About Internet Marketing

It's been almost 2 years now since I started learning and getting involved in Internet Marketing. No doubt it's been a journey of trial and errors but I've never regretted a day of it. Infact, I love it! Internet Marketing requires patience, passion and commitment. It is not for those who are impatient and restless. I am currently helping to facilitate an Internet Marketing Workshop in Kuala Lumpur. Well, the internet marketing experience has been very satisfying for me especially so when I see money starts flowing in! If you'd like to know more about Internet Marketing do have a look here.

The Future of Medicine in the Age of Biotech

Everything you wanted to know about the future of health care industry and related themes. Keynote speech plus videos below by Dr Patrick Dixon (physician and futurist) for gene technology companies and biotech analysts / investors in Zurich. Audience of 150 - October 2002

How scientists will attempt to slow down or stop the ageing process - video
Comment by Dr Patrick Dixon on science of ageing, health care, life expectancy, medical advances, pensions, retirement, lifestyles and government policy.

Themes: The future of medicine and health care. Major trends impacting every area of health care. How genetics will create new patterns of drug discovery and drug development. New cures and treatments. Ethical and social issues of biotech. Gene testing for insurance, genetic predictions of disease and related issues. Human cloning and reproductive technologies. How public mood towards biotech is changing. Media pressures and single issue activism. Laws, regulations and moral debates.

Human Cloning - How Clones Will Be Made, Stem Cells & Future Researchc:


Dr Patrick Dixon lecture to biotech venture capital investors about future medicine and health care, gene therapy, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr Dixon is a physician and trends analyst.

Future Of Malaysian Economy

By Dr Patrick Dixon: Futurist, "Europe's Leading Futurist" - Press Assocation
"Global Change Guru" - Wall Street Journal, "One of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive today" Thinkers 50 survey in 2005.

Future Of Malaysian Economy:


Future Of Malaysia :

Science of Mentos - Diet Coke explosions explained

Science of Mentos-Diet Coke explosions explained
* 11:31 12 June 2008
* NewScientist.com news service
* Hazel Muir

The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation. A study in the US has identified the prime factors that drive the fizzy plumes from Coke bottles: the roughness of the sweet and how fast it plummets to the bottle's base.

"If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out," says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. "This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it."

When mint or fruit Mentos are dropped into a fresh bottle of Diet Coke, a jet of Coke whooshes out of the bottle's mouth and can reach a height of 10 metres. Theories abound as to why this happens, with some bloggers speculating that it is an acid-base reaction because Coke is acidic.

Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now.



Fizzy liquids

To find out more, Coffey and a team of students tested the reactions between Diet Coke and fruit Mentos, mint Mentos, and various ingredients such as other mints, dish-washing detergent, table salt and sand. They also compared reactions using other fizzy liquids such as caffeine-free and sugary colas, as well as soda water and tonic water.

All the reactions took place in a bottle angled at 10° off vertical and the fountain trajectories were recorded on video. The team also investigated the total mass lost in the fountain and the influence of the sweet's surface roughness.

The results showed that Diet Coke created the most spectacular explosions with either fruit or mint Mentos, the fountains travelling a horizontal distance of up to 7 metres.

But caffeine-free Diet Coke did just as well, suggesting that caffeine does not accelerate the reaction, at least at the normal levels in the drink.

Measurements of the pH of the Coke before and after the experiments showed that its acidity did not change, ruling out the idea that a simple acid-base reaction drives the fountains.

Instead, the vigour of the jets depends on various factors that affect the growth rate of carbon dioxide bubbles.

The rough, dimply surfaces of Mentos encourage bubble growth because they efficiently disrupt the polar attractions between water molecules, creating bubble growth sites.

Diet Coke & Mentos:


Rough candy

"Water molecules like to be next to other water molecules, so basically anything that you drop into the soda that disrupts the network of water molecules can act as a growth site for bubbles," Coffey told New Scientist. "And if you have rough candy with a high ratio of surface area to volume, then there's more places for the bubbles to go."

