NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Louisiana evacuees should stay away for at least a week to avoid "a wilderness" without power or drinking water that will be infested with poisonous snakes and fire ants, state officials warned Monday.

Looting was reported in some areas of New Orleans late Monday.

Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast and northern Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina continued to wreak havoc.

As of 5 p.m. ET Monday, Katrina was barely a Category 1 storm with 75 mph winds. It was centered about 30 miles northwest of Laurel, Mississippi, and hurricane-force winds extended for 60 miles, said the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

"We would really encourage people not to come back [to New Orleans] for at least a week," said Ivor van Heerden, director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge.

"If you came back, you would be coming literally to a wilderness," he said. "If your house is gone, it's gone. If you come back in a day or a week,it's not going to make any difference."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she had ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers.

After topping levees in New Orleans, Katrina inundated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts with a 20-foot storm surge.

Streets of Biloxi, Mississippi, became flowing rivers up to 12 feet deep.

In Mobile, Alabama, the storm pushed Mobile Bay into downtown, submerging large sections of the city, and officials imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

An oil drilling platform broke away from its moorings and lodged under a bridge that carries U.S. Highway 98 over the Mobile River.

The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi.

At least 500,000 people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and well over 100,000 each in Alabama and Mississippi.

Hurricane-force winds are likely to continue into the night as Katrina slowly diminishes and carries its wind and rain into central and north Mississippi, Tennessee and eventually Ohio, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm came ashore Monday morning just east of New Orleans. Winds topping 140 mph transformed street signs, tree branches and roof debris into projectiles.

Rising water strained the system of levees and pumping stations that protect the low-lying city. About 70 percent of the city sits below sea level.

Water poured over levees in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and pats of the city's east side were under 9 feet of standing water.

Police in New Orleans and surrounding parishes received more than 100 calls from residents trapped on top of their roofs.

"Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live," resident Chris Robinson told The Associated Press via cell phone from his home east of downtown.

As the storm passed, Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, said officials hope to take advantage of the remaining daylight hours to rescue the people they can. But high winds and flood waters were hampering the effort.

Report: 'Total structural failure'

The National Weather Service said it had received many reports of "total structural failure" in the New Orleans metro area. It did not elaborate, but video from the city showed crumbled walls in one neighborhood.

About 10,000 people, who were unable to evacuate the city, took shelter in the Louisiana Superdome -- the cavernous football stadium that is home to the New Orleans Saints.

Reporter Ed Reams from affiliate WDSU told CNN that Katrina ripped away a large section of the building's roof.

Other developments

Everyone along the northern Gulf of Mexico needs to take this hurricane very seriously and put action plans into play now. Hurricane warnings have now been hoisted from Morgan City, La., to the Florida-Alabama border. This includes the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. A tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch have been issued from the Alabama-Florida border eastward to Destin, Florida and from west of Morgan City to Intracoastal City, Louisiana.

Katrina is forecast to turn to the northwest later this morning, then toward the north tonight. Well ahead of the center there will be very high surf crashing ashore in the northern Gulf starting Sunday night. You'll need to use extreme caution or just not go in the water at all along all of the northern Gulf beaches from Louisiana to western Florida due to this increased surf. Extreme damaging winds, high, life threatening storm surge, and deadly flooding rains with possible tornadoes are expected at landfall.

Effects from Katrina will not be confined to coastal areas. Once Hurricane Katrina makes landfall, it will progress inland Monday into Tuesday with a trail of flooding rains and damaging winds across Mississippi and Alabama and then into Tennessee. Torrential, flooding rainfall is possible with the remnants of Katrina well inland, possibly into the Ohio Valley, Great Lakes and the Northeast later this week.

Elsewhere, there are two areas of low pressure in the central Atlantic. One low pressure is a system that has been monitored for several days now. It is centered about 800 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands. The strong area of low pressure has dealt with a harsh environment ever since its existence. Atmospheric conditions have not improved over the last 12 hours, so development with this system would be slow.

A second area of low pressure is located several hundred miles southeast of the aforementioned low. This system continues to show signs of organization and could become the next tropical depression later today. It could approach the Lesser Antilles in the next 3 to 4 days.

Tropical Depression Irwin continues to weaken in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Top winds are down to 30 mph and it may dissipate in the next 24 hours.

In the northwest Pacific Talim has become a typhoon and is forecast to grow to a 120 mph typhoon before moving across Taiwan and into mainland China in the next 3 to 4 days.

