Free Republic

A psychoactive drug made from human bones is leaving addicts digging up graves in order to get their fix. Police officers are guarding cemeteries in Freetown, Sierra Leone, after more people are turning to the drug Kush. It is made from a variety of toxic substances, with one of its main ingredients is ground-up human bone. Human remains contain traces of sulphur, which allegedly can enhance the affects of drugs. It first emerged in the country around six years ago and induces a hypnotic high which can last for several hours. One former user Abu Bakhar, 25, told Channel 4...

The current work involves the creation of unusual excitons in the material nickel phosphorus trisulfide (NiPS3). These excitons are "dressed" or affected by the environment that surrounds them. In this case that environment is the magnetism. The physicists found that a pulse of light causes each of the little electron "needles" in NiPS3 to start rotating around in a circle. The rotating spins are synchronized and form a wave throughout the material, known as a spin wave. Spin waves can be used in spin electronics, or spintronics... Spintronics essentially uses electrons' spin to go beyond electronics, which is based on...

By incorporating sugar into the web-like architecture of the electrode they have stabilized the sulfur, preventing it from moving and blanketing the lithium electrode. Credit: Monash Energy Institute ________________________________________________________________________________ Simply by adding sugar, researchers from the Monash Energy Institute have created a longer-lasting, lighter, more sustainable rival to the lithium-ion batteries that are essential for aviation, electric vehicles and submarines. The Monash team, assisted by CSIRO, report in today's edition of Nature Communications that using a glucose-based additive on the positive electrode they have managed to stabilize lithium-sulfur battery technology, long touted as the basis for the next generation of...

NASA has focused its vegetable-growing efforts on lettuce, which astronauts tend to while they live on the International Space Station. The orbiting laboratory poses different challenges than the Red Planet's surface, however, and crops that Mars visitors can expect to rely on may not be to everyone's taste. "In fact, in this particular area the soils are more alkaline so this would be OK for growing asparagus and beans and not potatoes," NASA chief scientist Jim Green said during a presentation held here last week as part of the International Astronautical Congress of soil studied by NASA's Curiosity rover. However...

A river near Yellowstone National Park suddenly changed colors and began to boil and emit yellowish noxious gases. Some witnesses wondered if "we're all about to die." Is this just another volcanic vent or a sign of bad things to come? The Shoshone River runs through Cody, Wyoming, just east of Yellowstone National Park. It's close enough to be a 'canary in a coal mine' for unusual geothermic events and that's precisely what happened on March 25th when photographer Dewey Vanderhoff spotted the Shoshone River mysteriously boiling ... and more... Yes, it's most likely a volcanic vent, but it's in...

Enlarge ImageGreen gold. A complex geological process produced this sample of nickel sulfide. Credit: Marco Fiorentini, Science Those spare nickels in your pocket might not be there without the help of ancient volcanoes that blasted sulfur dioxide into the sky billions of years ago. The discovery solves a mystery that has dogged researchers for decades, says geochemist Edward Ripley of Indiana University, Bloomington, who was not affiliated with the study. The nickel in ore deposits is actually nickel sulfide, a compound that is rich in sulfur. The sulfur is "critically important," says geochemist Douglas Rumble of the Carnegie Institution...

A series of Earth-shattering volcanic eruptions in Iceland during the Middle Ages may have spurred the people living there to turn away from their pagan gods and convert to Christianity, a new study finds. The discovery came about thanks to precise dating of the volcanic eruptions, which spewed lava about two generations before the Icelandic people changed religions. But why would volcanic eruptions turn people toward monotheism? The answer has to do with the "Voluspa," a prominent medieval poem that predicted a fiery eruption would help lead to the downfall of the pagan gods, the researchers said. Historians have long...

If you’ve ever noticed a strange, not-entirely-pleasant scent coming from your urine after you eat asparagus, you’re definitely not alone. Distinguished thinkers as varied as Scottish mathematician and physician John Arbuthnot (who wrote in a 1731 book that “asparagus…affects the urine with a foetid smell”) and Marcel Proust (who wrote how the vegetable “transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume”) have commented on the phenomenon. Even Benjamin Franklin took note, stating in a 1781 letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels that “A few Stems of Asparagus eaten, shall give our Urine a disagreable Odour” (he was trying to...

The streets of San Francisco are used to weird smells. However, on Wednesday morning, a mysterious rotten-egg and sulfur-like odor that baffled city and federal agencies and prompted dozens of phone calls of complaint. [Snip] The calls initially came from the downtown area and then moved toward the Marina, Sunset and Richmond neighborhoods. SFist said complaints also poured in from Bayview, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, the Marina, SoMa and the Mission. Officials with SF Environment, San Francisco Public Works and the city’s Department of Emergency Management, as well as Recology, were reportedly notified, KQED reports.

