GOURETTE, France -- One of its biggest stars is already gone, and now so is the leader of the Tour de France.

Michael Rasmussen was removed from the race by his Rabobank team after winning Wednesday's stage, a day after Alexandre Vinokourov and his team withdrew when the star cyclist tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.

"Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating [the team's] internal rules," Rabobank spokesman Jacob Bergsma told The Associated Press by phone.

The expulsion, which Bergsma said was ordered by the Dutch team's sponsor, was linked to "incorrect" information that Rasmussen gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen missed random drug tests May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, told Denmark's Danmarks Radio on Wednesday that he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.

"Of course I'm clean," Rasmussen said, after a doping test following Wednesday's stage win. "Like I said, I've been tested 17 times now in less than two weeks. Both the peloton and the public, they're just taking their frustration out on me now. I mean, all I can say is that by now I had my test number 17 on this Tour, and all of those have come back negative. I don't feel I can do anymore than that."

Tour organizers said Tuesday they would have stopped Rasmussen from taking part in the race had they known about the missed tests before the July 7 start.

"We cannot say that Rasmussen cheated, but his flippancy and his lies on his whereabouts had become unbearable," Tour director Christian Prudhomme said.

What a shock it is! Taken out by his own team given that he is so close to winning the Tour. (It does comes as a surprise to see him in the lead)

Hopefully, cycling sports will start to get better and be rid of all these doping news in the headlines.

And did Floyd Landis doped?

Jul 29, Contador sealed his first Tour win after narrowly holding a 23-second overall lead while his teammate Leipheimer won the 35-mile 19th stage time trial. ESPN.

Related: Tour's openness is its greatest strength, and weakness.

Of course, Rasmussen's demise underscores the fact that cycling is open only in a superficial sense. Its doping culture is a dense web of secrets, and riders have become so accustomed to it that obfuscating is the norm, fibbing is habit and cheating is common currency.

There is still a lot going on underneath the surface in the most open professional sport on the planet. The people who want to change cycling for the better are still cracking the codes and trying to see through the tinted windows on the big team buses.

If doping scandals make you doubt that the physical feats you see in a bike race are real, look again. Look at the whole sport. It's convulsing in a very real, human, imperfect way. Things may get worse before they get better, though it's hard to imagine how much worse they could be than they were this week at the Tour de France.

And more from ESPN

Tour de France -- Doping timeline.

Pounding the pedals with Floyd Landis.

Klöden considers retirement (Velonews) He raised the possibility of riders' careers being sacrificed in the current dispute between Tour organizers ASO and the UCI.

Why are cyclists at the Tour de France still doping? - By Nathaniel Vinton - Slate

Lance Armstrong is impressed by Contador (DesMoinesRegister.com).

2007, August 10,

Tour winner Contador says he's always competed clean.

Discovery team to cease operations at season's end.

2007, September 20,

Landis stripped of Tour title for doping, unsure on appeal. The vote was 2-1 to uphold the results. The 84-page ruling, handed down nearly four months after a bizarre and bitterly fought hearing, leaves the American with one final way to possibly salvage his 2006 title -- an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He has a month to file an appeal.

:)

As science has become increasingly complex and interconnected, even the smallest a-ha instance demands that researchers spend the bulk of their time on grunt work—combing through relevant journal articles that are poorly annotated, begging colleagues for necessary materials (a biologist may need specific cell lines, for instance), and tracking down data sets. As scientific goals grow more multifaceted, the challenges for research and development lie not only in the experiments themselves, but also in the transfer of information among peers.

Enter John Wilbanks, executive director of the Science Commons initiative, and the six-year-old innovation of its parent organization, Creative Commons—an intelligent, understandable copyright that's revolutionizing how everything from photos to publications are shared. Wilbanks and his team (which includes Nobel Prize winners Joshua Lederberg and John Sulston) are focused on three areas where roadblocks to scientific discovery are most common: in accessing literature, obtaining materials, and sharing data.