Source: Weather.com

From this point on through landfall, Hurricane Katrina will continue to turn, first toward the west-northwest Saturday, then to the northwest on Sunday, then finally toward the north before making landfall on Monday. Well ahead of the center there will be high surf crashing ashore in the northern Gulf starting Saturday into Sunday. You'll need to use extreme caution along all of the northern Gulf beaches from Louisiana to western Florida due to this increased surf. Extreme damaging winds, high life threatening storm surge, deadly flooding rains with possible tornadoes are expected at landfall. Once Hurricane Katrina makes landfall it will progress inland Monday into Tuesday with a trail of flooding rains and damaging winds across Mississippi and Alabama and then into Tennessee. Late Tuesday into Wednesday the very heavy rains and gusty winds will progress from the Tennessee Valley to the eastern Ohio Valley.

Hurricane Katrina is in a region of light wind shear, and is therefore anticipated to gather further strength, reaching a strong Category 4 storm prior to landfall.

The Air Force Reserve Reconnaissance Hurricane Hunters made some interesting observations Saturday morning. Just before 5 a.m., small hail was observed in the southeast quadrant at a height of roughly 8000-9000 feet. Around 11 a.m. EDT, concentric eyewalls (meaning two of them, one inside another) were witnessed.

Winds are finally slacking off in the Florida Keys after a wild Friday. After its landfall on Thursday evening, Hurricane Katrina moved off the southwest coast of Florida on Friday but continued to slam the Florida Keys with wind gusts of 60 to 85 mph and torrential rains for most of the day. During Friday, Key West had nearly 10 inches of rain; the fourth wettest day on record and the wettest August day on record. The Dry Tortugas National Park to the west of Key West had sustained winds of 82 mph and a gust to 105 mph in the outer rainbands and squalls.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall south of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., around 6:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. Reports of wind gusts of 60 to 95 mph were widespread across southeast Florida with widespread power outages and tremendous tree damage. Falling trees and other accidents are blamed in the deaths of seven people so far. Radar estimates and actual observations show about 8-to-20 inches of rain fell across southern Florida with a great deal of flooding, especially near the Homestead area.

Elsewhere, there are two areas of low pressure in the central Atlantic. One low pressure is a system that has been monitored for several days now. It is centered about 900 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands. The strong area of low pressure has dealt with a harsh environment ever since its existence; namely persistent southwesterly shear. Because of this, thunderstorm activity continues to be well removed away from the surface circulation. That being said, the system could develop further in the upcoming days and will be monitored for possible development.

The second area of low pressure is located several hundred miles southeast of the aforementioned low. It is currently lacking thunderstorm activity but it has the potential for slow development over the next several days.

Tropical Storm Irwin formed off the west coast of Mexico and is now located about 450 miles west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. It is not expected to gain hurricane strength but build to a moderate to strong tropical storm over the next few days. Fortunately, Irwin will head west away from the Mexican coastline with only a threat to marine interests.

Source: Weather.com

Radar Image: Weather Underground

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn claim the difference grows when the highest IQ levels are considered.

Their research was based on IQ tests given to 80,000 people and a further study of 20,000 students.

'Widening gap'

Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four the study showed that, up to the age of 14, there was no difference between the IQs of boys and girls.

"But beyond that age and into adulthood there is a difference of five points, which is small but it can have important implications," he said.

"This is against a background of women dramatically overtaking men in educational attainment and making very rapid advances in terms of occupational achievement."

The academics used a test which is said to measure "general cognitive ability" - spatial and verbal ability.

As intelligence scores among the study group rose, the academics say they found a widening gap between the sexes.

There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees.

At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Nobel prize-winners

Dr Irwing told The Times the differences "may go some way to explaining the greater numbers of men achieving distinctions of various kinds, such as chess grandmasters, Fields medallists for mathematics, Nobel prize-winners and the like".

The paper will argue that there is evidence that at the same level of IQ, women are able to achieve more than men "possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work".

Earlier this year, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, sparked controversy when he suggested at a seminar that one reason men outperformed women in maths and science was genetics.

Several guests walked out of the conference after hearing the comments.

Dr Summers, who has apologised repeatedly for his remarks, said later that the shortage of senior female academics was partly caused by child-minding duties, which restricted working hours.

Source: BBC News

Copyright 2005 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: CNN.com

Davenport spoke Sunday at the Little Green Men Festival in Hopkinsville with tales of what he believes are some of the more fascinating, provable cases reported. The festival, at the Hopkinsville-Christian County Conference and Convention Center, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Aug. 21, 1955, report of an alien invasion at Kelly.

