有心臟病或有心臟病家族史的人，應該經常喝點小酒，但是，對老年人似乎無明顯效果

Alcohol heart protection may not be down to inflammatory markers in the elder men but true for the younger people.

25/07/2006 - A new study indicates that light to moderate alcohol drinking may exert cardioprotective effects in some, but in elderly men at least the mechanism of action does not seem to be down to a reduction in inflammatory markers as previously thought.

Although alcohol has been implicated in worsening some other chronic diseases and the overall effect of drinking on survival is not clear, some studies have shown that light to moderate drinking may reduce the risk of heart disease. The effect was thought to be somehow connected with inflammation, since reduction in levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 circulating in the blood were seen to drop.

But the current study, which the researchers claim is the first with the specific aim of investigating the impact of inflammation on the relationship between alcohol consumption and health-related outcomes, found that these markers did not seem to be linked to heart disease incidence. This leads to the suspicion that some other, as yet unidentified mechanism may be at play.

a new electric sports car - costing 100.000 dollars

An Electric Car With Juice
Silicon Valley Firm Bets Its Chips on the Speedy Tesla Roadster

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 22, 2006; Page D01

Detroit is floundering, gas prices are rising -- now Silicon Valley is stepping in with an impractical-but-cool solution: A sexy, pricey and fast electric car that uses the same lithium ion batteries found in your cellphone or laptop.

The Tesla Roadster goes from zero to 60 in four noiseless seconds, has a top speed of 135 mph and can roam for more than 200 miles before needing a recharge.

Fittingly for a car designed in Silicon Valley, the Roadster comes with built-in satellite navigation technology and an iPod dock that allows drivers to control the music player via the car's standard Blaupunkt stereo. Owners will be able to check their service records online, naturally.

And, of course, there's a blog. At the Tesla Web site, Eberhard started making his case for the car and his company this week. Bottom line: Electric cars don't have to be for wimps.

"Most electric cars were designed by and for people who fundamentally don't think we should drive," Eberhard said in his Wednesday blog posting. "We at Tesla Motors love cars."

Unlike most electric cars, the company's literature notes, the Tesla Roadster holds enough juice to make the round trip between Silicon Valley and the Pebble Beach Golf Links.

While the flashy two-seater may be too expensive for most buyers to consider, the community of electric car aficionados has received Tesla warmly.

布希總算拖延了一下科學家們想當神的可怕研究

US President George W Bush has vetoed a controversial bill which would have lifted a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research.

It was the first time in his presidency that Mr Bush refused to sign into law a bill approved by Congress.

"It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," he said on Wednesday.

Polls suggest most Americans back the research, which scientists hope will lead to cures for serious illnesses.

Supporters of the research say the technique offers hope for people suffering degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and for diabetes.

The House of Representatives later failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote needed to overturn Mr Bush's veto.

'Not spare parts'

Mr Bush has said he is against the use of public funds for research involving the destruction of human embryos.

He has also consistently opposed embryonic research on moral grounds.

However, my suspecion is how long we can delay this irresistable scientific temptation, and how long the God can be still the sole God.

For scientists, the great attraction of the cells is twofold: their ability to make almost limitless copies of themselves in laboratory dishes and, wh

The cells on the outside of that sphere go on to become the placenta, the bridge of tissue connecting the embryo to the mother's womb. The cluster of cells inside the sphere, called the inner cell mass, goes on to form all the tissues of the developing embryo itself. Embryonic stem cells are extracted from this inner mass.

For scientists, the great attraction of the cells is twofold: their ability to make almost limitless copies of themselves in laboratory dishes and, when tweaked by specific chemical signals, their potential to become almost any cell or tissue in the body. That includes the brain cells lost in Parkinson's disease, the heart muscle cells that die after a heart attack or the pancreatic cells that go awry in diabetes.

This is what distinguishes embryonic stem cells from so-called adult stem cells found in bone marrow, the brain and other organs, each of which has the capacity to become certain kinds of cells -- but not every kind.

Scientists hope someday to be able to transplant brain cells, heart cells or other kinds of cells grown from embryonic stem cells into patients. Scientists also see embryonic stem cells as powerful tools for studying diseases on the cellular level.

