Scientists identify narcolepsy gene

Japanese scientists have identified a gene variant that may be linked to narcolepsy, a condition marked by excessive daytime sleepiness, impaired vision and muscle weakness. It occurs in 1 out of 2,500 individuals in the United States and Europe, but is at least 4 times more frequent in Japanese.

The researchers analyzed the genomes, or DNA, of more than 200 narcoleptic Japanese and almost 400 others who did not have that condition, and one gene variant occurred with significant frequency among those with narcolepsy. Identification of this gene variant could pave the way for experts to hunt for a treatment.

The gene is located between the genes CPT1B and CHKB, both of which appear to be linked to the disorder. CPT1B controls an enzyme that regulates sleep, while CHKB is linked to the sleep-wake cycle. The scientists took a further step to examine that same gene variant in more than 400 Koreans, 800 European and 200 African Americans. It occurred with significant frequency among narcoleptic Koreans, but the association was not evident in the Europeans and African Americans.

As medical disorders go, narcolepsy has the paradox of being popularly portrayed in comedy, but being a rare, devastating and poorly understood condition in real life. Only one in 2,000 people have the disease, which means doctors can rarely get enough patients or funding to really study narcolepsy and make advances to treat it. But Nature Genetics researchers reported that they discovered a genetic variant which increases a person's susceptibility to narcolepsy by 79 percent.

Communication using Skype

I talk to everyone on Skype. That is how I communicate. Usually I would buy by minutes, but recently I purchased a three-month calling subscription for the price of two months. (Thank god for Skype coupon codes.) Now, I can keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones around the world – just as long as I have my laptop computer with me.

If you have been living under a rock and still have not heard of Skype, let me explain it to you. And perhaps you will find out why it has become a necessity to me. It is a software that allows users to make phone calls over the Internet. Calls can be made to other Skype users (for free) and to landlines and mobile phones virtually anywhere in the world (with charges). Also, there are plenty of extra features such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and file transfer.

So basically, Skype is a phone on my computer. (I don’t even use my mobile phone that much anymore!) It’s my way of keeping connected, however nomadic my line of work can make me. All I have to bring with me is my trusty headset and web camera. What’s amazing is, even though I don’t exactly have an office (or an actual darkroom), I can still listen to voicemails that have been left while I was offline. Gone are the good old days of answering machines on the living room.

If you are planning to use Skype and talk to anyone in the world for a minimal amount of cost, just download the software. And, of course, don’t forget to use coupon codes whenever you make a subscription or purchase minutes.

If sounds like a crisis it probably is

In the '90s, the smartest people were telling us that the internet revolution had vanquished the business cycle by sending productivity on a perpetual upward climb. Economic laws no longer applied. And then the bubble burst.

In the '00s, the smartest people were telling us that Wall Street had vanquished the business cycle by gaining mastery over risk. No mortgage was too absurd, no leverage too great, no structured product too reckless when risk-spreading models were so brilliantly engineered.

Commonsense laws no longer applied and the bubble burst again. So the big question is this: "do we have the capacity to learn ?". Despite temptation, can we resolve to assume that if something sounds crazy, it probably is?. The business cycle is real and the economy has some direct relationship to supply and demand. Housing, which has grown at roughly the rate of inflation for many decades, probably can't grow a whole lot faster over time.

You can't sustain a market based on lending when the borrowers don't have the resources to pay back the loans. It's all pretty basic. That guy on tv who's telling us how we can make a killing on a real state, with no money down? we're probably better off resisting the urge to chase that particular dream.

We should focus on the signs of whether we are, or are not, learning from our mistakes.

Source: smart editor's memo from BusinessWeek.

Nokia music store is here

Nokia has announced its Music Store service today. Offering a feature supported by last high speed networks on handsets, Music Store will offer seamless over-the-air music purchases and downloads directly from handsets combined with automatic two-way synchronization to the host PC.

Other features include dynamic music recommendations and a "Mix Me" feature for creating playlists of recommended songs based on genre preferences.

The WMA tracks will run €1 with entire albums starting at €10. PC streaming will also be available for €10 a month. Available now in Europe, before the year's out will be offered to other markets.

Vodafone UK apparently has an exclusive on the recently announced Nokia N95 8GB. Presumably that handset will actually ship with Nokia's Xpress Music software inside, but Vodafone could choose to leave it out.

MySpace new digital music space

MySpace will launch on Thursday a new service that will offer its 120 million users, free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from major record companies in the world.

But the music can only be played on personal computers connected to the Internet and users will have to accept advertising that will appear sporadically on their screens. All those wishing to transfer a song to a portable device like the iPod from Apple, will have to purchase music through the download service launched a year ago by Amazon.com Inc., which sells songs starting 79 cents per unit.

Unlike most of the material on the iTunes Store of Apple, music sold through the new version of MySpace does not contain limitations that restrict the number of times a song can be copied.

MySpace hopes to differentiate even more than iTunes to allow their users to create a unlimited number of lists that have 100 songs each, a concept similar to the exchange of music services offered by imeem and Last.fm.

If MySpace is successful, users will incorporate regular lists of songs to their lists and profiles shall make known to their friends their new musical tastes.

Safer stem cells

Researchers have found a safer way to revert adult mouse cells to an embryonic state. The new technique, avoids using viruses that alter the cells’ DNA, a major goal among stem-cell researchers since these DNA mutations can lead to cancer.

Such cells could sidestep the controversy about therapies based on embryonic stem cells, because the embryonic-like cells can be made from a person’s skin or blood cells without creating or destroying an embryo. Coaxing these reprogrammed cells into for example, fresh heart or pancreas cells for transplantation back into the patient could offer new, personalized ways to treat ailments such as heart disease and diabetes.

