Flying Car a Step Closer to Reality

Weird-looking cars are a dime a dozen. Far less common are weird-looking cars that can also fly AND have approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Indeed, as far as we know, there's only one of those babies: The Terrafugia Transition.
The private aircraft/funky-looking car has been in the news before. But the recent announcement that it's going into production sparked mega-searches on the Web. Almost immediately, online lookups for "terrafugia transition" and "terrafugia transition pictures" both, well, took off.
A popular article from the UK's Daily Telegraph explains that the FAA's special exemption allows the vehicle to function as both a "light aircraft" and a car. Normally, for a plane to meet the "light aircraft" designation, it can weigh no more than 1,200 pounds. The Terrafugia Transition weighs 1,320, due primarily to the number of car-related safety features, like airbags and crumple zones. The "light aircraft" designation is key, because licenses for planes with that label require only 20 hours of flying time. Fewer hoops to jump through means more potential sales.
So, how does the plane/car work? Check out the flying car's official video below. So far, 70 people have placed a deposit. The total retail cost: $194,000. Expensive, but really, can you put a price on skipping commercial flights?
by Mike Krumboltz

COOL THOUGHTS

Qatar Princess yacht

Amputee cat gets bionic legs

LONDON (AFP) – A cat which lost both back paws after a traumatic accident involving a combine harvester has regained a spring in its step after being fitted with prosthetic limbs.
In a groundbreaking surgery carried out by Noel Fitzpatrick, a Surrey-based veterinary surgeon, the custom-made implants "peg" the ankle to Oscar's foot and mimic the way in which deer antler bone grows through skin.
The prosthetic legs, called intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics (Itaps) were developed by a team from University College London, led by Professor Gordon Blunn.
"The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone," Fitzpatrick said of the operation which took place last November.
"We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an 'exoprosthesis' that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal's limbs to give him effectively normal gait," he added.
The veterinary surgical team took three hours to insert the pegs by drilling into one of the cat's ankle bones in each of the back legs.
The Itap technology has already been used to create a prosthetic for a woman who lost her arm in the July 2005 London bombings.
Oscar's recovery will feature as part of a six-part BBC One documentary series, The Bionic Vet, starting later this month.

World's Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Linked to Mass Death

Scientists have revealed what may be the world's largest dinosaur graveyard.
The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today's hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area.
The findings could help solve a mystery concerning why the badlands of western Canada are so rich in dinosaur fossils.
The roughly 76-million-year-old fossil beds apparently hold thousands of bones over an area of at least 568 acres (2.3 square km), skeletons that belonged to a roughly cow-sized, plant-eating horned dinosaur known as Centrosaurus. This treasure trove provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers easily in the high hundreds to low thousands, said senior research scientist David Eberth, a paleontologist and geologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.
The "mega-bonebed," which consists of 14 smaller bonebeds, lies in northern Alberta near Hilda, Canada, right by the border with Saskatchewan. The graveyard was actually discovered in 1997, but confirmation of the discovery's size was detailed this month in the book "New Perspectives On Horned Dinosaurs" (Indiana University Press, 2010).
Alberta is extraordinarily rich in fossils, such as those of duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs including Triceratops, ankylosaurs, raptors related to Velociraptor, and tyrannosaurids such as Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. The area was home to a remarkable diversity of other animals as well, including birds, pterosaurs, alligators, turtles, lizards and mammals - in fact, scientists recently found mammal tooth marks on dinosaur bones in Alberta.
Thousands die in flood :
Back when these centrosaurs lived, Alberta was warm and lush, and encompassed lowlands on the western coast of the Western Interior Seaway, a vast inland sea that divided what is now North America in half. The way the fossils are linked together in the same layers of earth within these bonebeds suggests all these centrosaurs were wiped out simultaneously.
The likely culprit in this scenario was a catastrophic storm, which could quickly have routinely made the waters flood up as high as 12 to 15 feet (3.6 to 4.6 meters), if experiences with modern floodplains are any guide.
These storms could also help explain why fossils are so abundant in the badlands of western Canada overall, "and why they are often found preserved so exquisitely," Eberth said.
Coastal floodplains such as those seen in modern Bangladesh can cover vast areas, with flooding killing hundreds of thousands of livestock, not to mention the human tragedies that occur.
"Because of their size and the scale of the flooding, dinosaurs could not escape the coastal floodwaters and would have been killed in large numbers," Eberth explained. "In contrast, fish, small reptiles, mammals, and birds may have been able to escape such seasonal catastrophes by retreating to quiet water areas, the safety of trees and burrows, or simply by flying away."
The researchers now hope to take lessons they have learned in Alberta to compare it to other parts of the world in an effort to pinpoint signs of past catastrophes elsewhere.
/LiveScience.com

What's the most expensive thing in the world?

