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SYDNEY (AFP) — Air safety investigators said Sunday that an exploding oxygen cylinder may have been to blame for tearing a huge hole in an Australian Qantas jumbo jet in mid-air, nearly causing a disaster. Officials said an oxygen back-up cylinder is missing from the aircraft, and ordered the airline to inspect all such bottles on its fleet of Boeing 747s. The Qantas Boeing 747 was flying from Hong Kong to Melbourne on Friday when an explosive bang led to a sudden loss of air pressure in the cabin. The plane, which had originated in London and was carrying 365...

Infants With Birthmarks Received Less Oxygen In Womb ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — A hemangioma is a benign tumor of cells that line blood vessels, appearing during the first few weeks of life as a large birthmark or lesion. A new study reveals that a disturbance of oxygen depletion was found in placentas of babies who developed infantile hemangioma (IH). Researchers reviewed placental samples from 26 pregnancies with babies who weighed less than 3.5 pounds, 13 consisting of newborns who developed IH after birth and 13 healthy preterm infants who did not have IH. Only one of the infants without...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian scientist emerged unscathed Wednesday after spending 12 days in an underwater capsule where he had to create his own oxygen with algae and generate electricity on an exercise bike. Self-confessed "nutcase" Lloyd Godson lived at the bottom of a flooded quarry in a yellow steel capsule measuring just nine square metres to demonstrate how a closed ecological system can work. Godson admitted suffering mild cabin fever during his time in the underwater tank, which used a revolutionary Israeli-developed "Biocoil" system to generate oxygen from algae soaked with the 27-year-old's urine. "It's nice to feel the...

Did snowball Earth's melting let oxygen fuel life? 22:00 27 November 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht We may owe our green Earth to a big freeze that covered the entire planet in thick sheets of ice 2.3 billion years ago, researchers say. As this “snowball” Earth thawed, the new theory goes, it released strong oxidants into the oceans and atmosphere for the first time, setting off the chain of events that led to oxygen-tolerant marine organisms and photosynthesis as we know it today. The evolution of efficient, oxygen-based photosynthesis has been hard to explain. Primitive life forms garnered energy...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

Scientists have paved the way for the first permanently manned base on the Moon by developing a way to 'squeeze' oxygen out of lunar soil. Nasa experts say the technique will allow astronauts of the future to create their own supplies of the gas instead of transporting it all from Earth. The space agency plans to take its extraction system to the Moon in 2011 as part of its Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, which will test a range of equipment designed to support human life. If the technique is successful, it could lead to a permanent station like Moon-base Alpha...

(CBS/AP) Charges are being filed against the driver of a bus that caught fire near Dallas while carrying people fleeing Hurricane Rita. The driver is being charged with criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of 23 passengers.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- It may be pure and fundamental to life, but dispensing oxygen requires prescription power. Lacking that authority, the owner of an oxygen bar at the Nebraska State Fair may be violating federal and state laws. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates pure oxygen and considers it a "legend drug," says Marla Augustine, spokeswoman for the state Health and Human Services System. To dispense pure oxygen without authority of a prescription -- and the necessary license to issue one -- violates federal law, Augustine said Friday. .... The federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act says any...

...Aviation experts were perplexed, saying it was rare for a plane to crash because of depressurization. "Although there are precedents for both pilots losing consciousness at the controls of the aircraft in the past, for it to happen on a large airliner like a Boeing 737, with all the backup systems they have there, does seem to be really quite extraordinary," said Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence.... Airliners are pressurized by a system that draws air from the engines, which compress air for internal use. A valve at the back of the plane determines how fast air is...

AMMAN, Jordan - Islamic militants planned to detonate an explosion that would have sent a cloud of toxic chemicals across Jordan, causing death, blindness and sickness, a chemical expert testified in a military court Wednesday. Col. Najeh al-Azam was giving evidence in the trial of 13 men who are alleged to have planned what would have been the world's first chemical attack by the al-Qaida terror group. The accused include al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi, and three other fugitives who are being tried in absentia. Jordanian security services foiled the plot in April last year. Jordanian officials say that...

