08/18/10 - Why Matter prevails in the Universe
A large collaboration of physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider has discovered evidence of an explanation for the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter. The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind. Physicists have long known about processes described by current physics theory that would produce tiny excesses of matter, but the amounts the theories predict are far smaller than necessary to create the universe we observe. The Tevatron experiments suggest that we are on the verge of accounting for the quantities of matter that exist today. But the truly exciting implication is that the experiment implies that there is new physics, beyond the widely accepted Standard Model, that must be at work. If that's the case, major scientific developments lie ahead. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Solar Toothbrush Could Eliminate the Need for Toothpaste
Instead of using solar rays to charge itself up, the toothbrush uses them to catalyze a powerful chemical reaction that could leave your mouth way cleaner than regular old brushing does. “You see complete destruction of bacterial cells,” says Kunio Komiyama, the inventor of the device. Komiyama’s first model, which was described 15 years ago in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, contained a titanium dioxide rod in the neck of the brush, just below the nylon bristles. It works when light shines on the wet rod, releasing electrons. Those electrons react with acid in the mouth, which helps break down plaque. No toothpaste is required. Now Komiyama’s back with a newer model, the Soladey-J3X, which he says packs twice the chemical punch compared to the original. Protruding from the base of the brush is a solar panel, which transmits electrons to the top of the toothbrush through a lead wire. It won’t work in the dark, though – the brush needs about as much light as a solar-powered calculator would to operate. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - How The Unemployment Crisis Has Swept Across America
This disturbing graphic, by Latoya Eguwuekwe, charts the rise of unemployment across the U.S. from 2007 on. (Hat tip to Daily Kos, which posted it earlier this month.) Displayed below is a time-lapse look at the so-called U3 unemployment statistic, which doesn't account for the underemployed and those who've simply given up looking for work. The graphic was last updated on July 15. / According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 31 million people currently unemployed -- that's including those involuntarily working parttime and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting. "The Decline: The Geography of a Recession," as created by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe, serves as a vivid representation of just how much. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 -- approximately one year before the start of the recession -- to the most recent unemployment data available today.

08/18/10 - VTzilla Firefox extension Scans Files for Malware Before Download
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The VTzilla Firefox extension adds a Scan with VirusTotal option to Firefox's right-click context menu and file download dialog that allows you to scan any file for a virus before you download it. The VTzilla extension takes one more step out of the equation, allowing you to scan any download before you commit to downloading it to your computer. Note: By default, VTzilla turns on a new toolbar in Firefox. To disable it, navigate to View -> Toolbars, then uncheck VirusTotal Toolbar. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Crazy Optical Illusions That Will Blow Your Mind
When you are looking at these photos your brain don’t know how to react. Every time you see something different or something that you think is on a good place or real. Optical illusions are great thing. Enjoy in these photos, and check out the video “10 optical illusions in 2 minutes” that will blow your mind. This guy is awesome and show us great skill with optical illusions. I can’t figure how he created some of the illusions in the video. Did you know the real meaning of: “An optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. There are three main types: literal optical illusions that create images that are different from the objects that make them, physiological ones that are the effects on the eyes and brain of excessive stimulation of a specific type (brightness, tilt, color, movement), and cognitive illusions where the eye and brain make unconscious inferences.” - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Working long hours is stupid
We do too much. We carry too many projects. This overproduction creates problems which we try to fix by working even more. We value most what we create. To be happy, you want to focus on making interesting stuff. This takes time and dedication. We often fall into the trap of thinking mostly about money and personal disputes. These thoughts pull us away from our interests and prevent us from doing great work. It is hard to be overworked by writing a book, by writing research articles or by playing golf. People are overworked dealing with email, context switching, money, and touchy relationships. This abundance of work makes people sad and boring. And this type of work tend to reproduce. The more you have, the more you will have. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Superheroes send out 'wrong message' to boys
Modern movie superheroes are bad role models for boys as they promote violence and revenge as a way of life, claim psychologists. Dr Sharon Lamb, of the University of Massachusetts, said that modern depictions of superheroes like Iron Man are often playboy millionaires who are only ruled by selfish goals. "There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday," Dr Lamb told the annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. "Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he's aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. "When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns." The comic book heroes of the past did fight criminals, she said, "but these were heroes boys could look up to and learn from because outside of their costumes, they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities," she said. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - 20 new ideas in science
Today’s most cutting-edge scientific thinking: from switching off ageing to “enhancing” our babies; understanding consciousness to finding dark matter. There is no such thing as time, enhanced humans are coming, and most of the universe is missing: 20 of the latest breakthroughs in scientific understanding. Follow the link... - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Inertial-Electrostatic-Confinement Fusion Device
Inertial-electrostatic-confinement (IEC) systems provide an economical and technologically straightforward means to produce fusion reactions in a table-top device.1,2 IEC devices confine a plasma in a potential well created by electrostatic fields or a combination of electrostatic and magnetic fields. The fields can be produced either by grids or by virtual cathodes, typically in spherical or cylindrical geometry. The fields accelerate ions towards the center of the device, where fusion reactions can occur (Figure 1). The technological simplicity of the IEC system was the basis for its early success—it produced a steady-state neutron yield of 2 × 1010 neutrons/s in the late 1960s.3 Though useful for practical neutron sources, the existing IEC fusion devices suffer low fusion yields, ~ 0.01% of input power. This is because the Coulomb-collision cross section is much greater than the fusion-collision cross section by several orders of magnitude. The ion beams in the IEC device rapidly lose the energy by Coulomb collisions before producing fusion reactions, leading to a net loss in energy. A new electrostatic plasma equilibrium that should mitigate this problem has been proposed by LANL theorists4 and recently confirmed experimentally.5 This concept requires uniform electron injection into the central region of a spherical device to produce harmonic oscillator potential. An ion cloud (referred to as the Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere, or POPS) in such an environment will undergo harmonic oscillation with an oscillation frequency independent of amplitude. Tuning the external radio-frequency (rf) electric fields to this naturally occurring mode allows the ion motions to be phase-locked. This simultaneously produces very high densities and temperatures during the collapse phase of the oscillation when all the ions converge into the center. Solutions to POPS oscillation have the remarkable property that they maintain equilibrium distribution of the ions at all times. This would eliminate any power loss due to Coulomb collisions and would greatly increase the neutron yield up to more than 100%, resulting in a net energy gain for fusion-power generation. In a practical embodiment, the POPS system would use a massively modular system to achieve high-mass-power density as shown in the conceptual drawing in Figure 2. Such a device would contain thousands of tiny spherical IEC reactors within a single reactor vessel to produce a large amount of fusion power (i.e., ~ 100–1000 MW). A modular IEC device would have very high-mass-power density, comparable to a light-water reactor, while maintaining conventional wall loads (~ 1 MW/m2) and being economically competitive with other sources of power. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Russian Scholar Warns Of 'Secret' U.S. Climate Change Weapon
As Muscovites suffer record high temperatures this summer, a Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries. In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, "At the moment, climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries." In an telephone interview with RFE/RL, Areshev appeared to back off from claims he made in the article, saying that he was merely positing a theory. "First of all, I would like to say that what I wrote in that article, even the citations, does not in any way claim to a be final truth. It is, if you will, speculation, in other words, the definition of an hypothesis," Areshev said. Moscow is currently sweltering under record temperatures. On July 29 Moscow suffered its hottest day ever, with temperatures hitting 39 degrees. But Russia isn't the only country suffering form a heat wave this summer. Indeed, the United States is also experiencing record temperatures. On July 24, temperatures in Washington, D.C., hit 37.7 degrees, and local weather services issued heat warnings for the first time this summer. Areshev agrees that it is also hot in the United States, but notes that the United States is significantly farther south than Russia, meaning that such high temperatures are not so surprising there. In the article, Areshev voiced suspicions about the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), funded by the U.S. Defense Department and the University of Alaska. HAARP, which has long been the target of conspiracy theorists, analyzes the ionosphere and seeks to develop technologies to improve radio communications, surveillance, and missile detection. Areshev writes, however, that its true aim is to create new weapons of mass destruction "in order to destabilize environmental and agricultural systems in local countries." Areshev's article also references an unmanned spacecraft X-37B, an orbital test vehicle the Pentagon launched in April 2010. The Pentagon calls X-37B a prototype for a new "space plane" that could take people and equipment to and from space stations. Areshev, however, alleges that the X-378 carries "laser weaponry" and could be a key component in the Pentagon's climate-change arsenal. The Pentagon was not immediately reachable for comment. Areshev also cites the U.S. government's effort to use rain and cloud coverage to block the Vietnam Army's supply routes during the Vietnam War. He insisted, however, that he was not a conspiracy theorist. "My comments were not made in order to accuse the U.S., or any other country, of consciously influencing Russia," Areshev said. "That would be quite ridiculous." - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - AT-AT Day Afternoon
When I was a kid, there are two things I wanted badly and never got... A real dog and a Kenner AT-AT Walker. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - New Battery for Cheap Electric Vehicles
The new company, called 24M, has been spun out of the advanced battery company A123 Systems. It will develop a novel type of battery based on research conducted by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science at MIT and founder of A123 Systems. He says the battery design has the potential to cut those costs by 85 percent. The battery pack alone in many electric cars can cost well over $10,000. Cutting this figure could make electric vehicles competitive with gasoline-fueled cars. Chiang isn't saying much about the details of the new battery--such as exactly what materials it's made of. But he does say that it uses a "semisolid" energy storage material (rather than the solid electrode material used in most batteries today), and that it combines the best attributes of conventional batteries, fuel cells, and something called flow batteries, while avoiding some of the disadvantages of these technologies. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Energy Entrepreneurs: Reinventing the landfill
Check out the latest Energy Entrepreneurs video. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Spam Filtering? Patented! 36 Companies Sued
Glyn Moody points us to the news that 36 companies have been sued for patent infringement in Marshall, Texas (of course) for supposedly violating a patent (6,018,761) on spam filtering. The companies sued represent a who's who of corporate America, including Apple, Google, HP, RIM, Citigroup, Capital One, Alcatel Lucent, AIG, AOL, JP Morgan Chase, McAfee, Symantec, Yahoo, IBM and many others. The patent itself is rather simple. So simple, I can repeat the entire claims section right here (not the abstract, the actual claims). Also, note how many typos there are. You would think, in such a short patent, someone would have caught typos like "usinig," "processine" and "usefiul.": What is claimed is:

