forsv: potpourri of thoughts

Can your printer tell on you?

This seems like a direct threat from the big brother:

Dancing cellphone

Disappointed with your cellphone's lack of enthusiasm? Then you'll be relieved to hear that Motorola has devised a handset that dances for joy when it receives a call.

The "ambulatory" device, as it is described, sits on four vibrating feet that shake with different strength and in slightly different directions to make the whole handset wriggle around.

The device could, for example, shimmy in a clockwise direction to signal an incoming call from the office, or wobble counter-clockwise to alert the user to a new message.

Motorola even proposes using accelerometers to let the owner teach the phone how to dance when a certain person calls. A further party trick would see the device detect the beat of a music track and dance along in time.

Read the dancing cellphone patent here.

Einstein's Big Idea

Exactly 100 years ago, Albert Einstein grappled with the implications of his revolutionary special theory of relativity and came to a startling conclusion: mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2. In "Einstein's Big Idea," NOVA dramatizes the remarkable story behind this equation.

PBS Broadcast Date: October 11, 2005 from 8 to 10 pm

Baby you can park my car

Nissan has developed an egg-shaped car for drivers who find backing out of tight parking spots a hassle.

The car's body pivots 360 degrees so that its rear end becomes the front.

The Pivo, shown on Friday at a Tokyo Nissan showroom, is still an experimental model and probably will not go on sale publicly for several years. It is a three-seater electric car that looks like a big egg on wheels. Its body revolves in a complete circle while its wheels stay put.

Such moves are possible because Pivo's steering, wheels and other parts are controlled electronically by wireless, or electronic signals, not mechanical links between the cabin and the vehicle's chassis.

"This is a cute car for people who have problems parking," said Nissan Motor Co. chief designer Masato Inoue.

Pivo, also planned for display at the Tokyo auto show opening next month, highlights other technologies, including a system that allows the driver to control devices inside the car simply by raising his or her fingers off the steering wheel.

Finger pointing

That is done through a camera embedded in the steering wheel that senses heat. Lifting one finger might turn on the radio. Two fingers might set car navigation equipment.

The technology works much like voice-recognition capabilities already available in some advanced cars, but Tokyo-based Nissan says some people prefer finger-pointing than talking.

Pivo also allows the driver to see blind spots via cameras attached to the outside of the car.

Inoue says it is possible to design a gasoline-engine vehicles that spins in the same way if electronic controls are approved for traffic safety. But they are unlikely to have the round look of Pivo because a conventional engine requires more room than an electric motor.

Mysterious Stars Surround Andromeda's Black Hole

Stars race around a black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy so fast that they could go the distance from Earth to the Moon in six minutes.

The finding, announced today, solves a mystery over the source of strange blue light coming from Andromeda's center. But it generates a new puzzle: The stars' phenomenal orbital velocity suggests they should never have formed in the first place.

Astronomers first spotted the blue light near Andromeda's core in 1995. Three years later, another group determined that the light emanated from a cluster of hot, young stars. Nobody knew how many were involved.

Continue reading.

Botany Photo of the Day

Inspired by NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, the gardeners and plant enthusiasts at the University of British Columbia's Botanical Centre have grown their very own photo blog. The first entry, on April 5, 2005, of a Chinese parasol storax, let it be known that these pictures would be painterly and lush. From a close-up of ferns, a Himalayan blue poppy, or this delicate fragrant granadilla, the diverse plants of Canada and the plentiful holdings of the UBC garden bloom forth. Categories include mosses, conifers, and the always-popular flowering plants. If you're the type who thinks fungus is don't-touch-that gross, dare to view these beauties. The garden syndicates its content through RSS, so plant a feed and see a new picture blossom each day.

Cellular Squirrel project

Do you suffer from mobile telephone calls at inopportune times? Could you use a cute PA to take calls for you while gaming, or asleep? A dissertation project from MIT by HCI specialist Stefan Marti may have your solution: Cellular Squirrel.

Of course you will always want to talk to people who are thinking the same things as you, so Cellular Squirrel waves and moves about rather than making a sound. His oddly bulbous figure makes use of "socially strong non-verbal cues like gaze, posture, and gestures, to alert and interact with the user" rather than intrusive alerts in order to minimise user stress and social disruption.

The Air Car

The Air Car. A car that runs on compressed air. While not a new idea, or unique,
the MDI car can reach a speed of 68 mph and has a claimed range of
roughly 124 miles. To recharge the tank, the car reportedly needs to be
plugged into the grid for 3 to 4 hours or attached to an air pump in a
gas station for only 2 minutes.
Is the wind of the future about to break? Will this technology pass gas as our urban fuel of choice?

Sustainable energy source could solve Bermuda Triangle riddle

Are methane-producing bacteria the explanation of the Bermuda Triangle mystery?

Haute couture

A new aeroplane has been designed entirely in virtual reality.

Intelligent Carpet Directs Robot Vacuum

An "intelligent carpet" that tells robotic vacuum cleaners where to go, and can even direct the robot to spots it might have missed.

'Teleporting' over the internet

Computer scientists in the US are developing a system which would allow people to 'teleport a solid 3D recreation of themselves over the internet. And it's based on the animation of "Wallace and Gromit".

makes computers think about the consequences

Researchers at the US, along with teams from the UK, France, Germany and Japan have come up with a new programming language which allows a computer to think through the consequences of an action before executing it.

Developed the international team led by scientists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with what they call a 'process specification language software' which is more mundanely known as ISO 18629.

A traditional programming language consists of a series of instructions which, as any programmer faced with buggy code knows, will be followed slavishly whether the consequences are those intended or not.

The ISO 18629 language is different. Built around developments in artificial intelligence it allows the computer to analyse an instruction and make decisions based on its 'meaning' and 'context'.

Continue reading ...

a Better Brain

11 Steps to a Better Brain Funny, reading forSV is not on the list.

Flying Snakes: New Videos Reveal How They Do It

You might not think snakes need any more tools in their box of fright tactics. However, some of these slithering reptiles are dramatic flyers.

Jake Socha of the University of Chicago has been studying snakes' ability to act like birds for eight years. Today he revealed just how good they are at winging it.

"Despite their lack of wing-like appendages, flying snakes are skilled aerial locomotors," he said.

Like a Frisbee

Snakes join birds, insects, bats, squirrels and even ants in the realm of aerial prowess. So just how do they do it?

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New Award (attempts to) challenge the Nobel Prize

$1 million science awards created
Kavli Prizes for astrophysics, neuroscience, nanotech

OSLO, Norway - Nobel science prizes will face a "more daring" rival beginning in 2008, with $1 million awards for research into everything from the Big Bang to the brain, a Norwegian-born philanthropist says.

Fred Kavli, a physicist who left Norway in 1955 with $300 and turned it into a $340 million fortune in California, said he was setting up three prizes for astrophysics, neuroscience and nanotechnology, the use of molecule-sized devices.

Kavli already funds 10 science institutes — nine at U.S. universities including Stanford, Yale and Cornell, and one at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Three scientists linked to the institutes won Nobel prizes last year.

"We want to spread the word of science and get more students interested. ... In many parts of the world that's a problem, from Norway to the United States," Kavli told Reuters on Monday.

"I think we'll be more daring," than the Nobel awards, he said, because they would seek to reward scientific breakthroughs more quickly than the conservative Nobel system.

