Augmented Reality Goggles Make Marine Mechanics More Efficient

AR Goggles Seeing the world differently through augmented reality, and becoming more efficient to boot Steven Feiner and Steven Henderson

From Popular Science:

Jarheads work almost 50 percent faster wearing heads-up display goggles that replace technical manuals.

New augmented reality goggles are helping Marine mechanics perform maintenance on vehicles in about half the usual time. The futuristic headgear displays precise instructions on top of real-world settings, and shows how to complete certain tasks, such as wiring up an ignition coil.

Read more ....

My Comment: Something tells me that this headgear must cost a fortune.

Bumper Brains -- A Commentary

Credit: Andrew Lee/COSMOS

From Cosmos Magazine:

Science can help us stretch the limits of the human mind: but should we embrace brain enhancement, despite the risks?

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in San Diego, researcher Mark Tuszynski and his colleagues have been studying the use of genetically modified neurons in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. In 2001, the scientists implanted neurons carrying extra copies of a gene that codes for nerve growth factor, or NGF, into the brains of patients.

Read more ....

Mantis Shrimp Eyes Could Show Way To Better DVD And CD players

A mantis shrimp takes a peep from it's burrow in the Sulu sea.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Richard Ng)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 26, 2009) — The remarkable eyes of a marine crustacean could inspire the next generation of DVD and CD players, according to a new study from the University of Bristol published today in Nature Photonics.

The mantis shrimps in the study are found on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and have the most complex vision systems known to science. They can see in twelve colours (humans see in only three) and can distinguish between different forms of polarized light.

Read more ....

Investigator Checks Out Haunted House For Sale

A haunted house in Cuchillo, New Mexico, being sold on eBay. Credit: Benjamin Radford

From Live Science:

There is no shortage of people seeking to turn ghosts into gold and spooks into silver. Hundreds of amateur ghost-hunting groups across the country offer tours of local haunts, allegedly spirit-infested hotels, mansions, cemeteries, and so on.

Ghosts generate a lot of green.

One of the most enterprising ghost entrepreneurs is an artist named Josh Bond, who lives in the tiny New Mexican town of Cuchillo. Bond is offering a genuine haunted house for sale — on eBay.

Read more ....

New Processor Will Feature 100 Cores

From Gadget Lab:

Forget dual-core and quad-core processors: A semiconductor company promises to pack 100 cores into a processor that can be used in applications that require hefty computing punch, like video conferencing, wireless base stations and networking. By comparison, Intel’s latest chips are expected to have just eight cores.

“This is a general purpose chip that can run off-the-shelf programs almost unmodified,” says Anant Agarwal, chief technical officer of Tilera, the company that is making the 100-core chip. “And we can do that while offering at least four times the compute performance of an Intel Nehalem-Ex, while burning a third of the power as a Nehalem.”

The 100-core processor, fabricated using 40-nanometer technology, is expected to be available early next year.

Read more ....

Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips On How To Learn

CAN TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT?: Not knowing the answer can be a good thing.
Magdalena Tworkowska

From Scientific American:

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn.

For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning," advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.

Read more ....

Best & Worst Destinations Rated, 2009

Photograph by Andrew H. Brown, National Geographic Stock

From National Geographic:

Still waters in Norang Fjord, shown in an undated picture, reflect the "well-preserved Norwegian rural life" that helped the region take top honors in the sixth annual "Destinations Rated" scorecard compiled by the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations.

The center convened an independent panel of 437 experts in fields from historic preservation and sustainable tourism to travel writing and archaeology to assess 133 iconic places around the world.

Read more ....

End Of An Era For Early Websites

From BBC News:

A service that gave many people their first taste of building and owning a web page is set to close.

Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web.

The free site has since fallen out of fashion with users, who have switched to social networks.

Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn (£2.17bn) in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

Read more ....

Video: Army’s Robot-Man Walks Like the Real Thing

From The Danger Room:

The makers of the eerily lifelike robotic mule have a new creation: a machine that walks around like a real human being. Boston Dynamics is building the “Petman” prototype for the U.S. Army, to test out protective clothing.

Read more ....

LHC Reawakens, Sending Proton Beams Running At The Speed of Light

Recovery: Repairwork in an above-ground warehouse on the French-Swiss border Cern's damaged magnets underwent repairs at a nearby above-ground site. This man is working on the end of a dipole magnet, which contains six conductors, each of which carried 8,000 amps but were capable of conducting up to 13,000. In superconducting magnets like this one, the internal materials are kept at some of the lowest temperatures imaginable, decreasing resistance and allowing them to generate electricity with virtually no loss of heat. Courtesy Cern

From Popular Science:

Over the weekend, Cern ran particle beams through the Large Hadron Collider for the first time since it was shut down last September. After a helium leak caused magnets to overheat, operations at the LHC were suspended for cleanup and repairs. After tests on October 23 and 25, scientists hope to have the LHC running again in full by November.

Read more ....

What Dangers Lurk in WWII-Era Nuclear Dumps?

