Blog Heap of Links for the day 17 June 2009

[Yeah! Impeach that heinous killer!]

"It appears to suggest that I was removed because I was disabled -- based on one occasion out of hundreds," he said. "I would never say President Obama doesn't have the capacity to continue to serve because of his (statement) that there are 56 states," Walpin said, adding that the same holds for Vice President Biden and his "many express confusions that have been highlighted by the media." Obama mistakenly said once on the campaign trail that he had traveled to 57 states.

The plan would give the government new powers to seize key companies whose failure jeopardizes the financial system, as well as creation of a watchdog agency to look out for consumers' interests. [IMPEACH!]

US Sen. Tom Coburn issued his own report Tuesday questioning billions in specific stimulus projects, complete with a photo of actors Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment in the decade-old film "The Sixth Sense." The Oklahoma Republican's report has Osment's character seeing stimulus checks instead of dead people....

Stillwater Police officer has been arrested .. worked as a school resource officer at the junior high school and is accused of being involved with a 15-year-old student...

A man who was arrested by an off-duty state trooper after being seen with a gun and ammunition in a Tulsa restaurant has received a five-year prison sentence... was praying to Allah to help him on a "mission," and the word "kill" was heard... diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia... had not taken any medication for about a month...

Bad practices that many students believe will make them become expert engineers are the ire of managers who hire recent engineering graduates.

A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade.

The Miami teen accused of brutally killing nearly two dozen cats can be released on bail because he poses no danger to himself or the community, a judge ruled Wednesday... will wear an electronic monitoring bracelet while he awaits his trial and will be allowed to attend counseling sessions that were recommended by a doctor after a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation...

Technical problems are degrading the accuracy of signals from the latest GPS satellite launched by the Pentagon, sparking worries about the next generation of satellites.

Officers said they had to break into the room Tuesday and found eight adults and half a dozen baby rabbits, one dead. The police say some were caged, some roaming....

"I didn't go through what most people go through," Hess said. "I gained some weight. I pretty much thought it was like the 'freshmen 15.'" Hess was shocked when what she thought were bad menstrual cramps were actually contractions, and that led to the surprise birth of a seven pound baby in the dorm bathroom….

Saudi Arabia's interior minister signalled his backing for the kingdom's controversial morality police this week, saying they were on a par with the security forces.... [Other than being, you know, unjust and tyrannical...]

multilayer aseptic cartons (a.k.a. 'boxes') may help reduce levels of substances that contribute odors to wine and can lower its quality.

The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged...

A former Mc- Intosh County sheriff and undersheriff who were charged last month with taking confiscated cash from a motorist were caught up in an FBI sting that originated with another traffic stop 19 months ago, court records show.

Beneath the surface of news blasts covering Iran's tainted elections, riots, protester deaths and government crackdowns, a subtext of women's rights is emerging. It is a subtext only to the extent that women's oppression isn't often acknowledged directly —- not even by the leader of the free world. But human rights are at the core of what is occurring now.

Those pesky graying hairs that tend to crop up with age really are signs of stress, reveals a new report.

A novel bacterium -- trapped three kilometers under glacial ice for over 120,000 years -- may hold clues as to what life forms might exist on other planets.

Allen Passmore of Duncan OK has claimed the winning Powerball ticket from Saturday's drawing worth $1,000,000.

as cells and tissues age, the expression of a key protein, called p16INK4a, dramatically increases in most mammalian organs. Because p16INK4a is a tumor suppressor protein, cancer researchers are interested in its role in cellular aging and cancer prevention.... same biomarker is present in human blood and is strongly correlated both with chronological age and with certain behaviors such as tobacco use and physical inactivity, which are known to accelerate the aging process....

A new study contradicts the conventional wisdom that living near a fast food outlet increases weight in children and that living near supermarkets, which sell fresh fruit and vegetables as well as so called junk food, lowers weight.

Soothing anxiety and helping with behaviors linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder could lead to more severe symptoms in children.

Scientists have discovered a "magnetic superatom" -- a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table -- that one day may be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster computers with larger memory storage.

skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.

extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees…

Medically unexplained (or 'functional') symptoms (MUS) are physical symptoms that prompt the sufferer to seek healthcare but remain unexplained after an appropriate medical evaluation... developmental factors may play a role in some cases.... Maternal perception of a threatening environment may be transmitted to the fetus when hormones cross the placenta and affect fetal physiology, effectively 'programming' the fetal stress response system and associated behaviors toward enhanced vigilance. After birth, intense stress responses in the individual may result in similar vulnerability, which may be unmasked by subsequent stressors....

Nanoparticles specially engineered by University of Central Florida Assistant Professor J. Manuel Perez and his colleagues could someday target and destroy tumors, sparing patients from toxic, whole-body chemotherapies.