In June, Science Commons introduced a set of tools to allow authors greater control over papers published in scientific journals. And this week, Science Commons is expanding its Neurocommons project with the launch of an open-source research platform for brain studies. By using text-mining tools and analysis software to annotate millions of neurology papers, researchers worldwide can find relevant information in a matter of minutes.

In five years, if everything comes out as I (Wilbanks) hope, you'll have a system that looks like Amazon for the life sciences. You could click on one thing—a relevant cell line, for example—and get recommendations for related research or tools. You could one-click and order that cell line from a third party instead of having to ask another laboratory to stop doing research and manufacture it for you.

In today's system, you don't get rewarded for sharing. And you sometimes get ahead by deliberately withholding. Even if it's not a matter of deliberately withholding, it takes a great deal of effort to share information with others once you're through with it. It takes common standards to annotate data and databases to hold the data. It takes infrastructure to make sharing work.

The Gates Foundation, is now offering millions for malaria research, and it's contingent on the researchers making it available to share. Sharing maximizes the return on investment in early-stage research. No pharmaceutical company is making money by selling biological knowledge—they make money by selling chemicals. So getting as much of that knowledge as possible into the efficiency of the Web-commerce world is going to make it faster to find those chemicals.

.. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across. However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure.

And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.

So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence, a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there and gave it to the oldest brother. (Elder Wand)

Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still farther, and asked for the power to recall others from Death. So Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead. (Resurrection Stone)

And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And Death most unwillingly handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.

Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had and admiring Death's gifts.

In due course the brothers separated, each for his own destination.

The first brother traveled on for a week or more, and reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard with whom he had a quarrel. Naturally, with the Elder Wand as his weapon, he won the duel that followed. Leaving his enemy dead upon the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible.

That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine sodden upon his bed. The thief took the wand and for good measure, slit the oldest brother's throat. And so Death took the first brother for his own.

Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.

Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally the second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as to join her. And so Death took the second brother for his own.

But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and equals, they departed this life.

Not coincidentally, Voldemort sought out for the Elder Wand to defeat Harry and killed himself with the Elder Wand. Dumbledore was cursed by the ring in his desire to see his dead parents and sister. Harry, in his desire to save others from Voldemort, accepted death and become the master of Death.

Wikipedia Deathly Hallows.

Dr. William Coley (1862–1936) was an American bone surgeon and cancer researcher, pioneer of cancer immunotherapy. He developed a treatment based on provoking an immune response to bacteria.

..

Coley’s discovery, as it turns out, was actually a re-discovery. The idea of a link between acute infection and the resolution of tumours was not new, and the phenomenon of infection-related "spontaneous regression" of cancer has been documented throughout history. A 13th century Italian saint was reputed to have his tumour-afflicted leg miraculously healed shortly after the malignant growth burst through the skin and became infected. Crude cancer immunotherapies working along similar lines to Coley’s early experiments were known in the 18th and 19th centuries, and may extend back to the time of the pharaohs. Ancient writings suggest that the renowned Egyptian physician Imhotep may have used a similar infect-and-incise method to treat tumours.

But Coley took those first important steps in dragging this old remedy into the twentieth century. After the fatalities with the ‘live’ version of his therapy, he developed an improved fluid containing killed bacteria of two different strains, Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens. This was based on the idea that the dead bacteria would still have the immune-stimulating capability of their living brethren (in the form of purported ‘toxins’), but not share their inconvenient tendency to cause death. His invention became variously known as ‘Coley’s Toxins’, ‘Coley’s Vaccine’, ‘Mixed Bacterial Toxins’ or ‘Coley Fluid.’

..

Due partly to the fact that the treatment mechanism isn't fully understood and the development of radiation therapy and chemotherapy, Coley’s Toxins is rarely used in the treatment of cancer thereafter.

The idea here is the body’s own defence and repair network can/may make a real difference in the battle against cancer.

Related: Colorful And Beautiful Butterflies.

..

