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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Summer Bucket List - 2012 - The B Keeps Us Honest

Summer is here and there is so much to do before Jude starts preschool in the fall. To help us maximize our fun I've decided to create a summer bucket list, a list of things we want to accomplish before summer is over.

You can create your own Summer Bucket List too. Simply write down at least 20 fun things you want to do this summer.

Our 2012 Summer Bucket List

1. Visit a new local park

2. Make homemade ice cream

3. Go to the pool

4. Have a picnic on the back deck

5. Make Ice Boats

6. Go to a free movie during the day

7. Make homemade lemonade

8. Visit a farm

9. Make puppets and have a puppet show

10. Take a day trip

11. Pick flowers and press them in a book

12. Watch the planes take off at the airport

13. Make a wind chime

14. Visit the Farmer's Market

15. Spit Watermelon seeds on the back deck

16. Ride the Train at Pullen Park

17. Collect seashells on the beach

18. Fly a kite

19. Visit a local museum

20. Blow bubbles

21. Eat a meal from a food truck

22. Draw with sidewalk chalk

23. Go to story time at the library

24. Go out for breakfast

25. Eat a locopop

26. Mail a letter

27. Play family board games

28. Family movie at home w/ popcorn

29. Visit the art museum outdoors

30. Bake something new

31. Eat at a new restaurant

32. Visit Aquarium

33. Play in the sprinkler

34. Make music

35. Finger Paint

Your list can be as long or as short as you like.?

I plan to print ours out and hang in on the fridge so I can be reminded of what we've finished and what we still need to complete.

What do you plan to do with your family this summer?

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Michael Jackson Letter to Lisa Marie Presley: Revealed, Removed From Auction

A letter Michael Jackson wrote to his former wife Lisa Marie Presley - in which he complains of chronic insomnia - was set to be sold at auctioned ... before until Lisa Marie found out, threw a fit and demanded it be taken off the block.

She didn't say why she wanted the letter pulled, but it's easy to guess.

Written sometime between 1993 and 1996, the letter from MJ reads: "Smell here [arrow with box] Lisa I truly need this rest I haven't slept litterally [sic] in 4 days now. I need to be away from phones and Business people."

"I must take care of my health first Im' [sic] crazy for you Love Turd."

Yes ... Love Turd.

Michael Jackson died June 25, 2009. Dr. Conrad Murray, who was injecting him with the hospital-grade anesthetic Propofol to help him sleep, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years behind bars.

Julien's Auction in Beverly Hills didn't elaborate on the incident beyond stating that Lisa's request was of "a personal nature" and "we wanted to honor the request."

We can read between the lines.

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Nokia to release a Lumia Batphone for the hardcore Batman fan

The phone will feature a black polycarbonate body with a laser-etched Batman logo

What's next for a Batman fan who already has a?Batmobile and an?authentic-looking costume? Is it a?Batcave? A?mini-me sidekick? Or a... Batphone? A tweet by the official Nokia Twitter account revealed that the company is preparing a Batman-themed Lumia 900 phone for fans who can't get enough of the Caped Crusader.

While Nokia didn't divulge any more details about the device, U.K. website?Pocket-lint claims that the black Lumia with a laser-etched Batman logo will be an extremely limited release. Other than the Dark Knight-inspired design, though, it's expected to have the same features as a standard?Lumia 900.

No word yet on whether the phone will be available in the U.S. But it will hit Germany, France, and the U.K. at an unknown date, presumably before or around the time?The Dark Knight Rises arrives in theaters on July 20.

[via?Mashable]

This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca

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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Clarence Thomas reconciles with Yale after bitter years

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Roman shipwrecks found nearly a mile deep

ATHENS, Greece?? Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday.

Greece's culture ministry said the two third-century wrecks were discovered earlier this month during a survey of an area where a Greek-Italian gas pipeline is to be sunk. They lay between 1.2 and 1.4 kilometers (0.7-0.9 miles) deep in the sea between Corfu and Italy.

That would place them among the deepest known ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean, apart from remains found in 1999 of an older vessel some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep off Cyprus.

Angeliki Simossi, head of Greece's underwater antiquities department, said sunken ancient ships are generally found 30-40 meters (100-130 feet) deep.

Most scholars believe that ancient traders were unwilling to veer far offshore, unlike warships that were unburdened by ballast and cargo.

"There are many Roman shipwrecks, but these are in deep waters. They were not sailing close to the coast," Simossi said. "The conventional theory was that, as these were small vessels up to 25 meters (80 feet) long, they did not have the capacity to navigate far from the coast, so that if there was a wreck they would be close enough to the coast to save the crew."

