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By PAUL ELIAS,
AP Biotechnology Writer
Mon Apr 17, 8:46 AM ET
VALLEJO, Calif. - Noelle's given birth in Afghanistan, California and dozens of points in between. She's a lifelike, pregnant robot used in increasing numbers of medical schools and hospital maternity wards.
The full-sized, blond, pale mannequin is in demand because medicine is rapidly abandoning centuries-old training methods that use patients as guinea pigs, turning instead to high-tech simulations. It's better to make a mistake on a $20,000 robot than a live patient.
The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the
National Academy of Sciences, estimates that as many as 98,000 U.S. patients die annually from preventable medical errors.
"We're trying to engineer out some of the errors," said Dr. Paul Preston, an anesthesiologist at Kaiser Permanente and architect of the hospital chain's 4-year-old pregnancy-care training program, in which Noelle plays a starring role. "We steal shamelessly from everybody and everywhere that has good training programs."
Noelle, from Miami-based Gaumard Scientific Co. Inc., is used in most of Kaiser's 30 hospitals nationwide, and other hospitals are putting in orders. The Northwest Physicians Insurance Co. is sponsoring similar training programs in 22 hospitals in Oregon and Idaho, rolling out Noelle initially at five of them.
Other companies make lifelike mannequins to train paramedics in emergencies, but Noelle appears to be the only high-tech, pregnant model available.
Noelle models range from a $3,200 basic version to a $20,000 computerized Noelle that best approximates a live birth.
She can be programmed for a variety of complications and for cervix dilation. She can labor for hours and produce a breach baby or unexpectedly give birth in a matter of minutes.
She ultimately delivers a plastic doll that can change colors, from a healthy pink glow to the deadly blue of oxygen deficiency. The baby mannequin is wired to flash vital signs when hooked up to monitors.
The computerized mannequins emit realistic pulse rates and can urinate and breathe.
"If she is bleeding, there will be ample blood in evidence everywhere," Preston said one rainy day recently as he put Noelle through her paces at Kaiser Permanente's Vallejo hospital.
About 50 doctors, nurses and others involved in caring for pregnant women attended the training session, which started with Noelle hooked up to standard delivery monitoring machines and tended to by nurses and doctors.
David Isaza, an engineer with Gaumard, sat in a corner with a laptop, sending wireless signals to Noelle. With a keystroke, he can inflict all sorts of complications, overriding any preprogrammed instructions.
As Noelle's heart rate increased, a nurse examined her under the sheets. An umbilical cord was visible — not a good thing. Immediately, the nurse called a "code 777." Several more medical personnel burst into the room and wheeled Noelle off to the operating room where she gave regular birth to twins after a frenzied 20-minute operation.
Then it was time for the debriefing back in a conference room.
"We wheeled her through the hallway with her gown open," complained one nurse.
"It was too loud," another said of the chaotic scene that include more than 30 people jammed into a small operating room.
And so it went for another 30 minutes until it was a second group's turn with Noelle.
"The mannequins are cool," Preston said. "But it is only one training tool."
Nobody knows this better than Robbie Prepas, a Laguna Beach midwife who is a consultant to Gaumard.
In 2004, Prepas was working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a $1 million Gates Foundation grant to train Afghan medical personnel in the care of women and children. Afghanistan has the world's second-highest infant mortality rate, according to the U.S. State Department.
Prepas and her colleagues hauled three different models of Noelle, including one that worked by hand crank to move the mechanical parts, for medical training at the only women's hospital in Kabul. But while the Noelle mannequins were helpful, power failures and other technological glitches hindered the mannequins' effectiveness.
Still, Prepas said Noelle is becoming standard issue in the United States.
"It's a really effective way to teach people how to take care of patients without harming actual patients," Prepas said.
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Bomb Blasts Hit New Delhi Mosque, Grenade Attacks Hit Indian Kashmir
By Anjana Pasricha
New Delhi
14 April 2006
ndia was rocked with violence on Friday as bombs exploded in the country's biggest mosque in the Indian capital, and a series of grenade attacks shook Indian Kashmir. At least 10 people were injured in the attack on the mosque in New Delhi, and five people were killed and about 20 injured in Kashmir.
Police say two bombs exploded within about 15 minutes of each other inside New Delhi's Jama Masjid mosque soon after hundreds of Muslims had offered Friday prayers. Women and children were among those injured.
Government officials and Muslim leaders appealed for calm as angry crowds chanted slogans in the congested neighborhood where the 17th century mosque is located.
