40% of coma patients in a ‘vegetative state’ may be misdiagnosed, says a new report.
Trapped inside their bodies, apparently switched off to the world, but still alive: they are the undead. Or so we thought. Forty per cent of patients in a ‘vegetative state’ are misdiagnosed. Now British scientists are leading the field in trying to put that right
Egyptian archaeologists have found about 30 mummies and at least one unopened sarcophagus in a burial chamber about 4,300 years old, the government said in a statement on Monday.
I am slightly amazed whenever I here of finds like this. Egypt has got to be one of the best covered areas of the world archaeologically speaking and yet they are still finding things like this. You would think it would be all played out.
Marie Jones, who was visiting Kinglake, where about 12 people perished, told Melbourne’s The Age newspaper that a badly-burnt man had arrived at the property where she was staying with his baby daughter, and told her his wife and other child had been killed.
“He was so badly burnt. … his little girl was burnt, but not as badly as her dad, and he just came down and he said `Look, I’ve lost my wife, I’ve lost my other kid, I just need you to save [my daughter]’,” Ms Jones told the newspaper.
A lot of people have died in the current round of brush fires in Australia. You can read all you want to know about them here.
This from the Telegraph….
French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus, an intelligence magazine claims.
Another story from the Telegraph details what another hacker was able to do to US computers without really trying.
These stories are nothing by themselves. But they make you wonder what a bunch of disciplined professionals working with the backing of a national government could accomplish via computer hacking if they put their mind to it.
The nationalist cyber mob that Russia throws at nations that annoy it does not count as professional in my book.
The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water.
Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate.
And from later on in the article….
The drought could hardly have come at a worse time for the leadership, which is already gearing for possible social instability with some 20 million rural migrants now out of work after losing their jobs in coastal factories and in cities. Many have returned to work their farms while they wait for the economic climate to improve but may now find they are unable to grow a harvest with no water for irrigation.
“The duration, scope and impact of the drought are rare,” said Zheng Guoguang, chief of the China Meteorological Administration.
Among the worst hit provinces is central Henan, the most populous in China and source of the highest number of migrant workers. No rain has fallen in the province for 105 days, state media said today.
If you don’t know what the Mandate From Heaven is read about it here. Drought was one of the tradtional ways in which it became apparent that the Mandate From Heaven was lost. But I will bet that economic depressions help the idea along as well.
If I was a Chinese ruler I would be on my best behavior just in case. It has a better chance of working than their weather control technology.
Scientists have found the fossilised bones of a “monster” snake that was more than 40 feet long and weighed more than a ton.
The most common form of dementia may be closely related to another common disease of old-age – type II diabetes, say scientists.
Treating Alzheimer’s with the hormone insulin, or with drugs to boost its effect, may help patients, they claim.
The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports insulin could protect against damage to brain cells key to memory.
An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre
The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake.
Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake.
Large swaths of Britain came to a standstill in the grip of the worst snowstorms for 18 years.
Despite five days of severe weather warnings, transport bosses still appeared to have been completely caught out as up to a foot of snow fell across the country, bringing rail, air and road networks to a halt.
From later on in the article…..
But David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the collapse of the transport network was unacceptable.
He said: “People of my generation saw much worse winters than this in the 1960s and 1970s, yet things kept going. Why can’t we cope now?
You should keep this mind when ever someone tries to tell you that we should drive vehicles more like the ones they drive in Europe. A fuel efficient vehicle is one that is light. And a light vehicle is one that can’t get traction in the snow. It is a simple matter of physics.