnir, the head of Israel's water authority weighs in, saying that in Israel, for the foreseeable future, the water crisis is over :

“How did we beat the water shortage? Because we said we would. We decided we would,” says Kushnir, a big man with a warm smile and a robust Russian accent. “And once you’ve made that decision, you build the tools to reduce your dependence. We’re on the edge of the desert in an area where water has always been short. The quantity of natural water per capita in Israel is the lowest for the whole region. But we decided early on that we were developing a modern state. So we were required to supply water for agriculture, and water for industry, and then water for hi-tech, and water to sustain an appropriate quality of life.”

The National Water Carrier — which takes water from the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) south through the whole country to Beersheba and beyond — exemplified Israel’s ambition. Contemplated even before the modern state was founded, its planning and initial construction were “a dominant feature of the first Ben-Gurion government — an unprecedented investment,” Kushnir notes. “It stressed our desire to achieve a different reality.”

Carrying almost 2 million cubic meters a day nationwide, that supply line, together with water from underground aquifers, kept Israel watered through the 70s. By the 1980s, though “we had a bigger population, bigger needs and the natural resources were overstretched. So we experimented with a small desalination plant in Eilat. And we began recycling purified sewage, and bringing industry into purifying water.”

“Use any superlatives you like,” urges Kushnir, to describe the fact that, today, “over 80% of our purified sewage goes back into agricultural use. The next best in the OECD is Spain with 17-18%. It’s so justified energy-wise, and environmentally as well.”

As Israel's population and agricultural and industrial needs grew, even these programs weren’t enough to meet the demand. So the Israelis came up with yet another innovation:

“By 2000 our balance was really strained,” says Kushnir. “We would have had to cut back drastically in agriculture or industry or home use and we weren’t prepared to do that. We didn’t want to switch off the water to a population in Israel which has enough problems to deal with.”

The solution was desalination, on a major scale — the third phase in a water revolution that had begun with the water carrier and continued with recycling. The first large desalination plant came on line in Ashkelon in 2005, followed by Palmahim and Hadera. By the end of this year, when the Soreq and Ashdod plants are working, there’ll be five plants — built privately at a cost of NIS 6-7 billion (about $2 billion).

Israel uses 2 billion cubic meters of water per year — which is actually a little less than a decade ago, as efficiencies have been introduced in agriculture (which uses 700 million), and water-saving awareness has permeated. Of that two billion, half will be “artificially” manufactured by year’s end — 600 million cubic meters from those desalination plants, and 400 from purified sewage and brackish water.

“We’re not the world’s biggest desalinators,” notes Kushnir, “but no one has made the shift so fast to a situation where half of its water needs are filled from ‘artificial’ sources. And it means we are now ready for the next decade, without dramatic dependence on rainfall fluctuations.”

That's what a people can do when they have a culture of self-reliance, education and innovation. And it's    noteworthy that while government assisted in some areas and coordinated certain projects,  all of Israel's desalination plants were privately built and owned.

As Kushnir mentions, less dependence on ground water also means Israel's aquifers will have a chance to refill,and as Kushnir also notes, the replenishment of the aquifirs is well on the way, especially since rainfall collection has also become much more efficient.

With it's new technology and innovation, Israel may actually become a water exporter.


Imagine what would happen if instead of constantly trying to murder the Jews and drive them out of the region, the Arabs actually made peace with them and learned from what Israel has to offer?

(H/T,Professor Bill at Legal Insurrection)

On Stephen Hawking And Boycotting Israel

 

There's much bigger news out there today, but one item that merits a bit of attention involves noted British scientist Stephen Hawking giving in the Israel Derangement Syndrome and deciding to participate in boycotting Israeli academics and conferences.

The 71-year-old Hawking is a world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He's perhaps more known worldwide for being able to continue his academic career in spite of being a victim of motor neuron disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for the past 50 years, and is only able to communicate with the world due to a special computer-based system.

Professor Hawking had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president's conference, Facing Tomorrow, a well known academic event sponsored by Israeli president Shimon Peres, and timed to coincide and celebrate Peres's 90th birthday in June.

Pro-Palestinian professors, activists and sufferers of Israel Derangement Syndrome (of which there are many in British academia) found out about it and put fierce pressure on Professor Hawking to cancel out and make a strong statement supporting the academic boycott of all things Israel. Hawking originally sent a message canceling out because of his ill health, but under increased pressure from these people decided to jump in (figuratively speaking, of course) with both feet and formally approved a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine announcing "his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".