Continue reading ...

Koreans Report Major Stem Cell Breakthrough

South Korean researchers are reporting today that they have developed a highly efficient recipe for producing human embryos through cloning, and then extracting their stem cells.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers, led by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, said they used their method to produce 11 human stem cell lines that were genetic matches of patients who ranged in age from 2 to 56.

The method, called therapeutic cloning, is one of the great hopes of the stem cell field. It produces stem cells, universal cells that are extracted from embryos, killing the embryos in the process, and that, in theory, can be directed to grow into any of the body's cell types.

Continue reading ...

Human evolution at the crossroads

Scientists are fond of running the evolutionary clock backward, using DNA analysis and the fossil record to figure out when our ancestors stood erect and split off from the rest of the primate evolutionary tree.

But the clock is running forward as well. So where are humans headed?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says it's the question he's most often asked, and "a question that any prudent evolutionist will evade." But the question is being raised even more frequently as researchers study our past and contemplate our future.

Paleontologists say that anatomically modern humans may have at one time shared the Earth with as many as three other closely related types — Neanderthals, Homo erectus and the dwarf hominids whose remains were discovered last year in Indonesia.

Does evolutionary theory allow for circumstances in which "spin-off" human species could develop again?

Some think the rapid rise of genetic modification could be just such a circumstance. Others believe we could blend ourselves with machines in unprecedented ways — turning natural-born humans into an endangered species.

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Top 25 Technological Breakthroughs

CNN has a list of tech advances over the past 25 years:

1) Wireless world
2) Defense technology
3) Alternative fuel vehicles
4) Biotechnology
5) Computers
6) Lasers
7) Genomics
8) Global finance
9) Processors
10) Digital storage
11) Space
12) Fiber optics
13) Satellite TV & radio
14) DNA testing
15) Video games
16) Biometrics
17) Energy and water savers
18) Scanning tunneling microscopes
19) Batteries
20) E-baggage
21) Remote controls
22) Animal cloning
23) Manufacturing technology
24) The big picture
25) Weather technology

A tiny robot swarm - fiction no longer

The cartoon superheroes were frustrated. They confronted a menacing robot that quickly repaired any damage they inflicted. It was made up of a swarm of microscopic robots - so-called nanobots - that could change its function and shape at will. Suddenly the swarm became fluid and flowed away.

That cartoon scenario may seem entertaining. But the reality is startling. Engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration want to pull off a similar trick. They are testing a robot that they hope to shrink to nanobot size and eventually form what NASA calls "autonomous nanotechnology swarms" (ANTS). The researchers aim to give ANTS enough artificial intelligence to make smart decisions as well as know intuitively when and how to walk and swarm.

Continue reading ...

Fully automated robotic parking garage.

Fully automated robotic parking garage.

The way it works is, a driver pulls in and drives onto a parking tray. The machinery does the rest.

"You get out of your car," said [developer Danny] Bivens. "It'll scan your car to make sure there's no dog in there or baby or husband."

The tray rises into the structure like an elevator and shifts the tray into an empty spot, returning with another tray.

"It slides them like an electronic Rubik's cube," said Bivens.

When the resident is ready for the car, a handheld device can be scanned in the elevator on the way down. The car will be waiting.

Robotic camel riders are ready to race

Camel racing is to be transformed as a spectator sport in the United Arab Emirates with robot riders taking the place of child jockeys.

The remotely operated riders were developed following a ban on the use of jockeys under 16 years of age, imposed by the UAE Camel Racing Association in March 2004.

Camel racing is a lucrative sport with a long tradition among Bedouin Arabs. But human rights groups have linked it to the kidnap and mistreatment of children as young as four years old. Riders have traditionally been younger than 16 years-old and weighed less than 45 kg (7 stone).

Continue reading...

ITSY-BITSY DRONE

There are now dozens of different types of drones in the Pentagon's arsenal. But you'd be hard-pressed to find one smaller than this Wasp Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), now being tested aboard the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group off Southern California.

"The Wasp has two cameras — one forward and one aft — that collect and feed live video or other information. It’s designed to follow a programmed or relayed route using Global Positioning System waypoints or other navigational systems," C4ISR Journal says.

Last month, researchers on the Nimitz's ships "launched several of the 7-ounce, 13-inch planes." Sailors there will be taking "the Wasp along on its upcoming deployment, used it for several missions, including maritime interdiction and force protection. Micro UAVs might help in situations in which ships do not have helicopters available... 'It has the potential to save lives during boardings,' said Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Roth, the Nimitz group’s communications officer."

Meanwhile, Darpa and Honeywell are teaming up for a second, slightly larger MAV program. Weighing in at about 12 pounds, the gallon-of-apple-juice-sized drone is meant to fit inside a soldier's (already overstuffed) backpack. The idea is that the MAV will give a small infantry unit the ability to see over the next hill, or around the next corner. That's pretty much what the hand-launched Raven and Dragon Eye drones do today. But this MAV uses ducted fan propulsion, giving it a helicopter-like ability to hover over a valley or alleyway -- or even land on a nearby rooftop, and watch a battle unfold.

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- If you think video games are engrossing now, just wait: PlayStation maker Sony Corp. has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.

The technique could one day be used to create video games in which you can smell, taste, and touch, or to help people who are blind or deaf.

The U.S. patent, granted to Sony researcher Thomas Dawson, describes a technique for aiming ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce "sensory experiences" such as smells, sounds and images.

"The pulsed ultrasonic signal alters the neural timing in the cortex," the patent states. "No invasive surgery is needed to assist a person, such as a blind person, to view live and/or recorded images or hear sounds."

According to New Scientist magazine, the first to report on the patent, Sony's technique could be an improvement over an existing non-surgical method known as transcranial magnetic stimulation. This activates nerves using rapidly changing magnetic fields, but cannot be focused on small groups of brain cells.

Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the University of Tuebingen in Germany, told New Scientist he had looked at the Sony patent and "found it plausible." Birbaumer himself has developed a device that enables disabled people to communicate by reading their brain waves.

A Sony Electronics spokeswoman told the magazine that no experiments had been conducted, and that the patent "was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."

Pentagon Invests in Unmanned 'Trauma Pod'

The Pentagon (news - web sites) is awarding $12 million in grants on Monday to develop an unmanned "trauma pod" designed to use robots to perform full scalpel-and-stitch surgeries on wounded soldiers in battlefield conditions.

The researchers who pitched the Defense Department on the idea have prepared a futuristic "concept video" that seems straight out of a teen fantasy game, showing with full color and sound effects the notion that robots in unmanned vehicles can operate on soldiers under enemy fire and then evacuate them.

"The main challenge is how can we get high-quality medical care onto the battlefield as close to the action and as close to the soldiers as possible," said John Bashkin, head of business development at SRI International, a nonprofit laboratory that often handles Defense Department research. "Right now, the resources are pretty limited to what a medic can carry with him."

Read

SleepTracker wristwatch

Invention of the day: The SleepTracker wristwatch, which "monitors your sleep and wakes you at the moment that your body would best adjust from moving from a sleeping state to being awake."

'Bionic eye' may help reverse blindness

A "bionic eye" may one day help blind people see again, according to US researchers who have successfully tested the system in rats.

The eye implant - a 3-millimetre-wide chip that would fit behind the retina - could be a dramatic step above currently available technology, says the team at Stanford University, California, US.

