An anonymous reader writes"Young people who are overexposed to antibacterial soaps containing triclosan may suffer more allergies, and exposure to higher levels of Bisphenol A among adults may negatively influence the immune system, a new University of Michigan School of Public Health study suggests (abstract, full paper [PDF]). Triclosan is a chemical compound widely used in products such as antibacterial soaps, toothpaste, pens, diaper bags and medical devices. Bisphenol A is found in many plastics and, for example, as a protective lining in food cans. Both of these chemicals are in a class of environmental toxicants called endocrine-disrupting compounds, which are believed to negatively impact human health by mimicking or affecting hormones."
Monday, November 29, 2010
Causing Terror On the Cheap
jhigh writes"Bruce Schneier posts on his blog today about the value of terror with respect to cost-benefit for the terrorists. If you look at terror attacks in terms of what they cost the terrorists to implement, compared with what they cost the economy of the nation that was hit, the reward for terrorists is astronomical. Add in the insane costs of the security measures implemented afterward, particularly in America, and it's easy to see why the terrorists do what they do. Even when they're unsuccessful, they cost us billions in security countermeasures."
Methane-Powered Laptops? Materials Scientists Unveil Tiny, Low-Temperature Methane Fuel Cells
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — Making fuel cells practical and affordable will not happen overnight. It may, however, not take much longer.
Aging Reversed In Mice
Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 29, @04:56AM
from the pressing-the-reset-button dept.
from the pressing-the-reset-button dept.
Hugh Pickens writes"The Guardian reports that scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the aging process after experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical Schoolturned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies. 'What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilization of the aging process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected,' says Ronald DePinho, who led the study. The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening where each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called 'senescence.' Researchers bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter causing the mice to age prematurely and suffer ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. When the mice were given injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of aging raising hope among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the aging process."
Cambridge Computer IDs World's Most Boring Day
Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 29, @01:52AM
from the because-they-can dept.
smitty777 writes"Scientists hard at work at Cambridge used a computer algorithm and nearly 300 million historical facts to identify the most boring day in history. The winner? On April 11, 1954, absolutely nothing happened. That is, unless you count the most boring day in the world happening."
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 24, @09:19AM
from the watch-how-you-play dept.
from the watch-how-you-play dept.
mernilio writes"According to UPI: 'A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo to all sixth-grade parents, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Thursday. The memo said students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials 'to build weapons.'"
New Sleep Cycle Discovery Explains Why Fatty Diets During Pregnancy Make Kids Obese
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — The link between sleeping and obesity is drawn tighter as a new research published online in the FASEB Journalstudy shows that what your mother ate when she was pregnant may make you obese or overweight by altering the function of genes (epigenetic changes) that regulate circadian rhythm. In the report, pregnant primate females consuming a high-fat diet altered the function of fetal genes that regulate circadian rhythm (including appetite and food intake) during development. The offspring also had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
How Sunlight Shapes Daily Rhythms
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — Fresh insight into how biological clocks adjust to having less sunlight in the winter could help us better understand the impact of jet lag and shift work.
Spine Implant Helps Paralyzed People Exercise
An anonymous reader writes "British engineers have created the first muscle-stimulating microchip small enough that several can be implanted in a person's spinal canal. In addition to providing enough stimulation to, say, let users pedal a stationary bicycle, they could also be used for things like stimulating bladder muscles to help overcome incontinence. Their breakthrough is that the devices package everything into one tiny unit. Lasers cut tiny electrodes from platinum foil, which are then folded into a 3D shape that looks like the pages of a book. These pages, in turn, wrap around the nerve roots."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
High Alpha-Carotene Levels Associated With Longer Life
ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — High blood levels of the antioxidant alpha-carotene appear to be associated with a reduced risk of dying over a 14-year period, according to a report posted online November 22 that will be published in the March 28 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Oxford Scientists Say Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats
Velcroman1 writes"This again: scientists at Oxford University claim canines are smarter than felines. And the reason, according to the researchers, is that dogs are more social animals and therefore have bigger brains than the more solitary-inclined cats. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, charted the evolutionary history of various mammals' brains over 60 million years and found a link between the size of an animal's brain in relation to its body and how socially active it was."
Pumpkin Pie increases Male Sex Drive
Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 23, @03:05PM
from the we're-going-to-need-more-whipped-cream dept.
from the we're-going-to-need-more-whipped-cream dept.
Dr. Alan Hirsch, Director of Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Center, says the key to a man's heart, and other parts, is pumpkin pie. Out of the 40 odors tested in Hirsch's study, a mixture of lavender and pumpkin pie got the biggest rise out of men ages 18 to 64. That particular fragrance was found to increase penile blood flow by an average of 40%. "Maybe the odors acted to reduce anxiety. By reducing anxiety, it acted to remove inhibitions," said Hirsch.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Should Airplanes Look Like Birds?
