THIS MONTH: "Now, That's Comical!"
Wednesday, May 4 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm
Vintage Lounge
1449 W. Taylor
Chicago, Illinois
hosted by Brian Kirst
Come celebrate the love o' language and New Comic
Book Wednesday with Vintage Lounge's exclusive,
monthly spoken word event! Featured guests include
comic book creator Dave Losso and The Great
Sandwich Detective Players (acting out an episode
of the locally created The Great Sandwich
Detective comic), longstanding Chicago poetry
maverick and acclaimed novelist Cj Laity reading
from his book of "anarchist" magical realism,
Point ...Nemo (available through
www.chicagopoetry.com or www.amazon.com), hip hop
artist Lyrical and the long awaited return (after
a 5 year hiatus) of those punk pop musical poets,
naughtiekittie!
Host Brian Kirst may be even
throwing on some green face and reading from his
Incredible Hulk comic collection, as well. So,
grab your favorite DC (or Marvel) action figure
and come on down to Little Italy! The event is
totally free!
Open mic poets and other sundry performers are
welcomed and strongly encouraged, as well!
Vintage Lounge has great eats and reasonably
priced drinks, as well!
Double Exposure, bi-lingual poetry/art encounter
Saturday, May 7 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Calles y Suenos
1900 S. Carpenter
Chicago, Illinois
Calles y Suenos, Pilsen's own "La Casa de Arte y Cultura"
Readings by After Hours contributors...Carlos Cumpian, Parneshia Jones, Larry Janowski, Albert DeGenova, and more (tba)...will join with contributors from the Spanish language journal Contratiempo in a poetry encounter featuring Chicago writers presenting their work in both English and Spanish.
6:00 - reception for photographer Santiago Weksler, After Hours #22 Featured Artist
6:30 - 9:00 -- poetry reading
Plus a special musical intermission set by Cole DeGenova...Latin Jazz!
Be there or be square...hey, it’s a free night of poetry, music, art, libations, and “encounters”
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Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Saturday April 30, 2011 from 10am – 6pm
Sunday, May 1, 2011 from 10am – 5pm at:
University of Southern California
Celebrities like Ted Danson, Walter Moseley and Patti Smith!
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Music Lessons in Childhood Make You Smarter, More Intelligent
If you want your child to be smart and intelligent then, make sure your kid learns to play musical instruments, scientists say. University of Kansas Medical Center researchers have found that practicing musical instruments as a child not only help him mastering the instrument, it also provides a boost to his brain decades later.
The researchers found that pensioners who learned piano, flute, clarinet or other lessons as a youngster, did better on intelligence tests than others, the Telegraph reported. Lead researcher Dr Brenda Hanna-Pladdy said: “Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging.
“Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older.” While much research has been done on the cognitive benefits of musical activity by children, this is the first study to examine whether those benefits can extend across a lifetime, said Dr Hanna-Pladdy .
For the study, published in the journal Neuropsychology, the researchers recruited 70 healthy adults, aged between 60 and 83, who were divided into groups based on their levels of musical experience. The groups included individuals with no musical training ; with one to nine years of musical study; or with at least 10 years of musical training. All the musicians were amateurs who began playing an instrument at about 10 years of age.
RIP Typewriters: Last Manufacturer Closes Its Doors
Joining other discarded technologies of late, including the Flip video camera, Kodachrome, and the humble floppy disk is the typewriter, which will no longer be produced anywhere in the world.
The last company on earth to produce the typewriter — Godrej and Boyce — has shut down its production plant in Mumbai, India, according to reports that, fittingly, are making the rounds via the Internet…
The company’s general manager, Milind Dukle, told India’s Business Standard newspaper: “We are not getting many orders now.” Update: Gawker is reporting that there are still manufacturers in China, Japan and Indonesia making typewriters.
The announcement, if true, ends a long run for the device, which was once a mainstay of office life. A prototype of the typewriter was introduced in 1714 by Henry Mill, but the first mass-produced typewriter came in 1868when Christopher Latham Sholes, a printer-publisher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, patented the device.
The typewriter hit its peak of production in the 1950s when Smith-Corona sold 12 million of the machines in the last quarter of 1953. But, thanks to the encroachment of the personal computer, only about 400,000 typewriters had been sold annually by 2009.
Though most of the world had abandoned the use of typewriters of late, India proved to be the one of the last bastions of use for the technology until recently. Another niche market for typewriters is more fanciful: Despite their lack of functionality, typewriters are being fetishized, oddly enough, by young hipsters, who are drawn by the nostalgia and romantic image attached to the now-bygone technology.
Brain Takes ‘Naps’ to Recharge
Contrary to popular opinion the brain is not always entirely asleep or awake but parts of it can go “offline”, researchers have discovered.
This they claim accounts for the feeling of being “half asleep” which causes forgetfulness and small errors such as misplacing keys or putting the milk in the cupboard or the cereal in the fridge.
The team at the University of Wisconsin, who measured electrical waves in the brain, discovered that some nerve cells in tired yet awake individuals can briefly go “offline”.
Professor Chiara Cirelli, a psychiatrist and author of the study, said: “Even before you feel fatigued, there are signs in the brain that you should stop certain activities that may require alertness.
“Specific groups of neurons may be falling asleep, with negative consequences on performance.”
Until now, scientists thought that sleep deprivation generally affected the entire brain. Electroencephalograms (EEGs), that measure electrical activity in the brain, show network can detect whether neurons in the brain are on or off.
Prof Cirelli said: “We know that when we are sleepy, we make mistakes, our attention wanders and our vigilance goes down.
“We have seen with EEGs that even while we are awake, we can experience shorts periods of ‘micro sleep’.”
She said periods of micro sleep were thought to be the most likely cause of people falling asleep at the wheel while driving.
However, the new research found that even before that stage, brains are already showing sleep-like activity that impairs them.
The researchers inserted probes into specific groups of neurons in the brains of freely-behaving rats. After the rats were kept awake for prolonged periods, the probes showed areas of “local sleep” despite the animals’ appearance of being awake and active.
Prof Cirelli said: “Even when some neurons went offline, the overall EEG measurements of the brain indicated wakefulness in the rats.”
She said there were behavioural problems caused by local sleep episodes.
“When we prolonged the awake period, we saw the rats start to make mistakes,” she said.
When animals were challenged to do a tricky task, such as reaching with one paw to get a sugar pellet, they began to drop the pellets or miss in reaching for them, indicating that a few neurons might have gone offline.
Prof Cirelli said: “This activity happened in few cells.
“For instance, out of 20 neurons we monitored in one experiment, 18 stayed awake.
From the other two, there were signs of sleep—brief periods of activity alternating with periods of silence.”
The researchers tested only motor tasks, so they concluded from the study published in the journal Nature, that neurons affected by local sleep are in the motor cortex.
This is the area of the central brain which plans, executes and controls movement and the carrying out of tasks.
Recently ChicagoPoetry.com put out the call for "poetry about poetry" for its new volume of Poetry Cram Magazine. The response was enormous, making this upcoming issue of Cram the biggest and best yet.
Congratulations go out to the forty-five poets selected for inclusion in, Cram 11=Poetry², to be released on Saturday, April 30, from 10 AM until 4 PM at the National Poetry Month Poetry Festival at Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State Street, where Poetry Cram 11 will be given away FREE in the main lobby to everyone who wants one. And then, later that same evening, more copies of Cram 11 will be given away FREE at the official release party and reading at Café Ballou, 939 N. Western Ave, from 7 until 9 PM, where poets from Cram 11 will be reading their work. Both events are free and open to the public...
Logan Square Literary Review
Tuesday, April 26 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Cole's Bar
2338 N Milwaukee Ave.
CHICAGO
Come and join us as we celebrate the publication of our sixth issue.
In addition to our own smiling faces and a table of swag and issues for sale, we'll be having several of our writers onstage reading portions of their work.
The reception will also mark Issue VI being available for purchase at www.loganliterary.com
A Texas based independent film production company is seeking instrumental background music immediately for a sci-fi thriller feature film. All previous films produced were distributed internationally straight to dvd/vod/etc. The production company anticipates a similar distribution plan with this film. Compensation is negotiable (but is based on a low budget).
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Greetings Music Fans:
Welcome to the April Rockin' The Blues on Two Wheels News!
Spring is here and everyone is beginning to get busy with warm-weather plans.
The band has been working on the new album and preparing new songs for the summer concerts.
During April we performed fun shows at the Visalia Harley Davidson Dealership and Tehachapi's Bear Valley Springs Country Club. Last Saturday we had a blast performing again in our hometown at the Visalia Country Club. Thank you very much to our friends in Visalia for your support, loved Rockin' the Blues with you!
Central California's Eagle Mountain Casino is a great place to visit! We perform in the casino's Summit Room this Friday and Saturday, April 22 & 23. Great dance floor, super restaurants and gaming!
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Every Language in the World Evolved From Single Prehistoric Mother Tongue
From English to Mandarin – Every language in the world evolved from a prehistoric ‘mother tongue. ‘ The mother tongue was first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago, a new study reveals.
After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors.
The findings don’t just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa – they also show that speech evolved at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought.
There is now compelling evidence that the first modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 to 150,000 years ago.
Around 70,000 years ago, these early humans began to migrate from the continent, eventually spreading around the rest of the world.
Although most scientists agree with this ‘Out of Africa’ theory, they are less sure when our ancestors began to talk.
Some have argued that language evolved independently in different parts of the world, while others say it evolved just once, and that all languages are descended from a single ancestral mother tongue.
Dr Atkinson, of Auckland University, has now come up with fascinating evidence for a single African origin of language.
In a paper published today in Science, he counted the number of distinct sounds, or phonemes, used in 504 languages from around the world and charted them on a map.
The number of sounds varies hugely from language to language. English, for instance has around 46 sounds, some languages in South America have fewer than 15, while the San bushmen of South Africa use a staggering 200.
Dr Atkinson found that the number of distinct sounds in a language tends to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa.
He argues that these differences reflect the patterns of migration of our ancestors when they left Africa 70,000 years ago.
Languages change as they are handed down from generation to generation.
In a large population, languages are likely to be relatively stable – simply because there are more people to remember what previous generations did, he says.
But in a smaller population – such as a splinter group that sets off to find a new home elsewhere – there are more chances that languages will change quickly and that sounds will be lost from generation to generation.
Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University, said the same effect could be seen in DNA.
Modern-day Africans have a much greater genetic diversity than white Europeans who are descended from a relatively small splinter group that left 70,000 years ago.
‘The further you get away from Africa, the fewer sounds you get,’ he said.
‘People have suspected for a long time that language arose with the origin of our species in Africa and this is consistent with that view.’
Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at Oxford University, said the origin of language could now be pushed back to between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
‘The study shows that ancestral language came from somewhere in Africa,’ he said.
Researchers Create Printed Battery That Stores 40% More Energy
A new manufacturing process developed by Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) will increase the energy a lithium-ion battery can store by 40%. The technology is similar to that of printed solar cells…
Scott Elrod told me about their goals so far and that, “We [PARC] should be able to achieve an electrode thicknesses of up to 500um.” He is PARC’s Director of Cleantech Innovation Program. Their approach works by printing the electrode in parallel with a highly conductive (and super top-secret!) membrane.
“By interleaving layers of the cathode material with other layers of a porous material to provide pathways for the Li ions, we can make the electrode substantially thicker — without increasing the resistance to Li ions getting into the full volume of the cathode. This enables higher storage density, reduced yield loss due to shorting, reduced production time, and other benefits,” he said.
However, there are still some obstacles to figure out. For example, is the conduit compatible with both the electrode and the electrolytes? What are its effects on battery life? But this technology could be a big step for the electric vehicle.
The U.S. Department of Energy has a goal of reducing car-battery costs by 70% by 2014 and it is doubtful this breakthrough will help. The DOE says the tipping point for mainstream adoption of electric vehicles is when the batteries cost around $350 kWh. (Meanwhile) the all-electric Nissan Leaf is guesstimated to be around $1,000 per kWh. Nissan refuses to comment on the actual cost of the car’s battery pack but other than to say it will definitely lose money out of the gate.
Government and private investors have already put forth serious cash into the field of materials science in hopes to drive down the cost of electrodes but active materials only account for 20% of the battery’s overall cost (less in hybrid applications). “The costs could be very similar, except for the increase in the cathode material,” confirms Scott.
It seems the free gift with purchase here is not going to be shaving off the cost but extending the cars range to meet our perceived driving needs. As drivers of the Chevy Volt are already reporting 1,000 miles per tank, it will be interesting to see if PARC can change the electric car industry as they did solar.
UK Gets Viagra-Laced Beer
A limited-edition beer containing herbal viagra (will) mark the forthcoming royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th. Brewed using various well known aphrodisiacs, the limited edition artisanal beer will only be available to buy from the BrewDog.com website.
Royal Virility Performance, a limited-edition beer soon to be made available in the U.K., will contain lashings of viagra, which is available without a prescription there…
According to the specially commissioned label, the Royal Virility Performance contains Viagra, chocolate, Horny Goat Weed and ‘a healthy dose of sarcasm’. The beer is a 7.5% ABV India Pale Ale and has been brewed at BrewDog’s brewery in Fraserburgh. With this beer we want to take the wheels off the royal wedding bandwagon being jumped on by dozens of breweries; The Royal Virility Performance is the perfect antidote to all the hype.
*Note - this beer will be shipped on the 28th of April*
We only have 1,000 bottles available.
Energy Saving Light Bulbs May Cause Cancer
Energy saving light bulbs are easy on your purse but scientists warn they may be deadly for your health as they emit cancer causing chemicals when switched on.
German scientists have warned that they should not be left on for long periods or be positioned near a person’s head as they emit poisonous substances.
Peter Braun, who tested these bulbs at the Berlin’s Alab Lab, said: “For such carcinogenic substances, it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”
The bulbs are already widely used in Britain following an EU direction to phase out traditional incandescent lighting by the end of this year, the Telegraph reports.
But the German scientists said toxins like phenol, naphthalene and styrene, were released when the supposedly green compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were switched on.
Andreas Kirchner, of the Federation of German Engineers, said: “Electrical smog develops around these lamps.
“I, therefore, use them only very economically. They should not be used in unventilated areas and definitely not in the proximity of the head.”
The latest report follows claims by Abraham Haim, professor of biology at Haifa University in Israel, that the bulbs could result in higher breast cancer rates if used late at night.
He said the bluer light that CFLs emitted closely mimicked daylight, disrupting the body’s production of the hormone melatonin more than older-style filament bulbs, which cast a yellower light.
The Migraine Action Association has warned they could trigger migraines and skin care specialists have claimed their intense light could exacerbate a range of existing skin problems.
From Sundown Lounge No. 253
Geeknotes:
Bandmix
Rock For Change
Kids Comic Con
Stars Go Dim
Chi-Town Poetry Events
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At BandMix, that’s all we do….and we’re pretty good at it if we do say so ourselves. Since launching in 2003, BandMix has been responsible for matching thousands of musicians with each other, and with hundreds of new members joining everyday you'll be sure to find the right person for your musical talents.
Because BandMix was created by musicians, you’ll find features that can’t be found on other classifieds sites:
* Free account option for all musicians and industry professionals.
* Upload your audio, video, and images for fellow musicians to see.
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L.A. band Ready Set Go (readysetgoband.com) are set to rock the NOHO ARTS Performing Arts Center on April 16 at 8pm to raise money for the Red Cross Relief work in Japan. Tickets are $10 with a portion of the proceeds going to the Red Cross. In addition, the band and their friends, artist Naia Kete and Shanica Knowles who are also on the bill, are asking their fans to bring any extra change they have to contribute to relief efforts. Once a month RSG will invite other bands and their friends to join them for a Rock for Change event with a new charity each month. The NOHO Pac is at 11020 Magnolia Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601. Tickets are available at the door; first 50 fans get a free T-shirt.
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KIDS COMIC CON 2011
Time: April 16, 2011 all day
Location: Bronx Community College
City/Town: Bronx Community College
Hey folks, my KIDS COMIC CON 2011 is coming round soon -- SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2011, with all its usual fun and flair, plus some wild art, video, and stories from our adventures in Africa! So why not be there as a participant or patron? For more info go to: www.KidsComiccon.com.
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New album title...
As some of you know we've been in the studio working hard on our next album. Our debut album, "Love Gone Mad", released back in August 2009. I think its time to unleash some new SGD on you all. We are super excited with how these new songs are turning out. FYI- Our current single "Like I Mean It" is the first single from this new record. Now for the big reveal...
The new album will be titled "Between Here and Now". There are moments in all our lives that are special to us, define us, and make life reality. They happen in the blink of an eye. Time stands still. Between here and now is a snapshot of our lives. We hope to release "Between Here and Now" this summer. Check our latest journal entry on www.starsgodim.com to get a sneak peek into our studio to hear a few clips as we are working on the record.
Be apart of the cover artwork!
We want YOU to be apart of the album artwork for "Between Here and Now". Your photographs will be used to make a collage of a central image. Please send us photographs of yourself, a special moment in your life, or somebody/something you love. A snapshot of your life. Upload your photos here: http://upload.starsgodim.com. We hope to use all or as many of them as possible. Please keep them clean. We love you all. Thank you for being apart of "Between Here and Now".
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Chi-Town Poetry Happenings (all events Central Time...)
