Pregnant Women Pregnant again?

In an extremely rare case, an expectant woman conceives another child..


http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/vid/15718290/

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Hope Diamond Goes Naked

WASHINGTON – For the first time, the famed and feared Hope Diamond is on display au naturel.

The doors were locked.

Tense looking security guards took their positions.

In rolled a cart, a white cloth covering its contents.

Smithsonian Institution officials lifted the cloth. "The Hope Diamond naked," proclaimed Jeffrey Post, curator of the National Gem Collection.

The world's largest blue diamond went on public display Wednesday, for the first time without its ornate setting.

Perched atop a light gray display post, the 45.5-carat, walnut-size diamond will be on view by itself for several months while a new setting is prepared.

Called "Embracing Hope," the new setting will surround the star gem in a ribbon of white diamonds. It was chosen from three proposals in an online vote, winning 45,000 out of a total 110,000 votes cast, said Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

The new display is part of a celebration of the Hope Diamond's half-century at the museum. It was donated in 1958 by jeweler Harry Winston, whose firm is preparing the new setting.

Long rumored to carry a curse, the diamond has brought the museum "nothing but good luck," said Post, noting that it inspired many other gifts and forms the basis of the National Gem Collection.

That was Winston's plan, he added, noting that the jeweler once commented that even though the United States doesn't have a king or queen, it should have crown jewels.

Previously the Hope Diamond has been shown in a platinum setting, surrounded by 16 white pear-shaped and cushion-cut diamonds, suspended from a chain containing forty-five diamonds. The Hope will return to this original setting in late 2010.

Formed more that a billion years ago, the diamond was mined in India and later is believed to have been part of the French crown jewels, having been stolen during the French Revolution. It later came into the possession of Henry Philip Hope, whose name it carries.

It's blue color comes from the element boron included in the stone itself. Exposed to ultraviolet light, the Hope Diamond glows red-orange.

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It's not lunacy, probes find water in moon dirt

WASHINGTON – The moon isn't the dry dull place it seems. Traces of water lurk in the dirt unseen.

Three different space probes found the chemical signature of water all over the moon's surface, surprising the scientists who at first doubted the unexpected measurement until it was confirmed independently and repeatedly.

It's not enough moisture to foster homegrown life on the moon. But if processed in mass quantities, it might provide resources — drinking water and rocket fuel — for future moon-dwellers, scientists say. The water comes and goes during the lunar day.

It's not a lot of water. If you took a two-liter soda bottle of lunar dirt, there would probably be a medicine dropperful of water in it, said University of Maryland astronomer Jessica Sunshine, one of the scientists who discovered the water. Another way to think of it is if you want a drink of water, it would take a baseball diamond's worth of dirt, said team leader Carle Pieters of Brown University.

"It's sort of just sticking on the surface," Sunshine said. "We always think of the moon as dead and this is sort of a dynamic process that's going on."

The discovery, with three studies bring published in the journal Science on Thursday and a NASA briefing, could refocus interest in the moon. The appeal of the moon waned after astronauts visited 40 years ago and called it "magnificent desolation."

The announcement comes two weeks before a NASA probe purposely smashes near the moon's south pole to see if it can kick up buried ice. Over the last decade, astronomers have found some signs of underground ice on the moon's poles. But this latest discovery is quite different. It finds unexpected and pervasive water clinging to the surface of soil, not absorbed into it.

"It is drier than any desert we have here," Sunshine said.

The water was spotted by spacecraft that either circled the moon or flew by. All three ships used the same type of instrument that looked at the absorption of a specific wavelength of light that is the chemical signature of only two molecules: water and hydroxyl. Hydroxyl is one atom of hydrogen with one atom of oxygen, instead of two hydrogen atoms in water.

Because of the timing during the daylight when some of that wavelength disappears and some doesn't, it shows that both hydroxyl and water are present, Sunshine said.

