Two-mile high Ultima Tower design mimics termite mound
The ultradense solution to sprawl.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Harsh discipline makes aggressive children worse
Crucially, unlike aggressive parenting, the greater use of calmer reasoning techniques for disciplining children was not associated with a subsequent increase in the children's aggression (although it didn't reduce aggression either).
Canada's Linda McQuaig likes reopening NAFTA
Here's the problem: NAFTA contains a clause that effectively prevents us from cutting back exports of our energy to the United States – even if it means there will be energy shortages in Canada.
This "proportionality clause" is highly unusual. Indeed, according to a new report by the Alberta-based Parkland Institute, it is "unique in all the world's treaties."
Gamma-secretase modulators (GSMs) for Alzheimer's are "astonishing"
Although the GSM's alter enzyme activity that produces the protein that forms the clumps, now it seems they also act on the amyloid beta itself.
World's most dangerous gangs
Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), Brazil:
... On Friday, May 12, the city of São Paulo came under siege as anonymous attackers burned buses, banks, and public buildings, gunning down police and instilling chaos as they went. Simultaneously, 73 prisons around the state erupted in rebellion. For days, the city and the prisons were at a standstill while local leaders floundered, unsure how to respond.
Changing belief in free will can cause students to cheat
This time, instead of just reading a passage, two groups of students read a booklet fifteen phrases such as "A belief in free will contradicts the known fact that the universe is governed by lawful principles of science," and were required to ponder each phrase for a full minute before turning to the next page. Another group read similar statements advocating free will, and another group read neutral statements. A final baseline group didn't read any statements at all. Everyone was given the same test, which was composed of 15 problems from the GRE exam, a rigorous test designed to assess applicants for graduate school.
One determinism group, the free will group, and the neutral group took the test in sets of 2 to 5 individuals. For these groups, a tempting possibility of cheating was introduced. The experimenter told them that she had to leave the room for a meeting, and that they were to take no more than 15 minutes to take the test, which they should grade themselves. She would not see their test sheets: they were to be destroyed in a document shredder in the room. Then they could award themselves $1 for every correct response from an envelope of coins she left on a table in the room.
The other two groups (the second determinism group and the baseline group) were tested individually, the experimenter graded their tests, and paid them based on their actual scores...
The beauty of this experiment is that the experimenter honestly didn't know how much money each person in the "cheating possible" groups took. She could only count the money after they left and find the average take per person. She couldn't even assess their answers on the test -- those were shredded. Yet those who had read the determinism statements took significantly more money when they were given the opportunity to cheat. The fact that reading about determinism didn't lead to higher scores when cheating was not possible suggests that indeed, cheating was going on, not just super-performance due to reading about determinism.
What the bagel man saw -- economics of the honor system
''But I found that as the unemployment rate goes down, dishonesty goes up,'' Paul F. says. ''My guess is that a low rate of unemployment means that companies are having to hire a lower class of employee.'' The data also show that the payment rate does not change when he raises bagel prices, though volume may temporarily fall.A separate experiment at Kitchener's City Cafe Bakery.
Neurochemistry of fairness
The new research shows that, despite the apparent significance of this behavior, it's remarkably easy to manipulate responses to the UG by tweaking brain chemistry. The authors of this study recruited volunteers that ingested a drink that was either a placebo, or one that would produce a short-term drop in the neurotransmitter serotonin. Five hours later, when serotonin levels should be stably depleted, the subjects with reduced serotonin rejected unfair offers at significantly higher rates than the placebo population. No difference in behavior was detected in offers that are typically viewed as fair.
Scientiest killed or injured by their experiments
In 1898, Curie and her husband, Pierre, discovered radium. She spent the remainder of her life performing radiation research and studying radiation therapy. Her constant exposure to radiation led to her contracting leukemia and she died in 1934. Curie is the first and only person to receive two Nobel prizes in science in two different fields: chemistry and physics. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris.
Some time with some Gypsies
Rough in France, but it's Gypsy culture itself:They forget their French and keep their children out of school and marry them to their first cousins aged fourteen. They accept bribes to vote for Mayor Alduy. They lose their teeth and are too frightened to go to the dentist. They die of minor diseases against which other French people—people who go to school—are inoculated. And they don’t leave a trace.
