Japan has recently seen an increase in weights in their country and is aiming to curb the growth. The weight gain is largely due to changes in the American diet and the encroachment of American style fast food chains. A traditional Japanese meal of miso soup, vegetables and fish is usually about 600 colories while a Big Mac burger, fries and coke is more than double that at 1,300 total calorie. Companies can face 19 million dollars in penalties, so they are encouraging healthy meals in cafeterias. They are also trying to get people moving by pumping out music through loud speakers, encouraging them to use the stairs, and doing exercises in stairwells. It’s difficult to imagine this in the US or North American. Japan says they can’t force people to lose weight, but they are encouraging it.

The recent videos showing an incredible ball girl catch during a Fresno Grizzlies vs Tacoma Rainiers baseball game are not real but part of a viral video marketing campaign. The video showing a ballgirl jump 6 feet to catch a ball is actually part of a series for Gatorade. The viral video campaign is titled “Ball Girl” and was created by Chicago’s Element 79 Partners ad agency and directed by Baker Smith of harvest, Santa Monica. A lot of advertising agencies are trying to capture the elusive viral video marketing hit. But unfortunately most just look like regular ads slapped onto Youtube. “Ball Girl” looks real - and so has become widely emailed and distributed on the Internet. This makes it a successful viral video marketing campaign. There is even a bit of product placement in the video, if you look close you will see there is a bottle of Gatorade on the ground next to the ball girl’s chair. At this time the creative team from Element 79 responsible for creating the “Ball Girl,” ad and concept was not givent he green light to talk about the project. The “Ball Girl” video was shot on location during and after an actual game between the Fresno Grizzlies and Tacoma Rainiers. The footage was shot on HD and later edited to look like a Grizzlies batter had hit the ball a out past the left field foul line. The shot and catch was completely choreographed with the ball girl played by stuntwoman Phoenix Brown having marks to hit, and the ball being added later in post. The ball girl was attached to wires was pulled up the wall by 2 stuntmen off to the side.
“It was so low-tech,” Smith said of the stunt. “We had her run, and she would jump, and they just gave her a little extra oomph. It was really very, very simple.”
The low tech non-CG effects helped to keep it real looking, and that’s what helped the viral video sell. Other things that help make it look real are the sudden abrupt endings, with the creative team noting that viral videos don’t have the special effects necessary, and the amateurishness is what gves it that pulled-from-TV quality of the video.
The ball girl comes from a real ball girl 20-year old Lindsey Ferris, who in 1996, made not one, but two spectacular catches during a Seattle Mariners - New York Yankees game.
Element 79 Handled the viral video marketing.

Will the cookie diet work? Most experts agree that losing weight is about calorie control, so since calorie restriction is the main premise of the diet, you will lose weight. But then again, if you eat this few calories, your body will start to conserve energy and slow your metabolism. You do not want that to happen. A slow metabolism means you won’t burn calories as fast as you used to, so if you ever go off the diet, you are likely to regain weight.
On a good note Dr. Siegal’s cookies are made from real food, not chemicals or drugs, so there is nothing really bad about them. On a bad note, 800 calories a day is low and hard to do over long periods of time. The person who will most likely benefit from this is Dr. Seigal himself as the diet cookies are not cheap. A week’s supply can cost $70 for 42 cookies. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to mix up some bran, protein powder and sawdust yourself? (please note that last line is a joke - don’t go using that recipe and come crying back to us saying the sawdust has messed up your regularity.)

The cookie diet has been in the media recently because of the the mandjshow.com. We do not know who they are but they must be popular. We do know who Madonna is. Madonna made the cookie diet infamous when she said her husband Guy Ritchie was on it and that he said the cookie diet made him lose interest in sex.

The median price of a home in Sacramento, Calif. was down 35% during the three months ended May 31 compared to the same period last year, according to the real estate web site Trulia.com. In Riverside, Calif. prices fell 29%, while San Diego prices dropped 26%.

“The most severe declines are happening right now,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com. Many of these cities are also among the leaders in foreclosure rates. As more foreclosed properties hit the market, prices are further depressed.

Experts believe that these markets will likely endure total price drops of 50% or more: California’s Central Valley, such as Stockton (-39%), Modesto (-37%) and Bakersfield (-29%).

Outside California, these cities are hard hit Phoenix (-18.8%), Las Vegas (-22%), West Palm Beach, Fla. (-32%) and Cape Coral, Fla. (-35%).