This light wavelength was first discovered by an instrument on the Indian lunar satellite Chandrayaan-1, which stopped operating last month. Scientists initially figured something was wrong with the instrument because everyone knew the moon did not have a drop of water on the surface, Pieters said.

"We argued literally for months amongst ourselves to find out where the problem was," Pieters said. Sunshine, who was on the team, had a similar instrument on NASA's Deep Impact probe, headed for a comet but swinging by the moon in June. So Deep Impact looked for the water-hydroxyl signature — and found it.

Scientists also looked back at the records of NASA's Cassini probe, which is circling Saturn. It has the same type instrument and whizzed by the moon ten years ago. Sure enough, it had found the same thing.

The chance that three different instruments malfunctioned in the same way on three different spaceships is almost zilch, so this confirms that it's water and hydroxyl, Pieters said.

"There's just no question that it's there," Pieters said. "It's unequivocal."

Scientists testing lunar samples returned to Earth by astronauts did find traces of water, but they had figured it was contamination from moisture in Earth air, Pieters said.

Three scientists who were not part of the team of discoverers said the conclusion makes sense, with Arizona State University's Ron Greeley using the same word as Pieters: unequivocal.

Lunar and Planetary Institute senior scientist Paul Spudis called it exciting and said it raises the logical question: Where did that water come from?

Pieters figures there are three possibilities: It came from comets or asteroids that crashed into the moon, those crashes freed up trapped water from below the surface, or the solar wind carries hydrogen atoms that binds with oxygen in the dirt. That final possibility is the one that Sunshine and Pieters both prefer.

If it is the solar wind, that also means that other places without atmosphere in our solar system, such as Mercury or asteroids, can also have bits of water, Sunshine said.

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Able Planet Sound Clarity Wireless Headphones use Infrared Transmitter

There is really no reason why headphones or earbuds should have wires, especially in an age of Bluetooth. Able Planet’s Sound Clarity has that capability, only it goes the Infrared route.

In fact, the headphones come with an Infrared Transmitter that is small enough to fit on the desk, but not big enough to get in the way. Just think of it as a mouse the doesn’t need to move. This transmitter has to be plugged into an outlet to work, and it must be connected to your laptop, MP3 Player, or anything else that has a compatible headphone jack.

The headphones themselves have cushioned earpads for extra comfort, and run on 2 AAA batteries. It has a volume control and power switch. Once turned on, the wireless headphones recognized the Infrared transmitter signal right away.

So how do they sound? Terrific. I have included a YouTube video to show them in action, and you can click here for more info about the technical aspects of Able Planet’s Linx Audio.

In short, Able Planet’s Sound Clarity Infrared Wireless Headphones capture the great sound of the Clear Harmony Noise Canceling Headphones, but without the burden of wires. This CES Innovations award-winning headphones are available now on the Able Planet website for $129.99.



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Audiovox offers rear-seat entertainment with PS2

Holidays in the form of road trips can be fun if they’re well planned and if you happen to have generally well behaved passengers and a loving co-pilot who won’t get upset at you even though you don’t want to stop and ask for directions, preferring instead to rely on your navigational instincts (or rather, the lack of it), especially after the GPS system has died due to the lack of battery power.

Audiovox could come in handy to defer the dreaded question, “Are we there yet?” for the umpteenth time by your once-bundles of joy in the back seat, thanks to their VOD10PS2 Mobile Video PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system.

While most parents might have already installed an LCD display and a DVD player to keep passengers at the back quiet and mesmerized by the latest Teletubbies or Barney episode, the VOD10PS2 Mobile Video PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system offers something different, as it will integrated an actual PS2 into the Audiovox overhead video system in a seamless manner without the need to throw in additional hardware or drape even more wires across the back seat passengers. This is handy, as it allows folks behind to enjoy one of many hundreds of quality titles that are available on the PS2, while they can always pop in a DVD once they get bored of a game or can’t quite get pass a certain level without the gaming prowess and assistance of dad.

