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Home » Headlines » Science » The possible world's largest snake, died shortly after its capture
The possible world's largest snake, died shortly after its capture
By Melany Mejias / Wednesday, 13 Apr 2016 08:03PM
Paya Terubong, Malaysia – What could be the world's largest snake ever seen alive was captured last Thursday under a tree in Paya Terubong, Malaysia, by the Penang Civil Defence Department. An official told The Guardian it took his team half-hour to subdue the eight-meter-long, record-braking reticulated python. But the 250Kg snake mysteriously died Sunday night just after giving birth.
It remains unclear the cause of its death, but a video released on the Malaysian Star website features a man kicking it, which suggests that the python was not handled properly after its capture. Muhammad Aizat, another member of the town's Civil Defense Department team, told the BBC that she made have died from the stress of being chased right before giving birth.
What could have been the world's largest snake ever found, died just days after its capture. Credit: Business Insider
Stephen Secor, a professor in the department of University of Alabama's Biological Sciences, said the Malaysian python could have laid 75 eggs at one time.
An official measurement is yet to be confirmed so it can be documented as the world's longest python ever seen alive.
The world's largest reticulated pythons reside in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is home to the longest reticulated pythons in the world, as the beasts are born to grow indefinitely but a slower rate with age. They are known for being slender, rather than heavy.
The current Guinness World Record-holder is Medusa, a 7.6-meter-long reticulated python who lives in Kansas City, at the Edge of Hell Haunted House. The snake, which was caught in October 2011, has eaten a 40-pound deer for dinner. Its predecessor was a bit shorter reticulated python called Fluffy.
Source: Washington Post
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Q: Reflection: Why are there methods like setAccessible()? Just wondering, why did the people who invented Java write methods like setAccessible(boolean flag), which makes the access-modifiers (specially private) useless and cannot protect fields, methods, and constructors from being reached? Look at the following simple example:
public class BankAccount
{
    private double balance = 100.0;

    public boolean withdrawCash(double cash)
    {
        if(cash <= balance)
        {
            balance -= cash;
            System.out.println("You have withdrawn " + cash + " dollars! The new balance is: " + balance);
            return true;
        }
        else System.out.println("Sorry, your balance (" + balance + ") is less than what you have requested (" + cash + ")!");
        return false;
    }
}

import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        BankAccount myAccount = new BankAccount();
        myAccount.withdrawCash(150);

        Field f = BankAccount.class.getDeclaredFields()[0];
        f.setAccessible(true);
        f.set(myAccount, 1000000); // I am a millionaire now ;)

        myAccount.withdrawCash(500000);
    }
}

OUTPUT:
Sorry, your balance (100.0) is less than what you have requested
(150.0)! You have withdrawn 500000.0 dollars! The new balance is: 500000.0

A: Because some code is trusted code -- i.e., if a local application wants to do this, maybe it's not a big deal. For untrusted code, though -- i.e., an applet, or a web start application, or RMI stubs, or any other downloaded code -- there's a SecurityManager in place, which (generally based on a policy file) has the opportunity to say "Sorry, Charlie" and deny the setAccessible() request.

