Reading Arabic 'Hard For Brain'

From The BBC:

Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read.

The University of Haifa team say people use both sides of their brain when they begin reading a language - but when learning Arabic this is wasting effort.

The detail of Arabic characters means students should use only the left side of their brain because that side is better at distinguishing detail.

The findings from the study of 40 people are reported in Neuropsychology.

Read more ....

What Are BP, Apple, Amazon, And Others Spending On Google Advertising?

From Fast Company:

Google is typically very secretive about the specifics of its search revenue. I can't actually recall any other leak quite like this one, in which the budgets of specific companies are laid out--kudos to AdAge for snagging the internal document with such rarely seen information.

Read more ....

Miniature Auto Differential Helps Tiny Aerial Robots Stay Aloft

Engineers at Harvard University are developing minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people. (Credit: Pratheev S. Sreetharan/Harvard University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 3, 2010) — Microrobots could be used for search and rescue, agriculture, environmental monitoringEngineers at Harvard University have created a millionth-scale automobile differential to govern the flight of minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people.

Read more ....

Top 10 Working Animals

From Live Science:

On Labor Day, we celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of American workers. But humans aren't the only ones who toil: Animals do, too. People have used animal labor for thousands of years, and even today, our fuzzy (or feathery, or slippery) friends can go places and do things we can't.

-- Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Read more ....

Are Aliens Eavesdropping On Us? Not Likely

From Discovery News:

The seeming infinity of stars we see in deep exposures of the Milky Way belies the fact that our galaxy has been dead silent when it comes to detecting a radio or optical signal saying “hello” from any neighboring extraterrestrial civilization.

Maybe extraterrestrials are out there but they might not have gone to the effort and expense of building a powerful radio beam and aiming it at us. This may not be in their annual science budget. Or they simply may not want to make their presence know to the universe, as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking recently warned us not to do.

Read more ....

Archaeologists Uncover 7,000-Year-Old Oar

"The oar was well preserved because fine mud layers completely blocked oxygen from decaying it," said Yoon On-Shik, a researcher from Gimhae National Museum.

From Cosmos:

SEOUL: A rare neolithic period wooden boat oar, believed to date back about 7,000 years but still in good condition, has been unearthed by South Korean archaeologists.

The oar was discovered in mud land in Changnyeong, 240 kilometres southeast of Seoul, the Gimhae National Museum said.

"This is a very rare find, not only in South Korea but also in the world," said museum researcher Yoon On-Shik. "We have to check with Chinese artefacts to confirm whether it is the oldest watercraft ever found in the world."

Read more ....

At Google, Doodling Is Real Work

The first doodle signaled that Google's co-founders were attending Burning Man.
(Credit: Google)

From CNET:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. Who are they? Google's Doodlers, of course.

A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.

Read more ....

Craigslist Puts "Censored" Tag On Adult Services Section

Craigslist has deactivated its adult services section
(Credit: CBS News)

From CBS News:

Craigslist has deactivated its adult services section in the United States, leaving in its place the word "censored" in bold black and white.

It's still not clear whether this means that the classified ads site has taken down the section, something that 17 attorneys general recently demanded in an open letter. They said that Craigslist could not adequately block potentially illegal ads promoting prostitution and child trafficking.

Craigslist did not immediately return a request for comment.

Read more ....

Surveillance Tech Wirelessly Watches Over Older Parents

From The ABC News:

Telemonitoring: Video Cameras, Sensors Help Care for Aging Parents.

For 74-year-old Carol Brewer, welcoming a video camera into her living room wasn't easy.

She said she'd walk through her own home and wonder, "Am I dressed appropriately?"

But over time, she said, she grew accustomed to the little grey globe in the corner of the room and now credits it, in part, with helping her and her 78-year-old husband Ross, who is paralyzed from the waist down, continue to live in their Lafayette, Ind., home on their own.

Read more ....

'No Climate Link' To African Wars

Climate Shifts 'Not To Blame' For African Civil Wars -- The BBC

A study suggests climate change is not responsible for civil wars in Africa, challenging widely held assumptions.

Climate change is not responsible for civil wars in Africa, a study suggests.

It challenges previous assumptions that environmental disasters, such as drought and prolonged heat waves, had played a part in triggering unrest.

Instead, it says, traditional factors - such as poverty and social tensions - were often the main factors behind the outbreak of conflicts.

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the United States.

Read more ....

My Comment: I think it is to early to say that climate change is not causing some African wars, on the flip side, it is also too early to say that it is. But according to the PNAS .... they are confident that there is no link at all.

How To tell Emergency Room Patients That They're Dying.

From Slate:

On television, the emergency room patients beat the odds. Their hearts get shocked back to life. Their organs get sewn up. They awaken to a handsome young physician's dazzling smile.

In real life, one in 500 ER patients—200,000 a year—dies under the bright lights of the emergency rooms. Another 500,000—3 percent—die during hospital stays following emergency treatment. Countless patients learn, from a doctor they have never seen before and may never see again, that they have fatal diseases. Others get treated, aggressively and repeatedly, for dangerous flare-ups in conditions like heart failure or emphysema without anyone having the time or the skills to explain that the chronic disease they have been living with is now the chronic disease that they are slowly dying from, a scenario Atul Gawande explored in his recent New Yorker piece on what doctors can do when they can no longer cure.

