Topic: NATURE - on April 18, 2007 at 12:16:00 PM CEST
Amazing Cave in Mexico
The geologist announced this week that he and a team of researchers have unlocked the mystery of just how the minerals in Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) achieved their monumental forms. Buried a thousand feet (300 meters) below Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert, the cave was discovered by two miners excavating a new tunnel for the Industrias Peñoles company in 2000.
The cave contains some of the largest natural crystals ever found: translucent gypsum beams measuring up to 36 feet (11 meters) long and weighing up to 55 tons.
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Topic: NEWS - on April 18, 2007 at 12:12:00 PM CEST
The Arctic highway
Located in Canada's Northwest Territories, the road from Tibbitt to Contwoyto is considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world. The Denison's road - as it is also known - stretches 600 kilometres into the Arctic territory and is the main supply route for the giant diamond mines in the North. The main danger is that 85 percent of the road lies over frozen lakes, so ice can break at anytime and swallow the trucks.
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Topic: DRUGS - on April 18, 2007 at 12:11:00 PM CEST
EDU: OPED: THE TIME HAS COME TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA USE
With all of the alcohol-related incidents that happen both in State College and around the United States, one would think that making alcohol illegal might be a good idea. Certainly, there would be fewer traffic-related deaths if alcohol were illegal, as the National Transportation Safety Board said that about 16,000 fatalities on the road are caused by alcohol each year.
Why, then, if alcohol causes so many problems, is deterring pot smoking the main focus of most drug education programs?
I'll say it right out. If alcohol is legal and smoking cigarettes is legal, then smoking marijuana should be within the bounds of the law as well.
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Topic: VIDEO - on April 18, 2007 at 11:21:00 AM CEST
Pool Tricks
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Topic: GOOGLE - on April 18, 2007 at 11:19:00 AM CEST
Google News Report
This report fetches the headlines from Google news on a schedule. Only headlines on the home page are fetched.
These results are then ranked by score. The score is determined by a combination of factors: appearance day and time, prominence on the google news page, number of appearances, and others, all weighted using a custom algorithm. The algorithm is designed to estimate referer traffic to the source.
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Topic: NEWS english - on April 18, 2007 at 11:01:00 AM CEST
China criticised for 'tiger wine'
China has come under fire for allowing tigers to be bred for the production of so-called "tiger bone wine".
The drink is reportedly made by steeping tiger carcasses in rice wine. Those who drink the wine believe it makes them strong.
Chinese delegates at the International Tiger Symposium in Nepal are arguing for the lifting of a current ban on the trade in tiger bones and skins.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 18, 2007 at 10:59:00 AM CEST
Another chapter in the story of the world’s most mysterious book
Gordon Rugg’s work showed that the Voynich Manuscript could have been hoaxed. Whether or not the manuscript actually was a hoax was another question. A key problem was finding a suitable type of statistical analysis.
A breakthrough comes with the publication in Cryptologia this April of an article by Austrian researcher Dr Andreas Schinner, a theoretical physicist and software engineer at the Johannes Kepler University. Schinner analysed the text of the manuscript using specialist statistics capable of handling quasi-stochastic distributions, and found that the manuscript’s statistical properties were consistent with a hoax consisting of meaningless gibberish produced using Rugg’s method or a similar quasi-random method.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 18, 2007 at 10:53:00 AM CEST
Das Geheimnis des mysteriösen Voynich-Codes
Eine der rätselhaftesten mittelalterlichen Handschriften ist wahrscheinlich das raffinierte Werk eines Schelms: Der österreichische Wissenschaftler Andreas Schinner bekräftigt nach einer Analyse des Texts die Vermutung, das in einer Geheimschrift verfasste Voynich-Manuskript enthalte lediglich bedeutungsloses Geschwafel. Wie er zeigte, unterliegt die Wortfolge im Manuskript einer gewissen Regelmäßigkeit und unterscheidet sich damit von in natürlichen Sprachen geschriebenen Texten. Die so genannte Schabernack-Hypothese würde erklären, warum es Kryptologen bisher nicht gelang, dem 250-seitigen Buch eine chiffrierte Botschaft zu entlocken.
wissenschaft.de Good scans of the Voynich Manuscript are hard to find. These are from the Yale Library (download instructions), though unfortunately in a proprietary graphics format, which I converted to jpeg.Voynich-Manuskript [wikipedia]
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