Thomson and his colleagues isolated cells from human embryos donated by fertility clinic patients. Other scientists and doctors immediately sought to replicate his discovery, but that raised profound questions about the ethics of using human embryos as sources of research material.

Religious conservatives, in particular, believe that even human embryos the earliest stages of life are beings with moral standing.

Proponents of the research, in contrast, allow that human embryos deserve respect but have argued that it is wrong to grant them the same moral standing as a fetus, which has reached a more complex stage of development, or a newborn. In general, proponents have argued for the right to do research on embryos until they reach 14 days of development -- when it is possible to discern the beginnings of a spinal cord and nervous system.

After Thomson's announcement, the National Institutes of Health created a panel of experts to consider the issue. Two years later, as the Clinton administration was coming to an end, the panel recommended policies that would have allowed scientists to use federal money to study colonies of embryonic stem cells as long as certain ethics rules were followed. Central were the requirements that the embryos must have been created for fertility treatment, were no longer needed by the couple that made them and were donated by the couple for research.

Before that policy went into effect, however, President Bush came into power and took the matter under consideration. He announced his decision in his first televised address to the nation -- an address dedicated solely to the topic of stem cells. The date was Aug. 9, 2001.

Bush declared that federal money could be used to study embryonic stem cell colonies made only from embryos that had been destroyed by that date. He said that, based on information provided by the NIH, there were more than 60 such colonies, a number that later grew into the low 70s.

Over the following months, however, it turned out that cells from only a handful of colonies were available for distribution and study. That number has never exceeded 24. Moreover, it became clear that virtually all those colonies had been maintained in culture dishes with blood products from rodents, calling into question their usefulness as medical products because of the risk of animal viruses and other contaminants.

Over time, it also became clear that some of the colonies, including those developed by Thomson, were not aging well, and were accumulating mutations and other defects.

A few U.S. labs have produced additional cell colonies using private money, but they have complained that the process requires them to waste resources to ensure that those colonies be kept separate from those under study using federal money.

如何克服婚姻中的小衝突，維繫快樂與幸福

Excerpted from some article in the New York Times

By AMY SUTHERLAND

July 16, 2006



I love my husband. He's well read, adventurous and does a hysterical rendition of a northern Vermont accent that still cracks me up after 12 years of marriage.

But he also tends to be forgetful, and is often tardy and mercurial. He hovers around me in the kitchen asking if I read this or that piece in The New Yorker when I'm trying to concentrate on the simmering pans. He leaves wadded tissues in his wake. He suffers from serious bouts of spousal deafness but never fails to hear me when I mutter to myself on the other side of the house. "What did you say?" he'll shout.

These minor annoyances are not the stuff of separation and divorce, but in sum they began to dull my love for Scott. I wanted — needed — to nudge him a little closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who wouldn't keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would be easier to love.
*******************

Then something magical happened. For a book I was writing about a school for exotic animal trainers, I started commuting from Maine to California, where I spent my days watching students do the seemingly impossible: teaching hyenas to pirouette on command, cougars to offer their paws for a nail clipping, and baboons to skateboard.

I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.

The central lesson I learned from exotic animal trainers is that I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don't. After all, you don't get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.

Back in Maine, I began thanking Scott if he threw one dirty shirt into the hamper. If he threw in two, I'd kiss him. Meanwhile, I would step over any soiled clothes on the floor without one sharp word, though I did sometimes kick them under the bed. But as he basked in my appreciation, the piles became smaller.

I was using what trainers call "approximations," rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior. You can't expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect an American husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock. With the baboon you first reward a hop, then a bigger hop, then an even bigger hop. With Scott the husband, I began to praise every small act every time: if he drove just a mile an hour slower, tossed one pair of shorts into the hamper, or was on time for anything.

*****************

However, without love and patience in our mind and heart, we can never follow the above-said "approximation" to move, change and tune-up our spouses into the true lovable, can we?

