News

[Blue Frost]

I hate green anymore
Maybe green like a Bell Pepper they roll better.

[Blue Frost]

This makes me mad on so many levels, the killing/murder of these great animals like they was nothing.
click image for larger version

[Blue Frost]

[Blue Frost]

Do you see anything wrong with it, or see what happened here ?
Well I do, even if it's not my country, or countries.

[Registered Guest]

I forgot what I was going to post here!.

Must be old time of day, catching up to me.

[Shen Li]

The Stanley Cup playoffs are underway....I have no clue what teams are even playing still.

[Blue Frost]

This isn't my regular news I post, but this got me. I watched his video a few weeks ago with him trying to be strong, it was heartbreaking.
Poor kid, what a shame, and such sorrow for his family

[Ryanissimo]

That's too bad.

Most people complain about relatively trivial matters, such as work, bills, their looks, the price of gas, etc. However, I don't think there is really an appreciation for what one really has until life is threatened by disease or accident. The kid said 'live life to the fullest', which is sound advice.

[Blue Frost]

I think fear is the worst part of dying, but maybe death is merciful to him, and many others.
It's sad to see anyone go, but when your not living because of an illness maybe it's better.
So young though, it's still a shame.

[Blue Frost]

Dragon makes history with space station docking
May 26, 2012
Associated Press
Save |

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)

[Tribrid Vampire]

Some fantastic news for Vancouver.

Richmond passes ban on genetically engineered crops



Richmond council has passed a motion banning genetically modified shrubs, plants and food crops from being grown in the city.

Rossland, Kaslo, Nelson, Powell River and Saltspring Island have passed motions opposing genetically modified organisms with their boundaries, but Richmond is the first predominantly agricultural jurisdiction in B.C. to enact such a ban.

The motion passed unanimously by council Tuesday evening was considerably stronger than the action recommended by city staff, who suggested lobbying senior levels of government for mandatory labelling of foods that contain ingredients from genetically engineered crops.

Under the motions passed, Richmond will seek stronger labelling requirements and integrate education and awareness of the issues raised by GMOs into the city's public outreach programs.

Because GE crops are federally regulated, Richmond cannot legally enforce its ban, but proponents of the ban are delight with the message that it sends.

"It's a pretty awesome outcome," said Arzeena Hamir of the Richmond Food Security Society. Hamir and representatives of the anti-GMO group GE Free BC first approached council two years ago to seek a ban on genentically engineered plants.

Hamir presented council with a petition in support of the ban, containing more than 1,000 names.

"I think this ban is more than symbolic," said Hamir. "To me just asking for labelling would have been the more meaningless gesture."

Only three farms in Richmond are known to be growing genetically engineered crops, according to Coun. Harold Steves, who is also a RIchmond farmer.

Steves said the danger of pollen drift from GE crops

[Blue Frost]

Oh man I should move there, that's great news for the people there. I think the likes of Monsanto needs sued for every contaminated field also, they shave sued many of farmer that ends up with their seed blowing in .
If Monsanto was held accountable for contaminated fields they would have to stop the crimes against us all.

[Tribrid Vampire]

Richmond is only a short bridge from Vancouver. I was there today. Lots of farm land. Used to be just that. Now it's more of a developed city.

[Blue Frost]

Well I hope they started something that will spread, Monsanto needs stopped by any means.
They have a place in the world, and have majorly abused it instead of helping it like they should have.
I blame government for letting them also betraying our trust for bribes.

[Blue Frost]

One billionth of a meter is a nanometer. x50 wow !
Video to link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12612209

Microscope with 50-nanometre resolution demonstrated
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News
Wei Guo with "super-resolution" microscope The technique can see features significantly smaller than prior efforts
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories


UK researchers have demonstrated the highest-resolution optical microscope ever - aided by tiny glass beads.

The microscope imaged objects down to just 50 billionths of a metre to yield a never-before-seen, direct glimpse into the "nanoscopic" world.

The team says the method could even be used to view individual viruses.

Their technique, reported in Nature Communications, makes use of "evanescent waves", emitted very near an object and usually lost altogether.

Instead, the beads gather the light and re-focus it, channelling it into a standard microscope.

This allowed researchers to see with their own eyes a level of detail that is normally restricted to indirect methods such as atomic force microscopy or scanning electron microscopy.

Some of these indirect methods have imaged to a resolution of one billionth of a metre (nanometre), and even given a glimpse of a single molecule - but none is the same as simply looking down a microscope directly at details this tiny.

Using the full spectrum of visible light - the kind that we can see - to look at objects of this size is, in a sense, breaking light's rules.

