Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Alaska alerted as South Pacific tsunami rolls toward West Coast

By The Associated Press and Channel 2 News Staff

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa -- A tsunami swept into Pago Pago in American Samoa shortly after an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.9 shook the Pacific area.

Officials say at least 14 people were killed.

The West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami advisory for the coastal areas of California and Oregon from the California-Mexico border to the Oregon-Washington border.

The same message was sent for informational purposes only for coastal areas of Washington and British Columbia, and Alaska from the Oregon-Washington border to Attu, Alaska.

An advisory means that a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near the water is imminent or expected.

The center says widespread inundation is not expected, and the hazardous period will occur early Wednesday morning.

Warning center official Guy Urban says a tsunami of 12 inches to 26 inches has been measured since the earthquake. Urban says it would be dangerous to people swimming or on beaches near the water.

Impact across Alaska is expected to be minimal.

Alaska geologists with the warning center say coastal communities will see some mild waves -- about a half-foot in Sitka and two inches in Yakutat -- at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.

It also means that there could be some strange water behavior, possibly odd currents, and people might notice the tide sequence appears to be off.

The tsunami that inudated American Samoa proved to have much more serious consequences.

Closer to the earthquake's epicenter, Fili Sagapolutele, who works at the Samoa News, says water flowed inland about 100 yards before receding, leaving cars stuck in mud.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu issued a tsunami warning for American Samoa and other areas of the Pacific, including New Zealand. A tsunami watch was posted elsewhere, including Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.

The temblor hit at 6:48 a.m. Tuesday midway between Samoa and American Samoa. In the Samoan capital, Apia, families fled their homes for higher ground amid severe shaking that lasted for up to three minutes.

Federal experts had originally said the earthquake was not expected to produce a tsunami along the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia or Alaska.

The quake occurred at 10:48 a.m. PDT Tuesday in the Samoa Islands region.

Tsunami awareness is much higher on the West Coast since a 2004 quake off Indonesia spawned a surge that killed more than 200,000 people. Signs pointing out tsunami evacuation routes are now common in coastal California.

Link to story here.


~Sandy G.

Video - Dog & Orangutan Friends

~Sandy G.

Twitter URLs Again Under Siege by Hackers

By Larry Barrett, InternetNews.com

Hackers are taking advantage of the popular microblogging site's limitations to spread malware.

Twitter's 140-character message limit is just enough space for the 55 million people who visited the site last month, but hackers are now exploiting this space limitation to spread a variety of malware through the microblogging community in quick order.

Symantec Connect's security team on Friday posted a blog entry warning tweeters to be especially vigilant when clicking on links contained within any of these 140-character messages.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.



~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Thank you!

First, I want to thank Jim Ames from UFOHQ.ORG.  He donated $20 to help me out and started a campaign for me! 

I also want to thank everyone that has kept me in their prayers and thoughts. It worked! I got the job. It isn't full-time, but it's a job and has the potential for more hours eventually.

I don't know if it is going to help in time to keep my Internet going without interruption, but at least I know I won't be down for long if it does happen. So please don't give up on me if I do disappear for a while.

Love and BIG hugs to everyone!


~Sandy G.

I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH LONGER I WILL BE ONLINE

I just want to let anyone reading know that I may suddenly not be online.  I'm having personal difficulties and may lose my Internet connection at any time and I have no idea how long I may be down for.  It could be for many months.

However, I WILL be back eventually and as quickly as possible so please don't give up on me!  I have a job interview tomorrow, so please keep me in your prayers, thoughts, or whatever you believe in and hope for the best.  Thanks!


~Sandy G.

Bathing, but Not Alone

By NICHOLAS WADE, The New York Times

Microbiologists have now added something else to the list of things too gross to contemplate: the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower.

Showers in New York carry a particularly high dose of a microbe related to tuberculosis called Mycobacterium avium. The bacterium and its close cousins can cause a variety of exotic chest complaints, including lifeguard’s lung, hot tub lung and Lady Windermere’s syndrome.

This unwelcome peek behind the shower curtain has been provided by a group of microbiologists headed by Norman R. Pace of the University of Colorado. As part of a project to measure microbes in the indoor human environment, they looked at shower water, in part because in showers bacteria are incorporated into fine droplets that can be breathed deep into the lungs.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

~Sandy G.

With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu

By TARA PARKER-POPE, The New York Times

It sounds so simple as to be innocuous, a throwaway line in public-health warnings about swine flu. But one of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase you first heard from your mother: wash your hands.

A host of recent studies have highlighted the importance and the scientific underpinning of this most basic hygiene measure. One of the most graphic was done at the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers focused video cameras on 10 college students as they read and typed on their laptops.

The scientists counted the times the students touched their faces, documenting every lip scratch, eye rub and nose pick. On average, the students touched their eyes, noses and lips 47 times during a three-hour period, once every four minutes.

Hand-to-face contact has a surprising impact on health. Germs can enter the body through breaks in the skin or through the membranes of the eyes, mouth and nose.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.