Elizabeth Marino Interview
Sunday, April 17 · 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Cathleen Schandlemeier will do a radio interview with Elizabeth Marino, on the re-release of her chapbook, Debris: Poems & Memoir.
The Wizard! 88.3 FM WZRD Chicago. Freeform, community, non-commercial radio out of Northeastern Illinois University.
W4tB presents Open Mic at the Bus Stop-FEATURING ELIZABETH HARPER
Monday, April 18 · 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Cafe Ballou
939 N Western Ave.
Chicago, IL
SUGGESTED THEME, BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Featuring: Elizabeth Harper
>
Larry O. Dean Book Release Extravaganza
Friday, April 29 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Quimby's Bookstore
Created By Zenith Beast
Larry O. Dean reads from his just released chapbooks, About the Author (Mindmade Books) and abbrev (Beard of Bees), as well as new and collected works.
He will be joined by fellow Flint expat, Sarah Carson, associate editor at RHINO and the Communications Specialist at Switchback Books. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Diagram, Epiphany, Limestone, Poet Lore, Strange Machine, and Slipstream, among others. She is the author of two chapbooks: Before Onstar (Etched Press, 2010) and Twenty-Two (Finishing Line Press, 2011).
Copies of the poets' most recent works will be available for purchase and for signing at this event.
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Everything Will be Powered by the Sun in the Future
New scheme would use only sunlight, air and water to supply energy for cars, laptops, GPS systems. “At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars.”–President Barack Obama, Jan. 25, 2011.
The Sun is Earth’s primary energy source and harnessing its abundant light is the Holy Grail of renewable energy.
Now, a group of scientists has demonstrated a new way to use sunlight, water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2)–some of the cheapest and most commonplace stuff on Earth–to make unlimited amounts of fuel to power almost anything, anywhere.
The method uses concentrated heat from the sun to convert water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO). Large amounts of these two gases could be combined to make liquid fuel that fits into America’s existing energy economy.
“Alternatively, you could use the H2 and CO to make methane (natural gas) for a gas-fired electricity generator,” said Sossina Haile, professor of Materials Science and of Chemical Engineering at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Or, because the fuels we produce are so pure, they could be easily used to run fuel cells, which generate power very efficiently.”
The researchers say one of the most exciting things about the discovery is its versatility. “We are not dictating to the user what the energy infrastructure should be,” Haile said. “We are making solar energy easy to use by putting it into a form that our industry is used to seeing and making it available on demand.”
Doing the two-step
Scientists have long known how to convert water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. But to do it cheaply and efficiently enough to make the process affordable on a wide scale has been the issue. Part of the problem was the need for expensive and rare elements, such as platinum or iridium, to act as catalysts that encourage the conversion to happen.
So Haile and her team took a novel approach; they tried ceria, a material used in the walls of self-cleaning ovens. Ceria is the oxidized or “rust” form of the element cerium, which is more abundant, and therefore cheaper, than other metals that could do the same job.
The new method requires two steps, the first at high temperature using concentrated heat from the sun (about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit), and the second at a much lower temperature.
Haile describes the process this way, “If we heat ceria up, the material ‘naturally’ releases some oxygen from its structure. If we then cool it back down, those oxygen vacancies want to be refilled. In other words, the ceria ‘exhales’ oxygen at high temperature and then ‘inhales’ it back when the temperature is lowered.”
To make fuel, the second step requires the presence of water and carbon dioxide gases. “At lower temperatures, the cerium, the hydrogen and the carbon all want the oxygen, but the cerium wants it most,” Haile said. “So the oxygen vacancies in the ceria are filled by stripping oxygen from H2O and CO2, leaving H2 and CO.”
An international collaboration
Haile and her Caltech team, supported by an award from the National Science Foundation, recently published a paper describing the breakthrough in the journal Science. For this project, they collaborated with researchers led by Aldo Steinfeld, a renewable energy technology professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, also called ETH Zürich, in Switzerland. Steinfeld also leads the Solar Technology Laboratory at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.
Two pieces of equipment were needed for the experiment. The first piece, built at Caltech, is a reactor “just a bit smaller than a gallon-jug,” Haile said. The reactor is basically a cylindrical container lined with ceria that has input and output lines for the gases.
The second piece is a solar concentrator, which is the most difficult part to build. The concentrator is basically a set of giant curved mirrors that gather sunlight from a wide area. For this experiment, the researchers were able to use an existing solar concentrator located at the Paul Scherrer Institute.
The Caltech scientists took their reactor to Switzerland and attached it to the bottom of the concentrator, allowing the sunlight to heat up the ceria inside. Then they piped steam and carbon dioxide into the reactor and measured the hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases flowing out.
Cheaper and more efficient
How far reaching could this new technology be and how much oil, gas or coal could it replace?
“The abundance of cerium means that this approach could have a significant impact on our national energy budget,” Haile said. Because cerium is 100,000 times more abundant than the precious metal platinum, she said, the cost would be many orders of magnitude smaller.
For this experiment, the efficiency of the reactor at converting sunlight to usable energy measured just under one percent, which Haile said is comparable to other methods. However, this was a first cut, aimed at simply proving that the process is practical and could be done economically.
Before bringing the technology to market, Haile said, the reactor design needs to be much tighter to get better efficiency.
“As a second step, it will be important to develop materials with even better characteristics than ceria,” she added.
“Ideally, one wants a material with a smaller temperature swing required as this will also increase efficiency,” Haile said. “In addition, if both the high and low temperatures can be lowered, the overall system lifetime will be improved. Better materials could result in a better process.”
Big Brother Needs No Warrant to Snoop at Your Cloud Emails
Do you use Gmail or other email cloud service? Then you’d be surprised to learn that according to the law, the government can get your email without a warrant if it’s older than 180 days. David Kravets of Wired’s Threat Level explains…
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way.
An Apple a Day Really Does Keep the Doctor Away
A study has found that women on an ‘apple diet’ saw their cholesterol drop by almost a quarter in six months. Another added benefit is they also lost weight.
Dr Bahram Arjmandi, of the department of nutrition, food and exercise sciences at Florida University, described the results as “incredible”
In the study, 80 women aged 45 to 65 were asked to eat 75 grams of dried prunes a day for a year, and the other 80 were asked to eat the same amount of dried apple, in addition to their normal diets.
Blood samples were taken at the start of the study and at three, six and 12 months.
Dr Arjmandi said that “incredible changes in the apple-eating women happened by 6 months- they experienced a 23 per cent decrease in LDL cholesterol, which is known as the ‘bad cholesterol’.”
They also had lower levels of bio-markers linked to heart disease, such as C-reactive protein.
They also shed on average 3.3lbs (1.5kg).
Dr Arjamandi, who presented the research at the Experimental Biology conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, concluded that there was some truth in the old adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.
Apples have long been known to be a good source of fiber, but the study, funded by the US Department of Agriculture, added to evidence that they had additional health benefits which made them a “miracle fruit”.
Dr Arjamandi said: “Everyone can benefit from consuming apples.”
Previous studies have shown that apple pectin and compounds called polyphenols – also present in substances including blueberries, tea and dark chocolate – stimulate the breakdown of fats in the blood and reduce inflammation of vessel walls, which both reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
This contest is offering a grand prize of $1,000 cash, an iPad 2, a feature on the world famous KCRW radio station, inclusion on a release by Walt Disney Records, and a TRON: Legacy original motion picture soundtrack vinyl box set. Deadline to Submit: April 28th.
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About This Opportunity
Chicago’s MOBfest 2011 (Music Over Business Festival) is set to take on an exciting new venue. Heading into its fifteenth year, MOBfest will celebrate Hard Rock-style when over 5,000 music lovers take over Hard Rock Chicago during the three day bash. In true Hard Rock fashion, the Fender Ballroom and surrounding event space in Hard Rock Hotel Chicago will be transformed into the ultimate concert venue.
From June 23-25, 2011, MOBfest 2011 will feature three evenings of showcases and multiple educational seminars. During the three day event, bands can showcase their music in front of a distinguished group of industry executives giving young, unsigned bands the opportunity to play for a greater number of big wigs ranging from brand marketing specialists, advertising executives, managers, record label representatives and new fans, all looking to discover the next cool band to work with and support.
***PLEASE NOTE***
This opportunity was originally listed as a FREE Submission in the email you may have received. Due to an overwhelming response to that free submission, we regret to inform you that the Submission Fee is now $10. We apologize to those who are just responding to the email offering the Free Submission. No action needs to be taken and no fees will be charged to the accounts of those artists who submitted to the free offering. Thank you for your understanding.
The Opportunity:
Ron Nevison is a legendary producer/engineer whose credits include The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, Bad Company, Barbra Streisand, Jefferson Starship, Chicago, Styx, Heart, Damn Yankees, Thin Lizzy and more.
Ron is looking for new artists to produce.
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Nanotechnology Breakthrough for Antibiotics
Powerful new antibiotics are being developed that act like magnets to destroy bacteria and disease, according to a new study. Researchers from IBM, the computer giant, say they are working on tiny particles known as nanostructures that are attracted to infected cells but do not destroy healthy ones.
They say if the nanostructures are introduced to traditional antibiotic drugs they make them much more effective by targeting the right areas.
In time the scientists hope the new structures can be turned into products such as soap and hand sanitiser as well as helping to heal wounds and treat superbugs such as MRSA.
Dr James Hedrick, Advanced Organic Materials Scientist at IBM Research, said: “The number of bacteria in the palm of a hand outnumbers the entire human population. With this discovery we’ve been able to leverage decades of materials development traditionally used for semiconductor technologies to create an entirely new delivery mechanism that could make them more specific and effective.”
“Using our novel nanostructures, we can offer a viable therapeutic solution for the treatment of MRSA and other infectious diseases,” added Dr Yiyan Yang, Group Leader at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore, who also worked on the project.
“This exciting discovery effectively integrates our capabilities in biomedical sciences and materials research to address key issues in conventional drug delivery.”
According to a paper in the new edition of the journal Nature Chemistry, the nanoparticles are physically attracted to infected cells like a magnet, which means they can eradicate bacteria without destroying healthy cells.
They also act in a different way to traditional antibiotics as they have been designed by the researchers to break through the membranes and walls in bacterial cells, which is hope will prevent the bacteria developing resistance to drugs.
Junk Food as Addictive as Cocaine
Seeing a milkshake can activate the same areas of the brain that light up when an addict sees cocaine, US researchers said.
The study helps explain why it can be so hard for some people to maintain a healthy weight, and why it has been so difficult for drugmakers and health experts to find obesity treatments that work. “If certain foods are addictive,this may partially explain the difficulty people experience in achieving sustainable weight loss,” Ashley Gearhardt of Yale University in Connecticut and colleagues wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Gearhardt’s team wanted to see what happens in the brain when young women are tempted by a tasty treat. They used a type of brain imaging known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study brain activity in 48 young women who were offered a chocolate milkshake or a tasteless solution. Women in the study ranged from lean to obese.
The team found that seeing the milkshake triggered brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex — brain areas that have been implicated in an addict’s urge to use drugs. And this activity was higher among women in the study who had high scores on a scale that assessed their eating habits for signs of addictive behavior.
People who are addicted to a substance are more likely to react with physical, psychological and behavioral changes when exposed to that substance. Altering visual “cues” — billboards of tempting treats, for example — might help curb the urge to indulge, they said.
Chemical Discovered Which Makes Bone Marrow Repair Skin
The chemical which summons stem cells from bone marrow to the site of a wound has been discovered by scientists in the UK and Japan.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified the distress signal – HMGB1.
The authors believe it can be used to put “a megaphone in the system” to improve the treatment of injuries such as burns and leg ulcers…
Another UK expert said the research had potential.
Bone marrow was thought to play a role in repairing damaged skin, but the exact process was unknown.
Scientists at Osaka University and King’s College London gave mice bone marrow cells that glow green – which can be tracked while moving round the body.
They then wounded the mice and some were given skin grafts.
Megaphone medicine
In mice without grafts, very few stem cells travelled to the wound. Those with grafts had many stem cells travelling to the wound.
Professor John McGrath, from King’s College London, says grafted skin tissue has no blood vessels and therefore no oxygen. He says this environment leads to the release of HMGB1 – or what he called a ‘Save Our Skin signal’ – which results in stem cells moving to the wound.
He said: “It could have a very big impact on regenerative medicine for treating people with rare genetic illnesses and more common problems such as burns and ulcers.
“It could potentially revolutionise the management of wound healing.”
He envisaged treatments in which a drug similar to HMGB1 would be injected near to a wound.
He said: “It would be like putting a megaphone in the system” bringing stem cells to the injury.
Researchers in Osaka are developing a drug to mimic HMGB1. They hope to begin animal testing by the end of the year and human clinical trials shortly afterwards.
Phil Stephens, professor of Cell Biology at Cardiff University, said: “I think it has potentially big clinical implications, but the key is potential if you can control it. You can’t just chuck it on, you need the right amounts at the right time.”
“Identifying the mechanism is a really important first step.”
Better Thinking Through Neurogenesis
Ignoring countless science-fiction movies warning them of the perils of tampering with nature, scientists are forging ahead with research to build a better brain.
Need a smarter noggin? Perhaps neurogenesis is for you…
The researchers engineered mice with a genetic switch that would turn off a gene that kills most new neurons in the adult hippocampus, thereby allowing more of these neurons to proliferate. The switch was turned on when the mice were injected with a specific drug, allowing the researchers to intervene only in adulthood.
The engineered mice performed better at a task that required them to distinguish between a chamber in which they had previously received an electric shock and a similar one with slightly different features that they’d experienced as safe. Sahay explains that pattern separation “is a mnemonic process that we use on a day-to-day basis in navigating our environments” and that it is needed to form memories and make judgments.
This unique genre-mashing band have created a rabid fanbase by paving their own road, DIY style, touring the world and selling upward of 800,000 albums in just a few short years. To find out how it's done, MC sat down with frontman Jeremy McKinnon and guitarist Kevin Skaff for this instructive in-depth Q&A.
In this installment of our popular series, Music Connection brings you exclusive interviews with high-profile musicians--including legendary axeman Robin Trower--whose insights and anecdotes are pure gold.
Music Connection once again provides this unique list of companies and individuals who can either upgrade your guitar gear or give your virtuosity a boost.
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A Few National Poetry Month Events in LA...
Go to the opening event of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival on Saturday at the Pasadena Public Library's Santa Catalina branch. Readings are at 2 p.m.
Most events are held between 3 and 5pm Fridays and Saturdays inside the backroom of the Santa Catalina branch of the Pasadena Public Library on 999 E. Washington Blvd.
Go see the Poetry Society of America reading April 18, with Katherine Coles, Patricia Smith and David St. John at the Geffen Playhouse, co-presented by Red Hen Press. The event begins at 7:30 p.m.; tickets are $20.
On April 28, go see poets reading the letters of Elizabeth Bishop at the Hammer Museum. Stephen Yenser, Carol Muske-Dukes and David St. John will read the letters of the onetime poet laureate, whose centenary is being celebrated this year.
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Microsoft Switches Off Privacy for Hotmail Users in War-Torn and Repressive States
For reasons unknown, Microsoft has changed the settings on Hotmail to disable HTTPS for users in several countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Hotmail users in those countries can now be readily spied upon by ISPs and their governments. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some good perspective…
Microsoft debuted the always-use-HTTPS feature for Hotmail in December of 2010, in order to give users the option of always encrypting their webmail traffic and protecting their sensitive communications from malicious hackers using tools such as Firesheep, and hostile governments eavesdropping on journalists and activists. For Microsoft to take such an enormous step backwards– undermining the security of Hotmail users in countries where freedom of expression is under attack and secure communication is especially important–is deeply disturbing. We hope that this counterproductive and potentially dangerous move is merely an error that Microsoft will swiftly correct.
The good news is that the fix is very easy. Hotmail users in the affected countries can turn the always-use-HTTPS feature back on by changing the country in their profile to any of the countries in which this feature has not been disabled, such as the United States, Germany, France, Israel, or Turkey. Hotmail users who browse the web with Firefox may force the use of HTTPS by default–while using any Hotmail location setting–by installing the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox plug-in.
The World is Getting Windier and the Waves Higher
The world is getting breezier, according to a new study, which found a slow but steady increase in top wind speeds across the oceans over the last 23 years.
Although global warming is a suspect, researchers can’t say for sure whether climate change is behind the growing gusts. The trend could simply be part of a natural and long-term cycle that pushes wind speeds both up and down over the course of many decades.
But if winds continue to pick up at the same rate, hurricanes could become far more damaging by the middle of the century. Among other implications, engineers would need to rethink they way they plan coastal and offshore structures.
“We may be observing an upward increase of something that, in the future, will go down again,” said Ian Young, a physical oceanographer at the Australian National University in Canberra. “However, the fact that we’re seeing this on a global basis in both the northern and the southern hemispheres suggests it may be a long-term trend rather than an oscillation. If we’re going to design things in the future, we may want to actually factor in oceanic waves going up.”
Winds over the oceans directly influence wave heights, and orbiting satellites use altimeters to regularly monitor both. Scientists are interested in these measurements because they affect the exchange of heat and gasses between water and sky. Winds also influence the frequency and strength of major storms.