Common cooking ingredients that act like medicines
One of my favorites for reports of possible Alzheimer's prevention:
1. Turmeric. As anyone who has ever treated a head cold with a nice hot Indian meal already knows, turmeric is one of the best healing herbs available to us today. It contains the anti-inflammatory curcumin, which may function in the same way as some pharmaceutical arthritis drugs.
The next time your joints are aching, just have a healthy serving of curry and see if your symptoms respond to the exotic spice. Researchers recommend a daily serving of 400 mg.
TeaCubes -- retractable spool timer
Adjustable time? Good for the hurried life, not for those serious about tea.
Eligible bachelor paradox: game theory explains dearth of appealing men
Where are all the good men?
You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so... In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal.
What dictionaries and optical illusions say about our brains
Mark Changizi is bent on determining why it works that way... [He] has demonstrated that the shapes of letters in 100 writing systems reflect common ones seen in nature: Take the letter "A"—it looks like a mountain, he says. And "Y" might remind one of a tree with branches. He also showed that across different languages most characters take three strokes to write out. That's because, he says, three is the highest quantity a person's brain can perceive without resorting to counting.
Pixar's Brad Bird on fostering innovation
Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.
With 3G, next cellphone battle will be between Apple and Google
Since iPod, Apple has been very significantly been about overpriced, propietary trendiness, making it more The Man than Google.But no phone maker today is poised to take advantage of the software chinks—however small—in the iPhone's armor. Companies like BlackBerry may have excelled at direct, no-frills interfaces, but with the flood of new iPhone applications due to arrive July 11, it will take a true software giant to mount any sort of defense.
A giant like Google.
This mob is big in Japan
Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians. And as far as the United States is concerned, Japan may be refueling U.S. warships at sea, but it's not helping us fight our own battles against organized crime -- a realization that led to my biggest scoop.
Extra vitamins can counteract faulty genes
Rine and Marini inserted variants of the human gene for an enzyme called MTHFR into yeast cells, where they were able to measure the enzyme's activity. They found five mutations that impaired the enzyme's function – but for four of them, the problem could be fixed by providing extra folate.
SafeManuals -- manuals online
So much time wasted looking all over the place for the instruction manual to tune the tv-set, find the printer cartridge replacement how-to, the meaning of the blinking led on the dashboard...
On this site you will easily be able to find the required instruction guides and user manuals that you need.
The trust-me drug that makes you take social risks
Just oxytocin:
The researchers found that—in the trust game, but not the risk game—OT reduced activity in two brain regions: the amygdala, which processes fear, danger and possibly risk of social betrayal; and an area of the striatum, part of the circuitry that guides and adjusts future behavior based on reward feedback.
Baumgartner and colleagues concluded that their findings showed that oxytocin affected the subjects' responses specifically related to trust . . . "If subjects face social risks, such as in the trust game, those who received placebo respond to the feedback with a decrease in trusting behavior while subjects with OT demonstrate no change in their trusting behavior although they were informed that their interaction partners did not honor their trust in roughly 50% of the cases."
Business scams that failed miserably
Using Corbin's influence to get an audience with the President, the pair would argue to [Ulysses S.] Grant that selling gold was a terrible idea that the government should avoid at all costs. The wily pair also used their influence at the White House to secure a position as assistant treasurer of the United States for Daniel Butterfield, who would warn them if the government started to sell gold.
With their connections in place, Fisk and Gould started buying up gold in September 1869, quickly driving the price of gold up by around 30 percent.
Once Grant and his advisors got wise to the situation, though, the government quickly sold off $4 million in gold to break the corner, effectively killing the inflated prices on September 24.
Scoutle -- promoting blogs through social networking
Promote your blog, attract more interested visitors, get your blog rated continuously and meet bloggers like you. Just work on the quality of your blog, Scoutle will do the rest.
Customs you need to know before visiting Japan
5. Thresholds
Take off your shoes at the entrance to all homes, and most businesses and hotels. Usually a rack will be provided to store your shoes, and pair of guest slippers will be sitting nearby; many Japanese bring a pair of indoor slippers just in case, though.
Never wear slippers when you need to step onto a tatami mat (used in most Japanese homes and hotels; the standard unit of measurement for area even today), and be careful to remove the toilet slippers waiting for you in the bathroom.
It is extremely bad form, for example, to reenter the main room of a house wearing slippers that have been running across dirty linoleum.
Altruism needs selfish gene after all
"[In species excluding ants, bees and wasps] the data is much more limited, but it points in the same direction," says Hughes. "You always have ancestral monandry when eusociality evolves." In other words, close genetic relatedness is crucial to the evolution of altruism.
