WHAT'S NEW

EYE JEWERLY

Eric Klarenbeek has created eye jewels that hang from your contact lenses. It’s not supposed to affect your eyesight, but what happens if it gets caught in something? This is one trend I will not be partipaicing in and I’m sure most people will agree with me.

GLOW iN THE DARK TATTOOS

Have you always wanted a tattoo but were afraid of what your boss will say? With glow in the dark tattoos you can cover yourself in body art and no one will be the wiser, unless they see you with the lights out. The new technique uses black light reactive ink, which is reactive to UV light. As a result, these tattoos only glow in black light. However, you will still surprise your next date when in the black light you start to shine.

SWiNE FLU

The CDC reports additional cases of confirmed swine influenza and a number of hospitalizations of swine flu patients. Internationally, the situation is more serious too, with additional countries reporting confirmed cases of swine flu. In response to the intensifying outbreak, the World Health Organization raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 4. A Phase 4 alert is characterized by confirmed person-to-person spread of a new influenza virus able to cause "community-level" outbreaks. The increase in the pandemic alert phase indicates that the likelihood of a pandemic has increased. CDC has activated its emergency operations center to coordinate the agency’s emergency response. CDC's goals are to reduce transmission and illness severity, and provide information to help health care providers, public health officials and the public address the challenges posed by this swine influenza virus. Yesterday, CDC issued a travel warning recommending that people avoid non-essential travel to Mexico. CDC continues to issue interim guidance daily on the website and through health alert network notices. CDC's Division of the Strategic National Stockpile is releasing one-quarter of its antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment, and respiratory protection devices to help states respond to the outbreak. The swine influenza a virus is susceptible to the prescription antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir. This is a rapidly evolving situation and CDC will provide updated guidance and new information as it becomes available.

RUBBER MULCH

During an adventure with my sponsor, he introduced me to rubber recycled mulch. Mulch is used in playgrounds, planets, and other places. It can become messy and cause a lot of problems. But, now rubber tires are being used as a sub. for mulch. The colors are black, blue, brown, green, and red. Here in two of our Lindenwold parks we now have rubber mulch being used. The difference between rubber mulch is it requires minimum maintenance, quick drying, non staining, it reduces dust and mud, will not mold or rot, and is guareenteed to last a life time. Who would have thought tires could do the world good?

0NE MAN'S TRASH iS ANOTHER MAN'S TREASURE

For the Senior projects' product I am making a trash sculpture. At first I did not know what exactly I was going to make but I have came to the conclusion that I am going to make a lion to represent our school's mascot with LHS over it. The only two problems I face now is, where will I put it and what materials will I use to create this masterpiece. My ideas for where to put it was outside and somewhere in a showcase in school. My first choice really is to keep it outside for everyone to see because I want the community to see what I have done and to make everyone aware of how much recycling can help our planet. As far as material I still am not sure. I need something that will be able to stand rain or snow and that will be strong enough for outside conditions. Also, the size of the lion I will like it to be a decent size, nothing tiny but life like size. I have looked at other trash sculptures and a lot have inspired me to do so much. I haven't really talked to any one about my idea because I haven't perfect it yet. I hope I do a good job on it.

THE NEXT MiNi iCE AGE?

