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PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. - Brace yourself for more wintry weather. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Saturday, leading the groundhog

to forecast six more weeks of winter.

The rodent was pulled from his stump by members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle, top-hat- and tuxedo-wearing

businessmen who carry out the tradition.

Each Feb. 2, thousands of people descend on Punxsutawney, a town of about 6,100 people some 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh,

to celebrate what had essentially been a German superstition.

The tradition is that if a hibernating animal sees a shadow on Feb. 2 — the Christian holiday of Candlemas — winter will last

another six weeks. If no shadow is seen, legend says spring will come early.

That was the forecast from Gen. Beauregard Lee, Punxsutawney Phil’s counterpart in Lilburn, Ga. Beau did not see his shadow

Saturday morning at the Yellow River Game Ranch.

It was the third year in a row the two groundhogs’ predictions differed.

Today is Groundhog Day in North America, a day where so-called prognosticating rodents

(a.k.a. groundhogs) emerge from their burrows. Custom has it that, if they see their

shadow, winter will continue for another 6 weeks; and if they do not, there will be an

early spring. This year the US and the Canadian groundhogs differ. Pennsylvania’s

Punxsutawney Phil thinks winter will continue (but that with Bush soon out, there’s hope

yet) whereas Wiarton Willie quickly noted that Canada’s winter will soon be over and then

high-tailed it to the closest pub.

The custom of predicting future weather conditions based on animals dates back at least a

thousand years, but using the weather on February 2nd to forecast a longer winter is more

recent than that.

It was during the Dark Ages in Europe that this widespread superstition took hold. Peasants

and nobles alike noticed a strong connection between a bright, sunny, medieval Candlemas

Day and long, dreary winter weather extending into the next 6 weeks:

If Candlemas be fair and bright, Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Winter will not come again.

In Germany, meanwhile, it was the hedgehog that played a starring role in a similar belief.

Farmers waited for late winter to watch the hibernating animal to come out of his burrow.

If the hedgehog saw his shadow on a bright, sunlit day he quickly returned to

hibernate…and thus put the official stamp on a prediction of six more weeks of winter for

German farmers.

German settlers later brought the old belief with them to Pennsylvania, replacing the

hedgehog with the more common American groundhog,

And the rest, as they say, is Groundhog Day history.

In popular culture, the 1993 film comedy Groundhog Day was a major hit for star Bill

Murray, bringing Punxsutawney Phil’s popularity to new heights.

Today, Pennsylvania-born groundhog Punxsutawney Phil is a minor celebrity. This sleepy

groundhog may be the most famous weather forecaster in the USA. Each year, the world’s

paparazzi hold vigil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2 as America waits with

frosted breath for Phil to emerge.

So… can we count on an early spring in 2008? Or will there be six more weeks of winter?

Only Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow knows…

Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases are inherited diseases of the central nervous system. These diseases have the same symptoms, though they are caused by mutations (changes) in different genes. A form of each disease affects babies and is fatal.What are the symptoms of Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases?
Babies with the classic (infantile) forms of Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases appear healthy at birth and seem to develop normally for the first few months of life. Symptoms generally appear by about 6 months of age when an apparently healthy baby gradually stops smiling, crawling, turning over and reaching out. The baby continues to lose skills gradually and eventually becomes blind, paralyzed and unaware of surroundings. Babies with Tay-Sachs disease usually die by age 5, and those with Sandhoff disease by age 3 (1, 2).

What causes the symptoms of these diseases?
Babies with classic Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases lack an enzyme (protein) called hexosaminidase. There are two versions of this enzyme, hex A and hex B. Babies with Tay-Sachs disease do not make hex A, and babies with Sandhoff do not make either hex A or hex B. A small number of babies with Tay-Sachs disease (AB variant) make both versions of the enzyme, but lack another protein that is needed for these enzymes to work properly.

Hexosaminidase is necessary for breaking down certain fatty substances (called GM2 gangliosides) in cells of the brain. Without this enzyme, these fatty substances build up and gradually destroy brain cells, until the entire central nervous system stops working.

Are there other forms of Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases besides the classic type that affects babies?
There are also late-onset forms of these diseases, referred to as juvenile and adult-onset disease, depending on the nature of the symptoms and when they begin.

While babies with classic Tay-Sachs do not produce any hex A, individuals with the late-onset forms produce very small amounts of the enzyme. This is probably why their symptoms begin later in life and generally are milder than in the classic form.

