If you feel immobilized by the latest bump in gas prices, just follow these five simple steps:
Last Friday night between 10:15 and 10:30 pm, six airplanes flying into Sydney Airport were victims of the city’s first coordinated laser attack, in which some miscreants shined lasers at the folks operating the flying tin cans carrying lots of people. The potentially dangerous maneuver provoked the government to consider banning laser pointers or classifying them as illegal weapons. (Shining laser beams at aircraft is already punishable by two years’ jail time and fines of up to $30,000.)
You might not have heard this from other Web sites out there, but today has been the biggest science news day in history. Truly, the events that have befallen our planet—and our universe—over the past 17 hours have been remarkable. So we here at DiscoBlog have rounded up the most important headlines from around the Internet. Here they are:
— Fungus with a Sweet Tooth Breathes Nectar of the Gods
— German Doc Prescribes Arsenic for Scare “Down There”
— Physicist’s Creepy Photos Show Wife’s Wedding Ring—and Skeleton!
— Animal-Lover Adopts Gaggle of Geese, Leads Them on Walks and Swims
— Cryptic Poetry Book Reveals Greater Truth About … Nothing
— Biology Lab Invaded by Unidentified Pest; Valuable Bacteria Sample Destroyed
— Physicist’s Cat Is Stuck in a Tree—and Not Stuck in a Tree
— Living Blob Devours Bystanders, Transforms Into New Form of Life
— Cyclist Becomes Possessed by Demons As Furniture Explodes into Colored Fountains
— Bicycle Maker Makes Apparent Suicide Leap on North Carolina Beach; Brother, Friends Bring Him Back to Earth
— Stuff Now Exists! (But What Came Before?)
— Shy Professor Injured by Falling Apple; Says He Knows Why
Hat tip to Overcoming Bias for pointing out the impressive magnitude of what’s going on.
The Friends-inspired rumor that urine can relieve a jellyfish sting provided more comedic value than useful first-aid advice, but there are actually many practical applications for that yellow waste product. Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs rubbed urine on their skin to treat cuts and burns, while the Romans used it as a bleaching agent for cleaning clothes and teeth. And now, it may help fight global warming.
Articles about Internet addictions have been popping up (online) for a while now—along with advertisements for 12-step recovery programs—but the “disease” at first seemed tongue-in-cheek (and, actually, it was). Then, like so many mental illnesses these days, it became over-hyped. The would-be condition didn’t even make it into the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV)—the Bible of the mental health world—which includes everything from narcissism to 14 types of anxiety disorders.
But now Oregon Health Sciences University Psychiatrist Jerald Block wants to make sure Internet addiction gets some recognition. In an editorial in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, he argues that it should be included in the next edition of the DSM, due out in 2012, and laid out the standards of this deadly (no, really) new affliction. If you meet the following criteria, you too might be addicted to the internet: (more…)
When Google Street View was released less than a year ago, its 360-degree panoramic shots from ground level changed the way people explored new cities (along with providing a Web-based haven for people watching). Now, Google is taking this technology to a higher level (har) with Google Sky, an Internet tool that brings you unlimited online stargazing opportunities. Google Sky lets you traipse amongst the celestial bodies, search for planets and galaxies, and even switch to microwave and infrared views. And if you’re not having luck finding anything cool yourself (there’s a lot of nothing out there), you can head to the image galleries, which take you to some sweet shots from the Hubble, Chandra X-Ray, GALEX UV, and Spitzer infrared scopes.
The tool is a bit slow, so if you’re not the biggest fan of watching images load you can download the Google Earth application for free, which includes Google Sky as an additional feature.
Image: Google
Robots build our cars, milk our cows, perform unassisted heart surgery, and, at least in Japan, take care of both the young and the old. Advances in robot technology in the home and workplace are impressive, but the best droids around (on our planet, at least) are out on the battlefield. For years, robotic soldiers have played considerable roles in performing the military’s most undesirable tasks: destroying and placing explosives, performing reconnaissance, and detecting and cleaning nuclear and biological agents—basically everything that gets left out when kids “play war.”