Some years ago what was then the Atomic Energy Commission held a special clearance sale on an element called californium-252, which they were letting go for a mere $1,000 per microgram, or about $350 billion per pound--just slightly higher than the price of sirloin!

Cecil Adams/
The Straight Dope

5 Dead Auto Brands And Why They Died

Ever since Henry Ford's Model T popularized automobiles in 1908, car companies have worked tirelessly designing, manufacturing, marketing and selling different models in the hopes that each would enjoy longevity in the marketplace. The brands associated with the major players have in recent years been challenged in terms of sales, and in some cases have been abandoned altogether. Ford Motor Company's (NYSE: F - News) June 2, 2010 announcement about its decision to discontinue the Mercury brand is the latest in a series of brand terminations. Whether out of financial necessity or the desire to streamline product lines, here are five auto brands that have faded away.
1. Mercury

Mercury is a brand of the Ford Motor Company that has been around for over 70 years. Ford recently decided in early June to end Mercury production before the end of the year. Mercury was originally created to offer Ford customers a premium vehicle. The continued popularity and corresponding sales of the Ford branded vehicles has left the Mercury brand weak, with many of its loyal customers now driving Fords.
2. Hummer

In February, 2010, General Motors (Pinksheets: MTLQQ.PK - News) announced it would be phasing out its Hummer brand after an unsuccessful attempt to sell the brand to a Chinese manufacturer. Hummer, with roots that go back to the 1992 military Humvees, faced challenges in recent years as consumers became more conscious about vehicle gas mileage. Hummers are notorious gas guzzlers and took criticism from environmental groups pressing for more fuel efficient vehicles.
Hummer is one of several recent General Motors brands to be discontinued
3. Pontiac

Anyone who paid attention on the road in the 1960s and 1970s took notice of muscle cars - those sleek, high performance vehicles with V8 engines that could be heard from a mile away. A brand of General Motors, Pontiac made vehicles and muscle cars that defined an era with legendary models such as the GTO and Trans Am.
Though Pontiac was at one time one of the top selling brands in the United States, its leadership was unable to devise a strategy that would allow the Pontiac brand to continue. In business since 1926, Pontiac was discontinued in April, 2009.
4. Saturn

General Motors halted production of its Saturn brand in October, 2009 after a deal to sell to Penske Automotive Group failed. Saturn, with a vehicle line that included mostly small to mid-size cars, had been around since 1985. General Motors has enjoyed successful brands over the years, but Saturn struggled and was never profitable.
General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in mid-2009, and was the recipient of U.S. government TARP loans (bailout) following the economic meltdown of 2008. Under scrutiny to pay back loans and become a sustainable corporation, GM has been forced to streamline its brands and focus on the lines that have the most potential.
5. Oldsmobile

Another General Motors brand, Oldsmobile was founded as the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in 1897. Claiming to be the first company to mass-produce vehicles, Oldsmobile joined GM in 1908. Oldsmobile was the first brand to come with fully automatic transmissions, debuted in the 1940 Hydra-Matic models. Competitive with both Chevrolet and Ford, Oldsmobile's Cutlass series became the best-selling car in the United States in 1976. GM pulled the plug in 2004, citing that "Oldsmobile production has remained unprofitable" and that it would therefore end manufacturing.
The Bottom Line

Since the invention of the automobile, brands have come and gone. Many have faded away, but a few remain strong in the hearts of collectors and enthusiasts, making occasional appearances at auto shows, or in magazines and online venues. The auto industry, which produced more than 60 million vehicles in 2009, is the most significant economic sector in terms of revenues.
Facing rising fuel costs, changes in consumer spending habits and increased volatility in raw materials pricing - particularly steel - the auto industry has been forced to analyze its fleets in an attempt to streamline production. As automobile manufacturers respond to a dynamic climate, others may join the ranks of dead auto brands.
by Jean Folger

