>Aftershocks in China Topple More Than 420,000 Houses

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Chinese state media say aftershocks toppled more than 420,000 houses Tuesday in China’s quake zone, nearly two weeks after this month’s devastating earthquake.

The official Xinhua news agency reports that the two temblors, 5.4 and 5.7 magnitude, struck in China’s southwestern Sichuan and neighboring Shaanxi province.

An aftershock on Sunday killed at least eight people and destroyed about 70,000 homes.

The death toll from the May 12 quake is already at more than 67,000, and nearly 21,000 remain missing.

Officials say they have begun a comprehensive effort to protect the lives of earthquake survivors as disease and floods threaten to bring more death and destruction.

Health officials are concerned about possible outbreaks of diseases among survivors who live in cramped and often unsanitary conditions and are working to prevent large-scale epidemics.

Health Ministry official Chen Xianyi says Tuesday health officials are closely monitoring the situation in Sichuan province. He adds that the number of cases of diarrhea, tuberculosis and hepatitis is not higher since the quake.

At the same time, soldiers have begun the evacuation of an additional 80,000 people from near a lake that formed when a quake-triggered landslide dammed a river.

More than 70,000 people have already been evacuated from the lake’s area in Beichuan county of Sichuan province.

An evacuation must be carried out before soldiers dynamite the banks of the new lake to release some of its water. Chinese officials say that if the lake’s barriers were to fully open, more than a million people would need to be evacuated. The lake is inaccessible by road and can only be reached by foot or air.

On Monday, storms cleared long enough for helicopters to deliver heavy equipment that may be used to build a water diversion channel to drain the lake. However, heavy rains expected in the coming days, are raising fears that the naturally formed dam could give way. – voa

>Researchers studying better insect repellants

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Researchers have identified seven possibilities for the next generation of mosquito repellant, some of which may work several times longer than the current standard-bearer, DEET. The next step: safety testing to make sure they’re not harmful.

While the new repellants aren’t likely to be available commercially for a few years, early tests on cloth were promising, with some chemicals repelling mosquitoes for as long as 73 days and many working for 40 to 50 days, compared to an average of 17.5 days with DEET, according to a study in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biting insects such as mosquitoes and ticks can spread diseases such as encephalitis, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, malaria and dengue Fever.

Several of the new chemicals “were just phenomenal,” said Ulrich R. Bernier, a research chemist at the Agriculture Department’s mosquito and fly research unit in Gainesville, Fla. “I was so surprised.” Bernier, a co-author of the study, said he regularly receives new repellants from people and he ends up writing them back to say they don’t work.

In this case, researchers funded by the Defense Department set out to determine what makes repellants work, and then to use that information in finding more effective ways to chase away disease-carrying insects, Bernier explained in a telephone interview.

“We thought, can we do a better job of designing repellants?” Bernier said. Using USDA data on hundreds of chemicals collected over 50 years, researchers led by Alan R. Katritzky of the University of Florida rated chemicals from “1” to “5” on ability to repel insects, and then focused on what the most effective ones — the 5s — had in common.

Focusing on a type of chemical known as N-acylpiperidines, they narrowed the study down to 34 molecules — 23 that had never been tested before and 11 that had — Bernier explained. .

From those, the 10 most effective were narrowed down to seven, with eliminations based on concerns about toxicity and high cost to produce.

The tests were done on cloth treated with the chemicals and then placed on the arms of volunteers.

This summer, safety tests will begin on the seven, Bernier said, to make sure they are safe to use directly on the skin.

While the military is paying for the research, any success is expected to benefit the general public too.

The current standard for repellants, DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide), was also originally developed for military use in 1946 and was registered for use on civilians in 1957.

While DEET has a good safety record, some people dislike its odor and others worry about safety for some individuals, especially children and pregnant women.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that DEET has been implicated in seizures among children, but there is not enough information to confirm it as the cause of the incidents.

EPA estimates that as much as one-third of the U.S. population uses products containing DEET every year to repel biting insects such as ticks and mosquitoes. – ap

>Random Pictures from a day in the life of Xeno

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You have new Picture Mail!, originally uploaded by xeno735.

>Test

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Test, originally uploaded by xeno735.

From the xeno.

Cool, it works… for me anyway… Post a photo to this blog by sending to lure09number2blog@photos.flickr.com.

>Test: Send a cell phone picture to my blog! (Today only?)

>This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

New: Post a photo to this blog by sending to lure09number2blog@photos.flickr.com.

Give it a try! Send me something random.

>High-tech Wine Cap Design Wins $15,000

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A design for a high-tech closure for wine bottles that would allow the wine to breathe much like traditional bark corks won the $15,000 first prize in the annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition at the University of California, Davis. The contest is run by students in the Graduate School of Management.

The screw-cap concept, which could help prevent some $10 billion worth of wine from being ruined every year by cork taint, will compete next on May 28 at the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Challenge in Palo Alto, Calif. The challenge pits the UC Davis team against the winners of business plan competitions at 15 other top west coast business schools. The prize: $250,000 in start-up funding.