Read more ....

Eternal Black Holes Are The Ultimate Cosmic Safes

There may be a way to create black holes that do not evaporate over time (Image: Copyright Denver Museum of Nature and Science)

From The New Scientist:

If you wanted to hide something away for all eternity, where could you put it? Black holes might seem like a safe bet, but Stephen Hawking famously calculated that they leak radiation, and most physicists now think that this radiation contains information about their contents. Now, there may be a way to make an "eternal" black hole that would act as the ultimate cosmic lockbox.

Read more ....

Taking Cues From Medical Tech, Big Oil Could Use Nanoparticles to Hunt for Leftover Crude in Spent Wells

Using Nanotech to Reach Every Drop of Oil Flcelloguy via Wikimedia

From Popular Science:

You can't throw a rock in the realm of biotech right now without hitting some scheme or another for tapping the unique properties of nanoparticles to hunt tumors, target drug delivery, or monitor the body internally for specific biomarkers. But a perhaps unlikely field of scientific exploration is also tapping these nano-biotechnology applications to search for the elusive hydrocarbons that are its lifeblood: the oil industry.

Read more ....

4 Big Losers From Apple's TV, iPod Announcement

From Popular Mechanics:

At today's music-themed keynote in San Francisco, Apple rolled out a lot of goodies as fanboys cheered each announcement. It was hard not to imagine entire industries turning red with fear. Apple is a powerful company, and their business decisions and product announcements have a tendency to radically reshape entire industries. Let's look at some of the biggest potential losers from today's announcements.

Read more ....

Can Nanotechnology Save Lives?

Polymer fronds a few thousand nanometers long wrap around even tinier plymer spheres. Felice C. Frankel

From The Smithsonian:

Harvard professor and scientific genius George Whitesides believes that nanotechnology will change medicine as we know it

Finding George Whitesides is often tricky even for George Whitesides. So he keeps an envelope in his jacket pocket. “I don’t actually know where I am in general until I look at it,” he says, “and then I find that I’m in Terre Haute, and then the question really is, ‘What’s next?’” During a recent stretch, the envelope revealed that he was in Boston, Abu Dhabi, Mumbai, Delhi, Basel, Geneva, Boston, Copenhagen, Boston, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles and Boston.

Read more ....

Inception: 'The Most Resilient Parasite Is An Idea Planted In The Unconscious Mind'

From The Telegraph:

The movie 'Inception' raises interesting questions about the brain’s susceptibility to new ideas during dreaming, says Roger Highfield.

Are you dreaming as you read this sentence? I’m sure you’re confident that you’re wide awake – but if you’ve seen Inception, the new blockbuster movie, you may harbour a nagging doubt.

Read more ....

5 Nanometer Computer Chips

From Future Pundit:

While Moore's Law for increasing computer chip transistor density won't go on for more than another 20 years it is still happening. Intel introduced 32 nanometer chips in 2009 and will introduce 22 nm chips in 2011. The New York Times reports on Rice University and Hewlett-Packard researchers who have developed 5 nanometer logic devices.

These chips store only 1,000 bits of data, but if the new technology fulfills the promise its inventors see, single chips that store as much as today’s highest capacity disk drives could be possible in five years. The new method involves filaments as thin as five nanometers in width — thinner than what the industry hopes to achieve by the end of the decade using standard techniques. The initial discovery was made by Jun Yao, a graduate researcher at Rice. Mr. Yao said he stumbled on the switch by accident.

Read more ....

How To Make Money Developing Mobile Apps

iPad, iPhone, iPod

From Tod.fm:

Do you want to make money developing applications for iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices? I went from almost zero experience to earning a regular income from my apps in a few short months. Let me show you how I did it.

This is a long article (6,217 words). I will go through some important aspects of writing successful apps, from finding and choosing the right ideas to develop, to a very important money saving tip. Although I’m writing from the perspective of an iOS developer, the general ideas apply to other platforms like Android. Whether you develop for Apple’s devices or not, you can still benefit from the article.

Read more ....

My Comment: A rather long article, but an interesting read.

This Is Weird

A game character from Love Plus is superimposed over a cellphone photo of Kanji Nagasawa, the owner of a Korean barbecue restaurant in Atami, Japan, holding a specialty dish created for the game's fans. Akiko Fujita

Only In Japan, Real Men Go To A Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends -- Wall Street Journal

Dating-Simulation Game a Last Resort For Honeymoon Town and Its Lonely Guests.

ATAMI, Japan—This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers—virtual sweethearts.

Since the marriage rate among Japan's shrinking population is falling and with many of the country's remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia's Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.

Read more ....

What Is Consciousness?

From Think Big:

What does it mean to be conscious? It's a question that philosophers and scientists have puzzled over perhaps since there have been philosophers and scientists.

In his book "Consciousness Explained," Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett calls human consciousness "just about the last surviving mystery," explaining that a mystery is something that people don't yet know how to think about. "We do not yet have all the answers to any of the questions of cosmology and particle physics, molecular genetics and evolutionary theory, but we do know how to think about them," writes Dennett. "With consciousness, however, we are still in a terrible muddle. Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist—and hope—that there will never be a demystification of consciousness."

Read more ....