A: Well, once you have released a Java program, anyone is free to reverse engineer, or de-compile, it anyways, so if someone wanted it badly enough, they would probably be able to access your your "privates" anyway.
What you can do however, is to forbid any foreign code to access your stuff in your runtime. That is, if you're for instance using someone else's code you could disable reflections, access to files etc before those libraries are used.
Search for ClassLoader and Security Manager to find out more. Here's something that looks relevant.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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"Endgame" Cast Finalized For Long Wharf; "Buyer and Cellar" and "Hairspray" on TV
By Christopher Arnott
"Buyer and Cellar" and "Hairspray Live!" to Air; "Endgame" cast is complete; rock theater updates and more.
Long Wharf Theatre has announced the rest of the cast for the eagerly awaited production of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," which plays the theater's Stage II space Jan. 5 through Feb. 5. Besides the already announced Brian Dennehy as Hamm and Reg E. Cathey as Clov, the show features Joe Grifasi as Nagg and Lynn Cohen as Nell.
Grifasi appeared with Dennehy in Eugene O'Neill's "Hughie" at the Long Wharf in 2008, and has acted and directed at the Yale Rep. He also directed Carmen de Lavallade's solo performance "As I Remember It" for the Arts & Ideas festival in the summer of 2015. His many film credits include "The Deerhunter," "The Hudsucker Proxy" and, this year, "Baked in Brooklyn." Lynn Cohen has over a dozen cool Broadway or off-Broadway credits, including "Big Love" and "Ivanov." On big and small screens, she's known as Mags in "The Hunger Games," Magda in "Sex and the City" and Judge Mizener on "Law and Order."
The set design of "Endgame" will be by Eugene Lee, the longtime "Saturday Night Live" production designer whose many Long Wharf shows have included "Hughie" and several Athol Fugard dramas. Costumes will be by Kaye Voyce, lighting by Jennifer Tipton and stage management by Kathy Snyder. Details at longhwarf.org.
Joe Grifasi, left, and Brian Dennehy as they appeared in Robert Falls' production of Eugene O'Neill's "Hughie," which played the Long Wharf Theatre in 2008. The pair appear together again in Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," at the Long Wharf Jan. 5 through Feb. 5. (Liz Lauren)
Join The Dance
The Connecticut Dance Alliance is holding a Greater Hartford Regional Meeting 9 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 14. The event, which is free and "open to anyone interested," will be held in the new offices of the Judy Dworin Dance Project at 75 Charter Oak Ave., Building One, Suite 206, Hartford. Speakers include Dworin, Jose Feliciano of the Greater Hartford Arts Council and CDA president Barbara Ally. RSVP to info@ctdanceall.org.
Buyer, Cellar, Broadcaster
When Michael Urie returned to perform Jonathan Tolins' play "Buyer and Cellar" at Westport Country Playhouse this past summer, with the show's original director Stephen Brackett and all its original designers, it was partly because the producers wanted to film it. That filmed version will be broadcast 10 p.m. Monday, Dec. 5, on New York's public TV station THIRTEEN. It will be shown again on the same channel Dec. 11 at 1 a.m.
Maybe Barbra Streisand will finally see the thing now.
[From CTNow] Here's what's happening for Black History Month at Connecticut's stages, museums and libraries »
Streisand is a major presence in the one-man comedy, about a young actor, Alex More, who is hired to work in the basement-level shopping mall that the megastar has built in her Malibu home. Urie originated the role of Alex in 2013. "Buyer and Cellar" has had many regional theater productions, including one starring Tom Lenk at TheaterWorks in February.
The David Bowie musical "Lazarus" as it appeared at the New York Theatre Workshop earlier this year. The show opened in London in November. (Jan Versweyveld)
Theater That Rocks
For the most in-depth reports on cutting-edge music/theater projects, you're often better off reading rock music magazines than theater journals or Broadway websites.
The December issue of the British rock mag MOJO has an interview with Lars Ulrich, of Metallica, in which the drummer discusses "Lulu," the band's controversial 2011 collaboration with Lou Reed based on works by the German expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind. The same issue has an extensive article on the David Bowie musical "Lazarus," which opened its London production in November. That article has a sidebar about Bowie's starring role in the play "The Elephant Man" on Broadway in 1980.