Breathing Underwater Without Oxygen Tanks IsraCast is a Jerusalem-based multimedia network and one of its reporters just wrote an article about a dream come true, "Like a Fish: Revolutionary Underwater Breathing System." An Israeli inventor, Alan-Izhar Bodner, "has developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater without the assistance of oxygen tanks." This invention is based on how fish are breathing, picking the air which is dissolved in the water. Right now, a prototype has been built which uses rechargeable batteries and which will allow for one hour of diving time. But don't run to your diving store...

CAPE CANAVERAL - A balky Russian oxygen generator broke down on the International Space Station, but its two-man crew has a reserve air supply that would last about five months, NASA officials said Friday. The station's primary generator, which has been operating in an on-again, off-again fashion for months, stopped working last week and the station's crew has not been able to fix it. Mission managers say the unit has failed for good. Consequently, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and U.S. astronaut John Phillips will be relying on reserves until replacement parts arrive at the station in late August. Kylie Clem,...

Direct Link Discovered Between Agricultural Runoff And Algal Blooms In SeaScientists have found the first direct evidence linking large-scale coastal farming to massive blooms of marine algae that are potentially harmful to ocean life and fisheries. Researchers from Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences made the discovery by analyzing satellite images of Mexico's Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California - a narrow, 700-mile-long stretch of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Mexican mainland from the Baja California Peninsula. Immortalized in the 1941 book Sea of Cortez, by writer John Steinbeck and marine biologist Edward Ricketts, the...

Before the real news, there's a little interesting background news we should take care of. This comes from the "Be careful who you blame department," because everything is not always exactly as it looks. We've been hoodwinked. Yeah, you, me, all of us. It appears to me that there is a major scam afoot. It's kind of funny, in a sick sort of way; but it is a flimflam nonetheless. First, we know that Dan Rather and his cohorts at CBS have a major bias. Among other things, they "fixed" a certain "60 Minutes" program many years ago to pump...

Clerk thwarts armed robbery Frail-looking gunman begs for oxygen tank after scuffle, police say By Andale Gross Beacon Journal staff writer An oxygen-dependent man who tried to rob a convenience store Wednesday had to beg for his portable breathing tank after an aggressive clerk tackled him.William Basil Armstrong is accused of entering the Clark Mart at 2115 East Ave. in Kenmore about 10:30 a.m. and ordering the clerk to fill a bag with money. Akron police say Armstrong, 56, was armed with a loaded .40-caliber handgun.The clerk didn't flinch when the frail-looking robber flashed a gun tucked at his hip.``I...

Scientists are divided about the use of the Moon as a base to develop ways to travel to Mars, according to reports given to the US government. Some have said the possibility of water-ice existing at the lunar poles would allow a moonbase to use the ice as rocket fuel for a Mars mission. Others contend that it would be too difficult to extract. And there is disagreement about whether the moon is a good alternative to space as a base for advanced telescopes. In January, President Bush redirected the US space effort sending astronauts back to the Moon and...

Description: Geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth's ancient oceans were much different from today's. New data shows that Earth's life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today's and could have been nearly devoid of oxygen for a billion years longer than previously thought.Newswise — As two rovers scour Mars for signs of water and the precursors of life, geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth's ancient oceans were much different from today's. The research, published in this week's issue of the journal Science, cites new data that shows that Earth's life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today's and could have been nearly...

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the first planet outside the solar system known to have oxygen and carbon in its atmosphere, scientists said Monday. The findings showed that scientists can identify gases in the atmosphere of planets lightyears away from Earth, which could eventually allow researchers to find a planet with an atmosphere that could sustain life. The planet, nicknamed Osiris and known as HD 209458b, is a gas giant 150 lightyears from Earth. It orbits a star similar to the sun, the scientists said. The findings of the team of scientists, led by Alfred Vidal-Madjar of the Astrophysics...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 May 28 SNR 0103-72.6: Oxygen Supply Credit: S.Park, D. Burrows (PSU) et al., Chandra Observatory, NASA Explanation: A supernova explosion, a massive star's inevitable and spectacular demise, blasts back into space debris enriched in the heavy elements forged in its stellar core. Incorporated into future stars and planets, these are the elements ultimately necessary for life. Seen here in a false-color x-ray image, supernova remnant SNR 0103-72.6...