Most of us get a little excited when we see a big spider, but for the
unfortunate few who fall victim to the bite of the daunting Brazilian
wandering spider, that “excitement” takes on a whole new meaning: The
venom of the wandering spider -- also known as the banana spider (or
more formally Phoneutria nigriventer) causes erections in men.
“The venom of the P. nigriventer
spider is a very rich mixture of several molecules,” says Dr. Kenia
Nunes, a physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia who is currently
studying the odd side effect. “These molecules are called toxins, and
then we have various toxins in this venom with different activity.
Because of this, when a human is bitten by this spider, we can observe
many different symptoms including priapism, a condition in which the
penis is continually erect.”
In addition to the hours-long painful
erection, the wandering spider’s bite can cause loss of muscle control,
severe pain, difficulty breathing and, if not treated, death, due to
oxygen deprivation (with anti-venom, the victim usually recovers within a
week.)
Luckily, deaths from this impressive creature – it boasts a
leg span of four to five inches – aren’t all that common. According to a
website
maintained by Rod Crawford, curator of arachnids at the University of
Washington’s Burke Museum, “authoritative sources state that over 7,000
authentic cases of human bites from these spiders have been recorded,
with only around 10 known deaths.”
Usually found on banana plantations in the tropics, wandering spiders do tend to, uh, wander, though, with recent sightings reported at a Whole Foods in Tulsa, Oklahoma and an IGA store in Russell, Manitoba and a biting reported in Somerset, England in 2005.
But
while the spider’s bite may be painful – or even deadly -- its oddball
venom may actually prove to be a valuable asset when it comes to
treating erectile dysfunction in men.
“In Brazil, we have several
reports of human accidents involving this spider and priapism as a
symptom,” says Nunes, who recently published a study in the Journal of
Sexual Medicine on the spider venom and its potential use in treating
ED. “So we started to investigate which part of the venom – which toxin –
would be responsible for this symptom. We found the toxin responsible
and performed experiments using hypertensive rats which have severe
erectile dysfunction. The toxin was able to normalize the erectile
function in these animals.”
After isolating the toxin (known as
PnTx2-6), Nunes and her colleagues then studied the mechanism of action
and found that the toxin acts in a different pathway as compared with
other erectile dysfunction drugs, such as Viagra.
“This is good
because we know that some patients don’t respond to the conventional
therapy,” she says. “This could be an optional treatment for
them.”
Does the Brazilian wandering spider venom hold any potential benefits for sexually dysfunctional women?
Nunes
says she hasn’t performed any experiments “to investigate the action of
this toxin in females yet,” but she intends to do it “soon.”
ContributorNetwork - The Oscars are the grand finale of awards
season, and rightfully so. They honor the best in film, singling out the
most prestigious Hollywood has to offer. For the film industry, there
is no bigger honor. While many applaud the acting, directing and writing
of films, many ignore...
(more...)
Filed under: Justin Bieber, TMZ TV
February 21, 2011 will forever be known as THE DAY JUSTIN
BIEBER CUT HIS BEAUTIFUL HAIR . Life as we know it will NEVER be the
same. Never. Ever, ever. Check out TMZ on TV -- click here to see your
local listings!...
(more...)
Considering Justin Bieber seems to have taken over the world, would
it surprise anyone to see him starring in an action movie?
Here's the deal...
PHOTOS: Check out G.I. Joe...
(more...)
We're live in an L.A. courtroom where Chris Brown and his legal team
will ask a judge to lift the restraining order prohibiting him from
going near his ex-girlfriend Rihanna . // NOTE : The screen will be
black until the hearing starts ... so don't fret.…...
(more...)
Actress DREW BARRYMORE has finally moved on from her on/off
relationship with JUSTIN LONG - she's dating the son of former Chanel
boss ARIE KOPELMAN.The Charlie's Angels star remained close to Long
after they ended their year-long romance in 2008, but it appears she's
put an end to their love afte...
(more...)
A restraining order forbidding R&B star CHRIS BROWN to be in the
same room as his ex-girlfriend RIHANNA has been lifted in Los
Angeles.Rihanna's lawyers recently agreed to reduce the restraining
order hanging over the Kiss Kiss singer after his lawyer complained it
restricted his career - and...