The base station's activities are governed by a base station controller, a special-purpose computer within the station that allocates radio channels and helps coordinate handovers between the transceivers under its control.

This controller in turn communicates with a mobile switching center that takes phone calls and connects them to call recipients within the same switching center, other switching centers within the company, or special exchanges that act as gateways to foreign networks, routing calls to other telephone networks (mobile or landline). The mobile switching centers are particularly important to the Athens affair because they hosted the rogue phone-tapping software, and it is there that the eavesdropping originated. They were the logical choice, because they are at the heart of the network; the intruders needed to take over only a few of them in order to carry out their attack.

A central processor coordinates the switch's operations and directs the switch to set up a speech or data path from one phone to another and then routes a call through it. Logs of network activity and billing records are stored on disk by a separate unit, called a management processor.

The key to understanding the hack at the heart of the Athens affair is knowing how the Ericsson AXE allows lawful intercepts—what are popularly called “wiretaps.” In AXE exchanges a remote-control equipment subsystem, or RES, carries out the phone tap by monitoring the speech and data streams of switched calls. It is a software subsystem typically used for setting up wiretaps, which only law officers are supposed to have access to. When the wiretapped phone makes a call, the RES copies the conversation into a second data stream and diverts that copy to a phone line used by law enforcement officials.

Ericsson optionally provides an interception management system (IMS), through which lawful call intercepts are set up and managed. When a court order is presented to the phone company, its operators initiate an intercept by filling out a dialog box in the IMS software. The optional IMS in the operator interface and the RES in the exchange each contain a list of wiretaps: wiretap requests in the case of the IMS, actual taps in the RES. Only IMS-initiated wiretaps should be active in the RES, so a wiretap in the RES without a request for a tap in the IMS is a pretty good indicator that an unauthorized tap has occurred.

It turns out Vodafone had not purchased the lawful intercept option at the time of the illegal wiretaps. The Vodafone system contained the software code necessary to intercept calls using the RES, even though it lacked the high-level user interface in the IMS normally used to facilitate such intercepts.

That odd circumstance would turn out to play a role in letting the Athens hackers illegally listen in on calls and yet escape detection for months and months.

It took guile and some serious programming chops to manipulate the lawful call-intercept functions in Vodafone's mobile switching centers. The intruders' task was particularly complicated because they needed to install and operate the wiretapping software on the exchanges without being detected by Vodafone or Ericsson system administrators. From time to time the intruders needed access to the rogue software to update the lists of monitored numbers and shadow phones. These activities had to be kept off all logs, while the software itself had to be invisible to the system administrators conducting routine maintenance activities. The intruders achieved all these objectives.

They took advantage of the fact that the AXE allows new software to be installed without rebooting the system, an important feature when any interruption would disconnect phone calls, lose text messages, and render emergency services unreachable. ..

See Image

A male-killing bacteria has led to skewed sex ratios in populations of Hypolimnas bolina butterflies in the South Pacific, but researchers have found that male butterflies on some islands have bounced back thanks to the rise of a suppressor gene.

Within 10 generations that spanned less than a year, the proportion of males of the Hypolimnas bolina butterfly on the South Pacific island of Savaii jumped from a meager 1 percent of the population to about 39 percent. The researchers considered this a stunning comeback and credited it to the rise of a suppressor gene that holds in check the Wolbachia bacteria, which is passed down from the mother and selectively kills males before they have a chance to hatch.

This study shows that when a population experiences very intense selective pressures, such as an extremely skewed sex ratio, evolution can happen very fast.

It is not yet clear whether the suppressor gene emerged from a chance mutation from within the local population, or if it was introduced by migratory Southeast Asian butterflies in which the mutation had already been established.

The suppressor gene allows infected females to produce males, these males will mate with many, many females, and the suppressor gene will therefore be in more and more individuals over generations.

"We usually think of natural selection as acting slowly, over hundreds or thousands of years," said Hurst. "But the example in this study happened in a blink of the eye, in terms of evolutionary time, and is a remarkable thing to get to observe."