Home Minister Shivraj Patil vowed to take all steps to protect what he called "the secular fabric of the country."
"We will not allow the people who want to create confusion in this manner to cause any harm to anybody belonging to any religion, any structure in the country," said Shivraj Patil.
The explosions in New Delhi occurred after a series of grenade attacks rocked the commercial heart of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir on Friday. The attacks took place along busy roads, and one of the city's most popular tourist attractions, the Dal Lake.
The attacks targeted paramilitary trucks and security bunkers, but civilians were among those killed or injured.
As ambulances and police cars raced through the streets, panicked shop owners downed shutters, and fled home.
The blasts shook Srinagar as hundreds of people were heading towards a popular Muslim shrine to offer special prayers to mark the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birth earlier in the week.
A local news agency said that four prominent Muslim militant organizations, had claimed responsibility for the blasts.
Bomb and grenade attacks blamed on these militant groups have been a regular occurrence in divided Kashmir since 1989 when a rebellion to free the Himalayan region from Indian rule began. But violence has declined in the region since India and Pakistan launched a peace process to settle their differences over Kashmir, which is claimed by both countries.
Other attacks blamed on Muslim militants have taken place in the Indian capital, the Hindu holy city of Varanasi and Bangalore in the past year.
Source : VOA News
Fossils unearth proof of human evolution: experts
Wed Apr 12, 4:17 PM ET
Four-million-year-old remains in Ethiopia have provided the first hard proof of a link between two key stages of human evolution by bridging the gap between pre-human species, paleontologists said.
"For the first time, we found fossils that allow us to connect the first phase of human evolution and the second phase," Dr Berhane Asfaw, anthropologist and co-research director of the project that found the remains, told a news conference Wednesday in Addis Ababa.
"The fossils represent unambiguous evidence for human evolution," he said.
The remains of eight individuals found in the northeastern Afar region of Ethiopia belonged to the species Australopithecus anamensis -- part of the Australopithecus genus thought to be a direct ancestor to humans, according to a report due to be published Thursday in Nature magazine.
"The fossils are anatomically intermediate between the earlier species Ardipithecus ramidus and the later species Australopithecus afarensis," he said.
The fossils were found by a team directed by the paleoanthropologist Tim White from the University of California, Berkeley, working in the Asa Issie site in the Middle Awash area, 230 kilometres (143 miles) north of Addis Ababa.
The ecology of the surrounding area indicated that the specimens were forest-dwellers, the Nature report said.
In 1992 White found remains of a more primitive hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus, which inhabited the region around the same time as the anamensis species. But no evolutionary link between them has been established until now.
The origin of Australopithecus is a key problem in the study of human evolution and a contentious subject among anthropologists. Some see them as early ancestors to humans, while others believe they represent a dead branch of the hominid genealogical tree.
A notable specimen of the newly found fossil's descendant species Australopithecus afarensis, a three-million-year old fossil nicknamed Lucy, was discovered in 1974.
"We have proved that one (species) is transforming into the other, so this evidence is important to show that there is human evolution... that human evolution is a fact and not a hypothesis," Asfaw said.
The anamensis species had previously been found in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya, but a link between the earlier and later stages of evolution could not be proven until anamensis was found in the same area as the other species.
"The ecological setting where we found the fossils shows that the first phase of the human evolution took place in the forest," he said. "They started moving out of the forest only after anamensis."
Ethiopia is "the cradle of humanity", according to Nature. All three of the species linked together by the new finds were found in Ethiopia.
"It is the only place in the world where the three phases of evolution could be documented and proved," Asfaw said.
"All (three species) were able to be found in one place, proving that evolution is a fact," Asfaw said. "Successive records that we see here prove that the Afar region is the origin of human kind."
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very excellent
In the name of God
Hello
Im very happy for this topic
please continue
I was just hunting UFOs, says Pentagon's UK hacker
By Michael Holden
Thu Apr 27, 11:20 AM ET
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Reuters Photo: British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who committed 'the biggest military computer ---- of all time',...
LONDON (Reuters) - To the United States, he is a seriously dangerous man who put the nation's security at risk by committing "the biggest military computer ---- of all time."
But Briton Gary McKinnon says he is just an ordinary computer nerd who wanted to find out whether aliens and UFOs exist.
During his two-year quest, McKinnon broke into computers at the
Pentagon,
NASA and the Johnson Space Center as well as systems used by the U.S. army, navy and air force.
U.S. officials say he caused $700,000 worth of damage and even crippled vital defense systems shortly after the September 11 attacks.
