July 2008 ~ Curious? Read

An Illustrated Guide to Every Stupid Cable You Need

We put up with too many cables. There are at least four different kinds of USB plugs, two kinds of FireWire and like a million different ways to connect something to TV or monitor. Modern gadget life can be kind of retarded in this way. Why not one kind of cable, or just a couple? I don't know. But until everyone gets on the same appendage-to-hole scheme, in the meantime, you can use this: an illustrated guide to pretty much every kind of cable you will see in current gadgets and what it's used for (unless, you know, Sony springs a new one on us overnight, which is honestly possible).

USB Type A Universal Serial Bus, the gold standard. The whole idea behind it is that this one interface will connect everything (except the stuff it doesn't), killing off the old guard, like parallel and serial ports. It moves data, and in the case of USB 2.0—which is pretty much the standard now—it does it faster, and with some extra specs for power. Clarification: USB 2.0 adds in the Battery Charging specification 1.0, which allows for dedicated charging and other power goodness. This particular connector is the type A variety. It plugs everything from your iPod to your digital camera into a computer, or whatever else. If you haven't seen this before, what are you reading this on?

USB Type B The USB Type B plug is basically a USB connector for peripherals—you've probably seen it jacked into a printer or scanner.

Mini USB It's a type of USB connector for smaller devices like cameras and phones—it takes up less real estate than a port for a Type A connection, obviously.

Micro USB Even smaller than the above Mini USB. Since it's, like, even smaller, we're starting to see it adopted by LG, Motorola and others—hopefully this is the last time they all switch power adapters on us, till wireless power makes adapters unnecessary. Update: Better pic via Mobile Burn.

IEEE 1394 (aka FireWire) An alternative to USB, Apple popularized the IEEE 1394 interface as FireWire (Sony called it i.LINK). You're probably most familiar with it on a digital camcorder (or an old school iPod), since it's really speedy for data transfers. You're looking at the four- and six-pin versions of FireWire 400. The six-pin version delivers power, the four-pin version (originally favored by Sony) doesn't.

FireWire 800 A revised, faster version of FireWire introduced in 2003, it doesn't use the same connectors as the original, making it rare for non pros—and an unnecessary pain the ass.

RJ45 The kind of plug you're used to seeing on the end of a Category 5, Cat5 enhanced or Cat6 (commonly known as Ethernet) cable, which is plugged into your router or computer's networking port. Cat5e is an update to Cat5 that supports faster Gigabit Ethernet. Cat6 is the next-gen standard that will handle speeds twice as fast as Cat5e, and has stricter rules about noise and crosstalk. Interestingly, the most recently approved IEEE 1394 spec (aka FireWire S800T) uses RJ45 connectors as well.

eSATA External Serial ATA is a branch off of the Serial ATA interface that connects your hard drive to your computer if it was put together in the last couple of years. As you can guess from the name, the difference is it's an external port, but it delivers the same insane data transfer speeds as the hookup to your hard drive. Faster than USB or FireWire, it's basically for external hard drives for quicker data transfers. You'll be seeing it more as more laptops include a port for it, usually one that can also be used with USB. There's even talk of bus-powered eSATA coming in the next year or two.

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface is another one of those "it'll connect everything except all the stuff it doesn't" deals, but for high-definition audio and video. It basically replaces DVI (see below) plus S-Video and all that other analog crap. Laptops, desktops and even high-end cameras and other gadgets are getting HDMI. Besides fat bandwidth, another benefit is control: The Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) profile already lets machines send commands to other products over HDMI—that or something like it could be very useful in the PC space, too.

DVI The digital successor to VGA, Digital Visual Interface is a video connection you'll most likely see dealing with computers or computer monitors, at least until they're all replaced by HDMI. Older HDTVs have DVI ports too. It can have a few different pin arrangements, depending on whether it carries a digital (DVI-D) or analog (DVI-A) signal or both (DVI-I, for integrated). The analog deal on some types is to make them easy to adapt for use with a VGA monitor, but it's less and less noteworthy. There's also a dual-link version that carries more data for high-res displays. These are helpfully depicted at Wikipedia.

Mini and Micro DVI are dumb, shrunken, Apple-only versions of DVI. Why dumb? Because they're essentially proprietary formats. HDMI will make them obsolete before long.

DisplayPort is the newest video interface on the block, and its plane of existence is basically in the computer-to-monitor realm only. It's not even close to mainstream yet, but Dell is backing it, among others, so you might wanna know it. It can carry a whole lot of data, but it's got DRM built into the spec, so it's a double-edged sword. Update: Swapped pic out with a better one.

That's enough cable to strangle most of California, but by all means feel free to add in your own cable trivia down in the comments.

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[via gizmodo]

It's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

He told BBC News that his prediction is driven by the efforts of consumer electronics firm which are making products with new interactive interfaces inspired by the world of gaming .

"You've got Panasonic showing forward facing video in the home entertainment environment. Instead of using a conventional remote control you hold up your hand and it recognises you have done that," he said.

"It also recognises your face and that you are you and it will display on your TV screen your menu. You can move your hand to move around and select what you want," he added.

"Sony and Canon and other video and photographic manufacturers are using face recognition that recognises your face in real time," he said. "And it recognises even when you smile."

"You even have emotive systems where you can wear a headset and control a computer by simply thinking and that's a device set to hit the market in September."

"This" Mr Prentice said, "is all about using computer power to do things smarter."

Greatly exaggerated

Naturally enough those in the business of making mice are not wholly in agreement that the end is nigh.

"The death of the mouse is greatly exaggerated," said Rory Dooley senior vice president and general manager of Logitech's control devices unit.

Microsoft has said touch screens will be all pervasive

Logitech is the world's biggest manufacturer of mice and keyboards and has sold more than 500 million mice over the last 20 years.

"This just proves how important a device the mouse is," said Mr Dooley.

But he also agreed that the number of ways people can interact with a computers were rising and that his own company was manufacturing many of them.

"People have been talking about convergence for years," he said. "Today's TV works as a computer and today's computer works as a TV.

"The devices we use have been modified for our changing lifestyles but it doesn't negate the value of the mouse," Mr Dooley explained.

Popularity

The mouse was invented by Dr Douglas Engelbart while working for the Stanford Research Institute. He never received any royalties for the invention partly because his patent ran out in 1987 before the PC revolution made the mouse indispensible.

With a 40 year anniversary planned for later in the year, Mr Dooley said Gartner's prediction for the mouse was too gloomy given that the developing world has still to get online.

The Wii has changed ideas about how we interact with computers

"The mouse will be even more popular than it is today as a result," he suggested.

"Bringing technology, education and information to these parts of the world will be done by accessing web browsers and doing that in the ways that we are familiar with today and that is using a mouse.

"There are around one billion people online but the world's population is over five billion," he said.

Gesturing

So just how ready are people to wave their hands in the air or make faces at devices with embedded video readers?

Gartner's Mr Prentice says millions are already doing it thanks to machines like Nintendo's Wii and smartphones like the iPhone.

"With the Wii you point and shake and it vibrates back at you so you have a two-way relationship there.

"The new generation of smart phones like the iPhone all now have tilting mechanisms or you can shake the device to do one or more things.

"Even the multi-touch interface is so much more powerful and flexible than in the past allowing you to zoom in, scroll quickly or contract images."

For those who lament the demise of such tried and tested pieces of hardware, Mr Prentice did concede that the keyboard was here to stay for the foreseeable future.

"For all its faults, the keyboard will remain the primary text input device," he said. "Nothing is easily going to replace it. But the idea of a keyboard with a mouse as a control interface is the paradigm that I am talking about breaking down."