Children with juvenile Tay-Sachs disease develop symptoms between 2 and 10 years of age that resemble those of the classic form (3). Although the course of the disease is slower, death generally occurs by age 15 (3).

Individuals with adult-onset Tay-Sachs disease (also called chronic Tay-Sachs disease) have far milder symptoms than children with the classic or juvenile forms. Symptoms usually begin between adolescence and the mid-30s, although they can begin in childhood (4). Affected individuals usually do not lose vision or hearing. Some individuals may have loss of certain mental abilities, including problems with memory and comprehension. Symptoms vary greatly in severity and can include slurred speech, muscle weakness, muscle cramps, tremors, unsteady gait and sometimes mental illness. Life expectancy is variable, and in some cases appears to be unaffected (4, 5).

Rare late-onset forms of Sandhoff disease appear to share many of these symptoms.

Is there any treatment for these diseases?
There is currently no treatment that will prevent these diseases from running their course. Affected children can only be made as comfortable as possible and given other supportive care.

Researchers are investigating whether stem cell transplants (sometimes called bone marrow transplants) could help babies with classic Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases. Stem cells are immature blood cells that produce all other kinds of blood cells. Stem cells are obtained from umbilical cord blood or from the bone marrow of a donor. Unfortunately, stem cell transplantation has not yet been successful in stopping or reversing brain damage in Tay-Sachs or Sandhoff diseases, and this treatment poses a high risk of death in affected babies (6).

Doctors are also studying the effectiveness of drug treatments (including a drug called miglustat, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat a related disorder) in helping to reduce the build-up of fatty substances in brain cells in individuals with these diseases (7, 8).

Who is at risk for Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases?
Tay-Sachs disease occurs most frequently in descendants of Central and Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jews. About 1 out of every 30 American Jews carries a mutation in the gene that codes for hex A (9). Some non-Jewish individuals of French-Canadian ancestry (from the St. Lawrence River Valley of Quebec) and members of the Cajun population in Louisiana are also at increased risk (9). Individuals in other ethnic groups in this country have about a 1 in 300 chance of carrying a mutation in this gene (9).

Sandhoff disease can occur in any ethnic group, though it is uncommon. Individuals not of Jewish ancestry are more likely to carry one of the gene mutations that causes Sandhoff disease than those of Jewish ancestry (1 in 600 vs. 1 in 1,000) (2).

How are the diseases transmitted?
All forms of Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases are inherited. Tay-Sachs disease is caused by mutations in a gene on chromosome 15 that codes for hex A, while Sandhoff disease is caused by mutations in a gene on chromosome 5 that codes for hex B. Both diseases are passed on through parents who carry one of these mutations. A carrier does not have the illness. However, when two carriers become parents:

* There is a 25 percent (1-in-4) chance that any child they have will inherit a gene mutation from each parent and have the disease.
* There is a 25 percent chance (1-in-4) that the child will inherit the normal gene from each parent. The child will not have the disease and will not be a carrier.
* There is a 50 percent (2-in-4) chance that the child will inherit one normal and one abnormal gene. The child will not have the disease but will be a carrier like the parents.

If only one parent is a carrier, none of that person’s children can inherit the disease. However, each child has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the gene mutation and being a carrier.

Carrier screening is commonly performed before or during pregnancy for adults in populations who are at risk for these disorders.

Can these diseases be diagnosed before birth?
Yes. Prenatal tests called amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) can diagnose these diseases before birth. Amniocentesis usually is done between the 15th and 20th week of pregnancy. In this test, the doctor inserts a needle into the mother’s abdomen to take a sample of fluid that surrounds the fetus. The fluid contains fetal cells, which the lab tests to see if they contain hex A (when testing for Tay-Sachs) or hex A and hex B (when testing for Sandhoff).

CVS is generally done between the 10th and 12th weeks of pregnancy. In CVS, the doctor retrieves a sample of cells from the developing placenta either through a thin tube inserted through the vagina or by inserting a needle through the mother’s abdomen. The placenta contains cells that are genetically identical to those of the fetus, and these cells are examined for the presence of the enzyme.

If prenatal testing shows that only hex A is missing, the baby will have classic Tay-Sachs disease. If both hex A and hex B are missing, the baby will have classic Sandhoff disease. In a small number of cases, the doctor may recommend DNA-based genetic testing to look for known mutations in the hex A gene or hex B gene that cause the late-onset forms of the diseases. This type of test can determine whether the fetus has classic or a late-onset disease, and possibly how severely affected the child may be.

