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Archive for February, 2009

Candy Bags

Friday, February 27th, 2009

I have been seeing the most beautiful candy bags around lately. I make my own sweets and chocolates and often give them away as gifts or take them with me when I am visiting people as a small token of thanks. I like to put them in a pretty bag but in the past have only managed to find cellophane bags which have not looked that impressive, even when I have tied them up with pretty ribbon. I have been looking around the Internet and there seems to be a really lovely selection of much prettier bags and boxes than I have ever come across before. It is so nice to be able to give a gift with a pretty wrapping on it. I think it makes a really big difference to it. I do like to put the effort in myself and wrap things but sometimes it can just take up too much time so I have decided that perhaps I will buy some gift boxes and just put some pretty ribbons around them. I like the idea of having something where they cannot see what they are getting until they actually open the lid and hopefully that will delay the joy for longer by making it more of a surprise.

How to Deal With Dangerous Dogs in California

Friday, February 27th, 2009

Every year, nearly 5 million people in the United States receive dog bites. Many of these happen in California. Dog bites can range from anything from small nips to death. A lot of the injuries caused by them are bad enough that the victims need hospital visits. Needless to say, medical costs can cause a lot of money, and dog bite attorneys in California have to fight for victims’ rights all the time.

Just as long as the victims aren’t trespassing on the dog’s property or doing something to provoke it, then fault is usually found in the owners. If you’ve recently been bitten by a dog, then you need call or pay a visit to a dog bite attorney. Los Angeles deals with countless dog bites everyday, most of which is due to negligent or abusive owners.

Sometimes, though, dogs can be unpredictable, and will attack for no reason. Well meaning dog owners sometimes with an unstable dog. In cases such as these, you may need a lot of help with receiving compensation. Dog bite attorneys in California will help you make your case. No matter how bad your injuries are, it’s in your best interest to contact a dog bite attorney in Los Angeles to help you understand your options.

Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer Before Signing Anything

Friday, February 27th, 2009

If you’re suffering from a personal injury and need a good lawyer to represent you in the Phoenix area, then make sure you deal with one who has experience with your type of claim. Personal injury claims cover a broad area, and different

Phoenix personal injury lawyers deal with certain types.

Whether you’ve tripped over poorly maintained surfaces, been hit by a drunk driver, fallen at a place that’s supposed to be safe, or been hurt over a defective product, then you should be able to find a Phoenix personal injury attorney that can help with your case.

You will need certain types of evidence in order to win your case. The burden of proof will be on you, so you’ll need Phoenix personal injury lawyers on your side. You shouldn’t even talk to the other party’s insurance company without first consulting with an attorney.

The insurance companies may try to settle with you, but don’t sign any papers without a good lawyer present. That settlement may not be worth very much, otherwise, and you’ll need all the money you can get in order to take care of all the expenses. In order to receive all the compensation you deserve, call a Phoenix personal injury attorney right away so that you can receive the best help for your case.

Ancient Greeks and Romans used kissing to express deference, not for Valentines

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

Kissing meant much more than physical attraction for the ancient Greeks and Romans, for the juicy gesture was used to express deference at the time, says an expert.Donald Lateiner, a humanities-classics professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, says that men kissed men on the cheek as a social greeting, while subjects of a king “abased” themselves by kissing the ground in front of him.

While speaking at a press conference in Chicago, he said that people who wanted to curry favour with someone of higher status would “kiss up” the person’s hands, shoulders, and head-in that order.

He revealed that peems, novels, and all kinds of art helped him parse out the history of the kiss.

Lateiner said that many Tuscan and Roman ladies’ mirror cases sported erotic scenes “from the world of myth, (or) sometimes from the world of daily life.”

However, on Athenian vases and Pompeian frescoes, romantic smooching is quite rare.

“(Instead) there’s a whole lot of sex,” National Geographic quoted him as saying.

He said that that might be because artists of the era preferred to depict full bodies, and a “Hollywood close-up” of people kissing would be too small a detail to feature.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University highlighted the fact that over 90 percent of human societies and several animals, including chimpanzees, used kisses to express themselves.

She said that the ubiquity of the smooch supported Charles Darwin’s belief that kissing was an instinct that evolved to jump-start reproduction.

The two researchers presented their findings on kissing during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

IAF to have its own eye in space

Friday, February 13th, 2009

With a view to increasing its surveillance capabilities, Indian Air Force is going to have its own satellite in space by the end of 2010.

“We will launch our satellite by the end of 2010,” IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said here yesterday.

The satellite to be launched by ISRO next year will be a dual-use satellite and will be used for civilian purposes also.

It will help the IAF to position its aerial and ground assets and targets. It would be used to gather navigational information.

In the recent past, IAF has been working closely to develop its space-based capabilities. It even has plans of setting up an Aerospace command under it but it has faced opposition from the other two services over the issue.

Its Southern Command based in Thiruvananthapuram works closely with ISRO in space related areas. At the air headquarters also, one Air Vice Marshal rank officer looks after space operations.

Female seed beetles are ’sex-thirsty’

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

There’s something kinky going on in the world of seed beetles. According to a new study, the female insects seek out intimate moments not to increase their chances of becoming fertilized, but for hydration.”We were curious about the behavior of these females-males are known to inflict damage during mating, and yet the females keep going back for more,” the National Geographic quoted study lead author Claudia Ursprung of the University of Toronto Mississauga.