About 1.5 million people worldwide have a disease called retinitis pigmentosa, and 700,000 people in the western world are diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration each year. In both degenerative diseases, retinal cells at the back of the eye that process light gradually die.

Read

Fight Osteoporosis: Bone Up on B12

Women are about four times more likely than men to develop osteoporosis, or weak, porous bones. But a new study links vitamin B12 deficiency with low bone mineral density in men, and confirms similar, previously reported findings in women. Researchers funded by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) reported the findings in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The study was led by epidemiologist Katherine Tucker with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University in Boston, Mass. Tucker directs the HNRCA's Dietary Assessment and Epidemiology Research Program.

While vitamin B12 deficiency has been linked with low levels of markers of bone formation, the mechanism behind the relationship is not known.

The scientists examined the relationship between vitamin B12 blood levels and indicators of bone health measured in 2,576 men and women, aged 30 to 87, participating in the Framingham Osteoporosis Study. They found that those with vitamin B12 levels lower than 148 picomoles per liter (pM/L) were at greater risk of osteoporosis than those with higher levels. Plasma B12 levels below 185 pM/L are considered "very low," according to some experts.

The study found that those with vitamin B12 concentrations below 148 pM/L had significantly lower average bone mineral density--at the hip in men, and at the spine in women--than those with concentrations above.

The range of symptoms of B-12 deficiency includes anemia, balance disturbances and cognitive decline. Osteoporosis usually progresses with no outward effect until a fracture occurs.

The recommended dietary allowance for vitamin B12 is 2.4 micrograms per day for both men and women. Low stomach acid and aging can lower the ability to absorb the vitamin. Those over age 50 are encouraged to consume fortified foods or supplements containing B12.

This study suggests adequate vitamin B12 intake is important for maintaining bone mineral density. Animal protein foods, such as fish, liver, beef, pork, milk and cheese are good sources of vitamin B12.

From ARS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

Insect Criminality

[Bee crimes against the colony.] [Worker] [policing]: [the policing of insect societies].

Brain chip reads man's thoughts

A paralysed man in the US has become the first person to benefit from a brain chip that reads his mind.

Matthew Nagle, 25, was left paralysed from the neck down and confined to a wheelchair after a knife attack in 2001.

The pioneering surgery at New England Sinai Hospital, Massachusetts, last summer means he can now control everyday objects by thought alone.

The brain chip reads his mind and sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher.

Read

Why some see colours in numbers

US scientists say they can explain why some people 'see' colours when they look at numbers and letters.

As many as one in 2,000 people has an extraordinary condition in which the five senses intermingle, called synaesthesia.

Some see colours when they hear music or words. Others 'taste' words.

The study in Neuron tracked the brain activity of people with the most common form and found peaks in areas involved with perceiving shapes and colours.

Cross-wiring

The University of California San Diego team said their findings lend support to the idea that the condition is due to cross-activation between adjacent areas of the brain involved with processing different sensory information.

This cross-wiring might develop, they believe, by a failure of the "pruning" of nerve connections between the areas as the brain develops while still in the womb.

Continue reading...

Pacemaker 'cure' for depression

SCIENTISTS claim to have developed a "brain pacemaker" that can cure depression through an electronic stimulus.

The discovery raises hopes for thousands for release from depression by drilling holes into their skull and attaching electrodes to the brain which create a brighter mood.

But psychiatrists warn such "surgery" is a drastic measure that must be used with caution.

Scientists in Toronto studied six patients who had suffered years of untreatable clinical depression. Four women and two men had electrodes planted deep into their brain to stimulate one of the areas involved in mood control.

Continue reading ...

India wins landmark patent battle

India has won a 10-year-long battle at the European Patent Office (EPO) against a patent granted on an anti-fungal product, derived from neem.

EPO initially granted the patent to the US Department of Agriculture and multinational WR Grace in 1995.

But the Indian government successfully argued that the medicinal neem tree is part of traditional Indian knowledge.

The winning challenge comes after years of campaigning and legal efforts against so-called "bio-piracy".

Continue reading ...

Using air to charge cellphones? IIT-Delhi does it!

All you need to charge your mobile is -- air!

Students at the Department of Industrial Design at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have attached a turbine with a mobile phone that helps charge it even when the user is travelling, Head of the Department Professor Lalit Kumar Das told PTI.

"The electricity generated by the turbine when moved by wind energy could charge a cellphone in an emergency. It generates electricity to the tune of 3 to 4 watts which is sufficient to charge a mobile phone," he said.

The specially designed turbine, which costs about Rs 200 to be developed inside a laboratory, is so small that it could be easily kept in a pocket, he said.

The primary objective of the device is to extend mobile 'connectivity' where there is no electricity. The device also saves energy, though not to a significant extent, he said.

The electricity could also be used for other purposes such as illumination and playing a radio. High intensity light devices (HILDs) and radio require low energy to function that could be easily provided by the turbine, he said.

The device is best suited for coastal areas where the wind flows almost continuously.

The technique is not yet commercialised but the department has sent a proposal to the ministry of science and technology to help manufacture the turbine on a large scale, Das said.

"The device will help mobile phone users charge their phones while travelling in a bus, a car or a train. All they need to do is -- place the turbine against the wind flow. It will use wind energy to move the turbine thereby generating energy," he said.

The students have also used a spring in the device that can store energy through a handle. It could be used to charge a mobile during power cuts, the scientist added.

(via Rediff)

Invisibility Shields Planned by Engineers

In popular science fiction, the power of invisibility is readily apparent. Star Trek fans, for example, know that the devious Romulans could make their spaceships suddenly disappear.

But is the idea really so implausible? Not according to new findings by scientists who say they have come up with a way to create cloaking device.

Electronic engineers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia are researching a device they say could make objects "nearly invisible to an observer." The contrivance works by preventing light from bouncing off the surface of an object, causing the object to appear so small it all but disappears.

Continue reading ...

Need milk? Study says no

A new medical review suggests there is little evidence that current calcium recommendations help protect bones in children. Instead, experts recommend both exercise and calcium-rich foods.

Children who drink more milk do not necessarily develop healthier bones, researchers said Monday in a report that stresses exercise and modest consumption of calcium-rich foods such as tofu.

Other ways to obtain the absorbable calcium found in one cup of cow’s milk include a cup of fortified orange juice, a cup of cooked kale or turnip greens, two packages of instant oats, two-thirds cup of tofu, or 1-2/3 cups of broccoli, the report said.

Continue reading...

Finally, humans may conquer cockroaches

With the fake promise of, guess what, sex.

Could it be the scientific breakthrough of the century? After decades of trying, scientists have identified and isolated the chemical that gives female German cockroaches their sex appeal - offering humankind a chance of victory over perhaps its most indestructible foe.

In varying sizes and colours, cockroaches are to be found in every corner of the planet, blamed for the spread of almost every pestilence known to man. The most widespread species is the German cockroach - half an inch long and light brown in colour, and famed for its speed.

Humans have tried to gas them and poison them with ingenious combinations of chemicals. Especially popular in the US are lethally baited sticky traps called "roach motels", sold under the slogan "They Check In but They Don't Check Out". But as anyone who has had a roach problem knows full well, nothing works for long. The creatures have been around for 200 million years, and are reputedly capable of emerging unscathed from nuclear armageddon.