Until now, reprogramming adult cells in lab dishes required infecting the cells with viruses that carry the four reprogramming genes. Although the scientists cripple the viruses so that they can’t replicate, the viruses can still insert these four genes directly into the cells’ DNA at random locations. These willy-nilly changes to the cells’ DNA could disrupt the cells’ own genes, occasionally in ways that cause the cells to grow out of control and form a tumor. In addition to this risk, any process that alters a cell’s DNA complicates government approval for medical use.

The new technique solves these problems by using a different kind of virus that does not alter the cells’ genetic code, and this is a great advantage for the whole process.

Broccoli and kale for your eyes

Research over the past few decades shows that eye health is linked to diet and lifestyle. Being overweight, smoking, having diabetes, eating a high-fat diet, excessive alcohol consumption, and low fruit and vegetable intake all increase the risk of eye diseases.

While we all learned that carrots are important for our eyes, there’s actually more evidence that other veggies have even bigger impacts on our peepers: Specifically, green- and yellow-hued foods have been shown to be more effective at reducing risk for macular degeneration and cataracts than orange ones.

Why does color matter? Because green and yellow fruits and vegetables are packed with lutein and zeaxanthin, two nutrients that seem to protect the retina against oxidative damage and decrease risk for AMD. (The mineral zinc, and other antioxidants, such as beta carotene, have also been shown in some studies to provide protection against AMD.)

Some of the most absorbent forms of lutein and zeaxanthin are found in foods containing fats, such as egg yolks, pistachios, and avocados. Corn, spinach, squash, collard greens, kale, tomato products, and lettuces are also good sources.

Google Android market available

Google announced plans to open the Android Market as its way to distribute applications for Android handsets. Rather than Apple’s review process required to upload applications, developers can upload their work and make it available for use and ratings by Android users.

The approach Google is taking is to enable the community to police itself through a ratings system rather than reviewing applications individually. If an application does not function properly, users will be able to rate and comment on the application’s listing in the Android Market which will cause other users to avoid installing it. The Android Developers blog likened the process to uploading a YouTube video.

This is one way that Google is trying to cater to their developer community, who reacted to Google’s Android Developer Challenge by creating nearly 1,800 applications before the phone has been released. Of these numerous submissions only 50 were awarded prizes.

Google has announced that it will release a Beta version of the Android Market that will come installed on the first handsets that will be released. The announcement also stated that the Android Market Beta will only support free applications, though they expect to offer paid services down the line. There is no word on when developers will be able to start submitting applications for listing.

Microbes for plastic recycling

A new recycling process enlists the help of bacteria to turn the ubiquitous plastic PET into a biodegradable plastic that could replace the cellophane in food packaging.

PET, is one of the most familiar kinds of plastic: Billions of pounds of PET bottles are sold every year all over the world. But less than a quarter of those are recycled, according to a 2006 study by the trade group the National Association for PET Container Resources.

Getting high-quality material, such as plastics suitable for packaging food or beverages, back out of recycled plastic is more expensive than making virgin PET, so most plastic bottles are recycled into lower-grade, and less valuable, plastic.

But there’s only so much demand for lower-grade plastics, says microbiologist and coauthor Kevin O’Connor of University College Dublin in Ireland. “The problem is that the market for recycled PET is saturated.”

New ways of turning PET into valuable materials, or “up-cycling” it, could create an incentive to recycle more of it. Even better would be if the products of this recycling were biodegradable, as is PHA. PHA demand could grow to a point where it could absorb a slice of the PET waste, while PET to PHA is not the sole answer to PET recycling, it can be part of the solution.

First Google mobile phone available

A mobile telephone tailored to run on Google's Android software is to debut next week in New York City. US telecom carrier T-Mobile is slated to unveil on September 23 a "Google phone" built by Taiwanese firm HTC and to have the device for sale in stores as early as October.

Google is hoping Android will become the dominant operating system for mobile phones. It is designed to improve the speed and quality of using the Internet on handsets. Android is being developed as an "open source" platform, meaning anyone is free to use the technology to make mobile telephones compatible with the networks of multiple carriers.

Google announced Android plans late last year and analysts reacted by saying it could potentially transform the mobile telephone market by providing service supported by advertising instead of subscription fees. "We are seeing a number of technology companies demonstrating how Android will operate on their technology," Google spokesman Barry Schnitt told AFP at a Mobile World Congress gathering in Spain early this year.

Big bang machine first failure

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) has had today its first major incident, the failure of one of the 1230 main superconducting dipole magnets. This was apparently due to a “quench” in which the magnet goes rapidly from the superconducting to the normal conducting state, which then means that the tremendous electric current in the magnet suddenly starts heating it up, causing huge internal mechanical stresses. As pointed out elsewhere, quenches are expected to happen quite often in the LHC. The magnets are designed to withstand these forces, in principle, and were tested extensively. What happened here is not clear yet, and there is no official statement from CERN. Probably best to wait for that.

As for the effect on the LHC commissioning, to repair or replace the magnet requires warming up the relevant sector, then cooling back down after the repair. This takes several weeks, perhaps two months, and in the mean time, no tests with beam are possible.

Genetically engineered animals as food

Why should anyone be making genetically engineered animals anyway? Ask FDA and its new draft about this.

Most of the concerns raised about these critters are ethical. Some argue that it is inherently wrong for us to try and manipulate the heredity of animals. It is not our place to change the essential characteristics of a horse or a chicken. Nor can we be sure, critics worry, that genetically engineered animals will produce milk or meat that is absolutely safe to eat. And some critics worry that mixing genes from different species is not only unnatural but may wind up creating animals who wind up interbreeding with others and making offspring with traits that no one ever intended or anticipated.

