Volcanoes in the Philippines and Indonesia are threatening to erupt. In the central Philippines, the Mayon volcano puffsout gas and ash, as scientists warn that it may erupt sometime in February. Last year, it drove 68,000 people from their homes. There have also been minor earthquakes around the 8,100 foot mountain.

Its most violent eruption occurred in 1814, when it killed more than 1,200 people and buried an entire town in volcanicmud.
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The Pentagon recently held its first war game in space and discovered we would lose.

The five-day exercise was enacted to determine how to defend U.S. satellites and destroy those of a potential enemy.This deadly serious role-playing game, set in 2017 and acted out by military men in Colorado, involved two enemycountries.

During the game, our enemy tried a capitalist preemptive strike by buying up all the commercial satellites it couldfind. Both sides tried to disable each other’s computers. They also tried hijacking opponents’ satellites and using themto broadcast propaganda.

The enemy countries were supposedly China and the U.S., but we wonder if they might not also have represented Earthfighting off an attack from another planet.
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Scientists working to replicate the harsh conditions of space, with its cold temperatures, radiation and lack of air,have managed to get artificial cell membranes to form, proving that life could have originated in space. For life toexist in cellular form, each cell must be surrounded by a protective membrane. These cells then combine together to form complex life structures.

The membranes resemble primitive cell walls. David Dreamer, a biologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz,said, “This wall is semi-permeable, so that things like water and oxygen can get in and out very easily. That is whatlife requires-it needs to have an inside that is not totally shut off from the outside.”
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Hormel Foods Corporation, the creators of Spam, is teaming up with General Motors to make car parts out of pork and turkey byproducts. They will supply GM with a binding agent, known as “GMBond,” that is made from animal protein collagen and will be used to make the molds that are used to cast metal parts.

“Who would have guessed that a food product would be used in the production of your automobile’s engine block?” said Joel Johnson, president of Hormel. Richard Schreck, GM’s principle research scientist, said the collagen binder will help reduce manufacturing costs.
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