08/18/10 - Fresno State prof's idea would conserve ag water
Millions of gallons of water run through fruit processing plants every year, generating high costs and an ocean of waste for companies nationwide. But all that could change with technology developed by Fresno State professor Gour Choudhury. Choudhury, a specialist in food processing systems, has devised a system that uses air, rather than water, to blast peels off fruit. The invention could slash the water use by 80%, saving companies each tens of thousands of dollars a month. Traditionally, processing plants slice fruit in half, remove any pits and wash them in a lye solution that loosens the skin. Then a jet of water knocks off the skin as the fruit moves along a conveyor belt. Choudhury's system substitutes blasts of moisturized air in the final step. Some water is still needed to rinse away the lye, but far less than the half-million gallons a day that traditional systems can require. The prototype component of a peeling system used for processing peaches using compressed air, next to a project for peeling tomatoes. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Simulating Innovation
People can improve their innovation skills by mentally simulating the use of innovation tools. Chip and Dan Heath in their book, “Made to Stick”, talk of the importance of mental simulation with problem solving as well as skill-building:

08/18/10 - Use of copper could reduce hospital infections
Lethal diseases - formally called health-care-associated infections, or HAIs - kill more U.S. patients each year than breast cancer, car accidents and AIDS combined, according to latest statistics. Yet results from the first phase of a clinical trial funded by the U.S. Department of Defense strongly suggest that replacing such common hospital-room items as bed rails, chairs and tables with antimicrobial copper eventually would decrease HAI deaths and the billions of dollars they cost each year by upward of 80 percent. The trials were triggered by Pentagon concerns about rampant infectious diseases affecting and often disabling our troops in Iraq. In the second phase of the trials, copper bed rails, tray tables, chair arms, call buttons, monitors and IV poles replaced the stainless steel and plastic versions in the intensive-care units of three major hospitals: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, the Medical University of South Carolina and the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both in Charleston, S.C. The results of the phase-two trials were impressive. The copper equipment significantly reduced the overall load of bacteria in intensive-care units. Laboratory testing independent of the clinical trials affirmed the trial findings, proving that copper and copper alloys, such as brass and bronze, kill 99.9 percent of bacteria within two hours, when cleaned regularly in conjunction with routine disinfection programs. In fact, antimicrobial copper is so effective that it's the only touch-surface material registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a public-health antimicrobial product capable of controlling major drug-resistant infections that ravage hospitals, including such dreaded ones as enterococci, staphylococcus auereus and E.coli. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Intensely psychedelic "fractal" architecture animation
Welcome to the Mandelbox. Over at Dose Nation, the creator Hömpörg? says, "I wanted to go further too, but at the end part a single frame took 18 minutes to render, and the whole 1:27 minute video needed 12 days nonstop rendering. I felt thats more than enough at the time. It was just my first experiment with Mandelbulb 3D, a freeware program, I'm not a film director or something..." - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - New Micro Ultrasonic transducers
Researchers engineer ultrasound devices so small they could be placed inside cells to perform intracellular ultrasonics. Scientists and Engineers at The University of Nottingham have built the world's smallest ultrasonic transducers capable of generating and detecting ultrasound. These revolutionary transducers, which are orders of magnitude smaller than current systems, are so tiny that up to 500 of the smallest ones could be placed across the width of one human hair. While at an early stage these devices offer a myriad of possibilities for imaging and measuring at scales a thousand times smaller than conventional ultrasonics. They can be made so small they could be placed inside cells to perform intracellular ultrasonics. They can produce ultrasound of such a high frequency that its wavelength is smaller than that of visible light. Theoretically they make it possible for ultrasonic images to take finer pictures than the most powerful optical microscopes. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Hipmunk Is a Fantastic, Surprisingly Usable Flight Search Site

08/18/10 - Startups a Safer Bet Than Behemoths
"TechCrunch's Vivek Wadhwa has a great article that takes a look at difference between startups and 'established' tech companies and what they each mean to the economy and innovation in general. Wadhwa examines statistics surrounding job creation and innovation and while big companies may acquire startups and prove out the business model, the risk and true innovations seems to be living at the startup level almost exclusively. 'Now let's talk about innovation. Apple is the poster child for tech innovation; it releases one groundbreaking product after another. But let's get beyond Apple. I challenge you to name another tech company that innovates like Apple—with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Google certainly doesn't fit the bill—after its original search engine and ad platform, it hasn't invented anything earth shattering. Yes, Google did develop a nice email system and some mapping software, but these were incremental innovations. For that matter, what earth-shattering products have IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or Cisco produced in recent times? These companies constantly acquire startups and take advantage of their own size and distribution channels to scale up the innovations they have purchased.'" - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - $76k for an emergency appendectomy (Whats wrong with this?)

