President Barack Obama Weighs in on Washington Redskins’ Team Name Debate

On By A.P.In Dan Snyder, genocide, NFL, racism, redskin, Roger Goodell, Washington D.C., Washington RedskinsLeave a comment

redskins

President Barack Obama has joined the ongoing debate surrounding the NFL’s Washington Redskins and their nickname, according to the Associated Press via ESPN.

In a recent interview, President Obama admitted that nicknames like the “Redskins” can offend large groups of people. He also conceded that he doesn’t believe fans of Washington’s football team are out to mock or offend Native Americans.

Essentially, Obama didn’t pick a side, instead stating the facts that must be taken into consideration:

I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real legitimate concerns that people have about these things. I don’t want to detract from the wonderful Redskins fans that are here. They love their team and rightly so.

He also pointed out that American Indians “feel pretty strongly” about team names that play off negative stereotypes or cast the group in an unfavorable light.

Despite being president, Obama has no say in whether the Redskins change their nickname. The decision is ultimately up to team owner Daniel Snyder, who told USA Today back in May that the franchise “will never” change its name.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has weighed in as well, originally defending the nickname in a response to a letter from Congress back in June. In a radio interview on 106.7 The Fan in Washington last month, Goodell changed his tune, admitting that “if one person is offended, we have to listen.”

President Barack Obama Weighs in on Washington Redskins' Nickname Debate

FBI Captures Alleged Silk Road Boss Using His Own Methods

On By A.P.In amphetamine, Bitcoin, cannabis, Christopher Tarbell, cocaine, Dread Pirate Roberts, Drugs, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, heroin, Kebmodee, LSD, marijuana, MDMA (Ecstasy), Methamphetamine, opiates, Oxycodone, Psilocybin, Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road, tor networkLeave a comment

silk road

From an Internet café in San Francisco, a 29-year-old free-market evangelist who called himself “Dread Pirate Roberts” used untraceable web services, an international network of servers and anonymous digital currency to run a global online exchange of cocaine and heroin beyond the reach of the law.

For two years, cybercrime experts from the FBI pored over the secretive online drug bazaar known as Silk Road — an underground operation that had become, by the time the FBI shut it down this week, the venue for $1 billion worth of illegal transactions, according to prosecutors. Seeking the mastermind behind it, investigators began picking up clues: an anonymous posting to a website devoted to hallucinogenic mushrooms, recurring references to an Austrian school of economics, and early clues left on public sites including Google and LinkedIn.

A big break came in July, when a routine inspection of inbound mail from Canada turned up a parcel containing nine counterfeit IDs — each with a different name, but all featuring the photograph of the same man.

According to a 33-page criminal complaint unsealed yesterday in Manhattan federal court, the man in the ID photos was Ross Ulbricht, Silk Road’s alleged overseer. FBI agents arrested Ulbricht in San Francisco the same day at the Glen Park library in San Francisco, where he had gone to log onto a computer, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The criminal complaint against Ulbricht depicts the dark side of Internet commerce. In it, special agent Christopher Tarbell of the FBI’s New York office described Silk Road as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today” — a virtual bazaar where buyers could find everything from heroin and hacking software to contact information for hit men in more than 10 different countries.

Meanwhile, on July 10 of this year, customs officials intercepted the package from Canada as part of what the complaint characterized as a routine inspection. The package, addressed to an apartment on 15th Street in San Francisco, contained nine counterfeit IDs, each in a different name, but all featuring a photo of the same person.

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations arrived on July 26 at the 15th Street address. There, according to the complaint, they encountered Ross Ulbricht, whose photo matched those on all nine fake IDs.

Confronted with a fake California driver’s license bearing his photo and birthdate but a different name, Ulbricht avoided answering questions about the purchase of false IDs, according to the complaint. Instead, he volunteered that “hypothetically” anyone could go onto a website named Silk Road and purchase any drugs or counterfeit IDs they wanted. Ulbricht then produced his real ID, a Texas driver’s license, according to the complaint, and explained that he was subletting a room in the apartment for $1,000 a month. According to the complaint, he also said the roommates knew him as “Josh.”

