Scientists have discovered the world’s first ’self-watering’ plant in Israel’s Negev desert – one of the driest regions on earth. The Desert Rhubarb can hold 16 times more water than its rivals and has developed a unique ability to effectively water itself in its barren habitat.

Researchers were confounded by the metre-wide plant’s giant leaves, compared to its desert counterparts, whose tiny leaves stop dangerous moisture loss.

But they found the plant’s large leaves are the key to its success, because they are covered in microscopic streams through which water can be channelled.

Scientists claim ridges in the leaves act like mountain valleys, funnelling the water slowly and directly into the plant while stopping it evaporating.

A team from the Department of Science Education-Biology at the University of Haifa-Oranim, in Israel, said the leaves act like a mini irrigation system.

Lead researcher Professor Gidi Ne’eman said “We know of no other plant in the deserts of the world that functions in this manner.

“We have managed to make out the ’self-irrigating’ mechanism of the desert rhubarb, which enables it to harvest 16 times the amount of water than otherwise expected for a plant in this region based on the quantities of rain in the desert.

“These deep and wide depressions in the leaves create a “channelling” mountain-like system by which the rain water is channelled toward the ground surrounding the plant’s deep root.

“Other desert plants simply suffice with the rain water that penetrates the ground in its immediate surroundings.”

Results of experiments and analysis of the plant’s growth – in an area with an average annual rainfall of 75mm – showed that the desert rhubarb is able to harvest quantities of water that are closer to that of Mediterranean plants, reaching up to 426mm per year.

That is 16 times the amount of water harvested by the small-leafed plants of the Negev desert region.

The Negev makes up more than 50 per cent of Israel’s land area to the south of the country near it’s border with Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.

The smell of fear really does exist, according to a new study, which also suggests that being terrified is infectious.  The study, conducted by Dr Bettina Pause and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, suggests that people subconsciously detect whether others are scared by picking up chemicals they release from their bodies.

Researchers believe the signals can be contagious and can spread around a group.
For the study, researchers put cotton pads under the armpits of 49 student volunteers before they were due to start a university exam, reports the Telegraph.

Pause and colleagues also collected sweat from the same group of students as they worked out on exercise bikes.

They asked another group of 28 volunteer students to sniff the cotton pads while their brains were monitored with an MRI scanner.

None were able to tell the difference between ‘panic sweat’ and ‘exercise sweat’ but the brain scans told a different story.

When sniffing ‘panic sweat’, the researchers found that the regions of the brain that handle emotional and social signals became far more active. Parts of the brain involved in empathy also lit up.

The researchers reckon that fear and anxiety trigger the release of a chemical that makes other people empathise.

(From DailyKos)

by Meteor Blades

Thu Jan 15, 2009 at 09:34:55 PM PST

"You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope
you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

                                       - President George W. Bush

^{Video by Orpheus Roy}

As this is being written, Mister Bush has 107 hours to finish
supervising the packing of his bags and fly to Dallas. No more cutting
brush for him. No more pretending on that score.  

Unfortunately, when he and Dick Cheney head out of Washington on
Tuesday, their legacy will remain. The Smirk and the Snarl will fly
away and take their audacious, minute-to-minute mendacity with them.
 No longer will a lickspittle media have to find fresh ways to rescue
them from their latest betrayal, faux pas, stupidity, outrage. But the
destruction they leave behind is deep and wide – a shredded
Constitution, a wrecked economy, a worsened environment, a shattered
multilateralism, a strengthened plutocracy, a partisan legal system, an
undermined scientific community, crippled national security, trashed
diplomacy, battered checks and balances. These will not – cannot - be
fixed in a few months or even a few years.

Which made the aggressive treacle of Mister Bush’s farewell address
all the more insufferable Thursday night. That it was his last speech
as President was its only saving grace. A man characterized by a
chronic lack of leadership talent throughout his entire life, a man who
showed a relentless inability to act until his handlers told him what
to do dared  speak to us of trust, decisiveness, toughness. We know the
truth of that. We saw it on that awful day which Mister Bush conjured
up once again in his Thursday night goodbye. If we hadn’t known we were
in trouble previously, we learned it watching him with The Pet Goat in his hands, doing nothing, waiting, as always, for someone to rescue him.

(from Daily Kos...)

Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

by Bill in Portland Maine

Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 06:11:00 AM PST

"Another Festivus Miracle!"

Today is Festivus. In accordance with tradition, I submit my list for the Airing of Grievances. The following have disappointed me over the past year:

>> President-elect Barack Obama, for not being inclusive. And
by not being inclusive I mean not inviting me to go to Hawaii for the
holidays with him.