Some medical centers have begun offering genetic testing to carrier couples who undergo in vitro fertilization (a process in which eggs are removed from a woman’s ovaries and fertilized in the laboratory with her partner’s sperm). The embryos are tested for a genetic disease, and only healthy ones are implanted in the mother. This is called pre-implantation genetic testing.

How can people find out if they are carriers?
An individual can take a test that measures the amount of hexosaminidase in the blood. Tay-Sachs carriers have about half as much of hex A as noncarriers, but this is plenty for the carrier’s own needs. Similarly, carriers of Sandhoff disease have reduced but adequate amounts of both hex A and hex B.

A blood sample also can be used to perform DNA-based genetic testing for known mutations in the hex A or hex B genes.  This kind of testing may be recommended if the results of the carrier screening test are uncertain.

Where is carrier screening for Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases available?
Carrier screening is available from a genetic services center or clinic. A health care provider can provide referrals to local sites where testing is available, as can the National Tay-Sachs and Allied Diseases Association.

The genetic services center performs the carrier screening test that can determine whether one or both partners carry mutations that can cause these diseases. Trained genetic counselors will explain the test results so that individuals know whether or not their children will be at risk for the disease.

What research on Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases is being conducted by March of Dimes grantees?
March of Dimes grantees helped pinpoint mutations in the hex A gene that are responsible for late-onset forms of Tay-Sachs disease. Information about specific mutations leads to improved diagnosis and carrier screening for all forms of Tay-Sachs disease.

A recent grantee has been attempting to develop a drug treatment that may prevent the production of certain fatty substances that build up and impair brain cells in affected individuals. This approach eventually may help prevent the early deaths and loss of central nervous system function associated with Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases.

Well, bizarre images have emerged showing a mystery female figure walking down a hill on the arid planet.

The photo of what looks like a naked woman with her arm outstretched was among several taken on the red planet and sent back to Earth by NASA’s Mars explorer Spirit, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed website.

Man seen on Mars

Though no official confirmation has come from NASA whether the figure is an alien or an optical illusion caused by a landscape on Mars, it has set the Internet abuzz that there really is life on Mars.

These kinds of speculations are not new. Earlier also they have popped up just to find out later that they were wrong or perhaps too early to comment, as you can find in the article Unmasking the “Face on Mars” in NASA’s site.

New high-resolution images and 3D altimetry from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveal the Face on Mars for what it really is: a mesa.  Twenty five years ago something funny happened around Mars. NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft was circling the planet, snapping photos of possible landing sites for its sister ship Viking 2, when it spotted the shadowy likeness of a human face. An enormous head nearly two miles from end to end seemed to be staring back at the cameras from a region of the Red Planet called Cydonia.

As soon as this evening’s Florida debate ended, the MSNBC TV commentators were wondering how it would have looked to “someone who was seeing these candidates for the first time.”

Why didn’t they just ask me?

This is the first debate among the Republicans that I’ve seen at full length and in real time.* So factoring in all the expectations I’d gathered from coverage (Romney too weaselly, McCain really the strongest one, Huckabee a charmer, etc), how did it look?

Romney by a mile. More precisely, the only candidate you could imagine putting up a plausible general-election fight. Again, I’m not handicapping the GOP race, which I know nothing about. I’m not saying how each candidate did relative to previous appearances. I am telling you how this one debate looked if you had never seen these guys on the same stage before.

McCain, Giuliani, and Huckabee all notably ill at ease when asked to say anything about the economy. (Huckabee: building two new lanes on I-95, Maine to Florida, as an energy saving measure???) When Romney asked Giuliani a specific question about how to deal with China, the answer reminded me of the way I would sound if asked to fill 90 seconds discussing my favorite fashion designers. McCain attempting to describe his economy policy by listing his advisors. (Jack Kemp?) The more the economy matters as The general election issue, the less this will cut it — and the more Romney can use at least the veneer of his being able to discuss the issue.

Two other random points:
- Boy, do these people hate Hillary Clinton! Her name was mentioned at least ten times as often as George Bush’s (and all Bush mentions, that I heard, were from Romney).

- The intrusiveness and badgering nature of Tim Russert’s questions! I wonder whether the two parties will subject themselves to another presidential cycle of “debating” on these demeaning terms.