(more...)
Filed under: Chris Brown, Rihanna, Celebrity Justice
Award shows just got a little less awkward for Chris Brown and
Rihanna ... because a judge just lifted the restraining order
prohibiting him from going near her . Brown appeared in court mome...
(more...)
Filed under: Deena Nicole Cortese, Jersey Shore
She doesn't have a catchy nickname or any discernible talent,
but that's not stopping " Jersey Shore " cast member Deena Nicole
Cortese from positioning herself to make a little dough off her
newfound...
(more...)
Teen singing sensation Justin Bieber sent his fans into a frenzy
Tuesday when he tweeted that he cut his sweeping bangs into a shorter,
spikier hairdo.
On the set of his new music video with Rascal Flatts, Bieber tweeted
"yeah so it's true...i got a lil haircut...i like it...and we are giv...
(more...)
Localised brain activity rose in line with the strength of the electromagnetic field from a mobile phone. Photograph: Alamy
Radio waves from mobile phones
appear to boost activity in parts of the brain that are closest to the
devices' antennas, according to US government scientists.
Researchers
found that a 50-minute call led to a localised increase in brain
activity of 7%, but they said there was no evidence to suggest the rise
was harmful.
To rule out the variation in brain activity
that would be expected when someone listens to a call normally, changes
in brain were monitored while the phone was taking a call but was muted.
The team, led by Nora Volkow,
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Maryland, found
that brain activity rose in line with the strength of the
electromagnetic field to which the particular brain region was exposed.
Mobile
phones use radio waves to send and receive calls and these produce
small electromagnetic fields that can be absorbed by the head and brain.
"Although
we cannot determine the clinical significance, our results give
evidence that the human brain is sensitive to the effects of
radio-frequency electromagnetic fields from acute cellphone exposures,"
Dr Volkow said. The study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The
dramatic rise in mobile phone use around the world has prompted
concerns about possible harmful effects, including brain tumours. Last
year, the much-delayed Interphone report found no hard evidence that mobile phones increase the risk of cancer, but the issue remains unresolved.
In
the new study, 47 volunteers were given two brain scans, each on
different days. The scans, which used a technique called positron
emission tomography (PET), were designed to monitor changes in the way
the brain metabolised glucose, the fuel it needs to function.
Before
being scanned, the volunteers had a mobile phone positioned against
each ear. In one scan, both phones were switched off. But in the other
scan, the phone on the right ear was switched on, muted, and set to
receive a lengthy recorded message. The volunteers were not told which
scan was which.
When they compared scans taken in these two
different scenarios, Volkow's team discovered a pattern of increased
brain activity in the right orbitofrontal cortex and the lower parts of
the right superior temporal gyrus. In these areas of the brain, glucose
metabolism rose from 33.3 to 35.7 micromoles of glucose per 100g each
minute.
Brain activity can rise a lot more than this when a
person simply looks at images on a screen. In 2006, Andrei Vlassenko at
Washington University School of Medicine reported that viewing images could boost brain activity by between six and 51%. Vokow said these rises were caused by thinking about images, while mobile phones appeared to boost activity "artificially".
She
said it was unclear how mobile phone radiation might affect brain
metabolism and added that more studies were needed to investigate
whether the effects could be harmful to health. Since completing the
study she has started using an earpiece with her mobile phone, a move
she described as "conservative, not paranoid".
However, if
increases in brain activity caused by mobile phone use are found to be
harmless, Volkow said, the phenomenon could be exploited to stimulate
patients who have underactive brain areas.
Back in October when Skype 5.0 client software appeared, it was heralded as a good thing all round. It integrated Skype's audio and video conferencing into Facebook's
social media management, allowing Skype users to view and comment on
Facebook friends' posts, and to communicate with them via SMS and
Skype's voice service.
So far so good, but just over a month ago, a strange quirk emerged at
many companies and schools that cast a shadow over the whole thing. As
of the aftermath of Presidents' Day, that shadow is still looming.
