The following video will give you a quick peak at what a typical work day is for Rhaana Starling and Phil Evans, two astrophysicists studying gamma ray bursts at the University of Leicester, England
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Light in weight but heavy in sound, Image X5 headphones are loaded with advanced comfort features and proven technology, so you can enjoy pure performance without any pain. The Image X5 is a balanced full-range armature driver design with a tuned bass-reflex system for crisp, clear highs and deep, impressive lows. In other words, you can experience rich, enveloping sound performances that virtually put you on stage with your favorite artists. This is an exclusive offer from Audio Advisor and includes free shipping.
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1 Bit Audio Player is a lightweight & free Flash MP3 player that can be automatically inserted into webpages with JavaScript.
It is not a feature-rich or complicated player, rather, it is so simple & ideal for offering quick in-page previews for audio files.
1 Bit Audio Player uses its own unobtrusive JavaScript and SWFObject to embed Flash players into the pages.
It is possible to display players near every MP3 link or selected ones using CSS selectors.
The icons can be customized by simply editing the .FLA source file.
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Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets
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By Jimmy Rogers (@me)
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
We live in a world governed not by the biggest creatures, but by the smallest. Our bodies act as vessels for all that we call “ourselves,” forming a barrier between “out there” and “in here.” While that barrier is not as simple as a wall or a single membrane, the philosophy is made real by a complex defense network called the immune system.
As opposed to writing some kind of comprehensive molecular description of the immune system (which I’m sure would bore most of you to tears), I want to share a bit of immunological philosophy, as much of it as we understand anyway. If I leave something out, please don’t crucify me in the comments, just do a bit research on your own (good luck, immuno can be a bit confusing).
The first thing about the immune system that’s good to understand is the duality of “the barrier.” In one sense, you have an inside and an outside. Your skin is considered the absolute first line of defense against your environment. The majority of the things we touch do not get through our skin because it is thick (microscopically speaking), dry, and, in most cases, doesn’t have any openings. Typically you need to have a wound in order for a microbe to breach the skin. Exceptions include some parasites that can essentially “bite” you.
While your extremities and midsection are protected from most organisms by skin, there are several orifices that are easily entered by bacteria and viruses. A good example is your nose or mouth. Lining your respiratory and digestive tracts from “tip to stern,” as it were, are mucosal membranes. These are the front lines against outside attackers. The air we breath, food we eat, and water we drink are chock full of microbes. Many of these invaders simply cannot survive within us and die. Others are quickly stopped by defensive chemicals found in our saliva and other secreted fluids (tears, for instance, can lyse cell walls). Those that make it past these barriers must either invade directly through the mucosal membrane (often colonizing an area near where they entered, like strep throat or thrush) or suffer the riggors of the digestive system.
Here is where the physical metaphor of a barrier breaks down and one must substitute a barrier of vigilance. Any foreign body that makes its way this far will have successfully evaded major components of the “innate” immune response. That is, the parts of the immune system that are ALWAYS ON. The body has a much more specific system for dealing with particularly persistent intruders called the “acquired” immune response – let’s delve into that now. This particular component of the immune system is the part that plagues so many biology students, so I’ll keep to the concepts.
Your body has two primary methods of identifying a specific invader. First, any cell, once infected, can gather bits of its attacker and broadcast them to other cells via its outer membrane. A professor of mine once told us to think of this as a “suicide flag,” inviting other cells to come and destroy it. Cells in your body have no stake in their own survival: if instructed to die, they will try to comply.
The second method is a different kind of flag. Only a very select number of cells carry this marker because it is the “sniper flag.” If an immune cell recognizes a foreign body, it has the power to “call in a hit” on that invader, effectively mobilizing itself and others to rapidly divide and form an impromptu army of cells. Even after the invader has been neutralized, these cells remain in the body, to fend off attack in the future (the basis for what most people think of as immunity).