- Full Article Source

08/18/10 - 'Wi-Fi Illness' Spreads To Ontario Public Schools
"Readers of Slashdot might be familiar with Lakehead University's ban on WiFi routers a few years ago in Thunder Bay, Ontario because of 'health concerns,' a policy apparently still in effect. Now it seems a group of concerned parents in a number of communities in Ontario have petitioned the local school boards over similar concerns at public schools, where their kids are apparently experiencing 'headaches to dizziness and nausea and even racing heart rates' — symptoms that appear only when they are in school on weekdays, not on weekends at home. 'The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless ...' Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer?" - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Canadian youth program stopped
Late last month, Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services in Burnaby, British Columbia was forced to shut down a decades-old program where troubled youths had a device placed on their penises while they were subjected to media depicting stuff like rape and child pornography. The final straw was when one of the test administrators was arrested for a sexual assault allegedly committed during leisure time. In the wake of the fruit machine program, the fine folks at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health developed and still promote penile plethysmography (PPG). The device, nicknamed a peter meter, is supposedly a lie detector for male genitalia. It's not admissible in court cases as evidence for the same reason as a polygraph: the data can be manipulated by both subject and tester, and there's little standardization in equipment or stimuli. The whole sordid story follows. - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Leaked Intel Roadmap Shows 600GB SSD
"Solid State Drives have been trying to fill the mechanical hard drive niche for some time now. The problem is that while flash memory is faster than a spinning platter, it is also much more expensive per gigabyte. Over the weekend details leaked about Intel's SSD roadmap, and what's most interesting about it is that the capacities of Intel's SSDs are going to increase in a big way. First off is a refresh to the high performance X25-M range of SSDs. Currently available in 80GB and 160GB models, these will be replaced by a new design, codenamed Postville, which will come in 160GB, 300GB and 600GB variants." - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - From Slaying Dragons To Dictators
"In a weekend, programmer Austin Heap transformed from an apathetic MMO player, to a world class regime-slayer. When word for Iran's rigged election broke over Twitter, Heap decided to dedicate himself to building a better proxy system for people behind Iran's firewall. Heap's creation, Haystack, conceals someone's real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com. Heap tends to hide users in content that is popular in Tehran, sometimes the regime's own government mouthpieces" - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - Scottish Scientists Develop Whisky Biofuel
"It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "one for the road". Whisky, the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, is being used to develop a new biofuel which could be available at petrol pumps in a few years. This biofuel can be produced from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – "pot ale", the liquid from the copper stills, and "draff", the spent grains. Copious quantities of both waste products are produced by the £4bn whisky industry each year, and the scientists say there is real potential for the biofuel, to be available at local garage forecourts alongside traditional fuels. It can be used in conventional cars without adapting their engines. The team also said it could be used to fuel planes and as the basis for chemicals such as acetone, an important solvent." - Full Article Source