The January issue of MOJO revealed that one of the most acclaimed rock theater events of the past decade was finally getting a live-album release this month, but that there probably won't be a video. Kate Bush's career-spanning multimedia extravaganza "Before the Dawn" was staged in a 22-performance run at a single theater, the Hammersmith Apollo in London, in 2014. The performance featured dance, puppetry, masks, shadow theater, projections and illusions. The live album just came out (Dec. 2), two years after the shows happened. Bush told MOJO there were no plans to release the concerts as a film. Ah, but could somebody else stage it sometime if they wanted? Please?
'In Transit' CT Connection
Latest Arts & Theater
Here's what's happening for Black History Month at Connecticut's stages, museums and libraries
Courant art picks for Jan. 30-Feb. 5 include a lot of music and a little arsenic
Theater review: Despite no-frills set, fiesty, fiery 'What the Constitution Means to Me' ideal for The Bushnell
The new, all a cappella musical "In Transit" is in previews at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York, with opening night scheduled for Dec. 11. The show is co-written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth, and is directed by Kathleen Marshall. Connecticut connections abound. "In Transit" was developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford in 2008. The O'Neill center threw a gala in honor of Anderson-Lopez and her husband/"Frozen" collaborator Robert Lopez ("Avenue Q," "Book of Mormon") this past summer. Marshall directed the new musical "My Paris" at the Goodspeed in 2015 and the Long Wharf in 2016. Adam Bashian, who's making his Broadway debut in "In Transit," played Jigger in a 2011 production of "Carousel" at the Summer Theatre of New Canaan. (Oh, we can get pretty darn obscure with these local angles.)
New Hair Style
The TV remake of "Hairspray — The Musical," now known as "Hairspray Live!", is finally upon us, airing 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7, on NBC. It stars Maddie Baillio as Tracy Turnbladd, with a host of Broadway stars: Harvey Fierstein, Kristin Chenoweth, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Jennifer Hudson…
"Hairspray Live!" is directed by Kenny Leon, known for a slew of Broadway hits as well as major productions of August Wilson plays, but whom Connecticut audiences may also remember for the two wonderful Pearl Cleage plays he brought to the state a couple of decades ago: "Blues for an Alabama Sky" at Hartford Stage in 1996 and "Flyin' West" at the Long Wharf in 1994. Back then, Leon was the artistic director of the Alliance Theatre Company in Atlanta.
A look ahead at some things to add to your calendar. More events at ctnow.com/thingstodo.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Decatur County Solar Facility
Decatur County, Georgia
During World War II, Bainbridge Army Airfield trained military pilots. Today, the site (now the Decatur County Industrial Air Park) produces more than 200,000 megawatt-hours of solar-generated electricity every year—enough to power more than 18,200 homes.
Cloverly's portfolio includes Renewable Energy Credits from the Decatur County Solar Facility, the smaller of the two solar farms at the site. Its rated capacity is 19 megawatts. Its larger neighbor, the Decatur Parkway Solar Facility, is rated at 84 megawatts. Southern Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, owns both installations. They stand alongside runways and a golf course at the industrial air park, which is just outside Bainbridge in the southwest corner of Georgia.
The county loves them. "All the equipment out here is taxable property, so they're more than twice as large as the number two taxpayer in the county," said Rick McCaskill, executive director of the Development Authority of Bainbridge and Decatur County. "And all they're doing is using our sunshine, so it's a really good deal."
Renewable Energy Credits are also called renewable energy certificates or RECs. Each REC certifies that 1 megawatt-hour of electricity has been generated by renewable means and delivered to the electric grid. RECs represent the rights to all of the environmental benefits of generating energy by clean, renewable means. Buying them helps fund solar farms and other renewable-energy projects.
For a list of all the projects in our portfolio and an interactive map, see https://cloverly.com/offset-map. Learn more about Cloverly at https://cloverly.com.
19 megawatts
Renewable Energy Certificate


