8-limbed girl has successful surgery (GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press)

From the Associated Press:

Doctors in southern India completed a grueling 24-hour operation Wednesday on a girl born with four arms and four legs that surgeons said will give the 2-year-old a chance at a normal life.

The surgery went “wonderfully well,” said Dr. Sharan Patil, who led a team of more than 30 surgeons in performing the marathon procedure to remove Lakshmi’s extra limbs, salvage her organs and rebuild her pelvis area.

“This girl can now lead as good a life as anyone else,” Patil said from a hospital in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Read more of the story at: http://tickermyfeed.com/news.php/8-limbed_girl_has_successful_surgery

Sending his cancer a signal

Sending his cancer a signal
Kanzius did not have a medical background, not even a bachelor’s degree, but he knew radios. He had built and fixed them since he was a child, collecting transmitters, transceivers, antennas and amplifiers, earning an amateur radio operator license. Kanzius knew how to send radio wave signals around the world. If he could transmit them into cancer cells, he wondered, could he then direct the radio waves to destroy tumors, while leaving healthy cells intact?

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    Title: Sending his cancer a signal
    Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cancer2nov02,0,1633038.story?coll=la-home-center
    Author: ~
    Publication Date: 11/6/2007 9:30:47 PM

Motorola to Acquire Controlling Interest in Parent Company of Yaesu

According to a press release issued by Motorola, Motorola USA has announced its intention to “launch a tender offer to acquire a controlling interest in Vertex Standard Co, Ltd.” Vertex Standard is the parent company of Yaesu. Upon successful completion of the tender offer and subsequent restructuring process, Motorola will own 80 percent of Vertex Standard; Tokogiken, a privately held Japanese company, controlled by current president and CEO of Vertex Standard Jun Hasegawa, will retain 20 percent, forming a joint venture. The total purchase price for 80 percent of the outstanding shares on a fully diluted basis will be approximately ¥12.3 billion (approximately US $108 million). The bid will start November 6 and end on December 26. If the bid succeeds, shares of Vertex would be delisted from the Jasdaq Securities Exchange in Japan.
Full Story available at: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2007/11/05/100/?nc=twiar

Hospice of the Bluegrass is looking for volunteers…

I just heard this on Coffeebreak, and thought I should share…
Hospice of the Bluegrass is looking for volunteers. Medical experience isn’t necessarily needed. Anyone who has any skill can be put to work. Examples of tasks/chores a volunteer can do are building ramps, raking leaves, cleaning, etc.
Anyone who is interested in helping our community’s elderly can contact Kelly Kendall at (859) 234-6462, or via email at kkendall@hospicebg.org.
Kelly will also be a guest on tomorrow’s Coffeebreak program, aired on WCYN 1400AM.

History on the Hilltop (story by Donald Richie – The Cynthiana Democrat)

History on the Hilltop
Memories… there are over half a century of them on the Hilltop floating around Ingles Stadium. Many are of great games and plays and others are just of good times and friends, of days long gone and many, many laps around the track.

– Read the whole story –

The Cynthiana Democrat's new site…

So, I revisited the Democrat’s site an still found nothing but a site index–at least until I actually put that blasted www in front of the domain name, in the URL… and, whuddya know? The thing showed up! and they’ve revamped the site…
and, i don’t like it… well, sorta…
Honestly, the new layout and design of the Democrat’s site is better organized, and helps to deliver the news in a more organized way. The color scheme is also more comfortable, with the blues and whites, as opposed to the yellows and maroons. I understand why the site had been colored in the other colors, for our high school’s colors are maroon and gold, but that scheme isn’t all that pleasing for a reader’s eyes.
Another change, which I like, is the listing of headlines on the left of the page, and the navigation at the top–the navigational categories have also been condensed. The site also now offers national news feeds toward the bottom of the page, making it a page which one may actually consider having as a home page for his/her browser.
And, finally, they have rid the site of the guest/comment book. Thank God.
Two problems I have with the new site, are where it no longer has a link for an archival search, and where the generation scripts are tossing in extra characters or leaving out spacing on certain pages. On the editorial page, all the letters run together, and in a few of the news stories odd characters are appearing between words and paragraphs.
Another problem, which I might have with the new site, is how story links are handled. I’m not sure whether the site will allow me to link to the stories in my blog, as it had before, due to the scripting they are using. The stories also no longer have an option for print or email. I suppose I shall see how this may affect my blogging later this week, when the new stories appear…

Google Announces "Open Phone" Coalition, No gPhone (Updated)

Ponca City, We Love You writes “USA Today has an advance story on Google’s plans to announce a new operating system, geared specifically for cellphones with partners that include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo. Although details won’t be released until later today the new G-system will be based on Linux overlaid with Java and Google hopes to have a branded device ready for worldwide shipment by spring. Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds. Google plans to basically give away the software developer tools, used by programmers to write new applications. “If you’re a developer, you’ll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly,” said Morgan Gillis of the LiMo Foundation. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, supports the coalition, but it hasn’t formally agreed to make the Google Phone available to its 54 million subscribers.” Update 1727 GMT by SM: It’s official, Google is releasing the mobile “Android” OS in place of the Google branded mobile phone that many expected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So, Google is spearheading a movement for an opensource platform for mobile phones to operate on, rather than actually creating a single phone or line of phones. While for some, this may seem disappointing, it opens up a new realm of technologies on the wireless phones of all (who partake) service providers and manufacturers. I’ve embedded the video for the announcement below:

Google to Announce "Open Phone" Coalition

Ponca City, We Love You writes “USA Today has an advance story on Google’s plans to announce a new operating system, geared specifically for cellphones with partners that include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo. Although details won’t be released until later today the new G-system will be based on Linux overlaid with Java and Google hopes to have a branded device ready for worldwide shipment by spring. Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds. Google plans to basically give away the software developer tools, used by programmers to write new applications. “If you’re a developer, you’ll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly,” said Morgan Gillis of the LiMo Foundation. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, supports the coalition, but it hasn’t formally agreed to make the Google Phone available to its 54 million subscribers.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.