You will find that the VOD10PS2 comes with a generous 10.2″ LCD screen with built-in dome light and an aspect ratio of 16:9, where it will also include just about everything you require to start gaming right out of the box – these include a couple of wireless game controllers, two fold-flat IR wireless headphones and two PlayStation 2 game titles (Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and Hot Shots Golf 3). Each $949.99 purchase will come with a remote control and a built-in 16 channel FM Modulator with FM transmitter function.

Press Release

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Bluetooth Sony Stereo Headset Receiver for PSPgo

Sony has your PSPgo’s best interest at heart by announcing that it will roll out its latest Bluetooth Stereo Headset receiver this Christmas Eve in Japan, although folks living in North America, Europe/PAL territories and Asian regions will have to wait until January 2010 to get their hands on it. Something tells me that import stores will make sure those arrive in time for some frantic last minute Christmas shopping outside of Japan, but I could be wrong. Here’s what the Sony Bluetooth Stereo Headset receiver is all about.

With a sleek design that matches perfectly with PSPgo, users will be able to enjoy a variety of entertainment content sounds comfortably through the Bluetooth wireless technology with the combination of a commercially available head-phone and head-set (head-set not included). The Bluetooth Stereo Head-set Receiver pairs easily with PSPgo by simply holding the power button of the Receiver, and operation buttons on the Receiver will also enable users to instantly play, stop, pause, forward, rewind, and adjust the volume of music and videos. Additionally, the receiver can be paired with up to eight Bluetooth devices by using the Multi Pairing Feature.

There is no word on pricing, but it ought to last for up to 6 hours of continuous talktime when used.

Press Release

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A Box of Memory, Available Anywhere

Netgear’s new Stora network-attached storage device (NAS, in geek speak) comes with a terabyte (1,000) of hard drive space and software to help manage your files for $229. For another $20 a year, Netgear’s Stora service lets you access your content and play media files from any Internet-connected computer or smartphone.

The Stora is basically a box the size of a small toaster with slots for two hard drives, one of which comes pre-filled with the terabyte disc. (The case also has a USB port to which you can attach a USB hard drive for even more space.) As with any NAS, you connect the Stora to your router with an included Ethernet cable. Then run the setup CD on any PC or Mac on your network to give the Stora a unique name, set up a user account, and install optional desktop applications (for backup and other chores).

Without the Stora service, you can create two additional user accounts for others on your network to maintain their own backups and media libraries; with the service, you can create as many as you wish.

The Stora appears in a Windows PC’s network folder (and the Mac’s computer folder under “Shared”) as another computer, with various folders for storing data and media. The easiest way to move your media files is to drag and drop from their current location to the appropriate Stora folder: This takes about 15 minutes per gigabyte of material copied over a fast Wi-Fi connection.

At home, you can play your music and view files by clicking on the Stora Agent icon that appears in the Windows taskbar. With the $20 service, when you’re away, you simply point a browser to www.mystora.com and log in with the name you gave your box during setup, your user ID and password.

You won’t be able to play music a device doesn’t support–for example, an iPhone won’t play music encoded in Windows Media Audio (.wma) format. But otherwise, the Stora offers a relatively simple way to access your media from anywhere, while avoiding worries about entrusting it to the many Web-based storage services that may or may not last out the recession.

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Vietnam Finds Itself Vulnerable if Sea Rises

CAI RANG, Vietnam — For centuries, as monsoon rains, typhoons and wars have swept over them and disappeared into the sunshine, the farmers and fishermen of the Mekong Delta have drawn life from the water and fertile fields where the great river ends its 2,700-mile journey to the sea.

The rhythms of life continue from season to season though, like much of the country, the delta is moving quickly into the future, and industry has begun to pollute the air and water.

But everything here, both the timeless and the new, is at risk now from a threat that could bring deeper and longer-lasting disruptions than the generations of warfare that ended more than 30 years ago.

