 San Francisco Chronicle (blog) | New drug could destroy any viral infection you could ever get DVICE Ever since the accidental discovery of penicillin, we've had ways of being able to deal with bacterial infections. With viral infections, like when you get a cold, all we can really do is suck it up and treat the symptoms, but a new type of drug may be ... Greatest discovery since penicillin: Scientists work on drug that could cure ...Daily Mail New antiviral drug could cure nearly any viral infection – including the ...Gizmag all 17 news articles » |
Archive for August, 2011
New drug could destroy any viral infection you could ever get – DVICE
10
Aug
Gibbons defy their own evolution to jump as high as they can [Monkey News]
10
Aug
Mars Rover Reaches Giant Crater After 3-Year Trek
10
Aug
After nearly three years of dragging through the Martian dust, NASA’s Opportunity rover has reached the rim of an expansive and ancient crater.
Since leaving Victoria crater in August 2008, Opportunity has rolled 13 miles to reach the rim of 24-mile-wide Endeavour crater — the biggest of 11 craters the robot has visited. It’s the site of an ancient impact that shot out dark rocks onto the crater’s rim.
“We’re soon going to get the opportunity to sample a rock type the rovers haven’t seen yet,†said planetary scientist and Mars rover team member Matthew Golombek of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a press release. “Clay minerals form in wet conditions so we may learn about a potentially habitable environment that appears to have been very different from those responsible for the rocks [found on] the plains.â€
Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and has far exceeded its 3-month warranty. A faulty front-right wheel forced its Earth-based operators to drive most of the trip to Endeavour backwards.
The robot’s twin, named Spirit, stopped phoning home in March. Mission managers considered the robot a goner in May and have refocused their efforts on squeezing as much science as possible out of Opportunity.
Images: 1) The western rim of Endeavour crater on Mars, as seen by Opportunity looking southward. (NASA) [full-resolution version available] 2) A recent view of the trek Opportunity has made since landing on Jan. 25, 2004. The rover is now near Spirit Point. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) [full-resolution version available]
See Also:
- Giant Crater Is Next Mars Rover Landing Site
- Next Mars Rover Faces Race Against Time, Funding
- Sleeping Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Liquid Water
- Space Duct Tape Could Confuse Mars Rover
- NASA Gives Up on Spirit Rescue, Preps Mars Rover to Hibernate
The Price Of A Big Mac Is Now $17.19 In Zurich
09
Aug
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man
The price of a Big Mac is now $17.19 in Zurich
Just a quick thought on a ridiculously volatile day:
One of the things that people pick up on very quickly as they travel are how different price levels are around the world. I've been to roughly 100 countries, and I still find it amazing how much variance there is among things like food, property, and entertainment prices.
There are certain places-- Cambodia, Ecuador, Tanzania-- that are so jaw-droppingly cheap that it almost seems unreal. And you wonder how these people could possibly ever survive if they came to your country.
Well, the United States has just joined this proud cadre banana republics... at least if you're from Switzerland.
You see, the Swiss franc is one of the few currencies that have given investors some sense of comfort recently; Switzerland inspires confidence and stability, and the worse things get in the United States and Europe, the more investors pull their money out of the dollar and euro, and park it in the Swiss franc.
It's all about supply and demand. Increased demand for the Swiss franc coupled with expanded supply of dollars and euros has caused the franc to surge over the last weeks and months. It wasn't too long ago that it would take 1.20 francs to buy a US dollar. Now it takes $1.40 to buy a single franc.
I can think of a lot of words to describe the performance of the US dollar. Farce. Joke. Lunacy. Embarrassment. Disgusting. But it's more clearly summed up like this: the price of a Big Mac is in Zurich is now so high (at $17.19) that a minimum wage employee in Minneapolis, Minnesota, would have to work for nearly 4-hours in order to afford it.
This is what stability looks like to Ben Bernanke.
‘Made In China’ Accounts For Less Than 3 Percent Of American Personal Consumption Expenditures
09
Aug
A very interesting analysis by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn of the San Francisco Fed concludes that very little of American personal consumption spending actually ends up in China. When Americans go buy stuff, they’re overwhelmingly buying things that are made in America:
In part, this reflects the fact that 67 percent of spending is on services rather than goods, and services are 96 percent made in the USA. But even durable goods, which only account for about 10 percent of total spending, are mostly made in America — 66.6 percent to 12 percent for China with the rest coming from the rest of the world. In fact the only category of spending in which Made in the USA doesn’t account for the majority is clothing and shoes. What’s more, even a lot of the spending on imported goods actually reflects the cost of shipping them around the United States:
Table 1 shows that, of the 11.5% of U.S. consumer spending that goes for goods and services produced abroad, 7.3% reflects the cost of imports. The remaining 4.2% goes for U.S. transportation, wholesale, and retail activities. Thus, 36% of the price U.S. consumers pay for imported goods actually goes to U.S. companies and workers.
