No one will stop you from puttering around the supermarket in sweat pants and mangy hair, but the produce selection faces far more stringent standards. Throughout Europe, crooked cucumbers, forked carrots, and bananas with one too many blemishes have been banned from the markets for the past two decades. But a new decision by the European Union will lift appearance-based restrictions for 26 types of fruits and vegetables, including asparagus, cherries, and onions, allowing all shapes and sizes to vie for a place in your shopping cart. Ten other types of produce, including apples, peaches, and tomatoes, will enjoy relaxed standards, but misshapen individuals will still need to be labeled as such.
Proponents of irregular produce cited the recent economic downturn and the wastefulness of throwing away produce just because they are the “wrong” shape. However, political support for the new standards was far from unanimous, with 16 out of the EU’s 27 nations voting against the changes. The new rules will take effect next July. Produce not included in the list, like bananas, will still have to pass strict beauty standards.
Authorities were eager to offer their praise of the deregulation:
(more…)
Scientists have managed to create quite possibly the most annoying robot ever. “Jules,” a disembodied robot head with a statistically perfect androgynous face, can instantly mimic the facial expressions of humans it sees through its video camera eyes. You smile, Jules smiles, you stare in surprise, Jules stares back in surprise, you scrunch up your nose in disgust, Jules…you get the idea.
Researchers at Hanson Robotics engineered Jules’s face with 34 internal motors masked by a skin-like rubber known as Frubber. Jules is programmed to understand ten different human emotions, including happiness, sadness, and concern, and to mirror these emotions with its intricate set of motor “muscles.” Jules also speaks in a male voice with a British accent, and can simulate verbal interactions complete with eye contact.
(more…)
What’s more germy than a public toilet? It’s not a subway car handrail. It’s the shopping carts in grocery stores, according to a study last year that measured saliva, bacteria, and fecal matter on shopping cart handles. Both store owners and customers have sought ways to combat the filthy carts, from disinfectant wipes to cart liners to snap-on handles, with limited success. The latest clean-cart idea looks like a mini-car wash and sprays the entire cart with a mist of peroxide solution. PureCart Systems says their machines kill 99 percent of germs on carts.
More than 20 supermarkets across the country have installed PureCart machines, which cost about $8,000 a year. The machines appear to be popular with shoppers, especially those with young children. And with good reason: Among babies, contact with raw meat packaging is the second leading cause of Salmonella infection. Only reptile exposure is more dangerous. “[Kids] don’t necessarily have the best sanitary habits,” microbiologist Chuck Gerba said. “And you’re putting your broccoli right where the kid’s butt was.”
(more…)
Considering the rate at which we’re going through traditional antibiotics, one day doctors may have to turn to muskrat poop to treat infections. That’s right, the feces of muskrats, a common squirrel-sized swamp-dwelling rodent, contains a chemical that kills Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus (that causes staph infections), and other bacteria, according to South Korean researchers. The research team has filed a patent for a method of preparing the antibiotic, which involves using organic solvents to extract the chemical from dried muskrat excrement.
But, as they say in infomercials, that’s not all! The researchers claim that the same chemical also kills plant pathogens and termites. They envision a whole line of muskrat poop products, including antibiotics, fertilizers, and pesticides. Muskrat poop would be a fitting addition to next-generation antibiotics that already include alligator blood and frog skin.
(more…)
Do you ever find yourself in Starbucks thinking, “How strong is the Wi-Fi connection here?” Well, if you had this T-shirt, you would know.
ThinkGeek is now offering a wearable option for detecting Wi-Fi signals. When the signal is strong, the glowing bars on the front of the shirt light up all the way. When the signal is weak, fewer bars illuminate. The shirt has several pockets, one to carry a Wi-Fi receiver, and another for batteries. When a wireless signal is detected, it’s sent up through a cable connected to the display, so the LED lights in the shirt give off their own signal.
And best of all, it’s machine washable! Of course, you might want to unplug the battery pack and peel off the animated display on the front before you put it in the washing machine.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Airlines, Desperate to Lower Fuel Costs, Turn to GPS
DISCOVER: Emerging Technology: Wi-Fi Networking
Image: ThinkGeek
In a new class action lawsuit, dozens of women are claiming that Victoria’s Secret bras have given them painful, unsightly rashes. One of the plaintiffs, Roberta Ritter of Ohio, says the company’s “Angels Secret Embrace” and “Very Sexy Extreme Me Push-Up” bras gave her persistent itchy rashes that caused severe discomfort. When Ritter’s lawyers purchased the same bra types and sent them to a lab, she claims, they tested positive for formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde is considered a probable human carcinogen by the EPA and is also a known allergen. Though people often associate the chemical with embalmed specimens in jars, it is actually found in many everyday products.
