Viktor Mar

Baby Blues

Viktor Mar — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:42:59 +0000

Cartoons

Viktor Mar — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:09:39 +0000

Sledding, Preda-Bergün, Switzerland

Viktor Mar — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:28:45 +0000

Photograph courtesy Peter Fuchs

The 3.7-mile Preda-Bergün cross-country toboggan course is Switzerland’s first and Europe’s longest floodlit sled run. Take the Rhaetian Railway to the tiny village of Preda (about 20 minutes from St. Moritz and three hours from Zurich), rent a wooden sled at the train station, and hold on tight for the exhilarating plunge down the closed Abula Pass road from Preda (5,900 feet above sea level) to the finish at Bergün (4,484 feet). The icy course winds through towering pine trees and past tidy Swiss farms and villages. Periodic total darkness adds to the adventure and danger. Wear a ski helmet and goggles for safety, and watch for riders pitched off their sleds on hairpin turns. Snowmaking equipment helps ensure a full season of sledding, but check weather conditions and operating hours before making the train trek to Preda. Combination rail-and-sled daily passes cover unlimited train trips back to the starting point in Preda, so scope out the course—and panoramic views of the surrounding glaciated Alpine peaks—with an initial daytime run.

7 foods pets should never eat

Viktor Mar — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:42:27 +0000

Photo: iStockphoto

No begging

When I was growing up in New Hampshire, our dog doubled as our garbage disposal. She was my conspirator in my ongoing scheme to rid myself of unsavory dinnertime vegetables and would eat whatever I offered when my dad’s attention was diverted. Another favorite pet was Jerry, the cat who loved watermelon, apples and bananas. A lot of people have similar stories of pets hungry for "people food," which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise considering their normal fare. (I mean, how would you like to eat dry kibble for every meal, every day?)

While it’s OK to give some foods to pets, there are others that should be avoided at all costs. Some foods can sicken or kill dogs, cats and birds, so please give the following list a good read. If you ever suspect that your pet may have ingested something poisonous, call your local vet

Chocolate

Chocolate contains theobromine, an alkaloid that’s chemically similar to caffeine. The chemically pure analog of theobromine is used in medicine as a diuretic and heart stimulant. Most people have no problem digesting the naturally occurring theobromine found in chocolate, but it’s an entirely different story for dogs. They metabolize theobromine more slowly and can get sick and die from eating too much chocolate. How much is too much? It depends on the type of chocolate — baking chocolate has as much as 10 times as much theobromine as milk chocolate and thousands times more than white chocolate. To be safe it’s best to avoid giving dogs the sweet stuff entirely.

Garlic

According to the ASPCA, garlic is a no-no when it comes to our feline friends. While it seems that animals can digest small amounts of garlic powder, larger amounts can make them anemic and cause gastrointestinal problems. In the case of garlic, the culprit is the chemical compound thiosulfate, which is naturally occurring and difficult for dogs and cats to process. As bad as garlic is, though, it’s nothing when compared to the amount of thiosulfate found in the next item on our list, onions.

Onion

Onions can easily kill your pets. The levels of thiosulfate found in onions means that even small amounts can hurt and quickly kill your dog, cat and other pets. Onions also contain allyl propyl disulfide, which causes permanent damage to red blood cells, causing anemia and oxygen deprivation. Animals that eat onions can suffer from liver damage, discolored urine, difficulty breathing, dermatitis and anemia.

Avocado

Avocados made the ASPCA’s 2009 list of foods to avoid giving to animals, thanks to a substance called persin that’s extremely toxic to animals. It’s not only the edible flesh of the avocado that’s worrisome when it comes to your pets; the entire avocado plant — the seed, bark and leaves — contains persin and can sicken and kill any animals that partake of it. If you keep avocados in the house make sure to keep them well out of the reach of your animals.

Bones

Dogs and bones go together like chocolate and milk and peanut butter and jelly. Ask a child to draw a dog and it’s a good bet she’ll add a bone to the picture. Good dogs get big bones — that’s just how it is. But as it turns out, bones can wreak havoc on a dog’s digestive system. The FDA advised owners to skip the bones when it comes to rewarding their dogs and wrote a great list of 10 reasons why it’s a bad idea to give your dog a bone. How does broken teeth, mouth injuries, bones stuck in the stomach, and severe bleeding from the rectum sound?

Dried, uncooked beans

Dried beans are a tasty, nutritious snack for any bird; they just need to be soaked in water and cooked first. Some dried, uncooked beans contain enzyme inhibitors that can block the body’s ability to handle certain kinds of nutrients and can also have hemagglutinin, a substance that can have toxic effects by causing red blood cells to clump together. Cooking destroys the enzyme inhibitors and breaks down the hemagglutinin, making them safe for our feathered friends.

