South Carolina Woman Jailed after Failing to Return Movie Rented Nine Years Ago

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Photo Credit: PICKENS COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICEA South Carolina scofflaw movie renter spent a night in jail this week after police busted her for failing to return a Jennifer Lopez movie she rented nine years ago.

WHNS reports the scenario unfolded after Kayla Michelle Finley went to the Pickens County Jail in the northwestern tip of the state Thursday to report an unspecified crime – but instead got charged with one, herself.

The news station cites Finley’s arrest warrant in writing the 27-year-old woman had rented “Monster-in-Law” – a rom-com pairing Lopez with Jane Fonda that garnered a single star on Rotten Tomatoes – in 2005.

She’d reportedly rented the movie from the now-defunct Dalton Video, and never returned the cassette.

WHNS reports the store’s former owner, P.J. Dalton, had taken the matter to court nine years ago and gotten a judge to issue a warrant.

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Animal Moms Customize Milk Depending on Baby’s Sex

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Photo Credit: AP / California National Primate Research Center A special blend of mother’s milk just for girls? New research shows animal moms are customizing their milk in surprising ways depending on whether they have a boy or a girl.

The studies raise questions for human babies, too – about how to choose the donor milk that’s used for hospitalized preemies, or whether we should explore gender-specific infant formula.

“There’s been this myth that mother’s milk is pretty standard,” said Harvard University evolutionary biologist Katie Hinde, whose research suggests that’s far from true – in monkeys and cows, at least.

Instead, “the biological recipes for sons and daughters may be different,” she told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Friday.

Pediatricians have long stressed that breast milk is best when it comes to baby’s first food. Breast-fed infants are healthier, suffering fewer illnesses such as diarrhea, earaches or pneumonia during the first year of life and less likely to develop asthma or obesity later on.

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‘Iron Man’ Suits for U.S. Military Inching Closer to Reality? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News Could U.S. soldiers soon become real-life “Iron Men?”

The military is reportedly working on a high-tech tactical assault light operations suit, or TALUS, that would employ a form of armor that can shift from a liquid state to a rock-hard solid shield in milliseconds. This would make soldiers impervious to gunfire.

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Could We Soon Find Out Exactly How Long We’ll Live? Scientists Accurately Work Out Lifespan of Worms by Analysing Their Cells

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Photo Credit: Science Picture Co./CorbisFortune tellers may soon be out of the job.

Scientists have found a way to accurately predict lifespan in worms – a breakthrough that could one day be used to predict how long a human would live.

The secret, they claim, is in looking at the bursts of activity in mitochondria, a part of the cell which generates its energy.

The findings, reported by in Nature, suggest that an organism’s lifespan is largely predictable in early adulthood.

Meng-Qiu Dong at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing, China, added proteins to nematode worms that light up when they detect damaging in their mitochondria.

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Routine Traffic Stop Interrupted by Pack of Scary Yet Adorable Wolves (+video)

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During a routine traffic stop, a police officer panicked and climbed into the back seat of the car he had just pulled over… because a pack of wolves was racing toward him.

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Just When You Thought Google Glass Couldn’t Get Creepier: New App Allows Strangers to ID You Just by Looking at You (+video)

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Photo Credit: Google Glass/FacebookHave you ever seen someone wearing Google Glass out at the bar? Like a real person at a real bar actually wearing Google Glass? If so, you know how absolutely ridiculous they look. Which may be the only factor we have that will stop this:

A new app will allow total strangers to ID you and pull up all your information, just by looking at you and scanning your face with their Google Glass. The app is called NameTag and it sounds CREEPY.

The “real-time facial recognition” software “can detect a face using the Google Glass camera, send it wirelessly to a server, compare it to millions of records, and in seconds return a match complete with a name, additional photos and social media profiles.”

The information listed could include your name, occupation, any social media profiles you have set up and whether or not you have a criminal record (“CRIMINAL HISTORY FOUND” pops up in bright red letters according to the demo).

Photo Credit: NameTag

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Harley Burial: Rider and Bike are Inseparable, Even in Death

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Columbus Dispatch, Jonathan QuilterA motorcycle-loving man’s family has fulfilled his dying wish — to be buried astride his beloved Harley-Davidson encased in a see-through casket.

But it wasn’t easy. The project required an extra-large cemetery plot to accommodate a Plexiglas casket for Billy Standley and his hulking custom-painted 1967 Electra Glide cruiser. Five embalmers worked to prepare his body with a metal back brace and straps to ensure he’ll never lose his seat.

Standley’s family said he’d been talking about it for years and liked to take people to the garage to show off the unusual casket his two sons had built for him. He told people he didn’t just want to ride off to heaven, he wanted the world to see him do it in the big see-through box.

“He was a quirky man,” daughter Dorothy Brown said. “But when it comes to us kids, he loved us, he raised us well and, of course, we wanted to help him.”

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Food in the Sky? Highrise Farming Idea Gains Ground

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

Imagine stepping out of your highrise apartment into a sunny, plant-lined corridor, biting into an apple grown in the orchard on the fourth floor as you bid “good morning” to the farmer off to milk his cows on the fifth.

You take the lift to your office, passing the rice paddy and one of the many gardens housed in the glass edifice that not only heats and cools itself, but also captures rainwater and recirculates domestic waste as plant food.

No, this is not the setting for a futuristic movie about humans colonising a new planet.

It is the design of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut for a 132-floor “urban farm” — the answer, he believes, to a healthier, happier future for the estimated six billion people who will live in cities by 2050.

With food, water and energy sources dwindling, the city of the future will have to be a self-sufficient “living organism”, said the 36-year-old designer of avant-garde buildings some critics have dismissed as daft or a blight on the landscape.

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Want to Get the Flu? Volunteers Sneeze for Science

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Forget being sneezed on: Government scientists are deliberately giving dozens of volunteers the flu by squirting the live virus straight up their noses.

It may sound bizarre, but the rare type of research is a step in the quest for better flu vaccines. It turns out that how the body fends off influenza remains something of a mystery.

“Vaccines are working, but we could do better,” said Dr. Matthew Memoli of the National Institutes of Health, who is leading the study that aims to infect up to 100 adults over the next year.

Wait a minute: Flu is sweeping the country, so why not just study the already sick? That wouldn’t let scientists measure how the immune system reacts through each step of infection, starting with that first exposure to the virus.

It’s not an experiment to be taken lightly. After all, the flu kills thousands of Americans a year. For safety, Memoli chose a dose that produces mild to moderate symptoms – and accepts only volunteers who are healthy and no older than 50.

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Doctor Offers to Trade Vasectomy for Playoff Tickets

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Photo Credit: Fort Collins Coloradoan

Photo Credit: Fort Collins Coloradoan

A Colorado doctor has an unusual offer for anyone with extra tickets to Sunday’s AFC Championship Game between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots: a free vasectomy.

Dr. Steven Broman of Fort Collins is offering to perform the $1,000-plus surgery in return for tickets. A long-time season-ticket holder, Broman and his family will be at Sunday’s game anyway. The extra tickets, he said, would go to his staff.

“The only people who wouldn’t have to pay me in tickets is Tom Brady, but I’d have to do the operation before the game,” Broman said, laughing.

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