“Formaldehyde is the big thing these days,” says dermatologist Susan Tillman Elliott, consulting physician to the Center for Laser Surgery in Washington D.C. “It’s been known for a zillion years that it’s the major component of most fabric finishers. It’s a major contact allergen.” Formaldehyde is often used in fabrics for permanent press, anti-cling, anti-static, anti-wrinkle, and waterproof finishes. It’s also found in cosmetics, medications, household cleaners, paints, and cigarette smoke.
(more…)
While doctors may gripe about the increasing number of patients that arrive in their offices with WebMD printouts and search-engine-assisted self diagnoses, Google sees it as opportunity. Today, Google.org (the philanthropic arm of the Google monster) unveiled Google Flu Trends, a web tool that will track flu outbreaks based on user-generated search terms.
Flu Trends works because the Google search box is so often the first place people turn at the first sign of a sniffle. The company says Flu Trends could alert users to flu activity in their area up to two weeks ahead of traditional systems like emergency room reports.
The New York Times reports:
To develop the service, Google’s engineers devised a basket of keywords and phrases related to the flu, including thermometer, flu symptoms, muscle aches, chest congestion and many others. Google then dug into its database, extracted five years of data on those queries and mapped the data onto the C.D.C.’s reports of “influenza-like illness,” which the agency compiles based on data from labs, health care providers, death certificates and other sources. Google found an almost perfect correlation between its data and the C.D.C. reports.
(more…)
Who knew sharper images and clearer sound would be good for our feathered friends? Come January 15, Hawaii will be the first state in the U.S. to switch over to digital TV, a month before the mandatory nationwide conversion on February 17. But the interesting part about the switch isn’t so much when but why: Federal wildlife officials suggested tearing down the old analog transmission towers earlier to avoid interference with the nesting season of a bird, the endangered Hawaiian petrel.
Petrels, also known as the ’Ua’u, are only found in Hawaii, and more than 1,000 of them nest on the slopes of Maui’s Haleakala volcano, where the analog towers are currently located. The nocturnal species, which reportedly has a chirp that sounds like a yapping puppy, is not adapting well to urban sprawl: The birds are disoriented by city lights and sometimes get caught on wires. Officials think rebuilding the towers at a different location, away from the petrel’s nesting sites, will give them some peace to nest, and help the species’ survival in the long term.
(more…)
Though some believe humans have reached the dead-end of our evolutionary journey, small skink lizards (Lerista) seem to still be in the thick of it. Skink lizards already have elongated, snake-like bodies with relatively small, shrunken legs. Now, new research [pdf] finds that the lizards are giving up walking for good, and have been rapidly evolving away their limbs.
Adam Skinner of the University of Adelaide performed a genetic analysis on several species of skink lizards with different sized limbs. He found that there have been at least ten independent reductions in limbs throughout the lizards’ evolution, without any signs of reversal. Some species now have fewer digits (lizard fingers) while others have lost whole limbs. Complete loss of limbs could have occurred in as little as 3.6 millions years—a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
(more…)
For the three crew members living aboard the International Space Station, sustainability isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. The station is already powered by solar energy, but still relies on water sent periodically from Earth. On Friday, NASA’s space shuttle Endeavor will begin a special mission to deliver a water recovery system to the ISS that will recycle the crew’s urine and exhaled water vapor into drinkable water. Former ISS crew member Donald Pettit said thinking of the system as a fancy coffee machine might make the water go down easier: “It’s going to take yesterday’s coffee and make it into today’s coffee.” Or something like that.
Endeavor’s 15-day mission will give the decade-old ISS a complete truss-to-truss makeover. It will also deliver state-of-the-art exercise equipment, an extra fridge (the current one is reserved for science experiments, so the crew has been drinking lukewarm orange juice), an extra toilet, and sleeping quarters. The expansion will allow the station to house three more long-term crew members from Canada, Europe and Japan, all of whom are scheduled to arrive next spring. Astronauts arriving on the Endeavour will also help the current crew tackle a huge cleaning job, including four space walks to scrub the outside of the station.
(more…)