After a lifetime of studying what many brush off as science fiction, Davenport feels certain that UFOs exist and have been witnessed on Earth, and second, that the government has known about them for decades.

"I have not just a mountain of data, perhaps a mountain range of data. And I assure you, it's strictly by accident," Davenport said. He has spent the last 11 years filing accounts and eyewitness reports of UFO sightings from a reporting center that consists of one phone, one fax, and one Web master, and is almost completely privately funded by Davenport and donations.

Davenport graduated from Stanford with degrees in Russian and biology and received his MBA in finance and international business. But, years before receiving a master's degree in genetics and biochemistry of fish, Davenport heard of the Kelly Green Men incident on the radio. The story from Kelly was one of several that piqued his interest in UFOs, which eventually led to his involvement in the National UFO Reporting Center.

Davenport said his perspective of UFO sightings took on a whole new dimension when he was 6-years-old on a July night in 1954. Davenport said that's when he, his mom and brother saw a strange object in the sky while at a drive-in theater on the edge of the St. Louis Airport.

"We didn't know it at the time, but my father, and people in the tower on the north side of the airport, were looking at the same object with their binoculars," he said. Davenport said the object was about the size of the moon, bright red like a traffic signal and slightly oval in shape. "And (it) stopped, almost stock-still, in the sky to the east of our location. People were getting out of their cars," Davenport said. "It was casting a red light ... all over the theater, all over the airport, as far as we could see."

Since then, Davenport has logged literally thousands of calls about colored lights, flying triangles and hovering disks.

Source: Yahoo

Research investment into developing smaller and cheaper chips to process information in disposable health tests has been significant, but they were still reliant on an external power source. The researchers at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) think they have overcome this problem.

The battery is composed of paper, soaked in copper chloride, sandwiched between layers of magnesium and copper. The whole thing, once laminated in plastic, is just a millimetre thick, and 6cm by 3cm in size.

The researchers report that with just 0.2 millilitres of urine the battery will provide around 1.5 volts, with a maximum power output of 1.5 milli-Watts. The performance varies according to the geometry of the battery, and the materials used.

Looks like there are no limits to where science can err ummm, take us.

Source: The Register

NEW YORK (AP) -- In thousands of pages of oral histories released Friday, firefighters describe in vivid, intimate detail how they rushed to save fleeing civilians from churning smoke and fire before the World Trade Center collapsed in a monstrous cloud of debris and choking dust.

The histories, recorded in the weeks after the September 11 attack, offer some of the most detailed descriptions of the day's horror as seen through the eyes of firefighters who lost 343 of their brethren.

Firefighter Maureen McArdle-Schulman recalled hearing someone yell before the collapses that something was falling from the towers.

"It turned out it was people coming out, and they started coming out one after the other," she said. "We didn't know what it was at first, but then the first body hit and then we knew what it was."

"I was getting sick. I felt like I was intruding on a sacrament. They were choosing to die and I was watching them and shouldn't have been. So me and another guy turned away and looked at a wall and we could still hear them hit."

Emergency medical technician John Felidi recalled that when the south tower fell, "We heard a rumble. I heard the rumble and looked -- in the back of me all I seen was a monstrous -- I can't even describe it. A cloud. Looked like debris, dust."

The 12,000 pages of oral histories were made public along with hours of Fire Department radio transmissions, their release brought on by a lawsuit filed three years ago by The New York Times and long contested by the city.

Poignant catalog of raw memories

Some of the material had been released before, and the records released Friday were unlikely to fundamentally change the understanding of the September 11 attack.

Still, the histories offer a poignant catalog of firefighters' still-fresh memories of the towers' horrifying collapse. And the radio transmissions added new texture to the historical record of the day, beginning at 8:46 a.m. with an urgent but calm description of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

"The World Trade Center tower Number One is on fire!" one firefighter radioed.

As the depth of the crisis became clear, the voices on the radios thickened with panic.

"Send every available ambulance, everything you got to the World Trade Center," a firefighter calls from Engine 1. "Now!"

September 11 family members pored over the records Friday, some tearing up at descriptions and sounds of the attack and response. At an office building in midtown Manhattan, a half-dozen family members and two fire officers bent over laptops to examine the material.

Fire Lt. Jerry Reilly, who escaped the trade center, said the transmissions were almost too painful to hear. "I never heard any of this before -- the chaos," he said, his eyes tearing up.

