At long last, Internet access is finally becoming consistently available on flights around the country (and the world). While most technophiles like us are completely jazzed at the prospect of surfing while jet-setting, other folks aren't so sure. As you can see from the above video, many parents and other porn-averse folks are concerned that mile-high-Wi-Fi will just open the door to some shady fliers surfing illicit porn sites as they cross the country. They might be right -- US Air is indicating it won't filter 'Net access, but will instead rely on its stewardesses to maintain the peace and handle any complaints.
This, too, has people up in arms, particularly the stewardesses who say they already have enough to do without having to worry about looking for smut (it sure is a long way from the days of 'Coffee, Tea, or Me.'). But we're inclined to think this is being blown way out of proportion. People have been watching R-rated DVDs and videos on laptops mid-flight for years now and we haven't exactly heard a flood of complaints yet.
What do you think? Should in-flight Internet be censored?
This CBS News investigation started with a simple question: When you fill up, are you getting every drop of gas you pay for?
It's up to each state to make sure you're not getting ripped off at the pump. To see if you are, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and the investigative team turned to three reporters at CBS stations to see what they could find.
Mark Greenblatt of KHOU in Houston reports that for the first time ever, the state of Texas is suing a company that runs a chain of gas stations - accusing it of deliberately shorting consumers. The company denies any wrongdoing, but they are not alone. Last year the state found nearly 2,000 pumps at other gas stations that were cheating drivers.
The industry says about 90 percent of pumps pass inspection, and some even deliver a bit more than you pay for.
ut a two-month CBS News investigation raises serious questions about whether states even know if drivers are being cheated. CBS News uncovered huge gaps in how pumps are inspected nationwide, including:
• Inspection standards that vary wildly from state to state.
• A surprising lack of inspectors - only 600 or so nationwide.
As Frank Vascellaro from WCCO-TV in Minneapolis reports, Minnesota doesn't inspect gas pumps annually. There aren't enough inspectors to do it. Of the pumps they were able to inspect this year, 11 percent had problems. The state says stations have to fix them, but only a quarter are ever reinspected. And even though the state can charge operators ripping you off with a crime, that's never happened in Minnesota.
Overall, the investigation uncovered a pattern of inspection that was, literally, all over the map.
Michigan, for example, inspects only after complaints. New Hampshire and Arkansas allow gas stations to hire their own testers, while Tennessee and Florida rely on "statistical sampling."
"Some states are doing very well, others are struggling," said Henry Oppermann, the former head of the Department of Commerce division that sets guidelines for state inspections. "When the inspection period would get beyond, let's say, a year and a half, I think that's really going beyond what regulatory oversight should be."
In fact, CBS News found 17 states allow pumps to go more than a year and a half without inspection.
Among the worst: Arizona, at every three years. Maine's inspections are up to every four years. Same with Texas. One pump CBS News found in Fort Worth, Texas, was last inspected in 2003, when gas was $1.56 a gallon.
Speaking with Oppermann, Keteyian said: "I gotta tell you something, I don't have a great deal of confidence right now ... that I am actually getting what I am paying for."
"When there's a lack of oversight, there's a potential - a greater potential for abuse," Oppermann said. And even when pumps are regularly inspected, that's no guarantee.
Anna Werner at KPIX in San Francisco found that in California, 94 percent of pumps pass inspection. But consumers can still be cheated. That's because pumps can pass even when they dispense a little less than what the pump says. It's a margin of error the law allows.
So a high-volume station that routinely sells a little less than a gallon could rake in around $50,000 a year extra - for gas you never get.
"Shame on them!" one driver said. "That's all I can say, shame on them."
Is it time for Congress to look at this as a national issue?
"It would be beneficial to have a national coordination of efforts," Oppermann said.
Not likely. When CBS News tried to find out the last time Congress looked into the problem, but came up empty. Fact is: it never has.
Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat?
"Now I can finally answer," says Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Using high-resolution, high-speed digital imaging of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) faced with a looming swatter, Dickinson and graduate student Gwyneth Card have determined the secret to a fly's evasive maneuvering. Long before the fly leaps, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All of this action takes place within about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter."This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response," Dickinson says.