These housing markets may drop even further because people are afraid of overpaying. Local economic condition aren’t helping. Ten of the 11 cities with the highest unemployment rates in the nation are now in central California, with El Centro , at 18.4% in April, leading the way. Other double-digit disaster areas were in Merced (12.3%), Yuba City (11.8%), Modesto (10.7%), Visalia (10.3%), Hanford (10.2%) and Fresno (10%).

Many of these cities are also among the leaders in foreclosure rates. As more foreclosed properties hit the market, prices are further depressed.

According to other experts, the price correction was inevitable as home price gains had simply out-paced income by far too much to be sustained.Historically, the price to income ratio is 1-4 with house prices averaging four times wages. If homes get more expensive, people can’t afford to buy and house prices drop back.

“The housing boom was unprecedented in U.S. history,” said Michael Youngblood, a portfolio analyst with FBR Investment Management, “and the correction will be as well.”

Local price-to-income ratios are still out of whack even after sharp housing price drops. That means house prices still have room to drop.

“Right away we saw the quarter gallery, the windows in the stern, the cannons,” said Jim Kennard. “There was no mistaking. That’s when we started getting excited.” The discovery of the ship wreck was confirmed by The HMS Ontario expert Canadian Arthur Britton Smith, who authored the definitive book on the HMS Ontario.

The loss of the HMS Ontario, is one of the worst-ever disasters recorded on Lake Ontario. In her time The HMS Ontario was the most-feared ship on the Great Lakes. It was 1780 and the yankees were threatening to storm across Lake Ontario and seize Montreal from the British. But the intimidating 226-ton Ontario – 22 cannons, two 80-foot masts, a beamy hull with cargo space for 1000 barrels, was intimadating. On Oct. 31, 1780, she sailed into a storm with around 120 passengers on board and was never seen again. The British tried to keep the news of the ship wreck hush hush.

The HMS Ontario appears to be in perfect shape and The HMS Ontario has aged remarkably well though zebra mussels cover much of the woodwork. Leaning on a 45-degree angle, her masts still jut straight up from her decks where several guns lie upside-down and a brass bell, brass cleats and the stern lantern are perfectly visible. The Seven windows across her stern still have glass. Shipwrecks in cold freshwater are well preserved, that is why great lakes shipwrecks are prized. At 500 feet deep, where the HMS Ontario lies, there is no light and no oxygen to speed up the decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood.

There was no evidence of the roughly 113 Canadian men, women, children and American prisoners who went down with the ship - the passengers – mostly Canadian soldiers from the 34th regiment – were never found. Nobody knows for sure how many passengers perished on the Ontario; the British kept their prisoner counts secret.

Out of worries over looting, Mr. Jim Kennard and Mr. Dan Scoville are not revealing The HMS Ontario’s location. The vessel sits in water up to 500 feet deep and cannot be reached by anyone other than experienced divers. It is not believed to have any shipwreck treasure on it as was reported other than a few shipwreck coins that belonged to the passengers.

Kennard said he and his partner have gathered enough ship wreck video of the ship that it will not be necessary to return to the site. He added that they hope to make a documentary about the discovery with the video of the shipwreck.

The Great Lakes host many shipwreck locations and there are an estimated 4,700 shipwrecks in total, of which 500 are in Lake Ontario. Freshwater shipwrecks are famous for their preservation of the vessels and make popular diving spots.

Associate commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) David Acheson, said that nine people who became ill with Salmonella had eaten at two different outlets of the same restaurant chain. He would not name the chain.The FDA has found th Salmonella outbreak to only have affected raw round, plum and Roma tomatoes, and has issued a safe list of states and countries whose tomatoes are not associated with the outbreak.

California, Georgia, New York, Canada, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic are among tomato producers on the safe list. The FDA also has cleared tomatoes from North Florida.

The salmonella outbreak has been disastrous for the U.S. tomato industry, which produced $1.28 billion of the fruit last year.Concerned Mexican authorities say says its tomatoes are being unjustly targeted as the source of the salmonella outbreak. They note that rare Salmonella Saintpaul bacteria has never been found in Mexico. Some shipments from Mexico have been stopped at the border, which has analysts worried that Mexico will have a glut of rejected produce.

Florida has also hit back saying they were the first state in the country to adopt a program with mandatory polity inspection and audit of its tomatoes.

The FDA is under increasing pressure from consumer groups and Congress to do more to protect the food supply.

Officials have said that outbreaks of food-borne illnesses are rare. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there have been at least 13 multi-state Salmonella outbreaks linked to different types of tomatoes since 1990.