But now they may be about to meet their match. According to the journal Science, US researchers have produced a synthetic version of the female cockroach's sex pheromone - the magic ingredient that makes male cockroaches drop everything in the interest of helping their ladies to produce some 350,000 offspring per breeding season. Coby Schal, professor of entomology at North Carolina State University and an author of the study, says the faintest whiff will have the most starving roach come running. "The male will choose the sex pheromone over food, even though he may die on the way." The study found that when a minuscule quantity of the artificial pheromone was placed in one branch of a forked plexiglass tube, 60 per cent of a sample of cockroaches chose that branch and made their way to the sample in less than 10 seconds.

For designers of coachroach traps, the substance is potentially the most most potent bait yet, capable of luring roaches by the millions to their doom. But there is one small problem. In the lab test, 40 per cent of male roaches failed to respond to the pheromones, for reasons unclear. It seems man's battle with the roach is not yet won.

is this it?

Bubble Chambers are used to observe the tracks of subatomic particles at extremely high resolution. The photographs taken of these tracks are often stunningly beautiful and elegant. This website contains a java applet which simulates a bubble chamber, to gorgeous effect.

Great Advertising

3M advertises for it's "Security Glass".

3M puts its money where its mouth is. Yes, that *is* real money ...

The Secret to Longevity in Tubeworms

With an incredible lifespan of up to 250 years, the deep-sea tube worm, Lamellibrachia luymesi, is among the longest-lived of all animals, but how it obtains sufficient nutrients -- in the form of sulfide -- to keep going for this long has been a mystery. In a paper just published in the online journal PLoS Biology, a team of biologists now provide a solution: by releasing its waste sulfate not up into the ocean but down into the sediments, L. luymesi stimulates the growth of sulfide-producing microbes, thus ensuring its own long-term survival.

From Penn State

The research team includes Erik E. Cordes, a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Charles Fisher, professor of biology at Penn State, along with Katriona Shea, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, Michael A. Arthur, a professor of geosciences at Penn State, and Rolf S. Arvidson, an earth sciences research scientist at Rice University.

The sulfide this worm needs is created by a consortium of bacteria and archaea that live in the cold deep-sea sediments surrounding the seep where the worm lives. These organisms use energy from hydrocarbons to reduce sulfate to sulfide, which L. luymesi absorbs through unique root-like extensions of its body, which tunnel into the sediments. However, current measurements of sulfide and sulfate fluxes in the water near the vents do not match either the observed size of the tubeworm colony or the observed longevity of its individuals, leading Cordes et al. to propose that L. luymesi also uses its roots to release sulfate back to the microbial consortia from which it draws its sulfide. Without this return of sulfate, the model predicts an average lifespan of only 39 years in a colony of 1,000 individuals; with it, survival increases to over 250 years, matching the longevity of actual living tubeworms.

To date, the proposed return of sulfate to the sediments through the roots is only a hypothesis -- albeit one with much to support it -- that still awaits direct confirmation. By providing a model in which this hypothetical interaction provides real benefits and explains real observations, the authors hope to stimulate further research into the biology of the enigmatic and beautiful L. luymesi.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

You damned dirty ape

If you're going to work with Koko the Gorilla, the famous talking ape, you've got to know more than sign language. Allegedly, Dr. Penny Patterson insists you've also gotta show your boobs... who knew?

Chimps: fair. Humans:...?

[You humans] [have been around a lot longer than you were thought to have been here] -- [since at least 190,000 years ago]. [In 1967, the Omo ] [fossils were ] [thought to be about 130,000 ] [years old.]

Gene therapy converts dead bone graft to new, living tissue

Researchers have created a way to transform the dead bone of a transplanted skeletal graft into living tissue in an experiment involving mice. The advance, which uses gene therapy to stimulate the body into treating the foreign splint as living bone, is a promising development for the thousands of cancer and trauma patients each year who suffer with fragile and failing bone grafts. The findings were posted online Feb. 13 and will appear in the March 1 issue of Nature Medicine.

Solar Cell implant for the blind

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is scheduled for a later date.

Rush principal investigator Dr. John Pollack performed the surgeries with Dr. Kirk Packo, Dr. Pauline Merrill, Dr. Mathew MacCumber, and Dr. Jack Cohen. All are members of Illinois Retina Associates, S.C., a private practice group and are on the Rush faculty. Patients leave the hospital the same day and will be followed for two years as part of the study, and then indefinitely.

The patients were recruited from a pool of about 5,000 applicants.

The implants are designed for people with retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, which cause blindness and vision impairment in about 10 million Americans. More than one million of these people are legally blind.

Continue reading ...

Epica 2004 Awards

It contains 109 commercials from 18 countries, including the popular 'Gandhi' spot for Telecom Italia.

A Mysterious Streak Above Hawaii

A Mysterious Streak Above Hawaii
Credit: Night Sky Live Collaboration

Explanation: What in heavens-above was that? Not everything seen on the night sky is understood. The Night Sky Live (NSL) project keeps its global array of continuously updating web cameras (CONCAMs) always watching the night sky. On the night of 2004 December 17, the fisheye CONCAM perched on top of an active volcano in Haleakala, Hawaii, saw something moving across the night sky that remains mysterious. The NSL team might have disregarded the above streak as unconfirmed, but the Mauna Kea CONCAM on the next Hawaiian island recorded the same thing. The NSL team might then have disregarded the streak as a satellite, but no record of it was found in the heavens-above.com site that usually documents bright satellite events. If you think you have a reasonable explanation for the streak, please contribute to the on-line discussion. Current candidates include a known satellite that was somehow missed by heavens-above, a recently launched rocket, and a passing space rock. Volunteers are solicited by the NSL project to help monitor the operability of each NSL CONCAM, including looking for interesting anomalies such as this. Disclosure: Robert Nemiroff collaborates on both the NSL and APOD projects.

Cheese triangles shed light on hobbits

Cheese triangles are helping an Australian researcher to explain how hobbits on Flores could make the stone tools found with their bones.

Archaeology PhD student Mark Moore of the University of New England in Armidale presented his research at the recent Australian Archaeological Association conference.

One of the puzzling facts about the discovery of a new species of hobbit human in Liang Bua cave on Flores announced last year is that the remains were found alongside tools that appear to be as sophisticated as those made by modern humans.

This was a surprise as hobbits have such a small brain.

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Parachuting to Titan

Get ready for two of the strangest hours in the history of space exploration. Two hours. That's how long it will take the European Space Agency's Huygens probe to parachute to the surface of Titan on January 14th. Descending through thick orange clouds, Huygens will taste Titan’s atmosphere, measure its wind and rain, listen for alien sounds and, when the clouds part, start taking pictures. No one knows what the photos will reveal. Icy mountains? Liquid methane seas? Hot lightning? "It's anyone's guess," says Jonathan Lunine, a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona and a member of the Huygens science team. "We might not even understand what we see, not immediately."

Such is Titan--the biggest mystery in the solar system.

Astronomers have been watching Titan, Saturn's largest moon, for centuries. What's down there? No one knows, but it's bound to be strange. Get ready.