Various studies have shown upward trends in wind speed over the last decade or two, but all of those projects have focused on limited parts of the world. Young and colleagues wanted a more global perspective.
The researchers gathered data from seven satellites taken between 1985 and 2008. Then, they used five independent statistical techniques to combine, calibrate and calculate the records. All five produced the same result.
Despite large seasonal variations, the mean wind speed over the oceans hasn’t changed much in the last two decades, the researchers report today in the journal Science. Speeds of the fastest winds, though, have risen by about half a percent each year, and heights of the biggest waves have risen by between a quarter and half a percent each year. Those trends have been strongest in the southern hemisphere.
Over time, these kinds of small and incremental rises add up. Off the coast of Southern Australia, for example, the tallest 1 percent of waves have risen from five to six meters (16 to 20 feet). The most extreme winds are now blowing 10 percent faster than they used to.
Ongoing changes in the most extreme conditions could have major consequences, said Mark Donelan, an oceanographer at the University of Miami in Florida. If winds continue to get gustier at the same rate over the next 50 years, for example, the destructive forces of Category 5 hurricanes would multiply.
“They’d go from knocking over 90 percent of the buildings to knocking over all the buildings,” Donelan said. “It’s hard to say how much more damage would be done. But it definitely wouldn’t be a good thing.”
Marine Microbes Found Feasting On Plastic
Plastics have officially entered the food chain, as seen in the deadly effect things like Styrofoam and bottle caps have on sea turtles and albatross, and even whales. However, how far into the food chain is plastic going? It seems even microbes are eating their fill, though whether or not they’re actually digesting the plastic or just passing it up the chain to larger life forms is still a big question. Regardless, researchers including Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and colleagues have found bacteria that is feasting on plastics found in the ocean.
Nature.com reports that the researchers used an electron microscope to look at minute scraps of plastic, including a piece of fishing line, a plastic bag, and other items from the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic, and found that each piece is “an oasis, a reef of biological activity,” according to Mincer.
Setting up home in the pits of the plastic was bacteria-like cells, which appeared to be eating away at the surface. According to the article, this is the first evidence of marine bacteria breaking down plastics in the ocean, though microbes that digest plastic have been found in landfills.
The problem of course, is finding out if these microbes are actually digesting the plastic, turning it into a non-toxic substance again, or if they’re just eating it and passing the chemicals right up the food chain. Researchers don’t know yet if this is good news for plastic pollution, or cause for concern over how plastics and the toxins they contain are becoming part of the food chain.
“Genetic analysis shows that the bacteria on the plastic differ from those in the surrounding seawater or on nearby seaweed, says microbiologist Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. So far, the DNA sequences obtained by her lab show that almost 25% of the bacteria on one polyethylene surface were vibrios, bacteria from the same group as the cholera bacterium,” and Amaral-Zettler added that it’s unknown yet if these strains are pathogenic.
The researchers are now working to learn more about the larger impact of these tiny plastic-munching microbes.
‘Blue Petroleum’ Fuel Could Be the Fuel of the Future
In a forest of tubes eight metres high in eastern Spain scientists hope they have found the fuel of tomorrow: bio-oil produced with algae mixed with carbon dioxide from a factory.
Almost 400 of the green tubes, filled with millions of microscopic algae, cover a plain near the city of Alicante, next to a cement works from which the C02 is captured and transported via a pipeline to the “blue petroleum” factory.
The project, which is still experimental, has been developed over the past five years by Spanish and French researchers at the small Bio Fuel Systems (BFS) company.
At a time when companies are redoubling their efforts to find alternative energy sources, the idea is to reproduce and speed up a process which has taken millions of years and which has led to the production of fossil fuels.
“We are trying to simulate the conditions which existed millions of years ago, when the phytoplankton was transformed into oil,” said engineer Eloy Chapuli. “In this way, we obtain oil that is the same as oil today.”
The microalgae reproduces at high speed in the tubes by photosynthesis and from the CO2 released from the cement factory.
Every day some of this highly concentrated liquid is extracted and filtered to produce a biomass that is turned into bio-oil.
The other great advantage of the system is that it is a depollutant — it absorbs the C02 which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.
“It’s ecological oil,” said the founder and chairman of BFS, French engineer Bernard Stroiazzo-Mougin, who worked in oil fields in the Middle East before coming to Spain.
“We need another five to 10 years before industrial production can start,” said Stroiazzo-Mougin, who hopes to be able to develop another such project on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
“In a unit that covers 50 square kilometres, which is not something enormous, in barren regions of southern Spain, we could produce about 1.25 million barrels per day,” or almost as much as the daily export of oil from Iraq, he said.
BFS, a private company, hopes to negotiate “with several countries to obtain subsidies for the installation of artificial oil fields,” he said.
Other similar projects being studied in other parts of the world.
In Germany, the Swedish energy group Vattenfall last year launched a pilot project in which algae is used to absorb carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant.
US oil giant ExxonMobil plans to invest up to $600 million in research on oil produced from algae.
Companies, in particular those in the aeronautic sector, have shown keen interest in this research, hoping to find a replacement for classic oil.
Is Your Meat Made With Meat Glue?
Almost every country in the EU last week approved the use of Meat Glue in food. Technically called thrombin, or transglutaminase (TG), it is an enzyme that food processors use to hold different kinds of meat together.
Imitation crab meat is one of the more common applications: it’s made from surimi, a “fish-based food product” made by pulverizing white fish like pollock or hake into a paste, which is then mixed with meat glue so that the shreds stick together and hold the shape wanted for it by its creator…
Chicken nuggets are also often bound with meat glue, as are meat mixtures meant to mold like sausage but without the casing. Meat glue is also used by high-end chefs like New York restaurant WD-50’s Wylie Dufresne, who is famous for his shrimp pasta dish—instead of shrimp with pasta, he just makes the pasta out of shrimp.
How it works
TG is an enzyme that catalyzes covalent bonds between free amine groups in a protein, like lysine, and gamma-caroxminid groups, like glutamine. These bonds are pretty durable and resist degradation once the food has been formed.
Thrombin is made from pig or cow blood, though you’ll see it on labels, if at all, as “composite meat product.” Many Europeans are outraged at their governments’ recent approval of the product: Food Safety News reports that a member of the Swedish Consumers’ Association, for example, has stated, “We do not want this at all–it is meat make-up.”
Know your food?
While meat glue is not necessarily a new creation, nor is it the weirdest of the weird or gross aspects of modern food production, it is certainly something that puts greater distance between us and our food—when the search for sustainability depends on doing just the opposite. Knowing where and how our food is produced, and eating more locally, are key to making food healthier for people and the planet.
If the idea of fish slurry or chicken puree glued together with an enzyme isn’t appealing to you, use it as motivation to learn more about where your food comes from. Try shopping from farmer’s markets more, so that you know who has grown your vegetables, or raised your meat if you eat it. Although between the chemicals, pollutants, cruelty and carbon emissions from its production, maybe reconsider (again) what it means to eat meat at all. ?
From Sundown Lounge No. 250
Geeknotes:
Reverbnation Festival Opening
Chicago National Poetry Month Events
Script Frenzy Time
Updates From Brad Wilson and I Am Not Lefthanded
Black Writers Museum Event in Philadelphia
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From Reverbnation:
17th Annual Temecula Valley International Film and Music Festival!
Dates: Wednesday, September 14th - Sunday, September 18th
Location: Temecula, CA
Submissions Open: Submissions are open now!
Submissions Close: Thu Jun 30
Submission Fee: $15.00
This significant world class music showcase component of the 2011 Temecula Valley International Film & Music Festival is designed to showcase original music vision and artistic wizardry of talented individuals and groups from across America and the world.
Emerging, up and coming unsigned performing artists and bands. Performers may be a solo, duo, trio, quartet or an ensemble. Soon after the deadline date for submission (JUNE 30, 2011) TVIFF judges will select the Festival’s TOP MUSIC ARTISTS. These TOP MUSIC ARTISTS will then be showcased at the TVIFF MUSICFEST, Sept. 16-17, 2011 and will be featured in the Festival’s 17th Anniversary Compilation CD. Due to the large number of submissions, only the top music artists selected will be notified via e-mail, phone and/or fax, on or before Aug. 8, 2011. (We select 10 to 20 music artists for this festival).
Mark your calendars for these two exciting
National Poetry Month events
National Poetry Month at Café Mestizo
Saturday, April 16, 5 to 7 PM
Café Mestizo, 1738 W. 18th Street in Pilsen
Poetry Open Mic hosted by Vito Carli
With featured guests:
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu reading from her new
book, all seeds & blues.
CJ Laity's first featured reading from his new
book, Point Nemo.
A rare featured reading by Kim Berez.
Free and open to the public.
National Poetry Month Cram
Saturday, April 30, 7 to 9 PM
(following the big poetry fest)
Café Ballou, 939 N. Western Ave.
Everyone gets a free copy of Poetry Cram Volume 11
Cram 11 Poets read, plus open mic!
Hosted by CJ Laity
visit http://poetrycram.com
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Hello, Script Frenziers!
My name is Sandra Salas and I’ve taken over the reins from Jennifer Arzt as Script Frenzy Program Director. I’m a filmmaker and teacher here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I love dogs, paper airplanes, slow cookers, and dark chocolate.
Script Frenzy is less than two weeks away, but there’s still plenty of time to sign in and start planning your story. So come on over to the Script Frenzy website and check out our super-cool features, including Frenzy videos and fresh tales from the Plot Machine.
We also have swank new Script Frenzy merchandise in the store and some great Script Frenzy donor goodies.
Come join me for our April adventure! It’s time to get that mind-boggling story down on the page!
Hoarding huge amounts of dark chocolate for next month,
Sandra
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Brad Wilson is a California guitarslinger who plays rocked-up blues and is a charismatic and talented guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. Performing 150 shows a year, Brad has become known as a smokin' hot Blues player who can rock the house all night long with the best of them. His songwriting has a hard-charging Americana/Blues/Roots style. His guitar playing is contemporary blues and he can rip on lead. Brad's live show is presented with spirit and class.
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I Am Not Lefthanded
Mostly-Irish, post-grunge miscreants, I Am Not Lefthanded are buried
in their English country studio recording their first full-length
album, with funds raised through their partnership with
SliceThePie.com last year.
While they're still finishing up: crossing things, dotting other
things and ripping off Rolling Stones B-sides, they wanted to give
people unfamiliar with their work a taste of what has come before,
with a free 4-track EP, "Previously on I Am Not Lefthanded". With a
sampling of their work from the previous couple of years, it's
available for download gratis at:
The new album will be called "The Fire & The Sigh" and will be
released into the wild in the Summer of this year, with the first
single, "Alone" coming in mid-April.
The Black Writers Museum Presents an event like no other. The first annual Celebration of Black Poetry, highlighted by an all day/evening cross-generational Poetry Marathon. We are looking for poets of all ages/performance levels to participate in this event. The first of its kind in Philadelphia meant to bring together poets from all over the country in celebration of all that we are as artists and keepers of the pens that tell our stories.
If you are interested in participating in this amazing event, please contact the Black Writers Museum – 267-297-3078 or blackwritersmuseum@clear.net
Event Details:
Saturday – April 30th
11am to 11pm
Real Estate Auction Center
5549 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19144
$6 – General Admission
Youth 12 and under - Free
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World’s Largest Source of Spam Email Shut Down By Microsoft and U.S. Marshals
The world’s most prolific source of spam emails has been shut down in a series of coordinated raids by Microsoft and US federal authorities. The Rustock botnet, an international network of virus-infected computers, had for years generated billions of emails per day, promoting unlicensed online pharmacies and cut-price impotence pills.
But on Wednesday, security firms noticed email traffic from Rustock completely collapsed. It has now been revealed that Microsoft, backed by US Marshals acting on a court order, seized servers that it’s estimated covertly controlled almost a million Windows PCs.
“We think this has been 100 per cent effective,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in Microsoft’s digital crimes unit, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The servers were rented from commercial internet hosting firms across the Mid West, who were apparently unaware of their role in Rustock. These “command and control” servers would issue instructions to infected home and business PCs worldwide.
The criminals behind the spamming business were named in Microsoft’s lawsuit only as “John Does 1-11”. To get the court order, which empowered it to seize equipment and so “decapitate” the botnet, Microsoft alleged the John Does infringed its trademarks in some of their emails.
The scale of the shut down is unprecedented. A report last month by SecureWorks, a computer security firm, said Rustock was the world’s biggest source of spam.
“The reasons for this are due to the author’s relentless development of stealth tactics,” it said, referring to how Rustock was frequently updated to stay one step ahead of anti-virus packages.
Nine Jobs People May Lose to Robots
By 2013 there will be 1.2 million industrial robots working worldwide — that’s one robot for every 5,000 people, according to Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works and author of Robotic Nation.
Robots are currently analyzing documents, filling prescriptions, and handling other tasks that were once exclusively done by humans.
Pharmacists
The next time you drop off a prescription order, you might see a robot behind the counter.
The UCSF Medical Center recently launched an automated, robotics-controlled pharmacy at two UCSF hospitals.
Once computers at the new pharmacy electronically receive medication orders from UCSF physicians and pharmacists, the robotics pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills.
Machines assemble doses onto a thin plastic ring that contains all the medications for a patient for a 12-hour period, which is bar-coded.
The pharmacy system, which was phased in over the past year, so far has prepared 350,000 doses of medication without error.
This fall, nurses at UCSF Medical Center will begin to use barcode readers to scan the medication at patients’ bedsides, verifying it is the correct dosage for the patient. The automated system also compounds sterile preparations of chemotherapy and non-chemotherapy doses and fills IV syringes or bags with the medications.
Lawyers and paralegals
Instead of paying an army of lawyers and paralegals to review documents, software can do the job in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost.
The New York Times reported that Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, CA provided software that helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.
“From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,” Bill Herr, a lawyer, tells the New York Times. “People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don’t.”
Drivers
Google announced last fall that it was working on automated cars as a way to increase safety and help humans reduce the time spent commuting to work.
With human supervisors in the passenger seat, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control.
“Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard,” said Google engineer Sebastian Thrun. “They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe.”
Astronauts
Through a partnership with General Motors, NASA’s Robonaut2 is the latest example of android technology. Equipped with a wide array of sensors and dexterous five fingered hands, it will initially handle menial jobs such as cleaning the spacestation and assisting humans in space operations.
However, it could one day venture outside the station to help spacewalkers make repairs or perform scientific work, according to NASA.
Store clerks
Companies are increasingly looking for ways to sell more products with fewer employees. ATM machines reduce the need for bank tellers, virtual assistants can answer the phone 24 hours a day, and self-service machines are reducing the need for checkout clerks.
Retail employment has barely budged over the last year despite stronger sales at major chains. Meanwhile, $740 billion was transacted through self-service machines in 2010, up 9 percent from 2009, reported the Los Angeles Times. That number is projected to rise to $1.1 trillion by 2014.
Soldiers
Although soldiers have yet to be replaced by an army of robots, we seem to be moving in that direction as drones and other machines are increasingly being used in reconnaissance and combat missions.
One example is the the MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System), made by Foster-Miller, which has provided armed robots in Iraq. According to Wired, the robot is equipped with a GPS monitor; it can be programmed to differentiate between fire and no-fire zones, to open doors, and even to drag out injured bodies.
Babysitters
If there’s anything we’ve learned from Hollywood, it’s that robots are not only deadly weapons, they are also great for entertainment.
Aeon Co., a major Japanese retailer, introduced a four-foot-tall yellow and white robot at a store in 2008 whose job is to babysit children while the adults shop.
Other models include the Hello Kitty robot, which is perfect for “whoever does not have a lot time to stay with child,” according to a vendor and NEC’s PaPeRo robot, which tells jokes, gives quizzes, and can track kids using a radio-frequency identification chip.
Rescuers
Robots can reach areas that are inaccessible to humans and provide crucial help in rescuing victims from natural disasters. Scientists such as Satoshi Tadokoro of Tohoku University, based in Sendai, have offered the use of their robots to assist in the rescue efforts that are underway in Japan.
Tadokoro has offered the use of a snakelike robot that can enter tight spaces and use a camera to survey them, which could be helpful in collapsed buildings.
For now, the most useful robots could be aerial drones that can provide aerial inspections or ROV’s, which can help locate underwater objects and determine the condition of bridges and pipelines, according to the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at Texas A&M University.
Sportswriters and other reporters
Using software developed by Northwestern University, Narrative Science specializes in machine-generated stories. One of its customers, the Big Ten Network, which is partially owned by Fox Cable, says it uses the service for baseball and softball coverage because it’s cheaper.
“It’s considerably less expensive for us to go this route than for us to try to have our own beat reporters at each one of these games,” Michael Calderon, Big Ten’s director of new media, tells Bloomberg Businessweek. After a game, scorekeepers e-mail game data to Narrative Science, which feeds it into a computer and spits out a story in minutes.
What’s In Movie Theater Popcorn?
What makes movie popcorn so gosh darned expensive? What’s in that strange yellow liquid they call butter anyhow? And while we’re at it – what are in those popcorns anyhow?
Well, it’s all a secret and theater owners are fighting the FDA to keep it that way…
Alarmed at the prospect, representatives of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners have been lobbying the FDA and congressional staff members in recent weeks to exempt theaters from the nutritional labeling requirement.