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[via bbc]

When someone betrays us, how does the brain deal with it? A hormone associated with social attachment gives us clues.

The development of trust is an essential social tool, allowing people to form productive and meaningful relationships, both at a professional and personal level. Bonds of trust are also extremely fragile, however and a single act of betrayal—such as a marital affair—can instantly erase years of trustworthy behavior. The consequences of such breaches in confidence can be disastrous, and not only for a relationship. People who have been betrayed in the past will sometimes start avoiding future social interactions, which is a potential precursor to social phobia. In light of these connections, recent research has attempted to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying trust behavior. This is the goal of an exciting new study by neuroscientist Thomas Baumgartner and colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland that combines different disciplines (economics and neuroscience) and methodologies (neuroimaging and neuropharmacology) to investigate how the brain adapts to breaches of trust.

The Chemistry of Trust
To study social interactions, economists, and more recently neuroscientists, take advantage of a simple game played between two people called the “trust game.” (For more on greed and altruism, see this.) In a typical trust game, an investor (Player 1) is faced with a decision to keep a sum of money (say, $10) or share it with a trustee (Player 2). If shared, the investment is tripled ($30) and the trustee now faces the decision to repay the trust by sending back a larger amount of the initial investment (for example, $15 for each participant) or to defect and violate trust by keeping the money. In this game, the investor is therefore left with an important social dilemma: to trust or not to trust. Although it is more profitable to trust, doing so leaves the investor at risk of betrayal.

It has been hypothesized that oxytocin, a hormone recognized for its role in social attachment and facilitation of social interactions, is also important in the formation of trust. For instance, application of oxytocin to “investors” in experimental games increases their tendency to engage in social risks and trust someone else with their money (see this and this). The study by Baumgartner and his colleagues highlights the neural mechanisms through which oxytocin acts to facilitate trust behavior by investigating what happens in the brain when trust breaks down.

When Trust Is Broken
The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan 49 participants who were given either placebo or oxytocin via a nasal spray. Participants were instructed to act as investors during multiple rounds of a trust game with different trustees. They were also told that they would engage in a risk game (similar to the trust game in terms of financial risk, but played against a computer instead of another human being). In order to investigate the role of oxytocin following breaches of trust, the experiment was divided into a pre- and post-feedback phase. In between the two phases, participants received feedback information indicating that roughly 50 percent of their decisions (in both trust and risk games) had resulted in poor investments—that is, their trust had been breached (trust game) or their gamble did not pay off (risk game).

Participants who were given a placebo prior to playing the game decreased their rate of trust (that is, how much money they were willing to invest) after they discovered their trust had been violated. Participants who received oxytocin, however, continued to invest at similar rates regardless of whether or not their trusting behavior had been taken advantage of. These behavioral group differences were accompanied by differences in neural responses, as participants in the oxytocin group showed decreases in responses in the amygdala and caudate nucleus. The amygdala is a region of the brain involved in emotion and fear learning, and is rich in oxytocin receptors, whereas the caudate nucleus has been previously linked to reward-related responses and learning to trust . Thus, the authors hypothesized that oxytocin decreases both fear mechanisms associated with a potential aversion of betrayals (via the amygdala) and our reliance on positive feedback that can influence future decisions (via the caudate). This in turn facilitates the expression of trust even after breaches of trust have occurred. Notably, the behavioral and neural results observed were only apparent when participants played the trust game, but not the risk game, suggesting that oxytocin’s effects on trust are exclusive to interactions with real people.

A Science of Social Phobias?
The study demonstrates how oxytocin can facilitate social interactions after trust has been violated, by potentially lowering defense mechanisms associated with social risks and by overcoming negative feedback that is important for adapting behavior in the future. These intriguing results provide an important step in our understanding of mental disorders where deficits in social behavior are observed. Excessive fear of betrayal, for example, could serve as a precursor to social phobia, a disorder characterized by a disabling fear of social interactions. Over the long-term, this lack of social interaction may lead to serious problems in mental and physical well-being. Thus, to continue forming a bridge between basic and clinical research, future studies may focus on the effects of oxytocin during the sort of betrayals that more commonly occur in real life (such as being betrayed by a loved one or a business partner). It will also be interesting to examine how different genders respond to breaches in confidence following oxytocin administration.

Trust is an adaptive mechanism essential to building social relationships, and breaches of trust have a profound impact on social behavior and mental health. Understanding the balance between levels of oxytocin and appropriate levels of trust will be another important step in the future. Lower levels of oxytocin in some situations may certainly be adaptive, as a person will become more wary of possible harm. Higher levels of oxytocin, however, may also be necessary at times to allow an individual to “forgive and forget,” an imperative step in maintaining long-term relationships and mental well-being.

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[via sciam]

What goes around, comes around! Click the pic to read the article online

Civil War planes? Lemme know how that works out...

Must be one of those celebrity-without-makeup pictures...

And you wonder why...

Yeah, don't you hate those guys at DOE who do the NEPA's EIS on BNFL's AMWTP at INEEL after SRA protests?

"This is an artist's conception of the Mount Pleasant High School football field Friday after an electrical transformer blew, knocking out the stadium lights."

"We had no idea anyone was buried there"

"I wouldn't do it again" says the hero, "she's been a pain this week"

Please, if you've seen this man...

What are the odds of that?

Mistress of the universe... Now that sounds like a lot of work!

Here's the winner of a local dog look-alike contest... He does look exactly like his dog!

Ok, that's just mean

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[via odee]

Webcasting has officially made its way to the beer-and-football mainstream thanks to the National Football League, which has announced plans to stream live broadcasts of Sunday night football games this fall. These streams will be the first time the NFL's content is made widely available online, and the news means that the patented Madden "Boom!" will soon be coming to a laptop near you.

Both the NFL and its broadcast partner, NBC, will provide sites dedicated to the webcasts. In addition to the live TV feed that features commentary from Al Michaels and John Madden, both sites will feature a variety of extra content. These include highlight clips, views from multiple cameras, live statistics, and blog content. True fanatics may find the site worth visiting even if they have access to the TV broadcast.

The move is surprisingly forward-looking, given the NFL's historic anti-online stance when it comes to its games. As many Internet-using NFL fans know by now, the league keeps an extremely tight leash on even the tiniest of clips from its games. The organization even made headlines last March when it sent a series of DMCA takedown notices to Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer because she posted a clip on YouTube that showed the NFL's own copyright notice. In August, however, the NFL took its first baby steps into the big, bad online world by signing a deal with DIRECTV that would allow some satellite subscribers to watch games streamed live to their PCs.

Still, the DIRECTV deal was pretty restrictive, making this new offering even more noteworthy. "We are taking a big leap here," NFL Network's Steve Bornstein told the LA Times. "We are looking at this as a learning opportunity to see what applications work online. We are trying to be innovative and creative to make the viewing experience better for our fans."

NBC plans to sell advertising for the webcasts (presumably they will be free to the public) and the revenues from the ads will be shared with the NFL. Given the massive mainstream appeal of NFL games, the potential for this venture to rake in the advertising dollars is huge. This ain't no live broadcast of an artsy-fartsy documentary or the Jackass 2.5 movie; this is Reggie Bush trying to become the second coming of Barry Sanders.

The NFL and NBC plan to begin offering streams on September 4, a Thursday night game between the Washington Redskins and the New York Giants. After that, they will do regular broadcasts of Sunday night games.

If the league is successful, the move could open up the door to other mainstream TV content being broadcast live online, rather than delayed, as most network fare currently is. Live online House, here I come!

The NFL's press release, announcing the plan.