The unemployed computer programmer is now battling extradition to the United States, where, if found guilty, he faces up to 70 years in jail and fines of up to $1.75 million. His lawyer fears he could even be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
It's all a far cry from how he first got into hacking: watching a film about a teenage boy who breaks into a military central computer and almost starts World War Three.
"I had seen the film 'War Games' and I do remember clearly thinking at the time, that's amazing -- a great big military computer system and a young, spotty teenager," the softly spoken 39-year-old told Reuters in an interview.
"HACKER'S HANDBOOK"
A decade later, McKinnon, armed with information gleaned from the book, "The Hacker's Handbook," began his snooping.
During 2000-1 from his home in Hornsey, north London, and using a computer with just a limited 56K dial-up modem, he turned his sights on the American government and military.
"My main thing was wanting to find out about UFOs and suppressed technology," he said insisting his intention was not to cause damage. "I wanted to ... find out stuff the government wouldn't tell you about."
He said it was easy, despite being only a rank amateur. Using the hacking name "Solo," he discovered that many U.S. top-security systems were using an insecure Microsoft Windows program and had no password protection at all.
"So I got commercially available off-the-shelf software and used them to scan large military networks ... anything I thought might have possible links to UFO information," he said.
ALIENS?
He said he came across a group called the "Disclosure Project," which had expert testimonies from senior figures who said technology obtained from extra-terrestrials did exist.
One NASA scientist had reported that the Johnson Space Center had a facility where UFOs were airbrushed out of high-resolution satellite images. So, he hacked in.
"I saw what I'm convinced was some kind of satellite or spacecraft but it was manufactured by no means I have ever seen before -- there were no rivets, no seams, it was like one flawless piece of material. And that was above the Earth."
However, his probing came to an end in March 2002, when British police arrested him.
"I was completely obsessed. I was completely addicted. It was like a huge game but I was getting very paranoid," he said.
McKinnon's own story might sound like the plot of a movie, but the charges he faces are deadly serious. He argues he is being made a scapegoat by U.S. authorities to deter other would-be hackers rather than address their own security flaws.
"I'm already being treated as a terrorist," he said. "I appear in an official American army pamphlet ... in a guide to combating terrorism in the 21st century."
The next stage of his legal battle takes place on May 10. But he hints that whatever happens, he has a lot more to tell. : :
"I can't talk about a lot of stuff that I found. It's just not the right time," he said with a smile.
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Newly discovered gospel of Judas sheds new light
By LILLY ROCKWELL
Cox News Service
Friday, April 07, 2006
WASHINGTON — An ancient Egyptian manuscript that had been lost for 1,700 years, and was unveiled publicly for the first time Thursday, challenges the long-held view that Judas was a treacherous disciple who betrayed Jesus.
Religious scholars consider it to be the most important theological discovery in the last 60 years. It illuminates early Christian beliefs and contradicts established biblical teaching concerning Judas' role in Jesus Christ's death.
The brittle 26-page papyrus manuscript had been painstakingly preserved and translated over the last five years as part of a massive undertaking by the National Geographic Society, the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery.
It was discovered buried along the Nile River near the city of El Minya, about 100 miles south of Cairo, in the 1970s, and languished on the black market until 2000, when the preservation and translation process began. The authenticity of the manuscript was verified using carbon dating.
This highly controversial "Gospel of Judas," written around A.D. 300, details a secret interaction between Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ in which Jesus singles Judas out for special status and asks him for help in escaping his physical body to liberate his spiritual self.
The leather-bound manuscript ends by abruptly describing Judas turning over Jesus to authorities who would later kill him, casting that as what Jesus wanted in order to enter the spiritual world.
"He is the good guy in this portrayal," said Bart Ehrman, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In fact, he is not only the good guy, he is the only apostle who understands Jesus."
The discovery of this lost gospel is highly controversial because it clearly challenges an accepted fact of the Christian faith, based on the written teachings in the Bible.
In the Bible, Judas is portrayed as a close friend to Jesus who helps turn him over to Jewish authorities, an act that leads to his crucifixion, for money.
"This is obviously one of the most unusual and contrary gospels written in Christian antiquity," Ehrman said.
While religious scholars are heralding the discovery of this rare manuscript as a peek into understanding what early Christians believed, other religious authorities dismiss its importance.
The Rev. Donald Senior, a Catholic priest who was one of several featured speaker at the National Geographic press conference Thursday, said he doubts the manuscript will be taken seriously enough to rival New Testament writings.
"There is no independent historical tradition behind this text," Senior said.
Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, a large umbrella group for various Christian-based religions, said the manuscript needs to be studied more before any conclusions are made. He said scholars should determine "whether it was written by disgruntled factions of Christians at the time to shape the way the world looked at Christianity."
Edgar predicted this new gospel would get a lot of attention for a few days and then receive about the same weight as other Christian texts that are not considered part of the Bible.
The Gospel of Judas manuscript is written in coptic, an Egyptian text. Experts say the manuscript was a translation of a Greek document.
In it, Jesus tells Judas, "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. ... You will be cursed by the other generations - and you will come to rule over them."
This gospel originates from an early Christian sect called Gnostics, who held a wide-ranging religious belief that did not have the support of the Orthodox church.
(Optional material begins here)
Gnostics believe the way to salvation was through secret knowledge delivered by Jesus to his inner circle, not by his death and resurrection. Religion experts said it is similar to a Jewish mystic belief system known as Kabbalah.
This gospel shows that only Judas, and not any of the other disciples, understood this meaning. This Gnostic belief was suppressed by the Orthodox church and the gospel was buried in an attempt to discredit them.
Scholars say the discovery and translation of this text will shed light on what early Christianity was like.
"The Gospel of Judas highlights the diversity of expression in the early Christian movement," said Marvin Meyer, a professor of Bible and Christian studies at Chapman University in California.
Meyer said it illustrates that the teachings of Jesus were understood and embraced in many different ways after his death.
In the decades following the death of Jesus, Ehrman said different understandings of Jesus' teachings developed. All claimed to have the "true" versions of the life of Christ. It wasn't until the 4th century that a powerful group emerged and established itself as the rightful teachers of Christianity, labelling others as heretics.
"This one victorious group decided which books would be included in the New Testament and which groups would be excluded," Ehrman said.
Included were the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Excluded was the gospel of Judas embraced by Gnostics.
(Optional trim ends here)
The manuscript was discovered by peasant grave robbers in the 1970s and first sold in 1978, spending the next 22 years mainly in the possession of an Egyptian antiquities dealer, who made many attempts to sell it but did not realize the historical significance of the text.
Herb Krosney, author of a book on the find entitled, "The Lost Gospel," said that dealer, Hanna Asabil, tried to sell the document at a hefty asking price of $3 million, based purely on its presumed age.
After deteriorating inside a safety deposit box in Long Island, N.Y., for 16 years, it was bought for $300,000 in 2000 by a Swiss dealer who recognized the need to preserve the rapidly deteriorating manuscript.
"The artifact itself and its contents were in danger of being lost forever," said Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of National Geographic.
More than 80 percent of the text was assembled from more than 1,000 fragments and translated, and the document itself was subjected to various tests to determine its authenticity.
The preserved codex will be housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt, after a brief exhibit at the National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Lilly Rockwell is a Washington correspondent for Cox Newspapers.
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Controversial Judas Manuscript Discovered
By Ernest Leong
Washington, DC
24 April 2006
Easter is the Christian holiday commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But a recent archaeological find has put the story of Christ's Passion [Christ's suffering during the Crucifixion] in a different light.
The National Geographic Society has announced the discovery of a 1,700-year-old Egyptian Coptic codex [manuscript], which includes the Gospel according to Judas.
National Geographic's Vice President for Missions Programs is Terry Garcia. "You don't find a lost gospel very often."
How this document was acquired concerns some scholars and archaeologists, who consider it a looted object. According to National Geographic, in the 1970s the codex was discovered by Egyptian farmers. It passed through several antiquities dealers' hands in Europe and the United States before it finally was acquired by the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Switzerland. National Geographic provided financing to the foundation to authenticate, restore and translate the manuscript.
"They would take a photograph of each page, and each fragment. And then, they would painstakingly try to match pages with fragments," said Garcia.
The gospel was later translated, and the text revealed an unexpected retelling of events leading up to Christ's Passion.
Bart Ehrman is Chairman of the Religion Department at the University of North Carolina. He says, "The New Testament portrays Judas as engaging in a nefarious act in turning over Jesus to the authorities. This gospel [Gospel of Judas] portrays the act as far from nefarious, but the greatest thing Judas could do for Jesus."
This interpretation sparked strong reactions. While commemorating Jesus' washing of his apostles' feet before the Last Supper, Pope Benedict said, Judas was a liar and double-crosser for whom money was more important than communion with Jesus.