They argue that the proposed rules are an unwarranted intrusion into their business because people visit theaters to consume movies, not food.
“We’re not restaurants where people go to eat and satisfy themselves,” Gary Klein, the theater trade group’s general counsel, said. “It’s dinner and a movie, not dinner at a movie.”
Theater operators have a vested interest in fighting the proposed rules, as they generate up to one-third of their revenue from selling popcorn, sodas and other snacks. Popcorn is especially profitable. As David Ownby, the chief financial officer of Regal Entertainment Group, the nation’s largest theater circuit, recently said at an investor presentation, “We sell a bucket of popcorn for about $6. Our cost in that $6 bucket of popcorn is about 15 cents or 20 cents. So if that cost doubles, it doesn’t really hurt me that much.”
$0.20 to $6? That’s a 3,000% mark up!
From
Sundown Lounge No. 249
Geeknotes:
New London Club
Genesis SF Mag Call For Subs
Win A Private Stars Go Dim Concert
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From Urban World:
Emotions is London’s new Premier Urban clubbing brand to hit the world famous O2 Arena, bringing you the Glamour and trend-set Of The Capital collided with the freshest Urban beats.
Launching SATURDAY 19TH MARCH 2011 & Every SATURDAY Thereafter
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Genesis Science Fiction Magazine
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Black Science Fiction Society is now having open submissions for your short stories, books, comics, art, videos, etc. Since this is a grass roots effort we do not have funds to pay contributors. All funds generated from magazine sales are used to help finance the goals outlined in our manifesto which is our blueprint for gaining a positive footing for our science fiction creations.
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Win a private SGD concert!
How would you like to win a private concert with the band Stars Go Dim? And for just pennies on the dollar? Now is your chance. Stars Go Dim has partnered with EnoAuctions.com to bring you this exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring one of your favorite bands to your hometown and have them perform a private concert for you and your friends! Stars Go Dim will fly to your hometown and perform a private acoustic show for you. We will provide a budget for a lightly catered evening. No, no lobster or filet mignon. We will provide a professional photographer as well as have a video crew film the whole thing. Not like you will ever forget an experience like this, but hey, it is nice to show off sometimes. Free autographed SGD CD's for everyone at the show! Honestly, if that is not enough to get you so excited you can hardly sit still, you may need to check your pulse. But just in case, EnoAuctions will write a $500 grant to your favorite charity (some restrictions apply). More information Here!
Auction begins: Satuday, April 16 at 9:00am EST
Auction Ends: Friday, April 22 at 11:59pm EST
Where: www.EnoAuctions.com
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Smart Contact Lenses Will be the Bluetooth Headsets of the Future,
Imagine instant access to the latest market segment information at a meeting, or seeing the fourth quarter earnings for a company in (literally) the blink of an eye. (Pics)
Although it might sound like something from a science fiction novel, scientists at the University of Washington are working on solar powered contact lenses with transparent LEDs embedded onto the lens. This technology could be applied in countless ways, from health monitoring to text translation right in front of the wearer’s eyes.
In 2006, my team at SKD designed a very similar concept for our “Cautionary Visions” project. Analyzing current trends in technology and popular culture, from emerging demands for constant connection to the increasingly blurred boundaries between natural and artificial, my designers imagined the dark alleys down which these trends could take us.
One of the results was an “Assisted Living Contact Lens” that would project helpful information, such as the calorie count for a chocolate scone, or a GPS map overlay locating the nearest gyms.
Now it seems like our idea might become a reality. And the more I think about it, the more it seems like this concept could be the new Bluetooth headset. I still remember an article that ran in the Los Angeles Times: “Crazy? Or Cell Phone?” I used to ask myself the same question every time I saw a well-dressed man yelling and gesturing wildly to himself.
But I haven’t asked that question in years. These days, the seeming psycho-social disconnect displayed by talking to oneself in public is rarely considered grounds for insanity. The small wireless headsets that were once novelties have now become the norm. This is the process that happens once a new technology proves its relevance in users’ lives.
Bluetooth has been a massive benefit to the business world–the mobility allows constant communication with clients and its hands-free operation increases efficiency and allows for easier multi-tasking. And fortunately, most headsets have been implemented in ways that meet user needs for fit, comfort and functionality. Today, it’s used ubiquitously by CEOs and soccer moms.
Relevance is the challenge that new technology developers face, and it’s an area where designers can add value. Relevance involves finding the right audience for a new product, then discovering the needs of this audience and building a product around the need. When developing Jabra’s first line of Bluetooth headsets in 2000, my team at SKD looked at cultural factors and found that the increasingly blurred lines between work and personal life and the desire for constant connectivity made business professionals a great group of early adopters for Bluetooth Headsets. The capability of the technology solved an unmet need in their lives.
Which takes me back to the Smart Lens. Since the Assisted Living Contact Lens was conceived, a slough of new Smart Phones have engendered a populace absorbed in palm-sized screens and created a widespread desire for on-demand information. In today’s context, a Smart Lens sounds more convenient than creepy. Personally, I have a terrible memory for names. I might appreciate a contact lens that could provide labels over people’s heads when I walked into a room.
So if you see me gazing off into a distant world of information that only I can see, you may have fun wondering, “Crazy? Or contact lens?”…until you get your own.
Translucent Concrete
This special concrete tile allows light to pass through. The tile contains optical fibers that make up about 5% of its surface area. The fibers are distributed uniformly throughout the surface to allow an outline to be clearly visible on the other side. The tiles have the unique combination of being nearly unbreakable and translucent.
The material is made with a combination of optical fibers and fine concrete…
It can be produced as prefabricated building blocks. Due to the small size of the fibers, they blend into concrete and become a component of the material like small pieces of aggregate. The result is a new material, which is homogeneous in both its inner structure and its surfaces.
The material is manufactured by alternating layers of concrete and fibers. The concrete sets and the material is cut into tiles. The pattern of the fibers can be uniform, or can be designed to a specification such as artificial wood grain.
NASA Researches 5kW Galactic Trash Disposal System
Space junk is a growing problem — 200,000 pieces and counting — and as the amount of earth’s orbital debris increases, so does the chance some satellite will be involved in a cosmic collision. As this would cause much gnashing of teeth and woe for the affected terrestrial parties, some researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center have pitched the idea of removing said junk with a laser — once again proving that everything’s better with lasers…
The idea is to use a 5kW ray, like the one we’ve got at the Starfire Optical Range, to slow our galactic garbage enough to burn it up in earth’s atmosphere. Current estimates say such a laser could eliminate ten pieces of junk a day, promising us a future of neat and tidy skies.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 248
Geeknotes:
ReverbNation Goodies
Urban World
Music Connection
Young Chicago Authors thanks Dan Sinker, Mayor-Elect Emanuel
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Austin's Batfest is held on August 27th, 2011. Admission to the event is free. Attendance is estimated at 20,000.
Batfest is family friendly event that features arts, music, food, bat watching, and children's activities, and educational displays. Enjoy the scenic backdrop of Lady Bird Lake and downtown Austin, as up to 2 million Mexican Free Tail Bats emerge for their nightly flight. There are over 20 bands on two stages. There will be 3 slots reserved for ReverbNation artists. One band will be compensated $1,500. Two bands will be compensated $500.
HOW DO I INCREASE MY CHANCES OF BEING SELECTED?
Before you submit your RPK, make sure your artist profile is updated.You should also sync your MySpace and Facebook pages to your ReverbNation page in order to have a more accurate and competitive RPK. It is not mandatory but it sure does show a better representation of you and your music.
Event Dates: August 27, 2011
Submission Fee: $15
Submission Close: August 1, 2011
Want a chance to play at Warped Tour this year?
ReverbNation has partnered with Ernie Ball to bring you a FREE chance to play the 2011 Warped Tour.
Each year (this is the 15th), Ernie Ball holds an online 'Battle of the Bands' competition where fans get to vote on their favorite artists. The artists with the most votes become 'finalists', from which the winning Artists will be chosen by Ernie Ball.
The winning artists earn the opportunity to perform on the Ernie Ball Stage at the Summer's largest music festival, The 2011 Vans Warped Tour. The winning bands will play live in their hometown venue in front of thousands of fans alongside main stage headliners and Ernie Ball headlining artists There for Tomorrow, A Skylit Drive, Terrible Things, Eyes Set to Kill, Woe is Me, Motionless in White, Madina Lake, and more...
One band will be eligible to win the following ULTIMATE GRAND PRIZE:
• $15,000 Guitar Center Shopping Spree • All Expenses Paid Trip to Hollywood to play live at the Vans Warped Tour After-Party • 2 Week Slot on the 2012 Vans Warped Tour • Record a 3 song EP with Multi-Platinum Producer Matt Squire • 1 Year of paid Tunecore Service - digital distribution on ITunes, Yahoo, Rhapsody, Amazon • Full Ernie Ball Music Man Endorsement • Customize Vans Shoes • Custom Atticus Apparel Package
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Urban World is an online community where people can meet, chat, socialise and hear of forthcoming events and entertainment hotspots. The site hosts podcast links, music videos, fashion articles and celeb pics!
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This week's Ad from the Mar. issue:
INDIE VIXENS NEEDS BANDS FOR SXSW IN AUSTIN
INDIE VIXENS, the founders of Beyond The Music Label Series (beyondthemusiclabel.com) are looking for bands who will be in Austin during SXSW to perform at "The Suite" Austin (The Parish/Beale Street Tavern) as part of INDIE VIXENS Sessions from March 14 and 15, 2011. Brands are needed for the venue. Musicians (acoustic, jazz, and soul) are needed throughout the day and evening. Music showcases scheduled on March 14th and March 15th will benefit Colon Cancer Awareness. Beyond The Music Label Series will be held on March 15th. Submit your music via Beyond The Music Label - Austin Sonicbids link
and specify what date you are interested in performing in the subject line. For more information send an email to: music'at'indievixens'dot'com.
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URBAN TWANG
This Sunday, March 6
7 p.m.
at The Horseshoe
4115 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL
Also appearing another good band the Country Doctors.
P.S. Thank you to all of you that bought Trish and Laura a drink at the last gig.
CHICAGO, IL - March 3rd, 2011 - Young Chicago Authors (YCA) wishes to thank Dan Sinker, the person behind the @MayorEmanuel twitter account, who has chosen YCA as the recipient of a $5,000 charitable donation from Mayor-Elect Rahm Emanuel. In addition, YCA thanks Causes.com who matched the contribution and WLS 890 AM hosts Roe Conn and Richard Roeper who added $1,000 each...
...During the course of 2010-11 mayoral campaign, Dan Sinker, an associate professor at Columbia College, humorously put up tweets posing as @MayorEmanuel. These tweets gained national notoriety for their profanity-laced take on several events surrounding the campaign. Those following the tweets included Emanuel, who promised to donate $5,000 to the charity of the tweeter's choice if he or she revealed who they were.
On Wednesday, March 2nd Sinker and Emanuel met on The Roe Conn Show with Richard Roeper on WLS - 890 AM. Sinker announced that he had chosen Young Chicago Authors as the recipient of the donation. Emanuel praised the decision because Sinker was helping kids "find their voice." Sinker also had high praise for the organization mentioning it's Louder Than A Bomb poetry festival, Saturday Writing Program and "Say What" Magazine which had featured Sinker years ago. Later in the conversation, the Mayor-Elect noted that he had attended Louder Than A Bomb. In fact, he can be seen in the audience of 2008 festival which was recently chronicled in the "Louder Than A Bomb" documentary film...
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Kite-Powered Electric Car Crosses Australia Using Only $15 Worth of Electricity
The Win Explorer–a kite-assisted lightweight electric car–drove 3,107 miles across Australia in 18 days using only $15 worth of electricity. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, the journey set three world records: the first continental crossing by a wind-powered vehicle, the longest distance covered by a wind powered vehicle, and the longest distance covered by such vehicle in 36 hours!
The vehicle, an open roadster seating two people, weighs 441 lbs including both its battery pack and the wind turbine. It is constructed of sandwich carbon fiber which sits over an aluminum frame on top of bicycle tires that reduce any rolling resistance. The car’s electric motor is located at the rear wheel with the trunk space up front.
The team, Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer, traveled over 1,400 miles on wind-generated electricity alone and did another 300 miles by kite.
The car’s battery pack is 8 kWh lithium-ion battery spread over 4 blocks and 14 cells. It can be fully charged overnight from the wind turbine. The turbine sits atop a 20 foot telescopic bamboo pole and has a max power of 1,000 watts. Fully charged, the vehicle has a range of about 124 miles.
Test runs began in Perth around January 21 but the official journey started in Albany on the 26th, the southernmost point of the Australian mainland. The first 500 miles was all grid-powered but the Nullarbor Plain allowed for kite propulsion. This required one member to pilot the vehicle while the other held on to the large parasail-like kite. It is as difficult as it sounds as you can see in the video below.
WIth a lot of flat tires and a few blown out motors, the trip finished in Sidney on February 14th. The trip’s top speed was 50 mph and their best daily distance was 306 miles. Quite an impressive journey considering the concept was conceived just last summer.
Kepler Spacecraft Finds 2 Planets Sharing Same Orbit
To date, the telescope on the Kepler spacecraft has detected 1,235 planet candidates, and while Earth-bound telescopes are trying to determine if 54 of those planets may have conditions that could harbor life, one unique planetary system may have been uncovered.
Unique because it’s the first time scientists have discovered what may be two planets sharing the same orbit of their home sun, New Scientist reports…
Since planets are so far away and smaller than their host stars, Kepler is only able to “see” the potential planets by measuring any decreases in the brightness of stars, which would be caused by planets passing in front of them.
If this dual-orbiting planet hypothesis gets confirmed, researchers suggest it would lend credence to a theory that our moon was created when a planet-sized object, sharing a similar orbit to Earth’s eons ago, possibly crashed into our home world.
“Systems like this are not common, as this is the only one we have seen,” said Jack Lissauer, a space scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
The double-planetary system, dubbed KOI-730, is described in greater detail by Lissauer and his colleagues in the Astrophysical Journal.
Amazing Skin Gun Heals Severe Burns in Days
Scientists in the US have developed a new technique that sprays a burn patient’s own cells on the burn to help regenerate the skin and drastically reduce recovery time. The gun has been under development since 2008 and has now been used to successfully treat more than a dozen patients.
The Skin-cell Gun works essentially like a sophisticated paint spray gun. It was developed by Professor Joerg C. Gerlach and colleages of the Department of Surgery at the University of Pittsburg’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The concept was first introduced in 2008.
Until now burns have usually been treated with skin grafts, which involve taking skin sections from uninjured parts of the patient’s body, or growing sheets of skin artificially, and grafting them over the burn. The grafts can take several weeks or even months to heal, and during the recovery period patients are prone to infections because of the damage to the skin, which is the body’s first line of defense against pathogens.
Scientists have been able to regenerate skin in the laboratory for decades, but the process takes two to three weeks and the sheets of skin produced are fragile. When grafted on, blisters can form beneath it due to secretions, and can push up against the sheet and damage it.
Skin spraying have been in use for some time elsewhere, such as in Australia, where Dr Fiona Wood of the West Australia Burns Unit developed a method called “spray-on-skin.” Dr Wood’s method uses an aerosol system to spray on cultured skin cells. This system also cuts healing time to days rather than weeks or months, and the technique substantially cut the death toll in the Bali bombings in 2002.
Dr Gerlach said the new method uses an electronically controlled pneumatic device that does not injure the cells, while the other skin spraying devices are hand-pumped atomizers.
In a process taking only an hour and a half in total, a biopsy is taken from the patient’s undamaged skin and then healthy stem cells are isolated from the biopsy and an aqueous solution containing the cells is sprayed on the burn.
The sprayed wound is then covered with a newly-developed dressing with tubes enmeshed within it and extending from each end. One set of tubes functions as an artery, while the second set functions as a vein. The tubes are connected to an “artificial vascular system” and provide electrolytes, antibiotics, amino acids and glucose to the wound. The dressing keeps the wound clean and sterile, and provides nutrition for the skin stem cells to encourage them to regenerate new skin.
After treatment the wound heals in just days, when it would have taken weeks to heal using traditional treatments. Dr Gerlach said patients had been treated at the Berlin Burn Center and they had regrown skin over a burned ear or an entire face in only a few days.
At the moment the technique can only be used on second-degree burns, but Dr Gerlach hopes it will later be able to tackle third-degree burns as well.
The research is funded by the US Department of Defense under the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) consortium of research institutions, which was formed in 2008 to research better treatments for wounded service personnel.
The Skin-cell Gun will be shown on the National Geographic channel in the episode Explorer: How to Build a Beating Heart, which looks at the latest tissue regeneration techniques.
1 in 5 Americans Use the Internet While Driving
One in five Americans with a smartphone admits to using the internet while driving, with social networking ranking as one of the most popular distractions that’s taking eyes off the road.
The survey was carried out by US insurance company State Farm, which obviously has a vested interested in knowing who is paying attention when behind the wheel. The company asked just shy of 1,000 smartphone-owning drivers what they spend their time doing, and while some of the 19 per cent were looking for directions, others were reading email, searching on topics of immediate interested or updating their social-networking status.
It is really surprising that anyone has time to talk, or text, while driving anymore – which makes rather a mockery of all those states that specifically banned texting while driving.