The records shed some new light onto lingering questions and long-standing complaints about the response. Firefighters described faulty communications equipment and some disobeyed orders.

A group of victims' families who have become advocates for reforming building codes and emergency response had eagerly awaited the release of the records -- in hopes they would challenge the notion that many firefighters in the north tower heard, but chose to ignore, an evacuation message issued after the south tower collapsed.

'Hoping that the brothers would hear it above us'

Some city officials, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, have suggested some firefighters ignored the mayday call in acts of personal heroism. But the group of families has sought to lay blame on the city for providing firefighters with faulty radios.

At least one fire lieutenant, Gregg Hansson of Engine 34, said he heard the call to evacuate while he was on the 35th floor of the north tower and saw his colleagues leaving.

"I heard a mayday given over the command channel to evacuate the building," Hansson said in his oral history. "He started to tell everyone to evacuate, and I did also. I saw all the units get up, everybody got their gear, everybody started for the staircases to evacuate."

Another firefighter who was in the north tower, Paul Bessler, recalled seeing a fellow firefighter going up the stairs as though he were "on a mission."

"Just at that point, my radio came clear as day, 'Imminent collapse. This was a terrorist attack. Evacuate."'

"We relayed that again, hoping that the brothers would hear it above us, and I remember the look on Andy's face, like apprehension that we were going to leave this building," he continued. The north tower collapsed moments later.

'It was too too too much going on'

The transcripts reinforce the perception that some firefighters throughout the trade center dropped protocol and simply acted according to their best instincts.

Firefighter Patrick Martin of Engine 229 said that after the south tower had collapsed and before the north tower came down, his lieutenant instructed him to go on a boat taking people to hospitals across the Hudson River.

"I told him I wasn't leaving," Martin said. "We were still missing one guy."

Timothy Burke of Engine 202 said a firefighter from another company had a cell phone, and he and others used it to call their families.

"It seemed pretty bad that everybody was willing to get on the phone and try to call their wives to say goodbye or say whatever," he said. "Just the faces of people -- you kind of knew that some of us were going to get hurt because it was too too too much going on."

The New York Times and families of September 11 victims sued the city in 2002 to release the records.

The city withheld them, claiming the release would violate firefighters' privacy and jeopardize the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring with the September 11 hijackers.

In March the state's highest court ordered the city to release the oral histories and radio transmissions but said the city could edit out potentially painful and embarrassing portions.

The Fire Department, in a statement, said it hoped the release of the records would not cause firefighters and their families additional pain.

"The Department believes that the materials being released today ... will serve to further confirm the bravery and courage of our members who responded to the World Trade Center," the statement said.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

Source: CNN.com

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Fire Department on Friday released thousands of pages of oral histories recorded by firefighters on September 11 and hours of radio transmissions, a vast mine of records that evoked anew the chaos and horror of the attack.

Firefighter Kirk Long, whose Engine 1 was sent to the World Trade Center's north tower -- the first to be struck by a plane and the second to collapse -- described rushing up a stairway as evacuees were coming down.

"I was watching every person coming down, looked at their face, just to make them happy that they were getting out and we were going in, and everything was OK," Long said in his oral history.

Long said he heard the north tower shake and thought something in the basement had exploded.

"At that time I never knew that the south tower had gone down," he said.

Some families and other critics of the city's response have been hoping the new documents would help them challenge the conclusion that many firefighters in the north tower heard, but chose to ignore, an evacuation message issued after the south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m.

At least one fire lieutenant quoted in the oral histories heard the call and saw his colleagues leaving.

Fire Lt. Gregg Hansson, whose Engine 24 was called at 8:47 a.m. _ one minute after the first plane crash -- described hearing the call to evacuate while he was on the 35th floor of the north tower.

"I was in the vicinity of the battalion chief, who was on the command channel, when I heard a mayday given over the command channel to evacuate the building," Hansson said in his oral history. "He started to tell everyone to evacuate, and I did also. I saw all the units get up, everybody got their gear, everybody started for the staircases to evacuate."

Compelled by a lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the department made public 15 hours of radio transmissions and more than 500 oral histories describing the rush to the World Trade Center, which saved an unknown number of civilians and cost 343 firefighters their lives. In all, 2,749 people died in the twin towers' collapse.

At least 450 relatives of dead firefighters requested copies of the oral histories and radio recordings, and they received them by express mail Friday, the fire department said.

