Eideard

Ooh! That has to leave a mark

Zak Anthony King, 18, refused to stop when ordered to do so by police who spotted him on his liberal morning run.

When he began to outpace the sweating officers in West Melbourne, Florida, one threatened him with the Taser, which delivers an electric shock powerful enough to temporarily paralyse.

Within a fraction of a second of the barbs hitting his bottom, Mr King collapsed and was arrested, while cameras in a police car and on the immobiliser captured the moment.

The cameras also recorded sound and one officer can be heard reliving the incident only moments before, saying: “I’m like, ‘Don’t run, I’m gonna Tase you!’ So what does he do? He just keeps running.”

Mr King is suspected to have been drunk. He told the officers he had “super powers”.

Maybe his “super powers” don’t work when he isn’t wearing his cape? Or much else?

A man was electrocuted and died as he and a female partner tried to steal copper wire from an electrical vault in South Gate on Saturday afternoon, police said.

The woman tried to pull him away from the vault when it caught fire and exploded, but the electricity traveled through her body and she received severe burns, South Gate police spokesman Lt. Keith Huff said…

Two small children were found in a truck 15 feet from the accident but were not injured. They were being held by childrens’ services workers, Huff said.

The electrical vault was on a lot at 3064 Firestone Blvd., at the corner of South Gate Avenue. The lot was the former site of Liberty Cable Company but has been unoccupied for more than a year, Huff said.

No one ever said thieves had to be smart. Or live long productive lives.

Gunther von Hagens, a German anatomist famous for his controversial Body World exhibition displaying plastinated bodies, is now selling human and animal body parts — even as jewelry — online.

The move has provoked strong condemnation from German churches which accuse him of degrading human dignity.

I know, I know. For many churches, nowadays, obedience is of more concern than dignity.

A whole body from www.plastination-products.com costs about 70,000 euros ($97,400), torsos start at 55,644 euros and heads come in at around 22,000 euros each — excluding postage and packaging.

For those on a tighter budget, transparent body slices are available from 115 euros each…

Only “qualified users” who can provide written proof that they intend to use the parts for research, teaching or medical purposes can place an order.

Interested parties who do not fall into this category can buy reproductions of the real body parts — so-called “Anatomy Glass,” which the shop’s website describes as “high resolution acrylic glass prints of the original body slices.”

Jewelry crafted from animal corpses, including necklaces made from horse slices, wristbands made from giraffe tails and earrings made from bull penises, is also available to the general public…

Cripes. Reminds me of a hunter I knew back in the day.

There are 2 vertebrates in North America that have a bone permanently stiffening their penis: bears and raccoons. He would polish the coon variety and sell them as swizzle sticks.

Engineered E.coli strain (yellow) attaching to solid iron oxide (black)

The Terminator. The Borg. The Six Million Dollar Man. Science fiction is ripe with biological beings armed with artificial capabilities. In reality, however, the clunky connections between living and non-living worlds often lack a clear channel for communication. Now, scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed an electrical link to living cells engineered to shuttle electrons across a cell’s membrane to an external acceptor along a well-defined path. This direct channel could yield cells that can read and respond to electronic signals, electronics capable of self-replication and repair, or efficiently transfer sunlight into electricity.

“Melding the living and non-living worlds is a canonical image in science fiction,” said Caroline Ajo-Franklin, a staff scientist in the Biological Nanostructures Facility at the Molecular Foundry. “However, in most attempts to interface living and non-living systems, you poke cells with a sharp hard object, and the cells respond in a predictable way – they die. Yet, in Nature many organisms have evolved to interact with the rocks and minerals that are part of their environment. Here, we took inspiration from Nature’s approach and actually grew the connections out of the cell…”

“We were interested in finding a pathway that wouldn’t kill the living systems we were studying,” said Heather Jensen, a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley whose thesis work is part of this publication. “By using a living system in electronics, we can one day create biotechnologies that can repair and self-replicate…”

In their approach, Jensen, Ajo-Franklin and colleagues first cloned a part of the extracellular electron transfer chain of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, marine and soil bacteria capable of reducing heavy metals in oxygen-free environments. This chain or “genetic cassette,” Ajo-Franklin notes, is essentially a stretch of DNA that contains the instructions for making the electron conduit. Additionally, because all life as we know it uses DNA, the genetic cassette can be plugged into any organism. The team showed this natural electron pathway could be popped into a (harmless) strain of E. coli—a versatile model bacteria in biotechnology— to precisely channel electrons inside a living cell to an inorganic mineral: iron oxide, also known as rust.

The researchers plan to implement this genetic cassette in photosynthetic bacteria, as cellular electrons from these bacteria can be produced from sunlight—providing cheap, self-replicating solar batteries. These metal-reducing bacteria could also assist in producing pharmaceutical drugs, Ajo-Franklin adds, as the fermentation step in drug manufacturing requires energy-intensive pumping of oxygen. In contrast, these engineered bacteria breathe using rust, rather than oxygen, saving energy.

Bravo! Contrast this with the know-nothings who would respond to this – if they read any science news – by prating some crap about god’s will and vowing to halt further heresy.

I only wish I could live long enough to witness our species trudging all the way out of the Stone Age.

Authorities have arrested two Georgetown University students and another person in connection to a suspected drug lab found inside a dormitory Saturday morning.

The three males, each at least 18, face charges of possession of drug paraphernalia, said Officer Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the police department. The third individual was a campus visitor. None was identified.