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

God took the strength of a mountain,
The majesty of a tree,
The warmth of a summer sun,
The calm of a quiet sea,
The generous soul of nature,
The comforting arm of night,
The wisdom of the ages,
The power of the eagle's flight,
The joy of a morning in spring,
The faith of a mustard seed,
The patience of eternity,
The depth of a family need,
Then God combined these qualities,
When there was nothing more to add,
He knew His masterpiece was complete,
And so, He called it ... Dad
Author is unknown
/From : Zubia Kiran

Moon Has 100 Times More Water, New Study Suggests

The moon's interior may harbor 100 times more water than previous estimates, according to a new study that took a fresh look at samples of moon rocks collected by Apollo astronauts nearly 40 years ago.
The researchers determined that the lunar water likely originated early in the moon's formation history, suggesting that it is, in fact, native to the moon.
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, and other colleagues, said it's likely that the water was preserved from the hot magma that was present when the moon began to form – some 4.5 billion years ago.
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www.thecove.org/eventThey also think that the water, which is locked up in lunar rocks and material, is likely more widespread in the moon's interior than previous studies estimated. These findings now suggest that the lower limit for total water on the moon could be 100 times greater.
"When the rocks were first returned from the Apollo missions, it was pretty obvious that they were really dry," Francis McCubbin, lead author of the study, told SPACE.com. "A lot of people attributed the dry nature to something fundamental about how the moon formed. I think an estimate was thrown out there of less than 1 part per billion (ppb) water, because the presumption was that there was almost no water on the moon."
Tracking moon water:
In 2008, research of volcanic glass beads brought attention to the fact that there might be more water in the moon's interior than scientists had previously thought. At the time, McCubbin and his colleagues were searching for water in lunar minerals, but at that point they had only models and calculations that suggested higher water content.
Since then, observations from unmanned probes from NASA and other space agencies have confirmed the presence of water in lunar material and water ice on the moon's surface.
For this new study, the researchers were able to compare their calculations to analyses of samples of Apollo moon rocks and a lunar meteorite from Africa.
"We combined the measurements with models that characterize how the material crystallized as the moon cooled," McCubbin said. "We found that the minimum water content ranged from 64 parts per billion to 5 parts per million – at least two orders of magnitude greater than previous results."
The research will appear in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 14.
Moon water from magma :
In the new study, researchers located grains of the mineral apatite in thin sections from the moon rocks and meteorite. They used a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), which allowed them to analyze the grains for a compound known as hydroxyl, which can be incorporated into apatite's chemical structure if the mineral crystallizes from magma that contains water.
The SIMS technique bombards the lunar samples with a primary ion beam that allows the researchers to separate the ions with a magnet, depending on the charge. From these measurements, the scientists inferred the amount of water in the apatite's source magma, which allowed them to extrapolate the result to estimate the total amount of water that is present on the moon.
"The numbers that we got matched the calculations that we had done almost perfectly," McCubbin said. "We were pretty happy about that."
The prevailing hypothesis is that the moon was formed from a giant impact event, when a Mars-sized object slammed into Earth. The ejected material from this collision then coalesced into what is presently the moon.
The results of the new study found that the moon's water was likely present in the hot magma from the impact as it started to cool and crystallize.
Yet, compared to Earth and Mars, the moon is still remarkably dry, said McCubbin.
"If we were to take all the water that is locked up inside the moon, and put it in a homogenous layer on the lunar surface, it would cover the moon to about a meter depth," he explained.
In comparison, if all the water that is locked up in Mars was put on the lunar surface, it would cover the moon to a depth of about 0.93 miles (1.5 km). And, if the same is done for all of the water inside the Earth, it would cover the entire lunar surface to a depth of 155 miles (250 km).
Still, the findings have significant implications that could alter current theories about lunar magma, and how the moon formed and evolved.
"It is gratifying to see this proof of the OH contents in lunar apatite," said lunar scientist Bradley Jolliff of Washington University in St. Louis. "The concentrations are very low and, accordingly, they have been until recently nearly impossible to detect. We can now finally begin to consider the implications – and the origin – of water in the interior of the moon."
By Denise Chow/
SPACE.com Staff Writer