The two flags, really called “MHC I” and “MHC II,” are quite remarkable because they utilize the unique ability of the immune system to recognize almost any organism on Earth. Each relevant immune cell can recognize only a single biological subunit (essentially part of a protein, lipid, or nucleic acid called an antigen) and become activated and ready to rid the body of its target. The immune cells make up for their single-mindedness in numbers. For instance, there are approximately 1,000,000,000 unique B cells in each person.
This process costs the body a lot of energy and stress, though, so the acquired immune response only occurs once the antigen has been confirmed to exist in the body. Some diseases randomly activate immune cells and illicit a very dangerous reaction called a cytokine storm. The deadly Spanish Flu of 1918 and the modern H1N1 flu are known for this behavior.
So what’s the take-away message? Note, I didn’t mention macrophages, complement, antibodies, or even lymph nodes. Why? Because the strength of our immune systems is also the reason they’re so hard to understand: complexity. We have a vast number of organs, cells, and immune particles dedicated to protecting our insides from the bad things in the world. Personally, it makes me glad that our bodies have what it takes to compete in that great big microbial world out there!
Confused? Been swept into thinking more about immuno? Just wondering why antibodies look like big “Y”s? Well please post your questions in the comments or @me on Twitter (contact info at the top of the article)!
Also, feel free to read other Science Is Sexy stories from the archives…
[Flag man via Northern Ales | Header picture: Flickr (CC)]
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Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.
That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.
So I read a ton about how to use AdSense, took a few courses, and built a bunch of little search-engine-optimized niche websites. I worked and worked and built and built, and eventually I amassed a couple dozen of these little moneymakers.
Slowly, visitors began to come to my sites, click on the expensive Google ads for lawyers and insurance, and make me some money. Then, reasonably content with my Google army, I put those sites on “set it and forget it” mode (like a Ronco Rotisserie) and started something new.
Specifically, in April of last year, I started the Johnny B. Truant biz. The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.
I worked very hard, but it didn’t feel like work — especially compared to what I had been doing on the niche sites. It felt like being an amiable jackass in the right places, and meeting people, and kind of screwing around. Eventually it also started to feel like building a business, but that happened slowly and by degrees.
Nine months passed, with both venues making me money in their own unique way.
At the end of 2009, I recorded my second five-figure month in the JBT technology biz, after building between eighty and a hundred blogs for clients in December.
And at around the same time, I got my first ever AdSense check from Google. It was for $111.
Spend a few minutes Googling around for ways to make money online. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
If you didn’t do that search just now, it’s probably because you’ve tried it before and already knew what you would find. Almost every site, course, and guru out there will tell you that to make money online, you should sign up for AdSense (or maybe for a large advertiser’s affiliate program), rustle up some long-tail keywords, and start gaming Google traffic.
I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t work . . . but I am going to tell you that it didn’t work for me, and that it’s unlikely to work for you if you’re even one iota like me.
Here’s why I don’t like the AdSense strategy as a business model:
I worked really, really, really hard on those AdSense sites. I worked 15-hour days; I wrote keyword-laced post after keyword-laced post; I entered them in article directories and put them through social media bulk submitters; I launched site after site, tweaked, customized, and researched.
And by doing that, I made $111 in a year.
Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I used the wrong system. Maybe, if someone else had done it, they might have done it twice as well. And maybe that same person would have done it for three times as long as I did, building sites for the whole year instead of only doing it for four months.
So yeah, maybe that super-ambitious person might have made $888.
Now, stop and think about that for a second.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that they could start a business today, being themselves, playing to their own strengths, and creating value for others, and not make more than $888 in a year should . . . well, those people should really just stop reading about business right now.
Am I saying that you can’t use AdSense to make money online? No. Am I saying that every “system” for striking it rich on the Net — like creating anonymous niche sites that use AdWords ads to draw traffic to affiliate products — is an impossible scam? No.
I’m just saying that the average person is probably going to have better luck building a real business. Meaning:
This Third Tribe thing? This new internet era of being real and honest and open in business and marketing rather than relying on tricks, games, yellow-highlighted text, and the hard sell? It’s real, folks. And at least for me, using that approach turned my Google earnings into an afterthought.