Dissipated secular life starts to permeate the monastery life of 拉薩 as a result of the completion of the "great railway"

物慾衝擊聖城 拉薩前景質變？

天色一亮，大昭寺的信徒，開始五體投地地膜拜。「太陽島」夜總會裡嚎叫聲，才剛停歇。這就是奇特的拉薩。「常恨春歸無覓處，不知捲入此中來」。小董在夜店裡的迷惘，讓拉薩看起來，更像個精神分裂症患者。

不過，或許我們多慮了。布達拉宮裡的僧侶，遊客面前，旁若無人地玩弄兩隻小貓；大昭寺內上百僧侶，旁若無人地，在辯經壇上辯起佛經。或許，佛教的世界裡，自有它一套生存哲學。「本來無一物，何處惹塵埃」，又豈是我們凡人必要操心的。文化的底蘊是深沉的，青藏線通車，也應帶給我們深沉的啟示。

It's probably my next "target" -- conquer the bleak corner of the world

The 20 Tips column has long been one of Budget Travel magazine's most popular sections, but -- how to put this kindly? -- some tips have always struck me as more useful than others. The plan was for me, a novice, to take the cruise-related tips and see how they'd help me fare.

So, while other suckers spent the balmy afternoon in long pants, my friend Tyler and I sat on lounge chairs, sipping Coronas and wearing our bathing suits and flip-flops, because Budget Travel reader Jyotsna Sheth of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had passed on some choice advice: Put a swimsuit in your carry-on, and you won't have to wait for your bags to arrive.

Cruises to Alaska are booming. In 2005, more than 920,000 people sailed there, a nearly 20 percent increase from 2003. I'm not surprised. Alaska is a state that takes a lot of time and money to appreciate. It has few people and fewer roads, so traveling by boat is the easiest way to explore it. From the deck -- from your cabin -- you can see bears, bald eagles and pods of whales.

But what many people don't realize is that the high points of an Alaskan cruise tend to be the excursions: sportfishing, whale watching, extreme hiking, glacier trekking, helicopter touring, to say nothing of the less adventurous salmon bakes and lumberjack competitions.

Reader Cindy Rucker, from Cary, North Carolina, had a good tip for booking excursions -- though I would have been well served to read her entire tip. She suggested going to the cruise line's Web site and planning everything out in advance. I knew I'd have time for basically one excursion per port call (Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway and Wrangell). Before leaving New York City, I did some research at ncl.com. I signed up for salmon fishing, a helicopter glacier trek and two hikes. But there was a second part to Rucker's tip: She saves money by circumventing the cruise line and booking directly with the tour operators.

In my excitement -- helicopters! glaciers! helicopters on top of glaciers! -- I signed up right then and there. As a result, I paid retail: $375 for that four-hour helicopter glacier trek, versus $359 if I'd booked through the operator, Northstar Trekking.

I don't regret the copter ride: From the moment we touched down on the Mendenhall glacier, a vast expanse of jagged blue ice that we explored using ice axes and crampons, it was worth every penny. And $16 isn't a huge deal. But the premiums add up. My $180 sportfishing trip would have been $35 less if I'd booked with the outfitter. I would have saved $52 on my glacier hike and $14 on my rain-forest hike. All told, Cindy might have saved me $117. If I'd been booking for Tyler, too, that would have been $234 -- almost enough for another helicopter excursion. For me, anyway.
Fees and freestyle dining

Cruise lines are experts at making money wherever they can -- it's called capitalism. But Budget Travel tipsters know that while the idea of paying one fare and then leaving your wallet in your shoe organizer (I'll explain later) is a great lure, the reality is different.

"I can send text messages from the Inner Passage!" marveled Tyler, giddy to see his cell phone receive full coverage for the majority of the trip. His phone screen looked normal enough: It said CINGULAR and never indicated that it was roaming. His provider, it turns out, charges $2.49 a minute. When Tyler's bill arrived a month later, he owed $300. Using a phone on the ship would not have been much better; at checkout, we saw a tiny placard at the reception desk advertising at-sea service from AT&T, for $2 a minute.

Internet access onboard can only be purchased in blocks, and the cheapest is $25 for 33 minutes. Gail Jenkins of Idaho Falls, Idaho, had a great tip for keeping fees down: In port, go to a public library. Indeed, the Juneau Public Library allows free Internet access. I still spent $129 in fees for onboard Web access, because logging in once on a 10-day cruise simply wasn't enough. (Remember, I was working.)