Sea turtle films self, becomes YouTube sensation

MIAMI (AFP) – Move over James Cameron. A sea turtle found a waterproof camera in the Caribbean, somehow activated the device, filmed itself and is now a YouTube sensation.
Back in May US Coast Guard agent Paul Schultz found a digital camera in a waterproof case on a beach in Key West, Florida, and posted images he found on its memory chip on the Internet in an attempt to find its owner.
In a video clip dated January 2010 "a turtle came across the camera, and it's really hard to tell how, but it turns the camera on and recorded itself swimming with the camera," Schultz told AFP.
"When I saw the video, I thought first that someone was getting attacked by a sea creature," Schultz said.
"I thought that a diver was getting attacked," he said. However, he later realized that the camera was just hitching a ride with a sea turtle.
"The last thing the camera owner did was shoot a video underwater, and then it goes right into the next video with the camera turning around in the water," Schultz said.
The video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43sg-Ytt58.
Schultz eventually found the owner, a Dutch navy sailor who lost the camera when he was diving off the island of Aruba in November.
As the crow flies, Aruba, off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, is some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Key West, Florida.
But the camera likely took a roundabout journey on the Loop Current, which would have taken it from Aruba to the coast of central America, past Belize and the Yucatan peninsula, around the western coast of Cuba, into the Gulf Stream and on to the Florida Keys.
"I'm totally amazed about this," Schultz said.

Jets Punch Holes in Clouds and Create Rain

Aircraft can accidentally punch holes in clouds, leaving a trail of snow or rain in their wake, a new study finds.
Turboprop and jet aircraft that climb or descend under certain atmospheric conditions can inadvertently trigger what's known as cloud seeding. This technology is usually associated with schemes to control the weather. However, cloud seeding can happen by accident as planes soaring through mid-level clouds leave behind odd-shaped holes or channels in the clouds and cause narrow bands of snow or rain to develop and fall to the ground.
Holes punched in clouds are a phenomenon that has been recognized for many years and seen in photos from around the world. A front-page feature on Yahoo! carried the headline "A Halo over Moscow" after photos emerged of just such a hole in October 2009.
The secret behind these mysterious clouds has now been revealed: Supercooled water droplets that remain liquid even at subfreezing temperatures - below about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius). When an airplane cuts through clouds containing the supercooled water droplets, air is cooled behind aircraft propellers or over jet wings, and these water droplets freeze and drop toward Earth.
"Any time aircraft fly through these specific conditions, they are altering the clouds in a way that can result in enhanced precipitation nearby," said study co-author Andrew Heymsfield of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.
Hole-punched clouds and accidental cloud seeding may be more common in regions such as the Pacific Northwest and western Europe where cloud layers with supercooled droplets are more common, Heymsfield said.
Speculation on the how the cloud holes formed dates back to the 1940s. Aviation-related hypotheses ranged from acoustic shock waves produced by jets, to local warming of the air along a jet's path, to the formation of ice along jet contrails.
To unravel the mystery, Heymsfield and his colleagues set to the skies with a battery of instruments in tow. When they flew through some falling snow west of Denver International Airport in 2007, the research team did not notice anything unusual at the time. Once on the ground, a closer analysis of their data revealed a few peculiar anomalies.
Ground-based radar revealed an unusual echo in the area, indicating that the snow had evolved quickly and was unusually shaped. Also, the aircraft's camera recorded a hole in an otherwise solid deck of altocumulus clouds, as well as a burst of snow extending to the ground.
The final piece of the puzzle came when the researchers scrutinized the snowflakes within the snow beneath the hole-punch. These plate-shaped crystals showed evidence of what's known as riming - the accumulation of liquid water - whereas ice particles elsewhere in the cloud showed little or no riming." This tells us that the aircraft literally 'seeded' the cloud just by flying through it," Heymsfield said.
"You wouldn't necessarily see it from satellite or from the ground. I had no idea this was happening. I was sitting in back of the plane. And then this data set just fell in our laps. It was a lucky break," Heymsfield added.
LiveScience.com /livescience Staff

3D NEWSPAPERS !