08/18/10 - ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds
"Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Release inventions back to the creators
Currently, major employers typically claim blanket ownership of employee inventions (as a condition of employment) but with no obligation to actually use those claimed inventions. This missing obligation gives employers awesome power to stifle employee creativity, resulting in billions of dollars worth of lost new products, new business, new jobs and huge losses of precious tax revenue. All that is needed is a requirement for employers to "Use or Return" claimed employee inventions. This reform may seem trivial, but just one unwanted invention that was released back to the employee as "worthless" has spawned a huge $50 billion entirely new xerographic industry creating 500,000 jobs (Wall Street Journal May 23, 1989). Shouldn't we be striving to establish this reform as a permanent nationwide economic stimulus, which does not cost the taxpayers even one red cent? - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Sticker Makes Solar Panels Work Better
The power output of solar panels can be boosted by 10 percent just by applying a big transparent sticker to the front. Developed by a small startup called Genie Lens Technologies, the sticker is a polymer film embossed with microstructures that bend incoming sunlight. The result: the active materials in the panels absorb more light, and convert more of it into electricity. The polymer film does three main things, says Seth Weiss, CEO and cofounder of Genie Lens, based in Englewood, CO. It prevents light from reflecting off the surface of solar panels. It traps light inside the semiconductor materials that absorb light and convert it to electricity. And it redirects incoming light so that rather than passing through the thin semiconductor material, it travels along its surface, increasing the chances it will be absorbed. Researchers designed the microstructures that accomplish this by using algorithms that model how rays of light behave as they enter the film and encounter various surfaces within the solar panel--the protective glass cover, the semiconductor material, and the back surface of the panel--throughout the day. The key was bending the light the optimal amount, enough that it enters the solar panel at an angle, but not so much of an angle that the light reflects off and is lost. If light does reflect off either the glass or semiconductor surfaces, the film redirects much of it back into the solar panel. Tests at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory showed that the film increases power output on average between 4 percent and 12.5 percent, with the best improvement under cloudy conditions, when incoming light is diffuse. Adding the film--either in the factory, which is optimal, or on solar panels already in use--increases the overall cost of solar panels by between 1 percent and 10 percent. But the panels would then produce enough additional electricity to justify the price. What's more, increasing the power output of a solar panel decreases other costs--such as shipping and installation--because fewer solar panels are required at each installation, says Travis Bradford, a solar industry analyst and president of the Prometheus Institute. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - For Electric Cars, Startups Propose Solid-State Batteries
Orlando, Florida-based Planar Energy claims it has come up with a formula for a crystalline battery that can boost performance, cut costs, make it easier to erect factories and ultimately pave the way for things like inexpensive, mass-manufactured electric cars that can run on the same battery pack for years. Prieto Battery, a startup out of Colorado State and named after Professor Amy Prieto, is working on lithium ion batteries made with silicon nanowires. (The picture shows Prieto's battery architecture.) Meanwhile, the Khosla Ventures-backed Sakti3 is developing a safe, dense solid-state lithium-ion battery. The secret sauce is in the ingredients. Conventional batteries are like a chemical aquarium constructed of disparate parts: electrons get transferred between an anode and a cathode via a liquid electrolyte. A porous component called a separator prevents short circuits. In Planar's batteries, the anode, cathode and separator/electrolyte are crystalline, inorganic solids that get sprayed onto a substrate, according to CEO Scott Faris. "We are essentially printing batteries," he said. "Everything is crystalline -- the anode, cathode separator and electrolyte are crystalline." Rather than travel via a liquid, the charges migrate through the solids, much in the same way that electrical charges move through flash memory. In fact, a key ingredient for controlling the movement of electrons in flash -- silicon dioxide or ordinary glass -- is found in Planar's separator/electrolyte. "Flash memory is a really bad battery," he added. By contrast, Prieto wraps silicon nanowires generated via electrodeposition in an organic polymer that then gets surrounded by a cathode matrix. Nanowires increase the active surface area for transferring electrons between the anode and cathode for rapid power delivery. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Revolutionary New Gel Heals Wounds Six Times Faster Than Normal
A gene therapy in the form of a thick gel is about to revolutionize wound treatment. The gel is called Nexagon, and when you apply it to a wound, it reprograms the cells to heal more quickly and efficiently. The gel, named Nexagon, works by interrupting how cells communicate and prevents the production of a protein that blocks healing. That allows cells to move faster to the wound to begin healing it. Though it has only been tested on about 100 people so far, experts say if it proves successful, the gel could have a major impact on treating chronic wounds, like leg or diabetes ulcers, and even common scrapes or injuries from accidents. In most chronic wounds, Becker said there is an abnormal amount of a protein involved in inflammation. To reduce its amount, [cell biologist David] Becker and colleagues made Nexagon from bits of DNA that can block the protein’s production. “As that protein is turned off, cells move in to close the wound,” Becker said. The gel is clear and has the consistency of toothpaste. In an early study on leg ulcers, scientists at the company Becker co-founded to develop the gel found that after four weeks, the number of people with completely healed ulcers was five times higher in patients who got the gel versus those who didn’t. The average leg ulcer takes up to six months to heal and 60 percent of patients get repeated ulcers . . . The gel has also been used on a handful of people who have suffered serious chemical burns to their eyes, including a 25-year-old workman in New Zealand who accidentally squirted liquid cement into one of his eyes. In that case and five others, after Nexagon was applied, the outer lining of the patients’ eyes and the blood vessels within them regrew, saving their vision. In the U.S., the gel has been granted approval by the Food and Drug Administration for serious eye injuries. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Airsoft minigun packs quite a punch
[Kuba_T1000] built a multi-barrell Airsoft minigun with an unbelievable firing rate and an almost inexhaustible ammo pack. The gun is made entirely from aluminum which meant some time on the CNC machine. The six barrels don’t rotate but they are all used, resulting in the carnage shown in the video after the break. That large box you see is the ammo pack, which can hold 16,000 BBs and uses an electric feed system to reach the necessary delivery speeds. It is certainly not something you’d want to run into as part of an automated turret. (Imagine a small compressed air container on your back with a close proximity gun which could use a variety of projectiles...hmm...so they want to take our guns away, eh? Methinks not. This would freak muggers and other villains out! Float like a butterfly, sting like a swarm of biatches! - JWD) - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Converting Gas-Guzzlers into Hybrids
A handful of companies hope to carve a new niche by converting fleets of gas- or diesel-powered trucks, vans, and cars into hybrids and plug-in hybrids--and they're attracting millions of dollars of funding to do it. In some cases, they say, the conversions could pay for themselves in fuel and maintenance savings in just a few years. XL Hybrids plans to convert taxis, delivery trucks and other fleet vehicles into hybrids, cutting the vehicles' fuel consumption by 15 to 30 percent. Alt-E, a startup founded by former Tesla Motors engineers, is similarly targeting fleet vehicles, but it plans to make plug-in hybrids that can drive for roughly 40 miles on the energy stored in a battery that's recharged by plugging in. Once that stored charge is used up, Alt-E's vehicle will act like a conventional hybrid with fuel economy of 32 miles per hour--more than double that of the prototype vehicle it is working with--a Ford F150 pickup. Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies (HEVT) plans to offer both hybrid and plug-in hybrid conversions for a range of vehicles. Next year, major automakers will start selling their own plug-in hybrids--vehicles that can be recharged from electrical outlets but also have gasoline engines to extend their range. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Cape Man's Invention To Help Clean Up BP Oil Leak
Scott Smith's Hyannis company is called Cellect Plastics. He's developed a green foam material that works like a boom. "Oil sticks to it like a magnet, but water runs through it," says Smith. He says it's much lighter than conventional boom, and reusable. After the infamous oil leak, Smith says he called BP repeatedly to tell them about the invention he calls "the green stuff." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - As eReaders gain popularity, what happens to the personal library?
There are books we pretend to keep for reference, but in fact keep only because they look so damn fine on the shelf. And then there are the books where should-have-read blends with may-have-read, and we're too embarrassed to confess we can't remember which is the case ("Catcher in the Rye"). There are also the books of hollow triumph, the great tomes of philosophy read in college, which remain on the shelves like snapshots taken from the summit of Everest or like pants in the closet that will never again slide up our thighs without tearing. Electronic book readers are a great invention for people who actually read books. But what do they offer those of us who have an even more complicated relationship with books unread? Sitting on a shelf, Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain" stares down as coldly and harshly as an alp in winter. Locked up in the digital ether of a Kindle or a Nook, it can never indict our miserable laziness. The home library may live on in a few privileged homes as a purely fraudulent place, a room, like that one in the Hamptons, for displaying books that are entirely decorative. But all the lesser lies of reading, the smaller acts of fraud, the minor and more nuanced forms of self-deception that are manifest in a home library will lose their designated place, their little plot of space in the three-dimensional world. No one will ever look at an iPad icon that says "The Man Without Qualities," sitting on a high-definition digital picture of a bookshelf, and think, "After I'm dead." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Dragons' Den winner reveals £80k promise was in fact 'a loan'
Never in its five-year history had there been such a confident performance on the TV show for entrepreneurs, Dragons' Den. The five hard-faced panellists, including Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden, were moved to say her pitch was brilliant and it looked as though the £80,000 investment she was promised would propel Talpa Products, her fledgling business, into the commercial big time. The expert help she was expecting from her slick new backers never came, she says. Nor did the £80,000 investment she was promised by the Dragons for a stake in the company: instead of giving her the money to buy into the company, they offered it as a loan. Today, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the 40-year-old businesswoman tells how Dragons' Den nearly ruined her. Her account will shake the confidence of the programme's many fans and, in her opinion at least, casts doubt on the methods of James Caan, one of the show's star panellists. She says: 'I was stunned. This is not what I had seen on TV. Viewers are given the impression that the money the Dragons provide is to buy equity in the business. I didn't receive the monies that I expected, I didn't receive the support I needed and, more importantly, they were charging me for their services. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - “Rivers of Water” in our atmosphere
Reginald E. Newell of M.I.T. wrote in the “Geophysical Research Letters Journal” that rivers of water flow in the lower atmosphere. These “rivers” are not actually condensed water, but are vapors that really flow. In other words, man cannot see them, nor realize when he is flying an airplane through them. But, these vapor rivers are enormous. Their flows rival the actual flow on Earth of the mighty Amazon River. These rivers of vapor are 420 to 480 miles wide and up to 4,800 miles long. These rivers of water are 1.9 miles above the earth, and have volumes of 165 million kilograms of water [340 million pounds] per second. Scientists further discovered that there are five (5) atmospheric rivers in the Northern Hemisphere and five (5) more in the Southern Hemisphere. Each of these 10 rivers carries these flow rates mentioned above. [Ibid., page 75] Now that we know there are rivers of water 1.9 miles above the surface, and one or more of them transverse the United States, how does one best create a massive, 500-year flood? The easiest way, of course, would be to throw up a dam that would prevent the vapor river from going on its normal way, thus dumping huge amounts of water behind where it had been “damned” up! The question of the hour is, how can one create a “dam” in the atmosphere? Scientists have discovered that ELF generation can cause an electronic dam to be created in the atmosphere! These electronic dams can divert or block these vapor rivers, causing huge amounts of rainfall to be dumped! Could this be a sientific explanation for the great floods? Further anomalies to be looked at the splitting of the jet streams across Russia, China and Pakistan;