Ulbricht stands accused of narcotics trafficking, money laundering, computer-hacking conspiracy and, in an indictment unsealed yesterday in Maryland, of attempted murder.

Bitcoin Bets Feed Twitter Dreams as Regulators CircleCyber Drug Bazaar’s Alleged Boss Paired EBay Style, Crime
The genius of Silk Road’s design and the reason it eluded the FBI’s grasp for so long, according to the complaint, was its impenetrability. The site was accessible only on a so-called tor network, which is designed to conceal the true Internet addresses of computers using it. Its exclusive reliance on Bitcoin, an anonymous digital currency, added another layer of protection for its buyers and sellers.

Since November 2011, Tarbell’s team made more than 100 purchases of drugs from Silk Road vendors, accepting shipments of ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, LSD and other drugs posted from 10 different countries, including the U.S., according to the complaint.

In the FBI’s bid to identify the individual behind Silk Road, an agent on Tarbell’s team combed through Internet postings and discovered the earliest mention of the site on shroomery.org, an informational website for consumers of “magic mushrooms,” in January 2011.

The posting, from someone with the username altoid, alerted the site’s visitors to Silk Road and asked if anyone had tried it. Two days later, someone using the same username posted a similar message on “bitcointalk.org,” a discussion forum for the virtual currency.

“The two postings created by ’altoid’ on Shroomery and Bitcoin Talk appear to be attempts to generate interest in the site,” Tarbell wrote. “The fact that ’altoid’ posted similar messages about the site on two very different discussion forums, two days apart, indicates that ’altoid’ was visiting various discussion forums…and seeking to publicize the site among the forum users — which, based on my training and experience, is a common online marketing tactic for new websites.”

In October 2011, altoid surfaced again on the Bitcoin forum, seeking an “IT pro” to help build a Bitcoin startup company and directing potential job candidates to the Gmail account of someone named Ross Ulbricht. From a Google profile associated with the account, the FBI learned that Ulbricht had an interest in the Austrian school of economics and the Auburn, Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Institute. According to the group’s website, it functions as a center of Libertarian political and social theory.

Similar sentiments are voiced on a page of professional networking site LinkedIn that is also attributed to Ulbricht, according to the complaint. In a LinkedIn profile accessed yesterday, a user identified as Ross Ulbricht describes himself as an “investment adviser and entrepreneur” and lists his interests as “trading, economics, physics, virtual worlds, liberty.”

Agents made a connection between Ulbricht and Silk Road: The site’s webmaster, who identified himself as Dread Pirate Roberts, made regular references to Austrian economic theory and the teachings of Mises to justify Silk Road’s existence.

The New York FBI agents weren’t the only lawmen gunning for Silk Road. In April 2012, a federal agent in Maryland began communicating with Dread Pirate Roberts in an undercover capacity, posing as a drug dealer.

In January, the undercover agent completed the sale of a small quantity of cocaine to a Silk Road employee and was paid the equivalent of $27,000 in Bitcoin currency. According to the Maryland indictment, Dread Pirate Roberts subsequently asked the undercover agent to murder an employee the site overseer believed to have stolen money from Silk Road.

During this time, Tarbell’s team in New York tracked the Silk Road webmaster’s online logins to an Internet café on Laguna Street in San Francisco, near an apartment where Ulbricht had moved.

Following the confrontation, Tarbell and his team learned that in the weeks leading up to the discovery of the counterfeit identity papers, Dread Pirate Roberts had sent a series of private e-mails suggesting that he “needed a fake ID,” according to the complaint.