Towards the end of January, help desks like the one I manage started to
receive a lot of foot traffic from Skype users. Something that looked a
lot like a Trojan or virus was making Internet Explorer windows open
repeatedly, stacking error message on top of error message
in a cascade of spawning windows. A quick speed-read of the error
message pointed towards Facebook--a site that's blocked by many
corporate Web filters as not related to business.
The hapless clients who brought in their machines insisted that they'd
not been trying to get into Facebook, but every one of them did have a
Skype client loaded.
The mystery deepened upon visiting Skype's support site. Skype users
were complaining about the issue, wondering whether the Skype client was
carrying a virus.
"Our Anti Virus has come up clean, as has MalwareBytes, Spybot Search
and Destroy, Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, HiJackThis, and
AdAware," said one post, which went on to say that uninstalling the
program and installing the latest version did not fix the problem.
The early consensus was that removing Skype 5.0 software completely was the most effective fix. Reverting to Skype 4.0 also worked.
While this did fix the issue, it didn't come to grips with the
underlying cause--and Skype staff did not weigh in on their support
forum to provide any guidance. In the end, a conversation among several
Skype clients came up with a quick and effective solution: Turn off
Facebook integration in the Skype 5.0 client. Sure enough, that fixed
it. It turned off the much-vaunted features of the new software, but it
was worth the sacrifice.
Yep, the spawning Facebook windows were not caused by a virus; it was
likely a case of poor programming. Why else would Skype 5.0 keep looking
for Facebook when WebSense and other content filtering programs keep
saying "Site blocked"? That's the most likely explanation and as of now,
Skype doesn't seem to have offered any other reason.
All this came to light almost exactly a month ago, but in the
post-Presidents' Day holiday rush, our help desk is still getting cases
of Skype 5.0 related spawning pop-up windows.
In a finger-pointing frenzy, it's possible to blame Skype, WebSense,
and other content filtering software, or the administrators who choose
to block social networking sites from their company networks. But in the
long run, the path of least resistance is the same: Just say no to Facebook integration until the bug is fixed.
Here's how to do it for yourself:
1. Brace yourself for multiple browser windows.2. Launch Skype.3. Use Alt-Tab
on your keyboard to get through the spawning windows to Skype.4. Click
on the Facebook tab in the right pane of the Skype window.5. Click on
the link labeled "Don't Show Facebook In Skype."
This will halt the insane flow of new browser windows. But to get rid of them, you'll probably want to restart your system. Matt Lake is an author, award-winning technology journalist and technical services coordinator in the field of education.
A Cambridge Uni prof has provocatively suggested that sheep aren't
actually as thick as a Fair Isle woollen sweater, and can match humans
in the tricky task of identifying food amid a confusion of buckets.
Neuroboffin Jenny Morton herded a flock of Welsh mountain sheep and
presented them with variously-coloured buckets, only one of which
contained nosh.
Incredibly, the sheep were able to find nourishment in the same number of attempts it takes a monkey or a human, viz: seven.
Prof Morton said: "They have a reputation for being extremely dim, so
I didn't expect them to be so amenable to testing and certainly didn't
expect them to be so smart. In our tests they performed at a level very
similar to monkeys and humans in the initial learning tasks.
"When we then changed the rules they still performed as well as
monkeys and better than rodents. They are quite intelligent animals –
they seem to be able to recognise people and even respond when you call
their name."
Traditional journalistic rigour demands that we cast a sceptical eye over this science-light report of Morton's findings in the Evening Standard and conduct an in-depth analysis of her methodology.
In this case, however, we're not going to bother, since we're pretty
certain that if we sit a sheep in front of a Sudoku and suggest that if
it solves the puzzle in less than 20 minutes it won't end up the oven,
it'll be lamb cutlets at Vulture Central tonight.
And while we're licking the sheep fat from our fingers, we'd like to
challenge Morton to answer one of the great questions of our age: are gay sheep more intelligent than their bovine counterparts, and are either smarter than homosexual flamingos? ®
• Products of 10 companies fail to satisfy in Zurich trial • International Board meets on 5 March to make decision
A shot from Frank Lampard crossed the Germany line
in England's World Cup last-16 match in June, but a goal was not
awarded. Photograph: Joern Pollex/Getty Images
Fifa's
plans to introduce goal-line technology have suffered a setback after
every one of the 10 companies which took part in trials last week failed
to meet the criteria set by the world game's governing body. As
revealed in this column last month,
firms expressing an interest in providing the technology were invited
to Zurich to test their equipment in daytime and nighttime conditions.