>> Harry Reid, for proving that even "scrappy" former boxers can be total wussies.

>> John McCain, for abandoning all civility and running the
nastiest presidential campaign in 40 years. Also for choosing as a
running mate one of the least-qualified people in the country. (I've
forgotten her name.)

>> The corporate-jet, three-martini-lunch, French-cuffs,
mansion-dwelling, country-clubbing, let-'em-eat-cake crowd who made off
with over half of all my assets and have ensured that every tax dollar
I give to the government for the rest of my life will go nowhere but
into a giant black hole.

>> God, for not coming down here and straightening out this mess of a planet. She's dating another universe, isn’t she?

>> The traditional media, for so often quoting politicians,
"experts" and spokespeople without asking the fundamental question:
"Are they speaking the truth, or am I being played for a sucker?" Too
many times the answer is: Like a Charm's Blow Pop.

>> Whoever felt it was necessary to take from us this year:
Paul Newman, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Tim
Russert, George Carlin, Odetta, Heath Ledger, Sir Edmund Hillary, Jim
McKay, Arthur C. Clarke and Studs Terkel. Now, Jesse Helms? We
understand that one.

>> PUMA, the dumbest, most self-destructive organization since the American Society of Hand Grenade Swallowers.

>> The New England Patriots, for not winning the big one. Very inconvenient for me. It hurt my feelings.

>> George Bush, Dick Cheney and all of their goons, for
transforming a great, prosperous nation into a banana republic that
literally doesn’t have two nickels of its own to rub together
anymore...and then trying to rehabilitate their image at the 11th hour
by blaming everyone but themselves.

>> Joe Lieberman, walking proof that backstabbers and liars do, indeed, prosper. (Take note of that, kids!)

>> Congress, for greeting the Wall Street hacks as liberators while greeting the automakers as lepers.

>> Eliot Spitzer and John Edwards, for thinking with the wrong head.

"I HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE!"

(From Firedoglake)

By: Teddy Partridge Sunday December 7, 2008 8:01 pm

Now that Prop 8 has passed in California, radio hosts are attacking
other peoples' marriages as well. Take a look at what Mark Levine (host
of Inside Scoop from Washington) has to say, and how some callers respond to his idea that left-handed people should not be allowed to marry.

I know there are some who say that being left-handed is not a choice…
That people are “born” that way.
That’s ridiculous.
We all know we choose which hand to write with and feed ourselves.
And this disgusting abnormal perversion of this radical minority cannot be the will of God.
After all, in every human society from the beginning of time,
Right is “right”! It says so in every language. Left is sinister, evil, gauche, maladroit.

Right is “droit”, right, correct, the Law!

What other outrage will be perpetrated against decent Americans next?

(From Crooks & Liars...)

By Howie Klein Wednesday Dec 03, 2008 8:00pm

(from Impact Lab)

Elektro-Skate Electric Skateboard

 

I’m really starting to wonder if we, as human
beings, are getting tired of doing anything requiring physical
activity. I know that I rather like the conveyor belt walkways at theme
parks and the cool-yet rather precarious-use of a Segue instead of
walking.

 

 Charging port

We’ve mentioned Project Better Place before, the
company that plans to create a network of charging stations and battery
exchange locations for electric cars in Denmark, Israel and Australia.
Backed by super-rich investors, now it’s planning an ambitious
expansion into the San Francisco Bay area. The idea is to build a $1
billion network of 250,000 charging ports like you see here, 200
battery-swap stations, and a driver service center.

by DemFromCT - from DailyKos

Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 04:40:44 AM PST

From salamfall at YouTube:

just a celebration Video for Change!
Music Credit: Beautiful Day By : U2

Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis "Studs" Terkel died Friday afternoon in his home on the North Side. At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, "P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening," scheduled for release this month. He was 96 years old.

"Studs Terkel was part of a great Chicago literary tradition that stretched from Theodore Dreiser to Richard Wright to Nelson Algren to Mike Royko," Mayor Richard M. Daley said Friday. "In his many books, Studs captured the eloquence of the common men and women whose hard work and strong values built the America we enjoy today. He was also an excellent interviewer, and his WFMT radio show was an important part of Chicago's cultural landscape for more than 40 years."

Terkel received his nickname while he was acting in a play with another person named Louis. To keep the two straight, the director of the production gave Terkel the nickname Studs after the fictional character about whom Terkel was reading at the time—Studs Lonigan, of James T. Farrell's trilogy.