All the while, word of Silk Road and its bazaar of illicit goods and services spread around the Internet. In August, Forbes.com posted an interview with Dread Pirate Roberts that it said was conducted via messages sent through the site. “The highest levels of government are hunting me,” the cyber entrepreneur said, adding: “I can’t take any chances.”

Yesterday afternoon, Ulbricht surfaced at San Francisco’s Glen Park library, a small branch facility where public computers are located in front of the check-out desk. There, according to the person familiar with the matter, he was arrested by the FBI.

The criminal case is U.S. v. Ulbricht, 13-mg-023287; the civil forfeiture case is U.S. v. Ulbricht, 13-cv-06919, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Greg Farrell in New York at gregfarrell@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-10-03/fbi-captures-alleged-silk-road-pirate-boss-using-his-own-methods#p2

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Death of an un-loved one

On By A.P.In child abuse, death, Katherine Reddick, Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick, obituary, Patrick ReddickLeave a comment

death

The obituary for Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick that appeared in the Reno Gazette-Journal on September 10 started in typical fashion: She was born on January 4, 1935 and died on August 30, 2013. But the announcement, written by two of her adult children, quickly took a grim turn.

While most death notices include a short, factual and sometimes cheery biography of the deceased, this one included a laundry list of Johnson-Reddick’s alleged parental failings and character flaws.

“She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible,” the obituary read. “While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them.”

The obit was submitted via the paper’s self-service online portal, according to publisher John Maher, and it quickly went viral. Patrick and Katherine Reddick co-wrote the scathing remembrance, and Patrick has gone on to tell publications he sang the Wizard of Oz’s “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead” when he learned of his mother’s passing.

The cemetery isn’t always an easy place to bury the hatchet, especially when survivors remember the deceased in an adversarial light. What do “My condolences” or “I’m sorry for your loss” mean to a person who is thinking “Good riddance”? And how do resentful survivors avoid speaking ill of the dead?

Grief experts say people affected by the death of a less-than-loved one often have much more unfinished emotional business, and that business starts with forgiveness of a sort.

The Reddick siblings claimed in the obituary that their motive was “to stimulate a national movement” against child abuse in the United States. “Her surviving children will now live the rest of their lives with the peace of knowing their nightmare finally has some form of closure,” they wrote.

Russell Friedman, executive director of the Grief Recovery Institute, said even the death of a toxic person can’t bring the closure the Reddick siblings mention when grief is unresolved.

“Grieving people tend to create larger-than-life pictures in which they enshrine or bedevil the person who died,” he said.

Friedman says rehashing tough memories in an obituary like Johnson-Reddick’s keeps survivors mired in pain and grief.

“When they’re telling the story of their pain, there’s no recovery. Where is the completion,” he asked. “They’re just confirming the pain that’s built in; the pain becomes their identity. The pain is not freedom; it’s jail.”

Some survivors of heinous abuse agree that holding onto hatred for the dead and publicly shaming them will not close the book on a lifetime of hurt.

Becky Blanton knows what unresolved grief feels like. Her essay detailing alleged physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, titled “The Monster,” appeared in the late journalist Tim Russert’s final book “Wisdom of Our Fathers” and outlines how she came to terms with his abuse while he was on his death bed.

Blanton said the only way to overcome pain caused by an instrumental figure in one’s life is to forgive, but the definition of that word is often misunderstood.

Both Blanton and Friedman said forgiveness is about relieving oneself of resentment.

“Forgiveness isn’t about saying, ‘It’s OK,’ or that you ‘accept’ or ‘approve’ what happened,” Blanton said. “Forgiveness is the acknowledgment that what happened, happened, and that you are now ready to set down the baggage, the pain and the fear.”

“There simply is no other way,” Friedman agreed.

Blanton finds that when a person forgives they no longer take action based on feelings of revenge, anger or fear, but instead make decisions based on their own character.

“If I consider myself a good person, a generous person, but then act meanly or selfishly because someone has treated me that way, then I allow their actions to determine my character and my actions,” Blanton said.

