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First veterinary corneal implant procedure in
U.S. performed

post from Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money on 12 May 2008 01:16:26 PM. © Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money

Sinisa Grozdanic, an assistant professor of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at Iowa State University, performed the surgery that restored sight to 7-year-old Dixie, a Mountain Cur breed owned by Brett Williams of Runnells.

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http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/first-veterinary-corneal-implant-procedure-us-perf
ormed-16347.html

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Birds in the News 130

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 12 May 2008 12:59:59 PM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter

Common Pochard, Aythya ferina (Hiroshima, Japan).

Image: Bardiac [larger].

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/grrlscientist/~3/288796149/birds_in_t
he_news_130.php

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Latest Climate Action Sheet: Upcomming UK Events

post from Climate Change Action on 12 May 2008 12:51:00 PM. © Climate Change Action

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http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2008/05/latest-climate-action-sheet-upcom
ming.html

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Older persons with more schooling spend fewer
years with cognitive loss

post from Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money on 12 May 2008 12:16:07 PM. © Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money

Those with at least a high school education spend more of their older years without cognitive loss ? including the effects of Alzheimer?s, Parkinson?s and dementia -- but die sooner after the loss becomes apparent, reveals a new study appearing in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Aging and Health.

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http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/older-persons-more-schooling-spend-fewer-years-cog
nitive-loss-16345.html

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Vaccines do not cause autism!

post from Bad Astronomy Blog on 12 May 2008 11:51:26 AM. © Bad Astronomy Blog

I just can’t make this any clearer. Vaccines do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, in multiple ways. The removal of the MMR (mumps-measles-rubella) vaccine in Japan did not lead to a decline in the number of cases of autisms diagnosed; instead the number of children falling in the autism spectrum increased. [...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/288770388/

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Could "dark energy" be a sign of Earth's special
place in the universe

post from Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money on 12 May 2008 11:04:36 AM. © Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money

Ever since Copernicus placed the Sun at the center of the universe instead of the Earth, scientific discoveries have been repeatedly making our home planet less special and more ordinary. But could the "principle of mediocrity" turn out to be wrong in one critical recent discovery--dark matter--and could that discovery really mean something other than what physicists have suggested?

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http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/could-quotdark-energyquot-be-sign-earth039s-specia
l-place-universe-16343.html

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Are Anxiety Disorders All in the Mind

post from Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money on 12 May 2008 11:00:49 AM. © Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money

Using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), researchers in The Netherlands were able to detect biochemical differences in the brains of individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia), providing evidence of a long-suspected biological cause for the dysfunction.

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http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/are-anxiety-disorders-all-mind-16342.html

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Arsenic-Based Therapy Helps Eradicate Leukemia
Initiating Cells

post from Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money on 12 May 2008 10:41:40 AM. © Science Blog - Send lawyers, guns and money

In both leukemia and solid tumors, there exists among the multitude of warrior cancer cells a small subgroup that work undercover, patiently lying in wait to launch their attacks. Known as either cancer initiating cells (CICs) or leukemia initiating cells (LICs), these stealth populations are impervious to conventional chemotherapy and undaunted by targeted cancer therapies. When a leukemia patient relapses following a period of remission, it is the LICs that bear responsibility for the disease?s reemergence.

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http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/arsenicbased-therapy-helps-eradicate-leukemia-init
iating-cells-16340.html

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The Enigma Machine

The Enigma machine was once considered unbreakable, and the cracking of the "unbreakable code" by the allies changed the course of World War 2. This week on the podcast we talks to Nadia Baker from the Enigma Project about the history of codes and code-breaking, why the Enigma machine was considered unbreakable, the mathematics behind codes, and how it was finally cracked. The Enigma Project travels all over the United Kingdom and abroad, visiting over 100 schools and organisations, reaching over 12,000 people of all ages every year.

Listen to this show here.

You can read more on the Enigma Machine in this Plus article.
Coincidentally, I did the same course in Science Communication as Nadia, just a few years apart. Funny to meet up in Cambridge!

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MrSciencePodcast/~3/288737790/enigma-machine.html

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True monsters

I have a daughter myself, who I want to grow up to be independent and free and sensible and interesting, so I can't even imagine what it would take to bring a parent to this:

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Yikes. What did she do? Become a mass murderer, a terrorist, a destroyer of entire cultures by acts of destruction?

No, nothing quite so horrific. She was guilty of puppy love.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader Ali is a coward and a monster, the warped product of a bestial 'civilization' that treats half its members as chattel and the other half as little better than junkyard dogs, brutes who will maintain the savage order by denying love and individuality and murdering anyone who does not precisely fit their mandated roles.

Abdel-Qader Ali is not an aberration, not some random psychopath who committed an evil and then, all alone and despised, tries to justify it. No, he's part of a whole culture that favors this violence.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.
…
It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.
'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

They are not men, they are abused dogs. They have no honor; honor is not blind, stupid obedience to a death cult that demands that you murder your children or your sisters for showing signs of humanity.

I count at least three tragedies here.

One is these 'men' who have had their minds corrupted by a foul religion.

The greatest is Rand Abdel-Qader herself, murdered for an infatuation.

The third is one only briefly mentioned: the mother, Leila Hussein. I wonder…does her skin crawl at having to submit to the vile creature who tortured her daughter to death, or is she sufficiently indoctrinated into the evils of her culture that she accepts it? Either way, it's a nightmare.

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Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/pharyngula/~3/288691310/true_monsters
.php

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