Dr. Robert H. Schuller, Founding Pastor of Crystal Cathedral, made his feelings clear. "I don't need anything more than I get out of Matthew, Mark, St. Luke and John. I mean, wow! Who needs anything more?"
These four apostles wrote accounts of Jesus Christ's life and death in the New Testament. They all agree Judas received thirty pieces of silver, after which he singled out Jesus Christ for the Romans with a kiss. Filled with remorse, he later committed suicide.
The Gospel According to Judas was written by the Gnostics, an early Christian group.
Rev. Timothy Friedrichsen of the Catholic University in Washington, D.C., explains why the Gnostics' writings were rejected by the Christian church. "How the books [of the New Testament] got in there, they had to be widely used by various groups. So, works that were used by small sects of Christianity, especially those on the fringe of understanding of Jesus and so forth, they would have a harder time getting into the New Testament."
Friedrichsen says the Gnostics believe everyone has "secret knowledge" locked within them. Therefore, it was necessary for Judas to turn Jesus over to the Romans in order for Jesus to shed the physical shell he was trapped in, and find that knowledge.
"Salvation comes from within. That, by knowing oneself, you're able to achieve, you can find that divine spark," explains Garcia.
The Gnostics' belief system diverges significantly from the Catholic Church, which says mankind can be saved only through communion with Jesus Christ, who died for our sins.
Both Friedrichsen and Garcia agree on the document's historical importance.
"It's an important find, for purposes of history," says Friedrichsen. "It allows us to see how people were thinking at a particularly important time in history," adds Garcia.
Three other documents also contained in the codex are currently being restored and translated.
Some footage Courtesy National Geographic Channel: Gospel of Judas
Source : VOA News
Manuscript tells far different tale of Judas
In the ancient "Gospel of Judas," the disciple is depicted as "the good guy" who betrayed Jesus at his request.
Lilly Rockwell, Cox News Service
WASHINGTON - An ancient Egyptian manuscript that had been lost for 1,700 years, and was unveiled publicly for the first time Thursday, challenges the long-held view that Judas was a treacherous disciple who betrayed Jesus.
Religious scholars consider it to be the most important theological discovery in the past 60 years. It illuminates early Christian beliefs and contradicts established biblical teaching concerning Judas' role in Jesus Christ's death.
The brittle 26-page papyrus manuscript had been painstakingly preserved and translated over the past five years as part of a massive undertaking by the National Geographic Society, the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery.
It was discovered buried along the Nile River near the city of El Minya, about 100 miles south of Cairo, in the 1970s, and languished on the black market until 2000, when the preservation and translation process began. The authenticity of the manuscript was verified using carbon dating.
This controversial "Gospel of Judas," written around A.D. 300, details a secret interaction between Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ in which Jesus singles Judas out for special status and asks him for help in escaping his physical body to liberate his spiritual self.
The leather-bound manuscript ends by abruptly describing Judas turning over Jesus to authorities who would later kill him, casting that as what Jesus wanted in order to enter the spiritual world.
"He is the good guy in this portrayal," said Bart Ehrman, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In fact, he is not only the good guy, he is the only apostle who understands Jesus."
Accepted fact challenged
The discovery of this lost gospel is highly controversial because it clearly challenges an accepted fact of the Christian faith, based on the written teachings in the Bible.
In the Bible, Judas is portrayed as a close friend to Jesus who helps turn him over to Jewish authorities, an act that leads to his crucifixion, for money.
"This is obviously one of the most unusual and contrary gospels written in Christian antiquity," Ehrman said.
While religious scholars are heralding the discovery of this rare manuscript as a peek into understanding what early Christians believed, other religious authorities dismiss its importance.
The Rev. Donald Senior, a Catholic priest who was one of several featured speakers at the National Geographic news conference Thursday, said he doubts the manuscript will be taken seriously enough to rival New Testament writings.
"There is no independent historical tradition behind this text," Senior said.
Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, a large umbrella group for various Christian-based religions, said the manuscript needs to be studied more before any conclusions are made. He said scholars should determine "whether it was written by disgruntled factions of Christians at the time to shape the way the world looked at Christianity."
Edgar predicted this new gospel would get a lot of attention for a few days and then receive about the same weight as other Christian texts that are not considered part of the Bible.
The "Gospel of Judas" manuscript is written in coptic, an Egyptian text. Experts say the manuscript was a translation of a Greek document.
In it, Jesus tells Judas, "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. ... You will be cursed by the other generations -- and you will come to rule over them."
This gospel originates from an early Christian sect called Gnostics, who held a wide-ranging religious belief that did not have the support of the Orthodox church.
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