‘These days, data get stored on disks, computer chips, hard drives and good old-fashioned paper.
Scientists in Japan see something far smaller but more durable – bacteria.
The four characters – T, C, A and G – that represent the genetic coding in DNA work much like digital data.
Character combinations can stand for specific letters and symbols – so codes in genomes can be translated, or read, to produce music, text, video and other content.
While ink may fade and computers may crash, bacterial information lasts as long as a species stays alive – possibly a mind-boggling million years – according to Professor Masaru Tomita, who heads the team of researchers at Keio University.’
‘Tony Blair has reiterated his backing for nuclear power as the government prepares to unveil its energy strategy.
Plans to build more nuclear power stations are expected to be among the proposals in the Energy White Paper.
An expansion of energy efficiency and renewable sources such as tide and wind power will also be detailed.
The PM says nuclear power can “underpin the security of our energy supply” but opponents say it is dangerous and will reduce investment in renewable sources.’
‘This is kinda interesting too watch. A group of demonstrators are protesting against illegal immigration. A mexican decides to grab his camera and march with them for fun.’
(7.5meg Windows media)
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‘According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. [..]
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content-unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau-and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. “Therefore,” says Barsoum, “it’s very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block.”‘
‘The first part of this Foundry Note describes a technique for using a domestic microwave oven to melt and cast, to accurate shape, small quantities (up to a quarter of a kilo) of bronze, silver, white metal or iron. The technique has been used to cast pieces from ceramic shell moulds up to about 18cm high, and is an accessible alternative to other small-scale melting set-ups, for example the flask casting of jewellery.
The second part of the note describes thoughts and tests which led to the procedure. It offers guidance and some warnings, to anyone making investigations into metal heating by microwave.’
The video camera’s frame rate syncs up with the rotor speed, so it looks like the blades are not spinning at all.
(2.7meg Windows media)
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‘Just in case you didn’t already piece it together, many (if not all) of the new HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles set for release on May 22nd will feature the latest revisions to AACS. Right, the update hinted at by those forced user updates to the WinDVD and PowerDVD software. Yeah, well no worries… it’s cracked. That’s right, a week before the disks have even hit the shops, the kids over at Slysoft have already released AnyDVD HD 6.1.5.1 (beta) which kicks AACS MKB v3 swiftly to the curb. Thus you can continue to rip all your newly purchased HD DVD and BD flicks for playback any damn way you like.’
‘South Korea’s LG Philips LCD has developed the world’s first A4-sized colour electronic-paper – a paper-thin and bendable viewing panel.
The e-paper – which measures 35.9cm across its diagonal and is just 300 micrometres (0.3 millimetres) thin – can display up to 4096 colours, the world’s second largest liquid crystal display maker said in a statement.
It is designed to be energy-efficient, only using power when the image changes on the display, it said.’
‘He has flippers instead of feet — and certainly no sneakers or hiking boots. But that didn’t stop a sea lion from joining schoolchildren on a walk-a-thon.
The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School next to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.
“He did a whole lap,” said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.’
‘Two months ago at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, surgeons removed a transplanted heart from a patient who had died and re-transplanted it in another recipient.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time this has been done with a transplanted heart,” Dr. Lawrence S. C. Czer, medical director of the center’s heart transplant program, told Reuters. “Even with other organs, repeat transplantation is very rare.”
The second patient was a 45-year-old man with noncompaction syndrome, a rare cardiac condition in which the heart assumes a sponge-like appearance. The disease is progressive, and the man’s heart became more and more disabled despite the best medical therapy.’
‘A Mexican physician helped drug dealers avoid detection by replacing their fingerprints with skin from the bottom of their feet, a federal prosecutor said Friday.
The doctor, Jose L. Covarrubias, was arrested Wednesday in Arizona as he attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border a few hours after a grand jury in Harrisburg indicted him in connection with a marijuana dealing ring.
The indictment says Covarrubias, 49, of Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico, surgically removed the fingerprints of co-defendant Marc George, 42, of Jamaica.
“We heard those stories, but we didn’t believe them when we heard them during the course of the investigation,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Behe in Harrisburg. “We caught Marc George and we all became believers.”’
‘Does your milk taste like wet cardboard? Blame the bright lights in your market’s dairy section.
“Milk stored within a few inches of fluorescent light in translucent containers usually has a detectable oxidized flavor within two to four hours and a distinct off-flavor within 12 hours,” said Robert Marshall, University of Missouri food science professor.
Fluorescent lights in dairy cases create an oxidized off-flavor in milk that some experts call ‘burnt.’ The closer the milk container is to the light, and the longer it stays there, the greater the chance of an off-flavor, Marshall said in a statement.’
‘Microsoft’s Windows Update has a component called Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that downloads updates while you’re busy doing other things with your computer. If you get disconnected, the update will pick up where it left off when you get back on the network.
Sounds great, right? Well, generally it is. But since BITS is part of your operating system, your firewall doesn’t really check to see what it’s downloading. And while there is pretty much no risk of automatically downloading a virus or trojan through Windows Update under normal circumstances, hackers are starting to use BITS to download code to computers that have already been affected.’
‘Cult film production company Hammer Horror is set to be revived after being sold off to a consortium led by Dutch media billionaire Jon de Mol, the creator of Big Brother.
No official price was given for the deal. But sources at Hammer, which created gothic horrors in the 1950s and 1960s such as Dracula, the Curse of Frankenstein and The Mummy, said Cryte Investments, in which Mr de Mol is a major shareholder, got it for a “few million” pounds. The new owners plan to invest at least £25m initially to resurrect the popular British films – and plans are in the pipeline with a UK broadcaster to launch a Hammer Horror TV series.
