Jesus Christ! I have seen behaviour not entirely out of keeping with that from our own constabulary - but that really is foul.
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Jesus Christ! I have seen behaviour not entirely out of keeping with that from our own constabulary - but that really is foul.
that is just wrong what could that little girl have done to those police officers? really? stupid people
What I don't understand is why would the school authorities call the police to deal with her? Worse comes to worst, they should call child's parents and send her home or something... This is really beyond me.
People who suffer from stress do not have to move a muscle to improve their overall mood, new research claims. Nottingham Trent University researchers said sufferers can regain the "feel good factor" by watching their favourite sitcom or listening to music.
Stress researcher and health psychology expert Dr Attila Szabo tried to find a new way to help emotional wellbeing.
Participants were exposed to stationary cycling, sitting quietly, listening to new-age music and watching Friends.
Psychological questionnaires were used to assess their mood and anxiety levels five minutes before and five minutes after each treatment.
'Humour and music'
It was found the immediate psychological benefits of humour and music were greater than those generated from a bout of exercise.
Dr Szabo is based within the university's School of Biomedical and Natural Sciences.
He said: "Studies into the relationship between physical exercise and mental health have become extremely popular within health psychology.
"These results suggest that the acute mental benefits of exercise can be reproduced with physically less demanding and virtually effortless interventions, such as humour and music.
"It should be remembered, however, that this was a study into psychological wellbeing and there is no substitute for exercise in terms of physical health."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/n...re/4483583.stm
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladeshi customs officials found luxury cars, large-screen television sets and refrigerators in a container declared to be carrying metal scrap -- so they made it just that at a public ceremony on Monday.
Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National Board of Revenue (NBR) used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka.
NBR chairman Khairuzzaman Chowdhury said a trading firm had sought to evade customs duties by falsely declaring that the container carried iron scrap.
"They wanted to befool us by saying they brought in scrapped metals...so we are giving them the same. They, or anyone like them, will not forget this," he told reporters at the site.
Cash-strapped Bangladesh is trying hard to increase domestic revenue ahead of announcing the budget for the 2005-06 fiscal year, beginning next July.
Officials say tax revenues were 9 percent short of target in the first nine month of the current 2004-05 fiscal year, partly owing to lower-than-expected import taxes.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ladesh_cars_dc
Genetic Mingling Mixes Human, Animal Cells
On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.
The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago.
"It's mice on a large scale," Chamberlain says with a shrug.
As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.
In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.
Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.
But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent.
In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.
Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head?
The "idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered," the academies report warned.
In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.
Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.
The Academies' report recommends that each institution involved in stem cell research create a formal, standing committee to specifically oversee the work, including experiments that mix human and animal cells.
Weissman, who has already created mice with 1 percent human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also need to authorize the experiment.
Few human-animal hybrids are as advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.
Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in his experiment contain about 10 percent human liver cells, though a few have as much as 40 percent, Zanjani said.
Because the human liver regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting partial organs into people whose livers are failing.
Zanjani must first ensure no animal diseases would be passed on to patients. He also must find an efficient way to completely separate the human and sheep cells, a tough task because the human cells aren't clumped together but are rather spread throughout the sheep's liver.
Zanjani and other stem cell scientists defend their research and insist they aren't creating monsters — or anything remotely human.
"We haven't seen them act as anything but sheep," Zanjani said.
Zanjani's goals are many years from being realized.
He's also had trouble raising funds, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the university over allegations made by another researcher that the school mishandled its research sheep. Zanjani declined to comment on that matter, and university officials have stood by their practices.
Allegations about the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. First, human stem cells were injected into bacteria, then mice and now sheep. Such research blurs biological divisions between species that couldn't until now be breached.
Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have crossed yet, the Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even that policy recommendation isn't tough enough for some researchers.
"The boundary is going to push further into larger animals," New York Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. "That's just asking for trouble."
Newman and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin have been tracking this issue for the last decade and were behind a rather creative assault on both interspecies mixing and the government's policy of patenting individual human genes and other living matter.
Years ago, the two applied for a patent for what they called a "humanzee," a hypothetical — but very possible — creation that was half human and chimp.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevents the patenting of people.
Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning people into commodities.
And that's a point, Newman warns, that stem scientists are edging closer to every day: "Once you are on the slope, you tend to move down it."
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050430/...ng_3&printer=1)
hmm...what if a human mind were 'trapped' inside a sheep's head? would the sheep wander off to daydream about relativity, would it be insane due to it's inability to express itself on behalf of animal rights? would it...
*thinks
...it does seem cruel. they should ensure that any animal that receives human cerebral tissue gets a hyoid bone thrown in for good measure! speech, speech! :nod:
As the article mentioned, scientists test the behavior of all of the animals with human organs. I really wonder how they test and realize the difference between human behavior and 'lower' animal behavior; as you said, amuse, without speech, it seems difficult to measure objectively. Do the scientists merely research whether the sheep stand on two legs and drink martinis like the character from Family Guy on Basil's posted picture? :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by amuse
Drivers had to take evasive action on a busy city centre motorway when two horses galloped down the carriageway.
Stunned motorists watched as Dandy and Gandy trotted onto the M8 at Townhead, Glasgow, at about 0620 BST on Monday.
Traffic police had to direct vehicles while officers spent almost three hours trying to catch the runaways.
CCTV footage showed the horses running along the outside lane of the carriageway in the wrong direction with cars swerving to avoid them.
A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police said: "We received reports of two horses on the M8 on Monday morning.
"The horses were captured at 9.05am and taken to a farm in Stepps. We have now established the owner of the horses. She is arranging for their collection."
'Minor disruption'
Police said that the horses were from a farm in the Gartcosh area, though the owner did not want to be identified.
