Astronauts Suffer Agonizing, High-Pitched Death After Helium Leak

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Yahoo News has a good audio/visual report on a team of runners that recently finished the first run all the way across the Sahara Desert. And you thought your morning jog was grueling.

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The first in a planned series of animations for Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, "The Inner Life of the Cell" takes undergrads beyond textbooks and vividly illustrates the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This animation explores the different cellular environments in which these communications take place. It's also really beautiful.

Cathy Seipp is facing the end of her battle with lung cancer. Her family is with her. Cathy may be familiar to a few of you who offered advice on experimental drug combinations after her standard treatment failed (not that it should matter, but she never smoked in her life). To those who don't know her, she's a sweet, classy and smart as hell journalist and mother of beautiful Maia. The curious can find more about Cathy here and over here.

Update: Cathy passed away this afternoon. And Science Blog is really, really sad about that.

Spotted this via Gizmodo, which grabbed it via MAKE. A homemade FM transmitter for the little-loved (but I own one!) iPod Shuffle.

The swirling eye of Hurricane Ivan was photographed above from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday as the storm's sustained 200 kilometer per hour winds wreaked havoc in the Caribbean. The bad news is that hurricane season in the Atlantic typically lasts until November 30, still over two months away. The more immediate bad news is that tropical storm Jeanne is next in line coming across the mid-Atlantic Ocean and could pass Puerto Rico sometime today.

Kent Brockman: Senator Dole, why should people vote for you instead of President Clinton?

Kang: It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed. DOOMED!

Kent: Well, a refreshingly frank response there from senator Bob Dole. ............

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles.

[audience gasps in terror]

Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.

[murmurs]

Man1: He's right, this is a two-party system.