"In essence, organisms must evolve or change to stay in the same place, whether it's a predator-prey relationship, or a parasite-host interaction," said Charlat. "In the case of H. bolina, we're witnessing an evolutionary arms race between the parasite and the host. This strengthens the view that parasites can be major drivers in evolution."

There is segmentation fault on deletion of python FAM obj, which can be checked using GDB. After replacing the code PyMem_DEL with PyObject_Del in _fam.c and rebuilt the extension, the segmentation fault goes away. (I submit this as a bug?)

Here is the test code test_fam.py I wrote.

# test_fam.py
r"""
"""

import _fam
import select
from os import path
import sys

# from fam.h
"""enum FAMCodes { FAMChanged=1, FAMDeleted=2, FAMStartExecuting=3,
                FAMStopExecuting=4, FAMCreated=5, FAMMoved=6,
                FAMAcknowledge=7, FAMExists=8, FAMEndExist=9 };"""
FAMChanged=1
FAMDeleted=2
FAMStartExecuting=3
FAMStopExecuting=4
FAMCreated=5
#FAMMoved=6
FAMAcknowledge=7
FAMExists=8
FAMEndExist=9


_FM = _fam.open()
_Monitors = {}
_MonitorReqs = {}


def _notify(filename, change, code):
    print filename, change
    
def monitor(filename, notify):
    if filename not in _Monitors:
        _Monitors[filename] = [notify]
        if path.isdir(filename):
            fr = _FM.monitorDirectory(filename, filename)
        else:
            fr = _FM.monitorFile(filename, None)
        _MonitorReqs[filename] = fr
    else:
        _Monitors[filename].append(notify)

def unmonitor(filename, notify):
    if filename not in _Monitors:
        return
    notifys = _Monitors[filename]
    try:
        notifys.remove(notify)
        if not notifys:
            fr = _MonitorReqs[filename]
            #print 'cancelMonitor', fr.requestID()
            fr.cancelMonitor()
            del _MonitorReqs[filename]
            del _Monitors[filename]
    except Exception, e:
        print e

def _notify_event(fe):
    filename = fe.filename
    if filename not in _Monitors:
        if path.isabs(filename):
            print "? not monitor", filename
            return
        # for dir monitor
        adir = fe.userData
        if adir in _Monitors:
            notifys = _Monitors[adir]
            filename = path.join(adir, filename)
        else:
            return
    else:
        notifys = _Monitors[filename]
    ch, code = fe.code2str(), fe.code
    print code, ch, fe.requestID, fe.userData, fe.hostname
    for n in notifys:
        n(filename, ch, code)
        
def run():
    inl, eml = [_FM], []
    while 1:
        try:
            ri, ro, re = select.select(inl, eml, eml)
        except select.error, e:
            print e
            break
        while _FM.pending():
            print "check nextEvent"
            fe = _FM.nextEvent()
            _notify_event(fe)

#----------------------------------------------------------------------
def _unmonitor_onnotify(ecode):
    notify = lambda filename, change, code: (code == ecode and unmonitor(filename, notify)
        or _notify(filename, change, code))
    return notify

def _test(files):
    for fn in files:
        monitor(fn, _unmonitor_onnotify(FAMDeleted))
        monitor(fn, _unmonitor_onnotify(FAMChanged))
    run()
    
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
if __name__ == '__main__':
    a = sys.argv
    alen = len(a)
    if alen <= 1:
        print "test_fam.py file1 file2 .."
        sys.exit(0)
    _test(a[1:])
    

Manual pages for fam.

Related: FAM Non-superuser Hack.

I have some errors on compiling GDB:

• gdb configure error: no termcap library found.

  On searching, I find this solution to install ncurses-devel.

  I downloaded and extracted ncurses-devel-5.2-2.i386.rpm.html.