Marker for the first nuclear test at Los Alamos

From Discover Magazine:

Here’s one direct and obvious effect of the economic stimulus package passed in February: The toxic sites where scientists ushered in the nuclear age are getting cleaned up. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, a dump that contains refuse of the Manhattan Project and that was sealed up decades ago is finally being explored, thanks to $212 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But experts aren’t sure what they’ll find inside the dump. At the very least, there is probably a truck down there that was contaminated in 1945 at the Trinity test site, where the world’s first nuclear explosion seared the sky and melted the desert sand 200 miles south of here during World War II [The New York Times]. It may also contain explosive chemicals that could have become more dangerous over the years of burial.

Read more ....

My Comment: Long after the war has ended, it's left overs are still affecting us.

A Few Coffees A Day Keeps Liver Disease At Bay

Credit: iStockphoto

From Cosmos Magazine/AFP:

WASHINGTON DC: Researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute have found another good reason to go to the local espresso bar: several cups of coffee a day could halt the progression of liver disease.

Sufferers of chronic hepatitis C and advanced liver disease, who drank three or more cups of coffee per day, slashed their risk of the disease progressing by 53% compared to patients who drank no coffee, the study led by medical scientist Neal Freedman showed.

Read more ....

Controversial Study Suggests Vast Magma Pool Under Washington State

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON -- A vast pool of molten rock in the continental crust that underlies southwestern Washington state could supply magma to three active volcanoes in the Cascade Mountains -- Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier and Mount Adams -- according to a new study that's causing a stir among scientists.

The study, published Sunday in the magazine Nature Geoscience, concluded that the magma pool among the three mountains could be the "most widespread magma-bearing area of continental crust discovered so far."

Other scientists dismiss the existence of an underground vat of magma covering potentially hundreds of square miles as "farfetched" and "highly unlikely." Rather than magma heated to 1,300 to 1,400 degrees, some think it could be water.

Read more ....

Biofuel Displacing Food Crops May Have Bigger Carbon Impact Than Thought

MBL senior scientist Jerry Melillo and his colleagues have found that carbon emissions from land-use change caused by the displacement of food crops and pastures by a global biofuels program may be twice as much as emissions from lands directly devoted to biofuels production. (Credit: Chris Neill, MBL)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 25, 2009) — A report examining the impact of a global biofuels program on greenhouse gas emissions during the 21st century has found that carbon loss stemming from the displacement of food crops and pastures for biofuels crops may be twice as much as the CO2 emissions from land dedicated to biofuels production. The study, led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Jerry Melillo, also predicts that increased fertilizer use for biofuels production will cause nitrous oxide emissions (N2O) to become more important than carbon losses, in terms of warming potential, by the end of the century.

Read more ....

Fraud, Errors And Misconceptions In Medical Research

From Live Science:

Three years after being charged for fraud, misusing state funds and violating bioethics laws, disgraced South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk was convicted today on fraud charges, according to Reuters (The Washington Post said he was cleared of fraud but convicted on other charges).

Whichever, the court determined he has repented and so handed down a 2-year suspended sentence, according to media reports.

Read more ....

Yahoo Mail Outages Plague Some Users

From CNET:

Yahoo Mail users reported some problems Monday morning, with the service inaccessible for some and spotty for others.

Techcrunch noticed a Twitter spike in reports of problems with Yahoo Mail, and another company called Downrightnow also reported problems accessing the service over the last several hours. Several CNET employees reported that they were able to access their in-boxes, but mine is unavailable. Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo's home page appeared to be working fine.

Read more ....

Ten Years After Napster, Music Industry Still Faces the (Free) Music

From Epicenter:

A full decade after Napster taught the world to share, the music industry’s resistance to new business models continues to obstruct some of the very services that could preserve it, albeit in a smaller, more efficient form.

The future of music over the next ten years depends on finding the right mix between “free” and “paid,” luring fans away from file sharing networks by offering them services that are faster, easier, and more convenient without asking them to subsidize the industry’s return to CD era profits.

Read more ....

Does Economics Violate The Laws Of Physics?

ECONOMIC GROWTH: Does constant economic growth contradict the laws of physics?
© iStockphoto.com

From Scientific American:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

Read more ....

Comets Didn't Wipe Out Sabertooths, Early Americans?

North America's Great Lakes (pictured in an aerial shot on May 4, 2002) were created during glacial retreats and advances over millions of years—including the brief cold snap called the Younger Dryas, which occurred about 12,900 years ago. What caused the cold snap, though, has proved controversial: Recent research has weakened a theory that a giant comet caused the drop in temperatures and wiped out much of North America's wildlife, scientists said in October 2009. Photograph courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

From National Geographic:

A comet impact didn't set off a 1,300-year cold snap that wiped out most life in North America about 12,900 years ago, scientists say.

Though no one disputes the frigid period, more and more researchers have been unable to confirm a 2007 finding that says a collision triggered the change, known as the Younger Dryas.

Read more ....

S Korea Clone Scientist Convicted

Photo: Hwang Woo-suk was a hero in South Korea until the revelations of fraud.

From BBC:

A South Korean court has convicted the disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk of embezzlement over his stem cell research.

He was given a two-year sentence suspended for three years.

The 56-year-old scientist's work had raised hopes of finding cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's.

But his research was declared bogus in 2005, and he was put on trial the following year for embezzlement and accepting money under false pretences.

Hwang's research made him a South Korean hero until revelations that it was false shocked the nation.

Read more ....