Infrasound animals

"Infrasonic Symphony" Intrigued by reports of tsunami-avoidance behavior in Sri Lankan wildlife? Science News offers a timely antidote to simplistic mumbo-jumbo about the "mythical power" of animal earthquake detection with a detailed look at the latest research into low-frequency sound. The Elephant Listening Project is particularly interested in elephant rumblings that produce Rayleigh waves. "Mammals, birds, insects, and spiders can detect Rayleigh waves," notes The Explainer. "Most can feel the movement in their bodies, although some, like snakes and salamanders, put their ears to the ground in order to perceive it."

Top Science Stories of 2004

Mars Exploration

Researchers Unveil New Form of Matter

Cloned Human Embryos Yield Stem Cells

Chemists Report New Superheavy Elements

Ancient Shells May be Earliest Jewels

Ringed Victory: Cassini Gets Up Close and Personal with Saturn

NASA Identifies "Likely Direct Cause" of Genesis Crash

Mini-Human Species Unearthed

Fixing the Vote

Holes in the Missile Shield

Monkey Protein Blocks HIV

Newly Discovered Galaxy is a Record-Breaker

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With Great Beer, It's All in the Rocks

With Great Beer, It's All in the Rocks (and That Doesn't Mean Ice)

By KENNETH CHANG Published: December 14, 2004 - New York Times

DENVER - The refreshing bitterness of an English pale ale, the clean light taste of a Pilsener, the dark, almost burnt graininess of Irish stout. To Dr. Alex Maltman, these are prime illustrations of the power of geology.

Wine connoisseurs often talk of terroir - a French word expressing the notion that vineyard soils impart flavors to the finished wines. But data to back up the notion is sketchy, said Dr. Maltman, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Wales. And though whiskey distillers often make much of the water they use, there is little correlation between the taste of whiskey and the geology of where it is made, he said.

Beer and geology, on the other hand, are closely entwined, Dr. Maltman said last month at a seminar on geology and beer held at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.

For one, geologists drink lots of beer, typically ending a long day examining rocks with a trip to the nearest bar. Mayor John W. Hickenlooper of Denver, a former geologist turned pub owner, told the geologists how an earlier geology meeting in 1988 bolstered his fledgling microbrewery.

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Scientists Teach Sparrows to Sing Backward

You wouldn't think sparrows need to be taught how to whistle a happy tune, but Gary Rose wanted to try it anyway.

Rose and his colleagues captured about two dozen baby sparrows -- with permission, honest! -- and separated them so they wouldn't hear any sparrow songs. When the little nestlings were two weeks old, the researchers began to teach them how to perform a basic sparrow jingle using recordings made in the wild.

The music lessons were arduous, two 90-minute sessions every day for two months.

The pupils were treated like any aspiring musician, instructed in step-by-step fashion. Lessons were tailored to the students' instrument and their presumed collective goal, to sing the most common sparrow song, known as "ABCDE."

Here's how it goes: A is an opening whistle; B is bunch of notes; C is a buzz; D is a trill; and E is another bunch of notes. Importantly, the song's segments overlap, like this: AB, BC, CD and DE.

Grown-up sparrows know the number by heart. But how?

Is it genetic, like all human babies knowing exactly how to cry at 3 a.m. just after you've gone back to sleep? Or do sparrow virtuosos rely on short-term memory or, perhaps, on their long-term memories?

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LifeGem Human Carbon "Diamonds"

LifeGems are diamonds made from the carbon contained in human ashes. With 8 ounces of "cremains", enough carbon can be extracted to make a synthetic diamond. The process takes several months. LifeGems can be made in sizes from .25 carats (about $2500) to a full carat ($14,000) and come in round, radiant, or princess cuts. Pet LifeGems are available as well.

"I think more people are looking for more-personal ways to remember somebody," says Dean VandenBiesen, LifeGem's vice president of operations. "Rather than having ongoing mourning for someone's loss, people are wanting to celebrate a life. The LifeGem is just another way to do that, versus having a weeping, somber occasion."

From USA Today.

Google Suggest

Pretty cool, Google's got an iterative search implementation that offers suggsested keyword terms as you type. This is really cool, because I'm thinking of how much I struggled just to get post filtering working for the search on my blog.

Liquid Lens ...!

Camera phones will soon have lenses made from nothing more substantial that a couple of drops of oil and water, but will still be capable of auto focusing, and even zooming in on subjects, says Etienne Paillard, CEO of French start-up Varioptic.

Of course, folks like myself who are keen photographers are going to pipe up with scorn saying nothing new! Sure, Nikon introduced this technology in their cameras way back in 1979; but, it was a closely-guarded secret then and nobody was quite sure what precisely the lens did. All we knew (and were ecstatic about) was that it took the best pictures in the world!

Varioptic was founded two years ago to exploit two core technology patents covering lenses based on the principles of electro-wetting. This is the tendency of liquid to spread on a substrate, Paillard explains. "It means we can tune the shape of the drop to create a lens. Think about a tunable lens, like in the human eye".

The lens has a simple structure: two liquids, of equal density, sandwiched between two windows in a conical vessel. One liquid is water, which is conductive. The other, oil, acts as a lid, allowing the engineers to work with a fixed volume of water, and provides a measure of stability for the optical axis. The interface between the oil and water will change shape depending on the voltage applied across the conical structure. At 0V, the surface is flat, but at 40V, the surface of the oil is highly convex.

There are several advantages to having a lens built like this; no moving parts so less to break and more rugged. Power consumption is very low; 10% of a motorised auto focus lens. It also has the potential to be made very small. Presently, the limit is a few millimetres, but research is on to shrink the lens further. Varioptics is developing the lens for use in endoscopy as well as camera phones. They have a non-exclusive deal with a Samsung-subsidiary to develop the lenses for camera phones and products will be on shelves by Q1 of 2006 or maybe even in time for Christmas 2005. The first product will be the auto focussing lens, but in a year's time Varioptics will have a true zoom capability, using two liquid lenses.

Scientists track footprints of thoughts

Australian scientists have discovered a way to track the electronic footpath of a single thought travelling through the human brain.

The discovery has implications for everything from education to planning the safest way to undertake brain surgery.

The latest developments in scanning techniques allow brain experts to track responses in the brain from particular movements and thoughts, in real time.

"If we ask them to read a sentence we can actually look at them processing a single sentence. In other words we can look at the footprint of a single thought," Professor Keith Thulborn, from Chicago's Centre for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, said.

The technique can be used to monitor how stroke patients are responding to rehabiltation and how well children are learning new concepts.

"This gives you great control over how to plan the intervention and how you can make it most advantageous to the subject to acheive their full potential as quickly as possible."

With this technology doctors can tell precisely what is happening during epileptic seizures.

"It can lead to ideas for new treatments and even the possibility of a surgical cure," Professor Graeme Jackson, from Melbourne's Brain Research Institite, said.

Researchers say the technique can be used to help surgeons map out which parts of the brain to avoid during operations.

"With functional MRI, we can see where their language is and we can see where their motor function is and if we are doing surgery, we can keep well away from that," Professor Jackson said.

So far the new scanning technique is only available in Victoria, but doctors believe it will be widely available within five years.

spam for a spam

Screensaver tackles spam websites

Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.

The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.

Cost curve

"We've never really solved the big problem of spam which is that its so damn cheap and easy to do," said Malte Pollmann, spokesman for Lycos Europe.

"In the past we have built up the spam filtering systems for our users," he said, "but now we are going to go one step further."

"We've found a way to make it much higher cost for spammers by putting a load on their servers."