Laura Johnson Bailey was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She attended the University of Alabama to obtain her Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice. While there, she was the president of Alpha Phi Sigma and received the Department of Criminal Justice Chairperson's Award of Merit. Ms. Bailey then obtained her Juris Doctor from the Florida State University College of Law. During law school, she obtained her Certificate of Comparative International Law from Oxford University in Oxford, England, and was awarded the Certificate for Distinguished Pro Bono Service for serving as a pro bono law clerk to the Honorable Judge Kathleen F. Dekker in the Felony Division of the Circuit Court for the Second Judicial Circuit of Florida.
Upon graduating from law school, Ms. Bailey spent 12 years defending corporations and insurance companies in personal injury matters ranging from car accidents, dog bites, and premises liability, to wrongful death, in Florida and Georgia. She has repeatedly lectured on new developments in insurance and tort law for the Tort and Insurance Practice Section of the State Bar of Georgia. In 2017, she joined Morgan & Morgan to pursue a more meaningful career as a zealous advocate for those injured by the negligence of others. Ms. Bailey is honored to have the opportunity to use her technical knowledge of the law, and her insight into how corporations and insurance companies defend injury claims, for the benefit of her clients.
Outside of the practice of law, Ms. Bailey is passionate about animal rescue and welfare, and volunteers with several rescue groups throughout Georgia. She is a member of Buckhead Church.