“These students are trying things that more experienced people might say shouldn’t be done,” said Scott Lenet, managing director of DFJ Frontier and a volunteer judge for this year’s Big Bang! Business Plan Competition. “That’s why these business plan competitions are so important. These are the people who will create the next Microsoft, the next Amgen.”

In addition to the first-prize-winning cork concept, a $5,000 second prize and $3,000 “people’s choice” award — selected by audience vote — went to the same team: Arcus. Led by second-year MBA candidate Matt Vogel, who has had diabetes since adolescence, the team is developing technology that would allow people with diabetes to test their blood sugar levels by blowing into a small handheld device — a pain-free alternative to current glucose monitoring, in which patients must prick their fingers to draw a blood sample two to eight times a day.

The Big Bang! competition, founded in 2000 by students at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, is designed to reward innovation at UC Davis and encourage entrepreneurship in the region at large. – ucdavisnews

>Phoenix Mars Mission Photos

>Get them here.

>Diet Coke to drop additive in DNA damage fear

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Coca-Cola is phasing out a controversial additive that has been linked to damage to DNA and hyperactivity in children.

Sodium benzoate, also known as E211, is used to stop fizzy drinks going mouldy.

Coca-Cola said it had begun withdrawing the additive from Diet Coke in January in response to consumer demand for more natural products.

By the end of the year no can or bottle will contain E211.

The company plans to remove it from its other products as soon as possible, but said that at present it had not found a satisfactory alternative to replace the additive in some soft drinks with a higher juice content, including Fanta, Dr Pepper, Sprite and Oasis. The chemical is not used in regular Coke.

While sodium benzoate occurs naturally in some fruits, it is used in greater strengths by the soft drinks industry.

But research by Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology at Sheffield University, found that the additive could switch off parts of DNA, the genetic code in the cells of living creatures, that could be linked to cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson’s disease.

However, the Government-backed Committee on Mutagenicity has dismissed the research.

It argues that while sodium benzoate has been shown to be harmful to yeast cells, human cells are stronger.

Research by Southampton University found that sodium benzoate was one of seven additives – the six others are food colours – hat can lead to hyperactivity in children.

The Food Standards Agency has called for the six colours to be withdrawn from products but not sodium benzoate.

The Daily Mail has campaigned for a ban on harmful additives.

A Coca-Cola spokesman said: “We are continuously listening to our consumers’ thoughts about ingredients.”

The firm stressed that E211 was approved as an additive by many bodies around the world including the European Food Standards Agency. – dailymail

>Fox News Guest Openly Calls For Obama Assassination

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Neo-Con obsession with killing Democratic candidate takes sick new turn as Hillary Clinton makes veiled threat

The Neo-Cons’ sick obsession with assassinating Barack Obama took another bizarre turn yesterday when Fox News guest Liz Trotta openly expressed a desire to see someone “knock off” the Democratic candidate.

Trotta, former New York bureau chief of the Washington Times, referred to the Democratic frontrunner as “Osama” before quipping that it would be nice to see both Bin Laden and Barack Obama killed.

TROTTA: And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama — Obama. Well, both, if we could.

HOST: Talk about how you really feel.

This latest example follows the trend of a bizarre and disturbing corporate media obsession with Obama being killed before he is able to take office.

Neo-Cons, who will whine and bitch all day long about how protesters should be scrutinized and often brutalized for using their right to free speech “in a time of war,” apparently consider themselves above the law when it comes to making death threats against public figures.

Imagine if CNN pundits had joked about Bush being assassinated during the 2004 presidential campaign – they would have been booted off the air and interrogated by the secret service.

Keith Olbermann took Hillary Clinton to task on Friday for implying that she would stay in the Democratic race, despite the fact that she has virtually no chance of succeeding, because extraneous circumstances, such as an assassination, could change the picture.

Clinton made specific reference to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Only the most naive and deluded observer could take this as anything other than a veiled threat.

Olbermann’s fury is justified but, as Kurt Nimmo points out, this goes deeper than a mere faux pas on the part of Hillary. In reality, political crime families kill the opposition and the Clintons are notorious for having their adversaries “taken care of”.

Several high profile public figures have warned that Obama may be the target of an assassination attempt before he is able to occupy the White House.

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show last month, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura warned that Obama could be in the crosshairs.

“I believe very strongly that if an independent candidate like myself – a rogue – were to get into the President’s race legitimately, if the polls looked like he had a chance to win, I believe that candidate would either be physically assassinated or would be assassinated credibility-wise or in some manner by our government because I do not believe they would ever allow a true independent or a citizen to become President of the United States,” said Ventura.

“I say this in all seriousness – watch out Barack Obama,” he added.

British Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing said Obama would be taken out if he became President in February.

“He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him,” Lessing told a Swedish newspaper. – prisonplanet

>A Patent for a Pig

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