Independent investigations with access to the documents have already described major flaws in the city's response to the attack -- emergency radios did not function properly, police and firefighters did not work together and vital messages went unheard.

A reading of just a few of the 12,000 pages of transcripts from the oral histories made the day's drama clear.

Firefighter Long described leaving the north tower and being helped by another firefighter to a building nearby that had some clean air.

"There was a lot of mothers and babies there," he said. "I was ready to leave. They were a little shook up because I was covered up with all this dust. I was leaving and they started to cry. They didn't want me to go without them. So I stayed for maybe 10 or 15 minutes until it cleared up a little bit. Then I walked them over to the west side, where there were boats and fresh air."

Another firefighter, Patrick Martin, said that after the south tower had collapsed and before the north tower came down, his lieutenant instructed him to go on a boat that was taking people to hospitals across the Hudson River.

"I told him I wasn't leaving," Martin said. "We were still missing one guy."

The city had withheld the material, claiming the release would violate firefighters' privacy and jeopardize the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, who ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiring with the September 11 hijackers.

In March, the state's highest court ordered the city to release the oral histories and radio transmissions but said the city could edit out potentially painful and embarrassing portions.

In another oral history, fire Lt. Howard Hahn described using his cell phone that day but said his fire department radio was barely functioning.

"I was able to get through, but the transmissions was very hard," Hahn said. It was very hard to control. You're basically doing your own show."

It would have dwarfed a 10-story building and had the power to snap a ship in half - but never reached land.

The wave was recorded by sensors on the ocean floor as Hurricane Ivan passed over the Gulf of Mexico last September.

The observations suggest prior estimates for extreme waves are too low, researchers warn in Science.

Hurricane Ivan caused more than 100 deaths and left a trail of devastation as it swept over several Caribbean islands and part of the United States.

As it moved over the Gulf of Mexico, it triggered sensors deployed by the Naval Research Laboratory to measure water pressure.

Scientists at the Washington-based laboratory in the US used the data to calculate the extreme waves created under the eye of the storm.

The distance between the crest of the biggest wave and its trough was 91 ft (27.7 metres) but they suspect the instruments missed some waves that were as tall as 132 ft (40 metres).

The waves were bigger than expected, suggesting theoretical models of waves whipped up by hurricanes may have to be revised.

"Our results suggest that waves in excess of 90 ft are not rogue waves but actually are fairly common during hurricanes," lead author Dr David Wang, told the BBC News website.

He said that since hurricane activity is predicted to increase over the next few decades, more research like this needs to be carried out.

The 91 ft wave was the largest individual wave measured with instruments in US waters, he added.

It echoes the wave depicted in the film, The Perfect Storm, which was 100 ft tall. The story is based on the 1991 storm off Gloucester, Massachusetts, which was one of the strongest in recorded history.

Source: BBC News

Billy Goldberg, a New York physician, will have his book "Why Do Men Have Nipples?" hit book stores on Tuesday. The book, subtitled, "Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini," is co-authored by humorist Mark Leyner.

Chattering teeth is one way the body tries to generate heat. When the body gets too cold, the area of the brain called the hypothalamus alerts the rest of the body to begin warming up. Shivering, the rapid muscle movement that generates heat, then begins. Teeth chattering represents localized shivering.

During the course of their research regarding toilet seats, Goldberg and Leyner found reports of gonorrhea, pinworm and roundworm found on toilet seats -- although, catching something is rare. The authors discovered that an office setting might be worse for your health than toilet seats. Microbiologist Charles Gerba found the typical office desk harbors some 400x more disease-causing bacteria than the average toilet seat.

...More Questions...

"What causes morning breath?"
"Why do beans give you gas?"

Morning breath results from anaerobic bacteria, the xerostomia (dry mouth) or the volatile sulfur compounds (waste products from the bacteria). Other contributing factors: medication, alcohol, sugar, smoking, caffeine, and dairy products.

Beans contain high percentages of sugars that our bodies are unable to digest.
When the sugars make it to the intestines, bacteria go to work and start producing large amounts of gas.

And if you're ever bitten by a poisonous snake, sucking at the bite to remove the poison, as often shown in the movies is not only ineffective, but could lead to an infection. Instead, the bite should be washed with soap and water and immobilized. The bitten area should also be kept lower than the heart. Medical help should be sought immediately.

And why do men have nipples? While only females have mammary glands, we all start out in a similar way in the embryo. The embryo follows a female template until about 6 weeks, when the male sex chromosome kicks in. Men, however, have already developed nipples.

Source: Reuters