-- "A satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is an alluring sight in dark southern skies and the constellation Dorado. A mere 180,000 light-years distant, the LMC is seen in amazing detail in this very deep 4 frame mosaic of telescopic images, a view that reveals the Milky Way's satellite to have the appearance of a fledgling barred spiral galaxy. The mosaic includes image data taken through a narrow filter that transmits only the red light of hydrogen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, a hydrogen atom emits the characteristic red H-alpha light as its single electron is recaptured and transitions to lower energy states. As a result, this mosaic seems spattered with pinkish clouds of hydrogen gas surrounding massive, young stars. Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing hydrogen clouds are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Composed of many overlapping clouds, the sprawling Tarantula Nebula left of center, is by far the LMC's largest star forming region. The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 15,000 light-years across. "

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"The global war on drugs has "failed" according to a new report by a group of politicians and former world leaders.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy report calls for the legalisation of some drugs and an end to the criminalisation of drug users.

The panel includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.

The US and Mexican governments have rejected the findings as misguided.

The Global Commission's 24-page report argues that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths.

It cites UN estimates that opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.

Cesar Gaviria said the US came in for criticism.

The 19-member commission includes Mexico's former President Ernesto Zedillo, Brazil's ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, as well as the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and the current Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou.

The panel also features prominent Latin American writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, the EU's former foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and George Schultz, a former US secretary of state..."

-- Oh really? No way! Who knew? ...

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-- Old, but hilarious.

"China is the happiest place on earth(!!) according to a new global happiness index released by North Korea's Chosun Central Television. China earned 100 out of 100 points, followed closely by North Korea (98 points), then Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela. Coming in at 203rd place is America (or rather "the American Empire", 美帝国), with only 3 happiness points. South Korea got a measly 18 points for 152nd place.

While their representative representatives might not show the vivacity on their faces (and a few slip ups might have been caught on video) I guess China's been right to gush about Pyongyang's future. Nothing says happy like government-issued proclamations of happiness."

-- GOVERNMENT SAY EVERYBODY HAPPY IN NORTH KOREA

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"It looks like Smurf blood and it may keep Japan safe from nuclear waste. DeconGel is a liquid polymer that can spread easily on almost any surface. As it hardens it traps hazardous materials, including radioactive particles, and then easily peels away for disposal. CBI Polymers, the creators of DeconGel, recently donated ten pallets of the polymer to aid in Japan’s decontamination of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster site – a $250,000 gift when you include the labor of the experts and support staff that will be tagging along. DeconGel’s lightweight and easy to use approach to cleaning up radioactive waste could go a long way to restoring the Fukushima prefecture. Watch CNN’s coverage of the DeconGel donation in the video below, followed by a quick demonstration of the gel being used in more mundane situations. Discovered by accident, DeconGel is another great example of the plethora of advanced materials waiting for humanity to find and use in the future.

It’s hard to imagine a better list of properties you’d want in a decontaminate than you find in DeconGel. It adheres to almost any surface, including porous ones, and bonds tightly around particles and oils. This effectively traps any waste (hazardous or otherwise) within the substrate. While it doesn’t actually chemically or radioactively neutralize the materials it contains, it does make them exponentially easier to remove, and without the use of water or soaps. While multiple layers are recommended for heavy clean up operations, like those at Fukushima, the resulting coating is still very lightweight, with an eight pound gallon of the gel being able to cover up to 100 square feet of surface..."

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-- A pedophile disguised as a school is gettin kids everywhere!

"ScienceDaily (May 25, 2011) — A gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 has been newly unveiled as a candidate for the most distant object in the universe. At an estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years, the burst lies far beyond any known quasar and could be more distant than any previously known galaxy or gamma-ray burst. Multiple lines of evidence in favor of a record-breaking distance for this burst, known as GRB 090429B for the 29 April 2009 date when it was discovered, are presented in a paper by an international team of astronomers led by former Penn State University graduate student Antonino Cucchiara, now at the University of California, Berkeley.

The paper has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

The gigantic burst of gamma rays erupted from an exploding star when the universe was less than 4% of its present age, just 520 million years old, and less than 10% of its present size. "The galaxy hosting the progenitor star of GRB 090429B was truly one of the first galaxies in the universe," said Derek Fox, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a co-author of the paper. "Beyond the possible cosmic distance record, GRB 090429B illustrates how gamma-ray bursts can be used to reveal the locations of massive stars in the early universe and to track the processes of early galaxy and star formation that eventually led to the galaxy-rich cosmos we see around us today."

Gamma-ray bursts, the brightest explosions known, occur somewhere within the observable universe at a rate of about two per day. Thanks to their extreme brightness, gamma-ray bursts can be detected by Swift and other satellite observatories even when they occur at distances of billions of light years. While the bursts themselves last for minutes at most, their fading "afterglow" light remains observable from premier astronomical facilities for days to weeks. Detailed studies of the afterglow during this time, when feasible, allow astronomers to measure the distance to the burst..."

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A revolutionary skin patch that may cure thousands of deadly peanut allergy has been developed by paediatricans.

Researchers believe it presents one of the best possible ways of finding an effective treatment for a life threatening reaction to peanuts.

Developed by two leading paediatricians the device releases minute doses of peanut oil under the skin.

The aim is to educate the body so it doesnt over-react to peanut exposure.

Human safety trials have started in Europe and the United States and it is hoped that the patch could become become available within 3-4 years.

One of its two French inventors, Dr Pierre-Henri Benhamou, said: We envisage that the patch would be worn daily for several years and would slowly reduce the severity of accidental exposure to peanut...

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"There is water inside the moon—so much, in fact, that in some places it rivals the amount of water found within the Earth.

The finding comes from the first measurements of water in lunar melt inclusions. Those measurements show that some parts of the lunar mantle have as much water as the Earth’s upper mantle.

Lunar melt inclusions are tiny globules of molten rock trapped within crystals that are found in volcanic glass deposits formed during explosive eruptions. The new finding, published this week in Science Express, shows lunar magma water contents 100 times higher than previous studies have suggested.

The result is the culmination of years of investigation by the team searching for water and other volatiles in volcanic glasses returned by NASA Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In a paper in Nature in 2008, the same team led by Alberto Saal, associate professor of geological sciences at Brown University, reported the first evidence for the presence of water and used models to estimate how much water was originally in the magmas before eruption.

“The bottom line,” said Saal, an author on the Science Express paper and the principal investigator on the research grants, “is that in 2008, we said the primitive water content in the lunar magmas should be similar to the water content in lavas coming from the Earth’s depleted upper mantle. Now, we have proven that is indeed the case.”

The new finding got a critical assist from a Brown undergraduate student, Thomas Weinreich, who found the melt inclusions that allowed the team to measure the pre-eruption concentration of water in the magma and to estimate the amount of water in the Moon’s interior..."

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-- Not all that surprising really.