Low surface tension also helps bubbles grow quickly. Measurements showed that the surface tension in water containing the sweetener aspartame is lower than in sugary water, explaining why Diet Coke creates more dramatic fountains than sugary Coke.

Another factor is that the coatings of Mentos contain gum arabic, a surfactant that further reduces surface tension in the liquid. Rough-surfaced mints without the surfactant did not create such large fountains.

Mentos are also fairly dense and sink rapidly, quickly creating bubbles that seed further bubbles as they rise. Crushed Mentos that fell more slowly created puny fountains that only travelled about 30 centimetres.

"Middle-school teachers are getting their students out onto the baseball field next to their school and doing this reaction, and their students love it," says Coffey. "It's a great way to get students excited about science and learn something new."

Mentos Geyser World Record:

What Is Therapeutic Cloning?

BBC NEWS
Q&A: Therapeutic cloning
For the second time, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has given the go-ahead for a team of British scientists to clone human embryos.

BBC News Online examines the implications of the case.

Cloning could tackle disease

What are the scientists hoping to do?

Professor Ian Wilmut and a team at Kings College in London will clone early stage embryos to study a condition called motor neurone disease (MND).

What is MND?

MND is caused by the death of cells - called motor neurones - that control movement in the brain and spinal cord.

It affects about 5,000 people in the UK. Half of people with MND die within 14 months of diagnosis.

Weakness in the muscles that supply the face and throat also cause problems with speech and difficulty chewing and swallowing.

What will the research involve?

The team are investigating a cloning technique called cell nuclear replacement (CNR), in which the nucleus of a human egg cell is removed and replaced with the nucleus from a human body cell, such as a skin cell.

The replacement nucleus will come from patients with MND so the embryo also has MND.

The egg would then be stimulated to develop into an embryo.

The embryo would be allowed to develop for around six days, until it was at the blastocyst stage, before being destroyed.

What is the point of the research?

By cloning cells from MND patients, the researchers will be able to see how the illness develops in an embryo.

They would remove cells from the embryo while it was still in the earliest stages of development, before destroying it.

How is this different from earlier cloning research?

Up until now, scientists have wanted to create cloned embryos to see if they can be grown into tissues to repair damaged body parts.

Experts at the University of Newcastle, who were the first to be given the go-ahead by the HFEA, have been investigating new treatments for conditions including diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

Could it be done a different way?

Cloning opponents have said scientists should look for alternative ways to investigate MND, such as studying embryos that have been rejected from IVF use because they carry an inherited disease.

But Professor Peter Braude, from the Centre for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis at King's College, London, said: "Unlike other genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease, for which stem cell lines have already been created from affected embryos following preimplantation genetic diagnosis, there is no other way of producing a motor neurone stem cell line other than using cloning techniques."

Is it legal?

Yes. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority decided to make "therapeutic" cloning legal in 2001.

This means that scientists can apply for a licence to clone human embryos provided they intend to use them to study disease in a laboratory situation only.

The cloning of human embryos with the intention of creating a baby - reproductive cloning - is still strictly banned in the UK.

Embryos used for research must be destroyed when the work is finished. At this stage, they are still in an early stage of development, a bundle of several hundred cells.

It is controversial?

Yes. Opponents say an embryo, regardless of its stage of development, is still potentially a human being in the making.

Others question the potential benefits of the work.

A spokesman from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) said: "Human cloning remains dangerous, undesirable and unnecessary."

But proponents argue that experimentation takes place long before an embryo begins to develop any nervous system, or sense of self - and as such cannot be defined as a human life.

They argue that the work is vital if effective treatments are to be found for debilitating diseases.

Have other scientists created cloned human embryos?

Yes. A South Korean team announced earlier this year that they had 30 embryos that were the exact genetic copies of the women who donated the eggs and cells to make them.

The embryos were allowed to develop for several days, and embryonic stem cells were extracted from them.

The eventual aim, in this case, is to use such cells to replace those that have failed in patients with degenerative diseases, such as some heart conditions and Parkinson's, or in spinal cord injuries.