These ethical worries are not all legitimate. In a world in which there are thousands of varieties of pigs, chickens, sheep, cows, dogs, cats and mice all made by humans using selective breeding, it is hard to argue that it is inherently wrong to change "the essence" of any animal. We have changed our domestic animals so much that their wild relatives can no longer recognize them. Genetic engineering speeds the process and allows more drastic changes to be undertaken, but it is not fundamentally different than what it took our ancestors a few thousand years to do to get to the Chihuahua, Collie or Great Dane.

Google water-based data center

The idea is that Google would create mobile data center platforms out at sea by stacking containers filled with servers, storage systems and networking gear on barges or other platforms. This would let Google push computing centers closer to people in some regions where it’s not feasible, cost-effective or as efficient to build a data center on land. In short, Google brings the data closer to you, and then the data arrives at a quicker clip.

Perhaps even more intriguing to some, Google has theorized about powering these ocean data centers with energy gained just from water splashing against the side of the barges. Historically, Google has been unique among the largest service providers in the amount of custom work it’s willing to do on data center equipment. It’s no secret that Google builds its own servers and even networking equipment. If Google moves forward with the idea, we may have to expand our definition of “mobile applications".

Plastics chemical linked to heart disease

Study is based on data collected from human adults and matches urine concentrations of bisphenol A with type 2 diabetes, heart disease and liver enzyme problems. Urine levels of the chemical bisphenol A, found in many plastics, are strongly linked to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and liver enzyme problems, a new study suggests. The study represents a sample of the adult U.S population.

The study is based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. NHANES uses physical examinations, clinical and lab tests and personal interviews to get a snapshot of the health and nutritional status of the U.S. population. The recently released 2003–2004 NHANES provided scientists with the first large-scale data set on human urinary bisphenol A concentrations.

Today are popular: Megan Fox, Big Brother 10, Hells Angels, Aig, Lehman Brothers

How much your "per diem" expenses are ?

It's always nice to see a little Latin tossed into the online mix. Thanks to growing scrutiny of Sarah Palin's "per diem" travel expenses as governor, the two-word term has enjoyed an unexpected rush of popularity in Search.

So what does "per diem" mean? The American Heritage dictionary defines it simply as "an allowance for daily expenses." Within this context, "Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business."

According to The Washington Post, Governor Palin charged per diem costs to the state of Alaska for more than 300 nights she stayed at home with the kids. The resulting brouhaha has propelled queries like "per diem" and "palin per diem" up the Search charts. Not bad for a stuffy old phrase.

Test your child's attitude for maths

What does a crowded bus have to do with your ability to learn math? If you can tell by a quick glance whether more people are in the front or the back, chances are you had an easier time with numbers in school, a new study reveals.

Success in mathematics has already been linked to factors such as short-term memory. Many experts also suspected a role for the approximate number system (ANS), a sort of mental sense that allows us to judge the relative quantities of various objects, such as people in the front or back of a bus. But no one had studied the extent to which this ability varies in people, or whether it relates to math proficiency.

Cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene of INSERM in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, calls the experiment a "beautiful demonstration" of the link between the ANS and mathematical ability. Still, he notes that the study only shows a relationship between ANS and high math scores; it doesn't prove that one causes the other. Halberda says his team is now following a group of children to help answer that question.

Install your green roof at home

In a modern contaminated world, any initiative attempting to protect the environment is welcome. The latest one are green roofs. A green roof system is an extension of the existing roof which involves a high quality water proofing and root repellant system, a drainage system, filter cloth, a lightweight growing medium and plants.

Green roof systems may be modular, with drainage layers, filter cloth, growing media and plants already prepared in movable, interlocking grids, or, each component of the system may be installed separately. Green roof development involves the creation of "contained" green space on top of a human-made structure. This green space could be below, at or above grade, but in all cases the plants are not planted in the "ground". Green roofs can provide a wide range of public and private benefits, not only provide the owners of buildings with a proven return on investment, but also represent opportunities for significant social, economic and environmental benefits, particularly in cities. Find out more about the private and public benefits of green roof technologies below.

Scraper bike fever grows

Thanks to YouTube, a music video about the tricked-out bicycles posted to the site by some teenagers in Oakland, has attracted a cult following, with nearly 3 million views. The video spawned what is becoming a worldwide movement, even as it changed the lives of the young men who customized the bikes and made the video.

One biker says "Because I was at a young age, getting into a lot of serious trouble, selling drugs and on the verge of going to jail. So my mom told me this is a way to channel anger and frustration, just focusing on something that's creative, something that's me, and the bikes is me."

Oakland is a town where hip-hop is king and cars known as "scrapers" are huge. They're large, bright and have rims so big that they scrape the inside of the wheel well. Stevenson and his friends took those aesthetics and applied them to bicycles, fitting large wheels on small frames.

Another biker who couldn't afford a car made do with a bike. But not just any bike. "The idea from the scraper bikes, it basically came from the cars that ride in Oakland — we call them scrapers — basically it's an old model car, such as a Buick, that's painted a custom color to match the rims. I wanted to take that and put a bike onto it."

Insight, new Honda hydrogen vehicle

Honda will launch a concept version of its new small hybrid vehicle, to be named Insight, at the 2008 Paris Motor Show on October 2. The five passenger Honda Insight Hybrid will be built on an entirely new platform and be smaller than the Civic Hybrid and use styling cues from the Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen cell car.

The Insight is a mix of fancy and not. You get heated and cooled seats, a voice-control navigation system, satellite radio, one-touch operation on all four windows, high-intensity headlights, and a system that warns if a collision is likely and hits the brakes if you don’t. The Honda Insight is likely to be powered by the 1.4-litre petrol engine and electric motor seen in the Civic Hybrid which will develop around 115bhp.

When operating at low speeds, the Insight will work entirely on battery power ensuring zero emissions and at higher speeds a combination of brake energy and acceleration will help re-charge the Insight’s hybrid battery. The Insight Concept defines a new stage in the evolution of hybrid technology by utilizing a more cost-efficient version of Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist hybrid technology, resulting in a new level of affordability for hybrid customers worldwide.