A
difficult environment probably contributed to the companies' problems.
The artificial pitch made matters tricky for those companies who would
seek to run cables around the goalmouth. The lack of a stadium and of a a
crowd, with thousands of fans carrying mobile phones, also made
conditions unrealistic. Hawk-Eye, the most established technology having
already conducted stadium testing at Reading, declined even to take
part in apparent anticipation of the difficult environment.
Companies
had only a few months to strive for Fifa's criteria – 100% accuracy and
relaying results back to the officials within one second – and it
proved too exacting a task. But some influential individuals at Fifa
still wish to launch the technology at a Fifa tournament before possible
implementation at the 2014 World Cup.
"The results of the tests
will go to the International Football Association Board meeting [at
Celtic Manor on 5 March] and it will decide," said a Fifa spokesman. But
the game's law-making body has previously opposed technology's
introduction.
A proposal of the Uefa president, Michel Platini,
for additional match officials, is also set to be discussed: it seems
the best the inventors can hope for is a permit to carry on testing.
Argyle's skewed justice
Ask
the Football League why a 10-point penalty was this week levied against
Plymouth Argyle and it says it acted to protect the integrity of its
competition. Clubs must repay their debts, and after the club sought
bankruptcy protection from the courts the League felt it had to act.
It certainly applied its rules correctly but the rule itself is in this case misguided. Plymouth only intends
to appoint an administrator: it has not yet. It could well do so once
the court's 10-day grace period expires, since a buyer may well not be
found. Still, stricken though Argyle undoubtedly is, it has yet to
demand its creditors receive only a fraction of what they are owed.
Indeed,
the only effect of applying the sanction now and not on 3 March is for
the club, now bottom of the League One table, to become a less
attractive proposition, making administration more likely. The League's
insolvency rules are there to prevent clubs from turbo-charging their
teams with unaffordable debts, skewing competitive balance. So compare
Sheffield Wednesday's situation in December, when Milan Mandaric took
over after the Co-operative Bank agreed to take a £15m hit on the club's
£24m debt: no sanction was levied.
With Wednesday freely reducing
their liabilities and Argyle penalised even before that has happened,
the balance of justice has been skewed.
Hicks may get shirty
The
Sport+Markt/PR Marketing report into the amounts spent on individual
football clubs' merchandising goods puts Liverpool in third place. Dr
Peter Rohlmann's study into how much money clubs are generating for
themselves and their licensing partners through the sales of shirts and
club shop tat is a fair barometer of a club's brand value. And so, with
Tom Hicks claiming in the high court that he was left £140m out of
pocket in the £300m enforced sale of the club last year, it might
interest him that Arsenal (enterprise value £850m) did not even appear
in a top 10 of clubs that did include Lyon and Fenerbahce.
The offence? Parody
Twitter's
clampdown on some of the funniest parodies in football has put a lot of
online fans' noses out of joint. Two of football's great satirists,
@AndyDTownsend and @Thebig_Sam, have had their accounts shut down. After
being put in touch with "Andy Townsend" – in real life, the Doncaster
Rovers fan Glenn Wilson – by When Saturday Comes, it appears that
Twitter acted after claiming such accounts offend its parody policy.
Since "Townsend" had 5,000 followers and "Sam Allardyce" a staggering
40,000, there must be many supporters who are lamenting the silence of
voices that captured their subjects so well.
D'Banj And Kanye West Collabo?
This
kid from Nigeria seems to be following in the footsteps of one Aliaune
Thiam, aka, Akon. You would think he would still be excited after the
successful collaboration with Hip Hop legend, Snoop Dogg on the Mr
Endowed Remix.
Hot96
has fired presenter Bernard Oduor (Papa Shaq) who was suspended a month
ago. In a statement sent to us, Papa Shaq, has been replaced by a new
presenter Mike Mondo in a reshuffle by the station aimed at "taking its
authoritative positioning in the market".
