GOOD NEWS PRESS ARCHIVES
THE KING IS COMing
WD-40 by Joe And Betty Chikar
I thought that you might like to know more about this
well-known product.
When you read the "shower door" part, try it. It's the
first thing that has cleaned that spotty shower door.
If yours is plastic, it works just as
well as glass. It's a miracle!
Then try it on your stovetop. Viola! It's now shinier than
it's ever been. You'll be amazed.
The product began from a search for a rust
preventative solvent anddegreaser to protect
missile parts. WD-40 was created in 1953 by three
technicians at the San Diego Rocket Chemical
Company. Its name comes from the project that was to find
a "water displacement" compound. They
were successful with the fortieth formulation, thus WD-40.
The Corvair Company bought it in bulk to protect their
Atlas missile parts.
The workers were so pleased with the product, they
began smuggling(also known as "shrinkage" or "stealing")
it out to use at home.
The executives decided there might be a consumer market
for it and put it in aerosol cans. The rest, as they say, is history.
It is a carefully guarded recipe known only to four people.
Only one ofthem is the "brew master."
There are about 2.5 million gallons of the
stuff manufactured each year. It gets it's distinctive from a
fragrance that is added to the brew.
Ken East (one of the original founders) says
there is nothing in WD-40 that would hurt you.
Here are some of the uses:
*Protects silver from tarnishing
*Cleans and lubricates guitar string
*Gets oil spots off concrete driveways
*Gives floors that 'just-waxed' sheen without making it slippery
*Keeps flies off cows
*Restores and cleans chalkboards
*Removes lipstick stains
*Loosens stubborn zippers
*Untangles jewelry chains
*Removes stains from stainless steel sinks
*Removes dirt and grime from the barbecue grill
*Keeps ceramic/terra cotta garden pots from oxidizing
*Removes tomato stains from clothing
*Keeps glass shower doors free of water spots
*Camouflages scratches in ceramic and marble floors
*Keeps scissors working smoothly
*Lubricates noisy door hinges on vehicles and doors in
homes
*Gives a children's play gym slide a shine for a super
fast slide
*Lubricates gear shift and mower deck lever for ease
of handling on riding mowers
*Rids rocking chairs and swings of squeaky noises
*Lubricates tracks in sticking home windows and
makes them easier to open
*Spraying an umbrella stem makes it easier to open
and close
*Restores and cleans padded leather dashboards in
vehicles, as well as vinyl bumpers
*Restores and cleans roof racks on vehicles
*Lubricates and stops squeaks in electric fans
*Lubricates wheel sprockets on tricycles, wagons and
bicycles for easy handling
*Lubricates fan belts on washers and dryers and
keeps them running smoothly
*Keeps rust from forming on saws and saw blades,
and other tools
*Removes splattered grease on stove
*Keeps bathroom mirror from fogging
*Lubricates prosthetic limbs
*Keeps pigeons off the balcony (they hate the smell)
*Removes all traces of duct tape
*I have even heard of folks spraying it on their arms,
hands, and knees to relieve arthritis pain.
*Florida's favorite use was "cleans and removes love
bugs from grills and bumpers
*The favorite use in the state of New York--WD-40
protects the Statue of Liberty from the elements.
*WD-40 attracts fish. Spray a LITTLE on live bait or lures
and you will becatching the big one in no time.
Also it's a lot cheaper than the chemical
attractants that are made for just that purpose.
Keep in mind though, using some chemical laced baits or
lures for fishing are not allowed in some states.
*Use it for fire ant bites It takes the sting away
immediately, and stops the itch.
*WD-40 is great for removing crayon from walls.
Spray on the mark and wipe with a clean rag.
*Also, if you've discovered that your teenage daughter has
washed and dried a tube of lipstick with a load of laundry ,
saturate the lipstick spots withWD-40 and rewash.
Presto! Lipstick is gone!
*If you sprayed WD-40 on the distributor cap, it would
displace the moisture and allow the car to start.
(If I knew what a distributor cap was, it might help)
*WD-40, long known for its ability to remove leftover
tape mung (sticky label tape), is also a lovely perfume and
air freshener! Sprayed liberally on every hinge in the house,
it leaves that distinctive clean fresh scent for up to two days!
*Seriously though, it removes black scuff marks from
the kitchen floor!
*Use WD-40 for those nasty tar and scuff marks on
flooring. It doesn't seem to harm the finish and
you won't have to scrub nearly as hard to get them off.
*Just remember to open some windows if you have a
lot of marks.
*Bug guts will eat away the finish on your car if not
removed quickly! Use WD-40!
Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy
Maryann Mott
National Geographic News
January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.
In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.
And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.
Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.
Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.
But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?
There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.
Ethical Guidelines
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers.
A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though.
For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.
What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.
Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.
He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.
"There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals.
"One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain."
David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.
Human Born to Mice Parents?
For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.
"Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."
Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo.
Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines.
She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.
Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity.
"It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.
But, she noted, the wording on such a ban needs to be developed carefully. It shouldn't outlaw ethical and legitimate experiments—such as transferring a limited number of adult human stem cells into animal embryos in order to learn how they proliferate and grow during the prenatal period.
Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, is against a ban in the United States.
"Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will—not just be part of an argument—if that leads to a ban or moratorium. … they are stopping research that would save human lives," he said.
Mice With Human Brains
Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.
Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.
Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior.
Weissman said he's not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
The test has not yet begun. Weissman is waiting to read the National Academy's report, due out in March.
William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville, Florida, branch, feels that combining human and animal neurons is problematic.