It used to be that a cruise ship had one huge dining room in which you sat at an assigned table the entire journey. Norwegian pioneered a new concept, which it called Freestyle Dining: You eat at whichever onboard restaurant you want, when you want. Most major cruise lines have now adopted the concept. On the Sun, there's a buffet restaurant and three à la carte restaurants where you pay only for alcohol. The more recent trend has been to add specialty restaurants, where you pay not only for what you order, but also a cover charge (on the Sun, the charges amount to $15 for the French bistro and $20 for the steak house).

The steak was top-notch, though, and I definitely got my money's worth. Patrick Robinson, of Rupert, Idaho, suggested that I'd feel better about indulging my appetite if I used the stairs instead of the elevators. Tyler and I took Robinson's advice, getting exercise on our frequent trips between our cabin (on the main deck, level 5) and decks 11 and 12, where the food, pool and most of the action are. It may not have added up to an hour on the treadmill, but come on, it's not like we went on a cruise to lose weight.
Packing

One place you all failed me, however, was the packing list. There are many things that one might find handy on a cruise to Alaska; multiple pairs of shorts aren't one of them. And yet that's what I had -- three pairs of cargo shorts, plus a swimsuit. Things I did not pack, but should have: a waterproof jacket, hiking boots, binoculars and basketball shoes (there was actually a court onboard). I learned the chilly way that Alaska is cold and wet in the summer: They don't call its coastline a rain forest for nothing.

Norwegian seemed to assume that I would pack more appropriately. When my tickets came in the mail, the envelope included what I considered an absurd number of luggage tags, each imprinted with my cabin number. The company clearly expected me to prepare for a polar expedition; given the random cold-weather gear I had to pick up along the way in ports, I should learn to take a hint. But I had another plan for the tags, thanks to Alan Sweitzer of Kalamazoo, Michigan: Use them to label personal items like binoculars. That way, if you leave your stuff somewhere, the odds are much better you'll get it back.

As a man who once permanently misplaced four cell phones in a single summer, I considered the idea genius. I labeled a bag containing a paperback I'd already read, and then left the bag on the pool deck. When I returned to my room hours later, the bag was on my bed. Obviously, something more valuable might not have fared so well. But while I may be the kind of idiot who packs three pairs of shorts for an Alaskan cruise, I'm not so dumb as to intentionally leave my binoculars by the pool.

Wendy Maloney, from Vienna, Virginia, suggested bringing a handful of wire hangers in my luggage. How much of a difference would they really make? I packed them anyway, and was glad. My stateroom, like most hotel rooms I've occupied around the world, was woefully short on hangers. I left the ones I added to the closet to help out the cabin's next passenger, as Maloney instructed.
Local flavor

Not that you need more than a few extra hangers. The Sun's rooms were surprisingly comfortable, but there wasn't a whole lot of closet space -- even for two guys who packed poorly. I followed the lead of Jane Tague from Westerville, Ohio. She hangs a shoe organizer over the back of the bathroom door, using it to store toiletries, keys, cameras, and whatnot. In fact, the shoe organizer was the perfect place to stash my running shoes. And there they stayed for the remainder of the trip.

By the end of the cruise, I was jotting down tips of my own. (You think writers get free subscriptions?) Most had to do with packing the right clothes. But if I could get you to remember one thing, it's this: Nobody points out how good the food is on land. Though I enjoyed almost every meal onboard the ship -- you'll never be bored -- by far the best meal I ate was during our final stop, in Wrangell.

Very few cruise ships visit the fishing village, so their intermittent arrivals are much anticipated. Local merchants set up tables hawking crafts, cold drinks and fish prepared any number of ways right at the dock. Tyler and I tried some étouffée before setting off on a hike, and it was so delicious we vowed to have a bowl when we returned. But by then, it was all gone. My recommendation: Eat the étouffée for breakfast.

Not that lunch was disappointing; at an unassuming trailer named Memories, the owner plucked salmon, shrimp, and halibut -- all caught that morning -- from a tub of ice and cooked the best fish and chips I've ever had. Plus, it's rare to get fresh wild shrimp. We sat there for so long that we barely made it back onboard in time.

The last afternoon was an at-sea day that covered hundreds of miles of gorgeous Inner Passage channels between Wrangell and Vancouver. Over the P.A. system, the cruise director announced a disembarkation briefing. I already knew that I could skip it. I'd overheard a crew member explain that if you can carry all of your own luggage, you get to leave first. Otherwise, you wait your turn, and the boat is emptied in shifts.