Probably because of the movie Avatar, people in China are really in love on 3D staff. A newspaper that was issued in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, came out in 3D edition. Readers can see 3D pictures with 3D glasses that were attached with it. Well, this is not the first 3D newspaper which can found in China. In April, a newspaper from Shiyan city, Hubei Province, has made it the first. Looks like the printing technology for newspaper in China has made some breakthrough.
/vatanman/Image Source: imaginechina

The World's only Orang-Utan Nursery

Scientists use Calvin Klein cologne to lure jaguars

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters Life!) – Biologists tracking jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle might smell nice but it's all in the name of science, with researchers finding the Calvin Klein cologne Obsession for Men attracts big cats.
Biologists Rony Garcia and Jose Moreira from the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Jaguar Conservation Program say they use hidden cameras as a primary source for observing and tracking jaguars in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve.
But they also rely on Obsession for Men, a cologne known for its complex scent, to help lure then research and hopefully ultimately preserve jaguars in the Central American country.
"The method we are using to study the jaguars here in Guatemala is a non-invasive method which is based on photographing the individuals by using camera traps," Moreira told Reuters Television.
"It has been very useful using Obsession (for Men) to get the jaguars in front of these camera traps ... and that allows us to estimate with greater confidence the genders and the numbers that live in each studied site."
The discovery that Obsession for Men acted as a magnet for jaguars was the result of an experiment by the WCS's Bronx Zoo in New York.
The WCS was looking for ways to get cheetahs in front of camera traps, and, after several years of testing with different fragrances, found spraying the musky Obsession For Men near the heat-and-motion-sensitive cameras drew the cats for longer than other scents.
They also tried out about 23 other fragrances but Obsession for Men kept the cats' attention for longest with Nina Ricci's L'Air du Temps coming second.
The practice made its way down to Guatemala, where Garcia and Moreira said they have been recording similar success in the wild since 2007, allowing them to track jaguars and even record their mating rituals.
Garcia said the results will be invaluable to conservation efforts.
"These camera traps help us to identify how many jaguars are living in this area ... (and) helps us to have control over the population and lets us say to the government, to the public, that Laguna del Tigre still deserves conservation," he said.
The WCS said it tentatively plans to expand the use of the cologne in programs in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador in coming years.

Woman striving to be world's heaviest

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.Oldest leather shoe steps out after 5,500 years

WASHINGTON – About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather shoe ever found.
It'll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science.
Worn and shaped by the wearer's right foot, the shoe was found in a cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the shoe — between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago.
"This is great luck," enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.
"We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little information about the day-to-day activity" of these ancient people. "What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a chance to see this ... it gives us a real glimpse into society," he said in a telephone interview.
Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on the famous Otzi, the "Iceman" found frozen in the Alps a few years ago and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128 years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe.
Otzi's shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide, Pinhasi said.
Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were made of fiber rather than leather.
The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a broken pot and some wild goat horns.
But Pinhasi doesn't think it was thrown away. There was discarded material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn't worn out.
It's not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was stored, according to the researchers.
The Armenian shoe was small by current standards — European size 37 or U.S. women's size 7 — but might have fit a man of that era, according to Pinhasi.
He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace from toe to top.
There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft leather. "I don't know how long it would last in rocky terrain," Pinhasi said.
He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version, known as "pampooties" reportedly didn't last long, he said.
"In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region," Pinhasi said.
While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said.
Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn't smell.
Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and then returned to Armenia for display in a museum.
Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the other shoe will drop.
The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

Sip Your Way to a Flat Belly!

