desaparecidos,Izzy, Beautiful Physics, good sprouts

Izzy (Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri) still at large, seems to be unleashing armour piercing against the crusaders
92 killed in Oct. (wasnt there a Burroughs character called "Izzy the push"?)

In Aus, the last vestiges of human rights vanish before an indifferent populace bemused by a mare (I was on Bart's #1 nose, not seen since the first turn)
It will soon be a disappearing offence to incite killing of Aus troops in Iraq. May I take this last chance to say that it is the duty of every occupied to kill the occupiers.
While Aus aligns with the crusaders, I expect Aus troops to be killed in righteous rage. With retrospectively applied legislation, expect me to vanish into an Egyptian torture chamber around Xmas, but be aware that it will then be a crime to even think about it.

Weird Science

Lisa Randall. .."Warped Passages, Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions," A debate broke out on the physics blog Cosmic Variance a few weeks ago about whether it was appropriate, as a commentator on NPR had said, to say she looked like Jodie Foster.
this leads to the cosmicvariance blog, good sciencecvj, not so bad looking himself

some ensuing science links:
roaldhoffmann radio4
Books mentioned (omitting cvj's "D-branes" which looks way to techy)
Warped Passages : Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (Hardcover)
by Lisa Randall
Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos (Hardcover)
by Michio Kaku
Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity (Hardcover)
by Sean Carroll



from jimwich

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Another samurai sword killing of house intruders. abc
A few years ago a chap killed one and wounded 2 or 3 of 6 house invaders.

In Luzon I had a WWII Japanese military sword (I guess thats what it was) for home defence, which some Pinoy had hafted with a single hand grip, as if it was a machete (or cutlass, as they are still called in Jamaica). The single grip meant that the speed of withdrawal was slow, so you only got one slash. The wife was prone to paranoia about sounds on the tin roof. The sword occasionally made an appearance in domestic disputes. With its tip inches from my nose all I could say to my beloved asawa was "If you cut me, you'd better kill me. If you only wound me I'll come out of hospital and find you". This was enough to get the sword lowered.

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Another tax-payer subsidised private hole-in-the ground:
"This small area is not typical of what we are constructing in and we have had this incident and we'll thoroughly investigate it."

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scientifically good food
broccoli sprouts reduce H. pylori and pepsinogen.
..broccoli sprouts (..most sulforaphane-rich two or three days old) .. Another group of 20 ..received alfalfa spouts
..100 grams/day..for two months.
Broccoli sprouts: 250 mg/100g sulforaphane glucosinolate .. alfalfa sprouts contain neither sulforaphane nor sulforaphane glucosinolate.
Glucosinolates occur in cruciferous vegetables....broken down enzymatically into sulforaphane
broccoli sprouts patients showed less H. pylori and markedly decreased pepsinogen. Alfalfa sprouts had no effect, and the broccoli failed to eliminate H. pylori completely. Two months after ..H. pylori and pepsinogen returned to pre-test levels
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broccoli sprout extract .. counteracted the carcinogenic response to ultraviolet light..

..hairless Mice exposed to UV light comparable to .. sunbathing ..twice a week for 20 weeks. After irradiation, broccoli sprout extracts containing a low or high dose of sulforaphane were applied to the backs of the mice, five days a week for 11 weeks. Acetone .. was used as the vehicle & control group. ..100 percent of the control mice had developed cancerous skin tumors.
The incidence and number of tumors was reduced by half.. in the mice receiving the high dose of broccoli sprout extract. ..among the low-dose recipients, but even in their case, some benefit was observed.

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sauerkraut may protect women from breast cancer.

... Women ..raw- or short-cooked cabbage and sauerkraut three+ servings per week,..
..the Brassica : broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, collard greens and cauliflower. .. contain glucosinolates and the enzyme myrosinase ..
....breast cancer risk of Polish women rose three-fold after they immigrated to the United States...In Poland..women traditionally eat 30 pounds of cabbage and sauerkraut per year, as opposed to 10 pounds per year among American women. ..Polish women traditionally eat more raw cabbage and sauerkraut, in salads, or short-cooked...
..Cabbage cooked a long time..had no bearing on breast cancer risk.
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Chemoprevention of Ovarian Cancer by the Ginkgo Biloba

..600 ovarian cancer cases and 640 ..controls, women who took ginkgo supplements for six months+..60 percent lower risk for ovarian cancer.
ginkgo, echinacea, St. John’s Wort, ginseng, and chondroitin were the most commonly used herbals
ginkgo was the only herb linked to ovarian cancer prevention...more pronounced in ..non-muncious ovarian cancers, ..reduce ..by 65-70 percent. .. ginkgolide A and B--terpene --are the most active ....caused ovarian cancer cells to stop growing....
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Garlic Shown to Inhibit DNA Damaging Chemical in Breast Cancer

Cooking protein-rich foods like meats and eggs at high temperatures releases a chemical called PhIP, a suspected carcinogen...incidence of breast cancer is higher among women who eat large quantities of meat....
Diallyl sulfide (DAS), a flavor component of garlic, has been shown to inhibit the effects of PhIP that, ..can cause DNA damage or transform substances ..into carcinogens.
Ronald D. Thomas Florida A&M ..
..human breast epithelial cells with equal amounts of PhIP and DAS ..PhIP induced expression of the cancer-causing enzyme at every stage, up to 40-fold, while DAS completely inhibited the PhIP enzyme from becoming carcinogenic
..DAS triggers a gene alteration in PhIP that may play a significant role in preventing cancer, notably breast cancer, induced by PhIP in well-done meats.

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international consortium of scientists has completed a more detailed chart, or HapMap, showing markers of genetic variation, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)..SNPs are grouped in neighbourhoods, or haplotypes, and are usually inherited as blocks.. using DNA samples from 269 people from Asia, Africa and the United States.
..1 million SNPs. A second phase will add another 2 million.
..It has already revealed that genes involved in DNA repair are not as diverse as those which play a role in the body's immune response. [ well duh! the immune response has 'variable' regions...]