Perhaps Terkel was best known for his oral histories, such as the 1970 book, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, for which he assembled recollections of the Great Depression that spanned the socioeconomic spectrum, from Okies, through prison inmates, to the wealthy. His 1974 book, Working, in which (as reflected by its subtitle) People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, also was highly acclaimed. Working was made into a short-lived Broadway show in 1978 and was telecast on PBS in 1982.

Terkel won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for The Good War, which challenged the prevailing notion that, in contrast to the Vietnam War era, World War II was a time of unblemished national solidarity, goodwill, and unified purpose.

In 1997 Terkel was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, he received the George Polk Career Award in 1999.

Terkel died peacefully in his Chicago home on Friday, October 31, 2008 at the age of ninety-six. He had been suffering ever since a fall in his home earlier in October 2008. At his last public appearance, in 2007, Terkel said he was "still in touch—but ready to go".

[source: Chicago Tribune, Wikipedia]

From Crooks and Liars:

By Heather Wednesday Oct 29, 2008 10:00am

Download | Play    Download | Play

From Countdown, Monday Oct. 27, 2008. Keith tells John McCain that he needs to speak out against those who would use Friday's racist hoax attack perpetrated by Ashley Todd as a means to re-open the racial divide in America.

Transcript available here:

OLBERMANN: Finally, a "Campaign Comment" about the
fraudulent race attack claim since acknowledged and recanted by a John
McCain campaign volunteer in Pennsylvania. You know the story well, by
now. It's a sad and demoralizing tale of a woman who could be
summarized by the awful term B actress. Ashley Todd was not sexually
assaulted by a big black man. He did not carve the letter B on her face
to punish her for supporting John McCain.

It apparently never dawned on her it resembled less a cut than an
abrasion done by a weapon no more sinister than a nail file. She was
not even at the ATM where she claimed the attack took place. It
apparently never dawned on her that the machine had security video and
she would not be on it. And clearly, somewhere in her mind was a
calculation that a story like this one with layer upon layer of racial
threat could be some kind of game changer for the presidential
candidate she worked to get elected in at least two states for at least
two months. Her saga is pathetic. She now claims mental illness. If
this too is not true, Miss Todd might think she's pulling another fast
one over on the rest of us. In fact her claim seems to be accurate,
whether she knows it or not.

(from Daily Kos:)

by MissLaura

Thu Oct 16, 2008 at 09:20:10 AM PDT

Did PBS bury controversial torture documentary under pressure from Bush administration?

Scott
Horton reports today that PBS may have refused to nationally air a
controversial documentary on the use of torture by the U.S. government
in order to protect its funding. Previously, the Bush administration threatened to cut PBS’s funding after it aired Bush’s War, a Frontline special critical of the war in Iraq:

On Thursday evening WNET in New York will air an
important new documentary by Emmy and Dupont Award winning producer
Sherry Jones entitled “Torturing Democracy.” It appears on WNET and
several other affiliates independently because PBS would not run the
show. […]

According to producer Sherry Jones, PBS told her that “no
time slot could be found for the documentary before January 21, 2009″ —
the day after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office.

Watch a clip from Torturing Democracy here.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Ok, my birthday festival - so named because I celebrate from my actual birth date, Oct. 2nd, until the 7th (the doctor who filed out my birth certificate was drinking that day, or something).

Anyway, I celebrated in a literary way by releasing the first part of the final chapter of my book "Banjo Strings" early this morning, after much deadline setting and blowing. It'll take a few days for Mevio (the webhost for the podcast novel) to show hit stats for the latest episode, but I'll be concentrating on the next part of the novel's climax, which includes a wicked ghost sex scene...

Because the wait's been stretching on a bit for the next episode of my podcast novel, I'm going to release the scene I have now and not wait until I finish working on the second scene. Expect "Ch. 21: Vicksburg, Pt. 1" in a few days.

The National Novel Writing Month is coming around again for its November run, which means the forums will soon be cleared out of content. I started my novel topic in 2006, but lost the 06-07 content the first time they cleared the forums, but I have the post NaNo 07 content. Cool...

------------------------------------------------------------------

( Read more... )

By: SilentPatriot, Crooks & Liars



Unlike John McCain, who hasn't held a press conference in 41 days, Barack Obama faced the press today to respond to Paulson and Bernanke's testimony on the proposed $700 billion Wall St. bailout. The Democratic candidate laid out clearly his short-term and long-term goals, and even took questions from the press afterwards. That's what we call real leadership, McCain.

 Download | Play   Download | Play

"This plan cannot be a welfare program for Wall St. executives. The power to spend $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money cannot be left to the discretion of one man no matter who he is or what party he is from. I have great respect for Secretary Paulson, but he cannot act alone."