Archaeologist Brendan Foley, who was not involved in the project, said a series of ancient wrecks located far from land over the past 15 years has forced experts to reconsider the coast-hugging theory. "The Ministry of Culture's latest discoveries are crucial hard data showing the actual patterns of ancient seafaring and commerce," said Foley, a deep-water archaeology expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Jeffrey Royal, director of Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation, said that in many cases ? as when winds threatened to push ships onto rocks ? ancient mariners made a conscious effort to avoid coastal waters.

Royal, whose foundation has carried out a series of Mediterranean underwater projects, said the depth of such finds is immaterial from an archaeological standpoint.

"In antiquity, ships didn't sail around with depth finders and keep track of how deep they were," he said. "It was more how far they were on the surface in relation to land. After 30 meters of depth the boat's safe, so if it's 30 meters (100 feet) or 3,000 meters it's a little irrelevant."

The remains were located during an investigation that covered 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of seabed off the islands of Corfu and Paxoi.

More science news from msnbc.com
1. 16-year-old student sets off buzz over Newtonian physics
  Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: A research paper that claims to fill in a gap in Isaac Newton's formulas for the physics of falling objects has drawn worldwide attention to a 16-year-old student in Germany, but physicists are reserving judgment until they've seen the proof.
2. Roman shipwrecks found nearly a mile deep
3. Civilization's fall blamed on climate change
4. Hare trigger: Camera shoots rare striped rabbit

A Greek oceanographic vessel using side-scan radar and robot submarines took footage of scattered cargo ? storage jars, or amphorae, used to carry foodstuffs and wine ? cooking utensils for the crew, anchors, ballast stones and what could be remains of the wooden ships.

The team also raised samples of pottery and a marble vase.

The one ship was carrying the kind of amphorae produced in north Africa, and Simossi said it might have sailed from there and headed for Greece after a stop in Italy.

Foley said deep wrecks are very important because they are almost always more intact than those found in shallow water. "They contain far more archaeological and historical information than other sites," he said in an email. "As a result, the deep sea floor of the Mediterranean is the world's greatest repository for information about the earliest civilizations."

The discovery comes amid Greece's acute financial crisis, which has also taken a toll on funding for archaeology.

Simossi said her department, which monitors a vast area rich in ancient wrecks and sunken settlements, had its staff reduced by half because of non-renewed contracts and retirees who were not replaced.

"There were 89 of us, and there are 45 left," she said. "We are fighting tooth and claw to keep afloat."

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

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Dynamicweb.no - Website Worth Calculator

Dynamicweb.no has #1,901,986 traffic rank in world by Alexa. It gets 270 internet visitors per day. Visitors to it view 1.7 unique pages each day on average. Estimated daily time on site 00:55 seconds. It has an average of 662 pages indexed in major search engines like Google?. It has 58 backlinks according to Alexa.
With the daily ads revenue: $5 USD. If the site was up for sale, it would be worth approximately $1,944 USD. Out of the 16 unique keywords found on dynamicweb.no, "dynamicweb cms" was the most dense. This site has Google PageRank? 0 of 10.

Website Information

Title:

Content Management, eCommerce and Online Marketing - CMS

Description:

CMS, eCommerce and Online Marketing from Dynamicweb for all types of web solutions. CMS and e-business in one solution.

Tags:

Business, Cms, Content, Management, System, Webshop

Estimated Data

Daily Visits: The amount of user?s traffic during 24 hours. We use widestat algorithm with our own data to calculate visits quantity.	270	Monthly Visits: The amount of user?s traffic during 1 month. We use widestat algorithm with our own data to calculate visits quantity.	8,100
Daily Revenue: The estimated cost of daily income from contextual advertising allocation.	$5.40 USD	Monthly Revenue: The estimated cost of monthly income from contextual advertising allocation.	$162.00 USD

Summary Stats

Alexa Rank: Alexa Rank is combined rating, that takes into account both the quantity of users and the quantity of website?s page views. The lower Alexa Rank index is the better. The best website has maximum rank 1. Learn more - http://www.alexa.com/help/traffic-learn-more	1,901,986	Google PageRank: Google PageRank? - is an important rate for your website promotion in Google? search engine that is calculated for every page separately. The higher website PageRank the more significant it is for Google?, maximum PageRank value is 10.	0 of 10
Compete Rank: Compete rank is the authorized analytic resource that estimates sites? traffic. The bigger site traffic the lower Compete rank will be.	-	Google Index: The quantity of Google? indexed pages. The more pages are indexed by Google? the better.	662
Quantcast Rank: Quantcast makes hybrid evaluations of website?s audience and gives it the rank. The smaller the Quantcast Rank the better, maximum 1.	-	Yahoo Index: The quantity of Yahoo indexed pages. The more pages are indexed by Yahoo the better.	79
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Domain Registration

Created: Search engines are using website age while ranking search results. The older the website the better it is ranked in search engines.	-
Updated:	-
Expires:	-
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Owner:	-
Domain Nameservers:	ns2.dns.hostnordic.com ns1.dns.hostnordic.com

Server Information

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What's an American Indian? Warren case stirs query

Native Americans have a high rate of intermarriage with other groups. Many are not identifiable by appearance, which has made it possible for almost anyone to assume a Native persona. That seems to have been the case with US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

By Jesse Washington,?Associated Press / May 26, 2012

In this Thursday 2009 photo, dancers enter the arbor during the Grand Entry at Crow Fair in Crow Agency, Mont.