Mothers of sex offenders share responsibility, burden of label

Friedman said that without taking the proper steps to grieve and let go, pain can become part of one’s identity.

“(Retribution) does no virtue for you. It will create the illusion that you’ve done something valuable for yourself,” Friedman said.

Resolving that pain comes down to a key phrase: “I remember the time that you did this, and I’m not going to let the memory of that event hurt me anymore.”

There are ways to describe a person of dubious character after death without blasting them in an obit, according to Andrew Meacham, the chief epilogue writer for the Tampa Bay Times.

“Just as people aren’t saintly, they aren’t completely villainous,” he said.

“You don’t have to make somebody out to be a villain, just tell the facts and people can read between the lines,” Meacham explained.

Just as he says he avoids writing biographies in which that person “never met a stranger,” had a “smile that lit up a room” and the rest of those hanky clichés that come out when somebody dies, he also avoids the opposite.

“Had I written (the Johnson-Reddick obit) as a news story, I would want to talk to somebody who knew their mom,” he said. “Not necessarily to sanitize it, but she was a human being after all.”

Meanwhile, trying to console a person who has experienced a loss is tricky — especially if the relationship was contentious. Above all, Friedman recommends being mindful of the words you use.

“I’m sorry for your loss” doesn’t work, Friedman said. “‘I’m sorry’ is a dangerous line if you didn’t know the person who died.”

Friedman suggests instead using open-ended phrases like: “I don’t even know what to say. I can’t imagine what this has been like for you.” Turn the statement into more of a question, giving the person an opening to tell you the truth if they feel up to it.

Blanton agrees.

“‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ doesn’t cut it when a person is a monster,” Blanton said. “Having someone say, ‘I’m so sorry for what he did to you. I wish someone had been there for you’ does wonders.”

Blanton sees where the Reddicks were coming from. They are trying to be heard because they might not have been able to express anger as children (or were too scared to), she said, and they’re doing the best they can with the tools they have.

Her response: “We hear you.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/24/living/death-anger-reddick-obit/?iref=obnetwork

World record solar cell with 44.7% efficiency

On By A.P.In Berlin, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany, Kebmodee, Science, Solar Energy, solar power, World RecordsLeave a comment

solar cell

German Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin announced today that they have achieved a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells. Surpassing competition after only over three years of research, and entering the roadmap at world class level, a new record efficiency of 44.7% was measured at a concentration of 297 suns. This indicates that 44.7% of the solar spectrum’s energy, from ultraviolet through to the infrared, is converted into electrical energy. This is a major step towards reducing further the costs of solar electricity and continues to pave the way to the 50% efficiency roadmap.

Back in May 2013, the German-French team of Fraunhofer ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin had already announced a solar cell with 43.6% efficiency. Building on this result, further intensive research work and optimization steps led to the present efficiency of 44.7%.

These solar cells are used in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), a technology which achieves more than twice the efficiency of conventional PV power plants in sun-rich locations. The terrestrial use of so-called III-V multi-junction solar cells, which originally came from space technology, has prevailed to realize highest efficiencies for the conversion of sunlight to electricity. In this multi-junction solar cell, several cells made out of different III-V semiconductor materials are stacked on top of each other. The single subcells absorb different wavelength ranges of the solar spectrum.

“We are incredibly proud of our team which has been working now for three years on this four-junction solar cell,” says Frank Dimroth, Department Head and Project Leader in charge of this development work at Fraunhofer ISE. “This four-junction solar cell contains our collected expertise in this area over many years. Besides improved materials and optimization of the structure, a new procedure called wafer bonding plays a central role. With this technology, we are able to connect two semiconductor crystals, which otherwise cannot be grown on top of each other with high crystal quality. In this way we can produce the optimal semiconductor combination to create the highest efficiency solar cells.”

