Larry Winfield.com: Sundown Lounge - Maproom Archives
Map Room Archive: Shows 121 - 135
From
Sundown Lounge No. 135
Geeknotes:
CD Baby hits 10
Toufee 2.0
China vs Tibet on YouTube
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CD Baby hits 10:
This week CD Baby hits 10. What began with one musician, Derek Sivers, just trying to get his stuff out there, has become a really cool vehicle for independent artists to sell without selling out. Anyway, you can read all about it at derek's blog.
Toufee 2.0:
Toufee, the Flash Making Application, has come out with Pro 2.0. Cool! I'm thinking about using it to make a book trailer. Check it out at toufee.com.
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China vs Tibet on YouTube:
One of many Chinese replies to widespread condemnation over Tibet crackdown:
Tibet Independence movement reply to Chinese propaganda:
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Electrons Travel Over 100 Times Faster
in Graphene than Silicon
University of Maryland physicists have shown that in graphene the intrinsic limit to the mobility, a measure of how well a material conducts electricity, is higher than any other known material at room temperature. Graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of graphite, is a new material which combines aspects of semiconductors and metals.
Their results, published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, indicate that graphene holds great promise for replacing conventional semiconductor materials such as silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.
A team of researchers led by physics professor Michael S. Fuhrer of the university’s Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, and the Maryland NanoCenter said the findings are the first measurement of the effect of thermal vibrations on the conduction of electrons in graphene, and show that thermal vibrations have an extraordinarily small effect on the electrons in graphene.
Intel’s 60 Mile Long-Range Wi-Fi
Intel has found a way to stretch a Wi-Fi signal from one antenna to another located more than 60 miles away.
They recently announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough–up to about 6.5 megabits per second–that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says.
The RCP, which essentially consists of a processor, radios, specialized software, and an antenna, is an appealing way to connect remote areas that otherwise would go without the Internet, says Galinovsky. Wireless satellite connections are expensive, he points out. And it’s impractical to wire up some villages in Asian and African countries. “You can’t lay cable,” he says. “It’s difficult, expensive, and someone is going to pull it up out of the ground to sell it.”
Already, Intel has installed and tested the hardware in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa. Later this year, the company will sell the device in India, with a target price below $500. The point-to-point technology will require two nodes, which could provide “full back-end infrastructure” for less than $1,000, Galinovsky says.
I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.
Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief...
Tibet Once Ruled China?
This isn't from an article, just my own curious Googling as I came across a page on the Tibetan flag:
"The Tibetan national flag is intimately connected with the authentic history and royal lineages of Tibet which are thousands of years old. Furthermore, in the Tibetan Royal year 820 or in the seventh century of the Christian era, at the time of the Tibetan religious King Song-Tsen Gamp the Great extensive land of Tibet was divided into large and small districts. From these ... an army of 2,860,000 men was chosen and stationed along the borders of Tibet, and the subjects thus lived in safety. The bravery and heroism of the Tibetan people at that time in conquering and ruling even the adjacent empire of China is well-known in world history.
What's that? Tibet ruled China way back in the day?
I did a quick Wikipedia check, then went to a few more sources to confirm, and I like the paragraph I found at IDP:
The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online, an online archive of archeology-related information and images made freely available online. Now that it's vetted (for anybody with a rod up their butt), here's the paragraph:
"At the beginning of the seventh century the Tibetan army, under the leadership of King Songsen Gampo, began to move into Central Asia. As the western end of the Silk Road, the cities of Kashgar, Kucha and Khotan fell to the Tibetan army. To the east, the Tibetans came into direct conflict with China, and a war between the two states, interspersed with periods of peace, lasted for nearly two centuries. At its furthest extent, the Tibetan Empire included the Chinese capital itself, conquered in 763. The Tibetans also conquered the Tangut people, who were converted to Buddhism. After King Lang Darma was assassinated in 842 bringing to an end the dynasty of Tibetan kings, the Empire began to collapse and the Tibetans disappeared from Central Asia shortly afterwards."
Maybe I'm being too geeky, but I think a certain portion of China's extremely hard line on Tibet lies in this old wound, another example of human primitive tribal behavior.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 134
Geeknotes:
Chicago News
Downtown Events
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A couple Chi-town items:
Poet Michael C Watson's show "Wordslingers" airs the 1st and 3rd Sun. nights 8pm to 9pm central from the campus of Loyola University on 88.7fm WLUW and streaming live on www.wluw.org;
A documentary, "Killer Poet," about convicted killer Norman Porter (who we all knew as JJ Jameson) is out making the rounds at film festivals. I fear the scene will again be tarred as willfully ignorant or somehow complicit, but, we'll see...
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On the 2nd Thursday of the month we have the Downtown Art Walk and Comedy Walk, featuring around two dozen galleries and art spaces, and nine comedy clubs, all free. There are also local musicians who set up and perform on the corners. Kinda gives me a couple ideas...
Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism
SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1-5 PM
THE NEW LATC
514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles
One block east of Broadway in Downtown LA between 5th and 6th.
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Scientists Create Room
Temperature Superconductor
Instead of super-cooling the material, as is necessary for conventional superconductors, the new material is instead super-compressed. The researchers, a Canadian-German team, claim that the new material could sidestep the cooling requirement, thereby enabling superconducting wires that work at room temperature.
“If you put hydrogen compounds under enough pressure, you can get superconductivity,” said professor John Tse of the University of Saskatchewan. “These new superconductors can be operated at higher temperatures, perhaps without a refrigerant.”
He performed the theoretical work with doctoral candidate Yansun Yao. The experimental confirmation was performed by researcher Mikhail Eremets at the Max Plank Institute in Germany.
Researchers have speculated for years that hydrogen under enough pressure would superconduct at room temperature, but have been unable to achieve the necessary conditions (hydrogen is the most difficult element to compress). The Canadian and German researchers attributed their success to adding hydrogen to a compound with silicon that reduced the amount of compression needed to achieve superconductivity...
That's what Peter Tiernan, the proprietor of Bracketscience.com during March and a software director during the rest of the year, claims he can do. Drawing on decades of stats on tournament teams that he painstakingly compiled from game programs in the pre-digital, short-shorts age, Tiernan runs regression analyses on teams Performance Against Seed Expectations. Basically, he asks, what types of teams do better than you'd expect in the tournament?
For Ex:
Tiernan says that 15 of the last 17 champions have possessed six key attributes. Those teams:
* Are seeded 1 through 4
* Come from a Big Six Conference (i.e., Pac 10, SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big 10, Big East)
* Went to the previous year's tournament
* Have a coach who has been to the tourney at least 5 times
* Score more than 77 points per game
* Win by an average of at least 10 points per game over the course of the season
Only 4 teams meet all those conditions:
* North Carolina
* Duke
* Kansas
* Tennessee
Molecular Basis of Life
Discovered on Extrasolar Planet
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time found the telltale signature of methane, an organic molecule, in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.
Methane is one of the chemicals of life, an organic compound in the class of molecules containing carbon. However, no life is likely to exist on the large, gaseous planet known as HD 189733b. Its daily temperatures can reach 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit.
"These measurements are a dress rehearsal for future searches for life," said Mark Swain, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead author of a new study that appears in Nature tomorrow. "If we were able to detect [methane] on a more hospitable planet in the future, it would really be something exciting."
HD 189733b, a so-called "hot Jupiter," located 63 light years away, has proven a boon for scientists studying exoplanets. Its large size and proximity to its star mean that it dims the star's light more than any other known exoplanet. Combine that with its home star's high brightness, and scientists find that the system creates the best viewing conditions of any known extrasolar system.
Final Thoughts from Sir Arthur C. Clarke
By Saswato R. Das
The last interview with the late Sir Arthur in a Sri Lankan hospital in January found the famed author still entranced with terraforming planets, space elevators, and the search for extraterrestrials
I asked him about terraforming Mars, changing the Red Planet so that it would be more like Earth. He wrote a book about the process in the 1990s, trying to use software on his computer to model how Mars would change with terraforming. I asked him if his ideas had changed since then.
“Start terraforming Mars by remote-control systems,” he said. “It'll be a joint process, humans and machines.” Then he added mischievously, “I hope the machines don't get annoyed with us!”
I asked Clarke if he remembered his interaction with Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which brought him immense fame.
“There weren't any real fights,” he quipped. Clarke spent a few weeks holed up in an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side finishing the screenplay, based on his 1948 short story “The Sentinel.”