For example, the videos showed that if the descending swatter--actually, a 14-centimeter-diameter black disk, dropping at a 50-degree angle toward a fly standing at the center of a small platform--comes from in front of the fly, the fly moves its middle legs forward and leans back, then raises and extends its legs to push off backward. When the threat comes from the back, however, the fly (which has a nearly 360-degree field of view and can see behind itself) moves its middle legs a tiny bit backwards. With a threat from the side, the fly keeps its middle legs stationary, but leans its whole body in the opposite direction before it jumps.
"We also found that when the fly makes planning movements prior to take-off, it takes into account its body position at the time it first sees the threat," Dickinson says. "When it first notices an approaching threat, a fly's body might be in any sort of posture depending on what it was doing at the time, like grooming, feeding, walking, or courting. Our experiments showed that the fly somehow 'knows' whether it needs to make large or small postural changes to reach the correct preflight posture. This means that the fly must integrate visual information from its eyes, which tell it where the threat is approaching from, with mechanosensory information from its legs, which tells it how to move to reach the proper preflight pose."
The results offer new insight into the fly nervous system, and suggest that within the fly brain there is a map in which the position of the looming threat "is transformed into an appropriate pattern of leg and body motion prior to take off," Dickinson says. "This is a rather sophisticated sensory-to-motor transformation and the search is on to find the place in the brain where this happens," he says.
Dickinson's research also suggests an optimal method for actually swatting a fly. "It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter," he says.
The paper, "Visually Mediated Motor Planning in the Escape Response of Drosophila," will be published August 28 in the journal Current Biology.
Within the next 10 years, the U.S., China, Israel, and a host of private companies plan to set up camp on the moon. So if and when they plant a flag, does that give them property rights?
A NASA working group hosted a discussion this week to ask: Who owns the moon? The answer, of course, is no one. The Outer Space Treaty, the international law signed by more than 100 countries, states that the moon and other celestial bodies are the province of all mankind. No doubt that would irk all of the people throughout the ages, like monks from the Middle Ages, who have tried to claim the moon was theirs.
But ownership is different from property rights. People who rent apartments, for example, don't own where they live, but they still hold rights. So with all of the upcoming missions to visit the moon and beyond, space industry thought leaders are seriously asking themselves how to deal with a potential land rush, cowboy-style.
"This is a very relevant discussion right now. We've got this wave of new lunar missions from around the world," said William Marshall, a scientist in the small-spacecraft office at NASA, but who spoke this week at an event hosted by NASA's CoLab, a collaborative public-private working group. He was speaking from his personal interest and not on behalf of the agency.
To be sure, the United States aims to send astronauts back to the moon by as early as 2015, in a mission that would include a long-term settlement. China and Israel, among others, are also working on lunar projects. And for the first time, several private groups are building spacecraft to land on the moon in an attempt to win millions of dollars in the Google Lunar X Prize. Some participants say that they plan to gain some property rights in the mission.
One of those people is Steve Durst, a director on the board of the International Lunar Observatory (ILO) and owner of the Space Age Publishing Co. He's linked to one of the Google Lunar competitors, Odyssey Moon, and he said during the talk that he hopes to scratch out his initials on one of the legs of a lunar rover and "claim his acre."
His group has calculated that there are about 10 billion acres on the moon, not counting crater slopes. Given that there are about 6.7 billion people on Earth, it aligns nicely with the idea of "I want my acre," he said.
The question is, he said: "How do you get activity going if the moon is owned by everyone at the same time?"
Durst has helped start the ILO in Hawaii to eventually put an astrophysical observatory on the moon that will generate power, communicate, and act as a property rights agent, he said. Durst gave a talk in China last week and he jokingly said that he skipped over the part about property rights.
Ultimately, he thinks it's about balancing the common good and free enterprise. "I'm happy to deed over half of my acre to a common acre pool. I see this as a way of reconciling a right of individual ownership and the idea that the moon belongs to the whole Earth."
The question of lunar rights also hit home when someone from Russia bought part of the Russian rover and then subsequently claimed that he owns a bit of lunar surface under its foot, according to Marshall. Land rights could also get tricky when it comes to coveted areas of the moon with "peaks of eternal light" that could be more valuable for research, he said.
"It's much easier to solve this problem by thinking it through and thinking through what would most benefit the best interest of humanity … rather than doing it once it's a mess," Marshall said.
