Funny Video Forex Gadget Hi-tech

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• Recreate key battle sequences from James Cameron’s futuristic film, Avatar.
• The ultimate in gritty combat action and adventure Combat Amp Suit!
• Features over 22 points of articulation and fires multiple projectiles.
• Built to hold all Avatar action figures
• Comes with an exclusive i-Tag for an in-depth exploration of Pandora’s wild world.

Product Description
Official Name: MK-6 Armored Mobility Platform
Function: Ambulatory hydraulic armored weapons platform for military and civilian operations in hostile and toxic environments
Field Names: AMP suit, “Iron Lady”
Size and Weight: Thirteen feet in height, six feet wide.
Features: GPS. Cockpit commands are verbally activated, coded to operator’s voiceprint pattern. Thermal imaging display screens.
Weaponry: Hip-mounted and detachable GAU-90 thirty millimeter cannon, optional flamethrower, slashing blade, knife
Includes i-Tag; Figure sold separately.

James Cameron’s Avatar RDA Combat Amp Suit

NEW YORK — It’s the mystery under the kitchen sink. Exactly what’s in floor cleaner? What’s stain remover made of? And what effects, if any, might they have on human health or the environment?

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AT ISSUE: CHEMICALS: Activists asking makers to come clean on cleansers (Detroit Free Press)

Rates of E. coli fall in winter and spike in summer. To keep it lower all year, new technologies are being used on farms and slaughterhouses.

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Safety before the slaughter (USA Today)

Kahramaa begins awareness drive As part of a plan to maximise its employees awareness on health and occupational safety, Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) launched health, safety and environment (HSE Week) week yesterday.

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AM Doha Time (Gulf Times)

Ontario is making workplaces safer by focusing on hazards involving forklifts and lifting devices. Ministry of Labour inspectors will visit industrial workplaces during increased enforcement in February. They will ensure lifting equipment is being: inspected and maintained in good condition; operated by well-trained employees; and used in a safe work environment. read more

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Forklifts focus of safety blitz (Fort Frances Times)

UL Environment, Inc. , a global leader in environmental evaluation and certification, announces a collaborative effort to develop sustainability standards for plastic materials used in consumer and manufactured goods. These standards will establish environmental requirements for common plastics based on scientific assessment and broad stakeholder collaboration.

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UL Environment to Develop Sustainability Standards For Plastic (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

Health Affairs: Prices Don’t Drive Regional Medicare Spending Variations – “Per capita Medicare spending is more than twice as high in New York City and Miami than in places like Salem, Oregon…

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Research Roundup: Medicare Spending, Community Health Centers, Children’s Dental Services (Medical News Today)

ALOR SETAR, Feb 8 (Bernama) — The Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) code of practice that was announced by the Commercial Vehicles Licensing Board (CVLB) last month to discipline bus operators will be enforced next month.

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CVLB code to discipline bus operators (Sin Chew Jit Poh)

LANSING, Mich. , Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ — The Risk Management and Patient Safety Institute (RM&PSI), a national leader in clinical risk management practice and patient safety programs for health care institutions and providers, today announced the dates and focus for its 2010 national risk management seminar. The conference will take place April 26-27, 2010 at the Hotel 1000 in Seattle . This …

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The Risk Management and Patient Safety Institute Announces 2010 National Risk Management Conference, Dates (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Manpower has introduced statutory duties and powers for the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) auditors.

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New rules for Workplace Safety and Health auditors (Channel NewsAsia via Yahoo! Asia News)

