WHAT IS A VOOK?
A vook is a new innovation in reading that blends a well-written book, high-quality video and the power of the Internet into a single, complete story.
You can read your book, watch videos that enhance the story and connect with authors and your friends through social media all on one screen, without switching between platforms.
Vooks are available in two formats: As a web-based application you can read on your computer and a mobile application for reading on the go. With the web-based application you don't have to download programs or install software. Just open your favorite browser and start reading and watching in an exciting new way. You can also download and install the mobile applications through the Apple iTunes store and sync them with your Apple mobile device.
A way to reverse ageing has been discovered which allows withered muscle to rebuild itself by turning back a “biological clock”.
The effect has already been demonstrated on human muscle tissue in the laboratory.
Scientists in the US believe the breakthrough could lead to new treatments that rejuvenate and strengthen ageing bodies or combat degenerative diseases.
Their findings also underline the importance of staying active for older people, since this reduced age-related muscle loss.
Professor Irina Conboy, from the University of California at Berkeley, said: “Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigour given the right mix of biochemical signals.”
Previously the same team had shown that molecular “messages” from muscle cells alter with age to affect tissue repair. As people get older, their ability to restore and rebuild lost muscle is weakened.
The US researchers, working with colleagues from the Institute of Sports Medicine and Centre of Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, compared muscle tissue samples from around 30 healthy men. Half the volunteers were young 21 to 24-year-olds and half aged between 68 and 74.
At the start of the study, samples of muscle tissue were surgically removed from the participants' thighs. The men then had the leg from which the biopsies were taken immobilised in a cast for two weeks so that their muscles atrophied.
After the casts were removed, the men exercised with weights to rebuild their wasted muscles. The scientists found that during the exercise period the muscles of younger volunteers had four times more regenerative stem cells engaged in tissue repair than those of older participants. Old muscle also showed signs of damaging inflammation and scarring.
Analysis of the samples revealed for the first time a biological pathway involved in muscle repair that relied on an enzyme called mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). The enzyme, a type of active protein, stimulated a biological “switch” on muscle stem cells called Notch that triggered growth.
Burj Dubai (Arabic: برج دبي "Dubai Tower"), a supertall skyscraper under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is the tallest man-made structure ever built, at 818 m (2,684 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, and the tower is expected to be completed and ready for occupancy by the end of 2009.
The building is part of the 2 km2 (0.8 sq mi) flagship development called "Downtown Burj Dubai" at the "First Interchange" along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district. The tower's architect is Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) until 2006. The Chicago-based architecture and engineering firm SOM is in charge of the project. The primary builders are Samsung Engineering & Construction and Besix along with Arabtec Turner Construction Company was chosen as the construction manager.
The total budget for the Burj Dubai project is about US$4.1 billion, and for the entire new "Downtown Dubai", US$20 billion. Mohamed Ali Alabbar, the CEO of Emaar Properties, speaking at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat 8th World Congress, said that the price of office space at Burj Dubai had reached US$4,000 per sq ft (over US$43,000 per m2) and that the Armani Residences, also in Burj Dubai, were selling for US$3,500 per sq ft (over US$37,500 per m2). Coordinates of the Burj Dubai.
The fossil, known as 'Ardi', is the oldest specimen on the hominid branch that led
to modern humans yet unearthed
by Hannah Devlin
She had a stocky, ape-like form and a protruding jaw, with huge hands and a stooping gait. Beautiful she was not.
But Ardi, as scientists have christened her, has emerged as one of our oldest and most important ancestors.
The question of what our first “hominid” forebears looked like has intrigued scientists since the birth of evolutionary theory 150 years ago. But it is only now, with the discovery of a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton, that scientists have been able to paint a vivid picture of them.
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossil is the oldest specimen on the hominid branch found to date, and the closest that we have got to tracing our roots back to “the missing link” — our last common ancestor with modern apes.
The fossil is more than a million years older than the so-called “Lucy” skeleton. The lines that evolved into modern humans and apes last shared an ancestor at least six to seven million years ago.
Tim White, of the University of California Berkeley and a lead author of the study, said: “Darwin was very wise on this matter. He said, ‘We have to be really careful. The only way we are really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it’. Well, we have not found it. But we have come closer than we have ever come.”
The adult female specimen was found in 1994 in Afar, in the Great Rift Valley of northeastern Ethiopia.
It took an international team of researchers nearly three years to trawl the volcanic ash where the fossil lay and piece together the 125 fragments. The significance of the find meant that scientists took a further 13 years analysing the specimen, which is described today in intricate detail in the journal Science.
Ardi would have been about 4ft tall, and weighed about 9st, almost a foot taller and twice the weight of Lucy. Her brain was only slightly larger than a modern chimp’s and considerably smaller than Lucy’s, suggesting that our ancestors evolved an advanced intellect much later.
The angle of her head relative to her spine and the position of her pelvis and hip show that Ardi would have been able to walk with a stooped posture.
However, she retains the “grasping” big toe of our more primitive ancestors, as well as long arms and big hands, which suggest that she was an able climber, and would have spent much of her time in the trees. Unlike chimpanzees and orang-utans, though, she would not have been able to swing through the branches.
Analysis of Ardi’s teeth suggests that she lived on a diet of fruit, leaves and small mammals. Her canine teeth, and isolated male canine teeth found at the site, were similar in size and very small. This reveals an intriguing departure from modern apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, where males possess large canines that they bare in conflicts over females.
The comparable size of canine teeth between males and females suggests a low level of male aggression in hominid societies of the time. Males and females were likely to have had co-operative, monogamous relationships in which the males were involved in raising the young.
“This fossil suggests that the ‘feminisation’ of the canines, which is unique to humans, goes back deep into our history,” said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.
The fossil also changes thinking about the habitat of early hominids. It was previously thought that our ancestors developed upright walking as a consequence of living in the grassland savannahs. However, Afar would have been a lush forest environment populated by monkeys and elephants. Source
65 million years ago a comet strikes the Earth and caused an onslaught of destruction that sweeps the dinosaur kingdom, including shockwaves, earthquake, tsunamis, and rain of rock debris. The demise of dinosaurs benefited our ancestors, the mammals.
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