None of this should really be any surprise. However gifted he may be as a mathematician and theoretical physicist, Hawking has always been on the far Left fringe politically. A long-time Labour supporter, in the past he's referred to America's invasion of Iraq as a 'war crime', has flirted with being aa 9/11 Truther, is a major global warming groupie and in 2009 went on al-Jazeera ( AKA Jihad TV) to interview with Riz Khan and denounce Israel for defending itself against missile attacks from Gaza, saying that "the situation is like that of South Africa before 1990."

All of which goes to show that outside of his narrow field Professor Hawking is not very good at critical thinking, so none of this should be any surprise.

But it's also worth noting certain other inconsistencies.

Professor Hawking has obviously felt this way about Jews and Israel for some time now, certainly at least since 2009, and yet the Israeli conference saw fit to invite him anyway, ignoring Professor Hawking's delusional politics and concentrating on his scientific achievements.Yet Professor Hawking apparently chose not to return the favor, picking, of all things, to insult the dovish Israeli politician Shimon Peres, proof that Hawking's dislike extends viscerally to all things Israeli no matter what.

And as a final, mocking, irony, the entire computer-based communications system Professor Hawking uses to communicate his hatred of all things Israeli is Intel's Core i7, developed - wait for it -in Israel by Intel's Israeli team of computer wizards.

Apparently Professor Hawking's principles don't extend to his personal convenience and benefit. Otherwise, he would set an example by ripping the Israeli-designed Core i7 out of his computer and boycotting it in the future.

A question please, Professor Hawking? There's a word I'm having trouble with. Can you tell me what h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e spells and define it for me?

And can you tell me why  there's  a picture of you next to it in the dictionary?

Wife Allergic To Husband's Sperm

Now this is something I hadn't heard of before. And no, it's not a cooked, scientific mumbo-jumbo variation of "I-have-a-headache."

Boy meets Girl, they fall in love, make the Beast With Two Backs and instead of bliss and fireworks, this happens:

"I had this bizarre reaction," said Clara, who for privacy reasons did not want to use her real name. "I had burning and swelling and redness, which was very unusual. I thought I had contracted an STD [sexually transmitted disease]."

Horrified, she made an appointment with the gynecologist for testing and was nervous about having a "tricky conversation" with Jeff.

After several doctors' visits and hours of research online, the North Carolina couple finally got some answers, but it derailed their sex life and shook their marriage.

What she had was something called seminal plasma hypersensitivity, an allergic reaction to proteins in her husband's semen.

They tried condoms, but it didn't help, and treatment was expensive.so they just avoided sex.

"In a normal romantic relationship, you want to feel attractive to your partner and want to do things that make you feel sexy," Clara said. "I feel like we actually started to define ourselves -- minimizing things to avoid sex. Funny, I started thinking I wouldn't wear sexy underwear. ... What seemed like medical problems had bigger effects."

"It pretty much dramatically reduced our libido," Jeff said. "We really haven't had much sex at all for the last 10 months."

They didn't share their concerns with anyone.

"When your mom calls up and asks how's married life? ... It's something we've been facing privately," Clara said.

Jeff said they started feeling "isolated, like total weirdoes," wondering why this would happen to them. "The intimacy level drops dramatically -- all of a sudden instead of living with your new wife or husband, you are more like roommates."

Eventually they couldn't stand it any more, found a doctor who would take their insurance, and Clara was treated. This involved diluted injections of Jeff's love juice...and not in the fun way, but via syringe every 15-20 minutes over the course of two to three hours.

Specialists in allergies refer to this as 'desensitizing', and happily it did the trick.

The doctor involved, Dr. Jonathan Bernstein is also a professor at University of Cincinnati, who specializes in allergies and immunology. According to him, this condition is extremely rare, but not unknown and probably affects an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 women in the U.S.

Who knew?

Amazing Israel - New Technology Provides The Blind With Eyes-Free Smartphone

An Israeli company has developed a new app that allows the blind to use smartphones.

The application, called RAY, is based on a regular Android smartphone with the American company Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor, and it's expected to be on the market in about a month:

The multipurpose and easy-to-use phone is synchronized with the audio content of the Central Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Handicapped. After installing the application, users can use a touch screen, on which every finger movement triggers a certain function. Blind users, for example, can take pictures with a built-in camera of what is occurring in their homes and transmit the images to distant family members, allowing these family members to help out their blind relative without having to be physically present. A blind user can also choose music and books to listen to and almost all regular smartphone options are available.