08/15/10 - New World Order & Weather Weapons – New Phase of Global Warfare
Andrei Areshev states that “the incidence of the current anomalously high temperatures exclusively in Russia and some adjacent territories invites alternative explanations.” According to Dr. Areshev, the warnings of the United States using these most destructive of weapons was fidentified by Russia in a book written by former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about America’s dual role as disseminator of the technetronic revolution and principal preserver of the International status quo titled “Between Two Ages” (1976) wherein he mentioned “the theme of weather control, which he regarded as a form of broader social regulation”. “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211) A carefully orchestrated plan was being played out and we are now entering a new phase, a new era of global warfare usinf weather weapons. Hence why Obama is insistent on destroying or having no more nuclear weapons. Weather weapons, freak weather conditions are here to stay and will influence geopolitics for a long time to come. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Presence of animals is calming
In two small trials, having a dog around seemed to lower tensions during group collaboration and increased solidarity between people playing The Prisoner's Dilemma. The results seem to fit with preponderance of evidence that presence of animals is calming. One glaring problem, though: Both trials compared dog vs. nothing. Could you get the same benefits from an animal that slobbers less? - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Found alive: Two dinosaur species in Papua New Guinea
While on holiday in Papua New Guinea with my wife, I filmed this flying creature. It just looked like a bird from a distance, but when it flew directly overhead we saw that it quite large (wingspan about 10 feet) and it had no feathers. This is the first part when I grabbed my camera while it was directly overhead. / The Ropen (‘demon flyer‘) is a monstrous creature that’s terrified the natives of Papua New Guinea for thousands of years. Another smaller creature, the Duah-possibly related to the Ropen-haunts some of the far flung outlying islands. The descriptions of both monsters match that of fabled pterosaurs—ferocious flying dinosaurs thought to be extinct for 65 million years. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Scientists Develop Brain-Microchip Bridge
"Canadian scientists have developed a microchip capable of monitoring the electrical and chemical communication channels between individual neurons. This is the first time scientists have been able to monitor the interaction between brain cells on such a precise and subtle level. In addition to providing the ability to see more easily the impact of drugs on various mental disorders during testing, this provides one of the first fundamental steps towards real mind-machine interface." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Video Quality Matters Less If You Enjoy the Show
"Rice University researchers say new studies show that if you like what you're watching, you're less likely to notice the difference in video quality of the TV show, Internet video or mobile movie clip, putting a lie to some of the more extravagant marketing claims of electronics manufacturers. 'If you're at home watching and enjoying a movie, we found that you're probably not going to notice or even concern yourself with how many pixels the video is or if the data is being compressed,' said the lead researcher. 'This strong relationship holds across a wide range of encoding levels and movie content when that content is viewed under longer and more naturalistic viewing conditions.'" - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - The Fuel Cost of Obesity
"America loves to complain about gas mileage and the cost of gasoline. As it turns out, part of the problem is us. How much does it really matter? A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 1.1 percent increase in self-reported obesity, which translates into extra weight that your vehicle has to haul around. The study estimates that 1 billion extra gallons of fuel were needed to compensate for passenger weight gained between 1960 and 2002." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Rare Sharing of Data Led To Results In Alzheimer's Research
An unprecedented level of openness and data-sharing among scientists involved in the study of Alzheimer's disease has yielded a wealth of new research papers and may become the template for making progress in dealing with other afflictions. Quoting: "The key to the Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. 'It was unbelievable,' said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer's researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. 'It's not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.'" - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Unsuck it: translate douchey business jargon into normal language
What terrible business jargon do you need unsucked? Check out this new, original site to reparse and cleanup your worst nightmare communications. - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Incorporating Swarm Intelligence Into Computer AI
"From optimizing truck delivery routes to inspiring nerve-cell-based cognition models, ant intelligence has arrived. From the Economist: 'In 1992 Dr. Dorigo and his group began developing Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO), an algorithm that looks for solutions to a problem by simulating a group of ants wandering over an area and laying down pheromones. ACO proved good at solving travelling-salesman-type problems. Since then it has grown into a whole family of algorithms, which have been applied to many practical questions. ... Ant-like algorithms have also been applied to the problem of routing information through communication networks. Dr. Dorigo and Gianni Di Caro, another researcher at IDSIA, have developed AntNet, a routing protocol in which packets of information hop from node to node, leaving a trace that signals the "quality" of their trip as they do so. Other packets sniff the trails thus created and choose accordingly. In computer simulations and tests on small-scale networks, AntNet has been shown to outperform existing routing protocols." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Having Too Much Information Can Narrow Your Focus
"This excerpt sums up Dave Pell's article at NPR pretty well: 'Google's Eric Schmidt recently stated that every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of civilization through 2003. Perhaps the sheer bulk of data makes it easier to suppress that information which we find overly unpleasant. Who has got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these tweets coming in?' It's a valid point. If it's not tweets or Facebook posts, it's lengthy forum arguments or reading news articles from the time you walk in the door at work until you're ready for bed at night, and realizing you didn't actually accomplish anything else. Sometimes too much information can get in the way of living and can bury otherwise important things." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - Narco-Blogger Beats Mexico Drug War News Blackout
"An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere — an inside view of their country's raging drug war. Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story. Many postings, including warnings and a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to military or police." - Full Article Source

08/15/10 - New Jaguar XJ Suffers Blue Screen of Death
"CNET UK is reporting that it crashed a £90,000 Jaguar XJ Super Sport — one of the most technologically advanced cars on the planet today. It's not the sort of crash you'd imagine, however — An unforseen glitch somewhere within the car's dozens of separate onboard computers, hundreds of millions of lines of code, or its internal vehicular network, led to the dramatic BSOD, which had to be resolved with the use of a web-connected laptop." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Engineers unveil Lutec 1000 free energy machine
The Cairns creators of the Lutec 1000 free energy machine have resurfaced after six years of steering clear of the public spotlight, having been granted patents in at least 60 countries around the world, including the US, China and India. The generator works as an energy amplifier, generating up to 10 times the amount of electricity it consumes. The Lutec draws its power from a bank of batteries, with the motor turning due to powerful permanent magnets at its core being attracted and then repulsed from steel cores of fixed coils. It does not work via perpetual motion, rather it relies on natural magnetic forces and a pulsed electrical input. The results of the generator were verified by independent engineers from SGS Australia following a test earlier this year, which confirmed the energy output from the generator was indeed greater than its input. / Different size machines produce different outcomes; three examples of this occurring can be viewed on the videos of actual working prototypes displayed on this site. The smallest demonstrates an input of about 4 watts to a machine returning about 19 watts, and in another instance inputting around 70 watts and outputting around 270 watts. Because the system is designed to be scalable, an input of 250 kilowatts can become 1 megawatt and 1 megawatt can become 4.4 megawatts, or an input of 100 megawatts can become 440 megawatts. There is no top limit potential and neither is there a bottom level limit. Company website www.lutec.com.au - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Speeding Up Diagnosis of Infectious Disease
A Cambridge, MA-based startup called Pathogenica is developing a way to do it within a day--by reading the DNA sequence of pathogens. The company will initially focus on detecting the bacteria that cause urinary tract infections, and aims to have a product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of 2012, with a target of $10 per test. The cost of DNA sequencing has dropped exponentially in the last few years, thanks to new technologies. A growing number of pathogens can be detected using so-called molecular tests, developed over the last decade, which identify microbes by isolating and amplifying specific chunks of DNA. Molecular testing is much faster than culture methods, and has improved medical care by letting doctors correctly diagnose a disease and begin treatment before a patient even leaves the doctor's office, says Lipkin. "But directly sequencing DNA is much more precise," he says. Sequencing also lets scientists search for multiple microbes simultaneously. Sequencing the genes responsible for drug-resistance will let physicians immediately determine which antibiotics a microbe is immune to, helping them choose the most effective drugs from the start. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - How Star Trek artists imagined the iPad... 23 years ago
One interesting characteristic of Star Trek: The Next Generation—one that separated it from the original series and most of the early films—was its widespread use of smooth, flat, touch-based control panels throughout the Enterprise-D. This touch interface was also used for numerous portable devices known as PADDs, or Personal Access Display Devices. These mobile computing terminals bear a striking resemblance to Apple's iPad—a mobile computing device largely defined by its smooth, flat touchscreen interface. Because Jefferies was forced by budget restraints to be creative, however, the original Enterprise bridge was relatively sparse and simplistic. "Because he did such a brilliant job visualizing it, I think the original Star Trek still holds up today reasonably well," Okuda said. "The initial motivation for that was in fact cost," Okuda explained. "Doing it purely as a graphic was considerably less expensive than buying electronic components. But very quickly we began to realize—as we figured out how these things would work and how someone would operate them, people would come to me and say, 'What happens if I need to do this?' Perhaps it was some action I hadn't thought of, and we didn't have a specific control for that.