This is a plume of ash from the Sarychev volcano in the Kuril islands, northeast of Japan. The picture was taken from the International Space Station during the early stage of the volcano’s eruption on June 12, 2009. Credits: NASAFrom NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER and the “maybe they should have checked with Willis first” department comes this modeling claim:In June, 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines exploded, blasting millions of tons of ash and gas over 20 miles high – deep into the stratosphere, a stable layer of our atmosphere above most of the clouds and weather. Certain gases...

Engineers at the University of Maryland have created a battery that is made entirely out of one material, which can both move electricity and store it. "To my knowledge, there has never been any similar work reported," said Dr. Kang Xu of the Army Research Laboratory, a researcher only peripherally related to the study. "It could lead to revolutionary progress in area of solid state batteries." Envision an Oreo cookie. Most batteries have at either end a layer of material for the electrodes like the chocolate cookies to help move ions though the creamy frosting – the electrolyte. Chunsheng Wang,...

Like Earth, the interior of Mars has undergone a process known as differentiation. This is where a planet, due to its physical or chemical compositions, forms into layers, with denser materials concentrated at the center and less dense materials closer to the surface. In Mars’ case, this translates to a core that is between 1700 and 1850 km (1050 – 1150 mi) in radius and composed primarily of iron, nickel and sulfur. This core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that clearly experienced tectonic and volcanic activity in the past, but which now appears to be dormant. Besides silicon and...

The Environmental Protection Agency issued final rules Monday to slash the amount of sulfur in gasoline, which would help cut smog-causing pollution from autos and bring the rest of the country's fuel supply in line with California's standards. The new rule for "Tier 3" gasoline calls for reducing the amount of sulfur in fuel by two-thirds, to 10 parts per million from 30 parts per million. Similar low-sulfur gasoline is already in use in California, Europe, Japan and South Korea. The new gasoline would be available at the pump by January 2017. Cutting sulfur improves the efficiency of catalytic converters...

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez slid into a coma the day before he died of respiratory failure after cancer spread into his lungs, sources say. Chavez's precise condition was one of the world's best-kept secrets since his cancer was announced in June 2011. Since his death this week, however, details have emerged of the 58-year-old president's battle with cancer and the last moments in the hospital with close family and senior aides.

Guillermo Cochez Panamanian politician says the president of Venezuela is deceased Contact with CNN Chile's former ambassador said that since last December 30 President Chavez declared brain dead in Cuba, with which he returned to Venezuela in that state, and therefore it could not be visited by the various leaders who have visited, questioned and denied as the last picture that was published between Chavez and his daughters.

Translated by IASW Physicians caring for Hugo Chávez in Havana have notified his family, the Castro brothers, and the main chavista leaders that their patient will no longer be able to return to his functions as president of Venezuela. This is according to sources in direct contact with his medical team, who also indicate that Chávez has lost his voice completely as a result of medical treatment. His vocal cords have endured permanent damage making recuperation highly unlikely. Speechless and unable to move from the bed in which he has spent the last two months, our sources tell us the...

I know asking if things smell in LA sounds like the beginning of a joke... but I've read some dubious - yet pervasive - claims today that people in the San Fernando Valley, the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, the Northridge/Granada Hills area, Inland Empire in general, etc., are smelling an incredibly sulfurous stench. Inversions layer, Salton Sea rot, waste plant malfunctions all have been theorized but found wanting for various reasons. Reports are that an elementary school closed in the area because kids felt sick. Historically, hydrogen sulphide gas has often been forced out of the ground in...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

After 50 years, fire still burns under Pa. town (A motorist in 2004 drives among the smoldering remains of land near Route 61 in Centralia, Pa. AP file photo) Fifty years ago Sunday, a fire at the town dump ignited an exposed coal seam, setting off a chain of events that eventually led to the demolition of nearly every building in Centralia — a whole community of 1,400 simply gone. All these decades later, the Centralia fire still burns. It also maintains its grip on the popular imagination, drawing visitors from around the world who come to gawk at twisted,...

This is the grim sight that meets sulfur miners who are forced to scrape a living on the site of a live volcano. And not surprisingly, the horrendous conditions are to blame for them having a life expectancy of just 30 years. As these sobering pictures show, around 200 brave souls toil up to 12 hours a day at the top of Ijen volcano, in Indonesia. The men—who earn just £3 a day ($4.76 ATTOW)—carry baskets of hardened yellow sulfur weighing 70 to 90 kg (154-198 lbs) up a steep rocky path from the crater floor around ten times a...