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2010) — Airplanes do not look much like birds -- unless you were to imagine a really weird bird or a very strange plane -- but should they? This question is exactly what a pair of engineers in California and South Africa inadvertently answered recently when they set about re-thinking the ubiquitous tube-and-wings aircraft architecture from scratch in order to make airplanes more fuel efficient.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Emergency Broadcast System Coming To Cell Phones
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 17, @02:23PM
from the set-your-emergency-to-vibrate dept.
from the set-your-emergency-to-vibrate dept.
gambit3 writes"The Emergency Broadcast System that interrupts TV programming in times of crisis is jumping to a new format where it might be able to reach you better — on your cell phone. The communications company Alcatel-Lucent announced Tuesday that it's creating a Broadcast Message Center that will allow government agencies to send cell phone users specific information in the event of a local, state or national emergency. It will be similar to the TV alerts in that the text messages will be geographically targeted for areas where a tornado alert or major road closure, for example, is in effect."
How Video Games Stretch the Limits of Our Visual Attention
ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2010) — They are often accused of being distracting, but recent research has found that action packed video games like Halo and Call of Duty can enhance visual attention, the ability that allows us to focus on relevant visual information. This growing body of research, reviewed in WIREs Cognitive Science, suggests that action based games could be used to improve military training, educational approaches, and certain visual deficits.
Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Nov 18th 2010 6:04AM
Woz then moved on to the topic of Android saying that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world. Woz stressed that the iPhone, "Has very few weak points. There aren't any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading." However, he then conceded that, "Android phones have more features," and offer more choice for more people. Eventually, he thinks that Android quality, consistency, and user satisfaction will match iOS.
Steve closed the interview with a jab at Nokia calling it, "the brand from a previous generation" suggesting that the boys from Finland should introduce a new brand for a young consumer. Hmm, so we guess he'll be in line for the launch of the MeeGo-based N9 then?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Graphene Can Be Made With Table Sugar
Zothecula writes with this snippet from Gizmag:"There's no doubt that the discovery of graphene is one sweet breakthrough. The remarkable material offers everything from faster, cooler electronics and cheaper lithium-ion batteries to faster DNA sequencing and single-atom transistors. Researchers at Rice University have made graphene even sweeter by developing a way to make pristine sheets of the one-atom-thick form of carbon from plain table sugar and other carbon-based substances. In another plus, the one-step process takes place at temperatures low enough to make the wonder material easy to manufacture."
For 18 Minutes, 15% of the Internet Routed Through China
olsmeister writes"For 18 minutes this past April, 15% of the world's internet traffic was routed through servers in China. This includes traffic from both .gov and .mil US TLDs."The crazy thing is that this happened months ago, and nobody noticed. Hope you're encrypting your super-secret stuff.
Artificial Black Holes Made With Metamaterials: Design for Manmade Light Trapping Device Could Help Harvest Light for Solar Cells
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — While our direct knowledge of black holes in the universe is limited to what we can observe from thousands or millions of light years away, a team of Chinese physicists has proposed a simple way to design an artificial electromagnetic (EM) black hole in the laboratory.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Saving Our Data from Digital Decay
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — An old-school alternative to digital storage has a modern spin that could save us from future information loss as technology changes and today's state of the art devices become tomorrow's museum pieces.
Size of Hippocampus May Indicate Early Dementia
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — The size of the part of the brain known as the hippocampus may be linked to future dementia, reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
The World's Smallest Legible Font
Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 16, @03:25PM
from the because-he-can dept.
from the because-he-can dept.
hasanabbas1987 writes"From the article: 'Well 'technically' they aren't the smallest fonts in the world as if they were you wouldn't be able to read even a single letter, but, you should be able to read the entire paragraph in the picture given above... we did. A Computer science professor called Ken Perlin designed these tiny fonts and you can fit 500 reasonable words in a resolution of 320 x 240 space. There are at the moment the smallest legible fonts in the world.'"
New Species of Carnivorous Plant Discovered in Cambodia
ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — A new species of carnivorous pitcher plant has been found by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) in Cambodia's remote Cardamom Mountains. The discovery of Nepenthes holdenii is an indicator of both the stunning diversity and lack of research in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains.
Space-Time Cloak' to Conceal Events
ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2010) — The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, involves a new class of materials called metamaterials, which can be artificially engineered to distort light or sound waves. With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight line, but with metamaterials, scientists can exploit a wealth of additional flexibility to create undetectable blind spots. By deflecting certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, an image can be altered or made to look like it has disappeared.
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