Don’t you just hate it when other people on the road drive so badly? I am so bad at parking but I pretty much do a good job while on the road. Still, I haven’t driven in the longest time because of a traumatic “pulling out of the parking lot” experience years ago.

Anyhow, the next time that you find yourself on the brink of being a victim to road rage, bear this in mind: bad driving may be a result of the genetic make up of a person!

No, I am not pulling your leg. A team of researchers from the University of California Irvine conducted a study and found out that there is this gene variant present in people who drive badly as compared to the average person. They made people take a driving test, and those who had the gene variant performed 20% worse! The gene has something to do with proteins affecting memory, which is perhaps why bad drivers “forget” even the most basic of the road rules that everyone should know.

One shortcoming of the study is the fact that the researchers did not look any further than the driving test they used. For example, they did not take a look at other aspects such as car crashes. Also, the results are pretty much inconclusive – another example of potentially impractical information? Then again, if they conclusively identify this gene variant as a reason for bad driving, then perhaps something can be done about it in the future.

Photo courtesy of http://www.csb.yale.edu

News about the woman giving birth to octuplets made the headlines about a week ago. Since then, people have been giving their own points of view regarding the matter. There have been supportive people while there have been people who criticized the woman for choosing be artificially inseminated with so many babies at once – especially since she already has 6 children. No matter how much noise was made about the multiple births, the mother kept mum for a while.

Now, she has come out into the open and spoken her piece. Nadya Suleman, the mother of 8 newborns and 6 other children, was interviewed today by Ann Curry of NBC. In the interview, she acknowledged that she had 6 embryos implanted – more than the standard recommendations of the fertility industry. However, she said that she was aware that multiple births were a possibility and that she wanted them all.

Nadya, together with the medical professionals involved, has been severely criticized for her decision. This is taking into consideration the fact that she is a single mother and unemployed at that. She stands by her decision however, and said that it has always been her dream to have a HUGE family, being an only child. She also said that her childhood was pretty dysfunctional and that she has always wanted to become a mom.

Octuplets being born – and living this long – are very very rare. In fact, multiple births are considered a rarity and usually attract a lot of attention, including sponsorships.

Photo courtesy of www.blahmerica.com/

Professor Gunther von Hagens, or rather, Dr. Death recently opened his BODYWORLDS exhibit at O2 in London. Its deeply macabre stuff, which at first may seem horrifying but then can actually be fascinating, educational and even entertaining.

I rang my sister to tell her about the chilling traveling show, of how Dr.D (who amazingly looks every inch the part) took corpses, flayed and used “plastination“(which he pioneered in the 70′s) to make them come alive by putting them in life-like poses, like the chess match as seen in the photo above, or a man riding a horse, both holding out their brains for us to compare.

I have to admit that while I find the whole spectacle incredibly disturbing (the idea of a pregnant woman and her baby in womb, gutted out for all to see is especially disconcerting), I am not put off to visit the exhibit and plan to go when I am next in London.
Because though one can see it as gruesome, it is the reality of our anatomy – and as a writer for the Times succinctly puts it:

“….the unique view von Hagen’s corpses offer into the reality of our human make-up, means that squirmishness soon gives way to fascinating.

Even more beautiful than the corpses, are the cross-sectional slices. Inspired by 3D MRI scans, von Hagens has cut wafer thin slices through hands, lungs, brains. The plastic gives them a translucent quality, which when they’re easily distinguishable, like the bones of a hand, look like colourful x-rays. When they’re more abstract they bring to mind amber fossils. They also tell some powerful stories. Smokers should pay particular attention to the cross sections of two lungs, one healthy, the other damaged by nicotine. While the brain flabby with Alzheimers is a graphic depiction of the relationship between the functioning of our minds and our physical bodies.”

Here’s an interesting interview with the good doctor on the BBC from 2002.

Ok, so this isn’t exactly what you’d call news, but I just had to share this amusing article written in 1961.

Some things slightly ring true, the bit where kids learn from TV (not entirely, but which parent hasn’t bought and educational DVD, CD rom or system like Leapfrog?), indoor swimming pools and tv telephones, juice powders (Tang), tablets for energy and overall healthier people (the eco-friendly organic craze worldwide).

But largely, the article proves to me that scientists really can’t predict the future after all, or we would have floating roofs on our houses by now!

The article was the the July 22 issue of Weekend Magazine (printed where? I have no idea, I doubt it still exists) found on the web in the Pixelmatic website.

Will Life Be Worth Living in 2000 AD?

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you.

It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom.

You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight’s holiday in outer space.

Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun.

Doors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

You’ll have a home control room – an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you’re away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

You’ll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

Food won’t be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes – instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen – to give a physical and psychological lift.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will “talk” to each other.

It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man’s stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities.

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation’s traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains.

In commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour.

By the year 2020, five per cent of the world’s population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond.

Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100.

There’s a lot more besides to make H.G. Wells and George Orwell sound like they’re getting left behind.

And this isn’t science fiction. It’s science fact – futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists.

It’s the way they think the world will live in the next century – if there’s any world left!

Well, according to English UFO expert Philip Mantle at least. Mr. Mantle, who is also editor of UFO Data Magazine , has been studying the vegetation, rocks and soil at the famous UFO crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, which apparently really does looks like a scene out of a sci-fi film “….surrounded by charred trees and bushes and a mysterious blue substance that dribbles down rocks.”

Mantle is due to to come out with a highly-anticipated report at the UFO International Conference at the end of the month, which they say will prove that there truly is “life out there”.

Speaking of proof, even more incredible is the news that the “real X-Files“, have also begun to be released by no less than the UK’s Ministry of Defence, who over the next 3 years will be “de-classifying” UFO-related documents never seen before by the public.

The files, which date from 1978-2002 can now be downloaded here. On the same page, you’ll also find great links to a podcast from UK expert Dr. David Clarke, a videocast from Nick Pope, former UFO investigator at the Ministry of Defence and now independent expert on the unexplained, and a great guide with background material.

Again and again, people call it global warming. Change in weather, the weird set of climates from the usually normal warm and cold day shifts have totally been amazing and strange to people since clearly, adjustments to the obvious movement of the usual seasons have been a necessity.

As it stands right now, summer, spring or winter have been moved out of the usual months where they are expected to fall. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed records that January showed the warmest winter experienced to date. 10 warmest winters have occurred since 1995 and the second warmest was experienced in 2004 based on the records of NOAA.

A lot of the change in climate has been pointed towards the ever growing issue of pollution, notably the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Many are expecting the El Nino phenomenon to take place and from all indications, the warm climate that most parts of the world is experiencing is just a glimpse of warmer days to come.

For the past years, the climate has been changing. Initially some people considered the cold climate to fall in the holiday season, something that has been apparent from past years. The warm climate on the other hand would usually set in the summer where people would troop to the beaches and go surfing or swimming.

However, the change in climate has been mind-boggling. A lot has to be connected with the polluting air which has been known to affect the ozone layers leading to a global warming shift. While people have resorted to various practices to attend to such issues, it is obvious that the efforts have not been enough.

The effects can be seen in the rising case of illnesses and weird weathers during known seasons. Natural disasters such as storms, earthquakes and tsunamis have been coming one after another. Could it be the wrath of nature perhaps? Whatever the case may be, one thing is for sure, a lot of changes in the natural course of living are sure to be waiting in the wings.

Have you ever dreamed of going into space but know that the chances of your becoming an astronaut is anywhere from slim to none? Don’t despair. Thanks to enterprising businessmen like Richard Branson, you may still be able to fulfill your dream.

Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic, has already signed an agreement with Swedish company, Spaceport, to search for a possible launch site for a great view of the aurora borealis. They are looking at Kiruna airport as a possible launch site. This airport located on the northern area of the US has been a launch site for satellites. If it is found suitable for a good look at the northern lights, tours will begin in 2011 or 2012.

In the meantime, other concerns are being resolved as well. No trip of this kind has ever been made before so these companies have no idea of the effect of the phenomena may have on any spacecraft. Test runs are scheduled for this February.

We have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about everything. This includes a desire to solve the many mysteries of the past and reweave some of the lost tapestries of history. So a find like the caves in the southern Nullarbor plains of Australia is treasure indeed.

The caves contained fossils, complete skeletons of animals that are no longer found today. Most of these creatures are found to be from the middle pleistocene era. The bones have been dated to confirm that these are from creatures living 800,000 to 200,000 years ago. Some of these species did not make it past the ice-age.

With the use of the fossils, 8 new species of kangaroo have been completely identified. Two of the species are of tree dwelling kangaroos, kangaroos that adapted to living in the branches of trees. There were also fossils of various species wallaby, various species of large lizards among them one of the King’s skink (a large lizard), mulgara and a pair of parrots.

Harvard University conducted a study that has the tobacco companies on the defensive. The results of the study show that the tobacco companies have been manufacturing cigarettes that have higher nicotine content. This means that people become more addicted and it will be harder for them to quit should they want to.

The study was conducted using data that these companies provided themselves, from the period of 1997 to 2005. They provided their filter designs as well as their measurement of nicotine per stick of cigarette and how many puffs it would take to finish a stick. The nicotine levels rose in all brands, in all categories irregardless of whether it was regular, menthol, light or ultra light. The increase was as much as 10% says Greg Connolly, one of the authors of the study and former director of the Tobacco Control Program of the state health agency.

Major tobacco manufacturer, Philip Morris, is challenging the findings of this study. They insist that while the nicotine levels may have fluctuated a little per batch, the 1997 and 2006 batch have identical nicotine levels.