Last night DiscoBlog traipsed down to the fairly swanky headquarters of giant advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, where the British-based ad folks recognized 10 “world-changing ideas”—inventions to improve people’s lives in one way or another.
The winner among the finalists was the LifeStraw, a foot-long filtering tube that purports to let you (or your friends in the developing world) drink even the filthiest, most microbe-infested water without getting sick. We’re not sure what the criteria were for winning this award—the LifeStraw isn’t exactly new, having been named a Best Invention of the Year by Time in 2005—but it seems a legitimately great item. Wiley event attendees insist they knew it would win because it fit in with what Saatchi chose in the past.
Whereas LifeStraw may indeed be the most world-changing “idea” at the event, it did not have the most compelling presentation. (Perhaps it was handicapped in this regard by the fact that the plentiful Saatchi-provided wine seemed to be downright hygienic.)
Some other finalists’ presentations were both more future-looking and more exciting for the short-attention-spanned blogger in all of us.
Mark Vargas of Santa Clara, California, has a plug-in electric car and $70,000 worth of solar panels. But there’s a serious threat to Vargas’s environmental efforts: his tree-hugging neighbors, Richard Treanor and his wife Carolyn Bissett.
Prius-owning Treanor and Bissett have eight redwoods in their backyard—towering, majestic beasts that shade the forest floor and, apparently, Vargas’s solar panels. Nature-hating Vargus wants the renewable energy-hating couple to cut down the offending trees, and the three have been engaged in legal battles for six years.
Kids in developing countries don’t drop out of school because they have to work the fields or care for their younger siblings, Nicholas Negroponte said in his plenary lecture at AAAS. They drop out because they’re bored. Just after he got laptops to all the kids at a rural schoolhouse in Cambodia–one of the inspirations for his nonprofit, One Laptop per Child–there was a 100% increase in attendance. No one dropped out. (Parents were fans, too, mainly because the laptop screens were the brightest light in the house.)
Biofuels have their problems, surely, (competition with agriculture, a high carbon footprint, and incompatibility with gas engines, to name a few) but maybe that’s because we aren’t focusing on the right type of fuel. The answer lies in butanol, says James Liao of the University of California at Los Angeles in order to skirt many of the issues biofuels have brought to the table. By focusing on the technical and policy perspective on “Biomass-to-Biofuels Conversion” Liao establishes butanol as the non-agricultural, fast growing alternative within the alternative fuel industry.
io9, the new-ish Gawker blog about science fiction, has taken offense at Discover. Heaps and gobs of offense. All about our li’l column “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Science Fiction.” Annalee Newitz, the lead editor of the blog, attempts to scare-quote and exclamation-point our lighthearted column into Internet ignominy. The complaints, such as they are, range from wrong to not right to long on sarcasm, short on logic.
The most concrete gripe concerns our claim that “in 1926 writer Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first true science-fiction magazine.” Newitz says this honor actually belongs to Mary Shelley for writing Frankenstein.
Which raised a question in my mind, one that I pose to our readers: Have you picked up that latest issue of Frankenstein Magazine yet? It contains the entire story of Frankenstein’s monster in one bound volume. Yeah, that heavy, leather thing that says, “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus,” on the cover. Speaking of the cover, it’s fairly hard… (more…)
In case you hadn’t heard, it’s Australian Week here in the U.S., a state-run marketing event that has the streets running red with wine, buildings plastered with shots of Russell Crow and the strangely soothing accents infiltrating the airwaves (at least, if you’re in New York or Los Angeles).
Today at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue, the spotlight was placed squarely on Australian innovation. Six companies assembled for a shot to win money to fund the transition to the U.S. marketplace. The event, dubbed, an innovation “shoot out” had a representative from each of the companies (who were finalists in their respective Australian states) giving a 10 minute presentation on their company with follow-up questions from a panel. No two companies competed in the same market and the ideas varied from wastewater treatment to breast cancer detection. Here is the skinny on a few of the companies from down under that are working on getting a foot into the U.S. market. (more…)
Bad at remembering names? What if all you had to do to remind yourself was center a crosshair on a person’s face and his name-perhaps even his Facebook profile-would pop into your field of view?
