FOXO3A is a "longevity gene"

A variation in the gene FOXO3A has a positive effect on the life expectancy of humans, and is found much more often in people living to 100 and beyond – moreover, this appears to be true worldwide.

The "FOXO3A" gene promotes longevity? I'll bet the pundits at MSNBC are pissed...

Trench warfare, aided by a periscope

The soldier on the left has his rifle strapped to a wooden device which incorporates an angled mirror at the top (and certainly another at the bottom), with probably a wire going to the trigger, enabling him to aim and fire without lifting his head above the surface of the ground.

It appears he is being aided by a spotter behind him. I don't know the location, original source, photographer, or context for this. The hats suggest perhaps Gallipoli? Anyone know?

Addendum:  A hat tip to Bogong, who found the original image at Australian War Memorial:

Gallipoli, Turkey. 1915. A British Admiralty official photograph of a sniper using a rifle with a periscopic sight while an observer checks the results with a trench periscope. The periscopic rifle was invented by an Australian soldier. The men belong to the 2nd Light Horse Regiment and the place is probably Quinn's Post. Left to right: 274 Sergeant Ernest William Crain; unidentified; 313 Trooper Arthur Snowdon Demaine; Lieutenant Joseph Burge (killed in action 7 August 1915).

What's going on here?

When I first looked at this photo, I assumed the soldier/pilot was transporting the wing, but it appears to me that he has a parachute strapped to his chest. (Click to enlarge the image).

I wonder then if the "wing" is an early attempt at a parasail-type device to increase the range or dissemination of dropped paratroopers.

Any military or aviation historians/enthusiasts out there?

(image credit here, without details re hx or original source)

You're doing it wrong

Photo found in an album at Widelec.
(These P-40s are in the scrap yard at Kingman, AZ, or Walnut Ridge, AR. The engines were removed and the planes were parked on their nose for space saving.)

Addendum: My mistake above re ID of the aircraft. As pointed out in the comments section, this is a Consolidated B-24 Liberator.

Titanoboa - largest snake in the history of the world

It grew up to 45 feet long, weighed more than a ton and dined on giant turtles and fearsome crocodiles. It was also the biggest known snake to have ever lived...

Scientists discovered the fossilised backbones of the super-sized snake in a giant open-cast coal mine at Cerrejon in northern Colombia and estimated that at the fattest point on its very long body the snake would have been about three feet wide.

It lived about 60 million years ago, some 5 million years after the demise of the last dinosaurs, and before the warm-blooded mammals had been able to establish themselves as the largest and most widespread animal lifeforms on the planet.

The extinct reptile, formally named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, weighed about 1.25 tons and would have been the top predator in its semi-aquatic habitat of rivers and forests where it would have eaten practically anything that moved, from large tarpon-like fish the size of sharks to extinct crocodiles up to 20 feet long.

Apart from the expected "wow" factor, there is an additional consideration that impacts the debate on global warming:

A general rule for cold-blooded animals is that they get bigger the nearer they live to the equator, and the warmer the ambient temperatures are. Based on this principle, and armed with the knowledge of what is known about snakes today, the researchers were able to estimate the average temperatures of this tropical region 60 million years ago.

The size of Titanoboa indicates that it lived in an environment where the average yearly temperature was between 30C and 34C, which is about 5C hotter than the average temperatures at Cerrejon in Colombia today.

"This temperature estimate is much hotter than modern temperatures in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world... That means that tropical rainforests could exist at temperatures of 3C to 4C hotter than modern tropical rainforests experience," Dr Jaramillo said.

"These data challenge the view that tropical vegetation lives near its climatic optimum, and it has profound implications in understanding the effect of current global warming on tropical plants," he said.

Suggesting that global warming, if it occurs, may not be a threat to current tropical rainforests.

Sign of the times

Image credit here.

Andersonville prisoner

More info here.

The Union equivalent - Camp Douglas - was similar, using reduced food rations "to control the prison population and reduce escape attempt numbers."

I'll defer discussion today. Just storing this for future reference.

Capping executive pay at a half million $$ per year

Some in the business world object to the the limits, saying it will be hard to attract the best talent without traditionally high salaries.

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, told the New York Times.

Politics provides full employment for cartoonists

Some were concerned that with the departure of the Bush administration, political cartoonists would be starved for material. They need not have worried.

Ringlish?

A quick Google suggests the map depicts Kiev, so the use of "underground bridge" for "tunnel" would be the Russian* counterpart to "Chinglish."

Image found at Nothing to do with Arbroath.

*(I can't come up with a good word using "Ukranian")

Update: "AB" has provided some important information: "It's not a tunnel, it's a bridge for the metro trains (hence "underground"). You can't avoid being silly when inventing names for the above-ground parts of the underground." Thank you!

London by night

Two of 24 impressive photos collected at Boston.com's The Big Picture.

Click to enlarge photos - but best to view at original link.

How you can make serious money as a blogger

The typical way to make money is to sell advertising. But here's another, more interesting way.

Three days ago I wrote a piece entitled "How the Cash4Gold ripoff works." The article I cited at Cockeyed.com was also picked up at The Consumerist; both the Consumerist article and the original one have now been linked to by so many sites that they have risen in the Google ranks; as of tonight, if you Google Cash4Gold, those are the #2 and #3 links, after the Cash4Gold one itself.

So... the guy who wrote the article critical of Cash4Gold received an email from the Cash4Gold people:

I work on the Cash4Gold site. We are trying to clean up their first page of results in Google. Your article... is ranking very well for term “Cash4Gold”. The site looks like you may do well from Adsense.

Is there a financial arrangement we can come to that will offset your Adsense income and make it worth your while to take down or at least “de-optimize” it for that phrase? I would be happy to speak more about this on the phone…

When he didn't respond to their offer, they emailed him back offering "a few thousand" dollars if he would delete his article from the internet. To his credit, he has refused (so far...)

Stalingrad, 1947

Camel-drawn carts? In Stalingrad? Apparently so.

Image credit here.

This flag is upside-down

Count me in as one of those who never noticed before that the Union flag (and the Union Jack) are asymmetric flags. There's a bit of a row in the U.K. today because a toy flag was displayed incorrectly at a ceremony.

There is a specific way of hanging it, with the thick white parts of the diagonal cross nearest the flagpole being placed above the thinner white parts.

Mr Kearsley said: "Having the flag upside down historically was a sign of distress. You might have it put it up on a fort to warn those in the know - other British forces - that there was trouble from the enemy.

"Forces from other nations wouldn't have noticed. It was like a sort of code."

I suppose one could argue that Britain currently IS in distress, and that flying the flag inverted was fully appropriate...

Details and image credit here.

How your passport and driver's licence can be hacked...

... by someone driving by in a car.

A fellow in San Francisco installed an RFID reader in his car, with an antenna, and connected it to his laptop on the front seat. He then drove around the city and was able to pick up the signals from passports and driver's licenses and have the information downloaded to his computer. The information can then be uploaded into RFID chips for blank passports/driver's licenses.

The person doing this is one of the "good guys." He's demonstrating for the world how insanely easy it is to steal information from an RFID chip, and he's hoping to convince the public (or, more precisely, lawmakers) that RFID should not be used for personal identity tracking as the Department of Homeland Security wants to do.

Video at the Engadget link.