  Normally, you can install rpm by

  rpm -i --nodeps ncurses-devel-5.2-2.i386.rpm

  If this fails because it requires superuser access, you can extract with rpm2cpio using

  rpm2cpio ncurses-devel-5.2-2.i386.rpm > ncurses-devel-5.2-2.i386.cpio

  and then with cpio

  cpio -i < ncurses-devel-5.2-2.i386.cpio

• cc1: warnings being treated as errors

  See GDB Compiler Warnings.

  I reissue the failed command but removing -Werror from it to bypass the error.

See Debugging Extension Modules on Linux/Unix and Debugging Under Unix: gdb Tutorial.

You can debug python script as follows:

myhost> gdb
(gdb) file python
(gdb) run yourprogram.py yourargs
..
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
..
(gdb) backtrace  <- Inspecting crashes

Also see The Watchful Eye of FAM by Ethan McCallum.

I am trying to use it in an environment where I have no root access, and not using portmapper.

After some changes and testing, it seems to work.

• Change SuperUser uid to the uid you intend to run the program with, and also SuperUser_groups gid.
• Initialize Cred::Implementation::last = Cred::SuperUser.p;
• Bind to a specific non-reserved port.
• Remove the portmapper code following the binding.
• Remove the superuser check.
• Connect client to the same specific non-reserved port.
• and initialize bestvers = 2; and remove the portmapper code checking out which port to connect to.

Disclaimer:I do not claim this changes works. Furthermore, I do not understand the security impact, so, use at your own risk if you do.

The changes are recorded in the 2 diff files, fam.src.diff and fam.lib.diff.

Common subdirectories: fam-2.7.0/src/.deps and fam-2.7.0p/src/.deps
diff -Nau -x Makefile fam-2.7.0/src/Cred.c++ fam-2.7.0p/src/Cred.c++
--- fam-2.7.0/src/Cred.c++	Fri Nov 21 14:38:48 2003
+++ fam-2.7.0p/src/Cred.c++	Wed Jul 11 07:49:37 2007
@@ -38,10 +38,13 @@
 #include 
 #endif
 
-static gid_t SuperUser_groups[1] = { 0 };
-const Cred Cred::SuperUser(0, 1, SuperUser_groups, -1);
+//static gid_t SuperUser_groups[1] = { 0 };
+//const Cred Cred::SuperUser(0, 1, SuperUser_groups, -1);
+static gid_t SuperUser_groups[1] = { 111 };
+const Cred Cred::SuperUser(2222, 1, SuperUser_groups, -1);
 Cred Cred::untrusted;
-const Cred::Implementation *Cred::Implementation::last = NULL;
+//const Cred::Implementation *Cred::Implementation::last = NULL;
+const Cred::Implementation *Cred::Implementation::last = Cred::SuperUser.p;
 Cred::Implementation **Cred::impllist;
 unsigned Cred::nimpl;
 unsigned Cred::nimpl_alloc;
diff -Nau -x Makefile fam-2.7.0/src/Listener.c++ fam-2.7.0p/src/Listener.c++
--- fam-2.7.0/src/Listener.c++	Sun Jan 19 17:37:29 2003
+++ fam-2.7.0p/src/Listener.c++	Wed Jul 11 04:07:01 2007
@@ -87,14 +87,18 @@
 	{   Log::perror("can't create TCP/IP socket for rendezvous");
 	    exit(1);
 	}
+	//struct sockaddr_in addr;
 	struct sockaddr_in addr;
 	memset(&addr, 0, sizeof addr);
 	addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
         addr.sin_addr.s_addr = local_only ? htonl(INADDR_LOOPBACK) : 0;
-	addr.sin_port = htons(0);
-	if (bindresvport(sock, &addr) < 0)
+	//addr.sin_port = htons(0);
+	addr.sin_port = htons(7777);
+	//if (bindresvport(sock, &addr) < 0)
+	if (bind(sock, (struct sockaddr*) &addr, sizeof(addr)) < 0)
 	{
-	    Log::perror("can't bind to reserved port");
+	    //Log::perror("can't bind to reserved port");
+	    Log::perror("can't bind to port 7777");
 	    exit(1);
 	}
 	if (listen(sock, 1) < 0)
@@ -102,12 +106,12 @@
 	    Log::perror("can't listen for rendezvous");
 	    exit(1);
 	}
-	(void) pmap_unset(program, version);
-	if (!pmap_set(program, version, IPPROTO_TCP, ntohs(addr.sin_port)))
-	{
-	    Log::error("can't register with portmapper.");
-	    exit(1);
-	}
+	//(void) pmap_unset(program, version);
+	//if (!pmap_set(program, version, IPPROTO_TCP, ntohs(addr.sin_port)))
+	//{
+	//    Log::error("can't register with portmapper.");
+	//    exit(1);
+	//}
 	set_rendezvous_fd(sock);
     }
 }
diff -Nau -x Makefile fam-2.7.0/src/main.c++ fam-2.7.0p/src/main.c++
--- fam-2.7.0/src/main.c++	Sat Jan 18 23:15:51 2003
+++ fam-2.7.0p/src/main.c++	Wed Jul 11 02:46:52 2007
@@ -157,10 +157,10 @@
         }
     }
 
