Eideard

Oregano doesn’t only give a pizza its typical taste. Researchers have discovered that this spice also contains a substance which, amongst other qualities, appears to help cure inflammations.

The researchers administered its active ingredient – known as beta-caryophyllin (E-BCP) – to mice with inflamed paws. In seven out of ten cases there was a subsequent improvement in the symptoms. E-BCP might possibly be of use against disorders such as osteoporosis and arteriosclerosis.

E-BCP is a typical ingredient of many spices and food plants. Hence it is also found in plants such as basil, rosemary, cinnamon, and black pepper. Every day, we consume up to 200 milligrams of this annular molecule.

No-one had previously realised that it can have a beneficial effect on the body. “Our results have revealed that E-BCP inhibits inflammation”, declared Professor Dr. Andreas Zimmer of the Life&Brain-Zentrum in Bonn. But that’s not all: “experiments on mice have shown that this substance is also effective against osteoporosis.”

Get into the details of the research and you find other connections to the Mediterranean diet.

Another great reason I’m pleased I grew up sustained by cooking from the Italian half of my family.

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From the series: Windmills in China

China’s installed wind power generating capacity is expected to top 10 gigawatts (GW) by the end of this year and to exceed 20 GW in two years, far above government targets.

Beijing said in March that it had raised its target for installed wind power capacity to 10 GW in 2010 from a previous goal of 5 GW, as it seeks to increase the use of renewable energy.

Traditional power generators, new investors and even the State Grid Corp, the largest of China’s grid duopoly, have rushed into the booming clean energy sector amid record oil prices and soaring coal costs.

China will expedite the development of 1-GW level wind farms and build “the Three Gorges of wind power” in the Hosi Corridor, the coastal regions and Inner Mongolia, said Zhou Xi’an, a department chief of the National Energy Leading Office.

Uneven development throughout the world is a reflection of the political will of citizens and government together. Never reduce the quantity and quality of effort you try to bring to bear upon your own government to act on behalf of people’s needs.

Astronomer Olly Penrice is getting excited. “Don’t look, don’t look! In a minute you will see it and be much amazed…”

I put my eye to the telescope, a fat barrel of a thing fixed on a tripod embedded in concrete, and suddenly I’m floating above the craters and plains of our nearest neighbour. It feels like flying over the surface at 20 miles high. The view is too big to fit in the eyepiece in one go, so Olly hands me a gently glowing remote control and instructs me to look north, south, east and west.

I press north and the telescope whirs gently up the way, revealing jagged-edge craters and flat, silvery volcanic plains. I explore, whirring left, right, up and down, before handing on the remote control and eyepiece to the person waiting next to me. He too gazes in wonder, and then quietly says, “It looks like it’s made of cheese, Gromit.”

Another lovely piece in the Guardian – making me want to take my wife to Provence. Show her all the lovely parts of the countryside which look very much like where we live outside of Santa Fe.

And to see the night sky from another special vantage point.

NBC…has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who killed himself when confronted with cameras for the documentary series “To Catch a Predator.”

The family of Louis Conradt Jr. filed a $105 million lawsuit last year against NBC, which ran the “Predator” episode as part of its “Dateline NBC” news magazine series. The network agreed to pay the family an undisclosed amount…

Conradt, an assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas, had reportedly sent sexually explicit messages to a person he believed was underage. It turned out that the other person was a volunteer for Perverted Justice, an activist group that helps set up stings to catch child sexual predators. The group was a paid consultant for NBC in the “Predator” series.

The volunteer posing as a child arranged to meet with Conradt in November 2006, as part of a four-day sting in Texas facilitated by a local police department. The sting led to 25 arrests, but Conradt did not show up at the bait house, so the local police, encouraged by NBC (according to the lawsuit), decided to arrest him at his home. As police officers and camera crews entered the home, Conradt shot himself in the head.

Last winter, when the ABC news magazine “20/20″ investigated the “Predator” sting, Walter Weiss, a former detective with the police department that partnered with “Dateline,” said: “I understand he took his own life, but I have a feeling that he took his own life when he looked out the door and saw there was a bunch of television cameras outside.”

There has always been an element of entrapment about these stings. Often the case. When the sting expands to include “public interest” groups and TV crews – questioning of such tactics should be heightened, not ignored.

The Supreme Court has declared for the first time that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to have a gun, not just the right of the states to maintain militias.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the landmark 5-to-4 decision, said the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In so declaring, the majority found that a gun-control law in the nation’s capital went too far in making it nearly impossible to own a handgun.

But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.

I doubt if this will be a long-standing decision – in the sense of carrying forward for decades. Not at 5 to 4.

Sooner or later, a more broadly-based court will decide thoroughly to support or revise today’s opinion.

In 1978, when Microsoft was three years old and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, there were only a dozen people working for the company – compared with the current number of almost 90 000 employees worldwide.

Thirty years on from the taking of the original photograph, the Microsoft staff who worked at Albuquerque were reunited to recreate the photograph.

Wonder what their net worth is, nowadays?

The chocolate company Mars has announced that it is to decode the genetic structure of the cocoa tree.

Understanding the tree’s DNA could make crop production more resistant to pests, diseases, and water shortages that may come from a warming climate.

Howard-Yana Shapiro, Mars’ global director of plant science, said African farmers stood to benefit the most as they accounted for nearly two-thirds of world cocoa production.

The research would “ultimately improve cocoa trees, yield higher quality cocoa and increase income for farmers”, he told BBC News.

Some of us have a real appetite for this kind of research. Har!

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.

The end-of-life scenario for XP is in process. The announced “schedule” for W7 readies everyone for the next round of improvements.

Thanks, K B

Front on, the vehicle could be mistaken for a nifty sports car, and from the rear it looks like something out of a low-budget science fiction show, all jutting Thunderbirds fins. But the side view is the crucial one – a puzzling mishmash of tubes and wires and water tanks.

This is Inspiration, a steam-powered car built in the UK – in a wooden workshop in the New Forest, Hampshire, to be precise – believed by its designers to be capable of smashing the oldest land speed record.

In August, on the Bonneville salt flats of Utah in the US, superheated steam will rush through almost two miles of the car’s tubing and propel the vehicle at 175mph, a speed that would smash the steam car record of 128mph, established more than a century ago.

All in all, it is a very British kind of project, a mixture of eccentric dreams and clever, patient engineering: a combination of the hi-tech (it has taken brilliant technical knowhow to design tubing able to withstand the sort of heat and pressure that will be generated) and the homespun (an ordinary camping gas valve turns out to be a vital component in the ignition system).

You know, the crew at The Guardian are pretty lucky. They often get to write long, interesting pieces like this. And there really are a heckuva lot of folks like me out here – who really enjoy their writing and what they write about. Which is basically everything!

RTFA.