Cryte also hopes to restart Hammer’s production division and create new films for the first time in more than 30 years.’
I used to love watching Hammer movies.
‘If it seems Canadians weigh less than their American neighbours, they do – but not for the reasons you might think. A large swath of Canada actually boasts lower gravity than its surroundings.
Researchers have puzzled for years over whether this was due to the crust there rebounding slowly after the end of the last ice age or a deeper issue involving convection in the Earth’s mantle – or some combination of the two.
Now, ultra-precise measurements taken over four years by a pair of satellites known as GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) reveal that each effect is equally responsible for Canada’s low gravity. The work could shed light on how continents form and evolve over time.’
‘Groups of elderly Australians are reportedly setting up backyard laboratories to manufacture an illegal euthanasia drug so they can kill themselves when they have had enough of life.
One group has already succeeded in producing the drug nembutal, which is used by vets to put down animals, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Monday night.
At least four other backyard factories were planned for major cities across the country, with a total of some 800 elderly people prepared to become involved in producing the drug.
Dozens of older Australians were also engaged in illegally importing nembutal from the Mexican border town of Tijuana, close to the US city of San Diego, according to the report.’
‘A college degree is fast becoming a necessity for anyone looking to maintain a comfortable middle-class living. Unfortunately for many college students, just paying for this degree is a struggle. The cost of tuition is rising, and two-thirds of all college graduates leave college with debt averaging close to $20,000 (Herbert). In some cases this figure is much higher, and in countless others students can’t even afford to finish college in the first place. According to Tamara Draut, the director of the Economic Opportunity Program for public policy group Demos, the problem is “rooted in the reality that our government no longer really helps people pay for college” (qtd in Herbert). If college students truly want to reap the benefits of their education, they need another source of assistance in paying for college. [..]
This is why I believe students should have the opportunity to sell their organs to the college they are attending in exchange for cash or financial credit.’
This is a Rube Goldberg device that makes use of lots of fire and explosions. I like it. :)
(15.5meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Spreading honey on a diabetic ulcer could prevent the need to amputate an infected foot, researchers say.
A doctor at the University of Wisconsin who helped about half a dozen of her diabetic patients avoid amputation has launched a controlled trial to promote the widespread use of honey therapy.
The therapy involves squeezing a thick layer of honey onto the wound after dead skin and bacteria have been removed.
The honey kills bacteria because it is acidic and avoids the complication of bacterial resistance found with standard antibiotics, Jennifer Eddy, a professor at the University’s School of Medicine and Public Health, told AFP.
“This is a tremendously important issue for world health,” Eddy said.’
‘Fun at work?
A helter skelter is an amusement park ride with a slide built in a spiral around a high tower. Users climb the tower and usually slide down on a mat. It is thus similar to a waterless hydroslide…’
‘Roll up, roll up and prepare to be dazzled – unless you’re a car-hating arachnophobe. It’s the Spidercar.
Costing $15,000 and twice that amount in work hours, this novel creation took three months to design and six months to build.
Yes, there are some bugs – it’s not the smoothest of rides at the moment and it can only do a top speed of about 5mph.’
see it here »
‘A British man with Autism flies over Rome once in a helicopter and is able to recreate a huge, near-perfect panorama of the city. It takes him three days to complete his drawing.’
(18.1meg Windows media)
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All you need is an empty box of matches and fingers.
(7.6meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘A 13-year-old boy who lives with his gran has been exposed as one of Britain’s biggest internet conmen.
The boy earned more than £250,000 ($607,000) by posing as the boss of several multinational companies selling vacuum cleaners, stationery and office supplies.
Many goods weren’t sent, but he used the cash to revel in a luxury lifestyle way beyond his years: he wore designer suits, drank vintage champagne and travelled by chauffeur-driven limousine.
He even employed a personal bodyguard, flew abroad on business trips and claimed he was going to buy a private jet.’
‘[..] That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “After one hour,” he says, “we couldn’t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we’d done something wrong.” In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.
But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that “astounding” discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.’
‘When AACS was revealed as the encryption format of choice for HD DVD and Blu-ray, bets were placed on how long it would take for it to be cracked. Since the first HD DVD and Blu-ray discs began shipping, hackers have been hard at work figuring out how to break the encryption; DVD Jon even registered DeAACS.com. We’ve covered both crackers’ efforts and the attempts by the AACS Licensing Authority to keep those cracks from seeping into the public consciousness. Yesterday, all of that came to a head.’
‘What they found surprised them — corkscrew-shaped oviducts, with plenty of potential dead-ends.
“Interestingly, the male phallus is also a spiral, but it twists in the opposite, counterclockwise, direction,” said Yale ornithologist Richard Prum in a statement.
“So, the twists in the oviduct appear designed to exclude the opposing twists of the male phallus. It’s an exquisite anti-lock-and-key system.”
Brennan believes females evolved convoluted oviducts to foil the male rapists.
“You can envision an evolutionary scenario that, as the male phallus increases in size, the female creates more barriers. You get this evolutionary arms race,” Brennan said.’
‘US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer.
The scientists ran a “cortical simulator” that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer.
In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains.
Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain.’
‘A stream of water is split into two streams and falls through two bottomless cans into two buckets. The falling water creates opposite electrical charges in the buckets, and high voltage arcs jump between them periodically.’
Generating 10-20kV potentials with a dripping pipe and some buckets. Kinda cool. :)
(14.4meg Flash video)
see it here »