In a worse-case projection, a Vietnamese government report released last month says that more than one-third of the delta, where 17 million people live and nearly half the country’s rice is grown, could be submerged if sea levels rise by three feet in the decades to come.

In a more modest projection, it calculates that one-fifth of the delta would be flooded, said Tran Thuc, who leads Vietnam’s National Institute for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Sciences and is the chief author of the report.

Storm surges could periodically raise that level, he said, and experts say an intrusion of salt water and industrial pollution could contaminate much of the remaining delta area.

The risks of climate change for Vietnam go far beyond the Mekong Delta, up into the Central Highlands, where rising temperatures could put the coffee crop at risk, and to the Red River Delta in the north, where large areas could be inundated near the capital, Hanoi.

Climate experts consider this nation of an estimated 87 million people to be among the half-dozen most threatened by the weather disruptions and rising sea levels linked to climate change that are predicted in the course of this century.

If the sea level rises by three feet, 11 percent of Vietnam’s population could be displaced, according to a 2007 World Bank working paper.

If it rises by 15 feet, 35 percent of the population and 16 percent of the country’s land area could be affected, the document said.

The government report emphasizes that the predictions represent the threat, based on current models, if no measures are taken in the coming decades, like building dikes.

But the potential disruptions and the tremendous cost of trying to reduce their impact could slow Vietnam’s drive to emerge from its postwar poverty and impede its ambitions to become one of the region’s economic leaders.

Once again, this nation, which has spent much of its history struggling to free itself from foreign domination, finds itself threatened by an overpowering outside force.

“Climate change isn’t caused by a developing country like Vietnam, but it is suffering the consequences,” said Koos Neefjes, a policy adviser on climate change with the United Nations Development Program in Hanoi.

In addition to rising seas in the Mekong Delta, climatologists predict more frequent, severe and southerly typhoons, heavier floods and stronger storm surges that could ultimately drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Climate refugees could swell the population of Ho Chi Minh City, on low-lying land just north of the delta, as war refugees did when it was known as Saigon.

But the city itself is also at risk, says the government study, prepared by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Up to one-fourth of the city’s area would be threatened by rising floodwaters if the sea level rose by three feet.

“Ho Chi Minh City could have a double impact if sea levels rise and living conditions in the delta are not sustainable,” Mr. Thuc, the lead author of the government report, said in an interview.

His report assesses only the climatological risks, he said, and a great deal more work needs to be done to try to determine their social and economic impacts and the probable effect on population displacement.

Because of the uncertainties of climate change and the variables of mitigation measures, it is impossible to rank nations precisely on a scale of risk, Mr. Neefjes said.

However, the 2007 World Bank working paper studied 84 coastal developing countries and found Vietnam to be the most threatened in terms of percentage of population affected, and second only to the Bahamas in terms of percentage of land area affected, if no mitigating measures are taken.

“Among all of the indicators used in this paper, Vietnam ranks among the top five most impacted countries,” the paper says. It did not include some small island nations like the Maldives and Tuvalu that are also threatened with severe inundation.

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Taliban Widen Afghan Attacks From Base in Pakistan

WASHINGTON — Senior Taliban leaders, showing a surprising level of sophistication and organization, are using their sanctuary in Pakistan to stoke a widening campaign of violence in northern and western Afghanistan, senior American military and intelligence officials say.

The Taliban’s expansion into parts of Afghanistan that it once had little influence over comes as the Obama administration is struggling to settle on a new military strategy for Afghanistan, and as the White House renews its efforts to get Pakistan’s government to be more aggressive about killing or capturing Taliban leaders inside Pakistan.

American military and intelligence officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were discussing classified information, said the Taliban’s leadership council, led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and operating around the southern Pakistani city of Quetta, was directly responsible for a wave of violence in once relatively placid parts of northern and western Afghanistan. A recent string of attacks killed troops from Italy and Germany, pivotal American allies that are facing strong opposition to the Afghan war at home.