But there’s no reason to panic, most of those surveyed by State Farm said they only use the internet when at a red light, or stuck in traffic, or moving really slowly, or bowling along the interstate on a long and boring drive – so nothing to worry about really.
It makes cars driven by Google seem a whole lot safer.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 247
Geeknotes:
OzSong International
URBAN TWANG
New Chicago Open Mike
Music Connection BlogWorld & New Media Expo NY & LA
MegaCon
Walter Mosley Meetup in Atlanta
Jamie Lynn Noon in Billboard Magazine
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OzSong International is the first songwriting competition from Australia, open globally, where the grand prize is the winner's choice. Choose recording time at Studios 301, Sydney, NSW Australia or Funhouse Studios, Nashville, TN USA, each with airfare and accommodation completely paid.
Categorical and finals winners receive a Yamaha Gram3 home recording system, certificate of merit and paid memberships to musician-related websites.
The competition is judged by Australian music legends Kevin Borich, Rick Steel, Dave Hole, Chris Murphy and from Brooks & Dunn in Nashville, Trez Gregory.
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URBAN TWANG - This Friday at the Bird's Nest - 9 p.m.
Trish and Laura have revolted against Max's autocratic rule and booked URBAN TWANG in a bar.
Yes, finally playing a place that serves booze.
As Trish freely admits, "It hard to be around Max and not be liquored up."
Should you like to celebrate with the ladies at the gig, Trish's favorite beverage is a single malt scotch and
Laura gets all smiley just thinking about a vodka gimlet.
It's best not to approach Max the teetotaler, he's rather bitter, cantankerous and not very sociable.
And Trish has would like it known that she's done apologizing for that one.
No matter what you drink it should be a fun night.
URBAN TWANG
This Friday, February 25 - 9 p.m.
Bird's Nest
2500 North Southport Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614
An acoustic set
Please tell the door person at the Bird's Nest you are there to see URBAN TWANG.
If possible go in and out two or three times so it seems like we have a big following.
CALLING ALL POETS! POETRY READING AND OPEN MIKE
on Saturday March 5th from 2-4pm at CHI BAKERY &
CAFE, 2132 S, Michigan Ave. Near the Red Line
Chinatown stop (22nd St.) They serve
Intelligentsia coffee & tea and have the BEST
cakes & cookies. Also serve chicken salad
sandwiches. If you want to be a featured poet, let
me know at starpoet@att.net Thanks!
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This week's Ad from the Feb. issue:
MONDAY NIGHT SONGWRITERS IN THE ROUND AT ROOM 5
Every Monday night in Hollywood, CA, at club Room 5, Joel Eckels hosts a songwriters in the round. The night features four songwriters on stage together taking turns playing songs and, often, accompanying each other in a very "off the cuff" format. Eckels relates that many patrons have referred to it as "the best deal for great live music in town." Eckels also hosts other events at Room 5, including an ongoing series in which a group of 20 - 35 singer-songwriters play the songs of a classic artist, with proceeds benefiting good works organizations. "Those nights have been epic," says Eckels. Most recently, the series paid tribute to Tom Petty. For complete information, see joelbooksroom5'at'gmail'dot'com.
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BlogWorld & New Media Expo NY & LA
BlogWorld & New Media Expo will host it’s first East Coast event at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City this May 24-26! But wait there’s more. "BlogWorld East" will be co-located with Book Expo America!
We have been hinting at big news for weeks now and we are glad to finally be able to share it with you. BlogWorld & New Media Expo West will be held in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center this November 3-5, 2011.
Personally, I haven't attended the last few conventions cause Vegas is out of my reach, but with it coming downtown this year, I expect a strong showing from the many podcaster groups in the SoCal region...
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Atlanta Speculative Fiction Cafe Meet up - Walter Mosley at the Carter Center
Time: March 17, 2011 from 7pm to 9pm
Location: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
Street: 453 Freedom Parkway
City/Town: Atlanta, GA 30307
Event Type: writer, appearance
Organized By: Acappella Books
Latest Activity: Feb 22
MegaCon
Time: March 25, 2011 to March 27, 2011
Location: Orange County Convention Center
Street: Hall D 9899 International Drive,
City/Town: Orlando, FL
Organized By: megaconvention.com
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Jamie Lynn Noon is featured in the February 26, 2011 Issue of Billboard Magazine, at newsstands now!
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Antibody Created as Medical Smart Bomb to Fight Cancer
A joint team of Indian and Australian scientists claims to have achieved a breakthrough by creating an antibody which could be used for developing a “medical smart bomb” that would help seek out and eradicate the root of cancer — the stem cells.
The international project is a collaboration between Australia’s Deakin University and Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore along with Barwon Health’s Andrew Love Cancer Centre and Chem Genex Pharmaceuticals.
The team has, in fact, created the world’s first RNA aptamer, a chemical antibody that acts like a guided missile to seek out and bind only to cancer stem cells, the Cancer Science journal reported.
The aptamer has the potential to deliver drugs directly to the stem cells and to be used to develop a more effective cancer imaging system for early detection of the disease, say the scientists. The Director of Deakin Medical School’s Nanomedicine Program , Professor Wei Duan, said that the development of the aptamer had huge implications for the way cancer is detected and then treated.
Duan said: “The survival rates for many cancers remain poor, due partly to the inability to detect cancer early. To provide a cure for cancer we must accurately detect and eliminate the cancer stem cells.”
Solowheel Reinvents the Wheel with Next-Gen Segway Unicycle
If you can’t afford a Segway, what about half of one? While the two-wheeled personal transporter can set you back by $5,000 or more, a new one-wheel, Segway-inspired model called the Solowheel is due to go on sale for a mere $1,500 in the U.S., starting in March. Impress your friends, work on your balance, and most of all, watch out for bikes and people that still walk.
Walking is really retro these days, with more bikes on the road, and people leaving their cars parked in light of revolution-inspired high gas prices.
Are these Solowheels that good of an idea? Don’t people need more exercise, not less? It reminds me of an older magazine story about electric scooters being “the new walking.” Or a TreeHugger post in 2010: “Bike-Happy, Ped-Friendly Cities Less Obese.”
As CoolHunting.com explains it, the Solowheel is “geared for the mobile urbanite.” It’s a “self-balancing electric unicycle” that uses gyro sensors, a 1,000-watt motor and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
It charges up in as little as 45 minutes, according to Inventist Inc., and lasts for about two hours on a charge. The poor person’s Chevy Volt? The unicycle recaptures energy when going downhill or slowing down.
This is like riding on the front tire of a scooter. There are foot platforms on each side. The platforms fold up for “easy” storage in a backpack (it weighs 20 pounds). Saves time and money on parking, too. And you could arrive at work less sweaty.
Is this “the smallest, greenest, most convenient People Mover ever invented,” as the Inventist claims? Or at least a pretty affordable, pretty efficient mode of electric transport for the eco-minded and Segway-deprived?
It’s only the latest version of an electric unicycle, it seems. Others have been introduced by Honda. A Canadian inventor also came up with a single-wheeled motor bike called the Uno.
Plastic That Can Conduct Electricity
A newly discovered technique makes it possible to create a whole new array of plastics with metallic or even superconducting properties.
Plastics usually conduct electricity so poorly that they are used to insulate electric cables but, by placing a thin film of metal onto a plastic sheet and mixing it into the polymer surface with an ion beam, Australian researchers have shown that the method can be used to make cheap, strong, flexible and conductive plastic films.
The research has been published in the journal ChemPhysChem by a team led by Professor Paul Meredith and Associate Professor Ben Powell, both at the University of Queensland, and Associate Professor Adam Micolich of the UNSW School of Physics. This latest discovery reports experiments by former UQ Ph.D. student, Dr Andrew Stephenson.
Ion beam techniques are widely used in the microelectronics industry to tailor the conductivity of semiconductors such as silicon, but attempts to adapt this process to plastic films have been made since the 1980s with only limited success – until now.
“What the team has been able to do here is use an ion beam to tune the properties of a plastic film so that it conducts electricity like the metals used in the electrical wires themselves, and even to act as a superconductor and pass electric current without resistance if cooled to low enough temperature,” says Professor Meredith.
To demonstrate a potential application of this new material, the team produced electrical resistance thermometers that meet industrial standards. Tested against an industry standard platinum resistance thermometer, it had comparable or even superior accuracy.
“This material is so interesting because we can take all the desirable aspects of polymers – such as mechanical flexibility, robustness and low cost – and into the mix add good electrical conductivity, something not normally associated with plastics,” says Professor Micolich. “It opens new avenues to making plastic electronics.”
Andrew Stephenson says the most exciting part about the discovery is how precisely the film’s ability to conduct or resist the flow of electrical current can be tuned. It opens up a very broad potential for useful applications.
“In fact, we can vary the electrical resistivity over 10 orders of magnitude – put simply, that means we have ten billion options to adjust the recipe when we’re making the plastic film. In theory, we can make plastics that conduct no electricity at all or as well as metals do – and everything in between,” Dr Stephenson says.
These new materials can be easily produced with equipment commonly used in the microelectronics industry and are vastly more tolerant of exposure to oxygen compared to standard semiconducting polymers.
Combined, these advantages may give ion beam processed polymer films a bright future in the on-going development of soft materials for plastic electronics applications – a fusion between current and next generation technology, the researchers say.
Astronomers Warn Mankind Should Prepare For a Global Katrina-style Disaster
The world is overdue a ferocious ’space storm’ that could knock out communications satellites, ground aircraft and trigger blackouts – causing hundreds of billions of pounds of damage, scientists say.
Astronomers today warned that mankind is now more vulnerable to a major solar storm than at any time in history – and that the planet should prepare for a global Katrina-style disaster.
A massive eruption of the sun would send waves of radiation and charged particles to Earth, damaging the satellite systems used for synchronising computers, airline navigation and phone networks.
If the storm is powerful enough it could even crash stock markets and cause power cuts that last weeks or months, experts told the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The chances of a disruption from space are getting stronger because the sun is entering the most active period of its 11 to 12-year natural cycle.
The world got a taster of the sun’s explosive power last week when the strongest solar eruption in five years sent a torrent of charged plasma hurtling towards the world at 580 miles per second.
The storm created spectacular aurorae and disrupted radio communications.
Professor Sir John Beddington, the government’s chief scientific adviser, said: ‘The issue of space weather has got to be taken seriously. We’ve had a relatively quiet period of space weather – but we can’t expect that quiet period to continue.
‘At the same time over that period the potential vulnerability of our systems has increased dramatically, whether it is the smart grid in our electricity systems or the ubiquitous use of GPS in just about everything we use these days.
‘The situation has changed. We need to be thinking about the ability both to categorise and explain and give early warning when particular types of space weather are likely to occur.’
Solar storms are caused by massive explosions on the sun.
The explosions release waves of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation which smash into the Earth within minutes, disrupting radio signals and damaging the electronics of satellites.
They are followed ten to 20 minutes later by a burst of energetic particles which cause even more havoc with satellites – and then 15 to 30 hours later by supercharged plasma which collides with Earth’s magnetic field.
The plasma create the aurora – or Northern Lights – and can induce electrical currents in power lines and cables.
Jane Lubchenco, head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said: ‘This is not a matter of if, it is simply a matter of when and how big.
‘The last time we had a maximum in the solar cycle, about 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Cell phones are now ubiquitous; they were certainly around but we didn’t rely on them for so many different things.
‘Many things that we take for granted today are so much more prone to the process of space weather than was the case in the last solar maximum.’
The sun goes through a regular activity cycle about 11 years long on average. The last solar maximum occurred in 2001. Its latest minimum was particularly weak and long lasting.
Space storms are not new. The first major solar flare was recorded by British astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859.
Other solar geomagnetic storms have been observed in recent decades. One huge solar flare in 1972 cut off long-distance telephone communication in the mid-western state of Illinois, Nasa said.
Another similar flare in 1989 ‘provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission’ and caused blackouts across the Canadian province of Quebec, the U.S. space agency said.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 246
Geeknotes:
Point Nemo
Brother Love
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Chicago poetry buddy CJ Laity has just finished his novel "Point Nemo" and sent me an advance copy. I finished it a few days ago and give it a thumb's up. It's a sharp and funny satire of the insanity that passes for contemporary American political and media sensibility in all of its collapsing imperial goodness, and a great book to take to the beach when it comes out in print...
Brother Love sends a plugger with info on his upcoming world tour and the next gig of the group Her & King's Country...
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Sticky Tape Could Soon be Used to Diagnose Skin Cancer
Sticky tape could soon be used as a simple, cheap and quick tool to diagnose skin cancer, say scientists.
A new study, published in the ‘British Journal of Dermatology’, has found that the tape — a few millimetres wide — can painlessly strip tiny cells from the skin without the need for anaesthetic or the risk of scarring.
The study has shown the cells can be analysed using a simple genetic screening technique to reveal if the growth is cancerous and how dangerous it is.
Although the research is still at an early stage, the scientists hope they may eventually no longer have to carry out biopsies to diagnose skin cancers, the ‘Daily Express’ reported.
In the study, the scientists found that the skin cells left on the sticky tape contain small bits of genetic information.
The scientists demonstrated how normal skin cells contain 17 specific genes proving they are healthy. But when cancer is present, these genes subtly mutate. Laboratory test of skin cells collected on the sticky tape can reveal any unusual changes in the genes that would indicate cancer.
The scientists hope further tests will confirm that their sticky tape works on all patients and may also be more accurate than current techniques using biopsies.
An expert, Nina Goad, of the British Association of Dermatologists, said: “Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the UK and is rising rapidly. Melanoma is the most dangerous, resulting in more than 2,200 deaths a year.”
Sexual Reproduction in Space Will Likely be Impossible Says Nasa
Researchers at the agency’s Ames Research Centre in California found that without effective shielding on spacecraft, powerful proton particles would probably sterilize any female embryo conceived in deep space.
They also concluded that male fertility was likely to be negatively affected, with the particles damaging the sperm count.
Given that travel to distant planets is likely to take decades, centuries or longer, this could make any mission to colonise other environments a non-starter.
The scientists noted that space shield technology is currently not sufficiently advanced to offer enough protection from this type of radiation.
Dr Tore Straume, a radiation biophysicist at the centre, said: “The present shielding capabilities would probably preclude having a pregnancy transited to Mars.”
The DNA which manages the development of all the cells in the body is particularly susceptible to the kinds of radiation found in space.
Studies on animals have shown that exposure to ionising radiation can kills egg cells in a female fetus as far on as the second or third trimester.
Dr Straume added: “One would have to be very protective of those cells during gestation, during pregnancy, to make sure that the female didn’t become sterile so they could continue the colony.”
Nasa has a strict code of conduct on sexual relations, stating that “relationships of trust” among astronauts are to be maintained at all times.
The research was published in the Journal of Cosmology.
emPower Electronic Corrective Eyeglasses to Replace Progressive Lenses and Bifocals
A new device may be joining smartphones, iPads and music players that you have to charge overnight: electronic eyeglasses. These glasses have tiny batteries, microchips and assorted electronics to turn reading power on when you need it and off when you don’t.
Traditionally, people who hit their 40s often need extra optical help as farsightedness sets in. They may buy bifocals or no-line progressive lenses. But such glasses have a drawback: the lenses that magnify fine print also blur objects more than an arm’s length away when a wearer looks down, distorting the view when on a staircase, for example, or when swinging at a golf ball.
The new electronic spectacles, called emPower, are intended to handle that problem with an unusual insert in the bottom part of the lenses: liquid crystals, cousins to the familiar ones in television displays. The crystals change how the lenses refract or bend light, just as varying levels of thickness do in traditional glasses.
To call up reading power in the new glasses, users touch the side of the frame. Batteries in the frame send along a current that changes the orientation of molecules in the crystals. Touch the side of the frame again, and the reading power disappears. Turn it off to hit a golf ball; turn it on to read the scorecard.
The glasses, made by PixelOptics in Roanoke, Va., will be on the market this spring — first in Virginia and North Carolina, and later in the year nationally, said Dr. Ronald Blum, an optometrist and the company’s president. The estimated price, $1,000 to $1,200, will include frames, lenses, coatings and charger.
Dr. Larry Wan, a managing partner at Family EyeCare Center in Campbell, Calif., tested the glasses with 10 of his patients, all in their 50s. He said they were a hit, for example, with people who had been bothered by blur as they walked down flights of stairs while wearing their glasses. “With these,” he said, “you can turn the reading power off, so they are safer and you don’t have that distortion.”
Of course, you’ll have to remember to charge them, a nuisance required by no ordinary pair of glasses. The charge lasts two to three days, said Larry Rodriguez, an executive at PixelOptics.
But you won’t have to worry if you drop them in the water. “Wipe them off and they should be fine,” he says, although they may require recharging.
The glasses have a parts list associated more with iPods than with optics. The transparent layer of liquid crystals and its electrode array are buried beneath the front surface of the lenses. The eyeglass frames have tiny microchips, rechargeable batteries and wires that supply electricity to the lenses. There are also built-in accelerometers, devices that sense the downward bend of a head, as though to look at a page, that can switch on the reading power automatically.
Although the eyeglasses are loaded with electronics, they don’t look that way, says Jack Loeb of Fisher Island, Fla., who is trying out a pair. “They look just like ordinary, high-end glasses,” he said.