Anelka rewarded Chelsea's dominance with the opening goal
Chelsea eased the pressure on manager
Carlo Ancelotti as they cruised to a win over Copenhagen in the first
leg of their last-16 Champions League tie.
Nicolas Anelka seized on a misplaced pass from ex-Blues winger Jesper Gronkjaer to fire the visitors ahead.
The Premier League club added to their lead when Frank Lampard's reverse pass found Anelka and he drove in a second.
Ancelotti's men were dominant but £50m striker Fernando Torres could not register his first goal for the club.
It
was all too easy for Chelsea as the lacklustre Danish champions looked
every bit like a team that had not played a competitive game since 7
December because of their league's winter break.
With the
visitors desperate to keep alive their Champions League hopes after
being knocked out of the FA Cup last Saturday and their chances of
defending their Premier League crown seemingly over, Copenhagen had a
chance to add to Chelsea's misery.
Torres had his chances but a first Chelsea goal eluded him
Instead, a timid home side stood off their opponents and the Blues
were too good not to take advantage and earn a commanding lead for the
return leg at Stamford Bridge on 16 March.
Ancelotti paired
Anelka with Torres in attack as Didier Drogba dropped to the bench and
the duo, helped by some poor defending, responded with a performance of
hunger and desire, which was also epitomised by their team-mates.
Anelka
grabbed the glory with the goals but, if the finishing prowess of
Torres had been as clinical as his partner's, the Spaniard would have
scored his first goal for Chelsea since his January move from Liverpool.
However, while Anelka ruthlessly punished Gronkjaer by powering
in a shot from just inside the edge of the area to put the Blues in
front after 17 minutes, Torres failed to round off some of his pace and
movement with a goal.
The Spanish forward's first real chance
came when an off-target Ramires shot left him with a sight of goal but
his first touch let him down and allowed Copenhagen keeper Johan Wiland
to fend away the danger.
Torres jinked his way into a promising
opening as he produced the type of play which unnerves defenders, but
his poked shot was again saved by Wiland.
A lunging Mathias Jorgensen tackle was next to foil Torres as Chelsea dominated proceedings but failed to add to their lead.
Copenhagen
appeared to be fearful of the Blues and this was apparent when Anelka
was allowed the time and space to turn and shoot at goal with his effort
going high.
Visiting keeper Petr Cech was belatedly called into
action when he had a Martin Vingaard long-range shot to save after the
break.
The Danes had drawn against Barcelona at the Parken
Stadium in the group stages earlier this season but could not rediscover
the same sort of form as they looked a yard off the pace.
And
Chelsea wrapped things up when Anelka again showed Torres how to finish
with a first-time shot from Lampard's exquisite pass.
After a
faltering season, it was a welcome win for Ancelotti's side and a
surprisingly comfortable one given the fact Copenhagen had never before
suffered defeat at home in the Champions League.
'Born This Way' singer promotes safe sex and MAC lipstick on 'Good Morning America.'
Lady Gaga on "Good Morning America" on ThursdayYou might have done a double take on Thursday morning (February 17) if
you were having your morning coffee while watching "Good Morning
America." Yes, that was Lady Gaga up bright and early, and yes, she did
say she was wearing a "latex-condom-inspired outfit" as part of her bid
to promote AIDS awareness.
Four days after her instantly legendary entrance at the Grammy Awards in an egg-shaped vessel,
the singer donned a flesh-colored latex sheath dress with matching
shoes and a sculptural off-white hat to talk with "GMA" host Robin
Roberts.
"MAC has been fighting for identity and for passion and love and protection for so long," said Gaga of the MAC brand
of cosmetics, which she said raised $34 million last year through its
Viva Glam lipstick brand for HIV/AIDS-related causes, some of it
courtesy of an ad campaign starring Gaga and singer Cyndi Lauper. The
goal this year, said Gaga, again sporting the alien-inspired facial
ridges that seem to be part of her latest persona, was to raise $50
million.
She then gave Roberts a sample of the taupe lipstick and lip "glass" that she designed for MAC, which gives 100 percent of Viva Glam proceeds to AIDS/HIV prevention.