Since misery loves company — at least during the time when misery doesn’t want to be left entirely alone — I grabbed on to Brian Dillon’s new book, The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives (Faber & Faber, $25), as fast as I could. One thing I hadn’t heard said before, although it now strikes me as absolutely and undeniably true, is that misery loves good company. And Dillon’s brimming volume (278 fact-filled, not to say fun-filled, pages) certainly provides good company for the ceaselessly suffering imaginary-malady-struck. For once the author — who never identifies himself as hypochondriacal, but why else indulge in such unnecessary woe? — gets an introduction out of the way, he tells the medical histories and mysteries of those “tormented lives.” The nine memorialized are, in more or less chronological order: James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust (probably the least surprising inclusion), Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol. In describing the afflictions — or presumed afflictions — gripping the nonet, Dillon goes into gory detail. Physician Robert Whytt, enumerating the 18th-century “most common and remarkable’ symptoms, mentions “heartburn; wind in the stomach and intestines; low spirits; anxiety; timidity; flushes and chills; muscular pains and convulsions; flying pains in the head: flatulence; belching; costiveness; palpitations; fainting; breathing difficulties and a sense of imminent suffocation; yawning and sighing; hiccups; fits of weeping or laughter; giddiness; disturbances of sight, sound or smell; drowsiness; insomnia, ‘attended with an uneasiness that is not to be described’; nightmares; sadness, despair and peevishness; elation; confused or vagrant thoughts; strange fancies and, as though such torments were not enough to occupy the patients’ minds, ‘persuasions of their labouring under diseases of which they are quite free; and imagining their complaints to be as dangerous as they find them troublesome.’” (Note to reader: If at this point, you’re not already experiencing any of the above problems, you fail to meet the definition of a genuine hypochondriac and may want to divert your attention elsewhere.) A significant point Dillon makes throughout a book that qualifies as a concise history of hypochondria is that the hypochondriac’s profile changes over the centuries — but not entirely. Some of the same nagging worries plaguing Boswell, Bronte and Darwin continue to be a source of concern to, for instance, Glenn Gould. Dillon writes that the eventually reclusive pianist “suffered from flatulence…often on rising.” Also, “He complained of ‘back of head phenomenon,’ ‘pressure point awareness,’ ‘pressure of left temple,’ and ‘pockets of “ulcer-like” pain through to back’ after consuming liquids. He discovered black marks on his tongue and experienced ‘locked muscles’ in his mouth. His urination was frequent and painful.” It’s likely Proust’s and Gould carryings-on are familiar to those who dwell on these things, but what about seeming doers like Florence Nightingale and Charles Darwin — she who saw to so many of the wounded in far-flung places and he who went to the Galapagos to develop his ideas? In a letter to her physician, Nightingale writes, “Let me tell you Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal food increased the sickness.” Yes, Nightingale, who attended at beds, was often confined to hers — as was Darwin, who kept such scrupulous records of his flatulence that he had various labels for it: “slight,” “moderate,” “considerable,” “baddish,” “sharp,” and “excessive.” (Note to reader: If you’ve done the same or similar, you are a hypochondriac in honorable standing and will do well to remain here.) The least known of these fabulous hypochondriacs, German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber, is the most extreme — extreme to the point of madness. Since Schreber imagined the disappearance of vital organs, Dillon reports that the man “frequently went without a stomach — he recalls informing an attendant that he could not dine because it had suddenly vanished. Sometimes, just before he sat down to eat, a stomach was ’so to speak produced ad hoc by miracles,’ only to be removed again during the meal. On such occasions, food and drink simply poured into his abdominal cavity and from there began to fill up his legs.” The most recent example on whom Dillon lavishes his well-written coverage is Andy Warhol, who in a state of disturbing irony ignored several real conditions to concentrate on the imaginary ones. Of a psychological disease that’s somehow real because it feels so palpably real, Dillon says, “Warhol is our hypochondriac precursor… We live now when Warhol’s fears are emphatically our own — weight, complexion, age, aesthetics, the virulence of new diseases and the efficacy of the cures for the old ones.” In other words, when seminal artist Warhol declared that in the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes, he neglected to mention that everyone would also be Andy Warhol for 15 minutes. Or painfully, agonizingly longer. More on Evolution

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David Finkle: Brian Dillon’s Informative The Hypochondriacs: Read It and Become Symptomatic

Drew Brees visited Disney World today as a reward for winning the Super Bowl XLIV MVP award. Brees hopped in a car with Mickey Mouse and Goofy and drove through the Magic Kingdom for a celebratory parade. Brees celebrated with his young son last night after the big victory. This morning, Dove released footage of the star quarterback lathering up in the shower . Scroll down for photos from Disney World. More on Super Bowl XLIV

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Drew Brees’ Disney World Vacation (PICTURES)

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The man who pleaded guilty in the balloon boy hoax has been released from a Colorado jail to serve the rest of his sentence in a work-release program. Larimer County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Eloise Campanella says Richard Heene was transferred Sunday and is expected to work during the day, then spend nights at a work-release dormitory. She didn’t have information Monday on where he’ll work. Heene started serving a 90-day sentence Jan. 11 after pleading guilty to falsely influencing the sheriff. His wife, Mayumi, pleaded guilty to filing a false report and must serve 20 days in jail. Sheriff’s officials say the couple’s report Oct. 15 that their young son had floated away in a UFO-shaped helium balloon was a hoax. More on Balloon Boy