We came back to the present. He said that in many ways, being confined to a wheelchair had left his mind free to roam the cosmos. He was spending a lot of time thinking.
“My main interest is astronomy and the discovery of extraterrestrial life,” he said. “I'm sure the ETs are all over the place. I am surprised and disappointed they haven't come here already—assuming they haven't. Maybe they are waiting for the right moment to come. And I hope they are not hungry!”
From
Sundown Lounge No. 133
Geeknotes:
"Banjo Strings" Update
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On the book front, I have chapters 1 - 3 formatted for PDAs and the Amazon Kindle on the book page. Incidentally, the Kindle can read regular text files, just in case any writers out there were wondering about the whole "proprietary AZW" formatting thing, and the Amazon "Digital Text Platform," which doesn't really help me until I want to sell an entire book; they don't allow free samples through the Kindle store, far as I can tell. Well, anyway, anybody out there with a Kindle, a Palm, a Crackberry, have at it.
State environmental officials and caving organizations are asking people not to enter caves or mines with bats until further notice to avoid the possible transfer of a mysterious new bat disease from cave to cave.
Thousands of hibernating bats are dying in caves in New York and Vermont from unknown causes, prompting an investigation by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, as well as wildlife agencies and researchers around the nation.
The most obvious symptom involved in the die-off is a white fungus encircling the noses of some, but not all, of the bats.
Called "white nose syndrome," the fungus is believed to be associated with the problem, but it may not contribute to the actual cause of death. It appears that the impacted bats deplete their fat reserves months before they would normally emerge from hibernation, and die as a result.
Last year, some 8,000 to 11,000 bats died at several locations in New York, the largest die-off of bats due to disease documented in North America. This year, an unknown number of bats are at risk.
A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and in turn prevent the onset of AIDS.
Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus.
"When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus."
Barr and his team also prevented cells from turning on TRIM22 - provoking an interesting phenomenon: the normal response of interferon, a protein that co-ordinates attacks against viral infections, became useless at blocking HIV infection.
"This means that TRIM22 is an essential part of our body's ability to fight off HIV. The results are very exciting because they show that our bodies have a gene that is capable of stopping the spread of HIV."
Man Creates Vigilante Robot
to Battle Drug Dealers
Atlanta bar owner Rufus Terrill has built an armor plated remote control robot to video tape and chase away drug dealers and other unsavory characters who are causing problems in the neighborhood.
Late at night several times a week, Terrill powers up the 4-foot-tall, 300 pound device and reaches for a remote control packed with two joysticks and various knobs and switches. Standing on a nearby corner, he maneuvers the machine down the block, often to a daycare center where it accosts what Terrill says are drug dealers, vagrants and others who shouldn’t be there.
He flashes the robot’s spotlight and grabs a walkie-talkie, which he uses to boom his disembodied voice over the robot’s sound system.
“I tell them they are trespassing, it’s private property, and they have to leave,” he said. “They throw bottles and cans at it. That’s when I shoot the water cannon. They just scatter like roaches.”
To the list of threats to tropical rainforests you can add a new one -- trees. It might seem that for a rainforest the more trees the merrier, but a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution warns that non-native trees invading a rainforest can change its basic ecological structure -- rendering it less hospitable to the myriad plant and animal species that depend on its resources. Results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research team, led by Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, used innovative remote sensing technology on aircraft to survey the impact of invasives on more than 220,000 hectares (850 square miles) of rainforest on the island of Hawaii. Previous studies of the impact of invasive plants on forests were limited to small areas. Instruments aboard the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) penetrate the forest canopy to create a regional "CAT scan" of the ecosystem, identifying key plant species and mapping the forest's three-dimensional structure.
This is the first use of this approach to track invasives in Hawaii, where roughly half of all organisms are non-native, and approximately 120 plant species are considered highly invasive. Undisturbed Hawaiian rainforests are often dominated by the ohia tree (Metrosideros polymorpha), but these slow-growing native trees are losing ground to newcomers, such as the tropical ash (Fraxinus uhdei) and the Canary Island fire tree (Morella faya).
CAO surveys of rainforest tracts on the Mauna Kea and Kilauea Volcanoes found that stands of these two invasive tree species form significantly denser canopies than the native ohia trees. Less light reaches lower forest levels, and as a result native understory plants such as tree ferns are suppressed.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 132
Geeknotes:
Urban Twang
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early - The Onion
March Is Small Press Month. Oh Yeah? Says Who?
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Urban Twang
This Saturday, March 1
9:30 pm Set Time
Elbo Room
2871 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago
Against our better judgement we booked a gig.
Our set is early enough that your night is not ruined.
You can still go some where after it and have fun.
Also appearing will be a bunch of bands we have never
heard of and most likely half our age.
E-Zel
The Fuz
The Sharp & Harkins Band
The Spins
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Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early - The Onion
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March is declared Small Press Month. Really?
My buddy CJ Laity of Chicagopoetry.com hipped me to this, and it rubs me the wrong way same as him.
In the first place, I don't consider Houghton Mifflin, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Harlequin, Harper Collins, or McGraw-Hill "small press" or "independent" publishers. I don't even place university presses under that label because they have an educational institution supporting them. When I hear "small, indy press" I think of writers printing their own damn books because corporate publishers won't give 'em the time of day, and it's invariably not because of the quality of the work (you can read my "podcast novel" forum posts at AuthorNation for more on that end). Second, it's a NY-based literary cliche deciding this honor for indy publishers across the country, with the usual "flyover country" contempt for the midwest literary scene, and Chicago in particular. Being in LA, that attitude is very prevalent out here. Last point: for a celebration that's in its 12th year, I never heard of this thing until THIS year, and even this year there are less than 12 events being held across the country (and none in the South), and only 2 in the LA area, one being at the poetry nightclub Beyond Baroque in Venice.
Now, this little mini-rant may cost me a big book deal with the corporate publishing industry - so friggin what; my little book is getting readers all on its own, so they can go pound sand. More power to you, CJ.
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Black History Month Tribute by Three Days Later
From Megan Jenifer at "Law of Attraction Station": an inspirational video/audio recording that
was created by my brothers Ted, Shade and Jason Jenifer
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Google Lunar X Prize
More than three decades after the last Apollo astronauts roamed the lunar surface, disparate universities, open-source engineers and quixotic aerospace start-ups are planning to start their own robotic missions to the Earth's barren cousin.
The return to the moon is part of the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by Google with $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic rover on the moon and send images and other data back home.
At Google's headquarters last week, 10 teams from five countries announced their intention to participate in the competition.
Google will pay $20 million to the first team that lands on the moon, sends a package of data back to Earth, then travels at least 500 meters and sends another data package. The second team to accomplish the goals will win $5 million. Bonuses are offered for feats like visiting a historic landing site and finding and detecting lunar ice, but the prize money starts to shrink if the mission is not accomplished by 2012.
via Arbroath
Breath Analysis Used to Diagnosis Diseases
Your breath can reveal more than what you ate or drank, it may provide a very inexpensive method of diagnosing any disease you might be suffering from, researchers say.
The breath potentially contains trace of more than 1000 compounds even though you might see only water vapour coming out of your mouth on a cold winter day, they say.
A team of researchers led by Jun Ye has demonstrated that an optical technique for simultaneously identifying tiny amount of a broad range of molecules in breath has the potential of enabling a fast, low cast screen tool for disease.
“It is exciting to imagine the potential of analysing all major biomarkers in one’s breath at once,” says Ye, a physicist at JILA, a joint institute of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Giving an example, he says nitric oxide can indicate asthma, but it also appears in breath with many other lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis.
“However, if we simultaneously monitor nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, hydro-peroxide, nitrites, nitrates, pentane, and ethane, all important biomarkers for asthma, we can be much more certain for a definitive diagnosis of this important disease,” he adds.
Existing methods for detecting trace amounts of molecules from the breath, the researchers say, are either bulky, slow, limited to specific molecules, unable to distinguish very well between multiple compounds or inaccurate at measuring their concentrations.
Shell-Shaped Nautilus House
This house is more of a sculpture than a dwelling. Taking cues from a Nautilus shell, the house is put together using ferrocement construction, a technique involving a frame of steel-reinforced chicken wire with a special two-inch-thick composite of concrete spread over it, resulting in a structure that’s earthquake-proof and maintenance-free. More photos after the jump.
The open concept inside the house is dominated by smooth surfaces, spiral stairs and natural plantings that makes the inhabitants feel like they’re living inside a snail who swallowed the entire contents of somebody’s back yard. While the house is surrounded on three sides by the bustling Mexico City, its West side (where most of its portal-style windows are located) has a breathtaking view of the mountains.