Autistics are up to 40 percent faster at problem-solving than non-autistics

"Trakr was so much a part of my life, and, you know, he was more than just my partner," Symington said. "He was my best friend and my lifelong companion. Seeing and having his legacy live on in these puppies is a tremendous gift...." actually pulled the last remaining survivor from the rubble itself...

A Brooklyn special education student who won a national essay contest and was made the title character of a Superman comic got his first peek at the book Tuesday.

A Michigan man said Wednesday he is "99% convinced" that he's the Long Island toddler kidnapped in a long-unsolved 1955 crime. [Comparative photos]

online photographs led him to believe he found his birth mother... after years of feeling he didn't belong in his family, the woman he called his mother murmured on her death bed a few words about him being kidnapped...

a new analog to DNA that assembles and disassembles itself without the need for enzymes. Because the new system comprises components that might reasonably be expected in a primordial world, the new chemical system could answer questions about how life could emerge.

all of the girls said Factor made them feel uncomfortable by touching their legs, backs, buttocks, shoulders, arms, hands or knees. One girl said the situation eventually led her to leave Hale and TPS altogether. She said Factor called her "babe," moved his chair close to hers and put his hands between her legs while helping her in class. She said she repeatedly told him to stop, took her concerns to the school's principal, dean, attendance dean and a coach and tried in vain to be transferred out of Factor's class. "They told me that they could not do anything and that it was my word against his," she wrote. "When I went back to class, Mr. Factor said to me, quietly in my ear, 'Thanks for telling on me.' During the semester I turned in a paper to be graded. I asked, 'Can you grade my paper now?' He said, 'I'll grade it if you stop telling on me....' "

Charles Cox traveled in a covered wagon, courted in a Model T and served on four continents in the Army. His history also contains this jaw-dropping nugget: Cox's father fought in the Civil War... born when his father, who married three times, was 73....

A new type of robot being developed will make it easier to detect drugs, weapons, explosives and illegal immigrants concealed in cargo containers.

…eight people face accusations that they illegally posted [Dungeons & Dragons'] newest handbook for download on the Internet… Another case is against Mike Becker of Bartlesville, Okla…

Recently-predicted and much-sought, the material allows electrons on its surface to travel with no loss of energy at room temperatures and can be fabricated using existing semiconductor technologies. Such material could provide a leap in microchip speeds, and even become the bedrock of an entirely new kind of computing industry based on spintronics, the next evolution of electronics.

Gene regulatory networks in cell nuclei are similar to cloud computing networks, such as Google or Yahoo!, researchers report in the journal Molecular Systems Biology. The similarity is that each system keeps working despite the failure of individual components, whether they are master genes or computer processors.

A Nevada newspaper says it has been served a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about readers who posted comments on the paper's Web site. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday that its editor, Thomas Mitchell, plans to fight the request, which the newspaper received after reporting on a federal tax fraud case against business owner Robert Kahre.... prosecutors told the judge in the case that some comments hinted at acts of violence and the subpoena was issued out of concern for jurors' safety....

County public health officials backtracked on the number of previously unpublicized HIV cases in adult film performers Tuesday, saying they don't know if those who tested positive were actively working in the industry at the time.

[The buried lede in all the scare-tactic propaganda:] first active performer to contract the disease since a 2004 outbreak [In other words, the industry appears to be doing a pretty good job of taking care of itself]

Using a highly sensitive new test, scientists are reporting "convincing evidence" that marijuana smoke damages the genetic material DNA in ways that could increase the risk of cancer.[Which is why you hear about so many cases of cancer among potsmokers.... Oh... wait a minute...!] "The data obtained from this study suggesting the DNA damaging potential of cannabis smoke highlight the need for stringent regulation of the consumption of cannabis cigarettes, thus limiting the development of adverse health effects such as cancer." [NOOOOOOOOOOOOO it doesn't!]

Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign's administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 — required for senior congressional staffers - showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined. A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent. Political insiders in Nevada and in the Senate said that Ensign decided to acknowledge the affair publicly after the husband of the woman he had been seeing asked him for a substantial sum of money....

International media said Wednesday they were skirting the ban on reporting from the streets of Iran by using a flood of emails, Twitter messages and phone calls from people inside the country....newspapers and websites are reprinting emails, the contents of phone calls, and messages from Twitter and social networking site Facebook....

Gary IN... A 26-year-old convenience store clerk was shot and killed in broad daylight in Gary, Ind., and police say witnesses stood by and did nothing.... several customers walking around the store after the crime. But only one called 911 for help...

Many women taking the crowded train in Tokyo opt for women-only carriages during the rush hour to avoid gropers. Now, for fear of being accused of groping, some are asking for carriages reserved for men....