"This is unexplored biologic territory," he said. "Whatever moral threshold of human neural development we might choose to set as the limit for such an experiment, there would be a considerable risk of exceeding that limit before it could be recognized."
Cheshire supports research that combines human and animal cells to study cellular function. As an undergraduate he participated in research that fused human and mouse cells.
But where he draws the ethical line is on research that would destroy a human embryo to obtain cells, or research that would create an organism that is partly human and partly animal.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
FROM JOE AND BETTY CHIKAR
June 10, 2005—Quick, which one is the robot?
Repliee Q1 (at left in both pictures) appeared yesterday at the 2005 World Expo in Japan, where she gestured, blinked, spoke, and even appeared to breathe. Shown with co-creator Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University, the android is partially covered in skinlike silicone. Q1 is powered by a nearby air compressor, and has 31 points of articulation in its upper body.
Internal sensors allow the android to react "naturally." It can block an attempted slap, for example. But it's the little, "unconscious" movements that give the robot its eerie verisimilitude: the slight flutter of the eyelids, the subtle rising and falling of the chest, the constant, nearly imperceptible shifting so familiar to humans.
Surrounded by machines that draw portraits, swat fast-moving balls, and snake through debris, Q1 is only one of the showstoppers at the expo's Prototype Robot Exposition, which aims to showcase Japan's growing role in the robotics industry.
But given Q1's reported glitch-related "spasms" at the expo, it may be a while before androids are escorting tour groups or looking after children—which may be just as well. "When a robot looks too much like the real thing, it's creepy," Hiroshi told the Associated Press.
LIFE LIKE ROBOT FROM JOE AND BETTY CHIKAR
FROM JOE AND BETTY CHIKAR
Cancer Cure?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A common virus that is harmless to people can destroy cancerous cells in the body and might be developed into a new cancer therapy, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The virus, called adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80 percent of the population.
"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania.
"We believe that AAV-2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV-2 has great potential to be developed as an anti-cancer agent," Meyers said in a statement.
He said at a meeting of the American Society for Virology that studies have shown women infected with AAV-2 who are also infected with a cancer-causing wart virus called HPV develop cervical cancer less frequently than uninfected women do.
AAV-2 is a small virus that cannot replicate itself without the help of another virus. But with the help of a second virus it kills cells.
For their study, Meyers and colleagues first infected a batch of human cells with HPV, some strains of which cause cervical cancer.
They then infected these cells and normal cells with AAV-2.
After six days, all the HPV-infected cells died.
The same thing happened with cervical, breast, prostate and squamous cell tumor cells.
All are cancers of the epithelial cells, which include skin cells and other cells that line the insides and outsides of organs.
"One of the most compelling findings is that AAV-2 appears to have no pathologic effects on healthy cells," Meyers said.
"So many cancer therapies are as poisonous to healthy cells as they are to cancer cells. A therapy that is able to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells could be less difficult to endure for those with cancer."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A common virus that is harmless to people can destroy cancerous cells in the body and might be developed into a new cancer therapy, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The virus, called adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80 percent of the population.
"Our results suggest that adeno-associated virus type 2, which infects the majority of the population but has no known ill effects, kills multiple types of cancer cells yet has no effect on healthy cells," said Craig Meyers, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Pennsylvania.
"We believe that AAV-2 recognizes that the cancer cells are abnormal and destroys them. This suggests that AAV-2 has great potential to be developed as an anti-cancer agent," Meyers said in a statement.
He said at a meeting of the American Society for Virology that studies have shown women infected with AAV-2 who are also infected with a cancer-causing wart virus called HPV develop cervical cancer less frequently than uninfected women do.
AAV-2 is a small virus that cannot replicate itself without the help of another virus. But with the help of a second virus it kills cells.
For their study, Meyers and colleagues first infected a batch of human cells with HPV, some strains of which cause cervical cancer.
They then infected these cells and normal cells with AAV-2.
After six days, all the HPV-infected cells died.
The same thing happened with cervical, breast, prostate and squamous cell tumor cells.
All are cancers of the epithelial cells, which include skin cells and other cells that line the insides and outsides of organs.
"One of the most compelling findings is that AAV-2 appears to have no pathologic effects on healthy cells," Meyers said.
"So many cancer therapies are as poisonous to healthy cells as they are to cancer cells. A therapy that is able to distinguish between healthy and cancer cells could be less difficult to endure for those with cancer."
> Subject: Bill Cosby
> Bill Cosby addressed one of the black organizations recently, and this
speech wasn't received too well.
> The focus was on Jessie Jackson, who was on stage and standing behind
Cosby as he was talking.
> The commentator seemed to think that Jessie didn't like what he was
hearing. The media never
> aired the speech and little was said about it. I wonder why.
>
>
> We Can't Blame White People
> by BILL COSBY
>
>
> They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't
even talk
> the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is', What he
drive, Where
> he stay, Where he work, Who you be.........
>
> And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the
father talk.
> Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these
knuckleheads.
> You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact
> you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.People marched
and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now
> we've got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people
are
> not holding up their end in this deal.
>
> These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500
sneakers
> for what? And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking
about
> these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.
Where
> were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you
> when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And
where
> is the father? Or who is his father?
>
> People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something
gone
> wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack,
isn't that
> a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
>
> Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and
got all type
> of needles [piercing] going through her body? What part of Africa did
this come from?
> We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a
> thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed
> and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.
>
> Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the
> white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back.
>
> People used to be ashamed... [Today] a woman has eight children with
> eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now. We
> have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have
million-dollar
> basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We as black folks
have
> to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are
> hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
>
> We cannot blame the white people any longer.
>