So, he said, it comes down to assigning rights in the best interest of humanity, including ensuring no monopolies and no military installations.
Entities can apply for space in geostational orbit and receive a slot on a first come, first served basis, according to Marshall. That's an interesting model, he said, because it does that without granting ownership and allows access by less prosperous nations.
"In conclusion: Who owns on the moon? No one. Who should own the moon? No one. Does this stop property rights? No. The best way forward is probably some sort of property licensing body like how it works in geo," he said.
A particularly optimistic design firm in Dubai called Timelinks has proposed designs for the Ziggurat, a complete city to be layered inside of a massive pyramid that could serve as home for a million people at a time. Timelinks is currently seeking patents for a variety of technologies that would make such a building possible, including a three axis public transportation system that would run residents up, through and across the pyramid. They've also claimed that with a hybrid wind, solar and steam power the Ziggurat would be able to meet its own power needs, and that there would be enough room to allow for some minor agriculture in designated "green spaces." Before you just write this off as another wacky internet design concept, consider the absurdly ostentatious structures that Dubai has already built, and the fact that unlike the hyperluxurious ego-boosters currently under construction, the Ziggurat might be a viable housing solution for people who don't have a natural resource-infused trust fund.
Apparently it could - at least according to research by Richard Clayton, a security expert from Cambridge University's computer lab.
Most of us tend to assume that spammers focus on the right-hand side of our email addresses - the part after the @. That's why big companies and webmail services have to filter out so much junk email: a spammer can try it on with zillions of potential victims in one swoop, simply by throwing everything they've got at any @hotmail.com address.
However, it turns out that spammers could be more subtle creatures than we give them credit for. A paper presented by Clayton at CEAS 2008, the Conference on Email and Anti-Spam held last week at a Microsoft research facility in California, suggests that the text to the left of the @ also makes a serious difference to how much spam you're likely to receive. Analysing email traffic logs from Demon Internet, one of Britain's biggest ISPs, Clayton saw a marked difference between people's spam load depending on their names: specifically, those with names higher up the alphabet were more likely to get spammed than those closer to the bottom.
According to his statistics, someone called Alison may expect around 35% of the email she receives to be spam, while Zadie may only get around 20% - even if both use the same email provider.
The reason? As Clayton explains on his team's blog, he believes it is the result of so-called "Rumplestiltskin" attacks, where spammers run through entire dictionaries, guessing at names and sending millions of emails to try and find accounts belonging to real people. It seems that most spammers start their journeys at the beginning of the alphabet but peter out before they reach the end.
There is, he says, a genuine statistical divide between what he calls "aardvarks" - those high up the alphabetical food chain - and "zebras" - who graze at the bottom of the dictionary. For those weary of it, he even suggests changing species - or at least picking your username more carefully.
So are Anna and Andrew doomed to a life of spam-filled inboxes and email bankruptcy, while their friends Zach and Zoe live it up free of spam?
Not quite. The internet's scammers, phishers and other guttersnipes are still more likely to hit people who broadcast their email address on the web; and, of course, there are still a few special cases.
After all, Bill Gates - who famously revealed a few years ago that he received up to 4m junk emails every single day - may have a name that comes near the top of the Aardvark ratings - but given his prominence, it's unlikely that the Microsoft mogul could empty his spam folder simply by switching from Bill to William.
For a lot of college students, the new semester is just around the corner. Last year, we created a long list of great Web 2.0 tools that we thought would be helpful for college students.
But given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time.
Taking Notes
1) Evernote
Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. If you are in a lecture, for example, you can also take a picture of the blackboard with your phone, upload it to the Evernote server, and thanks to Evernote's clever OCR algorithms, even pictures of handwritten notes become instantly searchable.
You can also use it to bookmark web pages and write down your own lecture notes. Best of all, you can use a web app, a Windows or Mac desktop app, or a Windows Mobile and iPhone app, all of which seamlessly synch with each other, so that your notes are always up to date.
2) Google Notebook
The Google Notebook is one of Google's lesser know products, but, thanks to a very well designed Firefox extension, it's a great tool for when you do most of your work in a browser already. If you do some of your research in Google Books and Google Scholar, you can also easily clip excerpts from books and articles into your Google Notebook.