By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

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Sound solution to the pistachio problem

A device that separates ripe open pistachio nuts from unriped closed pistachios by their distinctive acoustic signatures. The new system is cheaper and more accurate than the current mechanical sorters, and as a pistachio addict I heartily applaud this development!

Clear Pictures of How We Think

We've all had recourse to say: "My head tells me to do one thing, but my heart says do the other." Sometimes we are forced to make a decision but we feel ourselves to be pulled in opposite directions by reason and emotion.

Thanks to an innovation that has transformed the study of the mind, scientists are now able to see precisely what happens in the brain in situations like this. For the first time in history we are getting close to answering the question of whether the heart rules the head.

The progress is due to functional magnetic-resonance imaging, or fMRI.

This technique allows the measurement of the level of oxygen in the blood, and tells scientists which parts of the brain are most active. It can show, for example, the parts of the brain that operate when we fall in love and when we have food cravings. It has even recently revealed the differences in the brains of Democrats and Republicans.

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AstroMeeting

No, these gorgeous images are not from NASA or the Hubble telescope. They are courtesy of Stuttgart-based Stefan Seip, humble IT consultant by day and intrepid astronomy photog by night. His quest for the best images possible takes him to the depths of the Black Forest where ambient light isn't a factor. From his lonely perch he captured comets, shooting stars, the aurora borealis, and other atmospheric phenomena as well as the galactic "big guns" like supernova remnants, double stars, planetary nebulae, and pinwheel galaxies galore. Click the Perseid meteor showers and find his handy map of nearby constellations. Then click more to see what a little moonlighting can do for the soul.

Electronic eye

An electronic "artificial eye", developed for people with impaired vision, has been shown to reliably identify pedestrian crossings, determine when it is safe to walk across and even measure the width of a road.

The system, created by Tadayoshi Shioyama and Mohammad Uddin, at the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan, consists of a single miniature camera that can be clipped onto a pair of glasses and a small wearable computer that analyses video images.

The artificial eye can identify Japanese pedestrian crossings by recognising the white stripes painted across the centre of a road. It can also tell when the signal is flashing to indicate that it is safe to cross. In testing, it successfully identified a crossing 196 times out of 198 and never “found” a crossing where there was not one.

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Google scholarly literature search

Stand on the shoulders of giants. Google Scholar launches.
"Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

Meditation and neuroplasticity

Meditation and neuroplasticity. A new study (PDF) describes the changes in the brains of Buddhist monks, using fMRI to scan their brains while they practice compassion meditation. The project was a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin and the Shechen Monastery in Nepal.

Computer use link to eye disease

Heavy computer use could be linked to glaucoma, especially among those who are short-sighted, fear researchers.

Glaucoma is caused by increased fluid pressure within the eye compressing the nerves at the back, which can lead to blindness if not treated.

The findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, are based on 10,000 Japanese workers.

The authors and experts recommend more research, particularly because being short-sighted is a known glaucoma risk.

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Study Links Sleep Deprivation, Obesity

Weight-loss experts have a novel prescription for people who want to shed pounds: Get some sleep. A very large study has found a surprisingly strong link between the amount of shut-eye people get and their risk of becoming obese.

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Apply Current, Boost Brain Power

Sending a weak electrical impulse through the front of a person's head can boost verbal skills by as much as 20 percent, according to a new study by the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In the study, researchers at the institute asked 103 volunteers to recall as many words that begin with a particular letter as possible. The researchers then passed a 2-milliamp current -- one-tenth of what is needed to power a small LED (light-emitting diode) light -- through electrodes attached to the surfaces of the volunteers' foreheads. When the volunteers were quizzed again while the current was still on, this time with a different letter, they were able to come up with 20 percent more words on average.

The only side effect reported was an itching or "fizzing" sensation around the scalp where the electrode was attached.

The findings could lead to new, drugless treatments for the symptoms of brain injuries and diseases, the researchers said.

"This could be a very helpful way of boosting brain function in people with brain disorders," said lead researcher Eric Wassermann, a neurobiologist with the National Institute's Brain Stimulation Unit in Bethesda, Maryland. "Drugs have more side effects and addictive potential. This doesn't seem to have those problems, at least at this point."

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Autorickshaw finds place in London museum!

The "notorious" three-wheeler autorickshaw of India has found a place in London's science museum for its energy efficiency.

The gleaming yellow and black vehicle is placed right at the entrance of the second floor of the multi-storey building that houses worldwide acquisitions in the field of science. The collection forms an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical change since the 18th century.

"Bajaj autorickshaw - a familiar site in the streets of Indian cities. It has only a 145 cc two-stroke engine but can manage 68 miles per gallon even when carrying a driver and three passengers," says a plaque placed before the autorickshaw numbered DLR 6575.

London's Science Museum took birth as part of the nineteenth-century movement to improve scientific and technical education. It evolved from the South Kensington Museum which was established in 1857. The museum got a new building formally in 1928.

"The science museum strives to collect the latest information in the science field by the earliest. It had acquired a cast of the skull of the 'hobbit', the human-like animal discovered in Indonesia recently, the same day the news broke," Kirsten Harvey, Press Executive of the museum, told a group of reporters from India.

The human-like animal is only a-metre tall, she said.

About three lakh exhibits are displayed in the museum. An interesting exhibit is a genetically-engineered mouse which remains obese. It is useful in the study of obesity. The museum is run by the UK government but several leading companies also provide funds.

Anti-Molestation Jacket

A shock treatment is in store for those who try to molest women on streets.

Two students of the garment manufacturing technology programme of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) have designed a unique anti-molestation jacket, which comes with a handy protection device for the wearer if someone tries to attack her.

The jacket promises to give the wearer confidence, especially in the present scenario of rising incidents of crime against women. It weighs only 450 gm and costs Rs 855, including the cost of the gadget.

NIFT Professor Rajesh Bheda says the designers of the jacket, Kumar Roshan and Shilpi Vaish, have worked out its prototype. However, the market tie-up will be finalised only after the patent is registered.

The jacket, dark maroon in colour, has been made of Indian fabric and designed to make it look like a normal garment by blending metal rivets with embroidery.

The electric gadget concealed inside the jacket is capable of releasing a current of 70 to 100 volts and can be activated at the press of a button attached to the waistband. This results in repelling any attack by giving the aggressor a shock as soon as he comes in contact with the jacket. Provisions have been made to ensure that the wearer does not get hurt in the process. The electric circuit, hidden in a mesh of wire attached to the inner lining of the jacket, is activated only when the wearer wants it to. Insulation protects the wearer from any shock.

The two designed the jacket when they were students at the NIFT in Kolkata. They are now working as garment technologists in Gurgaon-based and Faridabad-based companies.

The technology is the one used in the electric baton, developed by the DRDO for the use of riot police.

Cosmic doomsday delayed

You can breathe a sigh of relief: the Universe will last for at least the next 24 billion years, according to astrophysicists who have modelled the mysterious force of dark energy to work out the fate of the cosmos. Andrei Linde, a theoretical astrophysicist from Stanford University, California, leads a team who previously predicted that the Universe might end as soon as 11 billion years from now¹. But the team's latest research into dark energy, published online at the preprint server arXiv², gives us a stay of execution. The team's new calculation relies on recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope³, which has found several supernovae that are moving away from us faster than any others seen before, implying that the Universe is expanding faster than we thought. Linde concludes that the Universe is likely to last for almost twice as long again as it has already existed, before collapsing back on itself in a 'big crunch'.

