On this day in 421 Venice, Italy is born at twelve o'clock noon, according to legend.
While there are no historical records that deal directly with the obscure and peripheral[7] origins of Venice, tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees from Roman cities near Venice such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino and Concordia (modern Portogruaro) and from the undefended countryside, who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic invasions and Huns.[8] Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen on the islands in the original marshy lagoons. They were referred to as incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers"). The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giaccomo at the islet of Rialto (Rivoalto, "High Shore"), given a conventional date of 421.
Happy Friday Everyone! Welcome to the Pink Clubhouse daily diary.
When I think of Venice, Italy or any Italian coastline city, I think of the multi-storey buildings and colors.
I have never been to Italy, have you?
Science News
Virgin Oceanic: Billionaire Branson ventures into the deep sea
British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is signaling that the time has come for its long-discussed deep-sea exploration and tourism venture.
Advance word comes in the form of an invitation to a Los Angeles press event on April 5, during which a "major new initiative and challenge" will be announced. "The Virgin brand has reached many places — the seven continents of the earth, up into the jet stream and soon, even into space. There is only one frontier left," the Virgin Group's invitation reads.
It doesn't take much sleuthing to figure out the general topic. For one thing, once you rule out Earth's land mass, the atmosphere and outer space, the oceans are the only things left. Also, Branson has been talking about a venture called "Virgin Oceanic" (or "Virgin Aquatic") for a couple of years now.
Branson unveiled one part of his underwater ambitions last year, in the form of the "Necker Nymph." That's a a prototype submersible vehicle that's part of a $113,000 weeklong tour package available on Necker Island, the billionaire's vacation spot in the British Virgin Islands. (It's $25,000 for the sub ride, but another $88,000 for the resort stay). The craft was reportedly built at a cost of $670,000 (£415,000).
A new glimpse at the earliest Americans
Everything’s bigger in Texas, even the piles of debris and tools left alongside a stream some 15,000 years ago by some of the earliest known inhabitants of North America.
The newly discovered trove of 56 stone tools and thousands of flaky rock bits at an archeological site north of Austin is the largest and oldest artifact assemblage of its vintage discovered to date, says Michael Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station. Waters and a large team of colleagues describe the collection of artifacts, dubbed the Buttermilk Creek Complex, in the March 25 Science.
All across North America, a distinctive type of two-faced fluted blade shows up in layers of dirt dating to between 13,100 and 12,800 years ago. This “Clovis point” has been called the first great American invention, a technology that spread quickly among people living on the continent. Scientists used to think that the inventors and users of this particular point, which was probably fastened to wooden spears, were the first inhabitants of North America, arriving via an ancient land bridge with Siberia.
But a number of sites in North America and one in southern Chile known as Monte Verde established that people were making a living in the Americas earlier than 13,000 years ago, and in the last decade the “Clovis First” hypothesis has gone the way of the woolly mammoth. The Buttermilk creek complex, which dates to between 13,200 and 15,500 years ago, adds to this scant but growing roster of pre-Clovis sites.
“So from Oregon to Pennsylvania to Florida to Texas, 15,000 years ago we’ve got people all over North America that were doing a lot of things,” Waters says.
Robots Arrive at Fukushima Nuclear Site with Unclear Mission
As workers race to stave off further melting at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan, several robots there are waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to help. Questions remain, however, regarding how these units might assist in an ongoing emergency at a site contaminated with radiation and deluged with tons of corrosive seawater.
Concrete pump trucks sprayed about 130 tons of water into Daiichi's No. 4 reactor on Wednesday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) reported (pdf). Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) injected about 35 tons of seawater into the spent fuel pool of the No. 3 reactor to keep the fuel rods there from overheating, according to NISA, which also observed "slightly blackish" smoke generated from the building housing that reactor. Seawater is also being injected into the No. 1 reactor as well as the spent fuel pool of the No. 2 reactor.
TEPCo summoned a small corps of military-grade robots last week from iRobot Corp. in Bedford, Mass. Japan's Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. last week sent its Disaster Monitoring Robot, or Moni-Robo, to the Daiichi site as well. Other robotics companies, including Canada's Inuktun Services, are also fielding inquiries about how their technology might be of use. Each of the robots of interest moves on tracks and features a mechanical hand that can be used to lift and manipulate objects.
The roles that robots might play in Japan will depend upon the emergency responders' priorities, whether this includes handling intensely hot or radioactive materials or, later removing sludge from the site or drilling core samples to determine how deeply radiation may have penetrated the facility's walls and floor, says William "Red" Whittaker, a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor and director of the Field Robotics Center at the school's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh. Whittaker and several Carnegie Mellon colleagues built robots in the late 1970s and early 1980s to inspect and perform repairs in the basement of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station following the near meltdown there in 1979.
What big teeth that plant-eater had!
Back in 260 million B.C., the mammal-like creature known as Tiarajudens eccentricus looked as fearsome as any predator —possessing rows of teeth that went all the way back into its palate, with two saber teeth sticking out in the front. But paleontologists say this dog-sized monster lived on a strictly vegetarian diet. So why did it have all those menacing choppers?
In this week's issue of the journal Science, researchers from Brazil and South Africa examine the strange case of Tiarajudens, a newly identified type of distant mammalian relative known as a therapsid, and they go on to suggest possible solutions to the dental dilemma.