Published: 2005/02/08 09:13:56 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The Human Cloning Milestones!

Will the future humans be just redesigned, reengineeed genetic copies and mass produced on a production line?? Will this be happening in the very near future? It's like watching a science fiction movie except that...this is for REAL man! My mind boggles! .....


THE CLONING MILESTONES

As the most advanced human embryo clones yet are produced, BBC News Online looks back at some of the landmark moments since 1997, when British scientists unveiled the first successful mammal clone.

• 1997: Dolly the sheep and the big breakthrough - the first successful mammal clone from an ordinary adult cell.

• 1997 to 2000: Scientists at various institutes cloned various species of animal - as other scientists claimed to be working towards the first human clone.

• 1998: American Dr Richard Seed said he was ready to begin experiments on cloning a human being within the next three months.

• January 2001: Controversial Italian doctor Severino Antinori announced plans to clone human babies for infertile couples at his fertility clinic in Rome.

• April 2001: Dr Antinori reportedly said that a woman he was treating was pregnant with a cloned embryo. It was later denied.

• July 2002: Authorities in South Korea investigated a company's claim that it had implanted a cloned human embryo in a South Korean woman.

• November 2002: Dr Antinori announced that the first human baby clone would be born in January 2003.

• December 2002: Clonaid, founded by the Raelian sect, claimed the first human clone was born, sparking surprise and condemnation. It has never provided DNA proof of its cloning claims.

• February 2003: Dolly the sheep is put down after a veterinary examination showed she had a progressive lung disease.

• July 2003: The first UK research licence of its kind permitting a technique that creates embryonic stem cells from human eggs was granted to the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep in Edinburgh. This is therapeutic, not reproductive, cloning.

• September 2003: Dr Panos Zavos claims to have created the world's first cloned human embryo. He announced plans to implant the human embryo in a surrogate mother later in the year.

• October 2003: Scientists in China claimed they had created twins which effectively had two "genetic mothers" and one father, but the experiment did not create any live babies. One expert called the experiment "proof of principle" for human cloning, but others disagreed. The work was not aimed at producing genetic copies of humans.

• January 2004: Dr Zavos announces a 35-year-old woman is hoping to give birth to the world's first cloned baby.

• February 2004: South Korean scientists clone 30 human embryos and develop them over several days to a stage where special cells known as embryonic stem cells could be extracted. The researchers hope to obtain cells that could one day be used to treat disease.

There is controversy around human cloning

© BBC MMVIII

Overcome Fear Of Rejection

By Michael Neill

In 1977, an oft-quoted poll was done by the New York Times, which revealed that a larger percentage of respondents feared public speaking more than death.

While this makes a kind of logical sense (more people have experienced public speaking more than death), it has always seemed to me that the most crippling fear many of us face is our fear of rejection. Whether it stops us from making a sales call, asking someone on a date, or pursuing the life of our dreams, our survival-based fear of rejection is activated any time we make (or think about making) a request from anyone — this is because the possibility of being rejected is generally real. The person we are selling to may decide not to buy. The person we are asking out may indeed say, "No," and the road to the life of our dreams may well be paved with rejection.

As actors, my friends and I face rejection on a daily basis. And like anyone else who sells their product or services for a living, if we don't collect enough rejections, we're unlikely to make any money (in fact, an actress friend recently pointed out that if she wasn't getting rejected at least ten times a week, she began to panic about how slow things were!).

A little while back, I came up with a simple trick that works wonders in easing the fear of rejection and allowing us to put our best foot forward when we need to make a request.

You can use it the next time you're feeling nervous before a sales call, job interview, meeting, or even a blind date.

Today's Experiment:

This is ideal to use any time you need to make a request of someone, or when you are going to meet with someone whose approval is important to you. I use the example of a meeting — feel free to substitute phone call/request/interview or whatever your situation is!