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A second black hole has been discovered

A second black hole lurks at the centre of our Galaxy, according to astronomers who have watched a cluster of stars spinning around it.

Just three years ago, astronomers confirmed that the Milky Way revolves around a supermassive black hole1, called Sagittarius A*, which is about 2.6 million times more massive than the Sun.

But now a much smaller black hole, just 1,300 times our Sun's mass, has been found orbiting about three light years away from its supermassive cousin.

Jean-Pierre Maillard, an astronomer from the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, France, led a team that looked at a very bright area of the galactic core called IRS 13, previously thought by astronomers to be a single object.

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Stunning Find Deep in the Pacific Ocean

Ancient star dust found deep beneath the Pacific Ocean has led German scientists to make an astounding conclusion. They think it points to our human origins.

Researchers from the Technical University of Munich in Germany surmise that the star dust is likely debris from a supernova explosion that occurred some 3 million years ago, reports Reuters. The explosion rocked the Earth so much that it changed our planet's climate--drastically heating it up--and helped bring about human evolution just as our ancestors started to walk.

Study leader Gunther Korschinek speculates that the supernova may have caused an increase in cosmic rays for about 300,000 years, which would have warmed up the Earth's temperatures. Korschinek can tell that the star explosion occurred at the same time there was a significant climate change in Africa when drier conditions caused the forests to retreat and the savannah to emerge, reports Reuters. It's this major climate change that likely caused the hominids to emerge from the trees and begin to walk upright.

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cosmetic neurology

Brain-boosting "cosmetic neurology" on the horizon.

In the future, reality shows may have names such as "Extreme Makeover: Brain Edition" or "Sharp Eye for the Dumb Guy."

At the beginning of each episode, viewers could learn about one hapless soul's lifelong struggles with algebra and another's desire to stop being a worrywart. By the end of the hour, the transformed contestants would be winning chess matches and prancing carefree through fields of daisies. Don't check the TV listings yet, but the idea is not all fantasy.

Some neurologists recently have wondered whether their field is the next frontier in elective medicine. The specialty now tries to protect ailing brains from conditions such as Parkinson's disease or migraine headaches. But doctors' efforts one day may extend to normal brains.

"This is coming, and we need to know it's coming," said Dr. Anjan Chatterjee of the University of Pennsylvania.

There's even a name for the field: cosmetic neurology.

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Voice controlled unmanned jet airplane.

MIT team guides airplane remotely using spoken English Aeronautics researchers at MIT have developed a manned-to-unmanned aircraft guidance system that allows a pilot in one plane to guide another unmanned airplane by speaking commands in English. In a flight test, the pilotless vehicle, called a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), responded to sudden changes in plan and avoided unexpected threats en route to its destination, in real time. "The system allows the pilot to interface with the UAV at a high level--not just 'turn right, turn left' but 'fly to this region and perform this task,'" said Mario Valenti, a flight controls engineer for Boeing who is on leave to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. "The pilot essentially treats the UAV as a wingman," said Valenti, comparing the UAV to a companion pilot in a fighter-plane squadron. Tom Schouwenaars, a Ph.D. candidate in aeronautics and astronautics, and Valenti are principal researchers on the guidance system, which is part of the capstone demonstration of the Software Enabled Control (SEC) program. Professors Eric Feron and Jonathan How of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (aero/astro) are among the principal investigators on the SEC program.
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Game Theory

Game Theory .net provides resource material to educators and students of game theory and its applications to economics, business, political science, computer science, and other disciplines. Primarily, the site is directed at less rigorous presentations of the material, concentrating more on making the lessons of game theory relevant to the student. In aiding class preparation, a list of textbooks, readers, and lecture notes used by other educators is provided. Java applets and online games demonstrate these concepts in a fun, interactive way.
Sections I liked are:  Lecture Notes, Games and Pop Culture

NASA studies 'Rain Man' inspiration

NASA scientists are studying the man who was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the 1988 film "Rain Man," hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain his mental capabilities.

Last week, researchers had autistic savant Kim Peek undergo a series of tests including computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, the results of which will be melded to create a three-dimensional look at his brain structure.

The researchers want to compare a series of MRI images taken in 1988 by Dr. Dan Christensen, Peek's neuropsychiatrist at the University of Utah, to see what has since changed within his brain.

Not only are Peek's brain and his abilities unique, noted Richard D. Boyle, director of the California center performing the scans, but he seems to be getting smarter in his specialty areas as he ages.

The 53-year-old Peek is called a "mega-savant" because he is a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates. But he also is severely limited in other ways, like not being able to find the silverware drawer at home or dressing himself.

"The goal is to measure what happens in Kim's brain when he expresses things and when he thinks about them," said his father, Fran.

- CNN

The Watch That Sprays

If Batman’s nemesis, Poison Ivy, was ever comissioned to create her very own watch, she’d probably come up with this stainless steel watch with a hidden spray nozzle connected to an integrated tank at the back of the case.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t exist, and the likelihood of her ever getting licensed seems pretty slim, so we’ll have to settle for the unimaginative Venexx, that could easily be the name of an Ivy like villian in a Batman knockoff TV Show.

It took a year and a half for Munich watch company Venexx to come with the Perfume Watch. Yes! - a watch that carries a flacon inside.

At the back of the watch case, there's a tiny tank to be filled with your favourite scent by using a funnel (comes with the watch). The content will last for approx. 60 uses.

Supreme sophistication: Venexx even made a special perfume that comes with each Perfume Watch.

The guys who read this blog might turn green with envy. No stress, mates, all watches are unisex!

Physics: Dose of 'Reality'

If you're one of the thousands of people who bought Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" in 1988 and then let it gather dust as it sat on the coffee table impressing your visitors, better clear some space. There's a new theory-of-everything book on the way, and it's even more likely to wow your dates—assuming you can convince them you've read it. The first 400 pages of "The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe," by Hawking's equally renowned colleague Roger Penrose, are solid math. The next 600 ... let's just say those first 400 were an introduction.

Nonetheless, the book is being hailed as a masterpiece, and parts of it (specifically, the ones that aren't equations) are eloquent and comprehensible. Even the rankest amateurs will recognize some of Penrose's references, such as the vertigo-inducing etchings of M. C. Escher. "The Road to Reality" is a British best seller, and though it won't arrive in the States until February, it's already generating orders on Amazon. And reviews: one reader with a master's degree in theoretical physics complains that the book was supposed to be "light summer reading" but instead was "really hard going," and another says that Penrose uses the book "in a polemical manner to justify his neo-Platonist view of mathematics." Yeah, we hate it when people do that.
—Mary Carmichael © 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

Coolest idea in recent times!

Smart fabrics make for enhanced living

Imagine a handbag that warns you if you are about to forget your umbrella or wallet, and which you can later turn into a scarf that displays today’s pollution levels. Or how about creating a wall hanging that glows if someone tries to use your home’s wireless internet connection?

All these bizarre objects could soon be possible thanks to a system of computerised fabric patches developed by engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Each patch contains a functional unit of the system - a microprocessor and memory plus either a radio transceiver, a sensor, a microphone, batteries or a display. Put the patches together in different ways and you can create a variety of information-providing or environment-sensing objects, say developers Adrian Cable, Gauri Nanda and Michael Bove at MIT’s Media Lab.