Selsam flying wind Superturbines
"Resembling a field of wind-swept reeds swaying on the horizon, these floating wind spires boast an ultra-efficient design that flexes with the wind, taking advantage of air currents along the length of their shaft to generate electricity. Selsam’s prototypes produce 6000 watts in 32.5 mph winds - six times more power than a similarly sized seven foot single-rotor turbine can produce. The turbines can be easily deployed by land and by sea, and their effectiveness can be amplified even further via an air-born blimp."
Chef Grant Achatz profiles
of his approach to life, and thus his kitchen at Alinea. Reaction to his tongue cancer would seem to be typical.
Satanism is really just libertarianism
From the Wikipedia entry re the Satanic Bible:
This can be compared favorably to the arguments of ethical egoism--that what sometimes benefits others can be beneficial to oneself, but that one must always have one's own interests first in mind. LaVey never suggests that love is not a natural emotion in man, and on the contrary suggests that loving select individuals is very natural, but he does claim that to love all people is not only a philosophical mistake but is in fact impossible and even damaging to the ability to truly love those few individuals who deserve it.
... like love, it is senseless to universally apply hatred to all mankind.
Global slavery in 2008
Bonded Labor occurs when labor is demanded in order to repay a debt or loan and the cyclical nature of debt and work can enslave the person for the rest of their life. Some conditions are so controlled that slaves are surrounded by armed guards while they work, many of whom are slaves themselves. This has been found in Brazil. It is estimated that there are 20 million bonded labourers in the world.
Space euphoria: Do our brains change in outer space?
The overview effect:
He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. He says the feeling that rushed over him was a sense of interconnected euphoria
How to get and keep Windows XP after June 30, 2008
... you'll be able to buy XP on certain mainstream PCs at least until January 31, 2009, and possibly beyond. The cutoff date is even later for some ultra-low cost notebooks, as well as low-cost desktop PCs commonly called nettops, such as those made by Asus, Dell, and other manufacturers: They'll sell with XP until June 2010. As for technical support, that has a lot of life left as well--officially, Microsoft will provide at least some forms of support until 2014.
From Russia with Hate -- state of hate movements
You see Nazi salutes and swastikas and you realize that ideologically, Russia actually lost (or is now losing) the war and Hitler won (just not in Germany). My understanding is that there is a lot of unofficial backpatting from the government. I don't have a link in this blog, but there was a time when Putin was publicly encouraging harassment of ethnic Georgians in Russia.
Previous post on more ideologically native youth militia/sex camp here.
Genepax fuel system "generates electricity with only water, air"
... it uses the company's membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which contains a material capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction...
With the new process, the cell needs only water and air, eliminating the need for a hydrogen reformer and high-pressure hydrogen tank. Moreover, the MEA requires no special catalysts, and the required amount of rare metals such as platinum is almost the same as that of existing systems, Genepax said.
Beat jet lag by overriding sleep clock with food clock
It takes about 16 hours of fasting to engage the food clock.
However, when they restored the gene [BMAL1] only in a section of the hypothalamus called the dorsomedial nucleus, which helps organize waking and feeding schedules, the mice adjusted to the eating schedule, but not daylight.There's also this meal-synchronizing diet for the four days before arrival (protein for being awake). I've personally not had problems after trying to sync sleep a day before, forcing myself to stay up when I would be up at the destination.
Saper said when food is scarce, this second clock can override the body's primary clock. He said these same clock genes are known to be in all mammals, including humans.
Taser suffers a rare loss in court
69 court victories, and then (from The Herald of Monterey County):
A federal jury has held Taser International responsible for the death of a Salinas man in U.S. District Court in San Jose on Friday, and awarded his family more than $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages.
An attorney for the family called the verdict a “landmark decision,” and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for a death or injury linked to its product.
How seven self-made titans financed their success
In the late 1930s, Kerkorian offered to look after famous female aviator Pancho Barnes' cattle in return for flying lessons. During World War II, he took a job with the Royal Air Force transporting planes from their Canadian factory to England at $1,000 per month--an especially treacherous journey, as the planes weren't designed to withstand the long trip or the harsh weather over the North Atlantic. With savings from his wartime job, Kerkorian purchased Trans International Airlines for $60,000 in 1947. (It is unclear as to whether he needed additional financing.) He later sold it to Transamerica for $104 million in stock, used to fuel further investments.