One additional nice feature is that you can invite collaborators to work on a notebook with you. If you are doing a research project in a group, for example, you can easily share your research with your whole group.
Online Office Suites
3) Google and 4) Zoho
Word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation apps are probably the single most often used tool among college students, and while none of the online offerings can yet beat Microsoft Office (which, for students, now only costs around $60 for the Ultimate Edition), the online office suites from Google and Zoho do have some distinct advantages. Office obviously has a lot more features, but not only are both Google Apps and Zoho free, they also allow easier sharing of documents and working on projects collaboratively.
And while the online tools to create presentations are still a bit crude compared to Powerpoint or Keynote, they are both worthy contenders, especially if you don't feel the need to add lots of fancy transitions to your presentations.
If we had to choose between Google's and Zoho's offering, our vote would probably go to Google, as the Google apps have a slightly more organized and professional feel to them, which, in the end, is going to make it easier to focus on the content of your documents.
Bibliography
5) Zotero
The standard tool for doing extensive bibliographies in academia is Endnote. While that is a great tool if you are writing a dissertation, Zotero is a great choice for less extensive research projects - and it's free. Zotero is a Firefox extension, so it is not technically a web app, but in its next version, the developers are promising the ability to synch your bibliographies to a web version of the tool, so that your books and notes will become available everywhere.
For now, Zotero lives in the status bar of Firefox, and it pops up a little icon in your URL bar every time it recognizes a compatible website. Zotero already supports the databases of a huge amount of libraries worldwide, as well as a lot of standard academic databases such as JSTOR, LexisNexis, InfoTrac, PubMed, or ScienceDirect. Besides curating your citations, you can also add notes, tag items, or add attachments (like pdf files of articles). Once you are done, Zotero will create a bibliography for you in most standard formats, including APA, MLA, or Chicago style.
6) EasyBib
If you just need to create a short bibliography, Zotero might be more than you need. EasyBib will just help you to quickly create a bibliography entry in MLA format - a favorite among literature teachers. It can also handle the APA format, but you will have to subscribe to the pro version of EasyBib.
If you really hate figuring out where to put a comma and where to put a semicolon in your APA style bibliography entries, those $7.99 a year for the pro version might just turn out to be a bargain.
Also, if you only need a quick bibliography entry for a book, check out OttoBib, where you just have to enter the ISBN number and it will give you a fully formatted citation.
Staying Organized
7) Google Calendar
There are lots of great online calendars out there, including 30 Boxes and Yahoo's calendar app, but our favorite is the Google Calendar, simply because it is dead easy to use, integrates nicely with GMail, allows for importing and exporting your calendar, and lets you publish a site with your free/busy information with the click of a button, so that your friends know not to bother you while you are cramming for that test.
8) Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk might just be the tool that will keep you on track. And to make things even easier, Remember the Milk also integrates nicely with Google Calendar, so you can manage everything in one place.
Picking the Right Class
9) Rate My Professors
As much as teachers don't like sites like these, Professor Performance and Rate my Professors can be useful tools when you decide which class you want to take. While almost every university makes you rate your professor at the end of the semester, schools never make this data public, so whenever you get a choice between professors, you really have no idea who the better teacher is. We like Rate My Professors a bit more than Professor Performance, simply because its search is a lot easier and the site is a bit more up-to-date. The site now also features a Facebook application.
Keeping in Touch
10) Meebo
As much as your teachers would like to think so, college isn't just about classes, papers, and long ours in the library. If you want to stay in touch with your friends no matter what computer you are on, Meebo is a great universal IM client that lives on the web. It supports, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk, as well as Meebo's own IM architecture.
What are we missing?
Are there other tools you use in school that we missed here? Let us know in the comments.
Only changes in carbon dioxide levels are able to explain the transition from the mostly ice-free Greenland of three million years ago, to the ice-covered Greenland of today.
There have been many reports in the media about the effects of global warming on the Greenland ice-sheet, but there is still great uncertainty as to why there is an ice-sheet there at all.
Reporting today (28 August) in the journal Nature, scientists at the University of Bristol and the University of Leeds show that only changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide are able to explain the transition from the mostly ice-free Greenland of three million years ago, to the ice-covered Greenland of today.