1. A few minutes before your meeting, begin to focus on the people in your life who love you. If you are religious you can also focus on God's love for you; the more humanistically inclined can add in the love of a child, a partner, or a pet (if you can't think of anybody or anything who loves or has loved you, there are probably more important things for you to work on in your life than getting better at making sales calls!).

2. Continue to focus on the awareness (and the associated feeling) that you are loved and begin to think about the impending meeting. Notice that you may still want what you want from the other people, but you do not need them to love you. You are already loved.

3. Bring this awareness and feeling with you into your meeting. If at any point during the meeting you begin to feel unduly nervous, you can simply go back to this awareness and feeling of being loved.

Q: Why does this work so well?

A: Imagine you're back in caveman times. Your safety came from your belonging to the tribe. If you got banished from the tribe (i.e. rejected), you were suddenly alone left to fend for yourself. This was generally followed by being eaten by some wild animal or killed by members of another tribe — both excellent reasons to fear rejection!

While it is far less likely nowadays that being rejected will result in our being eaten or killed, the survival instinct is still there. By calming this ancient part of our brain (by flooding it with the feeling of connection and belonging that comes with the awareness of being loved), we are better able to tap into the full resources of our mind. It is almost like sending a message to your brain that says, "Don't worry if this person or tribe does not accept you… You are already safe!"

The Beauty of Correct Language!

A family was in the car travelling on their summer vacation. After a couple of hours on the freeway, little Johnny shouted out, "Mom, when are we gonna get there? I've got to use the can!"

The mother replied, "We'll be there soon. Just hold it for a little while longer."

A few minutes later, Johnny's young sister, Suzie, shouted out. "How much longer? I've gotta use the can too!"

Hearing her daughter use that expression, the mother scolded her. "Suzie! Watch your language! You are a young lady, and ladies do not 'use the can'. We powder our noses."

"Well," Suzie answered, "if I don't powder my nose real soon I'm going to sneeze all over the car seat!"

What's at risk: the future of human life on planet Earth

By Mike Adams:

n this cartoon, the farmer character is fretting over something the entire human race is going to suddenly realize one day: Playing God with seeds and the food supply for the purpose of extracting maximum corporate profits is to plae the very future of humankind at extreme risk. Suppose the terminator gene crops somehow cross-pollinate staple food crops that now feed the world... what happens then? Imagine all the wheat grown in the United States suddenly self-destructing after a single growing season. Mass starvation would quickly ensue, followed by economic collapse, military action and quite possibly the collapse of the nation itself. And the same is true in Europe, Australia, Asia and South America, too.

This is what's at stake with terminator gene technology. For the sake of maximizing corporate profits, the Monsanto corporation is willing to place the very future of humankind at risk. But it's no surprise to learn Monsanto is behind this crime against nature -- this is the same corporation that tried to patent the pig, claiming it owned the genetic code of hogs. This is also the same corporation that promoted aspartame to the world by purchasing a company called Searle, whose CEO was a man named Donald Rumsfeld. He strong-armed the FDA to get aspartame approved as "safe," and we've seen alarming increases in brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases ever since.

I believe there is no natural law that evil corporations led by greedy men will not violate in order to increase their own power or profits. Corporations have proven they will poison the environment, kill members of the public, bribe politicians, violate federal law, engage in competitive espionage, threaten critics, bribe the media, endanger lives, wipe out animal species and sacrifice the very future of life on planet Earth in order to squeeze out one more quarter of filthy profits. And they will do it with a straight face, while actually claiming they are "green."

There will be a day when the people will rise up against the corruption and overreaching power of the corporations. In time, they will reclaim their natural right to seeds, a clean environment, and natural health remedies. Today's patent laws -- which give ownership over virtually all commonsense ideas to corporations -- will crumble, and governments that colluded with corporations to strip power, health and dollars from the people will pay the price.

Until that day, of course, it's business as usual in the free market: Screw the people, violate the planet, desecrate nature and keep that share price propped up as high as possible. That's business as usual in the United States, a nation that has sold its soul to the highest bidder on eBay and now stands as an alarming historical example of what happens when a free market economic abandons basic ethics and human rights.