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Fear of a smell can be passed down several generations
Life 1 December 2013
By Linda Geddes
Remember that scent
(Image: M. Miyata/Getty)
Editorial: "Mouse memory inheritance may revitalise Lamarckism"
If a particular smell makes you uneasy but you don't know why, perhaps you should ask your grandparents.
Mice whose father or grandfather learned to associate the smell of cherry blossom with an electric shock became more jumpy in the presence of the same odour, and responded to lower concentrations of it than normal mice.
This work, led by Brian Dias at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, provides some of the best evidence yet for the inheritance of memories or traits across generations. It also sheds fresh light on the biological mechanism by which such traits might be passed down generations.
Previous studies have hinted that stressful events can affect the emotional behaviour or metabolism of future generations, possibly through chemical changes to the DNA that can turn genes off and on – a mechanism known as epigenetic inheritance.
However, although epigenetic changes have been observed, identifying which ones are relevant is a bit like searching for a needle in a haystack. That's because many genes control behaviours or metabolic diseases like obesity.
Smell is a little different though. Individual odours, such as acetophenone (which smells like cherry blossom) often bind to specific receptors on the olfactory bulb, the interface between the nose and brain – in this case to a smell receptor called M71. "Since we know the gene encoding this receptor, we can look at it and the haystack becomes a little smaller," says Dias.
Male mice have previously been conditioned to associate the smell of acetophenone with an electric shock and became fearful of it as a result. They also developed more M71 receptors, which enabled them to detect acetophenone at much lower levels.
Dias and Kerry Ressler, also at Emory, took sperm from these conditioned mice and used it to inseminate female mice. When the offspring from these pairings were exposed to acetophenone they were more jumpy than when they smelled a neutral odour – even though they had never smelled acetophenone before. The same was true of their grandpups. When the pups were exposed to a different smell, they showed no enhanced response.
Brain change
The offspring also had more M71 receptors in their brains than did mice born from parents who had not had the smell conditioning and were more sensitive to it. "There was more real estate devoted to this particular odorant receptor, suggesting that there's something in the sperm that is informing or allowing that information to be inherited," Dias says.
DNA sequencing of sperm from the grandfather mice and their sons also revealed epigenetic marks on the gene encoding M71 that weren't seen in control mice.
Female mice conditioned to fear acetophenone also appeared to transmit this "memory" to the next generation, although epigenetic marks on their eggs have not yet been analysed.
Moshe Szyf at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, describes the results as unprecedented and startling. "It suggests that there is a very particular, specific and organised transgenerational transfer of information," he says.
Marcus Pembrey at the University of Bristol, UK agrees. "It is high time public-health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously," he says. "I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally, without taking a multigenerational approach."
Permanent changes?
The mystery remains as to how a bad memory could get transmitted to the sperm and prompt chemical changes to the DNA, or how these chemical changes could be translated into a behavioural change in offspring – although some theories exist (see "How to inherit a memory, below"). Another question is how many generations such epigenetic changes will affect. "Does the epigenetic change eventually become genetic and then it is fixed?" asks Szyf.
Not everyone is convinced that smell memories can be inherited, however. For one thing, not all descendants of smell-conditioned mice were easier to startle than control mice – it is not yet known why. Neither have Dias and Ressler provided evidence that the epigenetic changes they found in the sperm were directly responsible for functional changes in the brain.
"The idea that something you smelled and became sensitive to can be transmitted across generations is astonishing, but I think it needs truly robust data to support it," says Isabelle Mansuy at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. "It's such an important question – one that touches fundamental concepts in genetics and epigenetics – so it's extremely important that the experimental design be rigorous and data be carefully interpreted."
Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.3594
How to inherit a memory
How could a memory of a smell wheedle its way into eggs and sperm and change the behaviour of children and grandchildren?
The discovery, by Brian Dias at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, that this seems to happen in mice (see main story) makes evolutionary sense. It would be beneficial to teaching future generations to recognise the scent of dangers, for example – but we are still a long way from understanding the mechanics of the process.
If it does happen, it must mean that there are mechanisms by which the brain could signal to the sperm, says Moshe Szyf at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
One candidate is microRNA. These small non-coding fragments of RNA may help to guide the epigenetic machinery to specific locations on the DNA. There it helps genes to become more or less active by adding or removing methyl groups.
"It's possible that microRNAs serve as intercellular messengers and go into the bloodstream and affect the potential transcription of these genes in the sperm," says Dias.
Hormones are another possibility. The brain secretes them, and they can affect the expression of multiple genes, so it is also possible that smell receptors on sperm respond to odour molecules that find their way into the circulation, says Dias.
However, it's not just recognition of a smell that seems to be transmitted down generations. "It's connecting the smell with the fear response," Szyf says. Although Dias has identified one gene that is modified in response to smell-conditioning, Szyf suspects that there will be many more.
The trouble is that without knowing which genes are involved, it is difficult to investigate how they are being altered.
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> Inicio > Investigación > Áreas de investigación > Fichas de Investigación En > Fichas > Faculty of Medicine > Bacterias & Cancer
Bacterias & Cancer
Academic Unit: Faculty of Medicine
Our focus is to contribute with the knowledge of the infectious agents related to cancer through basic and clinical scientific research, teaching, community outreach, and postulation of solutions in public health related to this field. This is based on a qualified team committed to the university community and the general public. The team's principles are ethics, efficiency, inclusion, biodiversity, and social impact.
Bacteriology.
Oncogenesis.
Alonso Martínez, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Postdoc in Molecular Biology.
Imperial College, England.
alonso.martinez1@udea.edu.co
Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center Louisiana State University.
Health Sciences Center (United States of America).
Laboratory of Biotechnology and Genomic Bioinformatics.
National School of Biological Sciences - Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Mexico).
Universidad de Santander (UDES, Colombia).
Corporación Universitaria Remington (Colombia).
Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (Uniminuto, Colombia).
Genes S.A.S (Colombia).
The National Cancer Institute: Colombia.
Determination of Helicobacter pylori virulence factors; possible phylogenetic associations and its relationship with gastroduodenal diseases.
Design of a model of gastric cancer in SCID mice through genetic engineering of normal cells of human gastric mucosa.
Prevalence and molecular characterization of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae in homeless and vulnerable population of Medellin.
Methylation status of the RASSF1A gene promoter and its association with the BRAF-V600E mutation in patients with papillary thyroid carcinomas, National Cancer Institute.
Generation of new knowledge and publication of articles in high national and international impact journals.
Human talent training in undergraduate, master's and doctoral programs.
Knowledge transfer in health promotion and disease prevention programs.
Offer of bacteriology and articulation of community outreach services with healthcare institutions.
Methylation status of tumor suppressor genes.
Bacterial strain identification for research works.
Molecular diagnosis of BRAF-V600E mutation.
H. pylori culture and fast urease test.
Susceptibility pattern of Helicobacter pylori by E-test and agar dilution.
Phenotypic and genotypic susceptibility pattern detection of Enterobacteria producing ESBL.
Stool test.
Gram staining and aerobic bacteria culture.
Fast HIV and Syphilis Test.
Chlamydia serological test.
Vaginal discharge study.
Urine cytochemical.
https://bit.ly/34sXcTq