It took three months before scientists noticed the explosion but this time the star was already fading. What they saw through the XMM Newton telescope was an unusual X-ray burst that wasn’t in any cosmic X-ray catalog. They worked quickly to check what was causing it and eventually pinned it down to a star known only as USNO-A2.0 0450-03360039. They eventually agreed that it was a Nova explosion and so started working on the tons of data collected by another telescope, the 6.5-meter Magellan-Clay telescope, and found that the star shined 600 times brighter than normal previously.

It “sucks” to know that such an event occurred in our lifetime without us actually seeing it. I just hope I come to see another such even before I die.

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Higher gas prices, less cars on the road. Less cars on the road, less traffic related accidents. Less traffic related accidents, less traffic related deaths.

Another thing that I think that would be a direct effect of the increasing gas prices is less pollution, especially in the cities. The less cars on the road, the less smoke. Less smoke, less smog… well you know the drill. The latter though can be easily solved by switching to alternative energy to power cars. One such possibility is electric power. And another possibility is Hydrogen power.

Well oh well… I think that this rising gas prices will eventually force us to move on to the next level and be pro-active in thinking for solutions. As for traffic-related accidents, as long as there are reckless drivers and day-dreaming pedestrians, we’ll be having them for quite some time.

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But that’s not the end of the story. They also give points to its users for doing certain actions on their site. You get:

1 Point for Searching
2 Points for Voting
3 Points for Commenting

You also earn 25% of all the points earned by any of your referrals. What to do with all these points? Well you can cash them out with the following values…

25,000 Points = $100
12,500 Points = $50
6,500 Points = $25

Cool huh? I mean, if you do search on a daily basis then this is definitely a good idea to make something out of those searches that you make. Best of all, it’s free to join and it won’t cost you a dime to use. No reason not to sign-up so I say click here to get started now.

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Weird, nasty, awesome, yuck! But could this be the world’s longest human tongue?

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Free search or organic search is said to be the best way to get traffic to your website. All you need to do is optimize your website for your targeted keywords and you get instant free traffic. Furthermore, it is said that the number 1, 2, 3 and 10 spots are the best spots to be on the search engine results mainly because 1, 2 and 3 are the first thing that the searcher sees and number 10 is the last that he sees when he scrolls down.

While that’s mostly true, I also noticed one thing while checking my Google Analytics report for my science blog. I noticed that I’m getting quite some traffic for the search phrase “why is the sea color blue” so I went to Google and did a search for that phrase and this is what I saw.

My website “Mike’s Science and Nature Blog” wasn’t on any of the sweet spots mentioned above. It was ranked as number 5 for the search phrase mentioned and yet I’m getting lots of traffic. If you take a good look at the screenshot above, you’ll probably notice why. Just in case you didn’t notice it (or maybe you don’t have enough time to take a good look at it), here’s why…

* Item no. 1 is about HTML color codes
* Item no. 2 is about why the sky is blue
* Item no. 3 is a Wikipedia entry on the color blue
* Item no. 4 is about a list of stuff on the moon
* Item no. 5 my website, is exactly what the searcher is looking for

The result therefore is that my site gets visited even though if it’s only number 5 in the SERPs. While the first four may still be getting traffic from that search phrase, I believe that my site is probably getting more traffic then them for this particular search phrase.

In other words, I get more click-thrus because my site delivers what the searcher is looking for even though it’s ranked only at number 5. In other words, it’s not just about ranking but also grabbing a person’s attention with your page title and meta description/page content that brings in the wanted traffic. The same can be said if the first 5 websites are all about the same topic but one of them has a more attractive title that grabs the user’s attention.

In the end good copywriting especially in titles still helps a lot in free search traffic as it often equates to good click through rates.

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According to stories I’ve seen on the net here, here and here, the fish does a pretty good job in eating away the dead skin cells found on the feet. Some even have the fish nibble on their entire body.