08/12/10 - Crashproof Motorbike
Crashproof Motorbike.. To good to be true.. perfect schadenfreude... - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Super Simple Inch worm mechanism
Sticklers for the definition of “robot” should simply avert your gaze for the opening title of the video. [Randofo] has posted this beautifully simple inch worm mechanism using only a ruler, some connectors, a switch, a servo, a comb, some batteries, and a couple Tupperware containers. It inches, as it was designed to do, quite well. We’re especially fond of the use of a comb as an easily modifiable switch activator. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Zeus Trojan emptying bank accounts worldwide!
Hold onto your hats. A new version of the Zeus trojan, called Zeus3, has wreaked havoc on thousands of bank accounts worldwide, stealing just over $1 million. The best part? There’s pretty much no way to detect the trojan if it’s on your system. M86 Security, the first group to discover the trojan, says: We’ve never seen such a sophisticated and dangerous threat. Always check your balance and have a good idea of what it is. The last thing you want to do is hear a bank account-draining sophisticated trojan. Oh, it only affects Windows systems. But you knew that already. The scariest part is that the trojan, after clear out your bank account, serves up a fake bank statement page. It looks like you have all of your money, but you actually have $50 left in your entire account. Again, no current anti-malware software can detect the trojan, so for the time being you’re on your on. Beware! But there’s more. It looks like it ONLY affects british accounts. More than likely it only affects IE browsers as well, the trojan is a browser plugin. http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/11623/major-uk-banks-online-customers-hit-by-600-000plus-zeus-3-fraud-/ The bad news is that the East European-controlled botnet that controls the malware drives a real-time plug-in within the users’ web browser and, when infected, the users PC quietly checks for a balance on the account the user is accessing. Then, if the balance is higher than 800 euro or its local currency equivalent, the malware initiates a transfer to a mule account.(I think this got me for $400! Called my bank and had the charges reversed before the transaction was completed! The customer service agent at CHASE said they were swamped with calls for this exact same thing. - JWD) - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Snapping pics at the right moment with a pressure plate
[BiOzZ] built a pressure sensitive camera accessory to snap pictures at just the right moment. Before turning out all the lights the camera is set up with a twenty-second timer and a three-second exposure. The pressure plate doesn’t take the photo, but fires the flash to catch an image in the middle of the action. The hack uses a piece of acrylic as the base of the pressure plate. A switch is constructed by placing aluminum tape on the base, and attaching a thin metal strip that is bent to add just a bit of spring. When an object is place on the plate the thin metal contacts the aluminum tape completing the circuit, a change in the weight breaks it. A simple circuit connects to this, using a relay to actuate the flash from a disposable camera. This is perfect for documenting the moment when you exercise that fruit-induced rage that has been consuming you lately. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - How harsh words may hurt your knees
Psychologist George Slavich of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues asked 124 volunteers to give speeches and perform mental arithmetic in front of a panel of dismissive observers. Saliva analysis showed they exhibited elevated levels of two inflammation markers. A quarter of the volunteers then played a computer game in which other players were instructed to exclude them. Functional MRI scans showed this triggered increased activity in two brain regions associated with rejection. Participants with the highest inflammatory responses showed the greatest increases in brain activity (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009164107). - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - No Anonymity Is The Future Of Web
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace proposes to do away with anonymous multiple identities in favor of one real identity. Part of the reasoning behind one trusted identity is to do away with crime. But isn't this the same logic of anonymity breeding anti-social behavior and criminals? According to ReadWriteWeb, Schmidt said of anti-social behavior, "The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it." If we keep hearing that privacy is dead and long buried, how long before we accept that anonymity is an anti-social behavior and a crime? Security expert Bruce Schneier suggests that we protect our privacy if we are thinking about it, but we give up our privacy when we are not thinking about it. Schneier wrote, "Here's the problem: The very companies whose CEOs eulogize privacy make their money by controlling vast amounts of their users' information. Whether through targeted advertising, cross-selling or simply convincing their users to spend more time on their site and sign up their friends, more information shared in more ways, more publicly means more profits. This means these companies are motivated to continually ratchet down the privacy of their services, while at the same time pronouncing privacy erosions as inevitable and giving users the illusion of control." The loss of anonymity will endanger privacy. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - A "Nobel Torsion Message" Over Norway?
According to early news reports coming out of Norway, just hours ago ... a vast, rapidly expanding "spiral" suddenly appeared in the pre-dawn skies over its northern-most town, a fishing center called "Tromso" (above). Moments later, a corkscrewing "blue beam" seemed to emmanate from the exact center of the spiral toward the ground. Then, as rapidly as this "glowing spiral" and central "beam" appeared ... the bright core of this rapidly rotating spiral abruptly disappeared ... to be immediately replaced by what could only be described as -- A pitch black, rapidly enlarging circle (below) -- looking eerily like "an expanding black hole ..." Initially, this visually spectacular event was thought by experts looking at those videos and images to be "just another Russian naval missile test"-- Until the Russian Navy denied it was responsible! But then, in an abrupt public reversal, the Russian Defense Ministry suddenly claimed that this was, indeed, "a Russian rocket launch ...." This belated (and 180-degree) lagging Russian "admission," unfortunately, has all the appearances of a hastily-ordered cover-up-- Of something "far more interesting" .... Is it another "coincidence" that, just over the hill from Tromso, lies a high-tech Norwegian "HAARP antenna farm" -- the EISCAT Ramfjordmoen facility (below) -- specifically designed to broadcast powerful beams of microwave energy high into space ... thereby also creating blatant HD/torsion side-effects in the Earth's highly-electrified upper "plasma" atmosphere (ionosphere)? The facility is officially supported by Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan ... China ... the United Kingdom ... and Germany. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - The Chevy Volt, just the latest expensive toy
The 2011 Chevy Volt from Government Motors is touted as the answer to carbon emissions and green jobs. The Volt, a hybrid vehicle, is said to be able to go 40 miles on one battery charge. The 1911 Baker Electric from the Baker Motor Vehicle Company of Cleveland, Ohio, could go 50 miles on one battery charge. The 1902 Baker Torpedo set a land speed record. Accepting a 70% to 80% efficiency for the electric vehicle gives a figure of only around 20% overall efficiency when recharged from fossil fuels. That is comparable to the efficiency of an internal combustion engine running at variable load. The efficiency of a gasoline engine is about 16%, and 20% for a diesel engine. Because of the relatively high price of electric/hybrid vehicles, German automakers say, Without government subsidies, electric cars are virtually unmarketable. If all that is true, we are spending much money on a fantasy. But, the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal solution” because it “is cleaner and quieter” and “much more economical.” That statement was published by The New York Times on November 12, 1911. We have yet to see that rosy prediction come true, as noted by the Energy Tribune. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Driller robot to explore great pyramid
Does the Pyramid of Cheops (really KHUFU) hide more secrets within its massive volume? A 1992 robot explored one tiny passage only to be blocked by limestone doors with brass handles -- and the next one drilled through only to find anther door behind it. Built 4,500 years ago, the vast tomb contains several passageways and two rooms, the Kings's and Queen's Chambers. Two shafts extend from each, but whereas those from the King's Chamber reach the exterior, those from the Queen's Chamber stop dead deep within the monument. A new robot, being prepared by a team from Leeds University, is designed to be able to drill a large enough hole for itself to pass through the doors. No word on what they hope to find on the other side. / Now technicians at Leeds University are putting the finishing touches to a robot which, they hope, will follow the shaft to its end. Known as the Djedi project, after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the pyramid, the robot will be able to drill through the second set of doors to see what lies beyond. Dr Robert Richardson, of the Leeds University School of Mechanical Engineering, said they would continue the expedition until they reach the end of the shafts. "We have been working on the project for five years," he said. "We have no preconceptions. We are trying to gain evidence for other people to draw conclusions. There are two shafts. The north shaft is blocked by a limestone door and nothing has penetrated that door. With the south shaft a previous team has measured the thickness of the stone, drilled through it and put a camera through it and found there was another surface. We are going to determine how thick that is and we could drill through it. We are preparing the robot now and expect to send it up before the end of the year. It's a big question, and it's very important not to cause unnecessary damage. We will carry on until we find the answer. We hope to get all the data possible which will be sufficient to answer the questions." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Fresh, home-made blood vessels
Organovo, a biotech start-up near San Diego, has figured out a method for printing blood vessels. Made from the stem cells of the soon-to-be transplant recipient, the blood vessels are useful in themselves, but they're also a first step toward something even crazy bigger—printing whole organs. Most organs in the body are filled with veins, so the ability to print vascular tissue is a critical building block for complete organs. The printed veins are about to start testing in animal trials, and eventually go through human clinical trials. If all goes well, in a few years you may be able to replace a vein that has deteriorated (due to frequent injections of chemo treatment, for example) with custom-printed tissue grown from your own cells. The barriers to full-organ printing are not just technological. The first organ-printing machine will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, test, produce and market. Not to mention the difficulty any company will have getting FDA approval. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - World's "most prolific" bank card broker busted in France
Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 27, aka BadB, holds dual-citizenship in Ukraine and Israel and was one of the earliest members of CarderPlanet, a first of its kind Russian-language carding forum that was launched around 2002 by a group of East Europeans. CarderPlanet was shuttered in 2004, and BadB had more recently been selling his stolen goods at carder.su and on his own websites, dumps.name and badb.biz, where he promoted his product in lighthearted Flash cartoons like the one above. Authorities say the network created by Horohorin and other CarderPlanet veterans is linked to "nearly every major intrusion of financial information reported to the international law enforcement community." BadB faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of access-device fraud and two years if found guilty of aggravated identity theft. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Minority Report Realized
Precog criminal though detection system can read your mind to see if you are planning a crime with near perfect accuracy. In a new study by researchers at Northwestern University, if specifics of a planned terrorist attack were know, P300 brain waves could be used to pick out those with guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab, said J. Peter Rosenfeld, professor of psychology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Using P300 brain wave measuring by electrodes attached to the scalp, researchers were able to pick out those subjects that had engaged in planning, but not carried out, crime. Even when the researchers had no advance details about the mock terrorism plans, the technology was still accurate in identifying critical concealed information. 'Without any prior knowledge of the planned crime in our mock terrorism scenarios, we were able to identify 10 out of 12 terrorists and, among them, 20 out of 30 crime-related details," Rosenfeld said. 'The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity.' - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Cops deploying automatic robo-license-plate-readers
Bot maker Motorola points out that officers can only manually check a small fraction of the license plates they see while on the beat, while their bot can check all of them. While testing Motorola's system, police in Long Beach, California were able to make 50 extra arrests, identify nearly 1,000 stolen or lost license plates and seize 275 stolen vehicles in just six months. The readers also alert cops to tags of those with outstanding traffic tickets, so they can be hauled off to jail and forced to pay up. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Just One Out of 16 Hybrids Pays Back In Gas Savings
"One of the criticisms of hybrid cars has historically been that there's no payback, especially given the cheap gasoline prices in the US. The extra money you spend on a hybrid isn't returned in gas savings, say critics. Well, that may be true, especially when regular gasoline is averaging $2.77 a gallon this week. But as we often point out, most people don't buy hybrids for payback — they buy them to make a statement about wanting to drive green. Nevertheless, a Canadian study has now looked at the question of hybrid payback in a country whose gasoline is more expensive than ours (roughly $3.70 per gallon this week), with surprising results. The British Columbia Automobile Association projected the fuel costs of 16 hybrids over five years against their purchase price and financing fees. In a study released in late July, only a single one of the 16 hybrids cost less to buy and run than its gasoline counterpart." The one car that would save you money, according the study, is the Mercedes S400 Hybrid sedan — and it will only cost you $105,000. - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Spinal-Fluid Test Confirmed To Predict Alzheimer's
"The New York Times reports that researchers have found a spinal-fluid test can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer's disease. The new study included more than 300 patients in their seventies, 114 with normal memories, 200 with memory problems, and 102 with Alzheimer's disease. Their spinal fluid was analyzed for amyloid beta, which forms plaques in the brain, and for tau, another protein that accumulates in dead and dying nerve cells in the brain. Nearly every person with Alzheimer's had the characteristic spinal fluid protein levels." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - FBI Prioritizes Copyright Over Missing Persons
"The FBI has limited resources, so it needs to prioritize what it works on. However, it's difficult to see why dealing with copyright infringement seems to get more attention than identity theft or missing persons. In the past year, the FBI has announced a special new task force to fight intellectual property infringement, but recent reports have shown that both identity theft and missing persons have been downgraded as priorities by the FBI, to the point that there are a backlog of such cases." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers
"Apparently, if you even have been *thinking* about bootlegging the Mile High Music Festival this coming weekend in Denver you've already been sued. No joke. Event producer AEG has already filed trademark infringement claims against 100 John Does and 100 Jane Does in anticipation that they're going to bootleg the event. Since none of the sued parties have actually done anything yet, no one's showing up in court to protest the lawsuit either, so it moves forward... meaning that AEG can use it to get all sorts of law enforcement officials (US Marshals, local and state police and even off-duty officers) to go seize bootleg material." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - The Vending Machines of the Future
"Not sure what you're thirsty for? New vending machines in Shinagawa Station in Tokyo will tell you based on your age and gender. The machines, controlled by a centralized server, come equipped with sensors that recognize basic costumer information, and then provide recommendations alongside the list of available drinks. A massive 47-inch touch panel display is used in place of the typical button system, allowing for an automatic digital advertising mode when no people are directly in front of the machine." - Full Article Source