“This world record increasing our efficiency level by more than 1 point in less than 4 months demonstrates the extreme potential of our four-junction solar cell design which relies on Soitec bonding techniques and expertise,” says André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Soitec’s Chairman and CEO. “It confirms the acceleration of the roadmap towards higher efficiencies which represents a key contributor to competitiveness of our own CPV systems. We are very proud of this achievement, a demonstration of a very successful collaboration.”

“This new record value reinforces the credibility of the direct semiconductor bonding approaches that is developed in the frame of our collaboration with Soitec and Fraunhofer ISE. We are very proud of this new result, confirming the broad path that exists in solar technologies for advanced III-V semiconductor processing,” said Leti CEO Laurent Malier.

Concentrator modules are produced by Soitec (started in 2005 under the name Concentrix Solar, a spin-off of Fraunhofer ISE). This particularly efficient technology is employed in solar power plants located in sun-rich regions with a high percentage of direct radiation. Presently Soitec has CPV installations in 18 different countries including Italy, France, South Africa and California.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-world-solar-cell-efficiency.html

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Boeing has retrofitted retired F-16 fighter jets to turn them into drones

On By A.P.In Boeing, drone, F-16, Kebmodee, military, Military Industrial ComplexLeave a comment

f16b

f16

It said that one of the Lockheed Martin F-16 made a first flight with an empty cockpit last week.

Two US Air Force pilots controlled the plane from the ground as it flew from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico.

Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on.

The jet – which had previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years – flew at an altitude of 40,000ft (12.2km) and a speed of Mach 1.47 (1,119mph/1,800km/h).

It carried out a series of manoeuvres including a barrel roll and a “split S” – a move in which the aircraft turns upside down before making a half loop so that it flies the right-way-up in the opposite direction. This can be used in combat to evade attack.

Boeing said the unmanned F16 was followed by two chase planes to ensure it stayed in sight, and also contained equipment that would have allowed it to self-destruct if necessary.

The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable of carrying out manoeuvres at 9Gs – something that might cause physical problems for a pilot.

“It flew great, everything worked great, [it] made a beautiful landing – probably one of the best landings I’ve ever seen,” said Paul Cejas, the project’s chief engineer.

Lt Col Ryan Inman, Commander of the US Air Force’s 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron, also had praise for how the test had gone.

“It was a little different to see it without anyone in it, but it was a great flight all the way around,” he said.

Boeing said that it had a total of six modified F-16s, which have been renamed QF-16s, and that the US military now planned to use some of them in live fire tests.

However, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots warned of the temptation to use them in warfare.

“I’m very concerned these could be used to target people on the ground,” said Prof Noel Sharkey.

“I’m particularly worried about the high speed at which they can travel because they might not be able to distinguish their targets very clearly.

“There is every reason to believe that these so-called ‘targets’ could become a test bed for drone warfare, moving us closer and closer to automated killing.”

This is not the first time a jet has been retrofitted to fly without a pilot inside. The US Air Force has previously used adapted F4- Phantoms for target practice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24231077

Thanks to Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

First cases of flesh-eating drug Krokodil surface in US

On By A.P.In Aaron Skolnik, Addiction, desomorphine, Drugs, Frank LoVecchio, heroin, Krokodil, Medicine, morphine, Neuropsychiatric DiseaseLeave a comment

krokodil640

A man prepares heroin in Zhukovsky, Russia, near Moscow. To produce krokodil, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous.

Krokodil, a flesh-eating drug which first surfaced in Russia more than a decade ago, has reportedly been found in the United States.

Similar to morphine or heroin, krokodil is made by mixing codeine with substances like gasoline, paint thinner, oil or alcohol. That mixture is then injected into a vein, potentially causing an addict’s skin to turn greenish, scaly and eventually rot away.

Dr. Frank LoVecchio, co-medical director at Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center in Arizona, told CBS5 that the first two cases of people using the drug have been reported in the state. He declined to comment on the patients’ conditions.

