Smurfette's New Writeups

Starbuck 2, The Clone (thing)

2000-09-19T12:02:19Z

Canadian researchers have cloned a male calf from the cells of Canada's world-renowned Starbuck Holstein Bull, which sired more than 200,000 offspring! This, now 3 years after the controversial ground-breaking cloning experiment in 1997 that produced Dolly The Sheep, now happily living in Scotland, and who gave birth to lambs for the 3rd consecutive spring this year.

The original Starbuck died at the age of 20 in 1998. He was famous for his sturdy dairy frame and his superb feet and legs. As a result, his frozen sperm was sold in more than 70 countries, and extended the genetic line of this near-perfect specimen of a bull beyond his natural lifespan.

This clone, temporarily known as Starbuck 2, was born on September 7th 2000 and weighed 55 kilograms (120 pounds) at birth.

The most and least expensive cities in the world (place)

2000-09-15T12:19:59Z

Carried out by the UBS, and according to a Swiss bank survery, Tokyo is by far the world's most expensive city to live in. The survey compares prices and salaries in 58 cities.

Tokyo comes out top, followed by New York and Zurich, with Bombay and Budapest bringing up the rear.Geneva is in ninth place, just below London.

Food accounts for a big proportion of the weekly budget in these cities. In Tokyo, a basket of items would cost $765, which is more than double the average price. Some consolation though, is that the salaries are the highest in the world.

Incomes are also much higher than average in the Swiss cities and New York, however they do work some of the longest hours, and for the Americans who get around 11 days leave a year...there is little respite. This compares with the generous 31 days offered to workers in Madrid.

There is a big difference in the cost of living in Asia…

Higgs (thing)

2000-09-08T12:21:04Z

European Scientists have obtained tantalising evidence of a subatomic particle called the Higgs. It is thought to give substance to all other matter in the Universe. The observation was made in the last month of an underground experiment that has been running since the late 1980's at the CERN laboratory near Geneva.

Discovering the Higgs particle has been one of the prime goals of physics in the past decade. Also known as the God particle , the Higgs particle holds a key place in the modern theory of matter.

First proposed in the 1960's by Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, the particle is imagined to give mass or weight to the other fundamental constituents of atoms. The particles are created by smashing atoms into each other at close to the speed of light. Vast detectors the size of warehouses pick up the debris from the collisions, and in the past 3 months CERN physicists have identified just 3 events in which something resembling the Higgs particle appeared.

vomit (thing)

2000-09-07T12:25:28Z

Scientists today said there was a crude but simple explanation for mysterious bouts of food poisoning.

It only takes one vomiting diner to infect an entire restaurant, they concluded.

Vomit is astonishingly effective at spreading viruses, the researchers found, with one diner being sick at a table spraying a nasty infection far and wide "like an aerosol".This surprising discovery means slack hygiene in the kitchen is not always to blame for outbreaks of food poisoning.

Public health scientists investigating how 52 diners fell ill at a hotel restaurant concluded the cause was a woman who had been sick at one of the 6 tables. The kitchen was quickly exonerated as being the source of the infection, the real culprit emerging when the scientists plotted the seating arrangements of those hit by the virus, New Scientist reported.

They found that 91% of the people on the same table as the woman had fallen victim, along with 76% and 56% of…

Microsoft (thing)

2000-09-07T09:18:41Z

1975 was the year Microsoft was born. Today, this software giant is 25 years old.

To start, the company didn't even have a name, it wasn't until November 1975 that the name Micro-Soft was coined - nearly a year after co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen first teamed up. Despite the recent publicity, there is more to the Redmond, Washington company than Windows and anti-trust trials.

1975 - Harvard dropout Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen created Basic, the first programme for a P-C, and set up shop in New Mexico.

1977 - Microsoft shipped Fortran, it's second product. (soon after, business began to pick up.)

1981 - a year after moving the Microsoft headquarters from New Mexico to Washington State, I-B-M introduced it's first personal computer. It just happened to run on Microsoft's 16-bit operating system M-S-dos 1.0, Basic, Cobol and Pascal.

1983 -…

Def Leppard (thing)

2000-09-06T15:12:59Z

Def Leppard's current line-up is Vivian Campbell on guitar and vocals, Rick "Sav" Savage on bass and vocals, Joe Elliott on lead and vocals, Phil Collen on guitars and vocals and Rick Allen on drums.

In 1977, Rick Savage started Atomic Mass with Peter Willis in Sheffield,Uk. Pete got both Steve "Steamin" Clark, who became the 2nd guitarist, and Joe Elliott, lead vocalist in the band. Drummer Tony Kenning completed the line-up, and Def Leppard was born.

Officially, they have released 9 albums between 1980 and 1999.

Discography detailed by ShadowLost.