Terrifying rites of manhood from around the world
Amongst the Matis, a small Brazilian tribe:
The concluding test revolves around an inoculation of Phyllomedusa bicolor, which is basically Latin for "local frogs that just happen to secrete nature's death juice." After burning an area of the skin, the frog goop is injected with the use of a wooden needle. The poison is said to increase strength and endurance. However, those enhancements must come after the unbearable lightheadedness, vehement vomiting and violent relieving of the bowels. After all, REAL men don't need innards.
Memory distortion and reality
[Daniel Schacter] divides the “sins” into the following categories: transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The “sins” of transience, absent-mindedness, and blocking are memory malfunctions that fall in to the class of omission—failure to bring to mind a desired fact, event, or idea. The remaining sins represent malfunctions in which some form of memory is present, but is either incorrect or unwanted.
Monday, June 30, 2008
JS-Kit Advisor: Widget that does background checks on plumbers, products, ...
Brings ratings and reviews from the likes of JD Power and Experian (powers contractorcheck.com):
A local listings site could install the widget and then anytime someone looked up a contractor, the widget would pop up and show them if the contractor’s license is expired, how much they are bonded for, and whether they have any liens or judgments against them, as well as their credit and bankruptcy history. “In other words,” says Loux, “all of the information that a bank uses to judge you, the consumer—the consumer can now use to judge a business, prior to clicking through.”
Post-Katrina New Orleans schools increasing test scores
Got this originally from Marginal, but they referred to the teachers' union being busted by the storm.Since Hurricane Katrina, most of the schools here have been taken over by the state, and are run either by Mr. Vallas or as citizen-controlled charter schools. The local school board and administration — long notorious for corruption and political interference — have been neutered.
Classes are smaller, many of the teachers are youthful imports brought in by groups like Teach for America, principals have been reshuffled or removed, school-hours remedial programs have been intensified, and after-school programs to help students increased.
Steps to getting the best medical care
10. Meet the doc behind the scenes. If you're having surgery in a hospital, you need to meet the anesthesiologist face-to-face and give him some dirt on you, such as the last time you had general anesthesia, exactly how much you drink, what drugs you use and how often. People who recreate with substances can keep their habit hidden from lots of people, but they'd better be up-front with the anesthesiologist, since narcotics and other drugs can increase the amount of anesthesia needed, and you don't want to be wide-awake when the surgeon asks for the knife. The anesthesiologist also needs to know how physically fit you are, any allergies you have, and (for the umpteenth time of your hospital stay) every medication, herbal remedy and supplement you take. What about those nightmarish stories you've heard about patients waking up during surgery? It's rare, but it happens. Talk to your anesthesiologist about this, and ask if a medical device that monitors wakefulness is available and should be used.
Forensic science on trial
...to judge by the most comprehensive study on the reliability of forensic evidence to date, the error rate is more than 10% in five categories of analysis, including fiber, paint and body fluids. ...DNA and fingerprints are more reliable but still not foolproof....a 2005 study in the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology suggests a fingerprint false-positive rate a bit below 1%, a widely read 2006 experiment shows an alarming 4% false-positive rate.
How can we preserve the usefulness of forensic evidence while protecting the public when it breaks down? The core problem with the forensic system is monopoly. Once evidence goes to one lab, it is rarely examined by any other. That needs to change. Each jurisdiction should include several competing labs...
Other reforms should include making labs independent of law enforcement and a requirement for blind testing. When crime labs are part of the police department, some forensic experts make mistakes out of an unconscious desire to help their "clients," the police and prosecution. Independence and blind testing prevent that.
Innocent gestures that can get you killed overseas
On finishing off you plate:
In China, if you finish every last bite of your meal, you are implying that you weren't given enough. Therefore, even if the meal is the most sexually delicious thing that has ever slid down your throat, you should still leave one last morsel on the plate to stare up at you mournfully while you eye it with ill-concealed resentment.
MicroRNAs implicated in genetic schizophrenia study
MicroRNAs?
Loss of this chromosomal piece (22q11) is the only known recurrent copy number mutation associated with schizophrenia. The corresponding region on mouse chromosome 16 is indicated along with the position of the engineered deletion in the mouse model. The engineered deletion results in alterations in microRNA production and as a result neuronal and behavioral deficits.