譯自Wichie Derend 的一首情詩

輕輕的飄盪在天光縫隙裡

悄悄地躲在雲影翅膀下

就這樣 三十三年了

我們的靈 用一捲好細好細的魚腸線牽著

我們的欲 像尼羅河畔金字塔般地 秘不可測


竟然 我就這樣

像影子般地 伴了她三十三年！！！

a blonde joke (rather than a practical joke; prank)

I Want to Buy That

A blonde goes into a nearby store and asks a clerk if she can buy the TV in the corner.

The clerk looks at her and says that he doesn't serve blondes, so she goes back home and dyes her hair black.

The next day she returns to the store and asks the same thing, and again, the clerk said he doesn't serve blondes.

Frustrated, the blonde goes home and dyes her hair yet again, to a shade of red.

Sure that a clerk would sell her the TV this time, she returns and asks a different clerk this time.

To her astonishment, this clerk also says that she doesn't serve blondes.

The blonde asks the clerk, "How in the world do you know I am a blonde?"

The clerk looks at her disgustedly and says,"That's not a TV -- it's a microwave!"

醫學技術日進千里，老女人已能再度懷孕；但是，問題卻產生了......

Fertility expert urged end to "selfish late motherhood"

A TOP fertility doctor has called for an end to the practice of elderly women giving birth after a 62-year-old became the oldest mother in Britain.

Patti Rashbrook, a child psychiatrist, gave birth to a son at her local Sussex hospital on Wednesday after receiving IVF treatment abroad. The law in Britain meant she could not be impregnated here.

Despite the parents’ public declarations of joy about their “wonderful son”, Sam Abdalla, medical director of the infertility clinic at the Lister hospital in London, said he opposed the trend towards treating ever older women with IVF.

I really admire her -- a cancer sufferer raising fund through her cycling through United States

如何修佛？〈佛光山〉

How to Practice and Cultivate in Buddhism?



We all would like to be successful in life. We wish for a good education, a prosperous career, friends, and a happy family life. In short, we want to be able to achieve what we set out to do. Religious cultivation is no different; we wish to understand the Dharma so that we can live the carefree life and be free of the cycle of birth and death. How do we practice to attain enlightenment? I want to offer you the following four suggestions:



1. Appreciate simplicity – In our efforts to practice the Dharma, we have to learn not to be attached to our emotions, bounded by them. It is best for our practice if our relationships with others are even-keeled; intense relationships often do not last long. There is a Chinese saying which goes like this, “A gentlemanly relationship is as plain as water.” Simple vegetables may taste bland, but if we eat them everyday, we would discover the unique taste of even the simplest greens.

2. Start from nothingness – Nothingness does not mean being without anything, for something can, in deed, arise from nothing. The saying, “From true emptiness comes many wondrous things,” tells us that emptiness is the basis of existence. For example, take a piece of vacant land. It is because it has nothing on it that a building can be constructed there. Similarly, our minds have to be free of prejudice before we can accept the truth of the Dharma. The cup must be empty before it can hold tea or water for us to drink. If the cup already contains wine or oil, the tea would taste differently. Thus, the state of nothingness is not necessarily bad; it can teach us a lot. In our undertakings, we should start with the expectation of “nothingness.” Those who are truly capable do not expect others to do everything for them; they can achieve their goals starting from nothing.

3. Be doubtful – Buddhism differs from other religions in the fact that it emphasizes the importance of being doubtful. Doubts are the seeds of enlightenment, without which enlightenment would not be possible. We should always ask questions in the course of our practice. In the Ch’an school, there is a method of practice which requires the student to contemplate on a saying. If the student is able to contemplate on a certain saying at all times and keeps asking questions, the student will no doubt improve in their practice.

4. Work diligently on our shortcomings – If we are mindful of our shortcomings when we practice, we will definitely make progress. Just like the old saying, “Diligence can compensate for a lot of shortcomings,” as long as we work hard in everything we do, we will be able to make steady progress.



How to practice and cultivate? We should:

1. Appreciate simplicity.

2. Start from nothingness.

3. Be doubtful.

4. Work diligently on our shortcomings.