Thirty-six different frames made by Aspex Eyewear will be offered initially, Mr. Rodriguez said. The electronic lenses are being manufactured by the Panasonic Healthcare Company in Japan. The lenses can be popped out and replaced if a prescription changes, Dr. Blum said.
The market for emPower glasses isn’t likely to include the young. “About 80 percent of the people wearing reading glasses are past 40,” said Steve Kodey, director of industry research at the Vision Council, a trade group for eyewear manufacturers and suppliers in Alexandria, Va. But the market is “much bigger than most people realize,” Mr. Kodey says.
Last year, some 20.6 million pairs of progressive lenses, and about 16.2 million pairs of bifocals, were sold in the United States.
If consumers buy emPowers instead of high-end progressive lenses, they will pay a premium. Even in high-end regular glasses, progressive lenses typically go for $300 to $400, Mr. Kodey said. And the average cost of frames is $125 (though there are many higher-cost options for the fashion-conscious.)
Liquid crystals offer a promising way to bend light in glasses, says Larry Thibos, a professor of optometry at Indiana University, Bloomington, whose research for the last 20 years has included work on electronic spectacles.
“The concept is solid,” he said. You energize the crystals and you have a lens that will then vanish when the power goes off.
Dr. Thibos evaluated prototypes of the glasses for Dr. Blum a decade ago. “The glasses worked fine even then, but they looked geeky,” he said of early versions. The process of bringing the glasses to market — in a stylish form — took 12 years and roughly 275 patents, says Dr. Blum. Financing has been provided by Delphi Ventures, the Carlyle Group, Longitude Capital, Stark Investments, Panasonic Ventures and Life Science Angels, among others.
The work on the new lenses started with the liquid crystals in computers, not in spectacles. In 1999, Dr. Blum and his group were working on ways to help aging eyes read a computer screen. Originally, they had hoped to put the extra reading power directly into the liquid crystal display on the computers, which at that time had thick screens. But as the screens grew thinner, it was no longer practical to do so.
“So we had to take what we’d put into the computer screen and put it into your lenses,” Dr. Blum said.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 245
Geeknotes:
Rambunctious Review Contests
YouBloom Song Search
Mocha Memoirs Press Call for Submissions
Stars Go Dim
Rambunctious Review: POETRY, FICTION, ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY CONTESTS on the theme: WATER
Rambunctious Review seeks entries in its twenty-eighth annual contest.
* A maximum of three original, previously unpublished poems, not exceeding 100 typewritten lines each, may be submitted. The poems may be in any style and may cover any subject reflecting the writer’s creative outlook on the theme of our next issue: “Water”. The entry fee is $ 3.00 per poem.
* Short story writers may submit one previously unpublished story, the length of which should not exceed twelve (12) double-spaced pages. The entry fee is $ 5.00 per story.
* Photographs of original artwork, or the originals themselves, may be submitted. Submissions should be in black and white format: maximum 8 by 10 inches. The entry fee is $ 3.00 per picture
* A maximum of five black and white prints may be submitted. Prints should be 8 by 10 inch glossies. The entry fee is $ 3.00 per photo.
The artist’s name and address must be on each page. Poems and stories will not be returned and slides will not be accepted. Entrants will be notified of contest results. Rambunctious Review retains one-time publication rights. The winning poems and stories will be published in future issues of Rambunctious Review.
PRIZES
First Prize . . . $ 100
Second Prize . . . $ 75
Third Prize . . . $ 50
DEADLINE
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Entries and subscription requests should be submitted to:
Rambunctious Review
1221 W. Pratt Blvd.
Chicago, Illinois 60626
**SPECIAL DEAL! Subscribe to Rambunctious Review (three issues for $15.00) and pay no entry fee.
YouBloom Song Contest is the annual internet-based competition conceived by Phil Harrington and musician/songwriter Bob Geldof. Harrington and Geldof, along with A&R man Nigel Grainge (The Waterboys, Sinead O'Connor, The Boomtown Rats, World Party and Steve Miller Band), songwriter/producer Rupert Hine (Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks), and record producer Damion "Damizza" Young (Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Mariah Carey) invite bands from all over the world to submit an audio performance of an original song. All details are posted at youbloom.com
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Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC is calling for submissions for release early spring 2011
Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC is a new publishing company that seeks to add new flavors to the realms of speculative fiction and all its subgenres. Our primary website will go live January 1, 2011, and we’re actively seeking submissions to add to our catalog before the launch.
We’re inviting authors to submit works of 15k and higher for possible publication in our electronic catalog. Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC wants to see titles that include excellent writing, superior storytelling, and fantastic creativity. We want our readers to lose themselves in the worlds the authors have created, and to care about the characters populating those worlds. Moreover, we’d like to see ethnic diversity in stories.
We’re currently looking for titles in the following genres: horror, science fiction, fantasy, and romance. We’re most excited about seeing stories in the subgenres of cyberpunk, steampunk, near-future sf, and space opera.
We do publish paranormal romance, science fiction romance, fantasy romance, and dark fantasy romance. We’d like to see submissions in these areas as well. Our interracial romance titles have been very successful, so feel free submit those as well.
To submit your work to us, submit a cover letter, completed novel and synopsis/marketing history to mochamemoirspress (at) gmail.com.
Hello everybody! We hope your having a great 2011 so far. Our year has started off pretty sweet if I must say. Our new single "Like I Mean It" and the music video have really started to get some great national attention...
We've also been in the studio lately finishing up a few new tunes- "Hesitate" and "Life Without You" (the song Joey co-wrote with Richard Marx). We are really excited about this next wave of tunes. Our first show of 2011 was a hometown performance here in Tulsa at the Cain's Ballroom on Jan 29th. It was a packed house and we had a blast...
Stars Go Dim is very honored to be featured this week on Noisetrade.com. Its a very popular music site where you can download some of your favorite music for free! Yes, you can go there now and download our complete "Love Gone Mad" album as well as an exclusive bonus song for free. You can also pick up music from other great artists such as The Civil Wars, Green River Ordinance, Ben Rector, and others. We double dare you to go download our music now.
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Chocolate Healthier Than Fruit
Chocoholics, you can now gorge on your favourite treat without a sense of guilt, for scientists have claimed that it’s actually healthier than many fruit. Not only that, but chocolate is being heralded as the latest “super food” by the scientists who carried out a study.
They have proved that it is packed with more healthy plant compounds and antioxidants gram-for-gram than fruit juice and provides far more nutritional goodness than food experts had previously thought.
The scientists have based their findings on a comparison of cocoa powder, the raw ingredient of chocolate, with powders made from fruits like acai berries, blueberries, cranberries and pomegranates, the ‘Daily Express’ reported.
Research into dark chocolate, containing around 60% cocoa, and cocoa drinks found that they too had more antioxidant activity and more flavanols — health-giving plant chemicals — than fruit.
The discovery means cocoa beans meet the nutritional criteria needed for fruits to be classed as “super fruits” according to the scientists at the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition in the US.
“The compounds in dark chocolate are just as good as the botanical compounds in fruit. Cacao seeds should be considered a ’super fruit’ and products derived from cacao seed extracts such as natural cocoa powder and dark chocolate, as ’super foods’,” said lead scientist Debra Miller.
However, the findings do not alter the fact that their favourite is high in fat and sugar, meaning dieticians say it should be balanced with less yummy foods such as brown rice and pulses, say the scientists.
“Dark chocolate needs to be considered as more of a tropical fruit like avocado which has a high fat content so you need to moderate the calories side of things. But people could create drinks and recipes containing cocoa to get the benefits without the calories,” said Dr Miller.
Google Earth Uncovers Thousands of Tombs
With the aid of revolutionary technology, archaeologists continue to expose exciting historical discoveries. According to The New Scientist, University of Western Australia professor David Kennedyhas utilized Google Earth in hopes of identifying archaeological sites, and he just may have stumbled across nearly two thousand potentially significant locations…
Using the satellite software from Perth, Kennedy analyzed approximately 500 square miles of the Arabian Peninsula and pinpointed 1,977 specific areas of interest, with 1,082 representing what he believes may be ancient “pendant” tombs. An associate within Saudi Arabia photographed two of the sites from the ground, and then Kennedy compared the resulting images to similar tombs in Jordan. Further site analysis is still needed from actual diggers, though, because Kennedy asserts that, “Just from Google Earth it’s impossible to know whether we have found a Bedouin structure that was made 150 years ago or 10,000 years ago.”
Archaeologists have utilized satellite imagery for years, but Google makes the practice universally and easily available. Coupled with the fact Google is publishing the Dead Sea scrolls for public consumption for the first time, a search engine may have shockingly eclipsed the standard, ancient trowel as an archaeologist’s most significant tool.
Top Ten Most Nutritious Vegetables and How to Grow Them in Your Garden
A perfectly ripe, juicy tomato, still warm from the sun. Sweet carrots, pulled from the garden minutes (or even seconds!) before they’re eaten. Growing your own vegetables is one of those activities that balances practicality and indulgence. In addition to the convenience of having the fixings for a salad or light supper right outside your door (or on your windowsill), when you grow your own vegetables, you’re getting the most nutritional bang for your buck as well. Vegetables start losing nutrients as soon as they’re harvested, and quality diminishes as sugars are turned into starches. For the tastiest veggies with the best nutrition, try growing a few of these nutrient-dense foods in your own garden. And don’t let the lack of a yard stop you – all of them can be grown in containers as well.
1. Broccoli
Broccoli is high in calcium, iron, and magnesium, as well as Vitamin A, B6, and C. In fact, one cup of raw broccoli florets provides 130% of your daily Vitamin C requirement.
* Grow Broccoli in Containers: One broccoli plant per pot, pots should be 12 to 16 inches deep.
* What to Watch Out For: Cabbage worm. If you start seeing pretty white butterflies fluttering around your broccoli, you’re guaranteed to start seeing little green worms all over your broccoli plants. To avoid this, cover your broccoli plants with floating row cover or lightweight bed sheets. If you start seeing cabbage worms, simply pick them off by hand.
2. Peas
There is nothing like peas grown right in your own garden – the tender sweetness of a snap pea just plucked from the vine is unlike anything you can buy in at a store. Aside from being absolutely delicious, peas are high in fiber, iron, magnesium, potassium, and Vitamin A, B6, and C.
* Grow Peas in Containers: Sow peas approximately 2 inches apart in a pot that is at least 10 inches deep. Provide support for peas to climb up.
* What to Watch Out For: Hot weather. Once the weather turns hot, pea production will pretty much shut down. Grow peas in early spring and late summer/autumn, or any time of year when temperatures are consistently between 40 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Beans (especially navy beans, great northern beans, kidney beans)
While snap beans (green beans/wax beans) are a great addition to any garden, it’s the beans we grow as dried beans that are real nutritional powerhouses. Dry beans, in general, are high in iron, fiber, manganese, and phosphorous.
* Grow Beans in Containers: Bush beans are your best option for growing in containers. Plant beans four inches apart in a container that is at least 12 inches deep.
* What to Watch Out For: Harvest at the right time. Harvest dry beans when the pods have completely dried on the vine. The pods should be light brown, and you should be able to feel the hard beans inside. Shell the beans, and let them sit out a few days to ensure that they’re completely dry before storing them in jars in a cool, dark, dry place.
4. Brussels Sprouts
The bane of many a childhood, Brussels sprouts get a bad wrap mostly due to overcooking. When prepared right, Brussels sprouts are sweet, tender, and delicious. They also provide tons of fiber, magnesium, potassium, and riboflavin, as well as high levels of Vitamins A, B6, and C.
* Grow Brussels Sprouts in Containers: Grow one plant per 16-inch deep container.
* What to Watch Out For: Cabbage worms (see “Broccoli, above.)
5. Tomatoes
Fresh, homegrown tomatoes are the reason many gardeners get into vegetable gardening in the first place. There’s just nothing that compares to eating a perfectly ripe tomato, still warm from the sun. Tomatoes are also incredibly good for us, packing plenty of fiber, iron, magnesium, niacin, potassium, and Vitamin A, B6, and C. They’re also a great source of the antioxidant lycopene.
* Grow Tomatoes in Containers: Container sizes will vary depending on the variety you’re growing. If you’re growing an indeterminate variety, your container will need to be at least 18 inches deep. For determinate varieties, 12 inches is a good depth, and for dwarf or “patio” type tomatoes, 8 inches is perfect. One tomato plant per pot.
* What to Watch Out For: Tomato horn worm can be a problem in many areas – these large caterpillars should be removed by hand whenever you see them. Also watch out for signs of blight, which is a real problem in many parts of the U.S.
6. Red Bell Peppers
Red bell peppers are high in potassium, riboflavin, and Vitamins A, B6, and C – in fact, one cup of red bell pepper packs an amazing 317% of the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C and 93% of the recommended Vitamin A.
* Grow Peppers in Containers: Plant one pepper plant per each 8 to 12 inch deep pot.
* What to Watch Out For: Aphids and flea beetles are the two most common insect pests when growing peppers. While both can be controlled with insecticidal soap, which is a common organic option, you can also make all-natural, homemade sprays to deter these pests. A tomato leaf spray will get rid of aphids, and garlic/hot pepper spray works very well on a flea beetle infestation.
7. Beets
Beets are a great “two-fer” crop – you can harvest the beet roots, of course, but you can also harvest and eat the greens. Young beet greens are delicious when added raw to a salad, and larger beet greens can be sauteed as a quick side dish or used the way you’d use other greens such as spinach. Beet roots are very high in iron, potassium, and vitamin C. Beet greens are even better, as they are high in iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, and Vitamins A, B6, and C.
* Grow Beets in Containers: Plant beet seeds three inches apart in a container that is twelve inches deep. Because each beet seed is actually a cluster of seeds, be sure to thin the seedlings to one per cluster. Thinnings can be added to salads or sandwiches.
* What to Watch Out For: Knowing when to harvest. Beet roots are at their best when they are harvested small – between one and two inches across. At this size, they are sweet and tender. Larger beets tend to be kind of woody and less flavorful.
8. Leaf Amaranth
Leaf amaranth is a less-common vegetable that is well worth a try in your own garden. The leaves have a sweet and slightly tangy flavor that works well in a variety of dishes, from stir-fries and soups to simply steaming it all by itself. As a bonus, leaf amaranth is one of the few heat-tolerant greens. It won’t bolt in the heat of summer the way spinach and kale are prone to. Nutritionally, leaf amaranth is very high in calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, riboflavin, zinc, and Vitamins A, B6, and C. Everyone should be growing this!
* Growing Leaf Amaranth in Containers: Scatter the tiny seeds over the soil’s surface in a pot that is at least 8 inches deep. Harvest the leaves when they are two to four inches tall. You will be able to get at least two or three harvest before you’ll have to sow more seeds.
* What to Watch Out For: Leaf amaranth is fairly easy to grow, and relatively problem-free. Rarely, leaf miners can become a problem.
9. Carrots
Carrots are at their sweetest, crunchiest best when freshly harvested from the garden. These icons of healthy eating deserve their “good-for-you” rep – they’re very high in fiber, manganese, niacin, potassium, and Vitamins A, B6, and C. Their only drawback is that they do tend to be high in sugar, so if you’re watching your carb intake, you’ll want to limit the amount of carrots you eat.
* Grow Carrots in Containers: Sow carrot seeds two to three inches apart in a pot that is at least twelve inches deep. Look for shorter varieties, such as ‘Thumbelina,’ or ‘Danver’s Half Long.’
* What to Watch Out For: Harvesting at the perfect size. Carrots are at their tastiest when harvested small. Leaving them in the ground too long can result in overly large, woody carrots. You’ll also want to make sure to keep your carrots evenly moist, as letting the soil dry out too often can also result in somewhat bitter, fibrous carrots.
10. Leafy Greens
OK, I cheated here. I can’t recommend just ONE leafy green, because they are all incredibly good for us, as well as delicious — kale, collards, spinach, turnip or dandelino greens — how can you possibly choose just one? In general, the “green leafies” contain high amounts of calcium, iron, potassium, and Vitamins A, B6, and C.
* Grow Greens in Containers: Grow one kale or collard plant per ten inch deep pot. Other greens can be grown a few plants to a pot — they should be planted at least 4 inches apart and harvested small.
* What to Watch Out For: Heat and cabbage worms. Most leafy greens are cool-weather crops, so they’re best grown in spring and fall in most areas – hot weather will cause them to bolt. In addition, many of these greens are members of the Brassicas family, which means they are prone to cabbage worm infestations. Control them with the same methods outlined in the “Broccoli” section, above.
Try growing one or two (or all!) of these nutrient-dense, delicious vegetables in your own garden, and you’ll get double the health benefits: healthy food and time spent outdoors, nurturing your plants.
Junk Food Lowers a Child IQ
It’s a research which may anger many busy parents who rely on processed foods to placate kids — eating junk food lowers a child’s IQ.
Researchers in Britain have carried out the study of 4,000 kids and found that those under the age of four eating a diet of processed food, fat and sugar have lower brain power at eight-and-a-half years.
Their IQ fell by 1.67 for every increase on a chart which reflected how much processed fat they ate. And the damage could not be reversed – as diet at the ages of four and seven had no affect on IQ scores.
In the study spanning several years, the researchers at Bristol University monitored the diet of kids at age three, four, seven and eight-and-a-half years, ‘The Sun’ reported.