Pico base station for optimized indoor and outdoor WiMAX coverage
From WiNetworks:
Building upon the success of the Compact Base Station (WiN7000), the Pico Base Station uses the same architecture and software for easy integration and deployment in hybrid environments. Both products support interfaces to the ASN Gateway and follow the WiMAX Forum's recommendations for interoperability. This allows the Pico Base Station to be installed in any existing network with complete interoperability to all 3rd party WiMAX Certified equipment.
Opening RBC bank account can get a free Eee PC
The Eee PC 2G Surf, but you have to have direct payroll deposit already at your present account and transfer it.
Using transcranial magnetic stimulation to neutralize your speech
Demonstration of part of your personhood being in the brain, but also can be used for schizophrenia and epilepsy treatment.
Superconducting cables beating back NIMBY
Hardly any EMF:
The Long Island Power Authority just opened a half-mile long test project.
It uses a High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) made by American Superconductor that is capable of carrying 574 megawatts of power, enough to power 300,000 homesl.
Mad pride taking on stigma
“Until now, the acceptance of mental illness has pretty much stopped at depression," said Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. “But a newer generation, fueled by the Internet and other sophisticated delivery systems, is saying, ‘We deserve to be heard, too.’ ”
Cutting through in Zen Buddhism
We have to envision our thoughts as water-like vortices and change our habit of just seeing the shape (rupa) and proceed to look for the substance. We also have to envision that this water is utterly invisible and immaterial it is not a vortex. Then we have to face our everyday world as being a three dimensional field of vortices—then look for that special water. This is the way you cut through.
The height gap -- Europeans getting taller, Americans not
Then something strange happened. While heights in Europe continued to climb, Komlos said, “the U.S. just went flat.” In the First World War, the average American soldier was still two inches taller than the average German. But sometime around 1955 the situation began to reverse. The Germans and other Europeans went on to grow an extra two centimetres a decade, and some Asian populations several times more, yet Americans haven’t grown taller in fifty years. By now, even the Japanese—once the shortest industrialized people on earth—have nearly caught up with us, and Northern Europeans are three inches taller and rising.
AMD announces external graphics solution for notebooks
ATI XGP is an exclusive technology that capitalizes on PCIe 2.0 to deliver enthusiast-class graphics via a connected cable to an externally powered and cooled device. This unique innovation delivers up to 4.0 Gbyte/s in each direction in bandwidth communication between the notebook and external graphics, whereas previous consumer level external solutions were limited in graphics bandwidth.
Health secrets of a 114-year old man
With regard to the genetical analysis, researchers were unsuccessful in finding any mutations in the KLOTHO gene, which is generally related to a good level of mineral density and therefore healthy bones. Neither did they find any mutations in the LRP5 gene, which is associated with longevity. None of the members of the family who participated in the study presented any mutations in this gene.
The results of the research do not rule out the possibility that other genetic mutations could positively influence longevity. However, researchers do point out the fact that the excellent health of this family, and of the 113-year-old man in particular, is probably due to a Mediterranean diet, the temperate climate of the island, a lack of stress and regular physical activity. The article underlines the fact that until the age of 102, the man cycled every day and looked after the family orchard.
Honda's walking assist device
Applying cooperative control based on the information obtained from hip angle sensors, the motors provide optimal assistance based on a command from the control CPU. With this assist, the user's stride will be lengthened compared to the user's normal stride without the device and therefore the ease of walking is achieved.
The compact design of the device was achieved with flat brushless motors and a control system developed by Honda. In addition, a simple design to be worn with a belt around the hip and thigh was employed to help achieve overall weight as light as approximately 2.8kg. As a result, the device reduces the user's load and can be fit to different body shapes.
Canadian Prime Minister Harper's apology for the aboriginal residential schools
Unreal that it has happened at all. The schools were around until 1993 to my knowledge.
Ant swarms in Houston destroying electronics
It's not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.At the same time, the ants aren't taking the bait usually left out in traps, according to exterminators, who want the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen restrictions on the use of more powerful pesticides.
And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.
K7: free fax/voicemail lines
Via Lifehacker:
Need a phone line to receive a one-time fax or voicemails on a particular project, auction, or job search? Free service K7 hands out 10-digit Seattle-area phone numbers that can answer calls with customized voicemail greetings or accept faxes. You can access both the audio files and fax documents through your sign-up account, and the only restrictions are a 20-message/fax limit (the site starts deleting the oldest after that) and an account wipe out after 30 days of inactivity. Other than that, you've got a free bin to keep your personal numbers private and still get at your messages.