~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

A $1 Million Dollar Reward Offered For Stolen Warhol Art

Stolen Art by Warhol Is Sought in California

By CAROL VOGEL and SOLOMON MOORE, The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — The theft of 10 silkscreen paintings by Andy Warhol has the Los Angeles Police Department searching for clues, but it has people in the art world scratching their heads, too.

The paintings were stolen from the West Los Angeles home of Richard L. Weisman, a businessman and prominent collector. A $1 million reward has been offered by Mr. Weisman for information leading to the paintings’ recovery.

On Friday, the Los Angeles police said that the paintings — images of athletes including Muhammad Ali, Chris Evert, Dorothy Hamill, Tom Seaver, Jack Nicklaus and O. J. Simpson — were taken from Mr. Weisman’s dining room. A housekeeper called the police; Mr. Weisman was out of town at the time.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.


~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Care-Tech To Halt Sale Of Unapproved Germ Fighters

Company violated numerous regs

By James Limbach, ConsumerAffairs.com

St. Louis-based Care-Tech Laboratories Inc. and its principal officers, John C. Brereton and Sherry L. Brereton, have agreed to stop the illegal manufacture, marketing, and distribution of over-the-counter antimicrobial drugs used to treat and prevent infection.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says its inspectors found that Care-Tech violated numerous provisions of the agency's current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) regulations that direct how antimicrobial drugs are made.

Additionally, it says the products do not conform to any applicable regulations for OTC drug products and have not undergone an FDA review, and therefore are considered unapproved drug products.

Under the terms of a consent decree, Care-Tech may not resume manufacturing and distribution of the drugs until it corrects these and other violations.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

~Sandy G.

Video - Baby Photos Rock The Web

~Sandy G.

VIDEOS - 9/11 MEMORIES

Workers Trying To Escape From The Twin Towers


Twin Tower Heroes


Trapped On Floors Above The Attacks


A 9/11 Life Saver


~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Privacy Plug-In Fakes Out Facebook

FaceCloak lets users hide sensitive updates from prying eyes, including Facebook's

By Robert Lemos, Technology Review

Social networks are rife with examples of users failing to understand the privacy implications of posting sensitive information online.

In February, for example, school officials in Wisconsin suspended a teacher who posted on Facebook a picture of herself pointing a gun at the camera. In April, the Swiss insurance company Nationale Suisse fired an employee after she called in sick and then posted updates on the same site. Others have raised concerns about users handing so much personal information to social-networking companies themselves.

Now, researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario have developed a browser plug-in to help users keep their information private from prying eyes and from social-network providers as well. Urs Hengartner, an assistant professor of computer science, and his colleagues say the plug-in replaces sensitive information in a user's profile and news feed with meaningless text that can only be unscrambled by trusted friends or contacts. Dubbed FaceCloak, the tool assures its users that sensitive data stays private, Hengartner says. "If you have a particular illness, you might want to allow only your friends to see that," he says. "This leaves it up to the user to decide what information to keep away from Facebook."

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

~Sandy G.

LABELS: PRIVACY PLUG-IN, FACEBOOK, FACECLOAK, HIDE UPDATES, SOCIAL NETWORKS, PRIVACY IMPLICATIONS OF POSTING SENSITIVE INFORMATION ONLINE, NATIONALE SUISSE, URS HENGARTNER, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO IN ONTARIO

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzles Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Multiple sclerosis successfully reversed in animals

From PhysOrg.com

A new experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) completely reverses the devastating autoimmune disorder in mice, and might work exactly the same way in humans, say researchers at the Jewish General Hospital Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal.

MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body's own immune response attacks the central nervous system, almost as if the body had become allergic to itself, leading to progressive physical and cognitive disability.

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-supppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharamaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way.

FOR COMPLETE STORY, PLEASE CLICK HERE.




~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Six Hidden Treasures Challenge

I received this challenge from Lizzie at Words To The Wise.   The following is copied from her site:

The aim of this award is for you to share YOUR six hidden treasures in YOUR archives.   Those posts you were proud of writing, and have sat in the dusty archives unread for years or months are going to be shown to the world again.   You don't have to send them to 6 people, that takes too long.   Just send them to one person.

The Rules

1. Take the Challenge picture and place on your blog
2. Find your favourite six hidden posts in the archives and add the links under the picture
3. Choose one other blogger and send the challenge to them
4. Link back to the sender of the challenge and New Scribbles

So here are my Six Hidden Treasures:

1) Alaska cracks down on man who feeds wild bears
2) Dating 101:  Top 5 ways to meet the man you'll marry
3) Bees take over store in NYC
4) Man saves dog by sucking snake venom from his nose
5) 2-Year old pool shark
6) Technology to wear

All you have to do is to replace my hiddden treasures with six of your own and pass this challenge to one person.

I'm sending mine to Tammy at A Little Girl Talk.


~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

Puzzle Of The Day

~Sandy G.

ABC News Video

18-Year-Old Missing Case May Be Solved


~Sandy G.