Rare african okapi discovered in Congo

Camera traps set by the Zoological Society of London in the Democratic Republic of Congo have captured rare pictures of wild okapi. The giraffe-like mammals, which have zebra-like stripes on their rear, are under threat from the bush meat trade. The sightings in Virunga National Park prove the species is surviving in the jungle despite years of civil conflict.

Okapis, which have a black tongue designed for grasping and holding, along with distinctive stripes on their behind, are the closest living relative of the giraffe. They were unknown to the western world until the early 20th Century, but are now known to inhabit three protected areas, of which Virunga National Park is one. Their abundance in the park is unknown as access to the forests of Congo is limited by civil conflict and poor infrastructure, making survey work difficult.

CERN Large Hadron Collider test

This early morning, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, say they will try to send the first beam of protons around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva.

And a generation of physicists, watching from control rooms and auditoriums on the scene, on Webcasts at webcast.cern. The collider, is the most expensive scientific experiment to date. Thousands of physicists from dozens of countries have been involved in building the collider and its huge particle detectors. It is designed to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts.

In recent weeks, there has been a blitzkrieg of papers and predictions on what might or might not be discovered, by theorists eager to get their bets down before the figurative roulette ball drops or the dice begin to tumble. At stake is a suite of theories called the Standard Model, which explains all of particle physics to date, but which breaks down at the conditions that existed in the earliest moments of the universe. The new collider will eventually reach temperatures and energies equivalent to those at a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. There are many theories about what will happen, including the emergence of a particle known as the Higgs boson, which is hypothesized to endow other particles with mass, or the identity of the mysterious dark matter that provides the invisible scaffolding of galaxies and the cosmos.

Pajama Media new big American online media

The online media company calling itself the Pajamas Media is currently a very popular online politics journal. According to the company official website, Pajamas Media began in 2005 as an affiliation of 90 of the most influential weblogs on the Internet. They were linked together as an advertising network, but the intention was to provide a significant alternative to mainstream media. Two years later PJM has expanded its reach. Besides adding to its blog network, through its portal, PJM now provides exclusive news and opinion 24/7 in text, video and podcast from correspondents in over forty countries. Pajamas Media also has its own weekly show on XM satellite radio – PJM Political – and syndicates its original material like a news agency.

The company is using tag cloud software to visually represent a frequency count of terms in a given piece of text, providing a clue to the importance of certain ideas. It has been able to moderately bring out each party involved in the politics and the campaigns for presidency. However, it seems more pro republicans since most of its current content predominantly features Republican vice-president in Waiting Sarah Palin. The software is helping the creators to have font sizes which emphasize on certain words of featured subjects. The Pajama media has done that with the words that clouds statements of Sarah Palin and John McCain’s speeches at the convention. Pajam Media has said that the speeches, based on the software find contrast. Palin’s address is full of power words like ‘energy’, ‘oil’ and ‘reform’ and frequently mentioned John McCain.

Boeing strike continues

Boeing group braced for global disruption from a potentially lengthy strike at Boeing on Monday as one of the planemaker's biggest suppliers lost no time in cutting production and working hours.

Three days after 27,000 machinists halted assembly at the world's top-selling planemaker, Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems suspended its 2008 financial guidance and said it was cutting volumes on certain Boeing products.

The former Boeing unit, based in Wichita, Kansas and one of the world's largest suppliers of airframe structures, said it had managed its way through a similar strike in 2005 by using a shorter working week instead of stopping production. It said it would implement a revised production and delivery schedule with a reduced working week for employees.

Economists have warned the strike which began on Saturday could hit businesses around the Seattle area, where Boeing's commercial assembly plants are located, and dent the U.S. economy in particular by expanding its trade deficit. Early in New York, Boeing stock edged up 0.2 percent to $63.0 but was left on the sidelines of a global market rally triggered by a massive mortgage bailout in the United States. Shares in EADS, parent of Boeing's European planemaker rival Airbus, rose more than 5 percent in Paris.

United airlines bankruptcy

Shares of UAL were cruising along just below short-term resistance at the 12.50 level until about 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, when traders caught wind of an erroneous report that the United Airlines parent was on the verge of filing bankruptcy. The story was first posted in the Chicago Tribune, which said that the 4-year old story was mistakenly released. UAL immediately decried the report as "untrue."

Unfortunately for UAL, the story was apparently picked up by the Sun Sentinel, after which the news gained traction with traders. UAL shares plunged nearly 100% by 11:07 a.m., touching a penny per share, and nearly wiping out the stock before trading could be halted. The company has since demanded a retraction from the Sun Sentinel, and said it is launching an investigation.

Trading has since resumed on UAUA shares, with the stock last seen hovering just below $12 per share - a vast improvement over pre-halt levels. Naturally, options traders jumped on this morning's news, sending more than 14,800 put contracts across the tape on UAUA before trading was stopped.

Kanye West's "Love Lockdown" song

Last night Kanye West premiered "Love Lockdown," the first single from his untitled fourth album. The song should be available on iTunes today and that clean/non-live reveal may disprove this thought, but I doubt it: Kanye, going against the grain, has made the most important song of his career since "Jesus Walks." And he pulled off a nifty prediction he made, albeit a year later than he said he would.
"Love Lockdown" is stadium music, far more indebted to U2 (or at least Coldplay) than anything he's recorded. Especially the song he actually recorded with Coldplay's Chris Martin. I struggled with last year's Graduation more than most, confused by the melding of old chipmunk soul Kanye ("The Glory," "Champion," "I Wonder") with Hybrid-happy Mr. West ("Stronger," "Homecoming"). Only in splashes did I think he'd hit on something new, something bigger, something wider in scope than what he'd done before. The sweeping orchestral skyscraper "Flashing Lights," in particular, a Capital B Big song nailed it, thumbing its nose at structure, toying with synths, and making fucking Dwele sound fantastic. "Love Lockdown" appears to be born with the same DNA. It's built on the tried-and-true quiet-loud-quiet construction (think "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and it's a heart-on-sleeve gutwrencher, once again either about his late mother, his ex-fiancee, or both. Or neither. Either way it is an affecting song that feels urgent and swept up, the same way "Jesus Walks" still does and probably always will. Oh, also he doesn't rap a bar. It's all autotuned vocals here. And, frankly, it's well-done.
Since College Dropout, Kanye's music has often sounded as though he were trying to top himself, more about form than feeling. Tinkering with Jon Brion, reallocating Daft Punk, sampling Can. These are all personal one-ups. "Love Lockdown" is a gut move, a personal record that, with this sudden and almost unhyped release, seems like something Kanye West needs to get off his chest.