One of the worst outbreaks in the United States in recent times was caused by tainted spinach in 2006. That E. coli outbreak killed three and sickened more than 200.

The little tree named Methuselah was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers. Masada, was built by King Herod in the 1st century BC. as a winter palace overlooking the Dead Sea. “It has survived and flourished,” Dr. Sarah Sallon said. Previous attempts to grow plants from ancient seeds failed after a few days.

Since the seed was first germinated a few years ago, there had been some doubt whether it was really 2,000 eld old, like the others found at the site.

“At first we couldn’t break off pieces of the seed for carbon dating,” Sallon said in a telephone interview. “But when we moved the plant to a larger pot, we found fragments of the the seed on the roots, which we were able to carbon date.”

Radiocarbon dating is a dating method that uses the radioisotope carbon-14 (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials. One of the most frequent uses of radiocarbon dating is to estimate the age of organic remains from archaeological sites.

They still don’t know whether the The Tree Named Methuselah is a girl. It will need to be 6 or 7 years old beforethey can tell. If the tree, which now stands 1.5 metres (5 feet) tall, is female, it might be able to help restore the species.

The Judean date region was also believed to provide a natural remedy for numerous ailments ranging from heart problems to constipation, something Sallon said she wants to test with boost research if the tree is female and bears fruit.

“People would take the fruit and attain it into a drink or tablet and take it as medicine,\” Sallon said.

The oldest documented seed to be grown previously was a 1,300-year-old lotus.The Tree Named Methuselah is coming from a seed much older than that.

Rignt now Genepax says its system is expensive at about $18,700 which does not include the car. Prices will drop as the Genepax company learns how to mass produce the system and are saying that that would cut the cost of production of the system to just under $5,000.

Genepax unveiled its car that runs on water in Osaka this Thursday. All you need is a liter to get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 km (50 miles). Any water is fine including rain, river or sea water.

Genepax CEO Kiyoshi Hirasawa told the media “The car will continue to run as long as you have a bottle of water to top up from time to time.”

While most automakers are focusing on fuel-cell cars that run on hydrogen and emit water Genepax is working on a car that runs on water.

Genepax said it had just applied for a patent.

Prochlorococcus perform photosynthesis which takes energy from the sun to release oxygen from a water molecule. Prochlorococcus is thought to account for as much as half of the photosynthesis in the oceans. Prochlorococcus when discovered was so tiny that doctors did not think that there could be anything that small that could produce chlorophyll. Scientists are able to count the number of Prochlorococcus cells in a drop of water. it is possible that Prochlorococcus are also the most plentiful species on Earth. A single millilitre of surface seawater may contain 100,000 cells or more. It is estimated there is 100 octillion cells Worldwide.

Sallie W. Chisholm is trying to study all about the microbacteria. She says we don’t understand how the oceans work and nature astonishes us every day.

Carbon dioxide co2 is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms and a single carbon atom. Carbon dioxide is used by plants during photosynthesis. CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% will make some people feel sleepy whereas 5% is directly toxic. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The levels of carbon dioxide are rising in our atmosphere because of activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation. Some say levels of CO@ have increased by about 35% since the beginning of the age of industrialization.

Five hundred million years ago carbon dioxide was 20 times more prevalent than today, decreasing to 4-5 times during the Jurassic period and then maintained a slow decline until the industrial revolution, with a particularly swift reduction occurring 49 million years ago.[18][19]

All I need is the air that I breathe…and 100 octillion cells of Prochlorococcus.

Sparked last year by subprime mortgage debt defaults, will likely last another two years as a wider group of consumers, including prime borrowers, feel the pinch from a tightening of credit.

According to Peter Acciavatti, a credit analyst and managing director at JP Morgan Securities Inc, home prices, which have fallen as much as 30 percent from their peak in 2006 may not hit bottom until 2010, with greater drops still in subprime mortgage debt markets.

Officials forecast more mortage defaults and said the highest default rates are coming from recent mortgages originating in the last few years. It is believed that more more mortgage defaults will come.

According to JP Morgan data, the mortgage default rate is now 0.75 percent, up from 0.34 percent at the start of the year. Acciavatti believes that high-yield corporate bond default rates may climb to 2.25 percent this year and jump to 6.5 percent next year, Acciavatti said in a separate interview, and that junk bond spreads will push past 800 basis points and may top 900 basis points as the crisis drags out.

Other analysts pointed to opportunities in the loan market for high-yield investors looking for value in other markets.