SoManyThingz

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it -Charles R. Swindoll

Thursday 7 July 2016

Woman Adopts 21-Year-Old Cat Abandoned By Owner, Creates Bucket List Full Of Adventures

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At the sunset of his life, 21-year-old cat Tigger was left behind by his owner at a local veterinary clinic. Depressed and disoriented, he couldn’t comprehend why. But then Adriene Nicole showed up. She read his story on the Canton Neighbors page and chose to adopt him. She wished to provide him the love and care he deserved.
Unfortunately, Nicole shortly found out that Tigger had kidney failure and a tumor. But that didn’t hold Nicole back: “Though he has kidney failure and we found a tumor, he kicks it like a 12 yr old. We decided to create a bucket list full of random adventures [for Tigger],” she wrote on Facebook.
“Though it might not be much to others, all the little trips outside are a blast for him because he loves to be outdoors… the beach being his favorite so far,” she said. “The most important part is that Tigger’s story just shows how amazing it is to adopt a geriatric pet and give them the best remaining days! He has forever changed our hearts and will hopefully change the hearts of others when it comes to adopting older pets!”


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Saturday 2 July 2016

Here Is The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read Aloud To Her Attacker

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 A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him,” according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her.

One night in January 2015, two Stanford University graduate students biking across campus spotted a freshman thrusting his body on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. This March, a California jury found the former student, 20-year-old Brock Allen Turner, guilty of three counts of sexual assault. Turner faced a maximum of 14 years in state prison. On Thursday, he was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on Turner, a champion swimmer who once aspired to compete in the Olympics — a point repeatedly brought up during the trial.
On Thursday, Turner’s victim addressed him directly, detailing the severe impact his actions had on her — from the night she learned she had been assaulted by a stranger while unconscious, to the grueling trial during which Turner’s attorneys argued that she had eagerly consented.
The woman, now 23, told BuzzFeed News she was disappointed with the “gentle” sentence and angry that Turner still denied sexually assaulting her.
“Even if the sentence is light, hopefully this will wake people up,” she said. “I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.”

Why Belarusians are getting naked at work

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Belarusians are now stripping off in their offices after the president ordered them to "get undressed and work."
Using the hashtag #раздеватьсяиработать -- roughly translating to #GetUndressedAndGoToWork -- people all over the country are sharing nudies on social media.
The president's exclamation seems to have been a Freudian slip, as the phrase "get undressed" (razden'sya) sounds similar to "develop themselves" (razvivat' sebya) in Russian.
Lukashenko expressed his wish during a speech at the 5th Belarusian People's Congress in Minsk. All in all, the speech addressed the importance of technology and innovation in order to lift Belarus from one of its worst economic situations in decades.
The nude flash mob has been picked up outside of Belarus as well, with more and more social media users undressing around the Baltic Sea.

Human organs grown in pigs may help transplant patients, scientists say

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Researchers are in the very early stages of using adult stem cells to grow human organs. The twist: These human organs are being grown inside animals.
Every day, about 22 people in the United States die while waiting for organ transplants, according to federal statistics.
In an attempt to solve the global donor-organ shortage, researchers at the University of California, Davis have created embryos that have both human and pig cells.
These cells are created by taking human stem cells from an adult's skin or hair, using them in a pig embryo and injecting it into the uterus of a pig.
The embryo needs a few weeks to mature for scientists to determine whether the procedure worked, but after 28 days, the pigs' pregnancies were terminated, and the cell remnants were analyzed.
Besides growing organs for transplant patients, this technology may help treat people with life-threatening diseases like diabetes, said scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
Belmonte is working with UC-Davis' Pablo Ross on this research. Their work is being funded in part by the Defense Department and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Getting to the point of creating human-animal hybrid organs is possible because of the combination of two breakthrough techniques in stem cell biology and gene-editing technology.
What is CRISPR Cas9 gene editing?

What is CRISPR Cas9 gene editing? 01:50
Scientists are able to knock out a section of an animal's DNA, such as the pancreas, so a pig embryo won't have the information it needs to make that particular organ.
Then, stem cells come into play. Once injected into the embryo, the adult stem cells will start working on creating a pancreas. Since embryos don't have immune systems, they can't reject the foreign cells.
The next step, which Belmonte said is still a dream, is that old, damaged or sick human organs could be easily replaced, possibly saving thousands of lives each year.