Casey Riffe/Billings Gazette/AP

Enlarge

What, exactly, makes someone American Indian? Even Indians themselves don't agree as they debate the case of Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, whose disputed claim of Native American identity is shining a rare spotlight on the malleable nature of Indian heritage and the long history of murky claims to such ancestry.

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Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and Democrat who is running in Massachusetts against Republican incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, was listed as Native American in several law school directories. Warren has said that her "family lore" described Indian ancestors, and the New England Genealogy Association said it found indications ? but not proof ? that Warren had a Cherokee great-great-great grandmother, which would make her 1/32 Indian.

"I'm proud of my heritage," Warren said Thursday. Asked how she knew it included Native Americans, she replied, "Because my mother told me so."

Her opponents question whether Warren chose this heritage to gain advantages available to Indians and other underrepresented groups in academia.

"Warren has zero evidence that she is at all Native American," said Brown's campaign manager, Jim Barnett. The genealogy association acknowledges that it found only secondary references to Cherokee family members, not primary sources such as marriage, birth or census records.

Among Native Americans, the varying opinions demonstrate that Indian identity is subjective even among Indians themselves.

When David Eugene Wilkins first saw Warren interviewed during her nomination to a federal post, he was smitten by her intelligence and politics. But when he heard about her claims of Indian ancestry, "I shook my head and said, 'Oh no.'"

"For us it was always about allegiance rather than biology or ancestry," said Wilkins, an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe and professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota.

"It's where you place your political, cultural, emotional allegiance. She lived her entire life and never had any association whatsoever with any community. So something doesn't wash for me," Wilkins said.

But David Treuer, an award-winning writer and Ojibwe Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota, said there is a difference between Indian identity and ancestry ? you can have one without the other.

"An Indian identity is something someone claims for oneself; it is a matter of choice," Treuer wrote in a Washington Post essay titled, "Elizabeth Warren says she's Native American. So she is."

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Earlier detection of bone loss may be in future: Isotope analysis rather than x-ray used for measurement

ScienceDaily (May 28, 2012) ? Are your bones getting stronger or weaker? Right now, it's hard to know. Scientists at Arizona State University and NASA are taking on this medical challenge by developing and applying a technique that originated in the Earth sciences. In a new study, this technique was more sensitive in detecting bone loss than the X-ray method used today, with less risk to patients. Eventually, it may find use in clinical settings, and could pave the way for additional innovative biosignatures to detect disease.

"Osteoporosis, a disease in which bones grow weaker, threatens more than half of Americans over age 50," explained Ariel Anbar, a professor in ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and senior author of the study.

"Bone loss also occurs in a number of cancers in their advanced stages. By the time these changes can be detected by X-rays, as a loss of bone density, significant damage has already occurred," Anbar said. "Also, X-rays aren't risk-free. We think there might be a better way."

With the new technique, bone loss is detected by carefully analyzing the isotopes of the chemical element calcium that are naturally present in urine. Isotopes are atoms of an element that differ in their masses. Patients do not need to ingest any artificial tracers and are not exposed to any radiation, so there is virtually no risk, the authors noted.

The findings are presented in a paper published in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of May 28. It is titled "Rapidly assessing changes in bone mineral balance using natural stable calcium isotopes."

"The paper suggests an exciting new approach to the problem," said Dr. Rafael Fonseca, chair of the Department of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and a specialist in the bone-destroying disease multiple myeloma. Fonseca was not associated with the study but is partnering with the ASU team on collaborative research based on the findings.

"Right now, pain is usually the first indication that cancer is affecting bones. If we could detect it earlier by an analysis of urine or blood in high-risk patients, it could significantly improve their care," Fonseca said.

The new technique makes use of a fact well known to Earth scientists, but seldom used in biomedicine: Different isotopes of a chemical element can react at slightly different rates. When bones form, the lighter isotopes of calcium enter bone a little faster than the heavier isotopes. That difference, called "isotope fractionation," is the key.