Beer

This one should probably go without saying, but you shouldn’t get wasted with your pets. It might be drunkenly funny to feed your dog or cat a bowl of beer while kicking back brews watching “Jeopardy” with your buddies, but it doesn’t take much for your pet to get too much. They have much smaller bodies and faster metabolisms than ours and don’t process alcohol as well as we humans, so it hits them harder. Just say no to cats and dogs getting drunk.

Scorpion Scorpiones

Viktor Mar — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:02:57 +0000

Scorpions are tough. Some species are able to change their metabolic rate, allowing them live on one meal per year and even survive being stored in a freezer overnight.

Photograph by Carsten Peter

Map

Scorpion Range

Fast Facts

Type:: Bug
Diet:: Carnivore
Average life span in the wild:: 3 to 8 years
Size:: Average, 2.5 in (6 cm); Largest, 8.3 in (21 cm)
Did you know?: Scientists aren’t sure why, but scorpions are fluorescent under ultraviolet light.
Size relative to a tea cup:

Scorpions are members of the class Arachnida and are closely related to spiders, mites, and ticks. They are commonly thought of as desert dwellers, but they also live in Brazilian forests, British Columbia, North Carolina, and even the Himalayas. These hardy, adaptable arthropods have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and they are nothing if not survivors.

There are almost 2,000 scorpion species, but only 30 or 40 have strong enough poison to kill a person. The many types of venom are effectively tailored to their users’ lifestyles, however, and are highly selected for effectiveness against that species’ chosen prey.

Scorpions typically eat insects, but their diet can be extremely variable—another key to their survival in so many harsh locales. When food is scarce, the scorpion has an amazing ability to slow its metabolism to as little as one-third the typical rate for arthropods. This technique enables some species to use little oxygen and live on as little as a single insect per year. Yet even with lowered metabolism, the scorpion has the ability to spring quickly to the hunt when the opportunity presents itself—a gift that many hibernating species lack.

Such survival skills allow scorpions to live in some of the planet’s toughest environments. Researchers have even frozen scorpions overnight, only to put them in the sun the next day and watch them thaw out and walk away. But there is one thing scorpions have a difficult time living without—soil. They are burrowing animals, so in areas of permafrost or heavy grasses, where loose soil is not available, scorpions may not be able to survive.

Leeches help save woman’s face

Viktor Mar — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:55:08 +0000

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (UPI) — Hundreds of leeches were applied to a woman’s face to treat a large wound inflicted by her own dog, doctors in Sweden said.
The woman was rushed to a hospital after the dog unexpectedly attacked her, ripping off a large piece of her face from her upper lip to her eye, The Local reported Tuesday.
After doctors worked to reattach the torn part, leeches were applied to help re-establish blood circulation to the woman’s face.
"The most important thing was to get blood into the torn off body part, which we managed to do within an hour of the start of the operation," specialist Stina Klasson said.
The 358 leeches, by sucking blood and introducing blood-thinning fluids, helped the process.
"The grower who supplies the hospital with leeches ran out. More leeches had to be flown in from the United Kingdom," Klasson said.
Doctors said the surgery was a success, although additional reconstructive procedures would probably be necessary.

Woman with two wombs delivers twins

CLEARWATER, Fla. (UPI) — A Florida mother with the rare medical condition of possessing two uteruses has given birth to fraternal twins, one from each womb, doctors said.
Her rare condition, called uterus didelphys, can lead to infertility, but Andreea Barbosa of Clearwater defied the odds and simultaneously conceived a boy and a girl in her separate uteruses, the St. Petersburg Times reported Monday.
"It was definitely a shocker," said Barbosa, 24, who learned about her unusual double pregnancy during an ultrasound at seven weeks. "I was frightened and scared — a little bit of everything in one."
Doctors put the chances of a successful double pregnancy of this kind at 1 in 5 million.
Healthy twins Nathan and Natalie Barbosa were born at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, with Nathan first, followed two minutes late by sister Natalie.
They join older sister Izabella, 2, who was conceived normally in Barbosa’s right uterus in a single pregnancy.
That will complete the family, Barbosa said.
"The first pregnancy I had one, the second I had two," she said.
"I can’t risk having three the next time."

