plenary (PLEE-nuh-ree, PLEN-uh-ree) adjective
1. Full; complete; absolute.
2. Having all members of a meeting in attendance.
From Latin plenarius (fully attended, complete), from plenus (full). Earliest documented use: 1425.
cowabunga (kou-uh-BUHNG-guh) interjection
An expression of surprise, joy, or enthusiasm.
The word was the cry of Chief Thunderthud, a character in the children's television program Howdy Doody. The word was later adopted by surfers. It was popularized by its use on the animated show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Earliest documented use: 1954.
gesundheit (guh-ZOONT-hyt) interjection
Used to wish good health to someone who has sneezed.
From German Gesundheit (health), from gesund (healthy) + -heit (-hood). Earliest documented use: 1914.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

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From: Joyce Leuchten Subject: thought for today
For sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted. Jean Paul Richter, writer (1763-1825)
I amended this thought and sent it to friends and neighbors. I hope they'll soon have the power to read it.
For sleep, riches, health and electricity to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted.

Cynthia Daily and her partner used a sperm donor to conceive a baby seven years ago, and they hoped that one day their son would get to know some of his half siblings — an extended family of sorts for modern times. So Ms. Daily searched a Web-based registry for other children fathered by the same donor and helped to create an online group to track them. Over the years, she watched the number of children in her son’s group grow. And grow. Today there are 150 children, all conceived with sperm from one donor, in this group of half siblings, and more are on the way.
Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm. They are also calling for legal limits on the number of children conceived using the same donor’s sperm and a re-examination of the anonymity that cloaks many donors. “We have more rules that go into place when you buy a used car than when you buy sperm,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College and author of “The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” “It’s very clear that the dealer can’t sell you a lemon, and there’s information about the history of the car. There are no such rules in the fertility industry right now.” Although other countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, limit how many children a sperm donor can father, there is no such limit in the United States. There are only guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a professional group that recommends restricting conceptions by individual donors to 25 births per population of 800,000. No one knows how many children are born in this country each year using sperm donors Some estimates put the number at 30,000 to 60,000, perhaps more. “Just as it’s happened in many other countries around the world,” Ms. Kramer said, “we need to publicly ask the questions ‘What is in the best interests of the child to be born?’ and ‘Is it fair to bring a child into the world who will have no access to knowing about one half of their genetics, medical history and ancestry?’ “These sperm banks are keeping donors anonymous, making women babies and making a lot of money. But nowhere in that formula is doing what’s right for the donor families.” Many of those questions were debated in Britain shortly after the birth there, in 1978, of Louise Brown, the first baby born using in vitro fertilization. In 1982, the British government appointed a committee, led by Mary Warnock, a well-known English philosopher, to look into the issues surrounding reproductive health. The groundbreaking Warnock Report contained a list of recommendations, including regulation of the sale of human sperm and embryos and strict limits on how many children a donor could father (10 per donor). The regulations have become a model for industry practices in other countries. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html

A patent-system overhaul nearly a decade in the making is expected to receive final congressional passage this month, significantly altering how anyone with an invention—from a garage tinkerer to a large corporation—will vie for profitable control of that idea's future. The bill, which passed a key Senate vote September 6 and is expected to get President Barack Obama's signature, will reverse centuries of U.S. patent policy by awarding patents to inventors who are "first to file" their invention with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Currently the "first to invent" principle reigns, which often spawns costly litigation between dueling inventors. The new system puts a premium on inventors with the wits—or deep pockets—to dash to the patent office as soon as they discover something useful and nonobvious. Many big companies say that change will help forestall drawn-out disputes. "You'll end up with a patent system that's more predictable and far more certain," said Bob Armitage, general counsel of drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. But small inventors fear the first-to-file approach will cause companies to overwhelm patent examiners with applications, a pace of activity individuals can't afford to match. Critics include Raymond Damadian, the doctor who invented magnetic resonance imaging technology and has said the MRI would never have been invented under the proposed rules. Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904537404576554633952918662.html

This week, while the moon is still not overly bright, you have a chance to see the death of a star: a supernova. Unfortunately, this stupendous event is taking place not in our own galaxy — where it would be readily visible to the naked eye — but in the galaxy M101. The bursting star was first seen on Aug. 23 with the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt telescope at Palomar Mountain Observatory in California. First called PTF 11kly and now designated SN2011fe, the supernova was discovered shining at a magnitude of +17.2, but has been brightening rapidly ever since. The galaxy in which this supernova is located, M101, has a linear diameter of more than 170,000 light-years, making it among the biggest disk galaxies known. And it is located at a distance of about 24 million light-years, meaning that the explosion actually took place 24 million years ago. It's taken that long for the light to get to us. In his Celestial Handbook, Robert Burnham, Jr. describes M101 as "one of the finest examples of a large face-on Sc type spiral and a beautiful object on long-exposure photographs." The Frenchman Pierre Mechain was the first to see this galaxy in 1781. Later that same year, it was observed by Charles Messier, who described it as appearing as "A nebula without star, very obscure and pretty large." Messier would later include this galaxy as the 101st object in the final (1781) version of his famous catalog of comet masqueraders, hence "M" (for Messier) 101. It was one of the first "spiral nebulas" identified as such, in 1851 by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse. Today, M101 sometimes goes by the popular moniker "The Pinwheel Galaxy." The name is quite appropriate, as observatory photographs show it as an impressive system with well-defined spiral arms. http://www.space.com/12806-supernova-skywatching-tips-star-explosion-sn2011fe.html

Website of the Day http://espn.go.com/
On this date in 1979, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network – aka ESPN – was born. Today the company’s website serves as a great place for sports fans to keep up with the news from the sporting world. You can follow many teams and leagues, watch videos, play fantasy games and more.
This Day in History
Sept. 7, 2008: The government takes control of the two largest mortgage financing companies in the U.S., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Daily Quote
“Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” - Grandma Moses, who was born on this date in 1860.
http://www.eveningtribune.com/newsnow/x1654952371/Morning-Minutes-Sept-7