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Balloon boy dad transferred to start work-release

Am I moving back because the New Orleans Saints won the playoffs? No. That would be ridiculous. I’m moving back because the Saints have won the Superbowl. If you’ve followed my Exiled on Main Street, Huffington Post or New Orleans.com columns you already know that as a post-Katrina expatriate, New Orleans is never not in my heart. After the federal levees failed, we washed up in Illinois and spent my father’s last years with him as his memory failed. My mother then started showing the same symptoms. Today she sang, ‘When the Saints Go Marching On. Oh when the Saints Go Marching On. Oh Lord I want to be Outnumbered…” It’s almost more entertaining that way. When I told her we were moving down to a little house in New Orleans and she said, “Like that lady who wrote the book.” I couldn’t tell you who the lady was, maybe it’s going to be me. Because the Saints have won the Superbowl and I’m moving home. For the last year, we have not been completely displaced. We come and go between a town where Abraham Lincoln was talked into running for President and a home we shared with a touring musician, so it worked out well. Our New Orleans house was full of skulls and candles, but now the roommate, his skulls and his candles are gone and he has found a place of his own. Because the Saints have won the Superbowl and we’re moving home. Since Katrina, we learned how kind a new town can be. We share our stories from New Orleans and my mother shows off for the nurses shouting, “Sing something Cajun!” to my husband. Which of course he can’t, being from the 9th Ward. We moved to Illinois in 10 degree weather from a town with no electricity and the smell of death in the streets. The move north was so difficult, emotionally and physically, that moving again became inconceivable. It was one of those things we silently agreed not to discuss. Everyone in my husband’s family lost everything. Everything. They are among the pioneers who came back as soon as the city was open, and rebuilt it into what it is today. Even my mother-in-law is about to move back, thanks to Rep. Neil Abramson looking into why her Road Home Grant was not processed in four years. And now the Saints have won the Superbowl and she’s moving home. Post-Katrina, our New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund raised and distributed almost half a million dollars worth of grants and instruments. This week, the Muses are giving the charity a grant at their ball presented by the B 52’s and I’m going to give the Queen Quinn Cummings’ ( The Hello Girl ) decorated shoe. All roads lead to New Orleans right now. David Simon’s Treme series on HBO is going to bring the Mardi Gras Indian culture to the world. The city has a new administration. I have a paying job in journalism after leaving newspapers a decade ago. But in the midst all this there are cold hard facts like saving up for a truck and packing what we’ve accumulated since Katrina. And saying goodbye to new friends and family. Lately my mother has been taken with music. The other day she asked me, “Who was that boy? That little boy who had such a hard time, and then someone gave him a trumpet?” I’ve gotten good at this guessing game so I asked, “Louis Armstrong?” “Yes,” she said, her face lighting up. “Then EVERYBODY loved him!!!” I’ll visit often, and miss her every day. But the Saints have won the Superbowl and I’m moving home. Karen Dalton Beninato is a writer and producer at New Orleans.com , the music, sports, food and culture site of New Orleans. Photo by Jimmy Descant. More on Super Bowl XLIV

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Karen Dalton-Beninato: The Saints Have Won the Superbowl and I’m Moving Home