There is a potion that magically strips away pounds from your body, improves your overall health, lengthens your life, makes you more attractive to the opposite sex, and keeps you lean forever. Even better, you can have as much of this magic weight-loss potion as you want, for free, and start stripping away pounds—perhaps even several dozen pounds this year alone—without exercise, without dieting, without visiting the set of Nip/Tuck.
What is this magical elixir? It’s water.
Really? Really. You don't even need to mix in that fancy fat-burning stuff from the vitamin store. In fact, the less you supplement your food and beverage intake, the more weight you’ll lose (and the more money you’ll save). Keep reading this five-point plan from the new book Drink This, Not That! and begin your no diet weight-loss goals today. You'll sip your way to a flat belly in record time--and keep it well beyond summer.
Step 1: Swear Off the Soda and Iced Tea
(Annual Weight Loss: 18 Pounds!)
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey measured where most of our calories come from. Researchers broke up America’s food intake into 143 different categories and discovered, to their horror, that the category making up the largest percentage of our calorie intake—7.1 percent, to be exact—was not a food at all. It was soda. (Vegetables, on the other hand, accounted for only 6.5 percent of our intake. Chicken and fish together only added up to 5.7 percent.) To put that into perspective, if you ate an average of 2,500 calories a day, and you cut 7 percent of your calories, you’d automatically drop down to 2,325, a difference that would save you 1.5 pounds per month. You could be 9 pounds lighter in 6 months by going cold-turkey today! Another thing to remember: You're far better off eating your vitamins than drinking them. Here are 40 foods with scientifically proven superpowers.
Step 2: Drink 8 Cups of Water Every Day
(Annual Weight Loss: 26 Pounds!)
Yes, the magic elixir really does have amazing powers. In one study, a group of 173 overweight women were put through diet and nutrition training using mainstream diet programs. Researchers then followed them for 10 months, with dietary and body composition being recorded up to 12 months after the classes. All women in the program lost weight, but those drinking more water lost more weight. Drinking more than 1 liter of water per day (nearly 4½ cups) was associated with an extra 5.07 pounds lost in 12 months.
And researchers from the University of Utah found that people who drink the most water have higher metabolisms. In a study, subjects drank 4, 8, or 12 cups of water each day. Those who drank at least 8 cups reported better concentration and higher energy levels, and tests showed that they were burning more calories than the 4-cups-a-day group.
Of course, if you're looking to lose weight, diet is only half the equation. For the other half, check out our list of the 100 best fitness tips ever written. Your best beach body awaits!
Step 3: Enjoy One, Two, or Even Three Yogurt-Based Smoothies a Day
(Annual Weight Loss: 10 Pounds!)
I love the sound of a cranking blender. But a combination of ice, dairy, and fruit does more than just make a teeth-rattling cacophony in your kitchen. It also helps strip pounds from your body.
There are three simple reasons why: Smoothies take little time to make (so you can quash your hunger pangs quickly), they’re packed with nutrition (especially if you start with Greek yogurt and add berries, whey protein, and some flax), and their thickness takes up a lot of space in your stomach, crowding out the Doritos. In fact, researchers at Purdue University found that people stayed fuller longer when they drank thick drinks than when they drank thin ones, and a study at Penn State found that people who drank yogurt shakes that had been blended until they doubled in volume ate 96 fewer calories a day than those consuming thinner drinks.
And speaking of deceptively unhealthy foods, check our must-know roundup of 30 “Health” Foods That Aren’t. You'll be shocked to learn how smoothies, salads and veggie wraps--among other seemingly healthful fare--might be sabotaging your weight-loss goals thanks to deceptive marketing practices.
Step 4: Avoid Juice Drinks
(Annual Weight Loss: 19 Pounds!)
Imagine a world in which we called products what they really were: Hungry Man Dinners would be called Lonely Man Dinners. ESPN would be called the Fat Nerds Yap about Jocks Channel. And SunnyD would be called Obesi-D because there’s nothing sunny about a drink marketed to kids that looks and tastes like juice, but is 95 percent water and corn syrup.
While even 100 percent juice has its problems, juice drinks and their ilk are the worse offenders. One 16-ounce bottle of SunnyD Smooth packs a whopping 180 straight-up empty calories and 40 grams of sugar. If you drink one a day, cut it out. You’ll lose 19 pounds in a year!
And SunnyD is just the beginning. See the worst beverages in the supermarket for a complete list of jaw-dropping drinks--and their healthier alternatives.
Step 5: Drink Coffee, Not Coffee Drinks
(Annual Weight Loss: 18 Pounds!)
Researchers studied coffee habits in New York and found that two-thirds of Starbucks’ customers opted for blended coffee drinks over regular brewed coffee or tea. The average caloric impact of the blended drinks was 239 calories. The regular coffee or tea, by comparison, was only 63 calories after factoring in added cream and sugar. So even if you like your coffee sweet and light, you can strip away 176 calories every day, just by making this one swap.
Now, budding mathematicians among you may notice that all this adds up to a whopping 91 pounds lost in a single year. This is not good news if you weigh 125. (However, travel just got a lot cheaper because now you can mail yourself all over the world.) Fact is, unless you're currently engaging in all of the bad habits above, you probably don't have 91 pounds to lose.
But this five-point plan illustrates how extraordinarily easy it is to shed extra weight—a lot of weight—just by watching what we drink. And that, my friends, is something worth raising a glass to.
By David Zinczenko/Men'sHealth