Dr Kate Northstone, who led the research at Bristol University, said: “In this population of contemporary British children, a poor diet, associated with increased intake of processed foods, fat and sugar in early childhood may be associated with lower IQ at the age of 8.5 years.
“In addition, a healthy diet may be associated with higher IQ. It is possible that good nutrition during this period may encourage optimal brain growth.”
But she added: “Further research is required to help determine the true effects of early diet on intelligence.”
Barbara Gallani, of the Food and Drink Federation, said: “It would not be surprising if a healthy, balanced diet is important in IQ development – just like it is generally for children’s health and growth.
“We believe it is important for everyone to eat a wide variety of foods. It’s possible to eat a healthy diet and still include some treat foods.”
A Los Angeles music producer is currently accepting submissions for several sections of a full-length feature film involving the sport of Freerunning. Accepted genres include Electro, Rock, Vibe Rock, Club and more. To see the complete details, visit submitmx.com/projects_listings.php?id=843. The deadline to submit is Feb. 8th.
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Atlanta Speculative Fiction Cafe Meet Up!
Time: February 19, 2011 from 4pm to 7pm
Location: The Urban Grind
Street: 962 Marietta Street NW
City/Town: Atlanta, GA 30318
Phone: 770-851-1306
Event Type: meeting, (kind, of)
Organized By: Milton Davis
Attention ATLiens! Join us at the Urban Grind for a very informal meet up. We don't have the place reserved; we'll just show up and cut up! Well, at the most get to know each other and get up to speed on our current projects. I hope to see you there!
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SoundBite Hearing Aid Uses Teeth to Transmit Sound
A company called Sonitus Medical has developed a unique way of providing hearing for people who are deaf in one ear. The cleverly named SoundBite hearing system is composed of two electronic devices, the Behind The Ear(BTE) unit and the In The Mouth (ITM) unit. You’d have to be the dumbest person on Earth if you don’t know which device goes where by now. The BTE is used to detect and capture sound. It has a digital signal processor and a second microphone for noise cancellation. It also has a transmitter, which it uses to wirelessly send sound to the ITM..
The ITM then converts the sound into imperceptible vibrations and sends them to both of the wearer’s inner ears via the teeth. Judging from the picture, the ITM is virtually invisible when worn, although whether or not it’s comfortable is another question altogether.
The SoundBite was recently awarded clearance by the FDA, so it’s only a matter of time before the system becomes available. If you’re deaf in one ear, be sure to take care of your teeth – you might be hearing from them soon. Visit Solinus Medical’s website for more info.
China Blocks the Word ‘Egypt’ From Internet Searches
Chinese authorities have blocked the word “Egypt” from searches on Twitter-like microblogging sites in an indication of concern among Communist Party leaders that the unrest there could encourage similar calls for political reform in China.
Internet censors also appeared Sunday to have deleted almost all of the comments posted beneath the few limited reports on the unrest—mostly from the state-run Xinhua news agency—that have been published on Chinese news sites in the past few days.
The strict online controls illustrate the party’s concern that the Internet is providing China’s citizens with a new means of information and organization that could challenge its monopoly on power, as has happened with other authoritarian governments in recent years.
Chinese authorities also stepped up their efforts to control the Internet after the “color revolutions” in the former Soviet Union in 2003-05, and the pro-democracy protests in Iran in 2009. They completely shut down Internet access in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang for several months after riots there in 2009.
China now appears to be tightening media and Internet restrictions in the run-up to once-a-decade leadership succession next year, when President Hu Jintao and six other top leaders are expected to retire from their party posts.
China—which has close diplomatic relations with Egypt and has sold it millions of dollars of weapons—also issued a warning to Chinese citizens there on Sunday, urging them to reconsider their travel plans or seek assistance from the Chinese government in Egypt.
China’s state media have provided limited coverage of the unrest in Egypt, including the scores of reported deaths, the cutting of Internet and cellphone access, and President Hosni Mubarak’s appointment of a vice president. Most newspapers, television stations and news portals have stuck closely to the official Xinhua reports, which they have not featured prominently, while refraining from independent reporting or commentary.
One of the only exceptions was the Global Times, a popular tabloid published by China’s Communist Party, which said in a commentary in English and Chinese on Sunday that “color revolutions” couldn’t achieve real democracy.
“In the West, democracy is not only a political system, but a way of life. Yet some emerging democracies in Asia and Africa are taking hit after hit from street-level clamor. Democracy is still far away for Tunisia and Egypt. The success of a democracy takes concrete foundations in economy, education and social issues,” the commentary said. “As a general concept, democracy has been accepted by most people. But when it comes to political systems, the Western model is only one of a few options. It takes time and effort to apply democracy to different countries, and to do so without the turmoil of revolution.”
Internet censors, meanwhile, appear to have been working hard to ensure that China’s army of 457 million Internet users don’t provide any independent commentary on the events in Egypt—or comparisons to China.
Searches on Sunday for “Egypt” on microblog functions of Chinese Web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com revealed only messages saying either that the results couldn’t be found, or couldn’t be displayed. “In accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results could not be displayed,” said the response on Sina.com’s microblogging site, Sina Weibo.
Twitter, Facebook and other foreign social-networking sites are blocked in China, and Internet censors routinely prevent access to other sites they consider politically sensitive or illegal under Chinese law. But Chinese microblogging services are rapidly becoming a popular alternative source of information, with the number of registered users hitting an estimated 75 million in 2010, up from eight million in 2009, according to a recent report by market-research firm Analysys International.
News portals mostly stuck to Xinhua reports, with at least 53 publishing one on Sunday that said that President Mubarak had appointed a new premier, and included a brief biography of the new appointment, but it made no mention of the unrest.
The Global Times’ Chinese site was one of the few that published several brief reports from other sources, saying for example that Israel had boosted security on its borders, and that Mr Mubarak’s two sons had arrived in Britain.
However, almost all of those reports had no comments at all beneath them—which is unusual for such a major world news story, unless censors have removed comments because they are deemed too politically sensitive.
China’s authorities appear to have grown increasingly concerned about the spread of unauthorized news reporting and commentary through microblogging and other websites, especially those under the control of local, rather than national, authorities.
In November, China’s propaganda czars launched a six-month campaign against “fake news,” according to a report on Friday in the Press and Publications Report, a journal published by the General Administration of Press and Publication. It quoted Zhai Huisheng, senior media official in charge of training journalists, saying the campaign involved teams of media officials holding conferences with journalists at provincial, prefectural and city levels.
In another example of tightening restrictions, state media reported this month that local police banned the photocopying of politically sensitive material on the campus of Peking University.
“Materials that express hate against the Party, the State or the social politics are forbidden,” reads an order issued by local police to each of the campus’s 29 photocopying rooms, according to the Global Times. “Do not photocopy. Call the police immediately after [the materials] are found.”
Skier Airbags – Motorcyclist-protection Technology Coming to the Ski Slopes
Almost anything that you can use to get around quickly comes with an airbag these days, even flying cars. So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that airbags could be the newest accessory you see skiers wearing the next time you hit the slopes.
Just for safety, it’s not news that skiers are wearing some form of protection as they race down the slopes. Olympic skiers from the United States and Canada have been doing it for years. But an Italian company is trying to bring airbag technology that has until now been used on motorcycles to ski slopes, specifically the Alpines.
The company Dainese has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Ski Federation to bring its D-Air wearable airbag technology to Alpine slopes.
According to Gizmag, Dainese is now in the early stages of testing, where the dynamics of ski racing are being monitored to tailor the existing motorcycle-specific technology to the needs of ski racers.
The company has several videoson its website to demonstrate how the airbag technology is designed to work for motorcycle riders, but none is available yet for skiers because Dainese is still so early in the testing process.
The project began last year, and is now in its first data collection phase. In the tests, skiers are fitted with a data-recording system based on an inertial platform that can record the dynamics involved in ski racing. Data collected during this phase will be used to determine the activation algorithm for the launch of the airbag, which is specially designed for Alpine skiing.
“Protecting people in sport is a corporate mission that has seen us engaged in a ceaseless process of research and innovation since 1972, said FIS President Gian Franco Kasper in a press release. “It is a process that started with motorcycling and brought us an immense wealth of knowledge that we are proud now to apply to Alpine skiing.”
Atlanta mother and grandmother, Jazz Ison Sinkfield, has been growing out her fingernails for the last 22 years in the hopes of meeting Oprah and “a lot of more celebrities.”
So far her quest has only landed her on the local news, but her nails, the longest of which is 24 inches, are actually pretty impressive. Their length keeps her from doing everyday tasks like tying her shoes and putting on jewelry, and she pays $250 a month at the nail salon to maintain them, but Jazz is committed nonetheless.
I feel like at this point she’s put such a tremendous investment of her time and money into her mission that somebody should put her in touch with Oprah. Or at least a person who’s making a documentary about wannabe talkshow guests.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 243
Geeknotes:
Poetry Cram 11
Kids Comic Con 2011
Web Series Matty's Rocket
ChicagoPoetry.com Press is pleased to announce its intention to publish Cram 11=Poetry², to be released to the public on Saturday, April 30 2011, at the Chicago Public Library Poetry Fest featuring keynote speaker Nikki Giovanni, when hundreds of copies of Cram 11 will be given away, FREE, to people at Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State Street. Cram 11 will also be distributed at an official release reading (details TBA). The Cram release events are always very exciting. Click here to check out some photos from the Cram 8 release event.
This time, Cram Magazine is going to be all about POETRY and other forms of writing! That's right, for the "Poetry Squared" edition of Cram, I am seeking POETRY ABOUT POETRY. I am specifically looking for poetry that personifies poetry or other forms of creative writing or that touches upon the themes of the writing process, being a writer, famous writers, your favorite writers, or writing styles. Poetry may be in any form, including free, formal, confessional, lyrical, experimental, rhyming, haiku or prose, as long as it in some way is about poetry or writing in general.
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KIDS COMIC CON 2011
Time: April 16, 2011 all day
Location: Bronx Community College
Hey folks, my KIDS COMIC CON 2011 is coming round soon -- SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2011, with all its usual fun and flair, plus some wild art, video, and stories from our adventures in Africa! So why not be there as a participant or patron? For more info go to: www.KidsComiccon.com.
Bighead Scientists presents Matty's Rocket
Matty’s Rocket is a galaxy spanning tale about the adventures of space pilot Matty Watty. This animatic series is based in an alternative past where the 30s-40s pulp stylings of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis collide with the real world events of World War 2, FDR, Nazis, the Harlem Renaissance and the oppressive Jim Crow era...
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Future Criminals Could be Identified as Toddlers
Tantrums and lack of self control in toddlers is a sign they may grow up to be drug addicts and criminals, claims research. Badly behaved children as young as three are also the most prone to financial and health problems in adulthood.
Researchers believe that identifying youngsters at such an early age could be a cheap way of tackling a range of issues from drug abuse to prison overcrowding.
The long term study followed more than 1,000 children in New Zealand through their lives to see if there was a connection between early behaviour and success in adulthood.
The youngsters were assessed by teachers, parents, observers and the participants themselves on a range of measures including “low frustration tolerance, lacks persistence in reaching goals, difficulty sticking with a task, overactive, acts before thinking, has difficulty waiting turn, restless, not conscientious”.
They were then followed up later in life to see how they had turned out.
Prof Terrie Moffitt and Prof Avshalom Caspi, of Duke University, North Carolina, said the impulsivity and relative inability to think about the long-term gave them more difficulty with finances, like savings, home ownership and credit card debt.
They also were more likely to be single parents, have a criminal conviction record, and be dependent on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and harder drugs.
The New Zealand children with low-self control were more likely to make poor choices as adolescents including taking up smoking, having unplanned pregnancies and dropping out of school.
Naturally, this set them on a more difficult path.
Even the low self-control individuals who finished high school as non-smokers without kids showed poorer outcomes at 32.
Their health suffered with badly behaved youth most from breathing problems, gum disease, sexually transmitted disease, inflammation, overweight and high cholesterol and blood pressure.
Prof Moffitt said: “These adult outcomes were predictable across the entire spectrum of self-control scores, from low to high.”
However the researchers said the good news was that self control could be taught – especially if the youngsters were caught early enough.
Participants who found a way to improve their self-control as they grew up fared better in adulthood than their childhood scores would have predicted.
Prof Caspi said: “This shows self-control is important by itself, apart from all other factors that siblings share, such as their parents and home life.”
Professor Alexis Piquero, at Florida State University who was not involved in the research, said: “The good news is that self-control can change. People can change.”
Prof Piquero, who studies the developmental roots of criminal behaviour, said there are many time-tested approaches that give parents and teachers the tools to teach self-control.
The successful programs practice decision-making, role-playing and learning the consequences of actions.
He said identifying low self-control as early as possible and doing prevention and intervention is so much cheaper than dealing with the fallout – prisons, drug programmes and personal economic failures.
“If you are just making a dollars-and-cents decision, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.
The United States of Shame
Jeff Wysaski of Pleated Jeans wrote “Whether it’s a fat population, high rate of STDs or excessive tax rate, it turns out that every state ranks dead last in at least one unsavory category.” So he compiled a most unusual “worst of” list, featuring your favorite home state (Oh, poor, poor North Dakotans!)
Hailing from California, the state with the worst *cough* air pollution, we give you The United States of Shame.
Most Students in U.S. Are Not Proficient in Science
One national “report card” on test scores, released Tuesday morning, paints a dismal picture of how well the country’s students have mastered science. Just 34 percent of fourth-graders, 30 percent of eighth-graders, and 21 percent of 12th-graders are performing at or above “proficient” in the most recent snapshot from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which gives science scores from 2009.
A very small number – just 1 or 2 percent at each grade level – scored at the “advanced” level, and relatively large numbers of students didn’t even meet the most basic level.
“The results released today show that our nation’s students aren’t learning at a rate that will maintain America’s role as an international leader in the sciences,” said Arne Duncan, the US secretary of Education, in a statement. “When only 1 or 2 percent of children score at the advanced levels on NAEP, the next generation will not be ready to be world-class inventors, doctors, and engineers.”
The NAEP science test was revised considerably since the last time students were tested, and the results can’t be compared with previous years. The new framework takes into account scientific advances, science educators say, and does a better job of measuring higher-level scientific thinking. Many questions are open-ended and ask students to design or evaluate experiments, for instance.
“The good news is that this is a really great test,” says Alan Friedman, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and a former director of the New York Hall of Science. But Dr. Friedman says he is especially concerned by the results at the two extremes: the tiny number of students who score at the advanced level and the large number scoring below basic. In fourth grade, 28 percent of students failed to meet the basic level. In eighth grade, the number rose to 37 percent, and at 12th grade, a whopping 47 percent of students didn’t meet the basic score.
“That is distressing,” Friedman says. “These challenges are very serious for all of us who are into science education and who want our kids to be prepared for living a full life.”
The NAEP results also showed big achievement gaps between races, income levels, public- and private-school students, and gender.
In fourth grade, for example, there was a 36-point achievement gap (on a 300-point scale) between blacks and whites, as well as a 32-point gap between Hispanic and white students. Boys performed two points better than girls, and private-school students outperformed public-school students by 14 points. Strong correlations were evident between better scores and students whose parents had more education.
“The overall performance is bleak, and the gaps are devastating,” says Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs at Education Trust, a nonprofit that focuses on narrowing the achievement gap. “Tonight the president is going to talk about the need for innovation to spur us out of these economic doldrums, and it looks like we haven’t given our kids the skills to do that. Science has always been the springboard of American innovation,… and it looks like we’re losing that.”
Also striking are the state-level results – available at the two lower grade levels for all but four states and the District of Columbia. Virtually across the board, the only states that performed better than the national average were located in the northern half of the country, and the states that performed worse than the national average were located in the southern half. A smattering of states all over had scores that were not significantly different from the rest of the nation.
At the fourth-grade level, the top-scoring states were New Hampshire, North Dakota, Virginia, and Kentucky, while Mississippi and California posted the lowest average scores. In Mississippi, 46 percent of fourth-graders failed to score at the basic level.
Those administering the NAEP project are always careful to shy away from drawing conclusions about the cause of achievement. But Friedman says he worries that the low scores may be partly due to an unintended consequence of No Child Left Behind, which led schools to focus almost exclusively on math and reading. He noted correlations between students who score better and factors such as whether their science classes regularly do hands-on activities or whether older students participate in science activities outside school.
He and others discount the idea that science is important only to a small handful of students who go on to a career in science or engineering.
“We want to enable every child to have the problem-solving, thinking, and communicating skills in the sciences so that they can be productive in whatever they choose to do for their field of work,” says Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of Science magazine and former president of the National Academy of Sciences.
In particular, Dr. Alberts says, it’s important that educators and students stop defining science as simply memorizing words that scientists use. Instead, the focus should be on higher-level thinking and scientific inquiry: “It’s learning how to do science and think like a scientist,” Alberts says.
The NAEP results should underscore how important it is to get qualified science teachers in the classroom, says Ms. Wilkins of Education Trust. “We know that at high-poverty, high-minority schools, kids are much more likely to be taking classes like science and math from out-of-field teachers,” she says.
Central Heating is Making You Fat
Sitting in your cosy home stops you from burning calories. It already adds unwanted pounds to your winter fuel bills.