Tom Brady injury

Patriots quarterback and defending NFL MVP Tom Brady has injured his left leg early on against the Kansas CIty Chiefs.

He has left the game and gone into the locker room for X-rays. Matt Cassell has replaced Brady.

Brady threw a deep pass to Randy Moss (Moss caught it, fell down, and fumbled the ball) when a Chiefs defender rolled over Brady's lower left leg. Brady went down as he knee bent back and ankle twisted. He stayed on the ground grasping his left leg.

The focus on Tom Brady has suddenly moved from his foot to his knee.

New England's star quarterback, who missed the pre-season while nursing foot troubles, limped off the field in the second quarter of the Patriot's home opener against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday afternoon.

He was hit in the leg by safety Bernard Pollard after completing a pass to Randy Moss, which the receiver wound up fumbling away.

Chuck Liddell vs Rashad Evans

Rashad Evans (17-0-1), considered by most to be merely a stepping stone for Chuck Liddell (21-6) on the way back to a Liddell title shot, stunned a capacity crowd in Atlanta's Phillips Arena on Saturday night, knocking out the former Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight title holder 1:51 into the second round of the main event at UFC 88: Breakthrough - an aptly-named title for the pay-per-view card, as Evans posted the biggest breakthrough of his career and one of the biggest upsets in recent UFC history.

Evans, who won the heavyweight division in Season 2 of The Ultimate Fighter reality TV show before moving down to the light heavyweight division, hung with Liddell through the first round, in the process lasting longer than many prognosticators felt he would. Evans spent much of the round circling and dancing, giving Liddell different looks and scoring with a few leg kicks, while Liddell was always looking for a knockout opportunity.

Following a few exchanges early in the second round, the finish came in spectacular fashion and was eerily reminiscent of Liddell's loss last year to Quinton Jackson: Liddell was loading a right uppercut but before he could land it he got caught with a vicious Evans right hand that sent Liddell crashing face-first to the mat, his body going limp before he hit the ground.
In that one moment - a highlight-reel knockout that will be replayed for years to come - an anticipated light-heavyweight title bout between Liddell and current champ Forrest Griffin was wiped out, and Evans shot up the ranks in the highly-competitive division.

Liddell has now lost three of his last four bouts, while Evans remains undefeated, his lone blemish a draw with ex-UFC light heavyweight champ Tito Ortiz.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae crisis

In recent months, the nation's two largest mortgage finance lenders have come under increasing scrutiny at the hands of Congress, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Federal National Mortgage Association, nicknamed Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation, nicknamed Freddie Mac, have operated since 1968 as government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). This means that, although the two companies are privately owned and operated by shareholders, they are protected financially by the support of the Federal Government. These government protections include access to a line of credit through the U.S. Treasury, exemption from state and local income taxes and exemption from SEC oversight. A recent accounting scandal at Freddie Mac that resulted in the replacement of three of the company's top executives has led to mounting concerns over the privileged status these GSEs enjoy in the marketplace.

Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The collapse of the national housing market in the wake of the Great Depression discouraged private lenders from investing in home loans. Fannie Mae was established in order to provide local banks with federal money to finance home mortgages in an attempt to raise levels of home ownership and the availability of affordable housing.

Initially, Fannie Mae operated like a national savings and loan, allowing local banks to charge low interest rates on mortgages for the benefit of the home buyer. This lead to the development of what is now known as the secondary mortgage market. Within the secondary mortgage market, companies such as Fannie Mae are able to borrow money from foreign investors at low interest rates because of the financial support that they receive from the U.S. Government. It is this ability to borrow at low rates that allows Fannie Mae to provide fixed interest rate mortgages with low down payments to home buyers. Fannie Mae makes a profit from the difference between the interest rates homeowners pay and foreign lenders charge.

For the first thirty years following its inception, Fannie Mae held a veritable monopoly over the secondary mortgage market. In 1968, due to fiscal pressures created by the Vietnam War, Lyndon B. Johnson privatized Fannie Mae in order to remove it from the national budget. At this point, Fannie Mae began operating as a GSE, generating profits for stock holders while enjoying the benefits of exemption from taxation and oversight as well as implied government backing. In order to prevent any further monopolization of the market, a second GSE known as Freddie Mac was created in 1970. Currently, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control about 90 percent of the nation's secondary mortgage market.

GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae, with their combination of private enterprise and public backing have experienced a period of unprecedented financial growth over the past few decades. The current assets of these two companies combine for a total that is 45 percent greater than that of the nation's largest bank.



On the other hand, their combined debt is equal to 46 percent of the current national debt. It is this combination of rapid growth and over leveraging that has lead to the current concerns of Congress, the Justice Department and the SEC with regards to the financial practices of these GSEs.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the only two Fortune 500 companies that are not required to inform the public about any financial difficulties that they may be having. In the event that there was some sort of financial collapse within either of these companies, U.S. taxpayers could be held responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in outstanding debts. A recent investigation by the Justice Department and the SEC into the accounting practices at Freddie Mac revealed accounting errors in the amount of 4.5 to 4.7 billion dollars and resulted in the termination of three of the company's top executives. Ongoing investigations by Congress, particular the House Finance Services subcommittee that oversees the activity of GSEs, will determine the future role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the secondary mortgage market that they dominate.