These assessments echo a recent report by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, in portraying the Taliban as an increasingly sophisticated shadow government that sees itself on the cusp of victory in the war-ravaged nation.

General McChrystal’s report describes how Mullah Omar’s insurgency has appointed shadow governors in most provinces of Afghanistan, levies taxes, establishes Islamic courts there and conducts a formal review of its military campaign each winter.

American officials say they believe that the Taliban leadership in Pakistan still gets support from parts of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military spy service. The ISI has been the Taliban’s off-again-on-again benefactor for more than a decade, and some of its senior officials see Mullah Omar as a valuable asset should the United States leave Afghanistan and the Taliban regain power.

The issue of the Taliban leadership council, or shura, in Quetta is now at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda in its meetings with Pakistani officials.

At the same time, American officials face a frustrating paradox: the more the administration wrestles publicly with how substantial and lasting a military commitment to make to Afghanistan, the more the ISI is likely to strengthen bonds to the Taliban as Pakistan hedges its bets.

American officials have long complained that senior Taliban leaders operating from Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, provide money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan, where most of the nearly 68,000 American forces are deployed.

But since NATO’s offensive into the Taliban-dominated south this spring, the insurgents have surprised American commanders by stepping up attacks against allied troops elsewhere in the country to throw NATO off balance and create the perception of spreading violence that neither the allied military nor the civilian Afghan government in Kabul can control.

“The Taliban is trying to create trouble elsewhere to alleviate pressure” in the south, said one senior American intelligence official. “They’ve outmaneuvered us time and time again.”

The issue has opened fresh rifts between the United States and Pakistan over how to combat the Taliban leadership council in Quetta. American officials have voiced new and unusually public criticism of Pakistan’s role in abetting the growing Afghan insurgency, reviving tensions that seemed to have eased after the two countries worked closely to track and kill Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in an American missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas last month.

General McChrystal said in his assessment, which was made public on Monday, “Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan, are linked with Al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups,” and are reportedly aided by “some elements” of the ISI.

The United States ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, said in a recent interview with the McClatchy newspapers that the Pakistani government was “certainly reluctant to take action” against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.

Pakistani officials take issue with that, adding that the United States overstates the threat posed by the Quetta shura, possibly because the American understanding of the situation is distorted by vague and self-serving intelligence provided by Afghanistan’s spy service.

A senior Pakistani official said that the United States had asked Pakistan in recent years to round up 10 Taliban leaders in Quetta. Of those 10, 6 were killed or captured by the Pakistanis, 2 were probably in Afghanistan and the remaining 2 presented no threat.

“Pakistan has said it’s willing to act when given actionable intelligence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. “We have made substantial progress in the last year or so against the Quetta shura.”

Pakistani officials also said that a move against militant leaders in Quetta risked inciting public anger throughout Baluchistan, a region that has long had a tense relationship with Pakistan’s government in Islamabad.

Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric, recently rallied his troops with a boastful message timed for the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr.

In the message, he taunted his American adversaries for ignoring the lessons of past military failures in Afghanistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great’s army.

And he bragged that the Taliban had emerged as a nationalistic movement that “is approaching the edge of victory.”

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For First Time, AIDS Vaccine Shows Some Success in Trials

A new AIDS vaccine tested on more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand has protected a significant minority against infection, the first time any vaccine against the disease has even partly succeeded in a clinical trial.

Scientists said they were delighted but puzzled by the result. The vaccine — a combination of two genetically engineered vaccines, neither of which had worked before in humans — protected too few people to be declared an unqualified success. And the researchers do not know why it worked.

“I don’t want to use a word like ‘breakthrough,’ but I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a very important result,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is one of the trial’s backers.

“For more than 20 years now, vaccine trials have essentially been failures,” he went on. “Now it’s like we were groping down an unlit path, and a door has been opened. We can start asking some very important questions.”

