Governments Must Invest in Internet Structures Now

People are jumping on the Internet without realizing that their action is leading to potential disaster. Many countries are leaving Internet investment to the private sector but such companies are only interested in short-term profit. Unless a monopoly exists it is just not worth while investing large amounts in Internet infrastructure.

Communication is at the center of everything we do today. Soon mobile devices will outnumber PCs. In some places Internet speed is slowing down due to overload. To meet future demand Governments will have to get involved in telecommunication infrastructure investment. In some cases this will mean government take-over of information systems.

Advanced technology requires very high speed and wide bandwidth. It takes up to ten years to build adequate optic fiber information networks. Soon poor countries will be measured by the quality of their Internet. Even some currently advanced nations will be left behind if they don't act in the near future.
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Science

Trapped Cat

"I'm really trapped this time."
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Funny Animal Photos

New Seahorse and Coral Found in Australian Waters

Two new species have been found in Australia in the Coral Sea near the Barrier Reef. Atolls were explored by a team from the Queensland Museum and the University of Queensland. In the dark depths adjacent to the atolls a new pygmy seahorse and coral were found. They are not really new: they have always been there. The depths were surveyed with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

The seahorse, Hippocampus denise, is native to the Coral Sea of the Indo-West Pacific. It was not know to exist in Australian waters. The tiny seahorse usually lives in shallow water not at depths which sunlight does not reach. They may be going deeper to avoid damage to coral from climate change.

In regard to the new coral, Echinomorpha nishihirai, perhaps the larvae are safer in this zone. They could be acting as seeding areas to repopulate shallower zones. La Niña has damaged many of these. Many more new species are expected to be identified in the ongoing research.
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Science

Dog and Cat Love

"I luv you."
"Cool it honey."
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Funny Animal Photos

Agriculture Was Brought into Western Europe by Southern European Males

Learning has not been linear for human beings. Advancement can be different from one place to another. It is now known from DNA analysis of 5,000 year old skeletons in a French cave that women did not travel into western Europe. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from the mother which shows that European women had local ancestry. On the other hand the Y chromosome passed down through males shows movement of males into new European regions. Knowledge of farming came into new areas when the males moved in and mated with local females.

Analysis of DNA from 29 skeletons found in France, highlighted this difference between the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome. Males had moved from the Mediterranean to western Europe. Most of the males in the 29 skeleton group were related, so when the males arrived they stayed on the land with their new hunter gatherer wives.

The southern males had a problem: they did not have the lactose tolerant gene of central Europeans. They had to drink fermented milk from sheep and goats. Adult central European males could easily digest milk from cows.

More work is being done to further clarify how and when agriculture spread across Europe.
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History

Karaoke Cats

"I did it....my way."

Blue Straggler Stars Found in the Milky Way Bulge

We now know that dark matter exists. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has also identified blue straggler stars in the Milky Way. These stars don't show their age. Their color hides their true age. This is the first time they have been found in the core of the Milky Way.

Not much is known about blue stragglers. Accepted theory is that they develop from binary pairs. The larger of the pair strips material from the smaller one. Hydrogen is activated which causes the larger star to undergo nuclear fission thus making the star blue.

Blue stragglers are rare in the Milky Way because the central bulge of the system stopped making new stars billions of years ago. Aging stars and cool red dwarfs exist in the Milky Way now. Giant blue stars were thought to have exploded into supernovae in the distant past. The presence of blue stragglers throws a spanner into the works of current models of star formation.
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Science

Loo Cat

"I can sit where I want, so shut up."
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Funny Animal Photos

It May Not Be a Wise to Take Polypills

As if we aren't taking enough medication, "combination" pills are now being made. Normal healthy people don't need to take "just in case" medication. After all anyone could be knocked down by a car and killed. Furthermore, many medications clash with each other producing dangerous chemicals when mixed.

The latest polypill is for heart attacks. It contains statins, aspirin, and two blood pressure drugs. Tests show that the incidence of heart attacks can be reduced by half if the multi-pill is taken regularly due to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. It is also claimed that colon cancer will be less frequent in test subjects, which seems rather odd considering the slim relationship between cholesterol and cancer.