Health News
Drug-resistant 'superbug' mostly limited to Southern California nursing homes
A drug-resistant bacterium that has surfaced in Southern California has mostly spread in nursing homes, not hospitals, but more needs to be done to track it, health officials said Thursday.
More than 350 cases of Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, or CRKP, have been reported at healthcare facilities in Los Angeles County, mostly among elderly patients at skilled-nursing and long-term care facilities, according to a study by Dr. Dawn Terashita, an epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Love and Sex
Sex Increases Risk of Heart Attack by 2.7X—Significantly Less Than Its Fun Multiplier
Don't give up sex, get more regular exercise
There are certain things you’re not supposed to do during sex and having a heart attack is one of them. We’ve known for a while that bursts of moderate to intense physical activity—including sex—increase heart attack risk, but a few scientists have now put number on that risk. And especially for out-of-shape folks, the diagnosis doesn’t look good (unless you’re aiming for death by sex, of course).
Studying death and sex is a tricky subject: Scientists can’t just round up volunteers, watch them make love, and then note which ones die. So instead they analyzed data from 14 different studies to single out connections between sex, exercise, and the risk of cardiac death or heart attacks.
As the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Acute cardiac events were significantly associated with … sexual activity.” When exercising, you’re 3.5 times more likely to get a heart attack, and when having sex (or immediately after sex), you’re 2.7 times more likely.
The main take-home message is not that you should give up sex, but that you should get more regular exercise. That’s because they also discovered that your likelihood of getting a heart attack during sex decreases by 45% for every “additional time you do physical activity that week.” “What we really don’t want to do is for the public to walk away from this and think exercise is bad,” lead author Jessica Paulus told Reuters.
Technology
LiveGo; All Your Friends at Same Place!
Are you tired of jumping between your browsers’ tab to take a look at your Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, AIM accounts then here’s a big treat for you. You can have all your account ON just in one page. Yeah, there is one site, which is recently launched named “LiveGO“. This site allows it’s user to use all social networking sites at one place. Now you don’t have to jump between tabs, everything in one Page.
Russian porn hacker sentenced
A Moscow court sentences a hacker for blasting rush hour drivers with hardcore porn.
Social Media
OMG, the Oxford English Dictionary Added New Words! We ‘Heart’ It! LOL!
“OMG,” “LOL” and the symbol for “heart” have all been added to the Oxford English Dictionary Online.
Animal lovers
A daring dog breaks into the fridge to score some midnight pizza.
Pop Culture
Steve Earle explores myth, reality and Hank Williams' ghost in his first novel
LOS ANGELES — It’s tempting to read Steve Earle’s first novel, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 256 pp., $26, forthcoming in May), through the filter of pop music; the title comes from a Hank Williams song. Yet while Williams’ ghost plays a significant role in the narrative, the motivation, Earle explains, is more complex.
“It’s about mortality,” the singer-songwriter says by phone from his New York apartment. Hence, the name of the book, a reference to the last song Williams released before he died on Jan. 1, 1953, in the back seat of a car on the road to a New Year’s Day gig in Canton, Ohio.
That lonesome death, because of drugs and alcohol, centers the novel, which revolves around a character named Doc, a physician fallen into heroin addiction, who gave the singer his final injection. Ten years later, Doc is living in a San Antonio flophouse, performing back-alley abortions, haunted by his failures and his sins.
On this Day in History
1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969 – During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (until March 31).
Happy Birthday
Danica Sue Patrick (born March 25, 1982) is an American auto racing driver, currently competing in the IndyCar Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series, as well as a model and advertising spokeswoman. Patrick was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season. With her win in the 2008 Indy Japan 300, Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy car race.
Sheryl Denise Swoopes (born March 25, 1971) is an American professional basketball player who played most recently for the Seattle Storm in the WNBA. She was the first player to be signed in the WNBA when it was created.[1] She has won three Olympic Gold Medals and is a three-time WNBA MVP. Frequently referred to as the "female Michael Jordan," Swoopes is famous for both her offensive and defensive skills. In 2005, she averaged 18.6 points, 85% free throws, 4.3 assists, 2.65 steals and 37.1 minutes playing time per game. Swoopes is considered "one of the greatest collegiate players of all time".
Sarah Jessica Parker (born March 25, 1965) is an American film, television, and theater actress and producer. She is best known for her leading role as Carrie Bradshaw on the HBO television series Sex and the City (1998–2004), for which she won four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards. She played the same role in the 2008 feature film based on the show, Sex and the City: The Movie, and in its sequel, Sex and the City 2, which opened on May 26, 2010.
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is an English singer-songwriter, composer and pianist. He has worked with his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
Paul Michael Glaser (born March 25, 1943) is an American actor and director, perhaps best known for his role as Detective David Starsky on the 1970s television series Starsky and Hutch; he also appeared as Captain Jack Steeper on the 1999 to 2005 NBC series Third Watch.
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is adept at jazz, blues, R&B, and gospel music. Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.
Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. A prominent writer and political figure, Steinem has founded many organizations and projects and has been the recipient of many awards and honors. She was a columnist for New York magazine and co-founded Ms. magazine. In 1969, she published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation" which, along with her early support of abortion rights, catapulted her to national fame as a feminist leader. In 2005, Steinem worked alongside Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan to co-found the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Steinem currently serves on the board of the organization. She continues to involve herself in politics and media affairs as a commentator, writer, lecturer, and organizer, campaigning for candidates and reforms and publishing books and articles.
Quote of the Day
"Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go." ~Truman Capote