It’s time to admit that the right wing has achieved its main goal and that all the sturm und drang now drifting from those quarters is an attempt to change the subject in hopes we won’t notice. Hopefully, they won’t dodge the blame, but like it or not, they got what they wanted: The government will have to shrink under the weight of a national debt that quadrupled under Reagan/Bush I, leveled off under Clinton, then doubled again under Bush II. For an excellent presentation on the facts of the national debt, click here . But take my word for it — that debt’s eating us alive. And while the guys who did this to us sit around the pool, the rest of us will have to live with the consequences — intended and otherwise. The only good news is that even though they don’t realize it, the right wing has strapped itself to those unintended consequences, and unless the nation is suddenly seized with a fit of forgetfulness, the result, for them, shouldn’t be pretty. That’s because the crisis they created will do a lot more than just shrink the government. The $12 trillion in debt we have today is enough to make our creditors wonder if we’ll be able to pay them back, which reasonable fear, in turn, is making them wonder if the Dollar can remain the world’s reserve currency. And it will make us a second-rate power. Calls to replace the Dollar with a basket of currencies are widespread these days, because as far as our creditors go — that includes Japan, Great Britain, Brazil and Canada, not just China and Russia — it’s strictly a matter of self-preservation. Japan, for instance, owns $751.5 billion in US Treasuries. The Dollar has been falling for over a year; what would you be thinking, if you were Japan’s Minister of Finance? You can bet he and the world’s other Finance Ministers are not just sitting around, waiting for something to happen. And when the Dollar becomes just another currency in that “basket”, it’ll come out of our domestic hide, in the form of higher borrowing costs across the board. For us, that means slower economic growth. Will that mean government will shrink? You betcha. But first, governments will try to hold on by selling off assets. Think: Bridges;.harbors. hospitals. the Interstate Highway System. Then will come the cuts in programs. But they’re unlikely to be what the right wing thought they’d be; so-called entitlements will probably be last, not first. Why? Because at some point, while the government will have to look at cutting future benefits for those 55 and under, Social Security and Medicare are what keep most parents from having to rely on their kids when they retire. With the cost of living still on the rise and wages stagnant, will the kids of those 55-year-olds really be able to shoulder the costs? And will they want to? So the main pressure will be to keep those cuts to a minimum as voters pressure their Congressmembers out of self-interest — one of the mainstays of right wing philosophy. And since the public recognizes that lax regulation of business is much of what got us into the economic mess we’re in today, its appetite to cut regulations further is unlikely to grow; if anything, the public will want more of it. So those functions of government will not shrink very much — not such a bad thing, if the proof is in the pudding. Since we’re not going to be defaulting on the national debt, that leaves our presence overseas — including defense, which is $663.8 billion in the 2010 budget, or almost half the $1.5 trillion deficit. Despite predictable screaming from the jingo Right, the question will become: What are we defending? The job of global cop? Do we really need that job, or the armies that go with it? Or a 284-ship Navy — including 12 aircraft carrier battle groups costing $35 billion a year? What about the Air Force’s 5,573 aircraft? We may very well have the greatest military the world has ever seen, but thanks to the right wing, we’re on the verge of being unable to afford it, or being the world’s preeminent power, much longer. We’re more in the way of being like a family with two vehicles — a family sedan, and a Porsche. As those tough times drag on — and in the wake of what’s still being called “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” the economic consensus is for very slow growth and high unemployment for years to come — domestic problems will come to the political fore. People’s sentiment will be to look after our own. So much for the Porsche, no? Oh, and by the way, taxes are going to rise, whatever the right wing says. As The Economist magazine wrote in May 2009: “Having spent a fortune bailing out their banks, Western governments will have to pay a price in terms of higher taxes to meet the interest on that debt.” The alternative, it says, is to allow their currencies to depreciate, or their economies to inflate, to be able to repay their debts with cheaper money. All of which brings us back to that basket of currencies, and what it would mean when the Dollar loses its reserve currency status. It has all the inevitability of something from Aeschylus. If there was every a time for the country to come together to deal with a common problem, this is it, but as we said earlier, the right wing is trying everything to change the subject so we won’t remember who got us into this disaster. They’re proving, every day, that they’re simply not reliable partners. Not that the Democrats are showing any backbone. But, willy-nilly, we can’t let the right wing shuck their responsibility for making the United States a second-rate power — an unintended consequence if there ever was one, but one they’re certainly guilty of. That fact’s got to be raised as often as possible, in as many forums as possible, by as many people as possible, so that even if things get as bad as that might get, the poisons they’ve released on the body politic can be dissipated — never, we hope to return.

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Andrew Reinbach: Le Deluge

I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave . The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don’t work for …

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Google Wave in Action: Real-World Use Case Studies [Use Cases …

A gadget is a small electronic or mechanical device of practical use. It is also a symbol of novelty. Sometimes people take it as a futile.

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Gadget Reviews: Gadgets for gift lovers | Gadget Reviews -

Principal Investigator Amy Wagers of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston said aging leads blood stem cells in bone marrow to produce an aberrant array of blood cell types that enhances vulnerability to disease. …

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Scientists reverse blood stem cell aging | The Money Times

Using virus- free techniques, a way to transform the stem cells from human fat into stimulated pluripotent stem cells has been discovered by the Stanford University School of Medicine. They use sophisticated mathematical techniques to …

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Using Virus-Free Technique, Stem Cells Transform into Pluripotent …