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One of the most powerful cancer drugs on the market — Taxol or, generically, paclitaxel — comes from the Pacific yew tree. It was discovered in the 1960s during a massive government program to find medications in plant extracts. It worked remarkably well in its first human trials, but environmentalists realized that harvesting more Taxol could drive the Pacific yew into extinction. The race to create the drug in a lab was on.

French researchers led by Pierre Potier learned in 1988 that they could make the drug by modifying a chemical from European yew trees, but their approach was too inefficient for mainstream production. Robert Holton, a medicinal chemist at Florida State University, built upon their work and developed the first viable approach to making Taxol in the lab in 1994.

Other researchers have followed suit, and some have tried to improve upon the original drug with better delivery systems. Several cousins of the medicine, including Docetaxel, are on the market today and in clinical trials. Abraxane, which is Taxol wrapped in a protein nanoparticle, has been approved by the FDA. Another nano-packaged Taxol, Xyotax, is in Phase III clinical trials.

Credit: pellaea/flickr

Everybody love Christmas, snow and winter! Take a look on these wallpapers – which are really Christmas symbols like, snow, ice, gifts, Christmas trees, night scenes..etc

A Magic Christmas by DigitalPhenom – 1920×1200

Chistmas Globes – 1600×1200

Merry Christmas drawing 1280×1024

Christmas Imperfection by DivineError – 1600×1200

Christmas Tree Ornaments – 1280×1024

Happy Snowman 1280×1024

Santa’s Parcel Service by Fredy3D -1600×1200

White Christmas by adni18 – 1600×1200

Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko on the December 2008 cover of Maxim Magazine

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Quantum of Solace (2008) continues the high octane adventures of James Bond in Casino Royale. Betrayed by Vesper, the woman he loved, 007 fights the urge to make his latest mission personal. Pursuing his determination to uncover the truth, Bond and M interrogate Mr White who reveals the organisation which blackmailed Vesper is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined.

Forensic intelligence links an MI6 traitor to a bank account in Haiti where a case of mistaken identity introduces Bond to the beautiful but feisty Camille, a woman who has her own vendetta. Camille leads Bond straight to Dominic Greene, a ruthless business man and major force within the mysterious organisation, Quantum.

On a mission that leads him to Austria, Italy and South America, Bond discovers that Greene, conspiring to take total control of one of the worlds most important natural resources, is forging a deal with the exiled General Medrano. Using his associates in the organisation, and manipulating his powerful contacts within the CIA and the British government, Greene promises to overthrow the existing regime in a Latin American country, giving the General control of the country in exchange for a seemingly barren piece of land. which is however a main source of the South American water supply. In a minefield of treachery, murder and deceit, Bond allies with old friends in a battle to uncover the truth. As he gets closer to finding the man responsible for the betrayal of Vesper, 007 must keep one step ahead of the CIA, the terrorists and even M, to unravel Greenes sinister plan and stop Quantum getting its way.

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Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy television series adapted by Clive Exton from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories. The series was produced by Picture Partnership Productions for Granada Television and screened on the ITV network from 1990 to 1993. It starred Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, a jovial but empty-headed young gentleman, and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his improbably well-informed and talented valet. The stories are set in England and the United States in pre-World War II 20th century (there are aspects of the Edwardian era, 1920s and 1930s).Wooster is a well-to-do bachelor, a minor aristocrat and a member of the idle rich. He and his friends, who are mainly members of The Drones Club are aided in all manner of societal adventures by the indispensable “gentleman’s personal gentleman” Jeeves. Wodehouse drew the themes of his plots from classical New Comedy which concern the entangled love lifes of the major characters.

Four series were produced with 23 episodes in total. The programmes were produced by Brian Eastman and are all available on DVD.

The theme music was composed by Anne Dudley

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Star Wars is an epic space opera franchise initially conceived by George Lucas during the 1970s and significantly expanded since that time. The first film in the franchise was simply titled Star Wars, but later had the subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope added to distinguish it from its sequels and prequels.^[1] Star Wars was released on May 25, 1977 by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, initially spawning two sequels. Twenty-two years after Star Wars was released, Lucas began the release of a second trilogy as a prequel to the original trilogy.

The franchise has spawned other media including books, television series, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film trilogies comprise the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and have resulted in significant development of the series’ fictional universe. As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films has totalled approximately $4.3 billion, making it the third-highest grossing film series.

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Casino Royale (2006) is the twenty-first film in the James Bond series; it is directed by Martin Campbell and the first to star Daniel Craig as MI6 agent James Bond. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, it was adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis.

It is the third screen adaptation of the Casino Royale novel, which was previously produced as a 1954 television episode and a 1967 satirical film. However, the 2006 film is the only EON Productions adaptation of Fleming’s novel. It is a reboot of the Bond franchise, establishing a new timeline and narrative framework not meant to precede any previous film.^[3] This not only frees the Bond franchise from more than forty years of continuity, but allows the film to show a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond.^[4]

The film is set at the beginning of James Bond’s career as Agent 007, just as he is earning his licence to kill. After preventing a terrorist attack at Miami Airport, Bond falls for Vesper Lynd, the treasury agent assigned to provide the money he needs to foil a high-stakes poker tournament organized by Le Chiffre. The 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, will be a direct sequel to Casino Royale and will continue some aspects of the story such as Le Chiffre’s associate, Mr. White.

The casting for the movie involved a widespread search for a new actor to portray James Bond, and significant controversy over Daniel Craig when he was eventually selected. Some Pierce Brosnan fans threatened to boycott the film in protest.^[5] Despite this, the film, and Daniel Craig’s performance in particular, earned critical acclaim. Casino Royale was produced by EON Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures, marking the first official Bond film to be co-produced by the latter studio, which had produced and originally distributed the 1967 non-canonicalfilm version

“007 – Casino Royale” wallpapers:

Download wallpaper: – Lake, landscape

The Nazca lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches more than 80 km (50 miles) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. They are believed to have been created by the Nazca culture between 200 BC and AD 700. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks, llamas and lizards.

The lines are shallow designs where the reddish pebbles that cover the surrounding landscape have been removed, revealing the whitish earth underneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes, and more than seventy are natural or human figures. The largest are over 200m across. Scholars differ in interpreting what the lines were for but generally ascribe religious significance to them. The dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau has preserved the lines to this day.

The exact reason the figures were built remains a mystery. A leading theory is that the Nazca people’s motivations were religious, and that the images were constructed so that gods in the sky could see them. Kosok and Reiche advanced one of the earliest reasons given for the Nazca Lines: that they were intended to point to the places on the distant horizon where the Sun and other celestial bodies rose or set. This hypothesis was evaluated by two different experts in archaeoastronomy,Gerald Hawkins and Anthony Aveni, and they both concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support an astronomical explanation.

In 1985, the archaeologist Johan Reinhard published archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data demonstrating that worship of mountains and other water sources played a dominant role in Nazca religion and economy from ancient to recent times. He presented the theory that the lines and figures can be explained as part of religious practices involving the worship of deities associated with the availability of water and thus the fertility of crops. The lines were interpreted as being primarily used as sacred paths leading to places where these deities could be worshiped and the figures as symbolically representing animals and objects meant to invoke their aid. However, the precise meanings of many of the individual geoglyphs remain unsolved.