Must-see documentary: The Corporation. Watch this if you really want to know the truth about how corporations threaten the very future of humankind.

What can you do about all this? Grow heirloom plants, buy organic, non-GM foods and refuse to do business with corporations that use GM foods.

The Future of Food

By Mike Adams :

Corporations like Monsanto are playing God with the food supply. Did you ever wonder what happens when all the genetically modified, pesticide-compatible, gene-terminated, laboratory-concocted Frankenfoods end up genetically contaminating the natural crops we depend on for a sustainable food future? In this comic, I explore this important concept by showing the plight of a farmer fretting over an empty bag of seedless watermelon seeds.

You may find this surprising to learn, but U.S. corporations have actually designed, patented and aggressively promoted "gene terminator" plant technology that causes second-generation plants to self-destruct. By doing this, the corporation can control intellectual property (seed patents) and demand royalties on seeds from poor farmers in third world countries. It eliminates the whole practice of "saving seeds" and propagating food from one plant generation to the next -- a practice that humankind has depended on for survival since the beginning of human history.

In doing so, this gene terminator technology is a crime against both nature and humanity. To deny farmers the ability to propagate seeds from one generation to the next is to enslave humanity in a system of corporate control that violates the laws of nature and God. Care to take a guess which U.S. corporation is engaged in this activity? If you guessed Monsanto, you're right. Click here to read news about Monsanto's terminator gene at the Organic Consumers Association.

You can also follow the news on this topic at BanTerminator.org.

If you buy seedless watermelons, or seedless grapes, or GM soy products, you're already supporting the corporations that are altering the food supply.

Seedless grapes are not natural, and they remove the very part of the grape that contains powerful cardiovascular medicine. Have you ever heard of the nutritional supplement called grape seed extract? Guess where it comes from? ... Grape seeds, of course. It's some of the best cardiovascular medicine known to modern science, far more potent than any prescription drug, yet with zero negative side effects. Yet food companies have removed it from the food supply and promoted "seedless grapes" as a benefit to consumers! (Of course, grape skins also contain powerful medicine called resveratrol, but grape seeds contain different medicines called proanthocyanidins and PCOs, which you can read about at the Physician's Desk Reference).

'Terminator Technology' Plants? Read On!

Monsanto May Commercialize Terminator - Biotech Giant Revises Pledge on Sterile Seed Technology as Global Alliance Calls for a Ban

MONTREAL, Feb. 21 /CNW Telbec/ - Monsanto, the world's largest seed and agro-biotech company, made a public promise in 1999 not to commercialize 'Terminator Technology' - plants that are genetically engineered to produce sterile seeds. Now Monsanto says it may develop or use the so-called 'suicide seeds' after all.

The revised pledge from Monsanto now suggests that it would use Terminator seeds in non-food crops and does not rule out other uses of Terminator in the future. Monsanto's modified stance comes to light as the biotech and seed industry confront peasant and farmer movements, Indigenous peoples and their allies in an escalating battle at the United Nations over the future of Terminator.

The Future Of Food:


In 2000 the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)adopted a de facto moratorium on sterile seed technologies, also known as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs). But at next month's high-level meeting of the CBD in Curitiba, Brazil (20-31 March 2006) the biotechnology industry will intensify its push to undermine the six-year old de facto moratorium.

In response, over 300 organizations today declared their support for a global ban on Terminator Technology, asserting that sterile seeds threaten biodiversity and will destroy the livelihoods and cultures of the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seed.

"The world's farmers cannot trust Monsanto," said Stewart Wells, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) of Canada Monsanto's broken promise is a deadly betrayal because Indigenous peoples and farmers depend on seed saving for food security."

Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food


The Ban Terminator campaign today announces the names of over 300 organizations worldwide that are demanding a ban on Terminator technology.