"I want to get people started at home at a younger age with their
children talking about HIV, talking about AIDS, talking about safe
sex," she explained. "My mother talked to me about sex at a young age,
and she always taught me to be self-aware — that's in my new song, 'Born
This Way.' I say 'My momma told me when I was young ...' My first
experience with my mother that I remember mostly was when she would put
her lipstick on in the morning and she would talk to me about life."
The bottom line, self-described activist and social-justice
fighter Gaga said, was to speak to the people in your life about safe
sex in order to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Gaga also talked about her "genuine shock" at hearing her name called at the Grammys on Sunday night when she won the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance award for "Bad Romance."
"I so genuinely did not think I was going to win," she said. "I
really didn't, and I was so shocked and so honored and so humbled. And
it was a very joyous day to sing 'Born This Way' for the first time."
Staying on message, Gaga then tied in the theme of the song with
her MAC line, saying it is shame and stigma around the difficulty of
talking to children about sex and AIDS that makes people not protect
themselves.
" 'Born This Way' is about self-love, and MAC AIDS Fund is about
self-love. ... It is so much bigger than me," she said. "It's not about
me at all. The song, when I wrote it, I just knew it was destined to
reach so many people all over the world. The most humbling thing for me
this past weekend is watching the fans harness onto the record and ...
really enjoying the music and feeing uplifted and a sense of
positivity."
US President Barack Obama has met Silicon Valley bosses, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Apple's Steve Jobs and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt were also present at the private get-together in California.
The president had been seeking the views of technology leaders as he works to turn around his country's ailing economy.
Mr Obama has said he wants to encourage American businesses to invest more money in innovation.
Among those meeting the president were the bosses of Twitter, Yahoo and Oracle.
Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs was in attendance, despite media reports that his health had taken a turn for the worse.
US newspaper the National Enquirer published pictures, said to be of Mr Jobs, looking emaciated.
He is currently on his third medical leave of absence from Apple since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004.
Thursday's meeting with the president was a private event, hosted by venture capitalist John Doerr.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, has warned that civil war could hit the country.
His comments came in a lengthy TV address to the nation broadcast as anti-government protests spread to the capital Tripoli.
He offered significant political reforms, and admitted that
the police and army had made "mistakes", but said the death toll was
lower than reported.
Human Rights Watch says at least 233 people have died since last Thursday.
It urged governments to tell Libya to stop the unlawful
killing of protesters amid accounts of authorities using live ammunition
against them. 'Shot in the head'
Earlier reports said Col Gaddafi had fled Libya, prompting
crowds to come out on to the streets of Tripoli to celebrate, but his
son told state TV viewers that his father remained in Libya "leading the
battle".
On Sunday evening, witnesses spoke of tear gas and live ammunition being used against protesters by the security forces.
A man who attended a rally in Tripoli's central Green Square
said snipers on rooftops had fired indiscriminately into the crowd using
what sounded like machine guns.
"People were shot in the head and in the back. I've now taken
refuge in my home. I'm afraid to leave. There is a climate of fear," he
told the BBC.
Unconfirmed reports that African mercenaries were being deployed against protesters again surfaced, as they have in Benghazi.
This was one of the strangest political speeches I have ever watched or listened to.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi blamed everyone from foreigners, exiles, drug addicts, Islamists and the media for the crisis.
He offered almost unlimited concessions - but warned of civil war if the trouble continued.
Then came the threat: His father Col Gaddafi would fight till the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.
The Libyan leader's son seemed completely to have missed the
gravity of the crisis. It will surely only redouble the determination of
Libyans to get rid of the regime. They know they face fearful
retribution should Col Gaddafi somehow hang on to power.
In the hours before Saif
Gaddafi's speech was broadcast, crowds in Tripoli could be heard
chanting slogans calling for the toppling of the regime.
Verifying information from Libya has been difficult amid a
government crackdown on the internet and media communications, but
credible reports suggest a police station in the capital was burnt down
and a building belonging to the country's ruling party was also attacked
and set ablaze.
Security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition in the
Gourghi area of the city, according to witnesses, but there were no
immediate reports of casualties.