ZIF Crystals Trap 80x Its Weight In CO2
Researchers had developed a new nanoscale crystal called ZIF (zeolitic imidazolate framerwork) that can trap 80x its volume of carbon dioxide!
This particular crystal has excited proponents of carbon-capturetechnology for its ability to absorb CO2 and nothing else, but the process that head researcher Omar Yahgi and his lab used to develop the compound is potentially much more significant.
Yahgi's lab employs automation techniques frequently found in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to rapidly test crystal samples on a scale not previously possible, which has led to an avalanche of new discoveries. At one point, the technique was yielding so many potentially useful compounds that Yahgi had to ask his students to stop so they could publish their findings. Possible uses for crystals that can selectively absorb specific molecules are numerous, including military applications and hydrogen-fuel storage for green vehicles.
Nanoparticles to Make Hydrogen Cheaper than Gasoline
According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for 2010 by 10%.
The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 131
Geeknotes:
Poetry Performance Incubator at Guild Complex
Bill 'Lynchmob' O'Reilly
The Guild Complex is assembling a poetry
performance incubator. What’s that you ask? It’s
an ensemble who will work collaboratively to craft
a performance at the intersection of poetry and
theater. Ensemble members will write as a
collective, which includes writing pieces not only
for oneself but for others in the group, and
performing not only one’s own poetry but others’
poetry as well. We are holding open auditions for
three slots in a five member team that will work
with respected director Coya Paz, co-founder of
Teatro Luna. The working theme for the incubator
is Inside/Outside: moments of contact that make
you feel that you belong or that you don’t belong.
This intensive incubator will meet weekly to
bi-weekly at first. The schedule will increase to
twice/three times weekly as the performance date
nears. Late March to through mid-July commitment
needed. Please prepare 5 minutes of work to be
performed at the audition. We’re looking for
people with energy, good humor and an openness to
a new process. Emerging talent welcome.
Please call the Guild Complex voice mail to
schedule a 5-minute audition: 1.877.394.5061.
Speak slowly and clearly to leave your name,
telephone number and e-mail address for
confirmation. We will return your call to give you
the time of your audition and to answer any
questions. Audition slots will close on Monday,
March 3, at 5:00 p.m. You must be available for
both the open audition and the call back to be
eligible for the incubator
Audition Open Call
Wednesday, March 5, Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W.
Cuyler, 2nd floor, Chicago
6:00-9:00 p.m.
Call back, March 9, evening, location TBA.
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Bill 'Lynchmob' O'Reilly
In a discussion of recent comments made by Michelle Obama, Bill O'Reilly took a call from a listener who stated that, according to "a friend who had knowledge of her," Obama " 'is a very angry,' her word was 'militant woman.' " O'Reilly later stated: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down."
Meanwhile,
the Dallas PD security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the he took the stage at Reunion Arena. The cops spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event.
Hey Bill, the good ol' boys called - "message received, and keep up the good work..."
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Peace Sign Turns 50
The Peace Sign, one of the most widely known symbols in the world, was first designed and drawn on home-made banners and badges in London, England on February 21, 1958.
The international icon was founded when the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ) was launched at a public meeting but has since been apropriated by scores of different protest movements, from hippies in 1960s America and to the rest of the world, it is known more broadly as the peace symbol.
Trying to persuade your powerful boss of a new idea? Just forget it. Going by a new study, he would not listen to you. A team of international researchers has carried out a study and found that when people feel the power of their position, they normally tend to ignore new opinion -- the reason being "confidence".
"Powerful people have confidence in what they are thinking. Whether their thoughts are positive or negative towards an idea, that position is going to be hard to change," said lead researcher Richard Petty of Ohio State University.
However, the study has also revealed that the best way to get leaders to consider new ideas is to put them in a situation where they don't feel as powerful.
"If you temporarily make a powerful person feel less powerful, you have a better chance of getting them to pay attention," said co-researcher Pablo Briol of the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid in Spain.
The team came to the conclusion after carrying out two related experiments on a group of college students in America.
Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain, the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston yesterday heard.
Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins.
Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.
Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania's centre for cognitive neuroscience, said: "The biggest effects are on language and memory. The finding about memory impairment - the ability to encounter a pattern and remember it - really surprised us."
Jack Shonkoff, director of Harvard University's centre on the developing child, said policymakers had to take note of the research because "the foundation of all social problems later in life takes place in the early years".
"The earlier you intervene [to counteract the impact of poverty], the better the outcome in the end, because the brain loses its plasticity [adaptability] as the child becomes older," he said.
Stress hormone levels tend to be higher in young children from poor families than in children growing up in middle-class and wealthy families, said Prof Shonkoff. Excessive levels of these hormones disrupt the formation of synaptic connections between cells in the developing brain - and even affect its blood supply. "They literally disrupt the brain architecture," he said.
The findings explain why relatively unfocused programmes to prepare poor children for school, such as Head Start in the US, have produced only modest results, the scientists said.
Study Rejects Internet Sex Predator Stereotype
By Julie Steenhuysen
The typical online sexual predator is not someone posing as a teen to lure unsuspecting victims into face-to-face meetings that result in violent rapes, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
Rather, they tend to be adults who make their intentions of a sexual encounter quite plain to vulnerable young teens who often believe they are in love with the predator, they said.
And contrary to the concerns of parents and state attorneys general, they found social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace do not appear to expose teens to greater risks.
"A lot of the characterizations that you see in Internet safety information suggests that sex offenders are targeting very young children and using violence and deception against their victims," said Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
"Especially since social networking sites became popular, people are suggesting that these offenders are using information to stalk and abduct their victims," said Wolak, whose study appears in the journal American Psychologist.
"We are not seeing those types of cases," Wolak said in a telephone interview.
Instead, she said most cases arise from risky online interactions such as talking online about sex to strangers.
"The great majority of cases we have seen involved young teenagers, mostly 13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls who are targeted by adults on the Internet who are straightforward about being interested in sex," she said.
The study was based on telephone interviews with 3,000 Internet users between the ages of 10 and 17 done in 2000 and again in 2005. The researchers also conducted more than 600 interviews with federal, state and local law enforcement officials in the United States.
They also combed through data from similar studies.
They found Internet offenders pretended to be teenagers in only 5 percent of the crimes studied. They also found nearly 75 percent of victims who met their offenders in person did so on more than one occasion.
Wolak said Internet predators use instant messages, e-mail and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate relationships with their victims. "From the perspective of the victim, these are romances," she said.
Wolak said teens who engaged in risky online behaviors -- having buddy lists that included strangers, discussing sex online with strangers, being rude online -- were much more likely to be targeted.
"One of the big factors we found is that offenders target kids who are willing to talk to them online. Most kids are not," Wolak said.
U.S. state attorneys general have been working with privately held Facebook and NewsCorp's MySpace to protect users from registered sex offenders.
But Wolak said it is important for parents and children to have a clear picture of who these predators are.
"If everybody is looking for violent predators lurking in the bushes, kids who are involved in these relationships aren't going to be seeing what is happening to them as a crime," she said.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 130
Geeknotes:
Grant Proposal Writing Workshop
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Grant Proposal Writing Workshop
The Grant Institute's Grants 101: Professional Grant Proposal Writing Workshop will be held at South Louisiana Community College - Lafayette Campus, February 27 - 29, 2008. Interested development professionals, researchers, faculty, and graduate students should register as soon as possible, as demand means that seats will fill up quickly. Please forward, post, and distribute this e-mail to your colleagues and listservs.
All participants will receive certification in professional grant writing from the Institute. For more information call (888) 824 - 4424 or visit The Grant Institute at www.thegrantinstitute.com.
The Grant Institute
Grants 101: Professional Grant Proposal Writing Workshop
will be held at
South Louisiana Community College
Lafayette Campus
Lafayette, Louisiana
February 27 - 29, 2008
8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Invention is 5 percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration, Thomas Alva Edison, one of the world’s greatest inventors, said. For Filipino inventor Virgilio “Billy” L. Malang, who invented a vitamin-laced beer, that 5 percent inspiration came from the Filipinos’ love of drinking.
“Tubig sa atin ang beer (Beer is like water to us),” he told the Inquirer. “The Pinoy’s weakness is beer, and his next weakness is the next beer,” he added
A 2004 Kirin Research Institute study ranks the Philippines as the 5th highest beer consumer in Asia (next to China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand), with 1.4 billion liters consumed annually and projected growth of 15.6 percent per annum. A Filipino drinks an average of nearly 20 liters of beer a year.