Understanding why the ice formed on Greenland three million years ago will help understand the possible response of the ice sheet to future climate change.
Dr Dan Lunt from the University of Bristol and funded by the British Antarctic Survey, explained: "Evidence shows that around three million years ago there was an increase in the amount of rock and debris deposited on the ocean floor around Greenland. These rocks could not have got there until icebergs started to form and could transport them, indicating that large amounts of ice on Greenland only began to form about three million years ago.
"Prior to that, Greenland was largely ice-free and probably covered in grass and forest. Furthermore, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were relatively high. So the question we wanted to answer was why did Greenland become covered in an ice-sheet?"
There are several competing theories, ranging from changes in ocean circulation, the increasing height of the Rocky Mountains, changes in the Earth's orbit, and natural changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Using state-of-the-art computer climate and ice-sheet models, Lunt and colleagues decided to test which, if any, of these theories was the most credible.
While the results suggest that climatic shifts associated with changes in ocean circulation and tectonic uplift did affect the amount of ice cover, and that the ice waxed and waned with changes in the Earth's orbit, none of these changes were large enough to contribute significantly to the long-term growth of the Greenland ice sheet.
Instead, the new research suggests that the dominant cause of the Greenland glaciation was the fall from high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to levels closer to that of pre-industrial times. Today concentrations are approaching the levels that existed while Greenland was mostly ice-free.
Dr Alan Haywood from the University of Leeds added: "So why did elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations fall to levels similar to the pre-industrial era? That is the million dollar question which researchers will no doubt be trying to answer during the next few years."
A beam of white light is made up of all the colors in the spectrum. The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one color that is notable by its absence (click here to check). Pink (or magenta, to use its official name) simply isn’t there. But if pink isn’t in the light spectrum, how come we can see it?
Here’s an experiment you can try: stare at the pink circle below for about one minute, then look over at the blank white space next to the image. What do you see? You should see an afterimage. What color is it? You should have seen a green afterimage, but why is this significant?
The afterimage always shows the color that is complementary to the color of the image. Complementary colors are those that are exact opposites in the way the eye perceives them.
It is a common misconception that red is complementary to green. However, if you try the same experiment as above with a red image, you will see a turquoise afterimage, since red is actually complementary to turquoise. Similarly, orange is complementary to blue, and yellow to violet.
All the colors in the light spectrum have complements that exist within the spectrum – except green. There seems to be some kind of imbalance. What is going on? Is green somehow being discriminated against?
The light spectrum consists of a range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (check this too). Red light has the longest wavelength; violet the shortest. The colors in between have wavelengths between those of red and violet light.
When our eyes see colors, they are actually detecting the different wavelengths of the light hitting the retina. Colors are distinguished by their wavelengths, and the brain processes this information and produces a visual display that we experience as color.
This means that colors only really exist within the brain – light is indeed travelling from objects to our eyes, and each object may well be transmitting/reflecting a different set of wavelengths of light; but what essentially defines a ‘color’ as opposed to a ‘wavelength’ is created within the brain.
If the eye receives light of more than one wavelength, the color generated in the brain is formed from the sum of the input responses on the retina. For example, if red light and green light enter the eye at the same time, the resulting colr produced in the brain is yellow, the color halfway between red and green in the spectrum.
So what does the brain do when our eyes detect wavelengths from both ends of the light spectrum at once (i.e. red and violet light)? Generally speaking, it has two options for interpreting the input data:
a) Sum the input responses to produce a color halfway between red and violet in the spectrum (which would in this case produce green – not a very representative color of a red and violet mix) b) Invent a new color halfway between red and violet
Magenta is the evidence that the brain takes option b – it has apparently constructed a color to bridge the gap between red and violet, because such a color does not exist in the light spectrum. Magenta has no wavelength attributed to it, unlike all the other spectrum colors.
The light spectrum has a color missing because it does not feel the need to ‘close the loop’ in the way that our brains do. We need color to make sense of the world, but equally we need to make sense of color; even if that means taking opposite ends of the spectrum and bringing them together.
Well, now we've got that sorted out, explain this: stare at the dot in the middle of the image below - you should see all the colors melt away.
Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player -- too good, it turns out.
The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.
