Archive for December 2nd, 2006
Japanese Medical Illustrations.
This collection of Japanese Medical Prints or Ukiyo-e is housed in the Clendening History of Medicine Library, at the Kansas University Medical Center. This group of prints is a small facet of the total donation that was donated sometime before May 1940, by Dr. Matthew Pickard
Most of the illustrations are accompanied by explanations of the condition or procedure portrayed. This one is attributed to the artist Kunisada Utagawa (1786-1864 ) and “talks about a good day to do moxa bustion [medical burning -- in this case foot burning]. (The fourth day is for fire) based on Japanese calendar.” Via Bifurcated Rivets
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Live Action Hamster Video Game.
This poor hamster is stuck in a video game! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
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Genetically Engineered Blood Protein Splits Water Into Hydrogen and Oxygen Atoms.
Scientists have created a genetically engineered blood protein that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms:
Professors Tsuchida and Komatsu from Waseda University, Japan, in collaboration with Imperial College London, synthesised a large molecular complex from albumin, a protein molecule that is found at high levels in blood serum, and porphyrin, a molecule which is used to carry oxygen around the body and gives blood its deep red colour. Porphyrin molecules are normally found combined with metals, and in their natural state in the blood they have an iron atom at their centre. The scientists modified the porphyrin molecule to swap the iron for a zinc atom in the middle, which completely changed the chemistry and characteristics of the molecule.
This modified porphyrin molecule was then combined with albumin; with the albumin molecule itself being modified by genetic engineering to enhance the efficiency of the process. The resulting molecular complex was proven to be sensitive to light, and can capture light energy in a way that allows water molecules to be split into molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.
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World's Largest Text: LUECKE.
From one of my favorite blogs, The Presurfer:
Close to Buescher State Park near Smithville in Texas you can find the world’s largest text. By clearing forest so that a pattern would be visible to landing aircraft, a landowner outside Austin, Texas created a target that is also useful for evaluating spatial resolution of astronaut photographs.
The forest was selectively cleared in order to spell the landowner’s name ‘LUECKE’ with the remaining trees. According to local surveyors who planned the clearing, the plan was to create a word that was 3100 by 1700 ft long.
Links: Google Sightseeing – via The Presurfer
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Are the Pyramids Made from Concrete Blocks?
Material scientists are renewing claims that the great pyramids at Giza were partly made from cement-like blocks:
But according to Professor Gilles Hug, of the French National Aerospace Research Agency (Onera), and Professor Michel Barsoum, of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the covering of the great Pyramids at Giza consists of two types of stone: one from the quarries and one man-made.
“There’s no way around it. The chemistry is well and truly different,” Professor Hug told Science et Vie magazine. Their study is being published this month in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
The pair used X-rays, a plasma torch and electron microscopes to compare small fragments from pyramids with stone from the Toura and Maadi quarries.
They found “traces of a rapid chemical reaction which did not allow natural crystalisation . . . The reaction would be inexplicable if the stones were quarried, but perfectly comprehensible if one accepts that they were cast like concrete.”
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The Airplane House.
Photo: Craig Timberg / Washington Post
Said Jamal built made this airplane house for his wife Liza, who loves to travel:
When the Jammals married in 1980, Said, now 48, taciturn and mustachioed, with a deep cleft in his chin, was a civil engineer with his own construction company. And Liza, now 42, chatty and dark-haired, was a devoted traveler.
Liza asked her new husband to someday build a house for her in the shape of an airplane as a symbol of her hobby. In the flush of young love, he agreed.
"That was my wife’s dream," Said Jammal said, smiling sheepishly as he puffed a cigarette at the end of a dark plastic holder. "You know, she likes to travel a lot, fly a lot."
Link – via Look at This …
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Recreating the Bayeux Tapestry.
Annette Banks spent more than 20 years to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry [wiki] all by herself to overcome hyperactivity (she has Cushing’s Syndrome).
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How Not To Be Seen.
How Not To Be Seen. How Not To Be Seen [wiki] [YouTube] is a popular sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus [wiki]. In it, the narator John Cleese stresses the importance of not being seen …
The sketch has been remade many times, using Lego, clips from War of World Craft, and clips from Halo: Combat Evolved [all YouTube] – via Metafilter. Here it is:
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When Lawmakers Attack ...
In a bit of political drama that made the US 2000 Presidential Election [wiki] look like a neighborhood misunderstanding, Felipe Calderón [wiki] of the right-of-center National Action Party took oath as the President of Mexico amidst jeers and protests:
Felipe Calderon took the oath of office as Mexico’s president in a lightning-fast ceremony Friday before Congress that was preceded by a brawl between lawmakers divided over the tight presidential election.
Calderon entered through a back door and appeared suddenly on the speaker’s platform, which was the site of three days of fistfights and sit-ins by lawmakers seeking to control the stage.
Yes, that’s right: fistfight and chair-throwing rampage [YouTube] in the Mexican Congress.
Here’s one more clip of the fistfight [Google Video]
Not one to let bygones be bygones, Calderón opponent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador [wiki] of the Party of the Democratic Revolution declared himself president!
At least they didn’t hold a food fight, à la the Taiwan Parliament in 2004!
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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Sets Own Lifespan.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [wiki] set its own lifespan (or death, if you will). The world’s largest (transparently operated) charitable organization decided that there’s no life in perpetuity in its future:
In a statement posted on the charity’s Web site, dated November 29, the foundation said: "We will be spending all of our resources within 50 years after the last of Bill’s or Melinda’s death." The news was reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
"The decision to focus all of our resources in this century underscores our optimism for making huge progress and for making sure that we do as much as possible, as soon as possible, on the comparatively narrow set of issues we’ve chosen to focus on," the foundation said in the statement.
Link – via Blue’s News
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The End of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Galaxies collide, it’s the way of the universe. In about 3 billion years, our Milky Way galaxy will cross path and collide with the Andromeda galaxy (which is much bigger).
This simulation shows what’s in store for our poor Milky Way galaxy. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Sherzod Agzamov!
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