The fish are toothless so they can only eat away the dead skin cells and can’t harm the living ones. In any situation, the fish leaves behind skin that looks much younger than before. I’d really love to have one of these cool spa treatments - and maybe start a business of my own too.

The Livescience Article can be found here.

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I haven’t contacted Pasay Central Office yet but that’s beside the point. Thing is, my mail should have arrived already. For those who don’t know, getting my Google Adsense pin is very very important because I won’t be able to get my money from Google if I don’t get that pin.

So, what’s wrong with the Philippine Postal Corporation? What’s taking them too long to deliver all those mails?

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The movie gives a good intro of the Joker’s bad attitude in the very beginning in a bank robbery scenario. An intro which tells that The Joker is a double-crossing maniac and a psychotic villain who cannot be trusted. Heath Ledger did well in portraying evil Joker allthroughout the movie and is one of the reasons why I didn’t get bored even though the movie is a bit long.

Then of course we have Christian Bale as The Batman who in this movie seems to have played a role second only to The Joker - at least in my opinion. The “dark side” of The Batman is revealed when he finally gets pissed of The Joker while interrogating him. His batmobile was destroyed in the movie only to reveal the batcycle which doubled as an escape module for the batmobile. And oh, I loved the Lamborghini. Batman got a new lighter suit which he requested Lucius Fox to create because the older suit was heavy and made him slow.

Aaron Eckhart played the role of Harvey Dent, Gotham city’s new District Attorney who was also called the “White Knight” by the Gotham’s people. He teamed up with The Batman and Lt. Jim Gordon in sacking the city’s mob which kindled Joker’s passion even more. He eventually turned into “Two-face” after half of his face got burned in a building explosion planned by The Joker.

Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon) once more played a good role as a supporter of The Batman and is a bit more involved in this movie than the previous one. He saved the mayor and even saved Batman himself only to end up with his family being held hostage by Two-face.

All-in-all the movie is packed with a good balance of action and story which I think will be enjoyed by adrenalin junkies and critics alike but I think it would have been better named “The Joker” than “The Dark Knight”. A 5 out of 5 for this movie.

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Fact is hybrid cars are very effective in defending this planet against global warming. So, how do hybrid cars help the environment? They help by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere as well by reducing our dependency on fossil fuels. They also help individuals financially by getting more mileage for each gallon of fuel used. Honestly, the only thing I can think of that doesn’t benefit from hybrid cars are the oil companies and the corrupt government officials who milk the oil companies for money.

Believe it or not, hybrid technology has been around for decades and we’ve been watching it on the news for a long time now. Is it a mature technology? By all means it is and the only reason why we’re not seeing it a lot is probably because governments around the world don’t want it to be seen - again for financial reasons.

Is it bad for the economy? Of course not! The only thing that it’ll damage are the personal financial gains of a few people who depend on the oil industry to sustain their vampire-like blood-sucking habits.

So I say let’s do our best to get rid or at least reduce our dependency on oil. Let’s go and convert our cars to hybrid! A couple of sites that might help you in this are:

• Burn Water - with Video
• Water Car Pro - with Video

Watch the videos on these sites and see water power in action.

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I made a few searches online and found two different approaches. The more traditional method is to have a small electric generator installed to your car that charges a set of batteries while running on gasoline. When enough power is stored in the batteries, it then switches to “electric mode” by turning off the gasoline engine and switching on the electric motor. The problem with this is that there’s no way to do it easily.

The other method on the other hand can be achieved by installing a device to the car engine that extracts hydrogen from water and mixes the produced hydrogen with the existing fuel-air mixture. This approach is way lot easier and can be done by any experienced mechanic. The idea behind this method is based on the fact that hydrogen is a flammable gas that is abundantly stored in ordinary water. The beauty of this method is that it does not require much modification to the car that is to be converted.

There are a few who offer such a device on the internet. I’ve listed a couple below just in case you’re interested:

• Burn Water - with Video
• Water Car Pro - with Video

So, how do you convert your car to a hybrid? Apparently, it’s not that difficult. With proper knowledge, the right tools and some water, it can actually be done.

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