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.
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.

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.

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.

Coal-competitive solar by mid-2009 from Sunrgi?

Good comparative diagrams here.

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

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.

Got this originally from Marginal, but they referred to the teachers' union being busted by the storm.

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.

Golden eagle throws goat off cliff

Real nature:

Electronic House's Homes of the Year

The gold medal to a very green solution.

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.

11th grader finds way to decompose plastic bags in 3 months

Tests to identify the strains found strain two was Sphingomonas bacteria and the helper was Pseudomonas.

Health tech breakthroughs coming soon

Like magnetic brain stim, bloodstream bots, ...

Honest college ad

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

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.

YoungMe - NowMe

The link goes directly to page 10.

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."

Busting some myths about mind

Like the 10% brain use thing.

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.

Small kitchen designs

There are also examples of carts.

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.

Apache and Predator attack camviews

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.

Why things cost $19.95

There were three scenarios involving different retail prices: one group of buyers was given a price of $5,000, another was given a price of $4,988, and the third was told $5,012. When all the buyers were asked to estimate the wholesale price, those with the $5,000 price tag in their head guessed much lower than those contemplating the more precise retail prices. That is, they moved farther away from the mental anchor. What is more, those who started with the round number as their mental anchor were much more likely to guess a wholesale price that was also in round numbers. The scientists ran this experiment again and again with different scenarios and always got the same result.

Also,

... a physician might say that your chance of responding to a medication is “good” or that your chance of responding is 80 percent. The percentage is more precise, but many studies have shown that patients prefer vague generalities like “good,”...

Miracle fruit makes (almost) everything delicious

Synsepalum dulcificum:

For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet... Scientists say a protein in the fruit works by binding to taste buds and altering the tongue's so-called sweet receptors to activate when sour foods are eaten. A French explorer known as the Chevalier des Marchais first encountered the effects in 1725 somewhere in West Africa, says Adam Gollner, who is writing a book about miracle fruit. The chevalier saw villagers eat the berry before consuming gruel and palm wine, so he gave it a try himself.

ZoomProspector -- geo data for businesses to select location

ZoomProspector aggregates information about various cities and communities - such as labor force sizes, unemployment rates, education levels, venture capital investments, and household incomes - and makes that info accessible through a map-based search tool.

SunHope solar balloons

"The design is also ideal for a multitude of off-the-grid applications, with the potential to bring power to deserts, isolated islands, ocean-bound freighters, and heavily forested landscapes. Additionally, the balloons’ eminently deployable nature makes them perfect for disaster and emergency situations, since the balloons are quick to set up and can be delivered via air. Cory and Gurfil have constructed several prototypes and have conducted research to show that a 10 ft balloon could provide around a kilowatt of energy (equivalent to 25 square meters of solar panels). Their target cost is $4,000 per balloon, compared to the $10,000 it would cost for a solar field producing the same amount of energy."

Glass chip spins silk

Inside the chip, the two proteins flow along tiny tubes and are exposed to a phosphate salt solution that makes them aggregate into tiny spheres 1 to 5 micrometres across.

A sudden jump in acidity and phosphate concentration then partially breaks open the spheres, allowing the proteins to latch together into chains. At this point, the flow speed increases and draws out the proteins into long silk fibres.

Creating fibres from two proteins was found to make the silk more chemically stable. The team has not tested the artificial silk's mechanical properties, but its grainy appearance suggests it does not yet rival the quality of the real thing.

Dutch bill to ban magic mushrooms

... the government's decision was prompted by the death of a 17-year-old French girl last year, who jumped from a bridge in Amsterdam.

But no formal link was established between her death and the use of mushrooms.

Other incidents involving the drug have included an Icelandic tourist jumping from a balcony and breaking both legs and a Danish tourist driving his car wildly through a camping ground, narrowly missing sleeping campers.

The ban on the cultivation and use of the mushrooms means most of Smart Shops will have to close.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

The book is subtitled "How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World". The link is to Marginal Revolution's excerpt; interesting take on ethnic identity:

And the same critical attitude toward bounded tribal territories is applied to European history. Ancient European tribal identities -- Celt, Scythians, Cimbri, Teoton, and Pict -- are now frequently seen as convenient names for chamelon-like political alliances that had no true ethnic identity, or as brief ethnic phenomena that were unable to persist for any length of time, or even as entirely imaginary later inventions.

Infected with insanity: Could microbes cause mental illness?

Not just prenatal.

GROU.PS -- all your collaboration tools in one place

The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups - each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Digg, blogs, ...)

High temperature superconductor breakthroughs

Well, up to 52K anyways.

The field hasn't come to an agreement on to how to account for the behavior of cuprate high-temperature superconductors. It is believed that the layered structure of the cuprates, the ability of electrons to hop from copper ion to copper ion, and the shielding provided by copper-free layers all contribute to the superconductivity. Since these new materials also have a similar-ish layered structure, are bad conductors before they transition, and exhibit antiferromagnetism, it is hoped that they can offer new insights into a general mechanism(s) of high-temperature superconductivity.