New material promises better batteries

BERKELELY, Calif. (UPI) — Scientists in California say a new material could allow lithium-ion batteries in cellphones, laptops and the newest electric cars to store more energy.
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are focusing on the anode, a critical component for storing energy in such batteries.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy facility have designed a new kind of anode that can absorb eight times the lithium of current designs and maintain its greatly increased energy capacity after more than a year of testing and hundreds of charge-discharge cycles, a laboratory release said Friday.
At the heart of the advancement is a polymer material that conducts electricity and binds closely to lithium-storing silicon particles, even as the particles expand to more than three times their volume during charging and then shrink again during discharge.
"High-capacity, lithium-ion anode materials have always confronted the challenge of volume change — swelling — when electrodes absorb lithium," laboratory researcher Gao Liu said.
This kind of swelling quickly breaks the electrical contacts in the anode, researchers said.
"Most of today’s lithium-ion batteries have anodes made of graphite, which is electrically conducting and expands only modestly when housing the ions between its graphene layers," Liu said.
A major benefit of the new polymer anode material is that in addition to its superior performance it is economical, he said.
"Using commercial silicon particles and without any conductive additive, our composite anode exhibits the best performance so far," Liu said. "The whole manufacturing process is low cost and compatible with established manufacturing technologies."

Pit bull credited with saving fallen woman

CARNEGIE, Pa. (UPI) — A Pennsylvania man said he is proud of his 2-year-old pit bull for saving the life of an elderly woman who fell into a ditch.
Jimmie Belchick of Carnegie said Cobain, his American pit bull terrier, a breed often in the news for attacking people, found the woman crumpled against a grate at the bottom of a ditch about 1 p.m. Saturday and quickly ran to alert his master, WTAE-TV, Pittsburgh, reported Tuesday.
"My dog put Lassie to shame. He came and alerted me when somebody needed help and what more can you ask for out of your dog," Belchick said.
Belchick said the woman appeared weak and had trouble speaking. She was taken to Allegheny General Hospital, where paramedics said she is expected to be fine.
Belchick said he is proud of Cobain for acting fast.
"He’s one in a million. I tell him that every day, but now, that’s some proof right there," Belchick said.

Survey: Scientists need coffee the most

CANTON, Mass. (UPI) — A survey commissioned by Massachusetts-based Dunkin’ Donuts ahead of National Coffee Day indicates scientists have the most need for coffee in their workdays.
The online survey of 4,700 U.S. workers, which was jointly commissioned by Dunkin’ Donuts and Web site CareerBuilder ahead of Thursday’s National Coffee Day, found 34 percent of respondents said they need coffee to get through their workdays and 46 percent of those said they are less productive without coffee.
The survey found scientists and lab technicians were the most likely to say they were less productive without coffee, followed by marketing and public relations professionals, education administrators, editors and writers, healthcare administrators and physicians.
"National Coffee Day is the perfect time to celebrate coffee’s unique place as a staple in our daily lives," said John Costello, chief global customer and innovation officer at Dunkin’ Brands. As these survey results show, coffee continues to play an increasingly important role in the workplace, helping to jumpstart people across all professions in the morning and keep them going throughout their busy workday.
The survey, conducted Aug. 16 through Sept. 8, had a plus or minus 1.43 percentage margin of error with a 95 percent certainty.

Word choices of psychopathic killers eyed

ITHACA, N.Y. (UPI) — Computerized text analyses of words psychopathic killers use describing their crimes identify word choices beyond their conscious control, U.S. researchers say.
Scientists at Cornell University in New York say the finding could lead to new tools for diagnosis and treatment and have implications for law enforcement.
Jeff Hancock, a Cornell professor of computing and information science, and colleagues at the University of British Columbia analyzed stories told by 14 psychopathic male murderers held in Canadian prisons and compared them with 38 convicted murderers not diagnosed as psychopathic, a Cornell release said Friday.
Psychopaths used more conjunctions such as "because," "since" or "so that," implying the crime "had to be done," Hancock said. They used twice as many words relating to physical needs such as food, sex or money.
Non-psychopaths used more words about social needs, including family, religion and spirituality, he said.
And psychopaths were more likely to use the past tense, suggesting a detachment from their crimes, the researchers said.
"Previous work has looked at how psychopaths use language," Hancock said. "Our paper is the first to show that you can use automated tools to detect the distinct speech patterns of psychopaths."