“As far as I know, these are the first cases in the United States that are reported,” LoVecchio said, adding that the cases are believed to be linked. “So we’re extremely frightened.”

Users of krokodil — or desomorphine — had previously only been found in large numbers in Russia, where 65 million doses of the opiate were seized during the first three months of 2011, Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service told Time.

“This is really frightening,” Dr. Aaron Skolnik, a toxicologist at Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center told MyFoxPhoenix.com. “This is something we hoped would never make it to the U.S. because it’s so detrimental to the people who use it.”

To produce the potentially deadly drug, which has a comparable effect to heroin but is much cheaper to make, users mix codeine with gasoline, paint thinner, iodine, hydrochloric acid and red phosphorous. Codeine, a controlled substance in the United States used to treat mild to moderate pain, is widely available over the counter in Russia.

In 2010, up to a million people, according to various estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, thus far the only country worldwide to see it grow into an epidemic, Time reports.

The drug’s sinister moniker — also known as crocodile — refers to the greenish and scaly appearance of a user’s skin at the site of injection as blood vessels rupture and cause surrounding tissues to die. According to reports, the drug first appeared in Siberia and parts of Russia around 2002, but has spread throughout the country in recent years.

Officials at the Washington-based National Institute on Drug Abuse told FoxNews.com in 2011 that they had not heard of the drug prior to an inquiry by FoxNews.com.

Dr. Ellen Marmur, chief of dermatological and cosmetic surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, told FoxNews.com in 2011 she had never seen any cases involving krokodil, but said it reminded her of “skin popping,” or when intravenous drug users inject a substance directly into their skin due to damaged veins.

“This looks to me a lot like skin popping, what drug users used to do back in the day with heroin and other drugs,” Marmur said. “It just kills the skin, that’s what you’re seeing, big dead pieces of skin.”

Those large pieces of dead skin are referred to as eschars, Marmur said, leaving the user prone to infection, amputation and other complications.

Marmur said at the time that she was concerned the drug could eventually make its way into the United States.

“It’s horrible,” she continued. “These people are the ultimate in self-destructive drug addiction. Once you’re an addict at this level, any rational thinking doesn’t apply.”

Dr. Lewis Nelson, a medical toxicologist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, also said in 2011 that he doubted krokodil would reach the United States due to the availability of other cheap, powerful drugs such as black tar heroin and Oxycontin.

“It’s not going to become a club drug, I can guarantee you that,” he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/09/26/first-cases-flesh-eating-drug-krokodil-surface-in-us/

Chinese doctor builds new nose on forehead

On By A.P.In Alexander Seifalian, China, Kebmodee, Medicine, Mr. C, Mr. CuomoLeave a comment

nose

A surgeon in China says he has constructed an extra nose out of a man’s rib cartilage and implanted it under the skin of his forehead to prepare for a transplant in probably the first operation of its kind.

Surgeon Guo Zhihui at Fujian Medical University Union Hospital in China’s southeastern province of Fujian spent nine months cultivating the graft for a 22-year-old man whose nose was damaged.

The striking images of the implant — with the nostril section facing diagonally upward on the left side of the man’s forehead — drew widespread publicity after they began to circulate in Chinese media this week. Guo plans to cut the nose from the forehead while leaving a section of skin still connected, and then rotate and graft it into position in a later operation.

“We were just interested in helping the man and did not expect it would stir up this much attention,” Guo said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Surgeons previously have used cartilage to help rebuild noses in their proper position and are experimenting with growing new ones from stem cells on other parts of the body, such as a forearm. But this was the first known case of building a nose on a forehead.

Alexander Seifalian, a professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London who has worked on transplants using stem cells, said implanting the nose graft in the forehead makes sense because the skin there has the same “structure and texture” as that of a nose.

However, he said it was unclear why the Chinese team built the nose on the forehead rather than in its proper position. A nose graft grown from stem cells would be prepared on another body part first, but this operation is using existing cartilage, Seifalian said.