Results of the trial of the vaccine, known as RV 144, were released at 2 a.m. Eastern time Thursday in Thailand by the partners that ran the trial, by far the largest of an AIDS vaccine: the United States Army, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Fauci’s institute, and the patent-holders in the two parts of the vaccine, Sanofi-Pasteur and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases.

Col. Jerome H. Kim, a physician who is manager of the army’s H.I.V. vaccine program, said half the 16,402 volunteers were given six doses of two vaccines in 2006 and half were given placebos. They then got regular tests for the AIDS virus for three years. Of those who got placebos, 74 became infected, while only 51 of those who got the vaccines did.

Although the difference was small, Dr. Kim said it was statistically significant and meant the vaccine was 31.2 percent effective.

Dr. Fauci said that scientists would seldom consider licensing a vaccine less than 70 or 80 percent effective, but he added, “If you have a product that’s even a little bit protective, you want to look at the blood samples and figure out what particular response was effective and direct research from there.”

The most confusing aspect of the trial, Dr. Kim said, was that everyone who did become infected developed roughly the same amount of virus in their blood whether they got the vaccine or a placebo.

Normally, any vaccine that gives only partial protection — a mismatched flu shot, for example — at least lowers the viral load.

That suggests that RV 144 does not produce neutralizing antibodies, as most vaccines do, Dr. Fauci said. Antibodies are long Y-shaped proteins formed by the body that clump onto invading viruses, blocking the surface spikes with which they attach to cells and flagging them for destruction.

Instead, he theorized, it might produce “binding antibodies,” which latch onto and empower effector cells, a type of white blood cell attacking the virus.

Whatever the vaccine does, he said, it does not seem to mimic the defenses of the rare individuals known to AIDS doctors as “long-term nonprogressors,” who do not get sick even though they are infected. They have low viral loads because they block reproduction in some way that is still mysterious.

“If we knew what immune response did it, we’d be able to be a lot more efficient in targeting it,” Dr. Kim said.

Also, the RV 144 tested in Thailand was designed to combat the most common strain of the virus circulating in Southeast Asia. Different strains circulate in Africa, the United States and elsewhere, and it is not clear that the vaccine would have similar results, even in modified form.

The thousands of Thais chosen were a cross-section of the Thai young adult population, not just high-risk groups like drug injectors or sex workers, Dr. Kim said.

One of the substances that were combined to make RV 144 is Alvac-HIV, from Sanofi-Pasteur, a canarypox virus with three AIDS virus genes grafted onto it. Variations of Alvac were tested in France, Thailand, Uganda and the United States; it was found safe but generated little immune response.

The other, Aidsvax, was originally made by Genentech and is an engineered version of a protein found on the surface of the AIDS virus; it is grown in a broth of hamster ovary cells.

It was tested in Thai drug users in 2003 and also in gay men in North America and Europe; it did not protect them against infection, and Genentech spun off the rights to develop the vaccine.

In 2007, two trials of a Merck vaccine in about 4,000 people were stopped early; it not only failed to work but for some men seemed to increase the risk of infection.

Combining Alvac and Aidsvax was a hunch by scientists: If one was designed to create antibodies and the other to alert white blood cells, might they work together even if neither worked alone?

Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, which pushes for vaccines and other forms of prevention, was enthusiastic about the trial data.

“Wow,” he said. “This is a hugely exciting and, frankly, unexpected result. It changes our thinking in ways we hadn’t anticipated.”

“We often talk about whether a vaccine is even possible,” he added. “This is not the vaccine that ends the epidemic and says, ‘O.K., let’s move on to something else.’ But it’s a fabulous new step that takes us in a new direction.”

Mr. Warren said the finding showed the need for large human trials, expensive as they are. Studies in mice and monkeys have not been good at predicting what would work in people, and small human trials in which researchers test results by looking for antibodies in blood have limited value.

Dr. Fauci agreed.

“This is not the endgame,” he said. “This is the beginning.”

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