Massachusetts Tragedy

A man fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then turned toward his 9-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him dead in what their chief described as "a killing field."

Read the rest here.

What gives with all the violence?

Toxic Toads

From Raw Story:

AUSSIES take day to kill toxic toads.

Turkey in the Straw

Cousin Emmy

Are you washing your hair too much?

Americans shampoo their hair about five times a week, but that could lead to dry and damaged strands.

Are you washing your hair too much?

Cows and methane

Cows break wind a lot, and their flatulence fills the air with methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Fish Oil Could Curb Cow Flatulence

Healthier Diet

Taking the first steps towards a new, healthier lifestyle are made simpler with these tips.

6 ways to start a healthier diet

Dish Soap Smuggling

A strict ban has driven many Spokane residents to cross state lines to buy dishwasher detergent.

Ban turns locals into dish soap 'smugglers'

North Carolina tragedy

Joining a sad list ...

A lone gunman burst into a Carthage, North Carolina nursing home Sunday morning and started "shooting everything," barging into the rooms of terrified patients, sparing some from his rampage without explanation while killing seven residents and a nurse caring for them.

Authorities said Robert Stewart also wounded three others, including the Carthage police officer who confronted him in a hallway of Pinelake Health and Rehab and stopped the brutal attack.

"He acted in nothing short of a heroic way today, and but for his actions, we certainly could have had a worse tragedy," said Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger. "We had an officer, a well-trained officer, who performed his job the way he was supposed to and prevented this from getting even worse than it is now."

By late Sunday afternoon, Krueger had charged Stewart, 45, of Moore County, with eight counts of first-degree murder and a single charge of felony assault of a law enforcement officer. Authorities offered few other details, allowing only that Stewart was not a patient or an employee at the nursing home and isn't believed to be related to any of the victims.

Read the rest here.

Ghost Net

GhostNet: Huge Chinese Spy System Infects Computers Worldwide

Canadian researchers have uncovered a huge Chinese spying operation which has infiltrated computers in hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama.

From BBC-Science:

THE BIG PICTURE

Sweet Jane

Cowboy Junkies

Health News

In Health News:

A deadly new form of mrsa is believed to be spreading from farm animals to human for the first time. The bacteria already has been found in hospitals abroad. Experts believe excessive use of antibiotics in factory-farmed animals may be behind its development.

Farm bug found in hospitals.

Fabric softeners, disinfectants, shampoos and other household products are spreading drug-resistant bacteria around Britain, scientists have warned. Detergents used in factories and mills are also increasing the odds that some medicines will no longer be able to combat dangerous diseases.

Shampoo in the water supply triggers growth of deadly drug-resistant bugs.

Tainted jewelry

Macy's department store has refused to give prosecutors the names of customers who purchased children's jewelry made with potentially toxic lead, according to an official with the Los Angeles district attorney's office.

Prosecutor accuses Macy's of stalling investigation of tainted jewelry.

Humpback Stranded in Hong Kong Waters

From TreeHugger:

Photo: El Cap'n via Flickr

A humpback whale, approximately ten meters in length, has been stranded in Hong Kong waters since March 18. Humpbacks are not native to the area. In fact, this is the first recorded instance of a humpback whale near Hong Kong. Scientists believe that the aquatic mammal is an inexperienced and confused juvenile who became lost during migration.

Article continues: Humpback Stranded in Hong Kong Waters

Clairvoyant wasn't he

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

~ President Thomas Jefferson

Gromia sphaerica and the evolutionary time line

Big Blobs Change View of Evolution

By Sarah Hoffman, Natural History Magazine (via LiveScience)

On a submersible dive off the Bahamas, Mikhail V. Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and several colleagues were seeking big-eyed, glowing animals adapted to darkness.

Yet as they cruised above the seafloor, the team was distracted by hundreds of bizarre, sediment-coated balls the size of grapes. Each sat at the end of a sinuous track in the seafloor ooze. Indeed, the balls appeared to have made the tracks; some even seemed to have rolled upslope.

The team collected specimens and identified the creatures as giant protozoans, Gromia sphaerica, each one a single large cell with an organic shell, or "test." When cleaned of sediment, the test feels like grape skin, but squishier, Matz says.

Surprisingly, the tracks on the Bahamian seafloor resemble grooves found in sedimentary rocks formed as long as 1.8 billion years ago. The ancient grooves, bisected by a low ridge, had constituted the only evidence that multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animals, such as worms, might have evolved so early in Earth's history.

Matz's discovery [of modern tracks apparently left by G. sphaerica] suggests that protozoans could have made those fossil traces rather than more advanced animals, which probably appeared much later. The next earliest evidence of multicellularity and bilateralism in animals occurs in fossils 580 million and 542 million years old, respectively.

G. sphaerica are rhizopods, an ancient protozoan group. Matz is planning further studies of the species, about which little is known.

The findings were detailed in the journal Current Biology in November.

Vacuum Cleaner Senses Human Emotions

This is getting scary ...

A specially-equipped Roomba robot vacuum cleaner can now sense human emotional states. University of Calgary researchers published their results in a paper titled "Using Bio-electrical Signals to Influence the Social Behaviours of Domesticated Robots."

"Two distinct robotic behaviours corresponding to two extreme emotional states, either relaxed or stressed, are triggered when the stress reading reach a threshold. Robot actions are then influenced by these stress readings. When a person shows high stress (~levels 3 & 4), the robot enters its cleaning mode but moves away from the user so as not annoy them. When a person is relaxed (~level 1), the robot (if cleaning) approaches the person and then stops, simulating a pet sitting next to its owner. If the reading is in between these two levels, the robot continues operating in its current mode until the stress reading reaches a threshold."

Read more at Vacuum Cleaner Senses Human Emotions.

Johnny Be Goode

Peter Tosh

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Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

Be faithful to yourself and what's in your heart.

I always am.