Police said that shortly before 6 a.m., they received a call about a foul odor at Georgetown’s Harbin Hall.

Initially, police thought the lab was for producing meth, but later said it was used to make Dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogenic drug commonly known as DMT.

DMT is classified as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it has no accepted medical use for treatment of any kind in the United States. Federal trafficking of Schedule 1 drugs carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, said Rusty Payne, a Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman.

DMT is a hallucinogenic that can be produced synthetically, but it also comes from a variety of plants and seeds found in South America, Payne said. The substance can be sniffed, smoked or injected, giving the user a short high sometimes referred to as a “business man’s trip” because it lasts about an hour…

Harbin Hall was evacuated most of the day following the discovery of the suspected lab. Seven people, including two security officers, were evaluated by medical personnel at the scene, said fire department spokesman Pete Piringer

I realize the chemistry required couldn’t have been too complex otherwise yo-yos as dumb as these wouldn’t have been able to construct their little chemical plant. Didn’t they think someone would smell the crap they were cooking?

In living quarters as close together as a dormitory you’re lucky when you don’t get complaints over old gym socks in your closet from two floors away.

For decades this central Indian city was vintage old India: crumbling Mughal-era ruins and ancient Buddhist caves surrounded by endless parched acres from which farmers coaxed cotton. But this month Aurangabad became an emblem of an altogether different India: the booming, increasingly urbanized economic powerhouse filled with ambition and a new desire to flaunt its wealth.

A group of more than 150 local businessmen decided to buy, en masse, a Mercedes-Benz car each, spending nearly $15 million in a single day and putting this small but thriving city on the map. Frustrated that the usual Chamber of Commerce brochures were slow to attract new investment, the businessmen decided to buy the cars as a stunt intended to stimulate investment in Aurangabad, one of several largely unknown but thriving urban centers across India’s more prosperous states.

“In and around Aurangabad there are companies worth a thousand crores,” an amount of Indian rupees equivalent to about $225 million, said Sachin Nagouri, 40, a hyperkinetic local real estate mogul who came up with the idea. “But Aurangabad is not known even in this state. There is plenty of money here. We just need to show it…”

These men could not be more different from their cautious fathers, who stashed every penny as a hedge against an uncertain future in India’s economy, which until 1991 was heavily controlled by the government. In the land of Gandhi and the birthplace of Buddhism, grand displays of material wealth are still frowned upon.

Older men like Ashish Garde, who runs Nirlep, a company that has made nonstick pots and pans here since 1968, declined to join the group. Mr. Garde said the nearly $15 million spent on luxury cars would have been better spent on investments in industries that would create jobs or donations to charity. He declared himself satisfied with his economy car.

“Those of us who went through the hardships of the past know the value of money in a different way,” Mr. Garde said. “Those who get quick money, their relationship is different. After globalization things happen very easily. The element of struggle is gone.”

RTFA. Interesting tales supporting and criticizing the stunt, the money, new attitudes.

Authorities in the South Korean capital are trying to untangle themselves from a slimy row: how many octopus heads is it safe to eat?

Octopus heads are a favorite dish on the peninsula — for their apparent aphrodisiac qualities.

In September, the Seoul city government enraged restaurateurs and the fishing industry when it announced octopus heads contained hazardous amounts of cadmium, a carcinogen that poisons the liver and kidneys.

It advised against eating more than two heads a day.

Enraged fishermen threatened to sue the government and their cause caught the imagination of the public when lawmakers representing their constituents took an octopus into a national assembly session, causing laughter as it tried to escape the jar.

Lee Wan-beom, a fisherman from the county of Muan, told the Korea JoongAng daily that prices for octopus had halved since the government’s warning.

Eeoough!

I’d stick with kimchi.

Police investigators entering Potvin’s home

A man who rigged a booby trap in his home to protect himself from intruders killed himself this week when he triggered it by accident.

Surete du Quebec officers said 75-year-old Jos Lawrence Potvin of Levis, a suburb south of Quebec City, died when he accidentally pulled a string running along the floor of the entrance to his bedroom that was attached to the trigger of a rifle.

Police found his body inside his trailer home Thursday morning. Suicide was ruled out.

A hunter, Potvin lived alone and had complained to police in the past that people were trying to rob him, although police could not find any proof. His valuables were kept in his bedroom.

Ayuh.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

World’s first commercial spaceport. Check. Solo flight of a rocket ship for tourists. Check. A runway in the southern New Mexico desert to help them climb to the heavens. Check…

“Today is very personal, as our dream becomes more real,” said Sir Richard Branson, whose company, Virgin Galactic, will operate the flights. “People are beginning to believe now.”

All that is left for the company is more rocket testing on SpaceShipTwo and sending it into space. The British billionaire said he expects flights for space tourists to begin in nine to 18 months, and he will be among the first passengers.

Stretching across a flat dusty plain 45 miles north of Las Cruces, the nearly two-mile-long runway is designed to support almost every aircraft in the world, day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations.

Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant of the taxpayer-funded $198 million spaceport and plans to use the facility to take tourists on what will first be short hops into space…

Branson was joined at Friday’s ceremonies by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, tourists who have already paid their deposits for a seat into suborbital space and Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon in 1969 as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.

Virgin Galactic’s White Knight Two – the special jet-powered mothership that will carry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude – also made an appearance Friday, passing over the spaceport several times before landing on the new runway.

Bravo! Gives me an excuse eventually to drive downstate and watch takeoffs and landings.

Can’t afford the flight.