“Sa Pilipino kasi, tatlong okasyon lang na pwedeng uminom siya—Kapag siya ay malungkot; kung siya ay masaya; at yung pagitan ng dalawa (Filipinos drink only on three occasions—when they are sad, when they are happy and in between),” Malang noted in jest.
Malang’s Vitamin B complex-fortified beer or Vitamin Beer takes some of the guilt out of drinking. “If you are looking for an excuse to take a swig, this is it,” said Malang, who claimed that Vitamin Beer replaces the essential Vitamin B which is lost when excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed.
via Arbroath
Self-Cleaning Wool and Silk
Developed Using Nanotechnology
Good news for those who hate washing socks, are worried about hygiene or resent spending money on dry cleaning: self cleaning forms of wool and silk have been developed with the help of nanotechnology.
Wool socks, skirts and silk ties may soon clean themselves of smells and stains in the sunshine, researchers in Australia and China suggest.
Dr Walid Daoud of Monash University, Victoria, Australia, and colleagues prepared wool fabrics with and without a nanoparticle coating - particles around five nanometres across (five billionths of a metre) composed of anatase titanium dioxide, a substance already used as a pigment that is known to break down and destroy contaminants upon exposure to sunlight.
"The self-cleaning technology in our work uses titanium dioxide photocatalyst that when triggered by light, it decomposes dirt, stains, harmful microorganisms and so on," says Dr Daoud.
The researchers then stained the fabric samples with red wine. After 20 hours of exposure to simulated sunlight, the coated fabric showed almost no signs of the red stain, whereas the untreated fabric remained deeply stained, the researchers say.
Here is a chart that answers the age old question about what size of penis they prefer on their guys. Click link for full pic.
Microfiber Fabric Makes Its Own Electricity
U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.
If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.
One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.
"When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said in a telephone interview. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity..."
by Jonah Lehrer
Woody Allen was a prescient man. Dr. Stuart Meloy has created a device that seems to help women with sexual problems regain their ability to have an orgasm:
The experimental implant -- now trademarked by Meloy as the Orgasmatron after the orgasm-inducing cylinder in Woody Allen's 1973 movie "Sleeper" -- rests on the skin just above the belt line. Two electrodes snake into the space between the vertebrae and the spinal cord. A video-game-like remote control allows women (or their partners) to turn electrical pulses on and off and fiddle with timing and intensity.
Electrodes in the right place (determined partly by trial and error) seem to interact with various nerve networks, Meloy says, including nerves from the pelvis that enter the spinal highway near the tailbone. Stimulating those nerves shoots pleasure signals straight up to the part of the brain that processes information coming from the genitalia.
Women who have used the device say they feel as if their clitoris and vagina are actually being stimulated, to quite realistic effect. ("One woman asked me, 'Would it be considered adultery if I gave the remote control to someone other than my husband?' " Meloy says.)
Some volunteers also report fleeting episodes of clenched foot muscles, Meloy says, probably a result of electrical pulses leaving the spine and stimulating nearby motor nerves. (He wonders if the phenomenon might somehow be related to a common orgasm description: "My toes curled.")
Couldn't the clenched feet also be due to the fact that the sensory map for the genitalia are located right next to the map of the toes in the somatosensory cortex? (I always assumed, probably in error, that this is why people have foot fetishes: some nerves in their somatosensory cortex got tangled.)
From
Sundown Lounge No. 129
Geeknotes:
Skydiver Girls
FAT Tour
Brookfield Zoo Poetry Contest
Rus Bowden at Gypsy
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From KFC:
Kara Ratliff, a reporter from WebProNews, has been covering a great deal of Podcasting and New Media News.
Check out the interviews she did with me:
1. This one is from the Expo where I was speaking on Guerilla Marketing
If you have news you think Kara would be interested in, you can contact her at: kratliff'at'webpronews'dot'com
On my website "List of Shows", I am collecting clips like these. If you see me in an interview, newspaper, or hear me on the radio but don't see the story on my site, please let me know so I can add it to my collection.
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FAT TOUR 2008 featuring NOFX, NO USE FOR A NAME, THE FLATLINERS, AMERICAN STEEL.
It kicks off on February 22nd at the House of Blues in Orlando, FL and stops in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, and—cue the trumpets—Texas! The tour will feature No Use For A Name as main support, with Canadian youngsters, The Flatliners, opening the Southern leg of the tour. American Steel will take over for the second Northwestern leg (dates coming real soon). The third leg of the tour will be in the Northeast and at this point it is a total mystery.
Tour Leg # 1
02/22/08 Orlando, FL at House of Blues
02/23/08 Jacksonville, FL at Plush
02/25/08 New Orleans, LA at House of Blues
02/26/08 Houston, TX at Warehouse Live
02/28/08 El Paso, TX at Club 101
02/29/08 Austin, TX at Stubb's BBQ
03/01/08 Dallas, TX at House of Blues
03/03/08 Tulsa, OK at Caines
03/04/08 Kansas City, MO at the Beaumont
03/06/08 Royal Oak, MI @ the Royal Oak Music Theater
03/07/08 Covington, KY @ Madison Theater
03/08/08 Chicago, IL at House of Blues
03/09/08 Maplewood, MN at The Myth
Global Climate Change & Polar Bears Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brookfield Zoo (managed by The
Chicago Zoological Society)
Deadline: Thursday February 21st
The Brookfield Zoo is asking your help in order to
obtain a contemporary piece of verse related to
the global climate change, its detrimental effect
on Polar bears and the opportunity to mend this
malady with our actions.
Poems may be free verse or formal, 60 lines or
less and should appeal to a general audience.
Winner’s poem (with credit) will become a
permanent part of the Great Bear Wilderness
exhibit’s interpretive display. The poem will
accompany engaging graphics and informational
blurbs on a wall-sized mural or 6-7’ informational
sign at a forthcoming exhibit, due to open
mid-2009.
Winner also receives a “share the care package”
which includes a certificate of participation, a
polar bear plush and picture of your bear.
First runner up will receive a copy of The Dire
Elegies 59 Poets on Endangered Species of North
America.
Second runner up gets a current Poet’s Market.
Please send 1-3 poems in plain text, in the body
of an email to, Andre Copeland at:
andre.copeland'at'czs'dot'org
*Attachments will NOT be opened.
Poems will be evaluated blindly by a board of 8-10
education specialists.
Only winning poem and runners up will be notified.
To learn more about the “share the care package”
and about Brookfield zoo, please visit the
website:
Rus Bowden on Poetry and Poets in Rags, at BELINDA
SUBRAMAN PRESENTS in iTunes...podcast category.
In 1999, Rus started posting poetry onto online forums. In 2003, he
began his column Poetry & Poets in Rags, a Tuesday night weekly that
is carried by the InterBoard Poetry Community (IBPC), part of the Web
Del Sol site, at http://www.webdelsol.com/IBPC/wire_rags.htm. For the
past two years, he has published a companion blog at
http://poetryandpoetsinrags.blogspot.com. Poetry & Poets in Rags is
essentially a clearing house of links on current poetry articles,
keeping the online poetry world informed, connected, represented, and
hopefully growing in influence.
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Last minute of the Super Bowl, from YouTube:
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'Itch-Free' Pyjamas
Designers have developed pyjamas that regulate body temperature, stop itching and ensure a good night's sleep, it has been claimed.
The nightwear, which is produced from a fabric called Dermasilk, can also help reduce the itching endured by sufferers of skin disorders such as eczema and dermatitis.
The pyjamas have been developed for Travelodge, the hotel chain, which carried out a survey to discover what kept people awake.
The study surveyed 3,000 adults and found that 23 per cent suffer from itchy nightclothes, which stops them from getting a good night's sleep.
Being too hot or cold is a common complaint, with 66 per cent confirming that their body temperature changes constantly throughout the night, which affects their sleep pattern.
ore people feel too hot, 54 per cent, in comparison to feeling cold, 35 per cent, while sleeping.
The sleepwear will be tested by customers at Travelodge hotels at Heathrow airport, Birmingham Fiveways, Bristol Central, Manchester Central and Edinburgh Central.
Take Your Medicine, or Try This Tooth
For those who hate taking medication or are always forgetting a pill, a solution might be on the horizon: a prosthetic tooth that delivers the drugs for you.
Called IntelliDrug, the device is just two molars in size and could ensure that patients take the correct amount of medicine, at precisely the correct time.
