What most of us hate most about e-mail is spam, but pop-up ads are a close second. U-Haul went to court to complain that a moving company displayed pop-up ads when customers went to its U-Haul site and tried to get them removed as a violation of their copyright. However, a judge ruled against them. He says that when we surf the internet, we’re “consenting” to seeing pop-up ads. That’s news to us.
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Two of our major health epidemics are AIDS and smoking (which leads to heart and respiratory illnesses, as well as cancer). Now a U.K. company has developed a vaccine that helps people quit smoking. And genetically-modified bacteria are being developed that can form a “living condom” to fight off the HIV virus.
Xenova invented the vaccine to help cocaine addicts, and found it also stops nicotine from entering the brain. If smokers don’t get their “hit” from cigarettes, they’re more likely to quit, although social situations also compel people to smoke.
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Scientists are setting up a major experiment in the U.K. to find evidence about whether or not Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are real. They aren’t going to use elaborate instruments to record the brain waves of patients in hospitals. Instead, they’re going to plant items high up in the operating rooms of 25 cardiac units, where they can’t be seen from the ground, to see if anyone who goes “out of body” will be able to describe them later.
“Over the course of a year we hope this would give us 100 people who leave their bodies,” says neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick. “If they do notice [the items] when the brain is not functioning, then it makes the case for the mind being separate from the brain.”
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How to dispose of radioactive materials is a major problem. It’s not just medical waste?it’s also the radioactive materials that power space satellites that we need to worry about. Jupiter has always been the “trash can” of our Solar System, absorbing the blows from space rocks that might otherwise destroy smaller planets (like us). Now there are plans to crash a spent satellite into Jupiter, making it a burial place for nuclear material as well.
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