Quoted: For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens -- certainly better than government meddling.
Quoted:
If you want to know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have survived scandal and crisis, consider this: Over the past decade, they have spent nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions.
But the political tentacles of the mortgage giants extend far beyond their checkbooks.
Quoted: He was remembered Thursday for "love given and love received," at what amounted to a state funeral.
Quoted: The dangerous face of ordinary life has been captured by Iraqis on their mobile phones – reaching the places Western photographers can no longer go. Robert Fisk reports
[tags: middle east, iraq, politics]
Quoted: Robert Fisk: 'Europe has a duty to educate the US about Middle East'
[tags: middle east, politics]
Quoted: Yesterday was the last day of the 2006 Lebanon war, the final chapter of Israel's folly and Hizbollah's hubris, a grisly day of corpse-swapping and refrigerated body parts and coffin after bleak wooden coffin on trucks crossing the Israeli border, which left old Ali Ahmed al-Sfeir and his wife, Wahde, stooped and broken with grief. Ali had a grizzled grey beard and stood propped on a stick while Wahde held a grey-tinged photograph of a young man – her son Ahmed, born in 1970.
[tags: politics, middle east]
Quoted: New technology could turn your windows into solar panels or improve the efficiency of existing solar cells, reducing the cost of solar power, says a new report.
[tags: solar]
Quoted: Tests that look for genetic variations linked to a number of common diseases are now available over the Internet. But a patient who walks into the doctor's office with a thick file of genetic information will probably find that the doctor has no idea what to do with it. A new project, launched in December by the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, in Camden, NJ, aims to change that.
Quoted: According to Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. By posing his hypothesis at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, Tegmark is harking back to the ancient Greeks with the oldest of the old questions: What is real?
[tags: universe, mathematics]
Quoted: Flavonoids are thought to help protect the body from cancer because of their antioxidant properties. They help the body neutralize certain free radicals that can trigger the cellular activity that may lead to cancer.
Melatonin — a substance present in red wine and some foods and that humans naturally produce in small amounts — is thought to delay the oxidative damage and inflammatory processes typical of old age.
Resveratrol is produced naturally by grape skins during red wine's fermentation process. Several studies have suggested that resveratrol may explain the "French paradox" — why the French appear to be able to consume a diet higher in fat than the norm while enjoying a comparatively lower incidence of heart disease.
Quoted: An implantable device that blocks a stomach nerve has shown promise in treating obesity in a less invasive way than traditional surgery, a study has found.
The device is implanted under the skin in the abdomen and is regulated by patients through a switch.
It emits a low-level electrical charge that blocks the vagal nerve, which signals a person when to eat. This blocking causes obese patients to feel full after a normal-sized meal rather than to continue eating.
Quoted: “Every culture and subculture gets the drugs that it deserves,” writes Douglas Rushkoff in his forward to Tim Pilcher’s e: The Incredibly Strange History of Ecstasy, “In fact, almost every major cultural movement in history can be traced back to the chemicals it did or did not have.” This is a profound point -- it makes sense that the Thirty Years War was fought by people who had beer soup with a side of beer from breakfast, lunch and supper from the time they were three, and that the English Romantic poets were drowning in opium dreams, and that today’s Los Angeles scenesters are enjoying a Molotov cocktail of ketamine and crystal meth. The human hunger for altered states of consciousness runs the gamut from beautiful to destructive, with a good dose of the pathetic and banal thrown in along the way.
Quoted: "The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively it explains that humor occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter," explained author Alastair Clarke, a British science writer.
Quoted: Humans can already form social bonds with robots, but the real trick may be getting AI equally interested in us
[tags: AI, artificial intelligence]
Quoted: A new method for efficient embryonic stem cell differentiation may contribute to the development of techniques for using stem cells as ‘spare parts’ for body organs and tissues. In a study conducted at the Georgia Tech University, researchers found a way to control the differentiation of stem cells into specific cell types by incorporating the proteins needed for this process directly into the cell aggregates, instead of into the cell's culture dish. The scientists hope this new approach will improve differentiation methods and will eventually lead to the development of cell replacement therapies.
Quoted: Alberto Morpurgo and his team of researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently attached a micrometer-thick crystal of an organic polymer to a similarly thin organic crystal of a second polymer creating a thin but strongly conducting channel along the junction that acts like a metal. The discovery could lead to a whole new way of making electronics from non-metallic materials, and even new superconductors.
[tags: electronics]
Quoted: Scientists from the California NanoSystems Institute and Northwestern University have developed a nanovalve that releases drugs under certain conditions, like different pH levels. The valve can be used for targeted drug delivery to cells differing in their physiological characters or to cells expressing certain enzymes. Potentially, the nanovalve could be used as a "smart weapon" in the fight against a host of diseases including cancer.
[tags: health]
Quoted: Scientists at the University of Sydney have developed a switch that would allow the internet to become 60 times faster than current networks. Taking four years to complete, the switch is created using a small scratch on a piece of glass. The scratch will mean almost instantaneous error free access to the internet anywhere in the world, announced by Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) at the Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference (OECC) held in Sydney this July.
[tags: internet]
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