Nuclear wastewater breakthrough
Kanatzidis' team is the first to elucidate the potential of metal sulfides for treatment of nuclear wastes. Nuclear reactors use water for cooling. This results in large quantities of contaminated water which is difficult to handle, transport and store. Unfortunately, the radioactive contaminant, strontium, floats in a sea of sodium ions. 1 million sodium ions for each strontium ion. Existing treatment methods, such as metal oxides and polymer resins, confuse the two ions and must pull out the sodium with the strontium. The result? You guessed it: a still large quantity of waste.
Kanatzidis uses a metal sulfide he calls KMS-1. KMS-1 prefers the heavier and more highly charged strontium ion to the sodium ion. Therefore, it selectively binds strontium for removal from the liquid waste. Another bonus: the KMS-1 works in both acid and basic solutions, and across the whole range in between.
Harvard's baby brain research lab
One area into which Spelke's team would like to delve deeper is the origins of bigotry in human beings. In the case of skin colour, newborns respond to individuals of all races equally. By three months, however, a baby from a Caucasian household will prefer to gaze at a white face, and a black baby at an African American face. By the age of two or three, they are drawn to their own gender, too.
The best way to cook those vegetables
Surprisingly, raw and plain vegetables are not always best. In The British Journal of Nutrition next month, researchers will report a study involving 198 Germans who strictly adhered to a raw food diet, meaning that 95 percent of their total food intake came from raw food. They had normal levels of vitamin A and relatively high levels of beta carotene.
But they fell short when it came to lycopene, a carotenoid found in tomatoes and other red-pigmented vegetables that is one of the most potent antioxidants. Nearly 80 percent of them had plasma lycopene levels below average.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Arthritis drug and painkiller show no benefit for Alzheimer's
Celebrex and Aleve didn't do the trick.
Some behind-the-scenes Indiana Jones facts you may not have known
7. R2-D2 and C3PO, the robots from Star Wars, can be seen in the hieroglyphics in the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Establishing new habits and breaking bad ones
“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”Breaking unhealthy ones here.
15-year-life glowing light source
How about a glowing light source that lasts for 15 years instead of the typical 15 minutes of a glowstick? GlowPaint's newest product does just that and is also non-toxic and inexpensive and doesn’t require a recharge via solar or electrical sources for its entire lifespan. According to the company, “This has potential to save billions in energy costs world-wide."
Tech myths debunked
You always need to 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it: This is another of those statements that's valid only under certain conditions. The idea behind saying this is to ensure that the USB device is not unplugged while data is being read from or written to it. Doing so would corrupt the file being transferred. But, if the device is idle, there is no need to go through the 'Safely Remove Hardware' drill. Note that in Windows Vista however, if you have set a USB flash drive to act as a Ready Boost device, you will need to 'stop' the device before unplugging it. For other devices such as keyboard/mouse, printers / scanners, etc., you can just unplug them provided they are not currently in use.
Behavioral genetics has some precision
Freud’s view of personality was passionate, controversial, sexy, unfalsifiable and wrong. But it was a personal theory of personality. Anyone could immediately apply it, party-game style, to his or her own unconscious motivations, hidden fantasies and terrible parents. The behavioural-genetics view of personality is calm, uncontroversial (except to a few diehard Freudians), empirically testable and correct. But it is an impersonal theory of personality.
Segway's RMP
Can move sideways and handle 400lbs.
MAKE @ RobotBusiness 2008 Segway RMP - Watch today’s top amazing videos here
Jobs that could kill you
#4 - Head of Anti-Mafia Taskforce, Sicily
Despite the Mob’s waning influence, talcking the Sicilain Mafia is still a fairly reckless career choice. Judge Giovanni Falcone, an anti-Mafia prosecutor who along with his car was blown into pieces back in 1992.
Natural ways of caring for teeth
Don't brush right away after eating citrus foods or drinks, because the citric acid in the fruit can temporarily weaken tooth enamel and leave the teeth vulnerable to erosion caused by brushing, according to "Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child."