Normally, the smallest object that can be seen is set by a physical property known as the diffraction limit; for visible light, that limits resolution to about 200 nanometres.

Light waves naturally and inevitably "spread out" in such a way as to limit the degree to which they can be focused - or, equivalently, the size of the object that can be imaged.

At the surfaces of objects, these evanescent waves are also produced.

As the name implies, evanescent waves fade quickly with distance. But crucially, they are not subject to the diffraction limit - so if they can be captured, they hold promise for far higher resolution than standard imaging methods can provide.
Going viral

"Previously, people including ourselves have been using microspheres for focusing light for fabrication purposes, so we can machine features smaller than the diffraction limit," explained Lin Li, of the University of Manchester's Laser Processing Research Centre.

"It just came to my mind that if we reverse it, we might be able to see small features as well, so that is the reason we carried out this piece of research," he told BBC News.

Professor Li and his colleagues used glass beads measuring between two and nine millionths of a metre across, placed on the surfaces of their samples.
Simulated light propagation in optical microsphere (Nature Communications) The beads gather up and re-focus light that normally fades away within nanometres of the sample

The beads collect the light transmitted through the samples, gathering up the evanescent waves and focusing them in such a way that a standard microscope lens could pick them up.

The team quotes a resolution of 50 nanometres - a record for this kind of direct viewing with "white light" visible illumination.

The team imaged minuscule features in various solid samples and even the nanometre-scale grooves in Blu-Ray discs to show that the approach's resolution beat all previous records for optical microscopy.

But Professor Li thinks that, with further improvements to the approach, it could hold great promise for biological studies - for which the action at the nanoscale is difficult to see directly.

"The area we think will be of interest will be looking at cells, bacteria, and even viruses," he said.

"Using the current technology, it is very time consuming; for example, using fluorescence optical microscopy, it takes up to two days to prepare one sample and the success rate of that preparation is 10 to 20%. That illustrates the potential gain by introducing a direct method of observing cells."

Ortwin Hess of Imperial College London said that "it's really quite fascinating and exciting to see these effects coming together".

"If you use the fact that you do generate those (evanescent waves) and focus them again, then you have a tight focal point that you wouldn't normally expect to have," he told BBC News.

"It's quite a nice phenomenon that they've absolutely exploited."

[Blue Frost]

[youtube][/youtube]

[Blue Frost]

This is tragic

[Dagon]

European Commission suggests bank bailouts
Jose Manuel Barroso Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso is charged with making sure countries comply with budget rules

The European Commission has proposed bailing out ailing banks directly rather than helping governments. "To sever the link between banks and the sovereigns (!), direct recapitalisation... might be envisaged," the commission said. "Flexibility and speed(!) are of the essence," commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said. The European Union's executive body also pushed for more integration through a "banking union". The call comes as fears over the health of Spanish banks have shaken markets. The commission's comments are part of its analysis of Europe's response to the debt crisis. "The economic situation in the euro area deteriorated significantly over the last year," the commission said. "Growth differences among the euro area member states are expected to persist."

But it said that the crisis should not stop banks from becoming more linked across Europe. "The crisis has slowed the financial integration process and ambitious steps to accelerate and deepen financial integration may be needed." The money for bailouts to banks would come via the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone's permanent bailout fund(!!!), which becomes operational from July. But the ESM is currently designed only to lend to ailing governments. It added: "A closer integration among the euro area countries in supervisory structures and practices, in cross-border crisis management and burden sharing, towards a 'banking union' would be an important complement to the current structure of EMU."

The commission also seemed to back the idea of eurobonds, which would be debt jointly issued by all 17 countries in the eurozone. "Budgetary discipline and solidarity in the euro area could also be fostered by the common issuance of sovereign debt instruments," it said. "Creating a new market segment based on common issuance would address the current shortage of investor demand for the sovereign bonds of many euro-area member states." The commission is consulting on project bonds - issued by the commission and the European Investment Bank - that would be invested in infrastructure.

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18261969

LOL! - told you to watch this:
[vimeo]23086688[/vimeo]

[Blue Frost]

The commission like the Reserve is the issue, they want to pay themselves the commission like the Reserve is the heads of the largest banks usually .
I was wondering why the governments didn't try bonds here, maybe they knew they couldn't afford the payout in 5 years or 10.

[Dagon]

One thing you have to give them is the sense of humor!:

Spanish savings banks agree merger as debt crisis bites

Three Spanish savings banks - Ibercaja, Liberbank and Caja3 - have approved a merger to strengthen their weakened balance sheets. The merged bank would create the country's seventh biggest lender, with 120bn euros (