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[via arstechnica]

Rural highways are some of the deadliest in the country, studies have shown, so some researchers have created a new interactive map that drivers can use to see exactly how safe — or fatal — the roads are where they live.

Driving is one of the most dangerous activities people engage in; the lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident for U.S residents is 1-in-100. About 57 percent of highway deaths happen on rural roads, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

To help educate drivers on the hazards they might face on the road, researchers at the University of Minnesota's Center for Excellence in Rural Safety (CERS) have mapped out every fatality in the nation at www.saferoadmaps.org

The researchers plan to unveil the new Web site Monday at an annual conference on rural safety in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Drivers can enter their address and are then shown a map or satellite image of all the in their area.

"When drivers type in their most common routes, they're shocked how much blood is being shed on it," said Tom Horan, research director for CERS.

Web site users can narrow down the search to see the age of the driver, whether speeding or drinking was a factor in the accident, and if the driver was wearing a seatbelt.

"When it's a route you or your loved ones use, the need to buckle up, slow down and avoid distractions and drinking suddenly becomes much more personal and urgent," Horan said.

The new tool also lets users know what policies, such as strong seatbelt laws, are in place in the area.

Last year, CERS researchers tabulated that have the highest proportion of accidents occurring on rural roads.

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[via livescience]

An entrepreneur with $60 million in venture funding says he's found an endless source of cheap energy. Trouble is, it violates the laws of quantum physics.

Imagine being able to convert water into a boundless source of cheap energy. That's what BlackLight Power, a 25-employee firm in Cranbury, N.J., says it can do. The only problem: Most scientists say that company's technology violates the basic laws of physics.

Such skepticism doesn't daunt Dr. Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained physician and founder of BlackLight, who recently claimed that he has created a working fuel cell using the world's most pervasive element: the hydrogen found in water.

"This is no longer an academic argument," Mills, 50, insists. "It's proven technology, and we're going to commercialize it as quickly as possible."

For the first time in his company's 19 years of persistent trial and error, Mills says he has a market-ready product: a fuel cell that produces a chemical reaction to alter hydrogen atoms. The fuel cell releases heat that turns water into steam, which drives electric turbines.

The working models in his lab generate 50 kilowatts of electricity - enough to power six or seven houses. But these, Mills says, can be scaled to drive a large, electric power plant. The inventor claims this electricity will cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which compares to a national average of 8.9 cents.

While his business has been working on the "BlackLight Process" since its inception almost two decades ago, Mills developed the patented cocktail that enables the reaction - a solid fuel made of hydrogen and a sodium hydride catalyst - only a year ago. (He recently posted instructions on the company's Web site, blacklightpower.com). Now that the device is ready for commercialization, he says, BlackLight is negotiating with several utilities and architecture and engineering firms, but he won't disclose any partners' names until the deals are finalized.

Cheap power for tomorrow: 5 ventures

About 20 of the generators, which look like small copper water heaters turned on their sides, rest on lab benches inside the company's 55,000 square foot headquarters, once a Lockheed Martin facility. BlackLight's 11 scientists barely make a sound as they slip among the cavernous rooms, blue lab coats flapping behind them. The near-emptiness is eerie, but it's also portentous, says Mills: "Within the next two years, we're going to grow to 500, maybe 1,000 employees. This could satisfy a majority of the world's power needs, and the demand is going to be huge."

Such grandiose predictions invite comparison to cold fusion, a source of cheap and abundant energy that two scientists in Utah claimed to unearth in 1989, only to be immediately discredited by government and independent experts.

But while the cold-fusion scientists rushed to the media shortly after their "discovery," BlackLight hasn't courted press until it considered its invention commercially viable, and had lined up financing and respected board members. The business, Mills says, has attracted $60 million in funding from wealthy individuals, investment firms, and utilities such as Delaware's Conectiv, and it is no longer seeking money. BlackLight's board of directors reads like a Who's Who of finance and energy leaders, including Michael Jordan, former CEO of both Electronic Data Systems (EDS, Fortune 500) and Westinghouse; Neil Moskowitz, CFO of Credit Suisse First Boston; and Shelby Brewer, former CEO of ABB (ABB) Combustion Engineering Nuclear Power. BlackLight has all of the trappings of prestige, minus one hitch: Mills' theory is rejected by almost all of the scientific community.

"He's wrong in so many ways, it's beyond counting," says Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and former spokesman for the American Physics Society. Parks, 77, uses BlackLight as an example of phony physics in his 2002 book, Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. He says of Mills, "I don't know of a single scientist of any reputation who takes his claims seriously."

Mills' theory, which he expounds upon in his self-published 2,000 page book, The Grand Unified Theory of Classical Quantum Mechanics, rests on what he describes as his discovery of the hydrino - an altered version of hydrogen that has an energy level lower than its ground state, or the baseline energy level. These modified atoms, he argues, are the stuff that comprises dark matter, the invisible material that many scientists believe composes more than 90% of the universe. The mechanism that creates hydrinos - a chemical reaction whose released energy can allegedly be harnessed for power - is what Mills calls the BlackLight Process.

Why do scientists give Mills so much heat? By positing that a molecule's energy level can dip below its ground state, he rewrites the principles of quantum mechanics, which are widely viewed as incontrovertible. Perhaps the most widely-known critique of his theory was published by Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency, who argues that Mills' mathematics is flawed.

Jan Naudts, a physics professor at the University of Antwerp, says of Mills' work, "The few people who looked at it immediately found errors." He adds, however, "That's quite common with new theories. And his hasn't been investigated on a large scale."

Mills attributes the lack of engagement with his theory to the self-preserving nature of academia.

"As long as you're in the mainstream, you're fine. But if you're doing something paradigm-changing, you're proving that academics have been going down the wrong path," he says. Such self-interested politics, argues Mills, have led mainstream scientists to seek BlackLight's demise by blacklisting the company from publications and spreading disinformation on the Web.

Brewer, who has served on the firm's board since 1997, agrees that the fear of losing government grants has bred widespread skepticism towards the hydrino: "Hell hath no fury like a professor whose funding is cut off."

BlackLight does have a few fans among scientists. Gerrit Kroesen, a professor Eindhoven University in the Netherlands, wrote in an e-mail that he's attempted to replicate Mills' experiment and produced surprising, if not conclusive, results.

How to shrink your electric bill

In 2005, leaders at Greenpeace asked Randy Booker, chair of the physics department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, to fly to New Jersey to investigate BlackLight's claims. Booker says he was skeptical at the outset, but during his visit, "I found that they really were producing a great deal of excess energy with hydrogen," he says. "Some people may disagree with the theory, but the experiments work." Booker believes that commercialization could lead more independent laboratories to validate BlackLight's claims. He now performs paid research work for the company.

Critics such as Park say the high-profile CEOs on BlackLight's board are following each other over a cliff. He could be right: Both Jordan and Jim Lenehan - a BlackLight investor, senior consultant at hedge fund Cerberus, and former president of Johnson and Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500) - say they were led to the business by friends. But Lenehan, who does not sit on BlackLight's board, says, "It's no longer a high-risk part of my portfolio. It now has the ability to make a huge difference in the world of power."

Jordan, who earned science degrees from Yale and Princeton, expresses a similar sentiment.

"In the beginning, I thought it was worth putting money into because it was going to be a huge flop or a huge success." he says. "But when they made the breakthrough last fall, I saw the results."

That logic could explain BlackLight's success in garnering investors, despite its lack of scientific approval: While the academic community stresses theoretical backing for a new discovery, the business world is more concerned with practical applications.

Lenehan says, "My point of view is, just do it - generate power. In terms of influencing investors, it's about results."

Jordan agrees: "Theoretically, the bumble bee can't fly - but no one told the bumble bee. Now they're saying this can't be done, but it's happening."

