Posts tagged song

Hello followers, so recently i have stumbled upon this site called “swagbucks” . My friend kept pushing me into seeing what this site was all about the day he knocked on my door with a box in his hand, i asked him why he was waking me up so early and he claimed this site had mailed him a amazon gift card, so i was a little skeptical, however sure enough there was a gift card in this little yellow envelop. To make a long story short this site shares its ad revenue with you in the form of points, that get redeemed for prizes the most popular being $5 amazon gift cards. For those of you that think this might be a scam i will provide youtube videos of people unboxing there amazon cards, and gifts. The quickiest way to get points from this site is to download there toolbar, basically they give you points when you use there search engine much like google. This site has to be by far the coolest thing ive ever seen, and completely legit, since then my friend danny has got 3 more gift card, ive only got two :< lol. Theres banners on my tumblr to join just click those to get bonus swagpoints or click the picture above.

(Source: futurenow321)

(Source: futurenow321)

Exactly why James Markam is alive and well is a bit of a mystery. The octogenarian has lost four siblings to cancer, heart disease and emphysema, all before they reached the age of 62. Yet the retired airline executive recalls only one bout of sickness, culminating with a chest cold, 50 years ago.

Scientists are taking a deep look at Markam’s genetics to see if there’s something protecting him from illnesses that affect others his age, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Markam, 83, of San Diego is one of more than 1,300 individuals identified as having what Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, called “Teflon-coated” genes.

“We think it’s in the genome in these individuals,” said Topol, who is leading research of healthy older people called the Wellderly Study at the institute. “You don’t see any environmental thing that would be explaining this.”

The study expects to have the first set of participants’ genes sequenced by the end of the year, said Cliff Reid, chief executive officer of Mountain View’s Complete Genomics Inc., which is doing the work for free.

Scientists and pharmaceutical companies are closely watching Scripps’ research project and others like it, eager for clues that may help them develop new treatments to ward off diseases that have long afflicted the elderly.

For drug companies such as Merck & Co. and Eli Lilly & Co., the hope is that the research will lead to the creation of billion-dollar blockbuster therapies.

The human genome is a transcript of an individual’s DNA code containing the instructions for making cells in the body. Scientists say the genome may provide keys to understanding health and disease.

The projects reflect researchers’ evolving views of how genetic mutations cause disease. While scientists once thought common genetic variants were responsible for many common diseases, recent research has changed that view.

Instead, combinations of the millions of rare variants are the more likely culprits behind widespread ailments, making them difficult to identify.

Creating a clean map of a healthy genome that can be quickly compared with the DNA that makes a person vulnerable to illness, the thinking goes, will allow researchers to more readily search for the roots of disease.

“What it does is accelerate discoveries of the basics of human disease,” Reid said. “The Wellderly data set promises to offer a superior set of harmless variations; that will enable researchers to more effectively separate the harmless variations from the disease-causing variations.”

(Source: futurenow321)

the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon’s southern polar region and to thermally map the “tiger stripe” terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon’s surface during previous flybys.

The photos themselves provided by Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) are raw and unprocessed, but along with the thermal data they should help researchers piece together a detailed map of Enceladus’s geologically active southern pole.

(Source: futurenow321)

Could some really great cupcakes be enough to send Americans back to the Moon?
More than a dozen US universities are hosting events on Saturday to urge support for the cash-strapped space agency, which faces major cuts to its planetary programs in fiscal year 2013.
Ranging from shoe shines to car washes and bake sales, the events are not actually designed to raise money to send to NASA, the organizers stressed.
“Our goal is not to raise money but to raise awareness and to have people tell Congress to put the funds back to last year’s funding level,” said Cindy Conrad, an assistant at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
NASA’s planetary programs are expected to be cut by more than $300 million dollars in President Barack Obama’s next budget, and the cost-cutting has already axed a major Mars project with Europe.
The US space agency has faced harsh criticism in recent years by slashing a program to return Americans to the Moon and retiring the space shuttle fleet in 2011 without a replacement vehicle to take astronauts to space.

(Source: futurenow321)

Sierra Nevada Corp.’s (SNC) Dream Chaser Space System (DCSS) has completed its preliminary design review (PDR).  This review was the third major system-level review for the DCSS as part of NASA’s commercial crew development round 2 (CCDev2) program.

SNC’s PDR included a review of all major elements of its orbital flight program including the Dream Chaser orbital crew vehicle, the Atlas V launch vehicle, and Dream Chaser mission and ground systems.  The entire design, architecture and performance of the Dream Chaser Space System was reviewed and evaluated by NASA and the DCSS partner companies. It was determined that the SNC preliminary design for DCSS is complete.