It is not known how the animals came to be on the motorway.
CCTV footage showed the horses running along the outside lane of the carriageway in the wrong direction.
One driver was seen to brake to a halt when he saw the horses running towards him.
However, there was less traffic on the road than usual as many commuters stayed at home on the bank holiday.
The police spokeswoman added: "It could have been a lot worse. There was a wee bit of disruption."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4506303.stm
There are certainly lots of sheep's minds trapped in human heads.
A Spanish designer has come up with what could be the perfect solution for the woman who feels frustrated that she has to do all the house chores.
It is a washing machine called "Your Turn", which will not let the same person use it twice in a row.
It uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the job of loading is not dumped on just one individual.
Pep Torres was approached by a Spanish white goods manufacturer to come up with an innovative Father's Day gift.
"I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn't do anything around the house except drink beers," said Torres, from DeBuenaTinta in Barcelona.
"Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home."
Fast fingers
Some men may disagree that it is a good present for Father's Day and argue that it is more of a gift for the lady of the house.
"It was a tongue-in-cheek idea which seemed to catch the imagination," said Torres.
"It's an invention that has a philosophy behind it and I hope both women and men will think it's time for the men to do more around the house."
Your Turn requires both partners to register their fingerprints on the sensor while it is hooked up to their home computer.
When the sensor is then plugged into the washing machine, the software will only allow the wash programme to start if a different finger is placed on it each time.
So what about the cheats - how can you get round it?
Torres has an unusual solution: "I suggest the man can leave his finger at home... we have 10 fingers, so he won't miss one - well, you don't use the little finger a lot.
"Seriously though, the only way to override the system is to crawl around the back of the machine, unplug the sensor, take it back to the home computer and re-programme it - not that easy.
"We have to make it difficult to change otherwise it defeats the object of the exercise."
All thumbs
Your Turn is also childproof. Parents can be confident that young fingers will not be able to operate the washing machine as it is only their fingerprints that can start it.
But there is one bone of contention. The same person can still load the washing time after time. The finger print sensor only controls who starts the programme.
In future designs, Torres hopes to bring the door release mechanism under the thumb of the fingerprint sensor, too.
In the meantime, Your Turn is expected to go on sale in the next couple of weeks.
The one thing it will not do though is something that most guys are notoriously bad at - separating the whites from the coloureds.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4504393.stm
Aahh... suave, sophisticated and loyal...Quote:
Originally Posted by Basil
A study of Napoleon Bonaparte's trousers could put an end to the theory that the French Emperor was poisoned. Napoleon died aged 52 on St Helena in the south Atlantic where he had been banished after his defeat at Waterloo.
His post mortem showed he died of stomach cancer, but it has been suggested arsenic poisoning or over-zealous treatment was to blame.
Now Swiss researchers say his trousers show he lost weight prior his death, confirming he had cancer.
The research, by scientists from the anatomical pathology department of the University Hospital in Basel and the Institute of Medical History at the University of Zurich, looked at 12 pairs of Napoleon's trousers which he wore during the six years he lived in exile.
They also measured the waists, and weighed, living stomach cancer patients.
The largest pair of trousers Napoleon wore had a waist measurement of 110cm; those he wore just before his death measured 98cm.
This, they say, shows he lost a significant amount of weight - as did the living patients, who lost between 11 and 15kg over the six months they were studied.
Enemas
The Swiss team say the presence of arsenic in Napoleon's hair, the source of the poisoning theory, was linked to this enthusiasm for wine.
At the time, it was the custom of winemakers' to dry their casks and basins with arsenic.
Dr Alessandro Lugli, who carried out the study which appeared in the American Review of Human Pathology, told the BBC News website he thought theories about alternative explanations for Napoleon's death would continue to be put forward.
But he said: "We are sure that the autopsy report speaks clearly in favour of gastric [stomach] cancer."
The demise of the French Emperor has provoked numerous theories.
Last year, researchers from the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Department said in New Scientist magazine that it was regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate, or tartar emetic a poisonous colourless salt which was used to make him vomit, that killed him.
He was also given regular enemas.
The researchers, led by forensic pathologist Steven Karch, say this would have caused a serious potassium deficiency, which can lead to a potentially fatal heart condition called Torsades de Pointes in which rapid heartbeats disrupt blood flow to the brain.
Dr Karch told BBC News Online at the time that he studied similar modern cases.
He said: "There is a very strong argument for this - but it's not as sexy as the idea that he was murdered.
"The arsenic wasn't killing him - his doctors did him in!"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4512289.stm
The prime minister of Bangladesh has intervened to help a poor woman who advertised to sell an eye to raise funds for her daughter's future. Shefali Begum has received offers of help from around the world and within Bangladesh after the BBC reported on her desperate newspaper advertisement.
Now Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has met her and arranged measures to support her, including a new house.
Ms Begum said she had no money for rent or to feed her daughter.
The 26-year-old mother lives with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in a tiny bamboo and corrugated-tin room in the east of the capital, Dhaka.
She says her husband of four years left her in March, leaving her penniless.
'So moved'
Prime Minister Zia has now met Ms Begum in her Dhaka office, her officials say.
"The prime minister was so moved by her story that she instantly decided to help this woman who has been abandoned by her husband," a spokesman for the prime minister told the BBC.
Officials say Ms Zia made arrangements to allocate Ms Begum in a house in a government-built shelter for the poor.
She also assured her that the government would provide financial assistance for her daughter's educational expenses. She will also receive the monthly allowance claimable by women abandoned by their husbands.
Officials also say the prime minister gave her some cash to pay for job training.
Ms Begum later told the officials that she would not now have to sell her eye after receiving help from the prime minister and many others anonymous donors.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4510699.stm