This U.S. fraction is much higher for imports from China. Whereas goods labeled “Made in China†make up 2.7% of U.S. consumer spending, only 1.2% actually reflects the cost of the imported goods. Thus, on average, of every dollar spent on an item labeled “Made in China,†55 cents go for services produced in the United States. In other words, the U.S. content of “Made in China†is about 55%. The fact that the U.S. content of Chinese goods is much higher than for imports as a whole is mainly due to higher retail and wholesale margins on consumer electronics and clothing than on most other goods and services.
Hale & Hobijn draw from this the narrow point that inflation in China is not likely to have a substantial effect on the price level in the United States. There’s no reason, in other words, for the Fed to worry that inflation in developing countries is a reason for tight money at home. But the broader point, as Doug Henwood says is to serve as “an antidote to the widespread belief that the U.S. is hollowed out and all the action is in China.â€
Codina House by A4estudio
09
Aug
Want A Starbucks? Use Jonathan's Card
09
Aug
Jonathan is letting anyone who wants to use his Starbucks card. He's posted a scanned copy of the mobile-app code on his Starbucks card and invited anyone who wants to to have a cup on him. The crazy thing is that it's working like "leave a penny, take a penny," with some people adding onto the card's balance after they grab a brew.
Starbucks reloadable cards let you download their code onto your smartphone. You can scan it from your phone at checkout in order to pay.
Jonathan released the card into the wild in July with a $30 balance on it. As of Monday, $3,651 had been spent on it, and at least 177 people had made donations to it.
Here's a full-sized image of the card. The card also has its own automated Twitter feed that gives status updates on its balance and asks for refills.
To reload the card, go to starbucks.com/card, hit "reload a card" and enter card number 6061006913522430.
Sometimes a greedy person will transfer a chunk of the balance to their own Starbucks card but then others refill the card back up again.
Starbucks knows about the project and isn't interfering. "We think Jonathan's project is really interesting and are flattered he chose Starbucks for his social experiment," Gina Woods, director of executive communications for Starbucks, told CNN via e-mail. "We're curious to see how his project continues to evolve."
Want a cup of coffee? Use Jonathan's card [CNN] (Thanks to David!)
The Ideology of No
09
Aug
Long before Barack Obama chose “Yes We Can†as his 2008 campaign slogan, Republicans had been dubbed the Party of No. The label is popular among liberals as an insult for the GOP, but it’s also been embraced by conservatives as a proud self-description: for some on the right, the Party of No conjures the adults in the room saving future generations from an orgiastic spending spree, in the spirit of William F. Buckley’s proclamation that conservatism “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.†These conflicting views were on display in the recent debt ceiling negotiations, with liberals frustrated by Republican obstructions, and conservative Tea Party members seeing it as their duty to say No to another debt ceiling increase.
Whether intended as a slur or a badge of honor, the Party of No label stems from specific policy preferences, mainly the conservative tendency to vote “no†on non-security domestic spending and tax proposals. At first blush, policy stalemates might seem simple differences of opinion on how to run the country. But a growing body of evidence is showing that partisan rancor goes far beyond the budget and policy fare of Sunday morning talk shows. As divisions between Red States and Blue States have grown (or at least acquired greater iconographic heft), so has interest in understanding the temperamental and attitudinal foundations of political ideology. An explosion of research over the last decade is revealing the psychological underpinnings of ideological differences, unearthing the subterranean meanings of the Party of No.
[More]US post offices spreading over time, 1700 to 1900
09
Aug
Using data from the USPS Postmaster Finder and the USGS Geographic Names Information System, geography graduate student Derek Watkins maps the opening of new post offices from 1700 to 1900. As you know, the mail must go through. No matter if it rains or snows. The mail must go through. So it's also a great way to see expansion of the US.
Some interesting spots: In 1776, after the revolution, new offices open along the east coast; in 1848, during the gold rush, offices sprout up on the west coast; in the 1870s, offices along the railroad open up.