“We wanted to find out whether females were getting food or drinks from the ejaculated fluid,” said Ursprung, whose research appears in a recent issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

To reach the conclusion, the research team kept 79 female seed beetles in enclosures for eight days. Some were given food and water, some just food, and some just water.

In the absence of water but not food, females were much more likely to try breeding. Being given water, however, left the females with little appetite for sex.

The beetles probably evolved this bizarre tactic because the species lives in a dry environment, the researchers suspect.

Clot-busting drug can benefit stroke victims

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Some patients who suffer stroke as a result of a brain artery blockage may benefit from a clot-busting drug nine or more hours after the attack.

“Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the US,” said study co-author, William A. Copen, director of Advanced Magnetic Resonance Neuroimaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.

“Every hour that we can add to the treatment window would allow vastly more stroke patients to be treated with potentially life-saving therapy,” Copen said.

The most common type of stroke is called ischemic stroke. They occur when a blood clot blocks a vessel supplying blood to the brain. Some ischemic strokes can be treated with thrombolytic, or clot-busting, therapy using tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), which helps dissolve the blockage.

However, the window of opportunity to safely administer the medication is generally considered to be just three hours. Because few patients get to the hospital to be diagnosed and treated within that time frame, fewer than seven percent of patients receive the drug.

In this retrospective study, researchers analysed the test results of 109 ischemic stroke patients at MGH. The testing methods included two different MRI scanning techniques: perfusion MRI, which measures blood flow in the brain, and diffusion MRI, which measures the movement of water molecules in tissue.

“Comparing the lesions that we see in these two MR images reveals which areas of the brain are threatened by a lack of blood flow, but could still be salvageable,” Copen said. “A mismatch between the lesions suggests that a patient might still benefit from thrombolytic therapy.”

In the study, most patients with blockage in a proximal artery, close to the base of the brain, continued to demonstrate a diffusion-perfusion mismatch between nine and 24 hours after the onset of their strokes, said an MGH release.

“Patients who have a mismatch have been successfully treated up to nine hours after stroke onset, which is already much longer than the guidelines allow,” Copen said.

The findings are published in the online edition of Radiology.

DUI Lawyers

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Drunk driving is very prevalent in Massachusetts and it accounts for about 41% of the people killed in road accidents per year.

A Massachusetts DUI attorney should posses the required skills needed for the questioning of the accused, s\tough witnesses, scientists and police officers.

As a result the attorney should be well versed in blood alcohol analysis, drunk driving cases and should be able to handle the complicated criminal proceedings in an effective way.

An ignition interlock is a device that is similar to a breath analyzer. It requires the driver to breathe into the device and provide a breath sample. If the alcohol content exceeds the programmed limit of the device the ignition automatically shuts down. At random times even after the ignition has been started the ignition interlock device (IID) will require another breath sample; this is to prevent a friend from breathing onto the device thus allowing the intoxicated person to drive away.

A hardship license is a certificate issued to a minor who is 14 or 15 years of age. There are many rule and regulations that have to be followed after procuring this license.

A person holding this license cannot drive heavy vehicles, tow trailers and trucks and other heavy equipment.

India sees year’s first lunar eclipse

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Avid sky-gazers who had assembled at vantage positions across the country tonight watched this year’s first and “deepest” penumbral lunar eclipse.

Parts of western and southern India witnessed the eclipse when the moon was rising while the rest of the country saw the total duration of the eclipse, NGO Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (S.P.A.C.E.) Director C B Devgun told agencies.

Eastern Canada and US, however, missed the eclipse, while people in Alaska, Hawaii, Australia and East Asia saw the entire eclipse, he said.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the earth is in a direct line between the sun and the moon and the shadow of the earth falls on the Moon, Devgun said, adding a penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when moon passes through penumbra, the lighter part of the earth’s shadow.

The lighter part of Earth’s shadow is called the “penumbra” and the totally dark part is called the “umbra”.

“Big Bang” collider startup postponed to September

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

The giant particle collider built to reproduce “Big Bang” conditions will now be restarted in September to allow time for repairs, not the summer as planned, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said.

In a statement late on Monday, CERN said the first particle collisions would take place in October, following repairs and the installation of new safety features to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the biggest and most complex machine ever built.

After another short technical stop at the end of 2009, the collider will run until autumn next year, producing enough data on the smallest building blocks of matter to announce results in 2010, it said.

“The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data,” CERN Director General Rolf Heuer said in the statement.

“It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year,” he said.

The new timetable represents a setback of six weeks on the previous schedule, which had foreseen that the LHC’s giant tunnels would be cooled down to their operating temperature of just above absolute zero by early July.

CERN had previously said it would restart the collider this spring after shutting it down in September because of an electrical fault and helium leak, only nine days after starting it up to great fanfare.

The collider is designed to recreate conditions just after the Big Bang, believed by most cosmologists to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

It sends beams of sub-atomic particles around a 27-km (17-mile) tunnel under the French-Swiss border outside Geneva to collide with each other at nearly the speed of light.

These collisions will explode in a burst of energy which scientists will monitor for new or previously unseen particles which they predict could help explain the nature of mass and the origins of the universe.

CERN has said the accident last year never posed any danger. When it first started the machine it had to rebuff suggestions that the experiment would create millions of black holes that would suck in the earth.

CERN, whose scientist Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1990, said in December it expected the repairs to cost up to 35 million Swiss francs ($30 million).

The LHC has already cost 10 billion francs ($8.5 billion) to build, supported by CERN’s 20 European member states and other countries including the United States and Russia.