Electronic and software components also allow doctors to adjust doses during the course of treatment, as well as track the history of the therapy.
The most expensive, carefully designed, and complicated solar panels in the world operate at about 40% efficiency. That means that, for every bit of sunlight that hits the panel, only 40% of it is turned into electricity.
Scientists think that this is just about as good as silicon panels can do and are now looking at ways to make it cheaper, instead of making them more efficient. But suddenly, from nowhere, comes Steven Novack of the Idaho National Laboratories with an inexpensive, foldable solar panel that may turn out to be up to 80% efficient.
The trick is nanotechnology. The surface of the material is printed with miniscule nano-antennae that capture infra-red radiation, the kind that the sun puts out in abundance, and is even available at night. Television antennas absorbe large wavelength energy, so in order to absorb ultra-small wavelength energy (photons) they had to create ultra-small antennas.
The material is fairly simple to create, and scientists are confidient that it would scale easily out of the laboratory. But there is a bit of a hitch: There's currently no way to capture the energy being created.
So while there are electrons pouring out of the nano-antennas when exposed to the sun, there is no way to capture those electrons. But don't worry, those geniuses in Idaho are working on that already. By putting a tiny capacitor, or AC/DC converter in the center of every tiny tiny antenna, they think they could make this new kind of solar panel export all that energy it's created without raising the price, or lowering the efficiency too much.
DNA "Pistons" Could Power Nanoscale Robots
While we've been spending our days padding our Xbox 360 Achievements and building castles out of Popsicle sticks, here come some science jerks all making us look bad. Researchers in the UK and Germany have managed to assemble tetrahedrons out of DNA "struts" with some chemical trickery, and then fed the shape DNA "fuel" to get the tetrahedron to contract. Some "anti-fuel" expands the shape again, creating a sort of piston with all sorts of potential. The researchers are currently working to assemble larger structures using the tetrahedrons as building blocks. Possible applications of the technology range from drug delivery to the motors of nanoscale robots, and it sounds like humanity is doomed either way.
Nanoscopic DNA pyramids that change shape when sent different chemical signals, have been demonstrated by researchers in the UK and Germany. Such structures could act as the motors of nanoscale robots, they say.
Other researchers have previously built DNA devices capable of walking along proteins or functioning like nanoscopic robot arms, but precise control of these 3D structures has proven difficult.
Now Andrew Turberfield of Oxford University in the UK, and colleagues at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, have shown how carefully crafted DNA structures can be made to self assemble and change shape when sent specific DNA signals.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 128
Geeknotes:
Sex 2.0
Los Angeles Museums Free Events Schedule
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Sex 2.0 - April 12, 2K8, Atlanta
Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both? These questions, and many more, will be addressed within a safe, welcoming, sex-positive space.
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Los Angeles Museums Free Events Schedule
* Long Beach Museum of Art
Free Fridays at Long Beach Museum of Art -- Long Beach
Cool Kandinskys cost nothing at this Pacific-side mansion. (Every Friday, 11AM-5PM)
* LACMA
Free Second Tuesdays at LACMA -- Mid-Wilshire
Scope free exhibits at the Museum of Art. (Second Tue. each month; free after 5PM every day)
* TV show taping
Attend the taping of a TV show -- Burbank to Culver City
'The Price is Right,' 'The Tonight Show,' et al, for free. (Times vary)
* Huntington Gardens and Library
First Thursdays at Huntington Gardens and Library -- San Marino
Must-see lush gardens and art collection. (First Thu. of each month, Noon-4:30PM)
* Autry Museum of Western Heritage
Free Second Tuesdays at Autry Museum of Western Heritage -- Burbank
Comprehensive collection for cowboys of all ages. (Second Tue., 10AM-5PM)
* Natural History Museum
Free First Tuesday of the month Natural History Museum
This popular museum houses dinosaurs, bugs and dioramas about your not-too-distant Cro-Magnon cousins. Los Angeles | (213) 763-3466
* George C. Page Museum / La Brea Tar Pits
Free First Tuesday of the month George C. Page Museum / La Brea Tar Pits
Saber-tooth tigers, wooly mammoths and giant sloths. Los Angeles
* The Getty Center
Free admission every day The Getty Center
Showcase of Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Walker Evans, Eugène Atget, Edmund Teske and Weegee. Los Angeles
* Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden
The arboretum has exotic plants, peacocks, Baldwin Lake and trams for those who can't cover 130 acres of greenery on foot. Admission is free every third Tuesday of the month.
301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia | (626) 821-3222
* California Science Center
The California science center is an innovative, hands-on "edutainment" museum. The permanent gallery is always free.
700 State Dr., Los Angeles | (323) 724-3623
* Craft and Folk Art Museum
Indonesian shadow puppets? Zulu baskets? Admission is free every first Wednesday of the month.
5814 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles | (323) 937-4230
* Japanese American National Museum
In two locations, the museum explores what it means today (and what it meant yesterday) to be Japanese in the United States. Admission is free every Thursday from 5pm-8pm and every third Thursday of the month all day.
369 E.1st St., Los Angeles | (213) 625-0414
* Museum of the American West
The museum pays tribute to spaghetti westerns and Native American culture. Admission is free every second Tuesday of the month and every Thursday from 4pm-8pm.
4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles | (323) 667-2000
* Pacific Asia Museum
The museum is home to the largest Asian antiquities collection in the Southwest. Admission is free every fourth Friday of the month.
46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena | (626) 449-2742 ext. 10
* UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History
With more than 750,000 sculptures, tools and masks, the Fowler Museum shows off some of the word's most exotic art. Admission to the museum is always free.
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Macbook Air–Let's Not Lose Our Minds
By Jason Cross
So Macworld is going on now, and as usual Steve Jobs has caused a fervor on the tech community with his powerful salesmanship. Love or hate Macs, you have to hand it to him—the guy can sell. There's plenty to talk about, from Apple senselessly gouging iPod Touch customers for $20 to enable apps that should be on there for free, the cool (and welcome) software updates to the Apple TV, to the new iPhone firmware we all sort of knew about that still doesn't add MMS support. But the big news is the Macbook Air.
It sounds almost too good to be true. A 13-inch Macbook that is so thin and light it fits into a manila envelope! Finally, you'll be able to carry around just a super-thin three pound notebook, saving your back, and your luggage space, and all that good stuff. Right?
Then the gotchas set in. There are little things, like the way it has a headphone output but no microphone input, so you have to use the built-in mic. The battery is integrated, so you can't replace it or carry around a spare. That micro-DVI connector isn't exactly a standard plug you're going to find on monitors wherever you go—Apple includes the adaptor, but that's just another thing to carry around that makes the ultraportable less portable. There's only one USB port, and no FireWire. Draft 802.11n networking is good, but many PCs now ship with the required antennae for 3G mobile services, so you can really get online wherever you go.
Oh, Apple also kindly includes install/restore DVDs should anything happen to your hard drive, but you can't use them because the Air has no optical drive. You gotta buy a separate external USB one (Apple's price for the Air Superdrive? $99). They'll sell a lot of those drives in a year or so when OS 10.6 comes out and all the Air customers have no other way to upgrade. Though it's not as thin, Panasonic makes a 2.6lb ultraportable that includes an optical drive.
And for a product that isn't even shipping yet, I'm kind of disappointed that 80GB is the hard drive limit. Vendors like Sony are putting 1.8-inch hard drives in some of their camcorders—they have a new model with a 120GB drive in it. We know they'll be available in volume soon, so why limit us to 80GB? I can only guess that Apple is buying those drives in enormous bulk thanks to iPod Classic manufacturing and it wouldn't get as good a deal on the 120GB models.
So let's not all lose our minds about the Macbook Air. I'm sure Mossberg and Pogue will review it and proclaim it a marvel, but from where I'm sitting, Apple made some fairly significant tradeoffs in order to produce the "thinnest notebook ever." Frankly, if I was going to give up this much stuff, I'd rather have a little 8-inch UMPC or something with a real touch screen (after all, multitouch on the trackpad isn't exactly what everyone had in mind when the Air was just a rumor a few days ago).
Nanotech Promises 10X Improvement
in Battery Life
Stanford University researchers have discovered a way to increase battery life tenfold by using silicon nanowires.
Stanford University researchers have made a discovery that could signal the arrival of laptop batteries that last more than a day on a single charge.
The researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries--used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones--as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.
The new batteries were developed by assistant professor Yi Cui and colleagues at Stanford University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."