Alien life possibly found on Saturn’s moon Titan

Scientists have found clues possibly pointing to primordial life on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons and the second largest moon in the Solar System.
According to analyses of the data sent back by the US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Cassini probe, which is currently exploring the distant moon, hydrogen gas which densely covers the planetoid’s atmosphere gradually disappears towards the surface. According to a paper published in the Icarus journal, this suggests that life forms might exist on Titan’s surface that can breathe.
Another paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research confirmed that there is less hydrogen on the surface than in the atmosphere.
“We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth,” said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Centre at Moffett Field, California.
"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth,” he said.
However, scientists suggest that should life exist on Titan, they would be vastly different from life on Earth.
According to Techtree.com India, “The moon is known to contain lakes of methane that range from a few kilometres wide to ones that ...measure 100s of kilometres across.” This suggests that any life found on Titan might be methane-based instead of water-based.
Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University said, “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process.”
“In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan,” he added.
/Fidelis Angela Tan

Apple's Jobs expected to reveal new iPhone

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Apple's secrecy about product launches is legendary but when chief executive Steve Jobs takes the stage Monday the world may have already had a glimpse of what is expected to be the next iPhone.
Jobs is to be the keynote speaker at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, an annual event during which the gadget maker reveals its latest must-have devices.
This year's conference, which has attracted more than 5,000 developers of programs for Macintosh computers, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad, carries less mystery than years past due to an Apple software engineer's unfortunate evening in a California beer garden a little over two months ago.
The engineer, Robert "Gray" Powell, lost a prototype of the next-generation iPhone while drinking at the Gourmet Haus Staudt near Apple headquarters and it ended up with a 21-year-old man who then sold it to technology blog Gizmodo.
According to Gizmodo, features of the new phone include a front-facing video camera for video conferencing and a better regular camera with a larger lens.
It reportedly has a flat back instead of curved back, is thinner than the previous model, the iPhone 3GS, and has a battery that is 16-percent larger.
Gizmodo, unsurprisingly, will not be in the audience when Jobs makes his keynote address at 10:00 am (1700 GMT). The technology blog said Apple has not responded to its requests to attend the June 7-11 WWDC.
Gartner analyst Van Baker said Gizmodo's revelations about the next iPhone had taken some of the shine off the event.
"I think the biggest challenge Apple's going to face is coming up with enough exciting news to have this truly get the market's attention," Baker said.

The front-facing video camera that will allow iPhone owners to have video chats with Macintosh computers or iPhone to iPhone "will probably be among the biggest news that we see," he said.
"I tink there'll be some additional reveals on OS 4.0 (the latest iPhone operating system)," Baker added.
"We might see a new iPod Touch," the Gartner analyst told AFP. "Beyond that, I'm not sure because the iPad's new and the MacBook line -- both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro -- just had a significant refresh.
"So I'm not sure what else to expect from them other than OS4 announcements and a reveal of the new iPhone," he said.
Baker said he did not expect the new iPhone to be "exactly" what Gizmodo displayed but there would probably not be substantive differences.
"I'm sure they had variants of the design floating around and likely made the decision of which ones to manufacture within the last month or so," he said.
Kathryn Huberty of Morgan Stanley said Apple may announce a price cut for the iPhone. A 50-dollar drop in price could result in a 40-percent increase in demand, she estimated.
US wireless carrier AT&T sells the latest iPhone for 199 dollars and a year ago Apple slashed the price for its earliest model to 99 dollars.
Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the Gizmodo leak "took some of the surprise out of the event" but called it a "momentary diversion."
In any case, Apple, which has sold more than 50 million iPhones in three years, has taken an approach of "evolution and not revolution" when it comes to the touchscreen smartphone, Levy said.
"When upgrading its iPhone hardware, Apple's goal is never to hit it out of the park," he said. "Rather, the company's intent is to move the bar far enough to maintain its market-dominant position.
"To ensure it has enough new-feature gas in the tank for next year, it never gives customers everything they've asked for in any given year," he said.
"Instead, it includes just enough new features to keep the faithful faithful for another year. It's the ultimate form of controlled marketing, and Apple does it better than virtually any company on the

by Chris Lefkow

1 Year Old Child is Pregnant !

One year old child found pregnant in Saudi Arabia.
Doctors says it’s a unique case for this world!
Medical Science Report says : “When the mother of this child was pregnant, she had 2 fetuses inside her.
But one of the fetus grew inside the other, this why this girl was born with the other fetus inside her womb.”
From: SAMEER BADAR