Here endeth the report from outer space.

Hey, remember my slapping down a video that was full of baloney about asteroid TU24?

Well, there is more of that garbage floating around You Tube, this time from user “TU24dotORG”. The video in question is full of what I can politely call inaccuracies. The basic premise is that this asteroid, which will pass our planet by quite some distance on January 29, may cause all kinds of havoc on Earth. Why? Well, because they say so.

For example, it says,

Although the chances of a direct impact with Earth are very minimal, truth is we don’t know much about TU24.

“Very minimal” overstates it. The chances are essentially 0. It’ll miss us by hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

But that’s not the point of that part of the video; the creator is trying to promote fear by saying astronomers don’t understand the asteroid. The next part of the video points out a few things about the asteroid we don’t know yet, like the asteroid’s pole direction, its rotation period, the light curve amplitude, and the spectral class.

Well, that means we don’t know if it’s spinning, how much the brightness fluctuates with time, or whether this is an iron or rocky asteroid.

My reply to that is… so? While those may be of scientific interest, they make no difference at all to the fact that the asteroid won’t hit us, and poses zero danger. That part of the video is literally laughable, in that I actually laughed out loud when I saw it.

The next bit shows a webpage about the asteroid saying that better astrometry (physical measurements of the asteroid’s position on the sky) is needed, but that’s always true, for every asteroid! That has nothing to bear on the (false) claim that this asteroid is a threat. We need to refine the orbit of the object, get the error bars lowered in our ability to predict its future positions. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know where it will be in a few weeks to pretty good accuracy.

This is simple fear mongering on the part of the person who made this video, and I take a very dim view of that. A very dim view.

In the next section, the video creator says that Comet Holmes was “40% more massive than our Sun”.

This may be ad hominem, but I’d have a pretty hard time believing someone’s claims when they confuse mass with size. Comet Holmes has a very small mass, more like that of a mountain, trillions of times less than the Sun’s mass. While the expanding gas cloud from it got bigger than the Sun in diameter, it was very, very tenuous, like a high grade vacuum by lab standards. The mass was teeny tiny.

The video creator then goes on about the electric universe, a long-discredited theory mostly supported by people who have a hard time grasping that large objects are electrically neutral. They think that things like the Earth exchange vast amounts of electric charge with everything around them, which is pretty silly. We have actual satellites in space that measure electrical and magnetic discharges, and while this stuff is extraordinarily complicated and the details certainly aren’t ironed out, it’s very clear that the claims of the EU people are totally wrong.

To prove my point, the video then shows lightning, and says it’s plasma discharge from the Sun. Oops. The guy who made the video confuses lightning with the aurora borealis. Not a good sign.

Inexplicably, the video then jumps to 2007 WD5, an asteroid that will pass close to Mars around the same time TU24 passes the Earth. It says that WD5 picked up positive ions from the Earth when it passed us on November 2. Thing is, it passed us at a distance of 7 million kilometers. That’s a wee bit far (18 times the Moon’s distance) to have picked up anything from us! If it could do that, why doesn’t the Moon pick up loads more charge?

Oh yeah, because this stuff is wrong.

Then the video gets nasty, and particularly evil. It says that TU24 (the one that gets kinda close to us later this month) could

… easily cause earthquakes, deadly storms, and massive eruptions of fire across hundreds or even thousands of square miles.

That’s complete and utter crap. And it gets worse.

It then says,

Think an asteroid can’t do this?

One already has…

100 years ago

TUNGUSKA.

Yeah, well, there’s an eensy weensy difference between the Tunguska impactor and TU24: the Tunguska impactor was an impactor. It hit us. TU24 won’t hit us.

Feh.

Then the video does the usual and expected paranoid thing, saying NASA won’t admit how close it will get, yadda yadda.

Let me be perfectly clear: this video is almost entirely garbage. The asteroid will miss by hundreds of thousands of kilometers, so there will be no direct impact. There’s no such thing as a “negative asteroid”, like they claim, the plasma discharges they talk about are a totally different phenomenon, and nothing like that has ever been seen in an asteroid, nor will it ever. Asteroids don’t carry charges like that, and wouldn’t couple well with the Earth’s magnetosphere the way they claim anyway.

We’re totally safe from this asteroid in January, and I’d bet anything on it. Literally.