The user interface supports a wide range of services including voice calls, text messaging with voice reading, navigation, object recognition, social networking services and access to audio books and other entertainment and leisure activities offered by the Central Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Handicapped.

It really makes you wonder...with all of the amazing technology Israel has developed, there have to be very few countries that have contributed so much to humanity as this one small nation.

That's something to consider when you hear talk from its neighbors about destroying it, especially when you consider what they've contributed to humanity in contrast.

U Of CO Study That Correctly Predicted The Last 8 Elections Says Romney Will Win

This is interesting..a University of Colorado study that has correctly predicted the winner of the last 8 elections says Mitt Romney will win in 2012:

The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.

“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.

According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.

“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”

This model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran in 1980 and 1992.

The study is scheduled to be published in PS: Political Science & Politics, the journal of the American Political Science Association.

The Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is unique reportedly because it's the only one to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.

Aside from state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income. Their research indicates that voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.

Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.

In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.

Needless to say, the researchers give themselves wiggle room.The data used in the current study was taken five months in advance of the election and Bickers and Berry plan to update it with more current economic data in September. Another factor they mention is that states very close to a 50-50 split could end up with an unexpected result.

Since I don't expect the economy or unemployment to improve between now and November 6th, it'll be interesting to see if Bickers and Berry make it 9-0.

NASA's Rover 'Curiosity' Makes Historic Landing On Mars, Beams Back Photos

Apparently NASA's space program is not entirely dead or limited to Muslim esteem enhancement and appeasement.

The NASA rover 'Curiosity' made an amazing landing near the Gale Crater, in Mars' southern hemisphere, and is already sending back photos:









That last one is maybe an artist's conception or something.

Curiosity was sent to Mars to look for any current signs of life, and to examine whether the Red Planet may have once had the basic buildings blocks necessary for humanoid life.

The rover was launched on November 26 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the robotic lab embarked through space on an eight month journey that covered 352 million miles (566 million km), before entering Mars' thin atmosphere at 13,000 MPH and starting its descent.

Protected by capsule-like shell, the Rover successfully used a first-of-its kind automated flight-entry system to sharply reduce its speed in order to land safely.

One of the challenges of these missions is not only generating enough speed to make the trip in a reasonable amount of time, but being able to put the brakes on successfully in order to be able to land safely without burning up once youhit atmosphere.

Everything appears to have worked out well so far, and Earth bound scientists are putting Curiosity through a series of tests before they send the Rover out cruisin' to see what kind of trouble it can get into.

All in all, an amazing achievement, and a major high five goes out to the guys and gals at JPL.

Another Miracle From Israel - Helping The Paralyzed And Lame To Walk

An Israeli scientist has developed an amazing device called the ReWalk that allows paraplegics and bedridden people who haven't walked in years to do so. Simply amazing, and an absolute miracle.

Tell me again, what exactly have the Arab countries contributed to human well-being lately aside from having some oil in the ground they couldn't find in the first place and needed others to drill, ship and refine for them?

Beware Of Armed Chimps! No Joke!

Especially if they're behind bars..

Santino, a male chimp at Sweden's Furuvik Zoo has apparently devised various schemes for tricking humans that has scientists rethinking their theories on animal behavior, according to a new study published in the journal PLoS One. There ar researchers who see this chimp's actions as hinting at a deep level of thinking once only associated with humans.

One day two years ago,Santino apparently got tired of being gawked at by zoo visitors, so he started throwing stones in their general direction.

Later that same day, when a different group of people approached his pen, the chimp came up with a new idea. "Santino approached them holding two stones, but this time appearing non-aggressive and munching on an apple," says Eoin O'Carroll at The Christian Science Monitor. He waited until the humans got closer and then pelted them with the rocks , taking the humans by surprise.

Santino got even craftier. Later, when no one was watching, Santino collected a large amount of hay and placed it near the visitor's section, hiding his collection of stones under it. He then plopped down on the hay, and when unsuspecting visitors came close and without any warning, pelted them with his hidden arsenal.

After zookeepers removed any rocks from his pen to prevent Santino from using them as ammo, he came up with a new tactic. Santino was caught breaking off pieces of the concrete floor, which he had fashioned into small discs he could throw.