Citing a research paper they wrote, published in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui said the increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium--which holds the charge--that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life.
Silicon anodes have the "the highest theoretical charge capacity" according to Cui's paper, but they expand when charging and shrink during use: a cycle that causes the silicon to be pulverized, degrading the performance of the battery. For 30 years, this dead end stumped researchers, who poured their battery life-extending energy into improving graphite-based anodes.
Cui and his colleagues looked at this old problem and overcame it by constructing a new type of silicon nanowire anode. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture.
Cui said there are a few barriers to commercializing the technology.
"We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology," Cui said. "There are no roadblocks for either of these."
Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. He expects the battery to be commercialized and available within "several years," pending testing.
Why People Have Irrational
Beliefs About Money
Ask yourself this question:
Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.
It turns out, the majority of people would choose the first option, even though that meant earning half of what they could otherwise have!
In this interesting article at Los Angeles Times, Michael Shermer explores why people make irrational decisions when it comes to money (hint: blame evolution). Apparently, monkeys also behave in the same ways:
Human as it sounds, loss aversion appears to be a trait we’ve inherited genetically because it is found in other primates, such as capuchin monkeys. In a 2006 experiment, these small primates were given 12 tokens that they were allowed to trade with the experimenters for either apple slices or grapes. In a preliminary trial, the monkeys were given the opportunity to trade tokens with one experimenter for a grape and with another experimenter for apple slices. One capuchin monkey in the experiment, for example, traded seven tokens for grapes and five tokens for apple slices. A baseline like this was established for each monkey so that the scientists knew each monkey’s preferences.
The experimenters then changed the conditions. In a second trial, the monkeys were given additional tokens to trade for food, only to discover that the price of one of the food items had doubled. According to the law of supply and demand, the monkeys should now purchase more of the relatively cheap food and less of the relatively expensive food, and that is precisely what they did. So far, so rational. But in another trial in which the experimental conditions were manipulated in such a way that the monkeys had a choice of a 50% chance of a bonus or a 50% chance of a loss, the monkeys were twice as averse to the loss as they were motivated by the gain.
Remarkable! Monkeys show the same sensitivity to changes in supply and demand and prices as people do, as well as displaying one of the most powerful effects in all of human behavior: loss aversion. It is extremely unlikely that this common trait would have evolved independently and in parallel between multiple primate species at different times and different places around the world. Instead, there is an early evolutionary origin for such preferences and biases, and these traits evolved in a common ancestor to monkeys, apes and humans and was then passed down through the generations.
Less than a year after eMarketer asked "Is DRM Doomed?," the answer is fast becoming "yes." As The New York Times reported, Sony is the last of the big four music labels to offer music unrestricted by DRM for download from Amazon.com.
The move is important for several reasons, but music marketers will likely be most excited by the prospect of a larger online music market.
The problem is not that consumers aren't buying digital music. Indeed, digital track sales grew by 45% last year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan "2007 Year-End Music Industry Report."
Yet digital music sales are not making up for a CD sales slump, and online music consumption will have to be far more widespread than it is today to do so.
eMarketer and other firms have pegged DRM as one of the things keeping consumers from buying more music digitally. Why should consumers buy digital music, the thinking goes, if it lets them do less with their music than a CD, such as load music onto multiple computers and portable devices?
In this light, Amazon has made a bold entry into the music download wars. The company launched Amazon MP3 in September 2007, and already it has brought the largest music labels, which had previously been skittish about parting with DRM, together on the same service.
The move threatens to undermine Apple’s leadership in this area. It had gone essentially unchallenged since the emergence of the iTunes Music Store in 2003.
By one estimate, Apple controlled 70% of the US market for single-track downloads in 2006, and there is no evidence to suggest that Apple’s numbers have shrunk considerably since then.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 127
Geeknotes:
"Banjo Strings" Anniversary
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My podcast novel is officially 1 year old today. The audience base so far stands at about 1200. Not bad for a work in progress...
In the writers community Author Nation, I have a forum topic on podcast novels located within the 'Audio Novels' forum. Check it out.
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Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms
Within Minutes In Human Study
An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.
This new study highlights the importance of certain soluble proteins, called cytokines, in Alzheimer’s disease. The study focuses on one of these cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha(TNF), a critical component of the brain’s immune system. Normally, TNF finely regulates the transmission of neural impulses in the brain. The authors hypothesized that elevated levels of TNF in Alzheimer’s disease interfere with this regulation. To reduce elevated TNF, the authors gave patients an injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept. Excess TNF-alpha has been documented in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer’s.
The new study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect in an Alzheimer’s patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of perispinal etanercept, which is etanercept given by injection in the spine. Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF. Etanercept is FDA approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off label in the study.
The use of anti-TNF therapeutics as a new treatment choice for many diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and potentially even Alzheimer’s, was recently chosen as one of the top 10 health stories of 2007 by the Harvard Health Letter...
Tata Nano Car
After months of rumors and tantalizing leaks Indian automaker Tata Motors has finally unveiled the Tata Nano -- its already legendary $2,500 car. As expected, the car that Tata claims will change the face of not only the Indian car market, but the global auto industry will be a four door, five seat hatch, powered by a 30 HP Bosch 624 cc four stroke engine mounted out back and mated to a CVT.
Mr. Ratan N. Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group and Tata Motors, today unveiled the Tata 'NANO', the People's Car from Tata Motors that India and the world have been looking forward to. A development, which signifies a first for the global automobile industry, the People's Car brings the comfort and safety of a car within the reach of thousands of families. The People's Car will be launched in India later in 2008.
Speaking at the unveiling ceremony at the 9th Auto Expo in New Delhi, Mr. Ratan N. Tata said, "I observed families riding on two-wheelers - the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby. It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family. Tata Motors' engineers and designers gave their all for about four years to realise this goal. Today, we indeed have a People's Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions. We are happy to present the People's Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility..."
On Monday, Jan. 14, a pioneering NASA spacecraft will be the first to visit Mercury in almost 33 years when it soars over the planet to explore and snap close-up images of never-before-seen terrain. These findings could open new theories and answer old questions in the study of the solar system.
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, called MESSENGER, is the first mission sent to orbit the planet closest to our sun. Before that orbit begins in 2011, the probe will make three flights past the small planet, skimming as close as 124 miles above Mercury's cratered, rocky surface. MESSENGER's cameras and other sophisticated, high-technology instruments will collect more than 1,200 images and make other observations during this approach, encounter and departure. It will make the first up-close measurements since Mariner 10 spacecraft's third and final flyby on March 16, 1975. When Mariner 10 flew by Mercury in the mid-1970s, it surveyed only one hemisphere.
"This is raw scientific exploration and the suspense is building by the day," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "What will MESSENGER see? Monday will tell the tale."
This encounter will provide a critical gravity assist needed to keep the spacecraft on track for its March 2011 orbit insertion, beginning an unprecedented yearlong study of Mercury. The flyby also will gather essential data for mission planning.
"During this flyby we will begin to image the hemisphere that has never been seen by a spacecraft and Mercury at resolutions better than those acquired by Mariner 10," said Sean C. Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator, Carnegie Institution of Washington. "Images will be in a number of different color filters so that we can start to get an idea of the composition of the surface."
One site of great interest is the Caloris basin, an impact crater about 800 miles in diameter, which is one of the largest impact basins in the solar system.
Top British violinist to release
record for free online
A top violinist is to release her next record for free on the Internet, in a bid to break down the elitist image of classic music, a report said Tuesday.
Tasmin Little, whose "Naked Violin" record will be available for download from next week, is following a much-discussed online innovation by British band Radiohead last year.
The musician, well known in international classic music circles, said she wanted to open up her work to a new audience which otherwise might not listen to it, The Guardian newspaper reported.
"Classical music, for some reason or another, has this reputation that you need a certain kind of education to listen to it, you need to be a certain colour or live in a certain place and I'm a bit fed up with that," she said.
"I wanted to take away any possible barrier and see if it makes a difference," she told the daily.
Radiohead shook up the music industry in October, when they offered their seventh studio album, "In Rainbows", for download from their website with fans asked to pay whatever they thought the 10 tracks would be worth.
The hit British art-rockers' move followed an iniative by US pop idol Prince, who distributed an album free with a British newspaper earlier in the year.
Little's new record, her first recording for four years, will comprise three works: Bach's "Partita No 3 in E Major"; a Polish folk music-inspired piece by British composer Paul Patterson; and "Sonata No 3 'Ballade'" by Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye.