Officials for the three-year-old league, which has eight teams and about 100 players, said they will disband Jericho's team, redistributing its players among other squads, and offered to refund $50 sign-up fees to anyone who asks for it. They say Jericho's coach, Wilfred Vidro, has resigned.
But Vidro says he didn't quit and the team refuses to disband. Players and parents held a protest at the league's field on Saturday urging the league to let Jericho pitch.
"He's never hurt any one," Vidro said. "He's on target all the time. How can you punish a kid for being too good?"
The controversy bothers Jericho, who says he misses pitching.
"I feel sad," he said. "I feel like it's all my fault nobody could play."
Jericho's coach and parents say the boy is being unfairly targeted because he turned down an invitation to join the defending league champion, which is sponsored by an employer of one of the league's administrators.
Jericho instead joined a team sponsored by Will Power Fitness. The team was 8-0 and on its way to the playoffs when Jericho was banned from pitching.
"I think it's discouraging when you're telling a 9-year-old you're too good at something," said his mother, Nicole Scott. "The whole objective in life is to find something you're good at and stick with it. I'd rather he spend all his time on the baseball field than idolizing someone standing on the street corner."
League attorney Peter Noble says the only factor in banning Jericho from the mound is his pitches are just too fast.
"He is a very skilled player, a very hard thrower," Noble said. "There are a lot of beginners. This is not a high-powered league. This is a developmental league whose main purpose is to promote the sport."
Noble acknowledged that Jericho had not beaned any batters in the co-ed league of 8- to 10-year-olds, but say parents expressed safety concerns.
"Facing that kind of speed" is frightening for beginning players, Noble said.
League officials say they first told Vidro that the boy could not pitch after a game on Aug. 13. Jericho played second base the next game on Aug. 16. But when he took the mound Wednesday, the other team walked off and a forfeit was called.
League officials say Jericho's mother became irate, threatening them and vowing to get the league shut down.
"I have never seen behavior of a parent like the behavior Jericho's mother exhibited Wednesday night," Noble said.
Scott denies threatening any one, but said she did call the police.
League officials suggested that Jericho play other positions, or pitch against older players or in a different league.
Local attorney John Williams was planning to meet with Jericho's parents Monday to discuss legal options.
"You don't have to be learned in the law to know in your heart that it's wrong," he said. "Now you have to be punished because you excel at something?"
An experiment into connecting the Web with language.
It Doesn’t Have to be This Way
You’re writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to. You’d like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed. This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task. And you haven’t even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.
This kind of clunky, time-consuming interaction is common on the Web. Mashups help in some cases but they are static, require Web development skills, and are largely site-centric rather than user-centric.
It’s even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.
Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part they are left trundling between web sites, performing common tasks resulting in frustration and wasted time.
Enter Ubiquity
Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.
The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:
Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility.
Extend the browser functionality easily.
Learn more about Ubiquity and the capabilities that it could provide for users and developers.
The Initial Prototype
As part of this announcement, we’re also releasing an early experimental prototype to demonstrate some of the concepts of Ubiquity and the possibilities that it opens up. This release is meant as a illustration of a concept and mainly focuses on the platform. The next release will explore interfaces that are closer to features that might make it into Firefox.
Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity “command list” to see them all.
Find and install new commands to extend your browser’s vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism
In a “miracle” that has stunned one of the world’s fastest-aging societies, a 61-year old Japanese woman has given birth to her own grandchild, sparking renewed calls for the entire process of surrogacy to be banned in Japan.
The unnamed woman, who is now thought to hold the record as the oldest Japanese woman ever to give birth successfully, undertook the controversial treatment at the Suwa Maternity Clinic – an institution that has already sparked fierce debate over the rights and wrongs of surrogate motherhood.
Despite the evident joy and relief of both mother and daughter, there remains a strong vein of disapproval over surrogacy in Japan: there is currently no legislation specifically outlawing the practice, but a panel convened by the government earlier in the year recommended an outright ban. It went further, demanding punishments for everyone involved in the surrogacy except the mother herself.
Yesterday’s successful treatment involved the woman having her daughter’s already fertilized egg implanted in her womb. The entire family is understood to have agreed to undergo the process, despite its difficulties, because the woman’s daughter was born without ovaries and unlike many young women in Japan, was keen to have children.