While the company's followers already extol the high-energy, green, and thrifty virtues of BlackLight's technology, the rest of the world will have to wait for evidence until the fall of 2009, when the business promises to install its cells in power plants. Whether or not Mills' team meets that deadline will likely determine how BlackLight goes down in history - as a revolutionary startup or a flop 19-years in the making.

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[via cnn]

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced ['albin']) was a name intended for a Swedish child who was born in 1991.

Parents Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding had planned never legally to name their child as a protest against the naming law of Sweden, which reads, "First names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name."

Because the parents failed to register a name by the boy's fifth birthday, a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden, fined them 5,000 kronor (US$682 at the time). Responding to the fine, the parents submitted the 43-character name in May 1996, claiming that it was "a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation." The parents suggested the name be understood in the spirit of 'pataphysics. The court rejected the name and upheld the fine.

The parents then tried to change the spelling of the name to A (also pronounced ['albin']). Once again the court refused to approve of the name, citing a prohibition on one-letter naming.

In his first passport, the boy's name was given as "Icke namngivet gossebarn", meaning "unnamed little boy".

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[via wikipedia]

Dreams come to us in our most private moments: wrapped up in sheets, our public faces stored away for the night. The visions we see in sleep are supposed to be expressions of our individual psyches and imaginations, but most people’s dreams are based on themes that are very common. I thought my recurring dream of losing my teeth was scary and freakish until I went online to find thousands of others having the same dream, all trying to find out what the heck it could mean. Just because our dreams are shared, though, doesn’t mean they aren’t unique; the way we experience these common elements in dreaming life is what’s significant.

1. Being chased.
Candice Janco, author of the Bedside Dream Dictionary: 500 Dream Symbols and Their Meanings, describes this dream (the most common) as an indication of a felt threat in your waking life. This threat can take the form of a menacing person or a strong emotion with which you are having difficulty coping. Try to determine who or what is chasing you, where the dream takes place, and what your feelings are during the chase to understand what this dreams means to you.

2. Missing an important event because you are late.
This can indicate regret over a missed opportunity, inability to make a connection, or desire to pull oneself together. In Dream Power: How to Use Your Night Dreams to Change Your Life, Cynthia Richmond suggests asking questions of dreams in order to understand what this common symbol means to you. For example: What are you missing? Who is disappointed by the missed event? Is it only you or are there others involved?

3. Finding yourself at work or school naked.
Not surprisingly, Freud interpreted dreams about being naked as repressed sexual wishes. But the most important part of this dream is the feelings that are involved. You suddenly find yourself exposed, vulnerable, and awkward. What area of your life corresponds to that feeling? Figure this out by noting where you are, who notices you, what part of you is exposed, how people react to you, and how you yourself react to the situation.

4. Falling.
Falling indicates feelings of insecurity and lack of support. What situation have you “fallen into?” Who has “let you down?” Perhaps not surprisingly, this particular dream is most common among professional men and women. The Illustrated Dream Dictionary authors Russell Grant and Vicky Emptage note the close relationship between “falling” and “failing.” They also note that the dream’s meaning is probably not so clear-cut. Grant and Emptage ascribe dreams of falling to feelings of isolation, the sense of being without the support and affection that success cannot provide.

5. Flying.
Interestingly, Grant and Emptage interpret flying dreams as boasting about sexual powers. The important part of the dream is how you are flying; since the flying itself represents your ambitions, are you flying successfully, or trying and failing to fly as high as possible? From there, they make the leap to feelings of sexual inadequacy, but such feelings of low self-esteem could cover inadequacy of any kind, not just sexual.

6. Losing your teeth.
This theme has a number of potential meanings because of the very different significances teeth have to different people. Our teeth are representative of our appearance because our smiles are one of the first things people notice about us. Therefore, dreaming about losing your teeth can indicate insecurity about your appearance, or even fears of sexual impotence, as teeth are often used to flirt with a desired partner. We also use our teeth to bite, chew, and tear, so losing them can mean a loss of power or fear of getting old. Interestingly, this dream is most common among menopausal women, perhaps for all of the above reasons

7. Snakes.
Snakes have been a fear in dreams for quite some time. The ancient Egyptians used to make snakes out of clay and place them at the doors of their homes to frighten away nightmares, believing that snakes were bringers of bad dreams and that the clay snake would keep real ones away. Dreammoods, an online encyclopedia of dream meanings, reports that snakes signify some hidden threat. This makes sense, as most of us fear the “snake in the grass.” Like most other symbols, though, this one has many meanings that depend on context. Snakes shed their skin, so they may signify renewal and transformation. This may be a frightening experience, as most people are uncomfortable with change, or it may be very positive.

In all of our dreams, the true meanings emerge when we decide what they really mean to us. Though these dream symbols are shared among many, and we can determine general explanations for them, it is the context in which we place them that is significant. Read all you can about dream meanings to find information that may be relevant to you, but also ask questions about your dreams and how these symbols make you feel. Once you dig a little deeper, you may find answers and clarity.

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[via divinecaroline]

If you have granite countertops in your home, you might consider testing them for the amounts of radon gas they give off, experts say, due to the potential that those amounts are above levels considered safe.

But marble manufacturers say flat-out that, "Radiation in granite is not dangerous."

Radon is "a cancer-causing natural radioactive gas that you can’t see, smell or taste," the Environmental Protection Agency explains on its Web site. "Its presence in your home can pose a danger to your family's health. Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers. Radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in America, and claims about 20,000 lives annually." The popularity and demand for granite countertops has grown in the last decade, as have the types of granite available.

The amount of radon in the air is measured in "picoCuries per liter of air," or "pCi/L," and the EPA says 4 pCi/L is the level of radon exposure that requires someone to take action. The agency also says levels lower than that "still pose a risk" and "in many cases, may be reduced."According to The New York Times, 4 picocuries is "about the same risk for cancer as smoking a half a pack of cigarettes per day."

The newspaper also reports that, "Allegations that granite countertops may emit dangerous levels of radon and radiation have been raised periodically over the past decade, mostly by makers and distributors of competing countertop materials. The Marble Institute of America has said such claims are "ludicrous" because although granite is known to contain uranium and other radioactive materials like thorium and potassium, the amounts in countertops are not enough to pose a health threat.

Indeed, health physicists and radiation experts agree that most granite countertops emit radiation and radon at extremely low levels. They say these emissions are insignificant compared with so-called background radiation that is constantly raining down from outer space or seeping up from the earth's crust, not to mention emanating from manmade sources like X-rays, luminous watches and smoke detectors.But with increasing regularity in recent months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been receiving calls from radon inspectors as well as from concerned homeowners about granite countertops with radiation measurements several times above background levels."

On The Early Show Friday, Stanley Liebert, quality assurance director at CMT Laboratories in Clifton Park, N.Y. showed co-anchor Harry Smith a chunk of granite countertop emitting 4.4 pCi/L and said, "The probability is we're looking at a problem here, and the granite would actually be removed.

"In the lower levels," Liebert said, "we can usually improve (radon levels) by exchanging air" with systems that "bring fresh air in and exchange it with the air in the kitchen."He says some granite countertop colors are more potentially troublesome than others: "We're seeing higher results in reds, pinks, purples. However, you've got to test them all.

"The only way to know about radon levels from your granite countertops, and in your home in general, is to test for them, and the EPA says, "There are many kinds of low-cost "do-it-yourself" radon test kits you can get through the mail and in hardware stores and other retail outlets. If you prefer, or if you are buying or selling a home, you can hire a qualified tester to do the testing for you. You should first contact your state radon office about obtaining a list of qualified testers. You can also contact a private radon proficiency program for lists of privately certified radon professionals serving your area."