When man and beast unite

What makes stem cells so special is that they can form any type of tissue.
The stem cells are injected into an embryo at such an early stage, when the embryo is just a few cells in a Petri dish, that they can essentially develop into any part of of an animal's body.
That possibility also makes the research controversial.
The mix of human and animal DNA in modern medicine is known as chimera. The name is inspired by a monstrous creature from Greek mythology that is depicted as part lion, part goat and part snake.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health announced in November that it would not support this human-animal research after reviewing a presentation from scientists working in the field.
The institutes' main concern involves the concept of chimeras acquiring a cognitive state. Scientists are essentially asking themselves what happens if human stem cells somehow start to create a human brain inside an animal.
It's a major bioethical question, according to Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center of Ethics at Emory University.
"If you were creating a pig with a heart made from human cells, is that OK? I think it is. There's nothing magical about the human cell," Wolpe said.
But the landscape gets murkier if there's a possibility of an animal experiencing human thoughts, Wolpe explained. Mental cognition is an intrinsically human experience.
"This is pretty crude procedure. We are throwing stem cells into embryonic cells and hoping that it works out. We have to be really careful about that," he said.
On China: Genetically modifying human embryos

On China: Genetically modifying human embryos 01:44
Although the risk of an animal acquiring human consciousness is slim -- their brains are smaller than and different from humans' -- anything is possible, Belmonte said.
"We need to consider all the possibilities. Where the cells go is a major question. They can go to the brain or anywhere," he said.
But the National Institutes of Health's funding ban has drawn criticism from scientists, including Daniel Garry, a cardiologist who leads a chimera project at the University of Minnesota, who said the agency's stance is inhibiting medical progress and creating a stigma around the research.

'Personalizing' the future of medicine

Other than transforming to essentially anything, human stem cells are important in chimera research because they can limit the chance of a human-pig organ being rejected by a transplant patient's body.
"With the compatibility of these cells, this will open the door for personalizing medicine," Belmonte said.
So why grow organs inside a pig, anyway?
The creature's organs are almost the same size as ours, said Walter Low, professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of Neurosurgery.
"The animal is acting as a biological incubator," Low said. "If the stem cells were taken from a patient with diabetes, those stem cells are identical to the patient's own cells."
Low has been using stem cells to treat neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease, a condition that affects the central nervous system.
This idea of chimera organs isn't a new concept, Low explained. In 2010, Japanese scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who is now a stem cell biologist at Stanford University, was able to grow a rat pancreas inside a mouse. This was a huge breakthrough in chimera research because rats and mice are different species.

Saturday 25 June 2016

Russia aim to make Star Trek-style teleportation a reality within 20 years

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Russia aim to make Star Trek-style teleportation a reality within 20 years

If you have been a avid Star Trek follower you may have seen Captain Kirk and Spock beam themselves upto to some different planet as a click of a button. The legendary dialogue by Captain Kirk, ‘Beam Me Up Scotty‘ looks to be reality soon. Russia is embarking on a ambitious Star Trek style teleporatation program and its research program has received financial backing from the Russian government. The program seems to be part of a new Kremlin drive to encourage Russia’s IT sector and high-tech economy.
A proposed multi-trillion pound strategic development program drawn up for Vladimir Putin would seek to develop teleportation by 2035. According to Kommersant, the $2.1 trillion (£1.4 trillion) “road map” for development of the cybernetics market to 2035 also includes developing a Russian computer programming language, secure cybernetic communications, quantum computing, and neural interfaces (direct connections between computers and human brains).
“It sounds fantastical today, but there have been successful experiments at Stanford at the molecular level,” Alexander Galitsky, a prominent investor in the country’s technology sector, told Russia’s Kommersant daily on Wednesday. “Much of the tech we have today was drawn from science fiction films 20 years ago.”
While the concept of people teleporting from one place to another remains in the realm of fantasy, the Star-Trek style target is listed in the National Technological Initiative, a state-sponsored strategic development plan created to fund research and development sector in a number of key sectors.
However, the goal is not as far-fetched as it may sound.
Ilya Massukh, head of the Informational Democracy Fund NGO, told Kommersant that because of science’s rapid development it is necessary to make plans 15 to 20 years in advance.
“It is important to have intermediate goals to have an opportunity to correct the road map and its realization in order not to get involved in knowingly utopian spheres,” he said.
For the first time in 2014, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands presented that it was possible to teleport information programmed into sub-atomic particles between two points three metres apart with 100% dependability.
Even though teleportation remains a remote prospect, experts believe that the next few decades will likely see significant progress in quantum computing and neural interfaces.
Looking to create its own version of Elon Musk’s hyperloop, The network would link Western Russia to the Far East and the northern reaches of the enormous country, with the first section of the network linking St. Petersburg to Moscow in order to transport cargo the 400 miles (640 km) from Baltic Sea terminals.
Earlier this week, Mr Putin showered praise on Russia’s IT sector when he met a team of programmers from St. Petersburg State University who won the 2016 international “Programming Olympiad.”
Russia not only has a talented programming community but also a small and lively software sector that has created many successful IT companies, including Kaspersky Labs and Yandex.
Western governments are also of the opinion that Russia has leveraged its computing talent to make one of the most impressive state-sponsored hacking and cyber-warfare programs in the world.