Thelist of organizations and other background materials are available at www.banterminator.org

"We are alarmed that Monsanto's edited pledge no longer rejects commercialization of this dangerous technology." said Lucy Sharratt of the international Ban Terminator Campaign. "We are calling on national governmentsto dismiss Monsanto's tactic in favour of an all-out ban on Terminator. We invite all civil society and social movements to join with us for the battle against Terminator next month in Brazil."

Vandana Shiva on Terminator Seed - Part 1

Mars starts using animal products

Taken from BBC News Channel:

Monday, 14 May 2007,

Some of the UK's best-selling chocolate bars, such as Mars and Twix, will no longer be suitable for vegetarians.

Also affecting brands such as Snickers and Maltesers, owner Masterfoods said it had started to use animal product rennet to make its chocolate products.

Masterfoods said the change was due to it switching the sourcing of its ingredients and the admission was a "principled decision" on its part.

The Vegetarian Society said the company's move was "incomprehensible".

'Extremely disappointed'

Masterfoods said it had started using rennet from 1 May and non-affected products had a "best before date" up to 1 October.

Masterfoods' decision to use non-vegetarian whey is a backward step
Vegetarian Society

Rennet, a chemical sourced from calves' stomachs, is used in the production of whey.

It will now also be found in Bounty, Minstrels and Milky Way products, and the ice cream versions of all Masterfoods' bars.

"If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate," said Paul Goalby, corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods.

The Vegetarian Society said it was "extremely disappointed".

"At a time when more and more consumers are concerned about the provenance of their food, Masterfoods' decision to use non-vegetarian whey is a backward step," it said in a statement.

"Mars products are very popular with young people and many will be shocked to discover that their manufacture now relies on the extraction of rennet from the stomach lining of young calves," it added.

5 Quick Ways to Cut Your Petrol Bill

50 ringgit of petrol used to last me about 2 1/2 days. That was already much for me but now it costs me about 60 - 70 ringgit! Waa...!! Pak Lah said there will be no more price increase of petrol till next year - but...what if price of oil keeps going up??? Hmm ..??

After dismissing the thought of boycotting petrol stations (heh, heh - wishful thinking) – won’t get the kids to school or you to work lah – but still gotta think about some real options right?

SO ... part of my budget restructuring drive involves changing my car!! From a 2000cc car, I'll be getting my 1500cc car this week! From a RM300+ - 15" tyres, this new car will only have RM100+ - (14") tyres. Not only maintenance but my road-tax too will be very much reduced! Alhamdulillah...! I love my current car but NO! - I'll have to love myself MORE!

However, if you guys are happy with your cars right now and have no intention (not pressured) of changing them like me (my purse currently have a very limited stretchability!), maybe I can share with you some tips on how we could cut our petrol bill further. Here goes :

1. Don’t drive as much.
Don't worry, this isn’t as painful as it sounds. We are all accustomed to our cars providing mobility on demand. It is a good thing when it isn’t hurting our purses or wallets but not so good when the reverse is true. That's what's happening today. Agree?

So better to plan ahead. A great strategy in saving petrol is to consolidate your day’s errands into sequential trips one after another.

2. Ease off on the pedal, Speed Racer.
Okay, take it easy from one traffic light to another. Avoid quick starts and stops cuz it does make a significant difference in fuel economy. Give it a try. Smooth out your pedal pressure at highway speeds as well.

3. Feeling the need for speed? Let it go.
It’s easy to forget about speed limits especially on highways where traffic seems to be zooming passed you, isn't it? Do you realise that fuel efficiency diminishes rapidly above 60 mph (96.6 kph) ? In fact, it seems that for each 5 mph (8.05 kph) driven above that speed, it has the net effect of costing you about several cents more per litre of petrol.

4. Check your tyre pressure weekly and keep your air tyres up to the recommended psi.
This is so simple but does everyone do it regularly? Not really. And that’s too bad. Do you know that tyres with low pressure create greater rolling resistance? That alone can cost you up to 3 percent in fuel efficiency!

Remember, tyres heat up upon driving and if you were to check them while still hot, you will get an artificially high reading. So, make a habit of checking tyre pressure before driving when your tyres are cold.