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[via aol]

AFTER the band was chosen and the napkins color-coordinated to match her shoes, Kacey Knauer, a bride-to-be, had another critical matter to address: her skin, and the skin of the nine women in her bridal party.

So Knauer, the 35-year-old owner of TempTrends, a staffing agency in New York, invited her nearest and dearest — including her mother and future mother-in-law — for a night out at the TriBeCa MedSpa, replete with mimosas and cupcakes. An aesthetician assessed each woman's face and devised a treatment plan — a quick chemical peel, say, or an injection of a wrinkle-filler. Or maybe, for a bridesmaid with age spots, a series of Fraxel laser treatments over months, allowing for recovery time.

For Knauer, who will be married in December, cosmetic interventions for herself and her entourage are as vital as the centerpieces or food. "If I were 25 or 26 and getting married, a bracelet, necklace or matching earrings would be fine," she said.

But at 35? "Giving them a bracelet isn't as special as spending an evening together. Plus, as you get older, everyone is more conscientious about their skin and appearance," she said. "Giving them something for themselves — as opposed to something that they'll never wear again — is more meaningful."

And let's not forget the pictures of college roommates-turned-bridesmaids quickly posted to Facebook. It is no longer sufficient to hire a hairstylist and makeup artist to be on hand the day of. Instead, bridal parties are indulging in dermal fillers and tooth-whitening months before the Big Day.

Some brides pick up the tab for their attendants, replacing the pillbox inscribed with the wedding date with a well-earned squirt between the eyes. In other cases, bridesmaids — who may quietly seethe about unflattering dresses — are surprisingly willing to pay for cosmetic enhancements. "Most women, when they come in here, they want it," said Camille Meyer, the owner of TriBeCa MedSpa. "They know they're aging."

For Karen Hohenstein, who held her party at the Tiffani Kim Institute Medical Wellness Spa in Chicago, convincing her friends was as smooth as a Botoxed forehead. "It wasn't me saying, 'Hey, we all could use a little something,' " she said. "It was, 'I want to do this,' and a couple of people said, 'I do, too.' "

But for every accommodating pal, there's another who feels going under the knife is beyond the duty of bridesmaid. Becky Lee, 39, a New York photographer, declined when a friend asked her — and five other attendants — to have their breasts enhanced. "We're all Asian and didn't have a whole lot of cleavage, and she found a doctor in L.A. who was willing to do four for the price of two," said Lee, who wore a push-up bra instead.

Not for nothing are some maids known as slaves of honor, but this kind of cajoling is a recent development on the wedding front.

Marie Scalogna-Watkinson, the founder of Spa Chicks on-the-Go, a mobile spa, said she receives five to seven calls a month from brides seeking Botox or Restylane for their bridesmaids. Five years ago, collective makeovers were unheard of, she said.

Dr. Fardad Forouzanpour, a cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills, California, said his business has increased more than 40 percent since he began offering what he calls Bridal Beauty Buffets in 2006.

In the last two years, bridal party tuneups have increased roughly 25 percent, estimated Susie Ellis, the president of SpaFinder.com, a site that lists 4,500 spas worldwide.

Just as timing matters when it comes to securing a hall, it's best that brides-to-be don't delay scheduling appointments, aestheticians and doctors say. "You wouldn't get a cut and color the week before," said Dr. Jessica Wu, a dermatologist in Beverly Hills who advises coming in three to six months before the big day. "We do a trial run of Botox about four months ahead of time. Then, two weeks before the wedding, we do that last treatment."

Meyer of TriBeCa MedSpa suggests that a bride contact her the minute the question is popped. "Brides really appreciate the fact that we put everything in a regimented schedule for them," she said. Since February 2007, she has staged more than 30 bridesmaid parties and has 18 planned so far this year. "If you have to do eight treatments, six weeks apart, that could take up to a year," she said.

Fraxel laser could also set you back $1,200 a session, which even without the economic downturn, amounts to quite a bit. These days, Robyn Bomar, an event planner in Destin, Florida, overhears brides doing cost-benefit analyses. "They will never choose Botox over a great dress, but they will say 'Maybe I'll have a buffet over a sit-down at the rehearsal dinner,' " she said. Or: "I'll spend the money on Botox rather than lunch.' "

In June, Jennifer Peterson, 31, a production director in Los Angeles, and eight friends indulged in Botox, Restylane, massages, facials and microdermabrasion at Infinity MedSpa in Valencia, California Her friends chipped in for her treatments, but she is considering giving them each a $100 certificate to the spa — a gift she is sure they will appreciate. "Everybody does Botox out here," she said.

The beauty procedure thank-you gift is becoming more common, said Bomar, who coordinates about three parties a month. Time was when the bride arranged for everyone to get manicures at the same time, followed by lunch. But today? "It's much more likely that she is footing the bill for eyelash extensions, airbrush tanning and a bevy of other cosmetic procedures," she said.

Five years ago, plastic surgeons, dermatologists and tooth-whitening centers "were virtually absent" from bridal expos, said William Heaton III, the president of the Great Bridal Expo Group, which produces events in 40 cities nationwide. "Now we're getting a half dozen phone calls a week."

This year alone, American Laser Centers, a chain, has participated in 830 bridal shows, said Amanda McInnes, a marketing director.

Two weeks ago, Health Travel Guides, a medical tourism company, exhibited at the Dallas Bridal Show for the first time. "We received 30 requests for quotes among the bridal show attendees — mostly for plastic surgery such as liposuction and breast augmentation," said Sandra Miller, the company's chief marketing officer. "But also many for cosmetic dentistry and inquiries for providing quotes for bachelorette getaways that will feature beauty treatments."

A bride's request that you whiten your grayish teeth can strain a relationship. Samantha Goldberg, a wedding planner in Chester, New Jersey, recalled a bride who asked her attendants to get professionally spray-tanned for a Hawaiian-theme reception.

Alas, two women were claustrophobic and couldn't bear standing in a tanning capsule. "They asked the bride if they could use regular tanning cream from a salon," Goldberg said. The bride refused; she wanted everyone to be the same shade. The women ultimately declined to be bridesmaids. "Friendships of 20-plus years gone over a spray tan?" Goldberg said. "Sad!"

And how does a bride break it to a mother-in-law that she'd love her crow's feet to be frozen into submission? Very delicately.

"My mother is in her 60s. She's been talking about it for so long, so I said 'Let's do it,' " said Stacey Berlin, 29, a marketing consultant, who is having a party at Aquamedica Day Spa in Long Branch, New Jersey

It was trickier with her future mother-in-law. "To her," Berlin said, "I said it as a joke: 'You should do Botox for the wedding!' She giggled, and then I said, 'I'm serious. It's exactly what you need to freshen up.' At first she kind of laughed it off, but the more we talked about it and I told her my mom was going to do it, she said 'O.K.' "

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[via iht]

From UGLY to HOT in 60 Seconds

This Dove Ad is a little old. But if you haven't seen it, its worth watching.

Girls of all ages are starving themselves to get that perfect super model body. When in reality not even the glamorous models we see on billboards are real. Every ad photo you see has been altered by powerful software like Photoshop. Trim here, widen there, stretch this, cut that, lighting and shading turn and average woman into a goddess.

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Most people aren't Warriors, and I'm fine with it. Most people do things that don't make sense, and I'm fine with it. I've learned to accept the non-sense that fills this world. (Part of being a Warrior is accepting that most other people are not Warriors, and accepting them.) Still, the point is that people do things that don't make sense. They whine, complain, and cry over problems they can easily change. They get depressed over problems they cause for themselves.