Doctors at the clinic suggested that while the woman may be the oldest to have successfully borne her own grandchild at Suwa, she is far from the first. The clinic has so far created four other mother-grandmothers, all of them at least 55 years old.
The doctor who runs the clinic, Yahiro Netsu, has been an ardent campaigner for surrogacy, sat on the panel that met earlier in the year, and insists that the process of using mothers to carry their own daughters’ babies to full term has not generated any serious problems. The panel concluded at the time that the “physical and mental burdens” imposed by surrogacy, along with the supposedly complex legal questions of parentage, made it undesirable.
Dr Netsu argued that surrogacy should be an available treatment to all women with severe fertility issues.
The birth at Suwa comes as the Japanese government is only just beginning to acknowledge the enormity of its fertility and birthrate crisis. Analysts speak of a “demographic timebomb” that will explode as the population ages beyond the economy’s ability to support itself, but many believe that the pain has already begun.
The government, meanwhile, is rapidly running out of ideas for how to reverse the trend. It has dawdled on birthrate policy for many years, and been forced to watch as the fertility rate – the average number of babies born to each woman of child-bearing age in Japan – has sunk to around 1.32. In parts of Tokyo, it has even dropped below 0.99.
In sharp decline for nearly 35 years, Japan’s birthrate has held below the critical replacement level of 2.1 children per couple since 1974. Strong social and political resistance to immigration mean that Japan’s population crisis has not been cushioned – as it has elsewhere in the developed world - by successive waves of newcomers.
What you don’t know about your car insurance policy could be draining your wallet right now. Insure.com, Inc. has revealed 12 factors that may be costing you money.
1. You’ll pay for your friend’s bad driving
If your friend borrows your car and crashes it, you’ll have to file a claim with your insurance company. You’ll have to pay any deductible that applies and your rates could go up as a result of your claim, especially if you have made other recent claims.
2. Your personal property in your car isn’t covered by your auto insurance
Stolen or damaged items like compact discs aren’t covered by your car insurance.
3. You may be entitled to payment for sales tax and registration fees for a new car
Most states require insurers to pay sales taxes on total loss settlements. Some states require the insurer to pay it at the time of loss while other states require it to be paid only if you purchase a replacement vehicle within a certain time period. Make your request for a sales tax reimbursement no matter where you live.
4. You may be entitled to a diminished value claim in some states
Diminished value is based on the idea that any car that has been in an accident, regardless of how well the repairs are done, is worth less than the exact same car that hasn’t been in an accident. However, most states allow car insurers to use policy language that officially disallows diminished value claims.
There’s one way you may be entitled to a diminished value claim: If someone else hits you and you make a damage claim on that person’s insurance. That’s called a third-party claim and it’s possible to get diminished value damages as a third party.
5. You may be able to “stack” your coverage
Stacking uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage means you can collect payment more than once within the same auto policy or across two auto policies. There are two scenarios for stacking: First, if you have multiple cars, you can collect the limit of your UM/UIM policy to cover full payment for damages. Second, if you have more than one policy with UM/UIM coverage, you can make a claim under each policy until all your damages are recovered. Check the language of your policy.
When an insurance company decides to raise your premiums because you make a claim, it doesn’t follow any hard and fast rules; many factors are involved. For example, if you make a claim and have a birthday before renewal time, your birthday might bump you into a higher risk category along with the claim.
Some insurance companies have “accident forgiveness” guidelines. When you buy or renew your policy, ask how to qualify for accident forgiveness.
7. If you don’t drive much, “usage-based” car insurance could save you money
“Usage-based” car insurance allows you to buy coverage based on how much you actually drive. If you don’t drive much, this can save you up to 60 percent on your insurance. Progressive is the first insurance company to offer “pay-as-you-drive” policies through its MyRate program. Your mileage will be measured by a wireless device installed in a car port.
If your insurance company doesn’t offer usage-based coverage, inquire about “low-mileage discounts.”
8. Your credit history may affect your car insurance premium
Car insurers believe that your credit history is an indicator of whether you are going to make a claim, and price your insurance policy accordingly where states allow it.