The Program’s PDR came during the same week when the Dream Chaser vehicle began its flight test program, illustrating SNC’s approach of concurrent design and development.  On May 29, the Dream Chaser Program completed the successful first flight of Dream Chaser full scale vehicle.  The flight met all the pre-established flight test goals and is a moving towards preparing the vehicle for an autonomous approach and landing test scheduled for later this summer.

 The Dream Chaser is a crewed suborbital and orbital vertical-takeoff, horizontal landing lifting-body space plane that was developed by SpaceDev, a subsidiary of SNC. The Dream Chaser is designed to carry seven people to and from low earth orbit. The vehicle is designed to be launched vertically on an Atlas V rocket and land horizontally on conventional runways.

The Dream Chaser was publicly announced in September of 2004 as a candidate for the NASA vision for space exploration, and then for the commercial orbital transportation services program. The DCSS is being developed as part of NASA’s venture into commercially provided crew transport.

Also  Sierra Nevada will utilize Virgin Galactic to market Dream Chaser commercial services and will also use “Virgin’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft as a platform for drop trials of the Dream Chaser atmospheric test vehicle” in 2012

(Source: futurenow321)

A lost parakeet in Japan was returned safely to its owner last week
after it told police its home address. Why do captive birds mimic
human speech, and how do they decide what to say?
 They’re trying to fit in with the flock, and they’ll say whatever it
takes. Parrots are among a handful of animal families that possess an
aptitude for vocal learning, meaning that they can form new sounds
based on experience.

In the wild, parrot flocks don’t talk like people, but they do seem
to develop distinct local dialects, and mated pairs may even sing
unique duets. This may allow them to keep untrustworthy newcomers
from joining their group…until the newcomer learns the language.
In one experiment, a group of parrots from one Costa Rican flock
was transplanted to a more northerly flock that showed different
vocalization patterns. About half flew right back home, but the rest
stayed and formed a sort of immigrant enclave with its own dialect.
One even learned the northern tongue and joined the locals.
 According to this theory, birds that are raised in captivity might mimic
their human owners as a way of gaining acceptance as a member of
the family. If they hear “pretty bird” a lot, they’ll interpret that as a
call distinct to their flock, and try making it themselves.
 Whether parrots can ever understand what they’re saying is still
debated. Researcher Irene Pepperberg trained an African Grey Parrot
named Alex some 100 human words, and the bird could identify
different objects by name. Skeptics have suggested that Alex’s abilities
might have been a product of the “Clever Hans” effect, in which an
animal gives correct responses based on its trainer’s body language.

(Source: futurenow321)

The Bigelow Next-Generation Commercial Space Station is a private orbital space complex currently under development by Bigelow Aerospace. The space station will be constructed of both Sundancer and BA 330 expandable spacecraft modules as well as a central docking node, propulsion, solar arrays, and attached crew capsules. Initial launch of space station components is planned for 2014, with portions of the station available for leased use as early as 2015. In 2010, Bigelow Aerospace began building a large production facility in North Las Vegas, Nevada to produce the space modules. The 181,000 square feet (16,800 m²) facility will include three production lines for three distinct spacecraft, doubling the amount of floor space at Bigelow and transitioning the focus from research and development to production. Bigelow expects to hire approximately 1200 new employees to staff the plant, with production commencing in early 2012.

(Source: futurenow321)

U.S, British and Mexican researchers say satellite tracking technology has uncovered feeding habitats and threats to a mysterious ocean giant, the manta ray. Conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York, the University of Exeter in Britain and the government of Mexico have completed a ground-breaking study using satellite telemetry to track the open-ocean journeys of the world’s largest ray, which can grow up to 25 feet in width, the WCS reported Friday. The manta ray, listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, has become increasingly threatened by fishing and accidental capture and now needs more protection, the researchers said. “Almost nothing is known about the movements and ecological needs of the manta ray, one of the ocean’s largest and least-known species,” said Rachel Graham, director of WCS’s Gulf and Caribbean Sharks and Rays Program. “Our real-time data illuminate the previously unseen world of this mythic fish and will help to shape management and conservation strategies for this species.” The research team attached satellite transmitters to six manta rays off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. “The satellite tag data revealed that some of the rays traveled more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) during the study period,” Matthew Witt of the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute said. “The rays spent most of their time traversing coastal areas plentiful in zooplankton and fish eggs from spawning events.” Manta rays are declining in the Caribbean and in other tropical regions of the world’s oceans because they are captured for shark bait or for use in the traditional Chinese medicinal trade, researchers said.

(Source: futurenow321)