Hundreds of Libyans, some armed with knives and guns,
attacked a South Korean-run construction site west of Tripoli, an
unnamed official at South Korea's foreign ministry told Reuters news
agency.
It sparked a clash in which at least 15 Bangladeshi and three
South Korean employees of the site were hurt - two of the Bangladeshis
with serious stab wounds.
South Korean companies have worked on hundreds of construction projects in Libya in recent decades.
Benghazi, the country's second city, appears to be largely
under the control of protesters after four days of unrest. Unconfirmed
reports say an army general there has defected to the opposition.
Hospitals in the city are said to be struggling to cope with
casualties, with one doctor saying he had received 50 bodies on Sunday
afternoon alone.
Fresh demonstrations have been reported in cities including Tobruk, al-Bayda and Misrata.
In another blow to Col Gaddafi's rule, representatives of the Warfla tribe, Libya's biggest, have endorsed the protests.
The leader of the eastern al-Zuwayya tribe threatened to cut
oil exports unless authorities halted what he called the "oppression of
protesters", Reuters reported.
Libya's envoy to the Arab League, Abdel Moneim al-Honi,
announced he was "joining the revolution" and its ambassador to India,
Ali al-Essawi, told the BBC he was resigning in protest at his
government's violent crackdown on demonstrators. 'Drunkards and thugs'
In his rambling TV address - the first comment on the unrest
by a senior figure from the Libyan leadership - Saif Gaddafi poured
scorn on protesters, talking of "drunkards and thugs" driving tanks
about the streets of Benghazi.
In his speech, Saif Gaddafi criticised the foreign media for
what he termed their exaggeration of the extent of the violence in
Libya.
He said opposition groups and outsiders were trying to
transform Libya into a group of small states. If they succeeded, he
said, foreign investment would stop and living standards would drop
drastically.
Troops had opened fire on protesters because they were not trained to handle civil unrest, he argued.
But he warned that if a civil war started, Libyans would be
"mourning hundreds and thousands of casualties", and Libya would slide
back to "colonial" rule.
A US official quoted by Reuters news agency said Washington
was weighing "all appropriate actions" in response to Libya's violent
crackdown, and was analysing Saif Gaddafi's speech.
European Union foreign ministers were set to condemn the
repression of protesters in Libya, according to the draft of a joint
statement to be agreed at their meeting later on Monday.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague earlier told the Libyan
leader's son in a phone call of London's "grave concern" at the
escalation of violence.
Col Gaddafi is the Arab world's longest-serving leader, having ruled the oil-rich state since a coup in 1969.
The Middle East region is seeing a wave of pro-democracy
protest, fuelled by the fall of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak on 11 February,
and long-time Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.
Yale boffins have built a laser light cancelling device roughly analogous to noise-cancelling headphones.
Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) beams
are made by pumping electricity or light into a device composed of two
opposing mirrors and a so-called gain medium, such as gallium arsenide,
between them. One of the mirrors is partially transparent. The gain
medium, excited by the applied electricity or light, emits photons which
bounce back and forth between the mirrors and the amount of light
involved is amplified as more photons are emitted.
The device is a resonant optical cavity and the emitted photons
oscillate between the two mirrors, with some escaping as an intense beam
of coherent light through the partially transparent mirror, as the
number of photons in the device continually increases.
"Coherence" means the laser beam is made of light waves with a single frequency and amplitude.
So we have light waves oscillating back and forth within the device. According to the El Reg
science 101 manual, if a light wave travelling one way meets a light
wave travelling the other way that has the same wavelength but is an
inverse of itself, the two waves should cancel each other out. Put
another way, if the incoming light enters what is effectively a loss
medium instead of a gain medium it should disappear.
Laser killer chase
The laser killer chase was started last year when a team, led by Yale
University physicist A Douglas Stone, published a paper theorising that
a laser-killing device could be built using common or garden silicon.
He then worked with another team of boffins led by Hui Cao at Yale, and
they built and demonstrated a 1cm device, a Coherent Perfect Absorber
(CPA) that worked almost perfectly, absorbing 99.4 per cent of the
near-infrared laser light shone into it.