Earthquake san francisco

The U.S. Geological Survey's preliminary report put the quake at a 4.0-magnitude.
The temblor's epicenter was near Alamo, Calif., about 28 miles east of San Francisco.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in Alamo or surrounding communities, said Contra Costa County Sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee.
The quake hit just after 9 p.m. and could be felt throughout the region.
Fans at the San Francisco Giants' waterfront ballpark felt a jolt during the game with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but there was no interruption of play.

New pathway for cancer research

The future of cancer drug development may be targeting pathways rather than single genes and their products.
Two new and unprecedentedly detailed analyses of pancreatic and brain cancers found dozens of mutations, but only a few were present in any given tumor. That could explain why gene-targeting cancer drugs have been so hard to develop: Even if a drug is successful, it will only affect a fraction of all tumors.
However, these varied mutations appear to influence only a few cellular pathways -- cause and effect cascades of enzymes and signals that go haywire in cancer cells. Some scientists say that chemicals capable of disrupting pathways, whether at a cancer-implicated gene or somewhere else altogether, are far more promising than the current generation of gene-targeting cancer drugs.
"Virtually all drug development over the past ten years has focused on targeted therapies directed against individual genes or gene products," said Bert Vogelstein, a Harvard Hughes Medical Institute cancer researcher and co-author of the studies, both published today in Science. "It's going to be even more difficult than previously expected to derive real cures from such therapies."
Vogelstein pointed to Gleevec, a leukemia drug known generically as Imatinib, as an exception that proves the rule: It targets tyrosine genes, and is one of the few modern cancer drug success stories. Most potential drugs developed in the last decade have failed during clinical testing, and of those that have come to market, few have significant impacts on a disease that will kill more than 560,000 Americans this year.
"A simple reliance on dominant gene product mode of drug discovery will likely be fraught with disappointment," said Lynn Hlatky, director of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology at Tufts University. She was not involved in the studies.
But other researchers say that pathway-targeting drugs are more complicated than they seem. Jackson Laboratory cancer researcher Tom Gridley agreed "you'll never be able to come up with enough drugs to target each individual component," but held out hope that high-profile genes could still be targeted.
Further complicating the situation, said Harvard Medical School oncologist Lynda Chin, there are many different ways to disrupt pathways -- and these have different clinical value.
"Sometimes you hit a different point in the pathway, and that works for one patient but not another," said Chin, a co-author of a brain cancer analysis published today in Nature by the Cancer Genome Atlas project. Though not as detailed as the Science analyses, the Nature study looked at 200 pancreatic cancer tumors.
"What's needed is an understanding of critical nodes," said Chin, suggesting that focusing on pathways -- while an advance on single-gene, single-outcome thinking -- is insufficient. "What the genome efforts give us is a network, not even a pathway. Everything is going to be interconnected. And at the end of the day, we still need to figure out what the key nodes are to target, and whether this should be done with a targeted drug or a pathway drug."
Gridley added that pathways don't function in isolation: Disrupt one, and another is affected, with potentially catastrophic side effects. "Detecting the tumor and removing it as early as possible may be the way to go, because it's difficult to find drugs of the requisite efficacy and specificity," he said.
Vogelstein echoed his point, noting that "the history of medical research shows that the best way to control diseases in the long term is by prevention, not therapy." Chin was sympathetic: The mutations identified in the papers will eventually help doctors in their search for early genetic traces of cancer.

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike strengthened rapidly into an fiercely dangerous Category 4 hurricane in the open Atlantic on Wednesday and Tropical Storm Hanna intensified to a lesser degree as it swirled over the Bahamas toward the southeast U.S. Coast.

Ike posed no immediate threat to land but strengthened explosively, growing in the space of a few hours from a tropical storm to an intense Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson intensity scale.

Ike had top sustained winds near 145 mph (230 kph) as it swept across the open waters of the west-central Atlantic 550 miles (885 km) northeast of the Leeward Islands, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. It was moving west-northwest near 17 mph (28 kph).

It was forecast to head for the southern Bahamas early next week but it was too early to tell whether it would threaten land, the forecasters said.

It was also too soon to say whether Ike would threaten U.S. oil and natural gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico.

The hurricane center's Web site, with updates and graphics, is at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml.

Hanna's torrential rains had already submerged parts of Haiti, stranding residents on rooftops and prompting President Rene Preval to warn of an "extraordinary catastrophe" to rival a storm that killed more than 3,000 people in the flood-prone Caribbean country four years ago.

Hanna was forecast to move over the central and northern Bahamas on Thursday, strengthening back into a hurricane with winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) before hitting the U.S. coast near the North Carolina-Virginia border on Saturday.

The government of the Bahamas had ended a hurricane warning for the northwestern part of the islands, meaning a tropical storm warning was now in effect for all of the Bahamas and for the Turks and Caicos Islands, the hurricane center said.

Sony Vaio overheating recall

Sony says it is recalling 440,000 units of Vaio laptop computers worldwide due to faulty parts that could trigger overheating.

Sony Corp. (SNE) said Thursday that the recall involves 19 models in the Vaio TZ series manufactured between May 2007 and July 2008.

The Tokyo-based consumer electronics company said improperly placed wires near the hinge connecting the body of the laptop and its display could wear quickly, causing a short circuit and overheating.

A flaw in a circuit board inside the display could also overheat its rim. Sony has received 209 reports of overheating worldwide, including seven cases in which people received minor burns.

The laptop problem comes two years after Sony had to engage in massive recalls of laptop batteries, which also caused overheating or even burst into flames.