Yes Santino is one crafty chip.

Simian males have been known to fling missiles like sticks and feces at onlookers before. I once observed a group of black children at the Bronx Zoo getting a poop bombardment from a bunch of chimps the children had been laughing at a little too exuberantly, much to the chimp's amusement. But what makes Santino's attacks different is that he planned the attacks so deliberately, varying his tactics each time for better results. Psychologists call this theory of mind, the ability to understand that others possess thoughts, desires, and motivations different from one's own.

Or in other words, Santino gave some thought to psyching out the enemy for maximum effect, and used the U.S. Marine's splendid motto..'Adapt, Improvise, Overcome'.

So, what's Santino's motivation? Michael Huffman of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute think the primate's stone-throwing is all about testosterone, and "may serve to augment the effect of intimidation displays." Other scientists think the answer could be that Santino simply gets enjoyment out of tricking humans.

Of course, the real motivation is probably to be found in an application I located to the Federal government for a $300,000 grant from the Obama Administration's stimulus funds or its equivalent in cherries, grapes, bananas and Jack Daniels filed by one 'Dr. Santino Chimp' of Sweden to provide shovel ready jobs in a stone quarry.

I may not have gotten that last part exactly right.

UK Muslim Scientist Receives Death Threats Over Darwinist Views

Dr Usama Hasan, a physics lecturer at Middlesex University and a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society is in trouble.

The poor fellow had the nerve to try and square his Islamic beliefs with the theory of evolution - otherwise known as 'intelligent design' when done by Christians and Jews - and ended up recanting when he started receiving death threats as an apostate.

Dr. Hasan intended to return to Masjid al-Tawhid, a mosque in Leyton, East London, for the first time since he delivered a lecture there entitled "Islam and the theory of evolution".

But according to his sister, police advised him not to attend because they couldn't be responsible for his safety. Instead his father, Suhaib, head of the mosque's committee of trustees, posted a notice on his behalf expressing regret over his comments. "I seek Allah's forgiveness for my mistakes and apologize for any offense caused," the statement read.

Masjid Tawhid is a prominent mosque which also runs one of the country's largest sharia courts, the Islamic Sharia Council. Dr. Hasan, of course, should have known better, as sharia is fairly explicit in these matters.

His lecture at the mosque was interrupted by men he described as "fanatics" who distributed leaflets claiming that "Darwin is blasphemy".

"One man came up to me during the lecture and said 'You are an apostate and should be killed'," Dr Hasan told The Independent. "I want to go back – I've been going to the mosque for 25 years. It is my favourite mosque in London, and I have been active in the community for a long time. I hope my positive contribution will outweigh their feelings towards me."

Uh, sorry, no. The mosque issued a statement saying that Dr Hasan had been dismissed from his position as vice-chairman and imam at the mosque, and describing his views as a "source of antagonism in the Muslim community". Neither he nor his father were present at the meeting that voted for his dismissal.

I have no way of knowing, but it would be interesting to see what Dr. Hasan's position was on the death fatwas issued against author Salman Rushdie or the MoToons cartoonists.

As the Blind Sheik famously said, "Islam is Islam."


(via memeorandum)

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World's Smartest Dog Has Vocabulary Of Over 1,000 Different Words

A border collie named Chaser has learned the names of 1,022 individual items -- more than any other animal.

Psychologists Alliston Reid and John Pilley of Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C., taught Chaser the names of hundreds of toys, one by one, slowly and patiently, for three years as part of a research experiment in animal psychology.

"We can't say anything definitive about this, but there is agreement among breeders," he said, citing decades of breeding for herding that makes the dogs particularly attuned to learning words. "The hypothesis is that they do have a special propensity to language, they listen to the farmer."

"In the first experiment where we talk about the learning of proper nouns, the procedure we use is one where she was taught in a way that she couldn't fail," Pilley said. "We would place the object right on the floor, somewhere the dog couldn't miss."

Gradually, they moved on to other objects, and to verbs like "get" "fetch" and "go".

The scientists tested Chaser on her vocabulary by placing random groups of 20 toys in another room and having her fetch them by name. Chaser never got less than 18 out of 20 right in 838 separate tests over three years.

If Chaser is anything like some other dogs I've known, these scientists could have beaten this record if they had used food items instead of toys..believe me!

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