5. If you’re using mid-grade or premium fuel, check if you really need to do this.
Some high-compression engines do require higher octane fuel to run properly. In fact serious engine damage could result from using a lower grade fuel than from what is specified in your owner’s manual. But if you don’t need premium fuel why should you be using it? Premium fuel costs more per litre but doesn’t provide better performance in engines designed to run on regular … so you’re actually pumping cash out your exhaust pipe. Food or rather fuel for thoughts folks?

Conjoined Twins: Abigail & Brittany Hansel

Abigail “Abby” Loraine Hensel and Britanny Lee Hensel are dicephalic conjoined twins. Britanny is the left twin while Abigail is the right twin. They have two spines which join at the pelvis. They have two stomachs, three lungs and at birth three arms of which one of them was amputated in infancy.



It is not easy to be born sharing a single body with your other twin and they are incredible that they had tried their best in leading a normal life.














Below is a television appearance on The Learning Channel around the time of their 16th birthday which was aired in December 17, 2006. The Learning Channel looks into the life of Abby and Britanny on how they coordinate between each other during school and daily activities.

a 2 dans un seul corp Siamois
by fazerillusion

Health - Discoveries Feed

Humour Feed

China Nanjing Parrots In Love

Cellphone Popcorns? Watch This!

Much have been said about handphones causing brain tumours. Do handphones really cause brain cancer? Are they safe? As increasing numbers of people give up land lines and use their handphones instead, these questions become more pressing - or at least, they should. But walk into any café these days and you'll see half the patrons chatting away on their mobiles; or just about anywhere now you'll see people engrossed in text-messaging or just talking on their fashion or nonfashion-phones. I for one find it most irritating when I hear a phone rings or someone speaks on the handphone whilst I'm enjoying a nice movie in the cinema!

Well.. watch these videos and judge for yourselves.








Notice that the popcorn kernels are surrounded by at least three cellphones with antennae pointed at the kernels. Kernels must be in middle of area so all cellphone antennae transmissions center on them.

It seems wise to be prudent about using your handphone. Use it only when you must, use the speakerphone if at all possible, and keep it far away from your body. Certainly, keep it out of your pants pocket next to anything you may value. You can invest in a relatively inexpensive product to shield you from radiation. Don't give a handphone to your kids if possible, until the results are in about long-term effects. And take a cue from a June 3 article in the New York Times that quotes three prominent neurosurgeons who recently appeared on Larry King Live.

Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University, says, "I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear." His less-cautious colleague, Dr. Keith Black of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, says, "I think the safe practice is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain."

I tend to agree that any device capable of popping corn (even as a joke) belongs nowhere near my little gray cells, lest my brain end up fried. Handphones may well be the addiction of our era. We won't give up the phone even though we suspect it might be bad for us, we want it above other toys, we want it attached to us every day, all day, and we get the shakes if we find ourselves without it.

Tissue of dead humans to be cloned!

Friends, we are now 'looking' at what's to come! What is the future of human beings
gonna be like? Let us all ponder on this report and figure out the future of our children .....


From The Sunday Times
June 1, 2008

Tissue of dead humans to be cloned

Marie Woolf, Whitehall Editor

Scientists are to be permitted to use tissue from dead people to create cloned human stem cells for research, under a legal change put forward by the government.

Health ministers have proposed that laboratories should be allowed to use stored human tissue to create cloned embryonic stem cells without the explicit consent of the tissue donor. This would allow research to be done on tissue donated for medical research as long as 30 years ago. Scientists would also be able to use cells from people who have died since they donated their tissue or who cannot be contacted.

Many laboratories have banks of stored tissue which act as DNA libraries that can play a vital role in finding cures for serious disorders such as diabetes and motor neurone disease.

Ministers have until now insisted that scientists contact tissue donors to gain explicit consent before DNA can be used to create cloned embryonic stem cells.

Leading scientists, including three Nobel prize winners, say gaining such consent is sometimes impossible because the donors have died, donated anonymously or cannot be contacted. They say the ban on using DNA without consent could hold up vital research.