The worse case is that the laptop could overheat, which is a serious safety concern. The problem is due to the wiring near the laptop’s hinge, which could short-circuit and then overheat.

If this was to happen, the user might burn themselves. One person has already suffered a minor burn, Sony have also received 15 other reports of their Vaio overheating.

The Sony Vaio TZ models that are affected are the VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300 and VGN-TZ2000. Sony has said that although not all laptops in the series are not affected users should contact them and stop using the laptop immediately.

New Honda Civic GX

The new Civic GX is powered by compressed natural gas—methane—the simplest and cleanest-burning hydrocarbon available. With an economical 113-hp, 1.8-Liter engine, the EPA has called the Civic the “world’s cleanest internal-combustion vehicle” with 90% cleaner emissions than the average gasoline-powered car on the road in 2004. Bear that natural gas can be purchased for $0.63 per gallon.

At $24,590, buying a new Civic GX won’t exactly break your bank account, especially since up to $7,000 will come back to you in the form of state and federal tax credits. But don’t expect to find one easily. The car is only sold in two states, New York and California, and Honda can’t build them fast enough. One dealership said they have over 80 people waiting to buy.

It’s fairly obvious why densely populated states would be interested, especially since natural gas is a readily available source of heating fuel for many parts of the country. Most importantly, the Civic is the Eagle Scout of emissions certifications: it qualified for the California Air Resources Board’s Advanced Technology Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle (AT-PZEV) status, which means that it’s a Super-Ultra-Low-Emission Vehicle (SULEV) with zero-evaporative emissions. To qualify for AT-PZEV, the Civic must also carry a 15-year/150,000-mile warranty on emissions equipment. It also meets EPA’s strict Tier-2, Bin-2 and ILEV certification.

Despite getting the equivalent of a good but not quite amazing 36 MPG highway/24 MPG city, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) awarded the Civic the green ribbon as the greenest vehicle of 2008. That’s the fifth consecutive year it’s taken the top prize.

What is amantadine

Amandatine is useful in the treatment of Parkinson's syndrome and in the short-term management of drug-induced extrapyramidal symptoms.

In Parkinson's syndrome, amantadine has been used alone and in combination with anticholinergic antiparkinson drugs and with levodopa. The final therapeutic benefit seen with amantadine is significantly less than that seen with levodopa. The maximal therapeutic benefit to be obtained with amantadine is usually seen within 1 week. However, initial benefits may diminish with continued dosing.

Amantadine is useful as an adjunct in patients who do not tolerate optimal doses of levodopa alone or in combined therapy with a decarboxylase inhibitor. In these patients, the addition of amantadine may result in better control of Parkinson's syndrome and may help to smooth out fluctuations in performance.

The comparative efficacy of amantadine and anticholinergic antiparkinson drugs has not yet been established. When amantadine or anticholinergic antiparkinson drugs are each used with marginal benefit, concomitant use may permit the same degree of control, often with a lower dose of the anticholinergic medication.

Amantadine is effective in reducing severity or abolishing drug-induced extrapyramidal reactions including parkinsonism syndrome, dystonia and akathisia. It is not effective in the management of tardive dyskinesia.

Although anticholinergic-type side effects have been noted when used in patients with drug-induced extrapyramidal reactions, there appears to be a lower incidence of these side effects than that observed with anticholinergic antiparkinson drugs.

Antiparkinsonian agents should not usually be used prophylactically during neuroleptic administration. However, they may be given when needed to suppress extrapyramidal symptoms. Therefore, amantadine may be used in the management of extrapyramidal symptoms which cannot be controlled by reduction of neuroleptic dosage, but should be discontinued as soon as it is no longer required. Amantadine should be withdrawn after a period of time to determine whether there is recrudescence of extrapyramidal symptoms.

Don LaFontaine

Don LaFontaine died on Monday from complications related to a collapsed lung. Many had heard the voice of Don LaFontaine but none had actually seen him until recently when he was in a Geico insurance commercial. LaFontaine had been nicknamed "King of the Movie Trailers" after he had been heard in thousands of radio and television commercials.

LaFontiane died at the age of 68 and is best known by the famous catch phrase that he was often heard saying, "In a world..." and in the Geico commercial he was known as the announcer guy. LaFontaine was reported to have died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and there has been no official report as to the cause of death as of now.

Just recently Dr. Dre's son died and this left many wondering who was next on the list of celebrities or well known people that would die. Dr. Dre's son wasn't the only one who had died; Dave Freeman who is the author of "100 Things to do Before You Die" had also died. The deaths of celebrities like LaFontaine and those listed bring us back to reality to realize that everyone dies and death is not prejudiced.

Over the past twenty-five years LaFontaine, aside from being the preeminent voice in the movie trailer industry, has also worked as the voice of Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, as well as for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and UPN, in addition to TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network. By conservative estimates, he voiced hundreds of thousands of television and radio spots, and most recently parodied himself on a series of national television commercials for Geico, reports ETonline.com. He is survived by his wife, singer/actress Nita Whitaker and three children Christine, Skye and Elyse.

Google Chrome

Google throws down the glove to Microsoft with its new browser ‘Google Chrome’, available in 100 countries. The software is free and available in the beta version, which can be modified thanks to the contribution of users. A real slap in the face for Microsoft, Google wants to attack the supremacy the giant from Seattle has in programmes for the internet. Google Chrome was designed to make navigation faster and easier, the project took 2 years to develop and became more complex after Microsoft’s launch of Internet Explorer 7.

The Web site for Google's new open-source Chrome browser is slowly waking up. There was a logo, a single screenshot, a link to a broken video, and a non-functioning download link. The page now redirects to Google.com, though.