“They could have made the nose and just put it on the nose, not in the forehead,” Seifalian said. “I don’t know why they put it there.”

However, Seifalian noted that he had not seen any scientific information on the Chinese operation and was just going by media reports.

The patient lost part of his nose in an accident in August 2012 and did not immediately have any reconstruction surgery because he couldn’t afford it, Guo said. An infection later ate away much of his nose cartilage, he said.

Guo said his team examined what remained of the nose and concluded there would be little chance of viably grafting cartilage there, instead building the nose on the forehead. When the new nose is rotated into position and grafted, it will at first have its own blood supply from links to the forehead, before developing new blood vessels. Later surgery will smooth out all of the skin.

The team first expanded skin on the man’s forehead for more than three months before using rib cartilage to build the nose bridge. Lastly, Guo’s team built the nostrils.

“We sculpted the nose three-dimensionally, like carpenters,” he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-doctor-builds-nose-mans-forehead-023520476.html

Thanks to Mr. Cuomo and Kebmodee for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues new stark warning over global warming

On By A.P.In Climate Change, Earth, Global Warming, International Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Mr. C, The FutureLeave a comment

bnurning earth

Scientists will this week issue their starkest warning yet about the mounting dangers of global warming. In a report to be handed to political leaders in Stockholm on Monday, they will say that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have now led to a warming of the entire globe, including land surfaces, oceans and the atmosphere.

Extreme weather events, including heatwaves and storms, have increased in many regions while ice sheets are dwindling at an alarming rate. In addition, sea levels are rising while the oceans are being acidified – a development that could see the planet’s coral reefs disappearing before the end of the century.

Writing in the Observer ahead of the report’s release, the economist and climate change expert Lord Stern calls on governments to end their dithering about fossil fuels and start working to create a global low-carbon economy to curtail global warming. Governments, he states, must decide what “kind of world we want to present to our children and grandchildren”.

The fifth assessment report on the physical science of climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that humanity is on course over the next few decades to raise global temperatures by more than 2C compared with pre-industrial levels. Such a rise could trigger the release of plumes of the greenhouse gas methane from the thawing Arctic tundra, while the polar ice caps, which reflect solar radiation back into space, could disappear.

Although the report does not say so, Earth would probably then be facing a runaway greenhouse effect.

The scientists’ warning – the most comprehensive and convincing yet produced by climate scientists – comes at a time when growing numbers of people are doubting the reality of global warming. Last week, the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) published a survey showing that the proportion of British people who do not think the world’s climate is changing has almost quadrupled since 2005.

Asked if they thought Earth’s climate was changing, 5% of respondents said “no” in 2005, a figure that rose to 11% last year and reached 19% this year.

But as the IPCC report underlines, scientists are becoming more and more certain that climate change poses a real danger to the planet.

Many believe the disconnection between popular belief and scientific analysis has been engineered by “deniers” explicitly opposed to the lifestyle changes – including restrictions on fossil fuel burning – that might be introduced in the near future.

“There are attempts by some politicians and lobbyists to confuse and mislead the public about the scientific evidence that human activities are driving climate change and creating huge risks,” said Stern.

“But the public should be wary of those who claim they know for certain that unmanaged climate change would not be dangerous. For they are not only denying 200 years of strong scientific evidence – the overwhelming view of the world’s scientific academies and over 95% of scientific papers on the subject – but they are often harbouring vested interests or rigid ideologies as well.”

The report will be discussed this week by political leaders meeting in Stockholm. The study – the work of more than 200 scientists – outlines the physical changes that are likely to affect Earth’s climate this century.

Future reports will cover the social impact of these changes and the efforts required to offset the damage caused by global warming. A United Nations meeting in Paris in 2015 will then debate what actions are needed to mitigate climate change.