If a person is fit and healthy it would probably be wise to leave things as they are because all medications have side effects, and tests done so far are only looking at short term results. Tests were only for 12 weeks. How can one draw such conclusions for only a three month period? A test for frequency of heart attacks needs to be done for at least ten years.
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Health

Cat Light

"I can shine light from somewhere else it you like."
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Funny Animal Photos

Australian Busiesses Must Move to the Internet

Australian retailers are in a corner with people turning to the Internet to make purchases. With rents near zero for Internet sellers and high rents for retail shops the odds are stacked against local stores.

Travel agents are the ones hit the hardest. It is so easy to buy an airline ticket online. Next are bookshops. They cannot compete with Amazon, though some Australian bookshops are selling online as well. Pharmacists are up against large cut-price online sellers in the US. However, chemists can still rely on the highly subsidized cash cow called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Some Australian businesses are becoming paranoid. A woman was accused by a bookshop proprietor of making a list of books to buy on the Internet. A sports retailer asks for a deposit before customers try things on.

Things are changing so fast. Major stores in the US are allowing goods purchased online to be returned at city outlets. Australian businesses must make the move to the Internet now, or they will go to the wall.
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Internet

Airborne Dog

"We have lift off."
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Funny Animal Photos

Radiation From Mobile Phones Is Dangerous

New evidence shows that mobile phones really are dangerous. Even the average user can suffer from brain damage, lower sperm count and altered DNA. Just 4 hours of continuous use will preempt the brain's capacity to repair itself.

When scientists originally said that pulsed digital signals from cell phones cause DNA breaks they were condemned for making it up. Now proof is very strong. Apparently, the industry has known about situational damage from mobile phone use for years. They have intentionally hidden the truth.

Research on insects shows that DNA fragmentation occurs in ovarian cells. Insects do have ovarian cells. This reduces the insects' capacity to breed. Long term exposure kills cells completely. Other work with rats shows bone damage to fetuses from just six minutes of radiation per day. And rats had memory loss. From this work it can be deduced that children are more at risk.
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Internet

Bear Service

"How long do you have to wait for service here!"
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Funny Animal Photos

Seals Losing Fur

Hair loss may be embarrassing for humans but for fur seals it can be life-threatening. Clumps of fur are falling out of fur seals' coats in Bass Strait. Without even protection over their bodies they will die of cold. The problem was identified in a study of seals on Lady Julia Percy Island. Given the sames term as human hair loss, alopecia, the disease began in 1989.

Sea lions don't need fur to keep their body temperature up as they have blubber. Fur seals on the other hand do not store blubber.

The amount of loss for each fur seal was photographically recorded and thermal imaging showed a loss of 6.6 degrees in areas where clumps of hair had fallen out. Such affected seals were in poor health. Mainly males and juvenile were affected. Seals predominantly suffer from the disease in spring/summer. Molting each year does not cure it. Just why alopecea has affected the seals for more than two decades is not known.
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Nature

Posing Cat

"Quick, take the photo!"
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Funny Animal Photos

Dark Energy Exists

Dark energy is no longer theory it is fact. Evidence from 200,000 galaxies confirms the hypothesis that dark energy is pulling the universe apart. It is a constant in that it pushes uniformally causing steady expansion of the universe.

Einstein was correct after all. He said there was a force pushing out stopping the universe from collapsing. This was known as "Einstein's biggest blunder'. He had to enter something into an equation which stopped the universe from collapsing. Though he didn't use the term "dark energy", this was the force he was talking about. He was wrong about the universe being static but he quickly revised his ideas when Edwin Hubble found that the universe was expanding. Gravity is no longer accepted as the force driving the universe apart. Gravity cannot push and pull at the same time.

Calculations show that dark energy makes up 74 per cent of the universe. Dark energy is not he same as dark matter. There is 22 per cent of dark matter out there. This leaves 4 per cent for all the atoms making up physical things.
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Science

Smiling Cat Napper

"Happy, happy, happy times."
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Funny Animal Photos

Australian Moths and Butterflies Are Barcoded

Australian moths and butterflies are being barcoded. There are 10,000 species in Australia and 65 per cent of them have been coded, 28,000 specimens in all. They are not flying around with a tag on them. DNA is analyzed then recorded with an image of a specimen in a barcode system.

The database is a combined project by the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and CSIRO's Australian National Insect Collection (ANIC). It is the first time such a system has been used to categorize a group of insects in a country. This is the beginning. Plans are in train to record most organisms worldwide.

The technology has been used to determine if wrongly named fish are being sold. It will be used to identify dangerous pests coming into Australia. Species will now be more effectively categorised in research.
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Science