And having the heating on high could also pile extra pounds on your weight, scientists believe.
Experts say many of us now keep our homes so cosy that we no longer have to burn as many calories to naturally warm up our bodies.
Modern centrally heated homes with efficient double glazing are helping to send obesity rates soaring, a study claims.
Scientists from University College London say it is an increasing problem across the developed world where average indoor temperatures are constantly rising.
And its impact on weight is made worse by the extra time we now spend indoors, whether working from home or shopping online.
Even when we do venture out, it is often via heated cars or other transport to offices and workplaces where the temperature is carefully controlled by air conditioning units.
The research, in the journal Obesity Reviews, said there was a direct link between ‘reduced exposure to seasonal cold and increases in obesity in the UK and U.S.’.
If the body is already warm it does not need to convert a ‘brown’ fat known as adipose tissue into energy to generate heat, the study said. Brown fat was previously thought to be present only in infants, playing a vital role in keeping them warm, but recent research found it also in adults.
This latest study suggested that prolonged exposure to comfortable warm temperatures may permanently reduce the body’s ability to burn this brown fat.
Lead author Fiona Johnson said: ‘Increased time spent indoors, widespread access to central heating and air conditioning, and increased expectations of thermal comfort all contribute to restricting the range of temperatures we experience in daily life.
‘This reduces the time our bodies spend under mild thermal stress – meaning we’re burning less energy.
‘This could have an impact on energy balance and ultimately have an impact on body weight and obesity.’
She called for health strategies to look at heating just as they currently look at other environmental factors such as diet and exercise.
Study co-author Marcella Ucci said: ‘The findings suggest that lower winter temperatures in buildings might contribute to tackling obesity as well as reducing carbon emissions.’
From
Sundown Lounge No. 242
Geeknotes:
Black Comix Day
Podcast Novel 49K Hits
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The 2nd Saturday in February (FEBRUARY 12th) is BLACK COMIC BOOK DAY as declared by Turtel ONLI (Father of "The Black Age" concept/movement) and Jerry Craft (world renown cartoonist of MOMA's BOYZ)!
Celebrate with us in Atlanta, GA and Chicago,IL. See www.blackageofcomics for more on the Chi-town events!
BARNES & NOBLE signing for BLACK COMIX in ATLANTA, GA! BLACK COMIX is THE who's who of The Black Age! DON'T MISS THIS CHANCE TO GET YOUR SIGNED COPY! THE BOOKS WILL SELL OUT! This is our second signing at the Camp Creek Barnes & Noble. We sold out before...and we WILL do it AGAIN! SO, ARRIVE EARLY! See you all in February!
The Darkness Launch Party!
Time: January 21, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm
Location: This event will be held at two venues simultaneously! 6pm PST/9pm EST Website or Map
*Live On-Air & Real Time Chat:
Call in live to www.blogtalkradio.com/sol-searching and or post questions and comments on Crystal’s Facebook Fan Page for live on-air & real-time answers, responses, & comments.
*Online Scavenger Hunt & Trivia Quizzes:
Race against other guest to find the clues hidden within the contents of Crystal’s blog or fan page comments & test your knowledge of the author for a chance to win 1 of 5 autographed c...opies of The Darkness!
One guest will win a grand prize of an autographed Hardback copy of The Darkness (not sold in stores), a "The Darkness" promotional tee shirt, a 2011 Artificial Light calendar, along other with prizes!
*Betcha Didn’t Know:
Listen to & read comments from Crystal’s family & friends as they mortify her by telling embarrassing facts & stories.
*Special Guest’s:
Ink slinger of Horror, Jonathon Moon
Fantasy Author, Wendy Raven McNair
Graphic Artist, Charles Apellaniz
Mixed media artist and cover designer for The Darkness Yvette Montoya
Executive Producer for Necropolis Studio Productions, Dave Frizzell
Film Maker & Programming Director, Crypticon Seattle, Eric Morgret
Senior Editor/Submissions Manager, NorGus Press Matt Nord
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Since I took this pic, the number is at 49,300...
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Superstreet Traffic Design Promises Faster Travel Times
by Eliminating Left Turns
No left turn. That is the simple concept behind the Superstreet traffic design which promises significantly faster travel times, plus a drastic reduction in auto-collisions and injuries. These superstreets are ground level streets – not raised freeways or highways – that allow for greater volume of thru-traffic by re-routing traffic from side streets that would normally be trying to get across the main road. While the idea has been around in urban transport modeling textbooks for over 20 years, researchers from the North Carolina State University have been the first to test the concept in the real world and the results are promising.
The central concept to the superstreet design is a thoroughfare, a stream of constantly moving traffic that follows a main arterial road. Drivers wanting to cross the thoroughfare or to turn left are first required to make a right turn, joining the main stream of traffic. A little way down the superstreet they then make a U-turn after which they can continue on along the thoroughfare if they had been trying to turn left or they can turn right into the side street if this was their planned route. While this may seem time-consuming, the study shows that it actually results in a significant time savings since drivers are not stuck waiting to make left-hand turns or for traffic from cross-streets to go across the thoroughfare.
“The study shows a 20 percent overall reduction in travel time compared to similar intersections that use conventional traffic designs,” Dr Joe Hummer, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State and one of the researchers who conducted the study said. “We also found that superstreet intersections experience an average of 46 percent fewer reported automobile collisions – and 63 percent fewer collisions that result in personal injury.”
The researchers assessed travel time at superstreet intersections as the amount of time it takes a vehicle to pass through an intersection from the moment it reaches the intersection – whether traveling left, right or straight ahead. The travel-time data were collected from three superstreets located in eastern and central North Carolina, all of which have traffic signals. The superstreet collision data were collected from 13 superstreets located across North Carolina, none of which have traffic signals.
A Paper on the travel time research will be presented on January 24 at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. The Paper is co-authored by Hummer, former NC State graduate students Rebecca Haley and Sarah Ott, and three researchers from NC State’s Institute for Transportation Research and Education: Robert Foyle, associate director; Christopher Cunningham, senior research associate; and Bastian Schroeder, research associate. The collision research was part of an overarching report of the study submitted to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) last month, and is the subject of a forthcoming paper. The study was funded by NCDOT.
Smoking Causes Genetic Damage to the Body in Minutes Rather Than Years
In a report – described as ‘a stark warning’ to those tempted to start smoking – scientists found that cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco form rapidly after the first inhalation from a cigarette.
One in five adults smoke in England and the habit causes more than 80,000 deaths a year. Half of long-term smokers will die prematurely due to cigarettes.
Dr Stephen Hecht from the University of Minnesota led a team that studied the level of harmful substances known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in 12 smokers.
Scientists have long believed that PAHs are one of the main causes of lung cancer, but until now it was not known how the chemicals caused DNA damage in humans.
Dr Hecht and colleagues added a labelled PAH, phenanthrene, to cigarettes and tracked its fate in 12 volunteers who smoked the cigarettes.
They found that phenanthrene quickly forms a toxic substance in the blood known to trash DNA, causing mutations that can cause cancer.
The smokers developed maximum levels of the substance in a time frame that surprised even the researchers: just 15 to 30 minutes after the volunteers finished smoking.
The researchers said the effect is so fast that it’s equivalent to injecting the substance directly into the bloodstream.
Dr Hecht, an internationally recognized expert on cancer-causing substances found in cigarette smoke and smokeless tobacco, said: ‘This study is unique. It is the first to investigate human metabolism of a PAH specifically delivered by inhalation in cigarette smoke, without interference by other sources of exposure such as air pollution or the diet.
‘The results reported here should serve as a stark warning to those who are considering starting to smoke cigarettes.’
The findings were published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, one of 38 peer-reviewed scientific journals published by the American Chemical Society.
Who’s got two thumbs and needs glasses to see 3D? Not this guy! Francois Vogel’s figured out a way to remove those pesky spectacles from the equation, and he’s ready to revolutionize the stereoscopic industry forever...
Sure, you’ll need a monitor with a 120Hz refresh rate, but that’s a prerequisite these days anyhow, and the rest is sweet, sticky gravy dished directly to your eyeballs. Get a sneak peek at the game-changing tech in the video above, and keep an eye out for unicorns (we’re sure they’re around here somewhere). You’ll never look at 3D the same way again, we promise.
Driving Three Hours at Night as Bad as Driving Drunk
Just three hours behind the wheel at night can make motorists drive as badly as if they were drunk, according to scientists. Driver tiredness after a few hours has the same effect as being over the drink-driving limit, a study has revealed.
Even two hours of motorway driving in the dark can affect performance so severely it is the same as having a couple of drinks.
Now experts who carried out the research want governments to impose a maximum two-hour limit on continuous night-time driving in a bid to curb accidents and death rates.
It is estimated that one-fifth of all traffic accidents are due to sleepiness behind the wheel.
One in three motorists admits to nodding off while driving at night.
A study last year by experts at Cardiff University called for newly-qualified drivers to be banned from the roads at night, a move that could save 200 lives a year in Britain and result in 1,700 fewer serious injuries.
Similar schemes already exist in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S.
Unlike alcohol, police have no way of measuring whether a driver is affected by fatigue.
To assess the extent to which tiredness hinders driving performance, researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands recruited 14 healthy young men aged 21 to 25.
Under supervision, each one drove for two, four and eight hours at a time through the night. They had to maintain a constant 80mph on the motorway and remain in the centre of their traffic lane.
Researchers used video recordings to monitor the safety of their driving. After the experiment, they compared motorists’ performances with what’s already known about the effect alcohol can have on driver safety.
The results, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, showed that after just two hours behind the wheel, the drivers were already making the same mistakes they would if they had 0.05 per cent blood alcohol content – more than half the UK legal drink drive limit of 80milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood.
At three hours, their performance corresponded to 0.08 cent blood alcohol content – the national limit and by four-and-a-half hours it was equivalent to 0.10 per cent.
In a report on their findings, the researchers said: ‘Our data show that drivers should take sleepiness behind the wheel seriously. It is one of the primary causes of accidents on motorways.
‘Yet drivers themselves are sometimes unaware of sleepiness, reduced alertness and corresponding impaired driving.
‘Measures such as playing loud music or opening the window are of limited use. A maximum continuous night-time driving duration of two hours should be recommended.’
From
Sundown Lounge No. 241
Geeknotes:
Dallas Songwriters Contest
Black Author Interviews
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From Music Opportunities:
DALLAS SONGWRITERS 2011 SONG CONTEST KICKS OFF
Amateur songwriters from around the world can compete in the 2011 Annual Song Contest hosted by the Dallas Songwriters Association (DSA). Eight categories will be judged by music industry pro's and will offer approx. $5,000 in prizes to the top winners. Entries must be post-marked by Mar. 31st. Song categories: Christian/inspirational; country, americana/folk/bluegrass; pop/rock/r&b/alternative; love songs/easy listening; children's/novelty; singer-songwriter; and instrumental. Enter by visiting dallassongwriters.org
or by mailing in an entry form to DSA, 2011 Song Contest, Sammons Center for the Arts, 3630 Harry Hines Blvd. #20, Dallas, TX 75219. Entry fee is $20/song.
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From
Authors On The Rise promotes authors and their books by featuring them on our blog. To be interviewed on AOTR blog, or to have your book considered for a professional review, email: authorsontheriseblog@yahoo.com for more information. Follow us on Twitter
Latest Interviews:
Valjeanne Jeffers, author of the SciFi "Immortal" trilogy.
Denise Coleman, author of "Drama with a Capital D"
Liane Spicer, author of "Café au Lait" a multicultural romance.
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Study Links Meditation to Telomerase, An Anti-Age Enzyme
It’s always awesome when meditation is given a nod by science and shed of its commonly regarded view as a new-agey, inaccessible practice. In 2009 and 2010, we shared meditation’s practical application to common health ailments as studied by researchers: heart disease and depression.
I’m not sure how I missed this third incredible find from TIME that was issued at the tail end of last year. Could we meditators also have a leg up in the longevity factor?
According to researchers at the University of California-Davis, quite possibly…
They compared a group of 30 meditation retreat goers at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado to a control group, those who didn’t attend the retreat but who were on the wait list. The meditators, who spent six hours per day for three months meditating on their breath and loving-kindness, were found to contain about 30% more activity of an enzyme called telomerase than the wait listers.
So What’s Telomerase?
TIME’s writer Maia Szalavitz makes its biology easy to understand explaining the enzyme telomerase as,
…Responsible for repairing telomeres, the structures located on the ends chromosomes, which, like the plastic aglets at the tips of shoelaces, prevent the chromosome from unraveling. Each time a cell reproduces, its telomeres become shorter and less effective at protecting the chromosome — this, researchers believe, is a cause of aging. As the chromosome becomes more and more vulnerable, cell copying becomes sloppier and eventually stops when the telomeres disintegrate completely. Telomerase can mitigate — and possibly stop — cell aging.
Is it mediation that actually increases telomerase activity? They’re not entirely certain. But when the study participants were spending six hours of the day engaging in what many find a calming, stress-reductive practice, the case for it is mighty strong. That, or there was something in the retreat center’s water, diet, etc. that could have been playing a part.
Either way, the study has produced hopeful health implications and serves as a great reminder that the “mind really could contain all possibilities,” as per the famous Buddhist quote. Dare I say possibly as much as that little prescription pill mucking up our water–if not more? Bring on more meditation research, 2011!
E. Coli Bacteria Could Become Our Next Computer Hard Drives
Researchers have figured out that data can be stored in bacteria, and that a single gram of bacteria can store more information than 450 2-terabyte hard drives! This storing and encrypting information in living organisms is called biostorage, and students at Hong Kong’s Chinese University are using E. coli to test the possibilities of how we store information in the future.
You could one day keep a box of E. coli bacteria in your fridge, but rather than storing just the potential for food poisoning, you’ll be storing piles of information.
Discovery News reports [http://news.discovery.com/tech/bacteria-work-as-hard-drives-110110.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1] that the concept started several years ago.
“In 2007, a team at Japan’s Keio University said they had successfully encoded the equation that represents Einstein’s theory of relativity, E=MC², in the DNA of a common soil bacterium. They pointed out that because bacteria constantly reproduce, a group of the single-celled organisms could store a piece of information for thousands of years.”
Now, research has progressed, and the Hong Kong researchers have figured out how to compress data, store it in chunks in several organisms, and map the DNA so the information can be easily found again, like a filing system. They’re calling it biocryptography.
According to the researchers, this could mean a revolution in how we store text, images, music, and even video. And what’s more, the information can’t be hacked:
“All kinds of computers are vulnerable to electrical failures or data theft. But bacteria are immune from cyber attacks. You can safeguard the information,” Professor Chan Ting Fung told AFP.
The researchers are now looking into what types of bacteria are good to use — there are some that can even survive nuclear radiation, which is important to know for ensuring information survives even the worst scenarios — as well as how to contain the bacteria and access the information after encryption. We’re many years from seeing bacteria take over for hard drives, but the foundations are being formed.
The potential of bacteria in daily use is being explored beyond just how to control it for health reasons. Researchers have created a self-destructing bacteria that can heal cracks in concrete. It can only grow when in contact with concrete, so it grows rapidly to fill the crack, but stops when the crack is filled.
Bacteria can not only heal city infrastructure, but also help plan it. Researchers have watched the way bacteria — specifically slime mold — finds its way from one food source to another. It moves in much the same ways as our road systems between major cities. Watching how slime mold moves across a petri dish could help us plan roadways and other transit maps.
Mostly researchers study how to kill off or control bacteria, but it’s clear that there is so much potential to what these microorganisms can help us accomplish.
Designed by students at the University of New South Wales, the Sunswift IVy, solar-powered vehicle has claimed the Guinness World Record for the world’s fastest solar-powered vehicle by hitting a top speed of 88.738kph. The record-breaking attempt took place at the HMAS Albatross navy base airstrip in Nowra, Australia and shattered the previous record of 78kph that was set by the GM Sunraycer in 1987.
The Sunswift IVy is a three-wheeled vehicle with a monocoque carbon fiber body. The vehicle features a brushless CSIRO 3 phase DC 1800W electric motor, which is powered by a solar array producing 1200W. Usually, the solar array is used to power a lithium-ion polymer battery pack, which was removed for the run as the milestone demanded a car that is powered exclusively by silicon solar cells.
Earbuds Beat Depression by Shining Lights Into Your Brain
The concept for the Valkee sounds like the worst kind of snake-oil: It’s a little box that combats the dark blues of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with bright lights. Nothing new there, except it shines the lights into your head through your ears.
Winter depression, in the form of SAD, has been treated with bright lights since forever. Researchers at the University of Oulu, Finland, say it’s not the eyes that need the light, it’s the brain. The ear canal is a convenient hole in the head through which to shine light, so the Valkee uses a pair of earbuds to light up the inside of your head, and stimulate photo-sensitive parts of the gray matter.
That’s the theory at least. Tests run at the University of Oulu confirm its efficacy, offering relief to nine out of 10 subjects with a daily 8- to 12-minute dose for four weeks. And not everyone is as skeptical as me. Valkee has received angel investment from such smart people as Esther Dyson and ex-Nokia boss Anssi Vanjoki.
Proper clinical trials are running now, which further inspires confidence. And for those in northern climes, where the winter months can bring nights that last weeks not hours, this 185-euro light box could prove to be a life saver. Available now.