Quantum vision lets birds see the magnetic field
Both the current theories are based on the reaction of cryptochromes to blue light. An incident photon creates a radical-ion pair in the bird's retina (one molecule with one too many electrons, and one too few, so both are electrically charged). Professor Hore of the University of Oxford proposes that these charged particles can be pulled apart by an applied magnetic field. While actual cryptochromes are quite hard to get hold of, a similar synthetic molecule known as a carotenoid-porphyrin-fullerene triad (or CPF for people who don't want to spend ten minutes saying its name) was examined by his team. By shining blue light on a chemical solution and applying a magnetic field, he was able to create different concentrations of radicals and ions in different parts of the solution. If birds can detect this chemical imbalance (and most of biology is just moving chemicals around), then they have their magnetic compass.
Hypermiling tips
24) Drive when it's warm out
If you have the flexibility, time your trips to coincide with warm temperatures (ie. middle of the day) rather than cold (night/early morning).
Cold tires and drivetrain experience more rolling and mechanical resistance, and a cold engine is less efficient.
Pharmaceutical company marketing methods
Was the research done independently, and if not, was it paid for by a drug company?And if the results are favourable about a particular drug, can you be sure that other less favourable results have not been censored or suppressed?
Mentions how physicians are wined and dined for some shilling action.
More things your auto mechanic won't tell you
12. Transmission flushes are one of the biggest scams going. Manufacturers don't recommend them, and your car almost never needs one.
Tomato for skin protection
To test the fruit's ability to protect the skin, ten volunteers were asked to eat five tablespoons of tomato paste mixed with olive oil every day for three months.
Another ten had a daily dose of olive oil - minus the tomato paste.
Tests using ultra-violet lamps showed the tomato-eaters were a third better protected against sunburn at the end of the study than at the start, the British Society for Investigative Dermatology's annual conference heard.
Other tests suggested the tomato-based diet had boosted production of collagen, the protein that keeps skin supple.
If that were not enough, the fruit also protects our mitochondria - the elements of cells which turn the food we eat into energy.
Professor Birch-Machin, of Newcastle University, said: "Being kind to our mitochondria is likely to contribute to improved skin health, which in turn may have an anti-ageing effect."
Smarter electric grid could be key to saving power
It will stop being merely a passive supplier of juice. Instead, power companies will be able to cue us, like those amber lights in Tsapoitis' house, to make choices about when and how we consume power. And most likely, we'll have our computers and appliances carry out those decisions for us.
The rise of the rest: a post-American world
American society can adapt to this new world. But can the American government? Washington has gotten used to a world in which all roads led to its doorstep. America has rarely had to worry about benchmarking to the rest of the world—it was always so far ahead. But the natives have gotten good at capitalism and the gap is narrowing. Look at the rise of London. It's now the world's leading financial center—less because of things that the United States did badly than those London did well, like improving regulation and becoming friendlier to foreign capital.
Insurance based on genetics: a questionable proposition
Environmental factors also play a key role; it's likely that a careful diet could suppress the risk—these tests would ideally identify those who need to change their diets—but neither employers or insurers are able to track diet in the same way they can track genetics.
Is keyword search about to hit its breaking point?
Re semantic web from Nova Spivack:
From To do for data what the Web did for documents.
You are turning the Web into a database, and your data becomes a part of it. Your data becomes part of the worldwide database. The semantic Web will let you move from data record to data record, just like you go from Web page to Web page.
Canada's C-51 law may outlaw 60% of natural health products; big pharma pushing to criminalize supplements
Among the changes proposed by the bill are radical alterations to key terminology, including replacing the word "drug" with "therapeutic product" throughout the Act, thereby giving the Canadian government broad-reaching powers to regulate the sale of all herbs, vitamins, supplements and other items. With this single language change, anything that is "therapeutic" automatically falls under the Food and Drug Act. This would include bottled water, blueberries, dandelion greens and essentially all plant-derived substances.
The Act also changes the definition of the word "sell" to include anyone who gives such therapeutic products to someone else. So a mother giving an herb to her child, under the proposed new language, could be arrested for engaging in the sale of unregulated, unapproved "therapeutic substances."
One guy who has [financially] seen it all doesn't like what he sees now
As a boy, he watched his father, a money manager, navigate the Depression. As a financial manager, consultant and financial historian, he personally dealt with the recession of 1958, the bear markets of the 1970s, the 1987 crash, the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s and the 2000-2002 bear market that followed the tech-stock bubble.
Tap into emotion through the left ear
New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear, while instructions, directions and non-emotional messages have more impact on the right side.
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