08/12/10 - Portugal Gives Itself a Clean-Energy Makeover
"It appears that some countries in oil-poor Europe are making a successful transition to renewable energy at a fast and steady pace. This article talks about the small country of Portugal on the West Coast of Europe, known for its white sand beaches, oranges, fish, and wines. Portugal has no oil, but lots of sun and wind. Five years ago, the government decided, against many dissenting voices, to invest massively in taking advantage of the country's natural resources in clean energy. The results are here. It used to be a heavy energy importer, but now it exports it." - Full Article Source

High Voltage & Free Energy Devices Handbook
This wonderfully informative ebook provides many simple experiments you can do, including hydrogen generation and electrostatic repulsion as well as the keys to EV Gray's Fuelless Engine. One of the most comprehensive compilations of information yet detailing the effects of high voltage repulsion as a driving force. Ed Gray's engine produced in excess of 300HP and he claimed to be able to 'split the positive' energy of electricity to produce a self-running motor/generator for use as an engine. Schematics and tons of photos of the original machines and more! Excellent gift for your technical friends or for that budding scientist! If you are an experimenter or know someone who investigates such matters, this would make an excellent addition to your library or as an unforgettable gift. The downloadable HVFE eBook pdf file is almost 11MB in size and contains many experiments, photos, diagrams and technical details. Buy a copy and learn all about hydrogen generation, its uses and how to produce electrostatic repulsion. - 121 pages - $15.00 - Source