It will be available for download free of charge on her website at www.tasminlittle.net from Monday.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 126
Geeknotes:
Author Giving his Book Away
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Charles Sheehan-Miles is giving away his novel "Republic" in a number of ebook formats, even as it's on sale at Amazon. He's no rube - Charles served in combat with the 24th Infantry Division during the 1991 Gulf War, and was decorated for valor for helping rescue fellow tank crewmen from a burning tank during the Battle at Rumayla. And this isn't his first book either; he agrees with me that a writer's biggest problem isn't online piracy, it's obscurity.
Anyway, I have a link to his website so you can check him out.
WASHINGTON - NASA's Spinoff 2007, an annual online and print publication featuring NASA space technologies that provide practical, tangible benefits to society, is now available.
Spinoff 2007 highlights 39 new examples of how NASA innovation can be transferred to the commercial market place and applied to areas such as health and medicine, transportation, public safety, consumer goods, homes and recreation, environmental and agricultural resources, computer technology and industrial productivity.
"NASA's science, aeronautics and space exploration drives inspiration, innovation and discovery which in turn keep this nation at the forefront of technology advancements at a global level," NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said.
An example of NASA innovation helping to better lives today is a method for non-invasive, painless, ultrasound examination of the carotid artery, which carries blood from the heart to the brain. The test helps to identify risk for atherosclerosis, a major cause of heart attacks and strokes. The test uses software based on a program NASA uses to interpret spacecraft imagery from Mars.
Spinoff 2007 also profiles NASA's education efforts and other partnership successes, and provides reference and resource information available through the agency's programs.
NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program produces the NASA Spinoff series. The program fosters technology partnerships, commercialization and innovation in support of NASA's overall mission and national priorities. For more information about the program, visit: http://ipp.nasa.gov
To request a free printed copy of Spinoff 2007, call 301- 286-5979. To access Spinoff 2007 and a searchable database of previous Spinoff editions on the Web, visit: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force.
In the world of commercial materials, lighter and cheaper is usually better, especially when those attributes are coupled with superior strength and special properties, such as a material's ability to remember its original shape after it's been deformed by a physical or magnetic force.
A new class of materials known as "magnetic shape-memory foams" has been developed by two research teams headed by Peter Müllner at Boise State University and David Dunand at Northwestern University, both funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The foam consists of a nickel-manganese-gallium alloy whose structure resembles a piece of Swiss cheese with small voids of space between thin, curvy "struts" of material. The struts have a bamboo-like grain structure that can lengthen, or strain, up to 10 percent when a magnetic field is applied. Strain is the degree to which a material deforms under load. In this instance, the force came from a magnetic field rather a physical load. Force from magnetic fields can be exerted over long range, making them advantageous for many applications. The alloy material retains its new shape when the field is turned off, but the magnetically sensitive atomic structure returns to its original structure if the field is rotated 90 degrees--a phenomenon called "magnetic shape-memory..."
Technology enthusiasts may get to see five major developments this year, according to a forecast made on the BBC News website. The website says that 2008 will see the emergence of more tools like Google Gears, Adobe Air, and Microsoft Silverlight that have the ability to take rich web content, and make some of it available offline.
Another big development, according to the forecast, will be the rise in the popularity of sub-notebook-sized Ultra Mobile PCs. Though the first devices were launched in 2006, they have not gone mass market as yet, partly because of a combination of high prices and poor battery life.
Taiwanese manufacturer Asus has now predicted that it will sell five million of the tiny machines in 2008.
Apple is also rumoured to be launching ultra-thin Macbooks using flash in 2008.
Next in list of possible major developments is the rise in internet protocol television (IPTV) services.
Though BT vision and Virgin Media are already providing such services in the UK, more operators are expected to emerge this year.
WIMAX, a wireless technology that can deliver high speed broadband over long distances, also has a mention on the list.
Mike Roberts of research firm Informa Media and Telecoms believes that the technology, which is already a big hit in the US, may make way to the yet-untouched Europe.
Wrapping up the list is Mobile VoIP, a technology that allows users to make cheap phone calls over the internet. It is believed that this technology may huge rise in 2008.
Five technologies that may become big in 2008:
1. The web to go
2. Ultra mobile PCs
3. IPTV
4. Wimax
5. Mobile VoIP
The Infinitely Geared Bike
Cyclists have been waiting a long time for this one. Based on a 1490s sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, The Ride’s rear hub mimics an infinite number of gears, rather than the mere 21 offered by the usual chain-yanking transmission.
So you can always find the perfect gear ratio, whether starting from a stop or speeding down a hill. Twist a dial on the handlebar, and ball bearings in the bike’s NuVinci transmission tilt between two rotating metal discs. (Your pedaling turns one disc; the other transfers power to the rear wheel.) As the balls tilt, they touch the discs at varying angles. This changes how fast the wheel spins relative to your pedaling—slowly for low gear ratios, where pedaling is easy but the wheel doesn’t turn much, and quickly for high ratios. The balls can roll to almost any angle, giving you precise control over the bike’s torque (and your exertion).
This latest take on da Vinci’s continuous transmission has potential uses beyond bikes. Within four years, expect to see the NuVinci in cars, tractors, even wind turbines —the possibilities are nearly as limitless as the gear ratios. 3,000; ellsworthbikes.com
Via Popular Science
From
Sundown Lounge No. 125
Geeknotes:
Robert Ronnow
Niggy Tardust
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Book Plug: Robert Ronnow
"New and selected poems 1975 - 2005," available from Barnwood Press.
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"The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!"
"The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" is the third album by Saul Williams, released on November 1, 2007. Williams worked closely with Trent Reznor on the album, and the title of the album is a reference to David Bowie's 1972 album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." Many of the album's lyrics were adapted from poetry in Williams' 2006 book "The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop."
Williams' new album is available only at niggytardust.com. Users can download a 192kbps MP3 version of the entire album for free, or pay $5 to support the artist directly and be given the choice of downloading a 192kps MP3 version, 320kbps MP3 version, or a lossless .FLAC version.
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From
Sundown Lounge No. 124
Geeknotes:
The State of Chicago Poetry and Holiday Schedule
Phot’Art International No. 8
Hans Op de Beeck Monograph
Xmas Extras
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From CJ Laity, Chicagopoetry.com:
The State of Chicago Poetry - The transcript of my annual State of Chicago Poetry Address is now online (including some lost photos from the 2007 Chicago Poetry Fest).
Issue #8 of Phot'Art International has just been published.
Africa is in the centre of this issue with the work of Mikhael Subotzky (South Africa), Fouad Maazouz (Morocco), Ami Vitale (USA), and Bernard Brisé, Jean-Pierre Evrard and Gilles Perrin (France). You will also find the broken down images from Oliver Sybillin, the look on China from the Israelian Gil Azouri, the animal portraits of the Spanish Jose A. Gallego, and magnificent portfolio of nudes from Lucien Clergue.
Phot’Art International is distributed by subscription in about fifty countries. The 2 next issues will be dedicated to Japan and New York City.
Phot’Art International
15, place de la République
59280 ARMENTIERES
France
contact: contact[at]phot-art[dot]com
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Hans Op de Beeck: On Vanishing
Monograph
Authors: Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley
Hans Op de Beeck: Extensions
Artist publication
Short story: Hans Op de Beeck
Over the past decade Hans Op de Beeck (1969, Belgium) has become established as one of the most exciting young artists on the international art scene. His work covers an astonishing spectrum ranging from installation art and sculpture, to video, photography and drawing.
Hans Op de Beeck: On Vanishing, an extensive monograph, is the result of a collaboration between the artist and the authors Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. The authors’ text builds other matter around the artist’s work, creating an ambiguous space crisscrossed by different paths that contain obstacles, deviations and detours. (Hardcover with dust jacket - English - ISBN 978-9-0615-3711-3 - 28 x 25,3 cm - 368 pages - 320 color ills. - € 69.95 - published by Mercatorfonds and Xavier Hufkens - 2007)
Here's some words I think Jesus would have no trouble saying. I found this anti-propaganda poster on a political blog around the time of the shameful exploitation of Terri Shiavo by the right wing:
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I also came across an old list off another political article - in this case, on Squdoo, called "The Noose - history, symbolism, and commentary from a white man's perspective" written by blogger identitybm. It's a list of the various offenses which would get Negroes lynched in the good old days south of the Mason-Dixon...
BTW, This photo on the article page links to a Google Image page of many more lynching photos, that used to be so popular they were made into postcards...