Some people might think I am being harsh; however, doomcryers are, in my opinion, among the lowest form of life. If they’re conmen (or pranksters) then they’re a particularly fetid brand of evil, and if they’re honest, they’re not trying very hard to educate themselves on reality (yet going to a lot more trouble to make YouTube videos about it). A third kind, of course, may be honest people with mental problems, and so in my opinion are worthy of our sympathy. But that doesn’t mean we cannot take action to correct what they are doing.

In the end, as well, all three kinds of fearmonger try very hard to scare people, and facts be damned. And many times I’ve seen people good and truly scared by garbage like this. I get emails…

Needless to say I’ll try to stay on top of stuff like this. I’m just glad in a week people like “TU24dotORG” will be out of a job. Temporarily, of course, until they find the next thing they can terrorize people with. Grrrrr.

DXM for beginners:

SWIM has been experimenting with dextromethorphan (DXM) lately, in order to lower his/her tolerance to opiates for his/her chipping habits. SWIM has found DXM to have a This is what I have to offer:

1) DXM is available in most cough/cold medicines, however only a select few are desirable mixtures for recreational use. Ideally, and most intelligently, one needs to find medicine containing only DXM. Look carefully at the Active ingredients list. THIS IS IMPERITAVE FOR ALL RECREATIONAL USE OF O-T-C AND PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. Many brands mix Aspirin (acetaminophen) with the DXM. Other drugs are commonly mixed in. Stay clear of them, because they can cause extremely adverse effects including uncontrollable vomiting and even death. This should not be a surprise to those who use prescription opiates. Look for a brand that states the only active ingredient is DXM, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Also, one can look at the alcohol content, for kicks (SWIM has found anywhere from 5%-11%). The syrups are more likely to contain pure DXM than the pill form. Make note of this.

2) Dosage: A good starting recreational dose is anywhere from 200-400mg of DXM. You can look at the box for dosage details. (SWIM has found a good dose to be 30mg DXM for 15ml of syrup. Try to get as high a dose per ml as possible — the stuff taste’s very strong!) You can spread your intake over a period of time or you can just take it all at once. SWIM has found that on an empty stomach some syrups can burn/upset the stomach. It has helped him/her to eat a little directly after dosing.

3) Effects: Onset takes roughly 30 minutes to begin to feel the effects. After this, onset becomes more rapid. By an hour after dosing, it becomes difficult to concentrate and SWIM begins to feel a little dizzy and disoriented. The experience can be described as disconnected, and slightly euphoric — almost out-of-body, in a way. Unlike opiates, SWIM has experienced a body buzz, but a much more shallow or hallow feeling one. Euphoria is less warm, but still fairly intense. Music and other stimulus are exaggerated greatly. SWIM has not found it difficult to interact with people and situations in a high state, but slightly more so and differently than opiates.

4) Taste? Yeah, it’s not a lie that cough syrup tastes like garbage. However, it’s better than the taste of opiate tea, or so says SWIM. He/she has found that having a good tasting tracer drink for immediately afterward to be very beneficial.

This about wraps up what SWIM has to say. Any questions can be answered.

Opel’s next-generation range of mid-size cars promises a radical step forward. The new model family, which makes its world premiere at the London Motor Show in July 2008, sets technology and design standards for the Opel brand and mid-size segment. To lead off the proceedings, Opel today announced the new model’s name: Opel Insignia. The new Insignia family will be built at Opel’s home plant in Rüsselsheim, one of the most state-of-the-art automobile production facilities in the world.

“Dynamic performance is one of the Opel brand’s core values. In the new Opel Insignia, this defining characteristic is realized by sophisticated powertrain technology, active safety and the interface between driver and car. The Insignia’s level of comfort and environmental friendliness is unrivaled even among considerably more expensive competitors,” says Alain Visser, Chief Marketing Officer, General Motors Europe. With the Insignia, Opel continues pursuing its strategy of making advanced technology affordable for more customers.

When it comes to the new car’s design, Visser says, “A closer look at our groundbreaking GTC concept car gives a good idea of how exciting Opel’s new design language will be.”

The beginning of Opel’s modern mid-size heritage dates back to 1970 with the launch of the Ascona, which sold 4.4 million units over three generations. This was succeeded by the Vectra in 1988, heralding a new era of innovative models from Opel. With almost 5.5 million models sold to date, the Opel Vectra is one of the key players in the mid-size segment.