Solar history was made in August of 2008. This was the first month, since 1913, where no sunspot activity was observed. In fact, the sun had been spotless for 42 days as of the end of August. This is according to sunspot data from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center. Although sunspot activity follows an 11 year cycle in which activity becomes minimal every 11 years, zero activity is not common. Subsequent to 1913 the sun had been very active but has slowed down, within the 11 year cycle, in recent years. In 2005, two scientists predicted that solar sunspot activity would reach zero by 2015. When this paper was written, sunspot activity was fairly high and they were rebuked by the global warming scientists. Their paper was refused publication because it was based on statistical evidence. It so happens that lack of sunspot activity during the years 1420-1570, 1645-1715 and 1790-1830 corresponds to periods of global cooling. Some scientists believe that as we approach 2014, the climate will again cool -- based on this statistical correlation between sunspot activity and global temperatures. However, this scientific data opposes the global warming stories we hear and, therefore, are rarely reported. They are deemed to be the work of insane deniers of the global warming cult. The point is that all of this is a very complex issue. It certainly cannot be argued that the sun has no effect on the temperature of the earth. The huge electro magnetic storms on the sun that sunspots are made of produce tremendous energy and great volumes of radiation. When we take into account all of the possible factors that make up the temperature of the earth, we see that there is virtually no limit to the number of variables. Because of this, creating a nice and neat theory that accurately predicts these events is impossible. The global warming pundits say the discussion is over and that the proof is at hand. It reminds us of a sniveling child with their fingers in their ears screaming at the top of their lungs so as to not hear what they are being told. If the case for global warming were so solid, they would not want to close the debate. Just as the evidence of sunspots vs. the earth's temperatures does not prove that we are entering a mini ice age, neither can the fantasies of the global warming crowd be proven. The issue is too complex and although we want to think we are so intelligent, the facts are that we know very little about it.

PARASTiC TWiNS

No, this is not the National Enquirer. Baby Manar Maged in Egypt known as the 'two headed girl' had survived an earlier operation to remove a parasitic twin joined at her head. However, on Saturday, she passed away after succumbing to an infection in her brain. Maner was only 10 months old when surgeons operated on her for 13 consecutive hours and managed to successfully separate the parasitic twin. The twin seen in the photo was not expected to survive even with the surgery or with the passage of natural time. Physicians stated that the twin could do little more but blink and smile.The surgery was somewhat controversial in Egypt because it would have meant the certain death of the parasitic twin, which had no limbs, a partial torso and only a head. Reports suggest that there was some effort to halt the surgery on compassionate grounds. In the end, it was an infection that the surviving twin succumbed to.The Manar Maged case has been diagnosed as craniopagus parasiticus, an extremely rare condition where the embryo splits to form a twin but fails to develop separately and is attached to the head of the 'normal' embryo. There have been other known cases, such as a girl in the Dominican Republic, born in 2003, who did not survive the delicate and dangerous operation to remove the parasitic twin. The 2003 case involved an 8-week old baby who endured a complicated 11-hour operation to separate an undeveloped head of her twin. Doctors had warned after the surgery that the girl would be at great risk of infection or hemorrhaging.In this case, lead surgeon Dr. Jorge Lazareff opined that the girl lost a lot of blood in the operation, which apparently caused her to suffer a heart attack. Friends and family donated almost 4 gallons of blood for surgeons to use during the operation. Fully developed twins born conjoined at the head are extremely rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births, but parasitic twins, where one twin stops developing in the womb, are even rarer. Rebecca was the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, doctors said. All the other infants documented to have had the condition died before birth, making Rebecca's surgery the first known operation of its kind. The afore-mentioned Egyptian case is recognized as the ninth.Without an operation, Rebecca would have barely been able to lift her head at 3 months old. Her doctors said the pressure from the second head, attached on top of the first and facing up, would have prevented her brain from developing.

S0LAR POWERED CELL PHONES

Not a whole lot of detail about Samsung's new Blue Earth Phone except that it has some eco-features that finally get us excited about the future of greener cell phones. We really hope this won't be a disappointing chunk of greenwash like Motorola's Renew. Hitting the UK in the second half of 2009, the Samsung Blue Earth phone is a touchscreen smart phone that can apparently generate the power it needs to make a call any time from the solar panel built into the back.
At first glance, we're pretty darn excited about this solar power feature. But, we aren't sure just what Samsung means by this and how powerful that solar panel must be to charge up an energy-intensive touchscreen phone for 24/7 use. Perhaps it's simply that it can get enough juice from the sun to make a call, but not run much else on the phone. Also, are people really going to leave their phone in the sun long enough and often enough to charge it? At any rate, it's an excellent addition to a cell phone so that needed back-up power can be gathered when it's bright out.Most of the phone is constructed from PCM, a plastic extracted from recycled water bottles (more so than the Renew?) and both the handset and energy efficient charger ditch harmful substances such as Brominated Flame Retardants, Beryllium and Phthalate. Additionally, the phone comes in recycled packaging.