For example, lazy people often whine that they don't make more money. Selfish people complain that they don't have more friends. Many people sabotage all their romantic relationships and then complain that they don't have a lover.

Granted, sometimes when something bad happens to a person it's purely bad luck. For example, you could be sitting in your well-built home while reading the newspaper and a tornado could tear your home up.

However, usually when you don't like what's happening in your life, it's your own damn fault. It's your fault if you're fat, lazy, uneducated, lonely, etc.

In the following, I list 71 things that you can do to be more successful. You choose to do them or not. If you choose not to do these things, then you have no right to complain about your problems; your problems are your fault!

1. Stop watching television.

2. Stop eating fast food.

3. Stop eating pizza and fried foods.

4. Stop driving places that you could easily walk to.

5. Read at least 1 book a month.

6. Take classes in what interests you or your vocation.

7. Work enough to support yourself, and if needed get a new job or second job to make enough to support yourself. Never stick with a job that doesn't pay enough to support yourself no matter how much you work.

8. Pay off your debts and don't go in debt. You can pay off your debts if you avoid needless expenses, such as cable, overpriced clothes, impractical decorations, unhealthy snacks, jewelry, etcetera.

9. Don't buy a car on finance, and don't buy an expensive car if a cheaper one that works is available.

10. Wake up early, and get all your work done as quickly as possible. That includes household chores, as well as your employment.

11. Drink alcohol less or quit.

12. Do drugs less or quit.

13. Don't smoke cigarettes.

14. Don't eat foods with high fructose corn syrup.

15. Don't drink soda.

16. Don't eat sugary foods at all.

17. Don't drink more than 1 glass of juice per day.

18. Stand up straight and have good posture.

19. Look people in the eyes when you talk to them.

20. Smile.

21. Be polite.

22. Keep your promises.

23. Wear a watch, if you can afford it.

24. Eat breakfast.

25. If you eat cereal at any time, choose your cereal based on healthiness not tastiness.

26. Exercise at least 3 days per week.

27. Walk often.

28. Always write with correct spelling and grammar.

29. Never speak worse about a person behind their back than you do to their face. (Feel free to say nicer things about a person behind their back than to their face.)

30. Don't gossip and don't have a big mouth.

31. Never judge other people harsher than you judge yourself.

32. Make New Years resolutions, but make one every day instead of every year.

33. Volunteer.

34. Forgive, but never forget.

35. Don't have skeletons in your closet.

36. Keep as few secrets as reasonably possible.

37. Despite the rule before this one, keep your friends' secrets.

38. Politely tell people that you will not betray your friends' trust, when you are asked about their secrets and such.

39. Volunteering (i.e. activism) is more important than voting. If you can do both, good for you. If you only have time for one, volunteer instead of voting. It makes more of a difference.

40. Privately question your own values.

41. Avoid questioning other people's values, especially in public.

42. Listen more than you talk.

43. Use a journal to count how many calories you consume per day.

44. Use a journal to count how many calories you burn per day.

45. If you want to lose weight, burn slightly more than you consume. If you want to gain weight, consume slightly more than you burn. If you are happy with your weight, try to burn the same amount as you consume.

46. Weigh yourself daily at the same time(s).

47. Write your daily weight down in a journal.

48. Never allow the police to search you, your car, or your belongings if you do not have something to hide.

49. Never tell other people that you think they or something they are doing is immoral or sinful.

50. Keep your moral values and religion to yourself. Use them to direct your own actions.

51. Ask people how they are often and listen to their answer.

52. Laugh at other people's jokes, but not your own.

53. Shower at least once per day.

54. Wash your hands, even if you aren't an employee.

55. Take care of the elderly, which includes spending time with them and talking to them.

56. Avoid going places where you need to be waited on.

57. Wait on yourself wherever possible.

58. Make your friends look good.

59. Avoid lying.

60. Don't pretend to be better than you are. Don't pretend to be more successful, popular, etcetera.

61. Treat other people as if they are better than they are. Treat them as if they are more successful, popular, etcetera.

62. Don't brag about your talents. Instead, surprise people with them when they just happen to be called upon.

63. Sit up straight.

64. Keep your house clean.

65. If you have either of them, keep your car and office clean.

66. Stretch daily. (I do Yoga most mornings.)

67. Dance.

68. Take dancing lessons if you could use improvement.

69. Ask other people (e.g. your friends, your co-workers, your boss, etc.) what their favorite book is, and read it.

70. Ask their favorite song or band, and listen to it.

71. Ask their favorite movie, and watch it.

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[via hyd-masti]

A list of useful things just about anyone could do with a jar of salt, in just one afternoon. You don't even need a pair of gloves.

My apologies to all the slug lovers out there for the slug salt maze.

Okay, so you've got a day off work and decide to do a bit of work around the house. The only drawback is that all you have is jar of salt. These are some of the chores you could still get on with, as salt has many (legal) uses in and around the house.

1. Collect your kids' smelly plastic juice bottles, stale flasks and other closed containers and soak them with salty water. Leave this overnight and come back tomorrow to fresher smelling bottles and containers.

2. Next, put some salt in your greasy baking pans and wipe down with paper. This makes them easier to wash.

3. As you're still in the kitchen you may as well add a pinch of salt to your milk to keep it fresher for longer.

4. Your jar of salt will keep you busy today as you'll see, so for a quick lunch, if you're cooking rice or pasta, add a bit of salt to the water, as salt makes it boil at a higher temperature, thus decreasing the cooking time (and saving on energy)

5. With lunch over, collect your faded washable curtains and rugs and dump them in the washing machine with a splash of salt added in your soap chamber. They'll come out brightened and newer looking, but make sure that they're washable before you do this, as the salt (nor me) can take responsibility for any shrinkage.

6. Once those are out of the washing machine, get all the young ones' (and the older ones') perspiration-stained garments, it's time to remove the offending stains. Dissolve 5 tablespoons of salt in one litre of hot water. Sponge the garments with the solution and watch the stains disappear.

7. Collect all your flower vases, and soak them in a strong solution of water and salt. Rub down with a sponge after a soak. If you can't reach down to the bottom of the vase, just dump in a handful of raw rice at the end of a long soak (rice works as a scrubber) get something to place on the top of the vase and shake vigorously. Or if you have access to an old bottle brush you can use this instead.

8. Work on your watermarks left on tables and other wooden surfaces by making a paste with water and salt. Work into the stain with a soft cloth until it's completely gone.

9. Go outside and place some salt on the around your doors and windows frames to stop ants and other insects entering the house. They won't cross the salt barrier. Remember to replace after heavy rain.

10. After all your hard work, you deserve a personal treat, so give your teeth a cheap instant whitening (and gum treatment). Grind down the salt as much as you can (maybe with a rolling pin on a cutting board). Add one part salt to two parts baking soda, make a paste and brush your teeth with it. You'll see a marked difference in colour. This is for whitening, removing plaque and healthy gums.

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[via gomestic]

A new “intelligent” lithium-ion battery is supposed to prevent explosions and fire accidents by sending constant updates on its own health. Developed by researchers at NTT DoCoMo, the battery uses a 8-bit microcomputer “brain” to monitor its condition and relay the information to the cellphone user.

The pack then notifies you when it's time to recharge, when it needs repairs or even when it's time for a replacement. Information is stored on the battery itself, so that even if you change your phone, you can still view your pack's previously recorded data.

NTT DoCoMo says that keeping close track of deterioration in the battery pack is a great way to prevent the Li-ions from catching fire or exploding—a problem that has only increased as the need for more portable power continues to swell. The new brand of intelligent batteries will be found on phone models coming out next year.