"Instead of isotopes of calcium, think about jelly beans," explained Jennifer Morgan, lead author of the study. "We all have our favorite. Imagine a huge pile of jelly beans with equal amounts of six different kinds. You get to make your own personal pile, picking out the ones you want. Maybe you pick two black ones for every one of another color because you really like licorice. It's easy to see that your pile will wind up with more black jelly beans than any other color. Therefore, the ratio of black to red or black to green will be higher in your pile than in the big one. That's similar to what happens with calcium isotopes when bones form. Bone favors lighter calcium isotopes and picks them over the heavier ones."

Other factors, especially bone destruction, also come into play, making the human body more complicated than the jelly bean analogy. But 15 years ago, corresponding author Joseph Skulan, now an adjunct professor at ASU, combined all the factors into a mathematical model that predicted that calcium isotope ratios in blood and urine should be extremely sensitive to bone mineral balance.

"Bone is continuously being formed and destroyed," Skulan explained. "In healthy, active humans, these processes are in balance. But if a disease throws the balance off then you ought to see a shift in the calcium isotope ratios."

The predicted effect on calcium isotopes is very small, but can be measured using sensitive mass spectrometry methods developed by Morgan as part of her doctoral work with Anbar, Skulan and co-author Gwyneth Gordon, an associate research scientist in the W.M. Keck Foundation Laboratory for Environmental Biogeochemistry at ASU. Co-author Stephen Romaniello, currently a doctoral student with Anbar at ASU, contributed an updated mathematical model.

The new study, funded by NASA, examined calcium isotopes in the urine of a dozen healthy subjects confined to bed ("bed rest") for 30 days at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's Institute for Translational Sciences-Clinical Research Center. Whenever a person lies down, the weight-bearing bones of the body, such as those in the spine and leg, are relieved of their burden, a condition known as "skeletal unloading." With skeletal unloading, bones start to deteriorate due to increased destruction. Extended periods of bed rest induce bone loss similar to that experienced by osteoporosis patients, and astronauts.

"NASA conducts these studies because astronauts in microgravity experience skeletal unloading and suffer bone loss," said co-author Scott M. Smith, NASA nutritionist. "It's one of the major problems in human spaceflight, and we need to find better ways to monitor and counteract it. But the methods used to detect the effects of skeletal unloading in astronauts are also relevant to general medicine."

Lab analysis of the subjects' urine samples at ASU revealed that the new technique can detect bone loss after as little as one week of bed rest, long before changes in bone density are detectable by the conventional approach, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA).

Importantly, it is the only method, other than DEXA, that directly measures net bone loss.

"What we really want to know is whether the amount of bone in the body is increasing or decreasing," said Morgan.

Calcium isotope measurements seem poised to assume an important role in detecting bone disease -- in space, and on Earth. The team is working now to evaluate the technique in samples from cancer patients.

"This is a 'proof-of-concept' paper," explained Anbar "We showed that the concept works as expected in healthy people in a well-defined experiment. The next step is to see if it works as expected in patients with bone-altering diseases. That would open the door to clinical applications."

However, the concept extends even beyond bone and calcium, the authors noted. Many diseases may cause subtle changes in element isotope abundances, or in the concentrations of elements. These sorts of signatures have not been systematically explored in the development of biosignatures of cancers and other diseases.

"The concept of inorganic signatures represents a new and exciting approach to diagnosing, treating and monitoring complex diseases such as cancer," stated Anna Barker, director of Transformative Healthcare Networks and co-director of the Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative in the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development at ASU. Barker, who came to ASU after being deputy director of the National Cancer Institute, emphasized the simplicity of the approach compared to the challenges of deciphering complex genome-derived data, adding "there is an opportunity to create an entirely new generation of diagnostics for cancer and other diseases."

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Samsung speaks out on Galaxy S III 'pebble blue' delays

Blue version delayed in 'some regions' for next 2-3 weeks

Following yesterday's widespread reports that the "pebble blue" version of the Samsung Galaxy S III would miss the May 29/30 launch window, Samsung has released a statement offering an official explanation. Without going into specifics, the manufacturer seemed to pin the delay on quality concerns, possibly confirming recent rumors that it recently had to destroy several thousand defective pebble blue back covers.

Here's the statement in full --

“Samsung’s GALAXY S III Pebble Blue version comes with a newly invented blue colour and special hyperglaze material.

“In order to meet the highest internal quality standards and to provide the best quality GALAXY S III to customers, a short supply of Pebble Blue version is expected in some regions in the next 2-3 weeks.

“Samsung is working hard to ensure that customers will get the Pebble Blue coloured devices as soon as possible.”

We're not sure exactly how you go about "inventing" a color, but it seems that the combination of the blue shade and glossy finish presented some problems in the final few weeks of production. Hopefully the manufacturer's claims will prove accurate, and those who have their hearts set on a pebble blue will be able to get one soon enough. In the meantime, if you're after a Galaxy S III over the next few weeks, it looks like you'll be getting a marble white.

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