If the “Third Tribe” style of doing business appeals to you, subscribe to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. We’re within a few days of announcing a brand-new tribe for online entrepreneurs. And our newsletter subscribers will be the very first to learn about it.
About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is an amiable jackass who may or may not have invented Post-It Notes. You can hire him to tell you how to do better than AdSense, or, failing that, you should at least follow him on Twitter because sometimes he tweets about zombies.
David Spiegelhalter’s proper title is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He is in two minds (literally) about playing it safe or chucking caution to the wind. Decisions, decisions!? Are bacon sandwiches really that dangerous and is it wise to drive when you love cycling? David shows us how to use statistics to face up to life’s major risks.
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Free is something you get, no matter what.
A bonus is something you get as an add-on when you purchase something, or trade your attention.
The purpose of free is to spread the word, alert the universe and generate interest.
The purpose of a bonus is to reward immediate action and to sway the undecided.
Here are some free things we built for Linchpin:
In each case, you don't have to do a thing to get started but you might decide you like it enough to spread the word. In the old days, gifts like these would cost money to create and be hard to share. Today, the opposite is true. The goal of something that's free is to spread the idea.
On the other hand, some bonus things we built for Linchpin:
Oh, wait, I can't show them to you because you have to buy something first.
Anyway, what we did was collect:
To get them, you need to answer a simple question to demonstrate that you've ordered the new book. That's because they are bonuses, not free. And yes, you qualify even if you got the book as a gift or received it a month ago. The bonus material will only be available for a few weeks.
We also did two special deals with 800 CEO READ (that's their phone number). If you hurry, you can get a bonus hardcover copy of The Blue Sweater with your purchase of two copies of LInchpin. Jacqueline's breakthrough is a brilliant book that will change the way you see the world.
Or, if you'd like one of the no-longer-sold boxed sets, there are a few left, available to anyone who buys a bulk box of 50 Linchpin copies from them.
KINDLE USERS! Also, if you have a Kindle, you'll automatically get a thirty-page original essay when you buy the Kindle edition at Amazon. It magically shows up on your Kindle, you don't even have to click. This is the only place you can get it. The free bonus will only be available for the next five weeks.
The best bonuses are valuable and scarce, worthy of your attention. I hope we succeeded.
Whatever you sell, whatever idea you want to spread, it's now possible to create both freebies and bonuses. One spreads, the other induces.
PS for audio listeners, Linchpin is now available on iTunes.
It’s cold enough that I’ve been seeing lots of people bundled up lately – and of course, the most enviable scarves and mittens are the homemade kind, particularly when they have a geek’s touch. For those of you thinking of picking up some knitting needles before the sun comes back out, here are a few ideas…
A triforce hat, because it’s dangerous to go alone. Take this! – mehrit CC)
A binary scarf, though only 1 of the 10 types of people in the world can pull it off. – jacqueline-w (CC)
A space invaders scarf, for the video game addict who can’t help but wear their high score around their neck. – vaedri (CC)
And another one, because it’s just kind of cool that this is a common project. – nurd_grrl (CC)
Even though it won’t keep you warm, a knitted dalek, because you know you want to make this pun: EXTERMI-KNIT! – gershamabob (CC)
A dalek hat, because once you make that joke once you’ll really want to keep making it. – jwordsmith (CC)
And finally, no post about geeky knitting would be complete without a shout out for Jayne’s cunning hat. – fling93 (CC)
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Lilina is an open source PHP application for aggregating feeds from a web-based interface.
It supports RSS, Atom & podcasts inside them. It is also possible to import/export feeds with an OPML file.
The application only requires PHP(5) to run & makes use of 2 built-in libraries: HTML Purifier and SimplePie.
Lilina has a plugin system for extending its capabilities & the look/feel can be customized with the theming support.
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Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets
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