While we’ve all heard of diseases, seen someone with a disease, and had a disease personally, it’s unlikely that we’ve encountered a rare disease. In the non-medical world, people use and interchange disease to mean infection, sickness, illness, or something similar. In the medical world, a disease is an abnormal condition that impairs bodily functions [...]

A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider.
Internet speed and connectivity in Africa’s largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.
Local news agency SAPA [...]

China contributed 19.2 percent of the world economic growth in 2007, up from 2.3 percent in 1978, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.   It said China tops the world in contribution to the global economic growth.
 

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is using the IMF’s annual meeting here to campaign for turning the fund into a kind of global central bank with at least $1 trillion for lending developing nations in a crisis.
 

Researchers from Kitasato University in Tokyo have been awarded this year’s Ig Nobel Biology Prize for demonstrating a method to reduce kitchen waste by more than 90% by using bacteria derived from Giant Panda excrement.  Professor Fumiaki Taguchi, who shares the prize with fellow researchers Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei (both from the Kitasato University [...]

No place to hide
Move over Erin Brockovich. Today’s environmental detectives can use radar, helicopters and even satellite images to help them spot illegal toxic waste dumps and help catch those responsible.  Ironically, the tightening of restrictions on waste disposal and the enforcement of new recycling laws have made illegal dumping more likely, turning it into [...]

Most babies born in rich countries this century will eventually make it to their 100th birthday, new research says. Danish experts say that since the 20th century, people in developed countries are living about three decades longer than in the past. Surprisingly, the trend shows little sign of slowing down.
 

Ardi – First Ape Woman
She lived at the dawn of a new era, when chimps and people began walking (or climbing) along their own evolutionary trails.  This is Ardi – the oldest member of the human family tree we’ve found so far.  Short, hairy and with long arms, she roamed the forests of Africa 4.4million [...]

How the rapidly moving technology in mobile phones will impact on the Telecare industry, writes Tom Morton, CEO, Argyll.   The care industry has experienced significant culture changes following the drive to support independent living and provision of care in the community.  These changes driven by the government have also placed significant challenges on our work [...]

Pop quiz: Worldwide, what’s the fastest growing primary fuel on a per capita basis?  It should come as no surprise to hear the answer is coal. Cheap and scalable, the ubiquitous black stuff is the first menu choice of nearly all industrializing economies with a growing energy appetite. That was easy; how about the second [...]

Najibullah Zazi after his arrest in a terrorism investigation
Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a [...]

Chinese researchers have unearthed the fossil of a bird-like dinosaur with four wings in northeastern China, which they suggest is a missing link in dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.   In a paper in the journal Nature, they said they found the well-preserved fossil of the “Anchiornis huxleyi,” which roamed the earth some 160 million years ago, [...]

Artist’s rendering, Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway
The Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, a 40km long marine causeway featuring a 22km bridge and 18km embankments connecting the west coast of Qatar to the east coast of Bahrain, is scheduled to begin construction in 2010.   The $3 billion project was originally scheduled to begin last year in May 2008, however in [...]

Chongqing in China is growing fast – so is the pollution
Apart from a few lower members of the animal kingdom, no-one other than human beings build cities.  They are totally artificial constructs and in them we live artificial lives. We travel differently, eat different food, receive water and energy through pipes and wires, live in different [...]

Children who are spanked have lower IQs worldwide, including in the United States, according to new groundbreaking research by University of New Hampshire professor Murray Straus. The research results will be presented Friday, Sept. 25, 2009, at the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, Calif.
 

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau is creating the world’s first shark sanctuary, a biological hotspot to protect great hammerheads, leopard sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks and more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean. But with only one boat to patrol 240,000 square miles (621,600 square kilometers) of Palau’s newly protected waters [...]

Go Go Gadget Satellite!

R.U. Sirius interviewed Randa Milliron, CEO of Interorbital Systems, “a ‘rocket and spacecraft manufacturing company’ that locates itself at the Mojave Airport and Spaceport in Mojave, California. They recently announced that they were offering to send people’s personal satellites into low-earth orbit on a NEPTUNE 30 rocket for the low low low [...]

Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth … none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini.
NASA scientists are marveling over the extent of ruffles and dust [...]

For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.  The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results “instilled new hope” in [...]

Right now, the transportation systems that support the economy appear to be highly efficient.  To the casual observer, whenever a company needs to move its goods around the country or around the globe, it can do so fairly cheaply and easily.  
 

You too can become a citizen of a virtual country
Wirtland, world’s first sovereign internet-based country, revealed the design of plastic identity card. Every citizen of Wirtland, who has submitted the Citizenship Application Form and scans of photograph and signature, is eligible for receiving the personal ID card. New applications for residence permit and ID card [...]

Yaskawa Electric’s industrial robots in Tokyo, victims of the global recession.
Play a small violin for thousands of Japanese industrial robots which now stand silent, victims of the global economic downturn in a country that hosts the highest robot-to-human ratio.  Recession times have proved a harsh reality check for Japan’s ongoing love affair with robots. Novelty [...]

A Seiyu outlet in Akabane, part of Wal-Mart Stores.
Not long ago, many Japanese bought so many $100 melons and $1,000 handbags that this was the only country in the world where luxury products were considered mass market.  Even through the economic stagnation of Japan’s so-called lost decade, which began in the early 1990s, Japanese consumers [...]

Hot money going out, even hotter coming back in
In September 2008, China witnessed a massive exodus of hot money due to the global financial crisis. However, with the Chinese economy showing signs of improvement in the second quarter of 2009, the situation reversed with a rush of hot money returning to China.
In late June 2009, [...]

Return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize
Today, Team Selenokhod, a Russian group of engineers and managers, announced its official entry into the Google Lunar X PRIZE – a $30 million competition that challenges space professionals and engineers from across the globe to build and launch to the moon a privately [...]