DVD - the Physics of Crystals, Pyramids and Tetrahedrons
This is a wonderful 2 hour DVD which presents one man's lifelong study of pyramids, crystals and their effects. Several of his original and very creative experiments are explained and diagramed out for experimenters. These experiments include; 1) transmutation of zinc to lower elements using a tetrahedron, 2) energy extraction from a pyramid, 3) determining mathematic ratios of nature in a simple experiment, 4) accelerating the growth of food, 5) increasing the abundance of food, 6) how crystals amplify, focus and defocus energy, 7) using crystals to assist natural healing, 8) how the universe uses spirals and vortexes to produce free energy and MORE... - $20 DVD + S&H / Source to Buy and Youtube Clip

14 Ways to Save Money on Fuel Costs
This eBook is the result of years of research into various methods to increase mileage, reduce pollution and most importantly, reduce overall fuel costs. It starts out with the simplest methods and offers progressively more detailed technologies that have been shown to reduce fuel costs. As a bonus to readers, I have salted the pages with free interesting BONUS items that correlate to the relevant page. Just filling up with one tank of gas using this or other methods explained here will pay for this eBook. Of course, many more methods are out there but I provided only the ones which I think are practical and can be studied by the average person who is looking for a way to immediately reduce their fuel costs. I am currently using two of the easier methods in my own vehicle which normally gets 18-22 mpg and now gets between 28 and 32 mpg depending on driving conditions. A tank of gas for my 1996 Ford Ranger costs about $45.00 here so I am saving around $15-$20 PER TANK, without hurting my engine and with 'greener' emissions due to a cleaner burn! The techniques provided in this ebook begin with simple things you can do NOW to improve your mileage and lower your gas costs. - $15 eBook Download / Source to Buy

KeelyNet BBS Files w/bonus PDF of 'Keely and his Discoveries'
Finally, I've gotten around to compiling all the files (almost 1,000 - about 20MB and lots of work doing it) from the original KeelyNet BBS into a form you can easily navigate and read using your browser, ideally Firefox but it does work with IE. Most of these files are extremely targeted, interesting and informative, I had forgotten just how much but now you can have the complete organized, categorized set, not just sprinklings from around the web. They will keep you reading for weeks if not longer and give you clues and insights into many subjects and new ideas for investigation and research. IN ADDITION, I am including as a bonus gift, the book (in PDF form) that started it all for me, 'Keely and his Discoveries - Aerial Navigation' which includes the analysis of Keely's discoveries by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton. This 407 page eBook alone is worth the price of the KeelyNet BBS CD but it will give you some degree of understanding about what all Keely accomplished which is just now being rediscovered, but of course, without recognizing Keely as the original discoverer. Chapters include; Vibratory Sympathetic and Polar Flows, Vibratory Physics, Latent Force in Interstitial Spaces and much more. These two excellent bodies of information will be sent to you on CD. To give some idea of how Keely's discoveries are being slowly rediscovered in modern times, check out this Keely History. If alternative science intrigues and fascinates you, this CD is what you've been looking for... - Source

New Vanguard Sciences eBooks - Save a Tree! eBooks make great gifts!
Shape Power - Dan Davidson's analysis of the mysterious pyramid energies, Keely's aether force, Reich's orgone energy, Schauberger's diamagnetic energy, plus a host of others, and shows how shape and materials interact with the universal aether to modify the aether into electromagnetic, gravitic, and various healing energies... - Shape Power Youtube

The Physics of the Primary State of Matter - published in the 1930s, Karl Schappeller described his Prime Mover, a 10-inch steel sphere with quarter-inch copper tubing coils. These were filled with a material not named specifically, but which is said to have hardened under the influence of direct current and a magnetic field [electro-rheological fluid]. With such polarization, it might be guessed to act like a dielectric capacitor and as a diode...

'The Evolution of Matter' and 'The Evolution of Forces' on CD
Years ago, I had been told by several people, that the US government frequently removes books they deem dangerous or 'sensitive' from libraries. Some are replaced with sections removed or rewritten so as to 'contain' information that should not be available to the public despite the authors intent. A key example was during the Manhattan Project when the US was trying to finalize research into atomic bombs. They removed any books that dealt with the subject and two of them were by Dr. Gustave Le Bon since they dealt with both energy and matter including radioactivity. I had been looking for these two books for many years and fortunately stumbled across two copies for which I paid about $40.00 each. I couldn't put down the books once I started reading them. Such a wealth of original discoveries, many not known or remembered today. / Page 88 - Without the ether there could be neither gravity, nor light, nor electricity, nor heat, nor anything, in a word, of which we have knowledge. The universe would be silent and dead, or would reveal itself in a form which we cannot even foresee. If one could construct a glass chamber from which the ether were to be entirely eliminated, heat and light could not pass through it. It would be absolutely dark, and probably gravitation would no longer act on the bodies within it. They would then have lost their weight. / Page 96-97 - A material vortex may be formed by any fluid, liquid or gaseous, turning round an axis, and by the fact of its rotation it describes spirals. The study of these vortices has been the object of important researches by different scholars, notably by Bjerkness and Weyher. They have shown that by them can be produced all the attractions and repulsions recognized in electricity, the deviations of the magnetic needle by currents, etc. These vortices are produced by the rapid rotation of a central rod furnished with pallets, or, more simply, of a sphere. Round this sphere gaseous currents are established, dissymetrical with regard to its equatorial plane, and the result is the attraction or repulsion of bodies brought near to it, according to the position given to them. It is even possible, as Weyher has proved, to compel these bodies to turn round the sphere as do the satellites of a planet without touching it. / Page 149 - "The problem of sending a pencil of parallel Hertzian waves to a distance possesses more than a theoretical interest. It is allowable to say that its solution would change the course of our civilization by rendering war impossible. The first physicist who realizes this discovery will be able to avail himself of the presence of an enemy's ironclads gathered together in a harbour to blow them up in a few minutes, from a distance of several kilometres, simply by directing on them a sheaf of electric radiations. On reaching the metal wires with which these vessels are nowadays honeycombed, this will excite an atmosphere of sparks which will at once explode the shells and torpedoes stored in their holds. With the same reflector, giving a pencil of parallel radiations, it would not be much more difficult to cause the explosion of the stores of powder and shells contained in a fortress, or in the artillery sparks of an army corps, and finally the metal cartridges of the soldiers. Science, which at first rendered wars so deadly, would then at length have rendered them impossible, and the relations between nations would have to be established on new bases." - Source

$5 Alt Science MP3s to listen while working/driving/jogging
No time to sit back and watch videos? Here are 15 interesting presentations you can download for just $5 each and listen to while driving, working, jogging, etc. An easy way to learn some fascinating new things that you will find of use. Easy, cheap and simple, better than eBooks or Videos. Roughly 50MB per MP3. - Source

15 New Alternative Science DVDs & 15 MP3s
An assortment of alternative science videos that provide many insights and inside information from various experimenters. Also MP3s extracted from these DVDs that you can listen to while working or driving. Reference links for these lectures and workshops by Bill Beaty of Amateur Science on the Dark Side of Amateur Science, Peter Lindemann on the World of Free Energy, Norman Wootan on the History of the EV Gray motor, Dan Davidson on Shape Power and Gravity Wave Phenomena, Lee Crock on a Method for Stimulating Energy, Doug Konzen on the Konzen Pulse Motor, George Wiseman on the Water Torch and Jerry Decker on Aether, ZPE and Dielectric Nano Arrays. Your purchase of these products helps support KeelyNet, thanks! - Source to Buy