- Needles suck. Well, unless you’re a hopelessly addicted
junkie in search of his or her next fix, in which case needles as supposedly
your friend. But for everyone else, needles are to be avoided at all costs. The
wicked-smaht folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology know this and
they are working to offer a viable alternative. A research team at MIT has engineered a
new device that can deliver medications without using a needle by creating a
high-pressure jet of medicine. Their jet injection device can squirt the
medication directly through the skin into the body without needing to puncture
with a needle. That may seem suspiciously like a needle and possibly just as
painful, but let’s give the MIT scientists a chance before dismissing their
idea. This device can be programmed to deliver a range of medication doses at
various depths, representing a significant improvement over jet injection
systems that are available right now. Why is its range of depths for medicine
delivery so important? Because different medications have to be delivered at
different depths within the body to function, of course. Some medications must
be injected directly into the muscle to work, while others need to be deposited
in the fatty tissue rather than muscle. Not only would removing needles from
the equation lead to fewer people putting off doctor’s appointments for fear of
sharp, pointy metal objects, but this device would also make medical workers much
less likely to accidentally poke themselves with a dirty needle. Extrapolating
further, the needle-free system would also be useful for patients for have to
routinely deliver medications to themselves in the home, such as diabetics. The
MIT jet injector is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator.
It is a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire with a piston
attached inside the drug ampoule. The device delivers the medication at a high
level of pressure and very near the speed of sound in air. That in no way
sounds painful…….
- There is nothing neutral about this one. Swiss tennis star
Roger Federer, who was the best player in men’s tennis from 2003-10, is still
one of the best in the sport and he made history Monday at Roland Garros,
winning his first-round matchup with Tobias
Kamke of Germany at the French Open. With the win, Federer tied Jimmy Connors'
Open era record of 233 Grand Slam match wins. Federer owns a record 16 major
championships, even though he has gone more than two years without a major
title -- his longest drought since winning his first at Wimbledon in 2003. He
is 233-35 at tennis' top four tournaments, a .869 winning percentage, besting
Connors’ record of 233-49. The Open era began in 1968, so Federer’s feat is an
impressive one and he knows it. That's a big one, because that was
longevity," Federer said. "Jimmy is obviously one of the greats of
all time and was around for 20 years." Setting the mark wasn’t exactly a
Herculean effort against Kamke, who fell to 6-10 at Grand Slams, never
advancing past the third round. Federer left no doubt, thumping him 6-2, 7-5,
6-3. Many experts and analysts have all but put Federer out to pasture after he
turned 30 last August. He is now attempting to become the first man that old to
win a Grand Slam tournament since Andre Agassi was 32 at the 2003 Australian
Open. Doing so will mean besting younger, quicker rivals and clay court superiors
Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic…………
- No one gave Bruce Willis the memo. Either that or Willis
is a veteran actor and a bonafide A-lister who knows how to promote the
umpteenth sequel of a movie franhcise that has stayed alive for two decades,
but either way, he’s selling the fifth installment in the “Die Hard” series
like a pro. Willis will reprise his role as renegade police officer/all-around
badass John McClane for a fifth time in the forthcoming film “A Good Day To Die
Hard.” The movie, which is scheduled for release on February 14, 2013, focused
on McClane traveling to Russia to come to the aid of his son, John McClane, Jr.
Willis insists he’s not making the movie just to make it or because of the huge
payday, but rather because he still wants to make a “Die Hard” film as good as
the original, which came out in 1988. Since McClane took down a German
terrorist group led by the immortal Hans Gruber at Nakatomi Plaza in Los
Angeles, Fox has cranked out three more installments in the series and yet,
Willis insists his standards for the role are as high as ever. "I'm still
trying to do as good a film as the first one. I like playing that character.
There will come a time where I won’t be able to do it anymore, but it's still
fun to do. I still get a kick out of it, I have a fun job," he said. In
between now and Feb. 14, Willis will also star in Wes Anderson's comedy “Moonrise
Kingdom,” which received its premiere at Cannes. After that, it’s time to hit
the gym and get in shape to play one of the best action heroes of modern
cinema……..