The company is hosting a press conference at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters Tuesday at 11 a.m. PDT. The Google Chrome download did not officially start yet, but the Chrome download page was briefly live already. The pages where online long enough for some screenshots of the new Google browser to leak out. As Google already revealed in the Google Chrome Comic book Chrome features the tab bar above the address bar. The homepage of Google Chrome features by default an app launch pad.

Unlike other modern web browsers, which can only run one process at a time, Google Chrome will give each tab its own process. This speeds up overall performance and saves the entire browser from crashing when one tab causes problems.

The multi-process design requires more memory allocation up front but less memory over time as users tend to multitask. It also prevents your computer from slowing down after you browse for an extended period of time and open/close lots of tabs.

Google Chrome also features a task manager that can be used to determine just which tabs and plugins are hogging just how much memory. It’s main purpose is to spot bad actors and close them before they ruin your browsing experience.

Google is leveraging its massive server infrastructure to run automatic performance tests for Chrome. The company is claiming that its Chrome Bot can test the browser on tens of thousands of different webpages within 20-30 minutes of each build. These webpages are chosen on the basis of their popularity, which has already been determined by Google with the data it collects from its search users.

Hurricane Gustav

At 8 a.m. ET Monday, Gustav was centered about 20 miles south of the Louisiana coast, moving northwest near 16 mph. It was forecast to hit land west of Houma, La., a low-lying center of gas-and-oil production.

Tropical storm-force winds had reached the southeastern tip of the state early Monday, but local officials said they had not received any distress calls or reports of unexpected flooding.

In New Orleans, power was knocked out in parts of the French Quarter at mid-morning.

City officials were anxiously watching to see what kind of storm surge New Orleans could face: If forecasts hold, the city could experience a storm surge of only 4 to 6 feet, compared to a surge of 10 to 14 feet at the site of landfall, said Corey Walton, a hurricane support meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center.

Katrina, by comparison, brought a storm surge of 25 feet, causing levees to break. While the Army Corps of Engineers has shored up some of the city's levee system since then, fears this time center on the city's West Bank, where levee repairs have not been completed.

In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, officials built an emergency levee to prevent flooding along a highway that runs along the Mississippi River channel, sheriff's spokesman Maj. John Marie said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who flew to the region to oversee emergency response team, said search and rescue would be the top priority once the storm passed: high-water vehicles, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, Coast Guard cutters and a Navy vessel that is essentially a floating emergency room were posted around the strike zone.

New Orleans neighborhoods were ghost-town quiet as residents heeded mandatory evacuation orders.

The front page of the Times-Picayune newspaper caught the mood of the city with a large banner headline on Monday's newspaper: "Hunkered Down"

But at least one French Quarter bar appeared immune to the dusk-to-dawn curfew and mandatory evacuation notice imposed on the city's residents.

Well after midnight, a dozen boisterous patrons, with two dogs, monitored four TV sets at Johnny White's Sports Bar and Grill on Bourbon Street.

The 10-stool bar won notoriety by staying open during Katrina and its aftermath, and is looking to reprise that experience.

The "official" reason the bar never closes and is impervious to regulations is that it has no locks. But at 12:30 a.m., patron and French Quarter resident Angel Rivero offered a more practical rationale: "All the cops and rescuers need a place to go to for cigarettes and sodas and whatever. If they close everything, where are they going to go to the bathroom at?"

In east New Orleans, Joseph Bijou, 61, settled in with his generator and his tools. He had to be rescued from his roof during Katrina, but expects conditions to be different this time.

"This neighborhood took a lot of water, it's true. I don't think we're going to get that much of a storm," Bijou says. "I've been through Betsy, Flossie. Katrina was the worst storm, but it was the politicians that screwed that one up."

He sent his wife on to Houston, but chose to stay to protect his property. "During Katrina, they broke in and stole everything that wasn't tied down," he says.

To try to keep crime under control, the state activated its 7,000-member National Guard and sent 1,500 of them to New Orleans. Police also patrolled the streets.

"Looting will not be tolerated," said Mayor Ray Nagin. "We have double the police force, double the National Guard force we had for Katrina, and looters will go directly to jail

Once it crosses land, Gustav is expected to slow and rapidly weaken, becoming a tropical storm, with winds greater than 39 mph, by Tuesday afternoon and a tropical depression, with winds less than 39 mph, by Wednesday, said Dennis Feltgen, with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

It will also likely drop torrential rains on southeast Texas as it breaks up, he said.

"This has the potential to be a tremendous rainmaker," Feltgen said.

The storm forced the paring down of the opening day of the Republican Party's national convention in St. Paul The party planned only routine business that must be performed for the convention to continue.

"I hope and pray that we will resume our normal operations as quickly as possible, but some of that, quite frankly, is in the hands of God," said presumptive nominee John McCain, who was campaigning in St. Louis.

President Bush, who will skip the convention along with Vice President Dick Cheney, planned to be in Texas Monday to monitor a variety of emergency operations.

Bush, whose administration drew strong criticism for its handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, attended a briefing Sunday at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters.

Afterward, he said that "while the levees are stronger than they've ever been, people across the Gulf Coast, especially in New Orleans, need to understand that in a storm of this size there is serious risk of significant flooding."

Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans and killed more than 1,600 along the Gulf Coast,

Along Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, Dave Howard, 55, manned Pumping Station no. 14, responsible for keeping the Jahncke Canal from overflowing and flooding dozens of houses that line its banks.

As Gustav approached, Howard hunkered down with cartons of military meals, canned food, fuel, a cot, and a charcoal grill. "I'm prepared to be here three weeks," he says.

Howard, who has run pumping stations for 34 years, controls four pumps, which, at best, can move 300 cubic feet of water per second from the canal to the lake. But as the storm approaches, one pump is out of service. It's missing a gear box.

"I can do alright. Usually three is enough," he says.

But he says Gustav has his stomach in knots. "Sleep is going to be a rare commodity here," he said.