-    if (getuid() != 0)
-    {   Log::error("must be superuser");
-	exit(1);
-    }
+    //if (getuid() != 0)
+    //{   Log::error("must be superuser");
+//	exit(1);
+    //}
 
     parse_config(opts);

Changes to the client library side.

Common subdirectories: fam-2.7.0/lib/.deps and fam-2.7.0p/lib/.deps
diff -Nau -x Makefile fam-2.7.0/lib/Client.c++ fam-2.7.0p/lib/Client.c++
--- fam-2.7.0/lib/Client.c++	Sat Jan 18 07:18:12 2003
+++ fam-2.7.0p/lib/Client.c++	Wed Jul 11 07:05:01 2007
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@
     sin.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(host);
     //  This is set below instead.
     //sin.sin_port = htons(pmap_getport(&sin, prog, vers, IPPROTO_TCP));
+    sin.sin_port = htons(7777);
 
     //
     //  We'll run through the list of pmaps ourselves instead of calling
@@ -60,6 +61,8 @@
     //  need to know which version of fam we're talking to.  (Isn't there
     //  an easier way to do that?)
     //
+    unsigned long bestvers = 2;
+/*
     pmaplist *pl = pmap_getmaps(&sin);  //  this is leaked; see note below loop
     unsigned long bestvers = 0;
     for (pmaplist *plp = pl; plp != NULL; plp = plp->pml_next)
@@ -83,7 +86,7 @@
     //  just leak it.  This sucks!  (call CLNT_CALL(client, PMAPPROC_DUMP, ...
     //  ourselves?)
     //xdr_free((xdrproc_t)xdr_pmaplist, &pl);
-
+*/
     if(sin.sin_port == 0)
     {
         //  Couldn't get port for rpc call.

A single soccer match achieves what five years of combat and negotiations could not: an apparent end to Ivory Coast's civil war. The man who brought the warring sides together was not a politician or a gun-toting strongman, but Didier Drogba, the star striker for Ivory Coast.

For nearly five years, Ivory Coast had been divided in two: rebel-held North, government-loyal South. But on a tour of the country in March, Drogba stunned his fellow Ivorians by proposing that the Madagascar game be played in Bouaké, the capital of the rebellion. North and South, unable to reconcile their differences through battle or peace talks, would set aside their guns and come together for a soccer game. And Drogba, already an international star, would become, in the eyes of Ivorians, something of a deity.

Geoffrey Baillet, the spokesman for the Ivorian minister of sports, leaning on a rail, watching the match. "We, the politicians, we went to the best universities; we're the intellectuals, the supposed leaders of the country," he said. "But when it came to making peace, we failed. It's a group of soccer players that brought us together. Didier Drogba came from nothing. Now he's a worldwide star and a hero for us. He's done a great thing for his country."