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[via gizmodo]

First off, let's set the record straight: Pain is normal. About 75 million U.S. residents endure chronic or recurrent pain. Migraines plague 25 million of us. One in six suffer arthritis.

The global pain industry peddles more than $50 billion in drugs a year. Yet for chronic pain sufferers, over-the-counter pills are typically little help, while morphine and other narcotics can be addictive sedatives.

An overview study published last month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine looked at multiple studies of pain and found "researchers don't yet know how to determine which [treatment] is best for individual patients." From studies of drugs to surgeries and alternative medicines, "We have found that there are huge gaps in our knowledge base," said Dr. Matthew J. Bair, assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

So what is pain and why do so many suffer so long?

Pain is felt when electrical signals are sent from nerve endings to your brain, which in turn can release painkillers called endorphins and generate reactions that range from instant and physical to long-term and emotional. Beyond that, scientific understanding gets painfully fuzzy. Here's what's known:

1. Scientist don't understand pain

When you're in pain, you know it. But if scientists could fully grasp how pain works and why, they might be able to help you more. The American Academy of Pain Medicine defines pain as "an unpleasant sensation and emotional response to that sensation." Some pain is the result of an obvious injury. Other times, it is caused by damaged nerves that are not so easy to pinpoint. "Pain is complex and defies our ability to establish a clear definition," says Kathryn Weiner, director of the American Academy of Pain Management. "Pain is far more than neural transmission and sensory transduction. Pain is a complex mixture of emotions, culture, experience, spirit and sensation."

2. Chronic pain shrinks brains

If you have chronic pain, you know how demoralizing and debilitating it can be, physically and mentally. It can prevent you from doing things and make you irritable for reasons nobody else understands. But that's only half the story. People with chronic backaches have brains as much as 11 percent smaller than those of non-sufferers, scientists reported in 2004. They don't know why. "It is possible it's just the stress of having to live with the condition," said study leader A. Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University. "The neurons become overactive or tired of the activity."

3. Migraines and sex go together

It may not eliminate the phrase "Not tonight, honey ..." but a 2006 study found that migraine sufferers had levels of sexual desire 20 percent higher than those suffering from tension headaches. The finding suggests sexual desire and migraines might be influenced by the same brain chemical, and getting a better handle on the link could lead to better treatments, at least for the pain portion of the equation.

4. Women feel more pain

Any man who has watched a woman having a baby without using drugs would swear that women can tolerate anything. But the truth is, guys, it hurts more than you can imagine. Women have more nerve receptors than men. As an example, women have 34 nerve fibers per square centimeter of facial skin, while men average just 17. And in a 2005 study, women were found to report more pain throughout their lifetimes and, compared to men, they feel pain in more areas of their body and for longer durations.

5. Some animals don't feel our pain

Animal research could offer clues to eventually relieve human suffering. Take the naked mole rat, a hairless and nearly blind subterranean creature. A study this year found it feels neither the pain of acid nor the sting of chili peppers. If researchers can figure out why, they might be on the road to new sorts of painkilling therapies for humans. In 2006, scientists found a pathway for the transmission of chronic pain in rats that they hope will translate into better understanding of human chronic pain. Lobsters feel no pain, even when boiled, scientists said in a 2005 report that is just one more salvo in a long-running debate.

What you can do

Meanwhile, exercise is a useful remedy for many types of chronic pain.

In an Italian study detailed in the May issue of the journal Cephalalgia, office workers did relaxation and posture exercises every two to three hours. Over an eight-month period, they kept diaries, which were then compared to those of a control group that did not change habits. In the end, the group that exercised reported that headaches and neck and shoulder pain decreased by more than 40 per cent, and their use of painkillers was cut in half.

"Physical activity is actually a natural pain reliever for most people suffering from arthritis," concludes another study published in the Arthritis Care and Research journal in April. "Even minor lifestyle changes like taking a 10-minute walk three times a day can reduce the impact of arthritis on a person's daily activities and help to prevent developing more painful arthritis," said Dr. Patience White, chief public health officer of the Arthritis Foundation. "Physical activity can actually reduce pain naturally and decrease dependence on pain medications."

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If you dont know who Randy Pausch is, please watch this video. It will change your life forever.

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor whose final lecture inspired millions, died early today in Virginia of pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Pausch, 47, who turned the lecture into a book, said that no one would have been interested in his words of wisdom were he not a man in his 40s with a terminal illness, leaving behind a wife and three young children.

According to Dr. Pausch's Web site, a biopsy last week revealed that the cancer had progressed further than expected, based on recent PETscans.

"Since last week, Randy has also taken a step down and is much sicker than he had been," the Web site said. "He's now enrolled in hospice. He's no longer able to post here so I'm a friend posting on his behalf because we know that many folks are watching this space for updates."

Last fall, Dr. Pausch delivered the lecture at CMU, which still posts it on its Web site. The lecture has attracted more than six million viewers.

In the year preceding the lecture, he had gone through rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, but refused to give in to morbidity or self-pity. Instead of focusing on the cancer, he talked about how to fulfill childhood dreams and the lessons he learned on his life's journey.

In his 10 years at CMU, he helped found the Entertainment Technology Center, established an annual virtual reality contest and helped start the Alice program, an animation-based curriculum for teaching high school and college students.

After the lecture, he moved to Chesapeake, Va., to spend his remaining time with his wife, children and family.

Steve Seabolt, a vice president at video-game maker Electronic Arts and one of Dr. Pausch's best friends, was with him when he died at 4 a.m. today. Dr. Pausch was lucid until near the end, he said, and even went up and down the steps a couple times at home yesterday, "although he had minimal energy."

Dr. Pausch had stopped taking chemotherapy in recent weeks but was investigating a possible vaccine therapy up until the end of his life, Mr. Seabolt said.

"Randy had an enormous and lasting impact on Carnegie Mellon," said university President Jared L. Cohon. "He was a brilliant researcher and gifted teacher. His love of teaching, his sense of fun and his brilliance came together in the Alice project, which teaches students computer programming while enabling them to do something fun -- making animated movies and games. Carnegie Mellon -- and the world -- are better places for having had Randy Pausch in them."

With the help of Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow, Dr. Pausch wrote a book, "The Last Lecture," which was published earlier this year and has now been translated into 30 languages. He elaborated on his lecture and emphasized the value he placed on hard work and learning from criticism. His words were intended as a legacy for his young children.

In May, Dr. Pausch spoke at the Carnegie Mellon University commencement. He said a friend recently told him he was "beating the [Grim] Reaper" because it's now been nine months since his doctor told him he would die in six.

"But we don't beat the Reaper by living longer. We beat the Reaper by living well," said Dr. Pausch, who urged the graduates to find and pursue their passion. He put an exclamation point at the end of his remarks by kissing his wife, Jai, and carrying her off stage.

Mr. Zaslow said the commencement was the last time he saw Dr. Pausch. He recalled that Dr. Pausch was weak enough from his cancer that he had to lie down on a couch before and after his appearance, but as he often did, he mustered his energy for the public appearance, "and he was excited and happy."

Mr. Zaslow said he had become obsessed with Googling Dr. Pausch's name each day on the Internet to see how many new Web sites were devoted to him. In an e-mail exchange they had about a month ago, Dr. Pausch "said to me, 'Will you stop Googling me and go hug your kids?' So I did."

In addition to his wife, Dr. Pausch is survived by his children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe. Also surviving are his mother, Virginia Pausch of Columbia, Md., and a sister, Tamara Mason of Lynchburg, Va. The family plans a private burial in Virginia. A campus memorial service is being planned. Details will be announced at a later date. In September, Carnegie Mellon announced a plan to honor Dr. Pausch's memory and his work as "a tireless advocate and enabler of collaboration between artistic and technical faculty members." CMU is to build the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge, which will connect the Gates Center for Computer Science, now under construction, with an adjacent arts building.

