Posts tagged sports

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)

Probably one of my favorite inventions, a machine that can suck out the moisture in the air, filter it and sterilize it, serving it up either hot or cold. Producing up to 7 gallons of pure water using half the the electricity of your microwave. Whats better is its available to the public for a affordable price $1200. Whether your trying to get a little extra water at your cabin or trying to prevent world hunger this is the machine for you. Water wells can cost anywhere between $6000-10000, and theres no guarantee you will hit water, especially where its most needed the desert. It is my believe that if this machine was sold on the mass market like walmart, and  costco the price would dramatically come down to $600 and efficiently go up to 10 or more gallons of water per day.

(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)

If you’ve ever wondered what beer from the mid-1800s might taste like a group of researchers in Finland may soon be answering your prayers.

Scientists from the VTT Technical Research Centre said they analyzed two bottles of beer discovered in 2010 that came from a ship believed to have sunk in the 1840s off the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea, Reuters reported.The researchers said they found living bacteria in the bottles that helped them retain a pale golden color and could originally have had hints of rose, almond and cloves. They said it’s possible that a smoky flavor in beer was appreciated at the time.Scientists said the discovery is the key to recreating the beer.”Based on the chemical analysis we made of the beer and with the help from a master brewer, it would be possible to try to make beer that would resemble it as much as possible,” researcher Annika Wilhelmson told Reuters.The beer bottles were found in the same wreck that contained the world’s oldest champagne still considered drinkable which has since been auctioned off.

(Source: futurenow321)