According to the new report, humanity has emitted about half a trillion tonnes of carbon by burning fossil fuels over the past 250 years, a process that has caused atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to rise by 40%. The world is now on target to release another half trillion tonnes in the next few decades which could trigger a major jump in global temperatures.

Most measures that have been proposed for tackling global warming rely on curtailing the burning of fossil fuels and these will form the focus of the 2015 UN meeting in Paris. Given the poor record of previous summits, many are pessimistic an agreement can be reached.

However, other measures have been suggested to curb global warming. In particular, many scientists have backed geo-engineering projects that would involve either spraying particles into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation back into space or extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to bury it in mines or depleted oil fields.

Both suggestions get short shrift in the new report: atmospheric aerosols could have widespread side-effects that could produce major disruptions to weather patterns, while not enough is known about the effectiveness of carbon dioxide extraction or burial. “We have to face up to the prospect of weaning ourselves off our addiction to oil and coal,” said one report author. “It is as simple as that.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/21/climate-change-ipcc-global-warming

Thanks to Mr. C for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

Man becomes drunk when stomach turns into brewery

On By A.P.In alcohol, auto-brewery syndrome, Barbara Cordell, Breathalyzer, Environmental Protection Agency, fermentation, Justin McCarthy, Medicine, Michael D. Gershon, Mike Moore, Panola College, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Texas, yeastLeave a comment

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When a 61-year-old Texas man came into an emergency room claiming he was dizzy and was found to have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.37 percent, doctors assumed he was drunk. Despite the fact the man claimed he hadn’t consumed alcohol that day, most doctors still thought he was a “closet drinker,” NPR reported.

It turned out that those medical professionals were wrong: the man had “auto-brewery syndrome.” His stomach contained so much yeast that he was making his own in-house brew, literally. Before he was diagnosed with the syndrome, the patient’s wife — who was a nurse — was so concerned with her husband’s constantly drunk condition that she had him regularly tested with a Breathalyzer. He would record numbers as high as 0.33 to 0.4 percent, considerably higher than the U.S. legal driving limit of 0.08 percent.

Barbara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas, and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, Texas, decided to figure out what was really going on.

“He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime,” Cordell told NPR.

After isolating the patient for 24 hours and making sure there was no alcohol or sugar available, the team continued to check his blood alcohol level. The levels were as high as 0.12 percent without any alcohol consumption. The doctors then realized that he must have been infected with high levels Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a kind of yeast that is used in alcohol fermentation and baking. They suspected that because the patient had been put on antibiotics following surgery for a broken foot in 2004, the medications might have killed all his gut bacteria. This allowed the yeast to thrive in his body.

The Environmental Protection Agency said the organism is not considered to be a pathogen, and some people take large quantities of the yeast daily as part of a “health food” diet.”No one takes potential danger from Saccharomyces cerevesiae seriously,” Dr. Michael D. Gershon, a professor in the department of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University in New York, told CBSNews.com.

Gershon added that the yeast is so non-threatening that it is often used by researchers in studies without any additional precautions.

Interviews revealed the man ate a lot of carbohydrates. That meant each time the patient ate something with starch, the high amounts of yeast in his body turned the sugars into ethanol or ethyl alcohol, which made him drunk from the inside. To cure his illness, the patient was placed on a low-carbohydrate diet and prescribed antifungal medication to get rid of the excess yeast.

His case study was published in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine earlier this summer.

The researchers acknowledge that this condition is extremely rare. Only a handful of cases have been reported in the last three decades, including a 13-year-old girl with short gut syndrome who would get drunk if she ate carbohydrates. Another 3-year-old with the same condition became drunk when she had a fruit drink high in carbohydrates.

“This is a rare syndrome but should be recognized because of the social implications such as loss of job, relationship difficulties, stigma, and even possible arrest and incarceration,” the authors noted. “It would behoove health care providers to listen more carefully to the intoxicated patient who denies ingesting alcohol.”

Thanks to Mike Moore for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.