Meet the guy who refused to sell Kanyeforpresident.com for $80,000

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This guy refused a whoppping $80,000 offer to sell kanyeforpresident.com to Kanye West

You may already know Kanye West who has been making more news off the stage than on it. West who is also married to one the top celebrities of Hollywood, Kim Kardashian managed to deliver one hit album, The Life of Pablo.
However West has other dreams also. He wants to be the President of the United States of America

However to make a successful bid for presidency, he needs to own the domain called www.kanyeforpresident.com. Sadly, he can own it because its owner refused a whopping $80,000 offer to sell it.
When you visit kanyeforpresident website, you will be taken to the Instagram page of Tramall Ferguson.
Tramall Ferguson is a graduate from Australia and turned a paltry $10 into whopping $80,000, all in a nights surfing. Tramall told ABC that he was purchased the domain for $10 a year ago while surfing aimlessly.
“I was just trying to do something out of the box,” Tramall told ABC’s Control Z podcast.
He then made two impulse purchases: kanyeforpresident.com and petergriffinforpresident.com.
“I thought it was clever and no one had it yet, so I went ahead and did it,” Tramall says, “And then I literally forgot that I had it.”
Tramall’s $10 investment grew tremendously in five months, when Kanye West announced his Presidential bid at the MTV awards. Suddenly, kanyeforpresident.com was HOT internet real estate. Everyone wanted a slice, and the bids started rolling in.
“I got a call from some guy, he was offering me like, $30,000 at first. And I didn’t even know that he was offering me money for it, so I was just like, ‘50 grand!’ And he was like, ‘35’, and I was like, ‘50!’ and he was like, I’ll call you back.
“Then I got a call from Greg at TMZ, and then that’s when I kind of raised my eyebrows.
“Then I started getting crazy phone calls that day with people throwing out offers. The highest one on the first day was about 80 grand.
“[It was] like getting a lottery ticket and just winning. That’s basically what happened,” Tramall says.
Domain names can be a good business if you know how to deal in websites. Otherwise you have to plain lucky like Tramall above or Sanmay Ved who purchased Google.com for $10 during a night surfing expedition. Like Tramall, Sanmay too would have made millions from his buy but he chose to give back the domain to Google for something like $10,000 to be donated to charity.

Forget Electronic Hard Drives, Now Bacteria Can Store Information

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We can use bacteria as living hard drives to store vast amounts of information state scientists

Instead of those bulky hard drives, soon we would be storing vast amounts of information on a bacteria. Yes, the humble bacteria can store information just like hard drives say scientists.
Harvard scientists led by Jeff Nivala and Seth Shipman have discovered a remarkable way to store lines of code in living bacteria, which can then be passed down to the next generation as genetic information. Based on a new study, bacteria colonies when fed by a series of human-written data can transform tiny cells into living hard drives.
According to Shipman, genotyping the bacteria could easily read the data from these living memory sticks. This type of experiment allows the transfer of 100 bytes of data, almost ten times more than possible with artificial DNA. Previously, the scientists had attempted this experiment but with synthetic DNA. The technique used by the scientists practically tricked the bacteria into copying actual computer code into their DNA without compromising their own cellular activities.
“Rather than synthesizing DNA and cutting it into a living cell, we wanted to know if we could use nature’s own methods to write directly onto the genome of a bacterial cell, so it gets copied and pasted into every subsequent generation,” says Shipman. “But working within a living cell is an entirely different story and challenge.”
“We write the information directly into the genome. While the overall amount of DNA data we have currently stored within a genome is relatively small compared to the completely synthetic DNA data storage systems, we think genome-based information storage has many potential advantages,” Nivala told Gizmodo. He says that these advantages could include higher fidelity and the capability to directly interface with biology. For example, a bacterium could be taught to identify, provide information, and even kill other microorganisms in its midst, or provide a record of genetic expression.
“Depending on how you calculate it, we stored between about 30 to 100 bytes of information,” said Nivala. “Which is quite high compared to the previous record set within a living cell, which was ~11 bits.”
Going forward, the kind of bacteria one uses is important. The researchers used E. coli for this particular experiment that clocks in a fairly respectable storage of 100 bytes. However, certain bacteria, such as Sulfolobus tokodaii may be capable of storing thousands of bytes.
To protect certain bacteria from viral infection, the scientists used the bacteria’s built-in immune system called CRISPR or Cas system. When the bacteria are attacked by viruses, they physically cut out a segment of the invaders’ DNA and paste it into a specific region of their own genome. This way, if that same virus attacks again, the bacteria can identify it and respond accordingly. Thus, the cell passes this information over to its progeny of the bacteria, transferring the viral immunity to next generations.
The bacteria research team discovered that by introducing a segment of genetic data that looks like viral DNA into a colony of bacteria that have the CRISPR/Cas system, the bacteria would devour it and include it in their genetic code. Therefore, the scientists spread the loose segments of DNA into the E.coli bacterial colony that had the CRISPR. They gulped it all up essentially becoming tiny, living hard drives.
The segments used were arbitrary strings of A, T, C, G nucleotides with pieces of viral DNA at the end. Shipman introduced one segment of information at a time and allowed the bacteria do the rest, storing away information like fastidious librarians.
Conveniently enough, the bacteria store new immune system entries in sequence, with earlier viral DNA recorded before that of more recent infections.
“That’s quite important,” Shipman says. “If the new information was just stored randomly, that wouldn’t be nearly as informative. You’d have to have tags on each piece of information to know when it was introduced into the cell. Here it’s ordered sequentially, like the way you write down the words in a sentence.”