The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, Calif. 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund, which primarily supports the university's continued work on the Alice project.

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The broken barrel of a maple bat whacked fan Susan Rhodes, 50, in the head as she sat four rows behind the visitors' dugout at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on April 25. She didn't see it coming. She suffered a concussion and the blow fractured her jaw in two places.

Broken bats are commonplace in baseball games, but the Rhodes incident along with similar injuries this year to a hitting coach and an umpire, are making people wonder: Has America's pastime suddenly become a lot more dangerous and is the new trend in bat wood to blame?

Babe Ruth's hickory bats are long gone, and now it seems the decades-long tradition of ash bats might also be waning. Thanks to Barry Bonds' affinity for maple bats, more and more players are using maple and an argument can be made that they are more likely to break.

"It's really dangerous," Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on June 26, referring to the prevalence of breaking bats. Just the week before, he was watching the ball when a piece of second baseman Kelly Johnson's bat flew over his head. Like Rhodes, Cox never even saw it.

Last month, players, teams and league officials began meeting to decide what might be done to solve the broken bat problem. Scientists and engineers have also considered the problem — they know that differences between maple bats and the more traditional ash bats, as well as the ways that a bat is shaped and hit, can influence how and whether it breaks.

Bat evolution

The maple vs. ash controversy didn't exist in the early days of baseball: When Babe Ruth was hitting homers, he — and every other player — used a hickory bat.

"Hickory was a common wood, and it's still known today as a good strong wood," said Lloyd Smith, a mechanical and materials engineer from Washington State University. "But it is very heavy ... that was one of the criticisms, was that it was a heavy bat."

The desire for a lighter-weight bat (for faster swinging and higher batting averages) eventually led to the adoption of ash as the wood of choice for major leaguers. And it stayed the preferred type of wood up until a few years ago.

But because it is lighter, ash is not as strong hickory.

"The problem with most wood is that strength is proportional to weight, so if you want a really strong wood, you can do that, but you end up getting an increase in weight," Smith explained. "And if you want a really light wood, you can do that, but you pay for it because your strength goes down. So there's this kind of optimum balance."

In the 1990s, maple started to make the rounds as an alternative. It was appealing because it was stronger (which is better for hitting longer distances) and less prone to flaking than ash, so players didn't go through bats as quickly. Most players still stuck to their ash bats, though — that is, until Barry Bonds got the single-season home run record in 2001, using a maple bat.

Now, just a few years later, maple is no longer on the fringe.

"For 50 years, northern white ash was the wood. Today half of the bats in the major leagues are made out of maple. So it was a very dramatic shift," Smith told LiveScience.

Flaking, cracking and breaking

Maple and ash tend to break in different ways. While ash tends to crack and flake off in smaller chunks, maple tends to fracture in bigger, jagged shards.

Smith attributes some of the difference in breaking patterns to the structure of the pores, which transport moisture inside the trees before they become bats.

Ash is what is called ring porous. "If you were to kind of climb inside of the wood, what you find is, in the grain areas, there's a whole bunch of pores that carry moisture through the tree. And if you go in the region of the growth ring where you don't have the grain, it's more or less solid fiber," Smith said.

Because the voids in the wood are concentrated in a few areas, the growth planes have weak regions. When the ash bat hits a ball, "these cell walls would collapse, and you'd get what they call 'flaking' — the barrel would just kind of start to soften, and you'd get little layers that flake off," Smith said.

Maple on the other hand is "ring diffuse," meaning its pores are more evenly distributed throughout the wood.

"So a characteristic of maple that exists today is the barrel is very durable; you don't get these flaking kinds of failures in maple bats that you did in the ash bats," Smith said.

Cracking styles

Cracks form in both types of wood as a bat is used to hit ball after ball after ball. But the same pore structure that makes ash prone to flaking also channels cracks along the length of the bat, meaning the crack has a long way to grow before it can break the bat in two. And batters tend to notice the cracks or decide the bat has too much flaking and switch to a new bat before the old bat completely breaks.

Because of maple's diffuse pores, cracks in the wood can grow in any direction, making it easier for them to grow out toward the edge of the barrel, causing a large chunk of it to break off entirely. And since maple doesn't flake, serving as a warning to a player that his bat is cracking, "you're perhaps more likely to have bat particles flying through the infield," Smith said.

How the bat is cut out of the wood when it is made can affect its susceptibility to breakage as well. A bat is strongest when the grain lines up with the length of the bat. The grain of ash is easier to see and straighter than the grain of maple, which Smith says could be a factor in how and how often maple bats break.

"If you have a bat that's not cut straight to the grain, it's going to be a weaker bat," Smith said. "Now whether that's the cause of the maple failures or not, there's still other things that could be going on, but that could at least be one factor."

Tremendous force

Another such factor has to do more with the batter than the wood: He could hit the ball badly.

The ball comes into contact with the bat over a small area for only about one thousandth of a second; the force of that short impact is about 5,000 pounds.

"If you hit the ball poorly, if you don't hit it on what they call the 'sweet spot' of the bat, you get this kind of stinging feeling in your hands," which means the bat is vibrating and bending, Smith explained.

If the vibrations are large enough, the bending can cause the bat to break, usually at the narrowest part of the bat, the handle. (That's exactly where the bat of Colorado Rockies player Todd Helton broke before the barrel hit Rhodes, the fan.)

This leads to another aspect of today's bats that could be causing them to break: narrow handles.

A century ago, bat handles were much thicker than they are today. Smith attributes the narrowing of the handle to the advent of metal bats, which most players today grew up using, and which typically have narrower handles. A narrow handle makes a wooden bat less sturdy and more prone to breaking.

Controversy today

The seeming prevalence of breaking bats in games this season has brought the issue into the limelight. The most recent incident occurred when plate umpire Brian O'Nora was hit in the head by a stray bat shard in a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Kansas City Royals on June 24.

But though engineers like Smith have a good idea of how and why bats crack and break, there is little data on how often they do so and which types of wood break more often, so there's no real evidence that bats are breaking more often now than in the past, or that maple breaks more than ash.

"People are really focusing on maple because it perhaps has a more dramatic failure than ash," Smith said, adding that broken ash bats have also caused injuries in the past.

One factor that Smith suggests could be skewing the statistics on which type of bat breaks more often is the fact that cracks in ash bats can often be detected before the bat breaks (players tap the bat on the plate and can tell that it sounds different), whereas maple cracks usually can't be detected and are more likely to break during a swing.

A number of ways to reduce the number of broken bats have been suggested. Smith mentioned the simple option of requiring thicker handles, like the older baseball bats (there are currently no restrictions on handle diameter in the major leagues).

"If you increase the handle diameter, then you're going to make the bat stronger, no question," Smith said. But that alone won't solve the problem.

"Really the problem is part of the game," Smith added. "Wood bats fail, and they'll continue to fail, and maple bats will likely continue to fail in a more brittle way than ash bats."

Major League Baseball could also do a study of wood types and put restrictions on the species that break in a more brittle way, or put specifications on the grain alignment of the bats to make them less likely to break, Smith said.

Alternatively, more protective netting could be added in front of the lower-level infield seats in stadiums, which would protect fans (Detroit Tigers center fielder Curtis Granderson suggested this option in his ESPN.com blog, since fans are the primary concern for injuries because it is easier for players to dodge errant shards). Smith agrees that it would keep fans safer, but adds: "Then you've got to look through that stupid net to enjoy the game."

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