- On this Memorial Day, it’s worth noting that as f’ed up as
the U.S. Constitution may seem at times as Americans attempt to interpret and
understand it, the salient point to remember is that we at least have a
constitution. The good people of Nepal cannot say that at the moment, not after
the country’s leaders dissolved its four-year-old Constituent Assembly at midnight Sunday and set
new elections after political parties failed to agree on the model of
federalism the country should adopt in a new constitution. The news came down
in a televised midnight address to the nation by Baburam Bhattarai, prime
minister of Nepal's Maoist-led national government. Bhattarai announced that the
government has set Nov. 22 as the date for fresh elections to a new Constituent
Assembly. "We tried our best to save the Constituent Assembly but we
failed,” Bhattarai said. "There was no alternative to fresh elections to
collect the people's mandate.” Oh good, another political crisis for the tiny
Himalayan nation. How the a 601-member Constituent Assembly, which also worked
as its parliament, could not come up with a new constitution in four years is
beyond comprehension. Worse still, the assembly was elected in April 2008
following a popular revolution against the monarchy in the spring of 2006. It
was part of the United Nations-backed peace process that brought former Maoist
rebels into the government after a decade-long civil war in which more than
13,000 people died. Four years later, the economy is tanking and the country is
torn by war. The assembly failed on its mandate to write a new constitution to
establish a federal democratic republic despite having its original deadline of
May 28, 2010, extended four times. The key issues continue to be how many
federal states the country should have and whether they should be based on the
ethnicity of people in that state or geographical features. Nepal's Supreme
Court ruled in November that the parties could not extend the term of the
Constituent Assembly any further and so here we are. Protestors marked the
deadline outside the Constituent Assembly complex in Katmandu, the capital, by clashing
with police. Whoever comes up with the new constitution will have to unite a multiethnic
and multilingual nation deeply rooted in feudalism, inequity and the caste
system. Volunteers can hop a flight to Kathmandu and get to work…….
- Superstitious losers: America has them in spades. A
group of them recently spent three months walking halfway across the country with a billy
goat in an attempt to break a supposed cursed hanging over the heads of Major
League Baseball’s most snakebitten franchise. The five hikers and their
four-legged companion left Mesa, Ariz., on Feb. 25 - the birth date of Chicago Cubs
legend Ron Santo. Since departing the Cubs’ spring training home, they have
walked 20 to 25 miles a day to reach Wrigley Field on Memorial Day. The
"Crack the Curse" walk has covered some 1,300 miles and its only
saving grace from total loser-dom is a charitable component of the journey. Kyle
Townsend, Blake Ferrell, Matt Gregory, P.J. Fisher and Philip Aldrich are also
raising funds for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which
provided care to one of Gregory’s mother. Were it not for that noble aspect of
the trip, these five tools would merely have trudged 1,300 miles with an
ill-tempered, IQ-deprived quadruped in a futile attempt to lift a non-existent curse.
They insist the responses they have received along the way have been positive.
"Great responses from everybody. I mean, we were in St. Louis, and we got
a great response there, people in St. Louis were great - even though they're
Cardinals fans, everybody's been really great to us," Ferrell said. If the
first third of the season is any indication, their effort have failed. The Cubs
are riding a 12-game losing streak, holding down last place in the National
League Central and tied for the worst record in baseball. Financially, the goal
of the walk is to raise $100,000, but the group is presently well short of the
mark. The goat has been the laziest participant in the trek, walking just five
to 10 miles a day while being pushed the rest of the way in an animal carriage.
It’s only fair, though, as the goat is also the only one who didn’t verbally
commit to the trip. Its name is Wrigley, fittingly, and it was purchased off
Craigslist. So where did this kooky idea originate? All five men worked last
year at a resort in Denali National Park in Alaska and with all but Fisher
being huge Cubs fans, they decided to overturn the supposed "Curse of the
Billy Goat" that went into effect during the Cubs' last appearance in the
World Series in 1945, when Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, was
asked to take his goat and leave a game against the Detroit Tigers because the
animal's odor was troubling fans. Sianis allegedly responded "Them Cubs, they aren't gonna win
no more.” Since then, the Cubs haven’t won a World Series. Of course, they also
didn’t win one from 1908 to 1945, before all of the goat drama. Now, some 67
years later, a group of idiots are trying to lift the curse with their loads of
free time to use………
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