How to remove permanent marker stains

Baking soda toothpaste

The goal of Buddhist practice

What the Buddha wants us to achieve is to have our mind awaken to itself (i.e., bodhicitta) instead of being asleep; deeply transfixed to the physical body. There exists a variety of practices because the nature of delusion is complex. Some people, therefore, require a different practice than others...

We must also be careful of not becoming a warden over the physical body as if it were a convict and needed constant monitoring.

Cultures of vengeance

Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle's life began, he answered, "The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden." Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeper lying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig.

Silly Putty light

The mushy lamps consist of an organic compound, which is coupled with ultraviolet light and a glasslike inorganic compound that gives the substance structural protection. The combo can handle temperatures to 500 degrees Celsius, uses half the power of typical fluorescent lights, and will last longer than white LEDs due to heat resistance.

Financial compensation for organ donors is working

... a non-profit, volunteer-run Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association (DATPA) mediates between recipients and donors. Recipients who cannot be assigned a kidney from a deceased donor and who cannot find a related living donor may apply to the DATPA. The DATPA identifies a possible donor from a pool of people who have applied to the DATPA to be donors. Donors are medically evaluated by transplant physicians, who have no connection to the DATPA, in just the same way as are non-financially compensated donors. The government pays donors $1,200 plus limited health insurance coverage. In addition, charitable organizations also provide renumeration to impoverished donors.

Boneheaded business decisions

Like thinking that there was no need to improve upon the Model T or thinking of the telephone as a toy.

Waterproof edible packaging

... adding beeswax to starch from peas produces an edible material that can be spread into thin films but is water resistant too.

Life Before Death -- before and after portrait series

Short profile and a quote excerpted from interviews with the photographers.

A smart Post-It

Ixp-Note is a new form of intelligent Post-It (TM) note. More than just a blank sticky note, the Ixp-Note allows the user to enter time and date of the future event. Using low cost electronic circuit printing technology, on paper, the user selects the time and date via touching the printed scroll strip with the finger. The user then writes the event to remember on the glow strip, which will flash or sound at the chosen time.

Brain tumor causes uncontrollable paedophilia

From a 2002 article.

In October 2001 he complained of headaches and secretly collected pornography once more. But after a MRI scan revealed tumour regrowth and it was removed, the behaviour again disappeared.

A list of biblical massacres

3. Doeg the Edomite killed 85 priests and all the men, women, children, infants, oxen, donkeys, and sheep with a sword. 1 Samuel 22:18-29

Cookie Monster takes a look in the mirror

Me thinks me have serious problem. Me thinks me addicted. But since when it acceptable to call addict monster? It affliction. It disease. It burden. But does it make me monster?

BananaSplitter -- split an avi into two segments

Bypassing codecs or any external libraries.

Just how safe is vitamin supplementation?

Megadoses of E, for example, can increase the risk of bleeding if you’re already on heart meds like blood thinners. An earlier 2004 analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers found consuming 400 IU or more of vitamin E a day alone (some products on the market today contain 1,000 IU per capsule) was associated with a higher risk of dying and should be avoided. (One theory says high doses may alter your natural immune function and actually become pro-oxidant.) Taking too much niacin without a doctor’s okay can lead to liver damage and other problems over time. And too much vitamin A increases the risk of liver and lung cancers, and can cause birth defects and reduce bone density.

Maxim's sexiest vegetarians

10. Kylie Bax.

Europe's philosophy of failure

Orienting kids to hate markets and free enterprise is a setup for some real pain.

Shape-shifting skin to reduce drag on planes and subs

One design uses "legs" just beneath the skin that lengthen under the influence of an electric field, bending the skin upwards. By controlling the field around each piezoceramic leg, Lagoudas’ team can deform the skin into corrugations of right wavelength and amplitude to cut down drag.

Beef and dairy farming leave much bigger carbon footprint than food transport

Final delivery leg not as important as production practices.

Historical figures with the weirdest deaths

Like sex unto death and farting out your innards.

FastStone Capture -- screenshot app

Can save captures in various formats (bmp, gif, jpeg, pcx, png, tga, tiff and pdf), and send anyscreenshot to your image editor of choice, printer, email client, open it in a Word or Powerpoint doc, or upload it to an ftp site. Can also annotate.

Molecules that sef-assemble into nanofiber scaffolding for nerve growth

Just inject into spinal cord of paralyzed mouse, et voila, function restored:

The new material is different because the researchers can inject it as a liquid directly into the spinal cord. Negatively charged molecules in the liquid start clumping together when they come in contact with positively charged particles such as calcium and sodium ions in the body. The molecules self-assemble into hollow, cylindrical nanofibers, which form a scaffold that can trap cells. On the surface of the nanofibers are biological molecules that inhibit scars and encourage nerve fibers to grow.