"It was the best thing that's ever happened to me," Drogba said. "It was more than soccer. To see everyone come together like that, only for a game. It shows how soccer can unite people. Sports in general can do this. Maybe only sports."

He went on. "We, the Elephants, all we did was our duty as soccer players, our obligation as Ivorians. We wanted Ivorians to share our dream and see it realized—the return of peace to Ivory Coast. The most moving thing was the national anthem. All the stadium was singing and it was the first time that the two armed forces were together, face-to-face. That was the best moment of my last several weeks."

Compounds found in pumpkin could potentially replace or at least drastically reduce the daily insulin injections that so many diabetics currently have to endure. Recent research reveals that pumpkin extract promotes regeneration of damaged pancreatic cells in diabetic rats, boosting levels of insulin-producing beta cells and insulin in the blood, reports Lisa Richards in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI.

A group, led by Tao Xia of the East China Normal University, found that diabetic rats fed the extract had only 5% less plasma insulin and 8% fewer insulin-positive (beta) cells compared to normal healthy rats. Xia says: ‘pumpkin extract is potentially a very good product for pre-diabetic persons, as well as those who have already developed diabetes.’

Boosting insulin levels has the effect of lowering blood sugar levels, which reduces levels of oxidative oxygen species that damage beta-cell membranes, preventing further damage and allowing for some regeneration.

The rats used in this study represent type I diabetes, but the researchers believe the pumpkin extract may also play a role in type II diabetes.

The mere mention of the mapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon, is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rain forest.

The folklore here is full of tales of encounters with the creature, and nearly every Indian tribe in the Amazon, including those that have had no contact with one another, have a word for the mapinguary (pronounced ma-ping-wahr-EE). The name is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid beast.”

In some areas, the creature is said to have two eyes, while in other accounts it has only one, like the Cyclops of Greek mythology. Some tell of a gaping, stinking mouth in the monster’s belly through which it consumes humans unfortunate enough to cross its path.

But all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and arrows.

“Often, the mapinguary gets revenge on people who transgress, who go where they shouldn’t go or harvest more animals or plants than they can consume, or set cruel traps,” said Márcio Souza, a prominent Brazilian novelist and playwright who lives in Manaus, in the central Amazon, and often draws on Amazon history and folklore in his works.

A study conducted by Huston, a pioneer in the psychology of relationships, revealed interesting new aspects about intimacy and marriage.

This 13-year study began in 1981, in which he followed 168 couples--drawn from marriage license records in four counties in a rural and working-class area of Pennsylvania--from their wedding day through 13 years of marriage.

Its four main findings were :

• Huston found that many newlyweds are far from blissfully in love.

• Couples whose marriages begin in romantic bliss are particularly divorce-prone because such intensity is too hard to maintain. Believe it or not, marriages that start out with less "Hollywood romance" usually have more promising futures.

• spouses in lasting but lackluster marriages are not prone to divorce, as one might suspect; their marriages are less fulfilling to begin with, so there is no erosion of a Western-style romantic ideal.
• Most importantly, it is the loss of love and affection, not the emergence of interpersonal issues, that sends couples journeying toward divorce.

Huston found that how well spouses got along as newlyweds affected their future, but the major distinguishing factor between those who divorced and those who remained married was the amount of change in the relationship over its first two years.

"The first two years are key--that's when the risk of divorce is particularly high," he says. "And the changes that take place during this time tell us a lot about where the marriage is headed."

"This ought to change the way we think about the early roots of what goes wrong in marriage," Huston said. "The dominant approach has been to work with couples to resolve conflict, but it should focus on preserving the positive feelings.

You can maintain intimacy and closeness with your partner by expressing your love frequently, communicating feelings, issues effectively and finding a project or hobby that both can enjoy together.