The concept is that laser beams of the same wavelength from two laser
sources are shone directly at each other, meeting inside a cavity
containing a silicon wafer, the loss medium, where the wavelengths
bounce back and forth inside the wafer, cancelling each other out.
The Yale release says: "The wafer aligned the light waves in such a
way that they became perfectly trapped, bouncing back and forth
indefinitely until they were eventually absorbed and transformed into
heat."
The boffins think they can build a device absorbing 99.999 per cent
of incoming light, which measures only six microns across. They also
expect to be able to absorb light at wavelengths visible to the human
eye by altering the cavity dimensions and the loss medium.
The scientists say possible uses of the technology include an optical
computer and radiological imaging or treatment of the human body for
diseases such as cancer.
The device isn't exactly analogous to noise-cancelling
headphones, as it doesn't generate the sound needed to cancel out
incoming sound at certain wavelengths. However this is only a first
step. It also can't function well as a defensive shield against laser
light beams as, a) you need to generate an exactly identical opposing
beam, and b) the absorbed light becomes heat, which would fry the
shield.
Read more in the 18 February issue of Science (subscription). ®
SKY SPORTS ON SKY There's more live
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Click here for more.
Arsene Wenger was quick to pay tribute to Leyton Orient after seeing them hold Arsenal to a 1-1 draw.
The Gunners arrived at Brisbane Road on Sunday as overwhelming
favourites to book a safe passage into the quarter-finals of the FA Cup.
They
will, however, have to see off Orient at Emirates Stadium in a replay
if they are to face off against Premier League title rivals Manchester United in the last eight.
A Tomas Rosicky header had them well-placed to get the job done over the weekend, but Jonathan Tehoue snatched a dramatic late leveller to leave the Gunners frustrated.
Wenger
conceded afterwards that his side had been short of their best, but
feels the dogged determination displayed by Orient made life difficult
for his troops.
"We have played the game with the right attitude and could not fault our fighting spirit, but you also have to give credit to Leyton Orient because they never gave up and fought very hard," said the French tactician.
"As long as you do not score the second goal, that can happen.
"Overall it is a disappointment, but we are still in the competition and will now play at home.
"The most important thing is to go through.
"You had a match against a team which is technically superior, but fighting spirit has a chance."
Breather
Wenger,
though, continued: "The most negative side of our result today is one
more fixture and in fairness that is not what we needed.
"We have had problems in the cups against teams from the lower divisions to finish them off, but also we have given a lot.
"Sometimes, mentally, a breather would not be bad.
"What
people forget is that since the beginning of December, we have played
every three days, so sometimes to have a week where we could give the
players a little breather would not be bad."
While he could do without another game, Wenger insists he does begrudge Orient their big night out at the Emirates.
He
added: "It will make their budget for the season, if not more, and to
scrap that off would be a blow to all the smaller clubs in England.
"They suffer already, so you would not have a lot of supporters to do that (scrap replays)."
SHANGHAI (AFP) – China's Renren, which started out as
a Facebook clone, is eyeing a US listing that could make it the first
social networking site to go public, a report said Monday.
The company plans to raise about $500 million in an initial public offering managed by Deutsche Bank, among others, the Financial Times reported, citing two unnamed people close to the situation.
Company officials were not immediately available for comment.
The Chinese site, whose name means "everyone" and was founded a year
after Facebook in 2005, has 160 million users and is the most popular
social networking site in China, where government censors have blocked
Facebook.
With Facebook not yet listed, Renren could become the target for
investors seeking to cash in on the social networking sector, the Financial Times said.
The situation is the same for microblogging sites. Twitter is not
public, but investors can buy stock in Chinese Internet giants Sina,
Tencent or Sohu, which all operate Twitter-like -- closely monitored --
services.
Renren does not publish financial data but has said its advertising
revenues more than doubled last year and in 2009, the newspaper
reported.
Arsenal keeper Wojciech Szczesny shows the Invisible Woman a real good time
Crazy keeper’s joyous celebration
Arsenal’s incredible Champions League turnaround against Barcelona
felt so good that goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny was compelled to start
humping thin air and show the world his sex face.
Anti-laser graphic (Yidong Chong, Yale University)
in the last eight.