Ministers have tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, now passing through parliament, which would allow stored tissue and cells to be used without the explicit consent of donors. The amendment, which is expected to be supported by most MPs, will be debated this week.

The End of Cheap Food

6 July 2007
By Gwynne Dyer

The era of cheap food is over. The price of corn (maize) has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 percent in one year, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour (used in making the staple food of the poor, tortillas) went up fourfold. Even in the developed countries food prices are going up, and they are not going to come down again.

Cheap food lasted for only fifty years. Before the Second World War most families in the developed countries spent a third or more of their income on food (as the poor majority in developing countries still do). But after the war a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the Green Revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long,steep fall in the real price of food. For the global middle class, it was the Good Old Days, with food taking only a tenth of their income.

It will probably be back up to a quarter within a decade, and it may go much higher than that, because we are entering a period when three separate factors are converging to drive food prices up. The first is simply demand. Not only is the global population continuing to grow (about an extra Turkey or Vietnam every year), but as Asian economies race ahead more and more people in those populous countries are starting to eat significant amounts of meat.

Early this month, in its annual assessment of farming trends, the United Nations predicted that by 2016, less than ten years from now, people in the developing countries will be eating 30 percent more beef, 50 percent more pig meat and 25 percent more poultry. The animals will need a great deal of grain, and meeting that demand will require shifting huge amounts of grain-growing land from human to animal consumption -- so the price of grain and of meat will both go up.

The global poor don't care about the price of meat, because they can't afford it even now -- but if the price of grain goes up, some of them will starve. And maybe they won't have to wait until 2016, because the mania for "bio-fuels" is shifting huge amounts of land out of food production. One-sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction.



The attraction of bio-fuels for politicians is obvious: they can claim that they are doing something useful to combat emissions and global warming (though the claims are deeply suspect), without actually demanding any sacrifices from business or the voters. The amount of US farmland devoted to bio-fuels grew by 48 percent in the last year alone, and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace the lost food production. In other big bio-fuel producers like China and Brazil it's the
same straight switch from food to fuel. In fact, the food market and the energy market are becoming closely linked, which is very bad news for the poor.

As oil prices rise (and the rapid economic growth in Asia guarantees that they will), they pull up the price of bio-fuels as well, and it gets even more attractive for farmers to switch from food to fuel. Nor will politics save the day. As economist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute told the US Congress last month: "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's two billion poorest people." Guess who wins.

Soaring Asian demand and bio-fuels mean expensive food now and in the near future, but then it gets worse. Global warming hits crop yields, but only recently has anybody quantified how hard. The answer, published in "Environmental Research Letters" in March by Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California and David Lobell of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is quite simple: for every 0.5C (0.9F) hotter, crop yields fall between three and five percent. So two degrees C hotter (3.6F), the lower end of the range of predicted emperature rise in this century, means a twelve to twenty percent fall in global food production.

This is science, of course, so that answer could be wrong -- but it could be wrong by being too conservative. Last year in New Delhi, I interviewed the director of a think tank who had just completed a contract to estimate the impact on Indian food production of a rise of just two degrees C in global temperature. The answer, at least for India, was 25 percent. That would mean mass starvation, for if India were in that situation, every other major food-producing country would be too, and there would be no imports available at any price.

In the early stages of this process, higher food prices will help millions of farmers who have been scraping along on very poor returns for their effort because political power lies in the cities, but later it gets uglier. The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes.
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Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

Cow - Human Hibrid Alien In Thailand?

Is this for real? You be the judge!

This dead alien-like being found in a small town in Thailand was claimed to be born from a cow and seems at first to be a severe case of birth malformation defect. A closer examination however revealed that the alien being resembled too much of a human baby with its front legs looking more like hands than feet.

In the form of a ritual, the local residents pour baby powder onto the dead 'body' and burned incense in their belief of cleansing the area of evil and hopeful that it would be reincarnated peacefully.