Ok... this catches my attention.

Beaker ahead of a metal band:

From The Guardian

"David Carradine, the star of the 1970s TV series Kung Fu and the Kill Bill films, has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room.

The 72-year-old was in Thailand filming his latest film Stretch, according to his personal manager, Chuck Binder."

Kung Fu was an important part of my childhood. I remember many spending many a late night watching Kung Fu with my father. Happy memories indeed!

More on his death here.

From an Institute of Food Research news release:

For the first time UK scientists have shown what the food poisoning bug Salmonella feeds on to survive as it causes infection: glucose.

Their discovery of Salmonella’s weakness for sugar could provide a new way to vaccinate against it. The discovery could also lead to vaccine strains to protect against other disease-causing bacteria, including superbugs.

“This is the first time that anyone has identified the nutrients that sustain Salmonella while it is infecting a host’s body,” says Dr Arthur Thompson from the Institute of Food Research.

The nutrition of bacteria during infection is an emerging science. This is one of the first major breakthroughs, achieved in collaboration with Dr. Gary Rowley at the University of East Anglia.

Salmonella food poisoning causes infection in around 20 million people worldwide each year and is responsible for about 200,000 human deaths. It also infects farm animals and attaches to salad vegetables.

During infection, Salmonella bacteria are engulfed by immune cells designed to kill them. But instead the bacteria multiply.

From an Andalucía Innova news release:

Researchers from Seville -María Dolores Gallego, Salvador Bueno (of Pablo de Olavide University) and Paula Luna (University of Seville)- carried out a report, published in the magazine Technological Forecasting & Social Change, stating that the use of free software in South America and Asia will be around 70% in 2010, with a special relevance in the education sector.

This work, whose aim was to measure the increasing interest in free software, compiles the opinions of 18 experts, both from the academic as well as the professional fields, using the Delphi method. With this process, designed for reliable consensus-building among a panel of experts, experts had to answer two rounds of questions so as to define the future scenario for the implementation and spreading of free software until 2010.

From a Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) news release:

The EU has set ambitious goals for greenhouse gas reductions the coming decades. But implementing necessary measures to reach the goals can prove to be much more difficult, according to a PhD thesis on European climate lobbyism.

“The environmental organisations convinced politicians to promise large emission reductions on a long term. However, the EU's climate and energy package from December last year shows that the promises are hard to follow up with actions”, said Anne-Therese Gullberg, a research fellow at CICERO Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

The climate and energy package kept the targets of 20 percent cut in emissions of greenhouse gases, a 20 percent increase in the share of renewables in the energy mix; and a 20 percent cut in energy consumption. However, changes had been made to the original package unveiled by the European Commission in January 2008, to address European industrialists' concerns. For example, the final package allowed for a larger use of CDM quotas to compensate for emissions in the European territory.

As we all know, birdstrikes can be quite dangerous, as the American Airlines incident demonstrated last year.

Aviation Herald recently reported one of the more bizarre birdstrike incidents that I've heard of. It seems that a vulture and a Boeing 737-300 had somewhat of an altercation. While it is fair to say that the vulture didn't fare well, it did manage to obtain some measure of revenge on the plane:

birdstrike

Fortunately for the 80 people onboard the plane was able to continue on to Salvador, Brazil and make a safe landing.

As one wag commented, "I bet that bastard has a serious headache."

From an Imperial College London news release:

Scientists are a step closer to making environmentally-friendly 'magnetic' refrigerators and air conditioning systems a reality, thanks to new research published recently in Advanced Materials.

Magnetic refrigeration technology could provide a 'green' alternative to traditional energy-guzzling gas-compression fridges and air conditioners. They would require 20-30% less energy to run than the best systems currently available, and would not rely on ozone-depleting chemicals or greenhouse gases. Refrigeration and air conditioning units make a major contribution to the planet's energy consumption - in the USA in the summer months they account for approximately 50% of the country's energy use.

From an ICT Results news release:

Three-dimensional viewing has not yet made it in a big way onto our television and cinema screens. According to European researchers, the story of 3-D TV is set to be quite different with mobile devices, as the right standards and technology fall into place.
Simulating the third dimension is something of a Holy Grail for cinema and television. The key advantage of 3-D film over the conventional two dimensions is the illusion of depth and the sense of ‘body’ the viewer experiences – as if the action is leaping out of the screen rather than occurring within it.

Despite the images it evokes of high-tech wizardry, rudimentary 3-D technologies have been around practically since the dawn of filmmaking. The first ever attempt came in 1890, when the British film pioneer William Friese-Greene invented a process in which two films were projected side by side on screen, and the viewer looked through a stereoscope to converge the two images.

From an NIH news release:

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and other institutions have identified in mice two proteins essential for ovulation to take place.

The finding has implications for treating infertility resulting from a failure of ovulation to occur as well as for developing new means to prevent pregnancy by preventing the release of the egg.

The proteins, called ERK1 and ERK2, appear to bring about the maturation and release of the egg.

The study, appearing in the May 15 issue of Science, was funded in part by two NIH institutes, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

"Ovulation results from a complex interplay of chemical sequences," said Duane Alexander, M.D., director of the NICHD. "The researchers have identified a crucial biochemical intermediary controlling the release of the egg. The finding advances our understanding and may one day contribute to new treatments for infertility as well as new ways to prevent pregnancy from occurring."

Children entering first grade with signs of depression and anxiety or excessive aggression are at risk of being chronically victimised by their classmates by third grade. That's the finding of a new longitudinal study that appears in the May/June 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Victoria, looked at more than 400 Canadian children beginning in the autumn of first grade. The children were asked about their experiences being bullied (such as being hit, pushed, and shoved, or being teased and excluded from play). Their teachers were asked to report on the children's symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as on their displays of physical aggression. The researchers returned at the end of first, second, and third grades, at which time they asked the children and their teachers to report on the same issues.