In the absence of any objective medical tests to determine who has ADD or ADHD, doctors rely in part on standardized assessments and the impressions of teachers and guardians while leaving little room for other causes or aggravating factors, such as diet, or environment. Hence, diagnosing a child or adolescent with ADD or ADHD is often the outcome, although no organic basis for either disease has yet to be clinically proven. Psychiatrists may then prescribe psychotropic drugs for the children first without making it clear to parents that these medications can have severe side-effects including insomnia, loss of appetite, headaches, psychotic symptoms and even potentially fatal adverse reactions, such as cardiac arrhythmia.

And yet, despite these dangers, many school systems actually work with government agencies to force parents to drug their children, threatening those who refuse with the prospect of having their children taken from the home unless they cooperate.

Sad situation.

In an experiment taking place along the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts, two otherwise unrelated groups of researchers are working together: computer engineers who are testing a new wireless communication network (TurtleNet), and biologists who are tracking snapping turtles — a species they worry may be headed for decline as land development shrinks their habitat.

The idea behind the technology is to create a network of constantly moving devices that record and store information, transmit data from one device to another, then relay all the saved information to a central location while running on self-charging batteries.

The solar-powered computers are light enough so they don't weigh the turtles down, and they don't interrupt their mating habits, Jones said.

Stuck to the shells of about 15 turtles found in spots near the Deerfield swamp, the gadgets will take periodic readings of the reptiles' location and body temperature.

When one computer-carrying snapper gets within a tenth-of-a-mile of another, the machines swap information.

The series of short-distance transmissions allows for long battery life in each computer, and the solar panels attached to the units are expected to constantly keep the batteries charged. Without a relay system, a longer transmission would require a larger battery that would drain too quickly or be too big for a turtle to carry.

The turtle-to-turtle relay ends when one of the snappers passes near a single base station that receives all the accumulated information.

It's a squid, it's an octopus, it's ... a mystery from the deep.

What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists.

The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority's deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.

The pitch-black conditions at 3,000 feet below sea level are unfamiliar to most but riveting to scientists who have had the opportunity to submerge. The sea floor is full of loose sediment, big boulders and rocks, and a lot of mucuslike things floating in the water, which are usually specimens that died at the surface and drifted to the bottom.

"It's quite fascinating," War said. "When you get below 700 feet, it's a totally different world. Lots of fish have heads like a fish and a body like an eel. There are fish floating in a vertical position, with the head up, and don't move unless they're disturbed."

"It's a beautiful squid. It's a gorgeous ruby red color," Kelley said. "We really enjoy these little mysteries that come up."

Related: Photo in the News: Colossal Squid Caught off Antarctica.

Related: Scientists go wild over dead giant squid.

The GIANT squid washed up dead on Tasmania's west coast is one of the biggest ever found, weighing in at 250 kilograms, with a cross-section as big as a truck tyre and longer than a station wagon.

The sign says, "Karma 21 YangJae Drive-In Theatre"

:mrgreen:

The dolphin was lying on a humpback whale’s head while it was slowly swimming along. Looking through my camera lens the stunt appeared to be orchestrated by mutual “agreement.” The whale very slowly—and vertically—lifted the dolphin into the air. I expected the dolphin to wriggle atop the humpback’s head to get off, but it just laid still and arched, trying to stay on top of the whale’s snout.

:)

The noctilucent clouds form in the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere in summer and are made of tiny ice crystals.

Scientists don't know much about how the clouds form, or why they have been appearing more often at lower latitudes and glowing brighter. Some scientists suspect their proliferation is related to increasing greenhouse gases, which can actually cause the upper reaches of the atmosphere to cool.

The amount of water vapour in the upper atmosphere has increased in the past 50 years, perhaps as a result of increased methane in the atmosphere from farming and other human activities. Methane can react with oxygen in the atmosphere to create water molecules.

To find out, NASA has employed a satellite, named AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in Mesosphere) to observe two cloud seasons over both of Earth's Poles. On June 11, AIM captured its first images of night shining clouds. The satellite will also provide scientists with data on the size and shape of the particles that make up the clouds.

Related: Satellite snaps first images of mysterious glowing clouds.