Engineers at the University of Washington have pushed our technologically primitive world closer to this Terminator-esque dream of augmented reality: They’ve manufactured contact lenses that contain electronic circuits and red LEDs-and taken pretty sweet pictures of rabbits showing them off. (more…)
At the Macworld expo today, Steve Jobs revealed several new features for your $400 iPhone, a $500 terabyte backup drive for OS X Leopard’s Time Machine, and, of course, the new $1,800-plus Macbook Air: the thinnest notebook in the world—so ridiculously thin, it practically floats. That’s the idea, anyway. (more…)
During the discussion of current technologies driving the future, the need for modular technology—in automotive systems, robots, and personal devices—was discussed at great length. As consumer electronics continue to become more personalized, customizable, and able to interact with a growing number of other devices, they will consequently need to be more modular—not just with open software, but also with the hardware they carry.
In the near future, you may be able to build your cell phone at the store—choosing a five-megapixel camera, a small LCD touchscreen and, heck, throwing in GPS capabilities. On top of that, you’ll be able to easily customize your programs, choosing from pre-packaged software or writing it—in a simple meta-language, of course—for your own needs. (more…)
Wireless power: We’ve seen it in MIT’s media lab, some predicted it would take over the world and, finally we see it coming out in products. Well, at least one product. eCoupled (owned by Fulton Innovations), hopes to be at the front of this emerging market. They introduced their brand of wireless power in, of all things, a water purifier. Ten years ago the company was having problems with an ultraviolet light and carbon-block filter water purifier. They were getting unwanted hot water caused by the ultraviolet lamp and a unit that was too large, and corrosion of metal-to-metal electrical connections. So they looked towards a connector-free energy-transfer technology to connect the base of the unit and the top. They say they ended up reducing energy consumption and ambient heat by nesting a connector-less ultraviolet lamp inside a submersed carbon filter. This solution also apparently reduced the size of the system and got rid of exposed electrical connections.
Now, the company is looking to take this solution and pursue a more difficult task—use it to make power hubs for devices that can charge without connectors. (more…)
Science fiction might make eye scanners out to be the security system of the future, but current eye-scanning technology is extremely pricey and is seen by many as an invasive version of security. (Really, who wants lasers in their eyes?) That’s probably why fingerprint systems have popped up as the first industry winner in biometric personal-security systems, a technology that is built into a number of computers on the market now. Such security is used as an access point to operating systems or particularly sensitive files. But if you have bank statements and other extremely sensitive personal information on your computer, the risk of a security breach is uncomfortably high, as it is not unimaginable for some nosy soul to obtain fingerprints using century-old forensic techniques and a simple latex mold. (more…)
Oregon Scientific is looking out their window this CES, unveiling two new weather-detecting devices that will let you know what’s going on outside. You may be asking, “Why would I need to know the weather in my backyard?” If so, you are decidedly not a weather enthusiast and you may want to pass up these products. If you were wondering, “Can I get temperature, humidity, wind, rain, and dew point not only in my ZIP code, but in my own backyard as well?” then you might be interested in the Professional Weather Center, a pricey (MSRP is $420) but slick collection of weather-watching devices that measures ten aspects of your backyard, including the UV level, heat index, phase of the moon, and wind chill, among others.
The International Federation of Robotics says that 2005 sales of robotics reached $8.4 billion and are projected to expand annually by 40 percent. Sure, such projected growth is quite optimistic and based on hopes that the brewing consumer-robotics storm will hit its stride with affordable price-points, friendly user-interface, and crash-proof robots. If so, industry insiders hope, robotics could move to ubiquity, making for a future where a robot lives in every home. (more…)