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Turning Water into Fuel
A cancer researcher stumbles upon a way to set saltwater aflame. Neat trick, but is his discovery useful?
Last winter, inventor John Kanzius was already attempting one seemingly impossible feat—building a machine to cure cancer with radio waves—when his device inadvertently succeeded in another: He made saltwater catch fire. TV footage of his bizarre discovery (check out the video below) has been burning up the blogosphere ever since, drawing crackpots and Ph.D.s alike into a raging debate. Can water burn? And if so, what good can come of it?
Some people gush over the invention's potential for desalinization or cheap energy. Briny seawater, after all, sloshes over most of the planet's surface, and harnessing its heat energy could power all sorts of things. Skeptics say Kanzius's radio generator is sucking up far more energy than it's creating, making it a carnival trick at best.
For now, Kanzius is tuning out the hubbub. The retired radio- and television- station owner says the saltwater stuff is interesting, but a cancer breakthrough is what he's really after. Diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, he began building his radio-wave blaster the next year, soon after a relapse. His lifelong fascination with radio provided further inspiration. Radio station antennas, he knew, can turn a bystander's metal eyeglasses toasty warm. If he could seed a person's cancerous cells with nanoscopic metal particles and blast them with radio waves, perhaps he could kill off the cancer while sparing healthy tissue.
The saltwater phenomenon happened by accident when an assistant was bombarding a saline-filled test tube with radio waves and bumped the tube, causing a small flash. Curious, Kanzius struck a match. "The water lit like a propane flame," he recalls.
"People said, 'It's a crock. Look for hidden electrodes in the water,' " says Penn State University materials scientist Rustum Roy, who visited the Erie, Pennsylvania, inventor in his lab in August after seeing the feat on Google Video. A demo made Roy a believer. "This is discovery science in the best tradition," he says. Roy thinks the sodium chloride in the water may weaken the bonds between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which are broken free by radio waves. It's these gas molecules that are igniting, he explains, not the liquid itself. Tests show that the reaction disappears once the radio waves stop. Roy plans to conduct more tests to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Meanwhile, researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have made progress using Kanzius's technology to fight cancer in animals. They published their findings last month in the journal Cancer.
Science fiction writers have suggested a future Earth populated by a blend of all races into a common human form. In real life, the reverse seems to be happening. People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.
"I was raised with the belief that modern humans showed up 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and haven't changed," explained Henry C. Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. "The opposite seems to be true."
"Our species is not static," Harpending added in a telephone interview.
That doesn't mean we should expect major changes in a few generations, though, evolution occurs over thousands of years.
Harpending and colleagues looked at the DNA of humans and that of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, they report in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found.
That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained.
"Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation," the study says. "The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease."
And they found that different changes are occurring in Africans, Asians and Europeans...
Chip-Shrinking May Be Nearing Its Limits
By JORDAN ROBERTSON
Sixty years after transistors were invented and nearly five decades since they were first integrated into silicon chips, the tiny on-off switches dubbed the "nerve cells" of the information age are starting to show their age.
The devices - whose miniaturization over time set in motion the race for faster, smaller and cheaper electronics - have been shrunk so much that the day is approaching when it will be physically impossible to make them even tinier.
Once chip makers can't squeeze any more into the same-sized slice of silicon, the dramatic performance gains and cost reductions in computing over the years could suddenly slow. And the engine that's driven the digital revolution - and modern economy - could grind to a halt.
Even Gordon Moore, the Intel Corp. co-founder who famously predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a chip should double every two years, sees that the end is fast approaching - an outcome the chip industry is scrambling to avoid.
"I can see (it lasting) another decade or so," he said of the axiom now known as Moore's Law. "Beyond that, things look tough. But that's been the case many times in the past."
Preparing for the day they can't add more transistors, chip companies are pouring billions of dollars into plotting new ways to use the existing transistors, instructing them to behave in different and more powerful ways.
Intel, the world's largest semiconductor company, predicts that a number of "highly speculative" alternative technologies, such as quantum computing, optical switches and other methods, will be needed to continue Moore's Law beyond 2020...
In an interesting case up in Vermont, a federal judge has ruled that someone accused of a crime cannot be forced to reveal his or her encryption key, as it would be a violation of the Constitution's 5th Amendment, saying that an individual cannot be forced to self-incriminate. In an age where encryption is becoming increasingly popular, expect to see other cases of this nature. It seems likely that a case like this one (if not this one itself) will eventually wind up before the Supreme Court to determine whether or not someone can be forced to give up his own encryption key. Where it gets tricky is the question of whether or not the key itself incriminates the person.
As the article notes, a person can be forced to give up a key to a safe that contains incriminating evidence, which many say is analogous to this situation. In the meantime, though, we've already seen cases where people are presumed guilty just because their computers have encryption software installed -- so, it may not matter whether or not the key is provided when the presence of PGP alone is viewed as incriminating.
Now in the case itself, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination. I have a link to the article, on Declan McCullagh's 'The Ionoclast'
From
Sundown Lounge No. 123
Geeknotes:
Review Ranking at Idiotvox
Trolling Blogs
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Well, I discovered at Idiotvox a list of book podcasts - either about books, or books themselves. The page is listed as a "Top Ten" grouping, but they have review rankings for the first 15, then the remaining unreviewed books are listed alphabetically. My title is lucky enough to place at slot "21."
There are some well-recognized titles I expected to see in a current list, but some of those books I haven't heard anything about in the year I've been publishing and researching podcast noveling, while a great book like "7th Son" isn't reviewed at all, and "The Dean Koontz Podcast" is at 86? So, I'm calling for "7th Son" fans to cruise by the list and show JC Hutchins some love, and if you're inclined, throw up a review for me. The only hitch is that it has to be a real review...
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A week ago, as I was surfing through black writers forums and blogs,
I came across this one, only to discover that the author had recently ended it.
From October 2006 until August 2007, author Mat Johnson (Drop, Hunting in Harlem,
The Great Negro Plot, Incognegro, and Pym) produced a blog entitled Niggerati Manor
that focused (mostly) on African American literature and culture.
I'd like to kick around the idea of podcast novels and the variations the form presents
within the whole "publishing industry / Black Literature vs. Street Lit / Self Publishing"
controversy of the past few years. I may still contact Mat to bounce my ideas off him,
particularly since it looks like I'm the only black writer podcasting a novel,
that I'm aware of, (and I've looked.)
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Mormon Cartoon Banned by the LDS: YouTube
This is an excerpt from an old christian documentary called "The God Makers."
I've heard everything from "It's all true!" to "It's all lies!" about it,
so I say let's see for ourselves and go from there, as objectively as we can...
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Everyday Ecotech
By Erik Rhey.
This is the first of a two-part column that discusses going solar in both small and big ways. If you are a renter or can't afford a solar set-up, you can still take advantage of sun power. In Part I, I will discuss the small, inexpensive ways to incorporate solar into your life. In Part II, I will go over what you need to know before doing a home installation, including what to check on your house, common misconceptions that keep people from going solar, and how to get started.
He talks about a starter kit that consists of roll-out solar panels, a large battery (similar to a car battery), and a power inverter, an off-the-grid solution to provide back-up power if the lights go out or if you're in a location where electricity is not available...
Virtual Cable Turns Windshield
into Navigation Display
By Bill Howard
A bright red overhead cable electronically painted on your car's windshield could be the ultimate head-up navigation display. The MVS Virtual Cable prototype works with a car navigation system and projects your route, including turns and curves in the road, as a cable - like a trolley car's catenary wire - floating above the road. It's the brainchild of New Jersey inventor Tom Zamojdo, COO of Making Virtual Solid LLC of New Milford, NJ.
A small laser works through a series of mirrors and lenses to project the path onto the windshield, as on a head-up display, although to the driver it appears to hover over the road. What Zamojdo showed at the Telematics Update Navigation & Location 2007 forum in San Jose was an inventor's prototype that needs further development, downsizing, and cost-reduction. Zamojdo says he'd like to see the cost at $400 and even that may be high, were this to become a product. I was impressed by the accurate placement of the navigation cable in a canned video demo; it would be hard to make a wrong turn at a complex intersection, or fail to navigate a winding road on a dark night. Getting the virtual cable overlay to work on real roads will be trickier, but if he can pull it off, Virtual Cable could make wrong turns a thing of the past.
Machine Turns Junk
into Usable Petroleum and Gas
By Rena Marie Pacela
Frank pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything.
I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.
The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects—or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what’s around you. Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running).
Pringle created the machine about 10 years ago after he drove by a massi