DNA of woman, 115, delineated

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (UPI) — Scientists in the Netherlands say they have sequenced the DNA of a woman whose mind was in remarkably good shape when she died at 115 years of age.
Dr. Henne Holstege of the Department of Clinical Genetics at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center in Amsterdam says the woman, who was the oldest in the world when she died, appeared to have rare genetic changes in her DNA.
"We know that she’s special. We know that her brain had absolutely no signs of Alzheimer’s," Holstege told the BBC. "There must be something in her body that is protective against dementia.
"We think that there are genes that may ensure a long life and be protective against Alzheimer’s."
The researchers, whose work was presented at the American Society of Human Genetics’ annual meeting in Montreal, said it was unclear exactly what role her genetic differences contributed to her long life, the BBC said Saturday.
The identity of the woman, who donated her body to science, has not been released. Scientists say she was born prematurely but was healthy most of her life, suffering breast cancer at the age of 100 and dying of a stomach tumor. Two years before she died, scientists said, she had the mental acumen of someone 60 to 75 years old.
Scientists first charted the human genome more than a decade ago and have since charted the full gene map of a few hundred people, the BBC said.

Implanted chip could monitor cancer tumors

Viktor Mar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:53:30 +0000

MUNICH, Germany (UPI) — Researchers in Germany say an implantable electronic chip may soon be able to monitor tumors that are difficult to operate on or growing slowly.
Medical engineers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen have developed an electronic sensor chip that can determine the oxygen content in a patient’s tissue fluid and wirelessly transmit that data to the patient’s doctor to monitor a course of therapy.
A drop in oxygen content in tissue surrounding a tumor can indicate the tumor might be growing faster and becoming aggressive.
This ongoing monitoring of the tumor means the patient does not have to visit the doctor or hospital as frequently for check-ups, a TUM release said Friday.
The thumbnail-sized sensor chip has already passed laboratory tests with cell and tissue cultures, the researchers said.

Low-cost cancer detector developed

EAST LANSING, Mich. (UPI) — Michigan State University scientists say they are working on a low-cost, hand-held device to help physicians in developing countries detect and diagnose cancer.
Cancer is emerging as a leading cause of death in underdeveloped and developing countries where resources for cancer screening are almost non-existent, Reza Nassiri, director of MSU’s Institute of International Health, said in a release Friday.
"Until now, little effort has been concentrated on moving cancer detection to global health settings in resource-poor countries," he said. "Early cancer detection in these countries may lead to affordable management of cancers with the aid of new screening and diagnostic technologies that can overcome global healthcare disparities."
Nassiri is working with Syed Hashsham, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, who is developing the Gene-Z device, which is operated using an iPod Touch or Android-based tablet to perform genetic analysis on microRNAs and other genetic markers.
MicroRNAs are single-stranded molecules that regulate genes, and changes in certain microRNAs have been linked to cancer and other health-related issues.
"Gene-Z has the capability to screen for established markers of cancer at extremely low costs in the field," Hashsham said. "Because it is a hand-held device operated by a battery and chargeable by solar energy, it is extremely useful in limited-resource settings."

Viktor Mar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:30:22 +0000

comics

Viktor Mar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:27:57 +0000

Viktor Mar — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:36:42 +0000

Bizarro Comics

Viktor Mar — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:09:07 +0000

Blondie

Viktor Mar — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 11:49:57 +0000

Picture of a Surgeon Holding Hands With a 21-week Old Fetus

Viktor Mar — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:27:32 +0000

Photo by Michael Clancy

Dr. Joseph Bruner at Vanderbilt is known for his work in fetal surgery, especially on babies with spina bifida, a condition in which the spine does not close properly during development.
Vanderbilt confirms that little Samuel Armus was 21 weeks-old in the womb when this surgery took place in 1999, which made the surgery very risky because if anything went wrong, the baby would survive on its own. Dr. Bruner and his colleagues, however, had done numerous successful spina bifida surgeries on fetuses that are not yet viable.
In this particular surgery, photographer Michael Clancy was in the operating room to document surgery on such a young fetus.
Clancy said that "out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one’s hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist."
The picture became a sensation as a forwarded email especially among opponents of abortion. The surgeon, Dr. Bruner, told USA Today in 2000 that the picture was being treated like an urban legend and that he’d even received a report that a team of medical experts had called it a hoax. Bruner confirmed that the surgery and the photo were real but said that it was "not true" that the baby reached out of the womb and grabbed his hand, as some of the forwarded emails alleged. "Samuel and his mother, Julie, were under anesthesia and could not move," he said. "The baby did not reach out. The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on."
Michael Clancy, who owns the copyright to the photo, was stunned by Bruner’s comments and maintains that they do not fit what he saw happen during the surgery and when he took his pictures. On his website atwww.michaelclancy.com, Clancy said he knows what he saw and also quoted a nurse at Vanderbilt who told him that she’d seen babies do that "all the time."
The surgery was successful and little Samuel Armas was born on December 2, 1999.