Blogs and Market Research

McGee writes:

In the marketing research context, blogs are a disruptive technology. Instead of having to generate data by way of surveys or focus groups with whatever artifacts the process introduces, blogs provide direct visibility into customers. Instead of having to connect potentially artificial samples back to the actual market, now you have to filter real market behavior, interpret it, and make sense of it. That presents two challenges to market research functions. First, market research staff have to develop new skills. For that, they would do well to pay attention to Dina. Second, management of market research needs to spend some quality thinking time about what to do with access to this new kind of market data.

The opportunity that blogs introduce into the marketing research equation is to create the opportunity to identify and run multiple micro-experiments in the market. Those that succeed get the resources to scale, those that fail generate some useful data and are quickly shut down. There are challenges, of course, especially given how quickly ideas spread in a connected world, but that should be offset by the speed with which experiments can be identified and run. Worth thinking about.

(via emergic)

When medicine meets moral philosophy

Stem-Cell Science
by Jonathan Shaw

The next time you look in a mirror, reflect on this: the face staring back at you is literally not the same one you saw two months ago. Your skin is constantly renewing itself. Like most specialized cells in your body, skin cells are post-mitotic — they cannot replace themselves by dividing. Yet there is always new skin to replace the cells that die and slough off in the shower every day. The source of the new you? Stem cells.

Doctors believe that if they can understand and harness the power of these cells, they will usher in a new era of regenerative medicine in which the body's own capacities for development and repair can be directed to cure such maladies as Parkinson's, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), and heart disease. With clinical applications in mind — between 100 million and 150 million people in the United States suffer from diseases potentially treatable with stem-cell-derived therapies — the University announced this spring the creation of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), which will coordinate the teaching, training, and research of 100 scientists across 14 Harvard schools and affiliated hospitals (see "Stem-cell Science," May-June 2004, page 59). The HSCI has the full and enthusiastic support of President Lawrence H. Summers.

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Petri Dish Autopilot

'Brain' In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene.

As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments.

Tea has same effects as drugs against Alzheimers!

Drinking regular cups of tea could help improve your memory, research suggests.

A team from Newcastle University found green and black tea inhibited the activity of key enzymes in the brain associated with memory.

The researchers hope their findings, published in Phytotherapy Research, may lead to the development of a new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease.

They say tea appears to have the same effect as drugs specifically designed to combat the condition.

Alzheimer's disease is associated with a reduced level of a chemical called acetylcholine in the brain.

In lab tests, the Newcastle team found that both green and black tea inhibited the activity of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which breaks down this key chemical.

They also found both teas inhibited the activity of a second enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE), which has been discovered in protein deposits found in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's.

Green tea went one step further in that it obstructed the activity of beta-secretase, which plays a role in the production of protein deposits in the brain which are associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The scientists also found that it continued to have its inhibitive effect for a week, whereas black tea's enzyme-inhibiting properties lasted for only one day.

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Printers betray document secrets

That staple of crime novels - solving a case by identifying the typewriter used to write a ransom note - is being updated for the modern day.

US scientists have discovered that every desktop printer has a signature style that it invisibly leaves on all the documents it produces.

They have now found a way to use this to identify individual laser printers.

The work will help track down printers used to make bogus bank notes, fake passports and other important papers.

Lie Detectors vs Truth Serum

"Human Lie Detectors Almost Never Miss". If you still don't trust them, then try this "mathematical truth serum".

Chips Coming to a Brain Near You

In this era of high-tech memory management, next in line to get that memory upgrade isn't your computer, it's you.

Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.

And it's no longer a question of "if" but "when."

The Worst Jobs in Science: The Sequel

Monitoring dumps, extracting worms, lobbying politicians: science's ugly side.

Think your job’s bad? Try dragging a bedspread around tick-ridden thickets, pausing regularly in the 100-degree heat not to squeegee the sweat from your brow but to tweeze dozens of the tiny pests into a collection jar. Reconsidering your career choice? Imagine training for years as a veterinarian, only to find yourself engaged in labwork designed to make the tail-wagging puppies in your charge sick, knowing all the while that when the study is over, the pooches will be euthanized. Having a bad day? Just be glad you’re not spending it in minute examination of unusual growths on a dozen or so people’s posteriors.

But don’t feel sorry for the scientists and staffers employed in these travails and the 14 others gathered in this, our second annual countdown of the worst jobs in science—they probably wouldn’t want your job any more than you’d want theirs. Case in point: As we canvassed hundreds of scientists for worst-job nominees, an inexplicable thing happened—the glorious and esteemed calling known as “science journalist” kept garnering votes. Something about missing out on the chance to do real science ourselves, coupled with our need to simplify (or was it “oversimplify”?) the subjects we cover.

That, of course, is part of the fascination of an exercise such as this. Job horror is in the eye of the job holder. And to the great benefit of society, most of these job holders simply don’t regard their occupation as being that horrible—or, at any rate, are willing to endure the horrors for the opportunity to do virtuous and important work. We salute them.

(via Popular Science)

Pencils down, people GLAT is here

The Google Labs Aptitude Test. Potential employees are asked some neat questions!

If you're the kind of uber-geek, you'll enjoy taking it, and maybe you'd enjoy life as a Googler. Give it a try. The GLAT is four pages long; you can print them out here, here, here and here. When you're done, send your completed test to:

Google Labs Jobs
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043-1351

Paralysed man sends e-mail by thought

"An pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far," reports Nature.

"The device, called the BrainGate, was developed by the company Cyberkinetics, based in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Each electrode taps into a neuron in the patient's brain. The BrainGate allowed the patient to control a computer or television using his mind, even when doing other things at the same time. Researchers report for example that he could control his television while talking and moving his head."

China as Early Wireless VoIP Market

Barron's writes:

Dense cities, with millions of people who can't afford cars or cellphone service make China a great testbed for wireless VoIP. That could create opportunities for makers of wireless networking chips, like Intel, Broadcom and little Atheros Communications.

Chinese phone operators have a good reason to bankroll voice over Wi-Fi or WiMax: Subscriber growth at China Mobile and China Unicom has been slowed by the availability of a cheap wireless alternative called Personal Handyphone Service. PHS offers limited-range wireless service at a fraction of the cost of cellular, typically about 8 bucks a month. Subscriptions for PHS have grown tenfold in three years, to more than 55 million. It's been a clever entree into wireless for its sponsors -- the fixed-line phone companies, China Telecom and China Netcom. It's also been a windfall for equipment suppliers like UTStarcom, the fast-growing -- if unevenly managed -- telecom outfit in Alameda, Calif.

To compete against PHS, China's mobile operators need a technology that's cheaper than cellular. Urban Wi-Fi networks would allow them to offer voice and Internet services at a comparable price to PHS, says Colin Macnab, the marketing vice president of Atheros. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Atheros has competed successfully against Intel and Texas Instruments with chips that are cheaper, yet more powerful. With a reception range of more than 800 meters, Atheros Wi-Fi chips can reach twice the distance of competing products. Wi-Fi makers are also adding power management features, to conserve battery life in devices like a handheld phone. So Wi-Fi voice technology has attracted the attention of China's phone firms, Macnab suggests.

(via emergic)