9. You must officially cancel your insurance policy when you switch insurers
You can cancel your coverage at any time by notifying the company in writing of your intended date of termination. Most consumers assume that if they decide to terminate the policy at the end of the coverage period, they can simply ignore the bill. Insurance companies don’t see it that way. They will send you another bill for the next premium payment, and when you don’t pay it, the company can cancel you for nonpayment, which goes on your credit record.
10. You can wait to add your teenager to your policy until he or she is licensed
In most cases, insurance companies don’t require you to add your teenager to your policy until the teen has his or her driver’s license. The exception may be if you are in a high-risk insurance pool; you may then have to add your child when they receive their permit.
11. Paying in installments will usually increase your overall bill
“Fractional premium” fees are usually charged when you divide your annual premium payment into installments rather than pay for a year of coverage all at once. It can be as little as a few dollars per payment, but the more you break it down, the more it adds up. When you apply for the policy, ask what the fees are for paying in installments. If you can, pay your annual premium all at once.
12. Your car model affects your premium, but by how much?
Auto insurers have a premium-rating system for every car model, usually based on “Vehicle Series Ratings” (VSRs) received from the Insurance Services Office (ISO). This rating indicates how comparatively expensive your vehicle should be to insure. Factors include susceptibility to theft and typical claims losses for the vehicle.
If you are shopping for a new car, contact your insurance company and ask about the premium difference among the cars you are considering.
We think we know what will make us happy, but we don’t. Many of us believe that money will make us happy, but it won’t. Except for the very poor, money cannot buy happiness. Instead of dreaming of vast wealth, we should dream of close friends and healthy bodies and meaningful work.
The psychology of happiness Several years ago, James Montier, a “global equity strategist”, took a break from investing in order to publish a brief overview of existing research into the psychology of happiness [PDF]. Montier learned that happiness comprises three components:
About 50% of individual happiness comes from a genetic set point. That is, we’re each predisposed to a certain level of happiness. Some of us are just naturally more inclined to be cheery than others.
About 10% of our happiness is due to our circumstances. Our age, race, gender, personal history, and, yes, wealth, only make up about one-tenth of our happiness.
The remaining 40% of an individual’s happiness seems to be derived from intentional activity, from “discrete actions or practices that people can choose to do”.
If we have no control over our genetic “happy point”, and if we have little control over our circumstances, then it makes sense to focus on those things that we can do to make ourselves happy. According to Montier’s paper, these activities include sex, exercise, sleep, and close relationships.
What does not bring happiness? Money, and the pursuit of happiness for its own sake. “A vast array of individuals seriously over-rate the importance of money in making themselves, and others, happy,” Montier writes. “Study after study from psychology shows that money doesn’t equal happiness.”
The happiness paradox Writing in The Washington Post last June, Shankar Vedantam described recent research into this subject. If the United States is generally wealthier than it was thirty or forty years ago, then why aren’t people happier? Economist Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California believes that part of the problem is the hedonic treadmill: once we reach a certain level of wealth, we want more. We’re never satisfied. From Vedantam’s article:
Easterlin attributes the phenomenon of happiness levels not keeping pace with economic gains to the fact that people’s desires and expectations change along with their material fortunes. Where an American in 1970 may have once dreamed about owning a house, he or she might now dream of owning two. Where people once dreamed of buying a new car, they now dream of buying a luxury model.
“People are wedded to the idea that more money will bring them more happiness,” Easterlin said. “When they think of the effects of more money, they are failing to factor in the fact that when they get more money they are going to want even more money. When they get more money, they are going to want a bigger house. They never have enough money, but what they do is sacrifice their family life and health to get more money.”
The irony is that health and the quality of personal relationships are among the most potent predictors of whether people report they are happy — and they are often the two things people sacrifice in their pursuit of greater wealth.
Why aren’t rich people happier? Perhaps it’s because many of them are workaholics, because they’re more focused on money than on the things that would bring them joy. A brief companion piece to The Washington Post story notes that researchers have found that “being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things, and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.”
In general, rich people aren’t much happier than those of us in the middle class. Yes, money can buy happiness if it elevates you from poverty, but beyond that the benefits are minimal. So why do so many people believe that money will make things better?
Stumbling on happiness In 2006, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert published Stumbling on Happiness, a book about our inability to predict what will really make us happy. The following is a 22-minute video of a presentation Gilbert made at TED 2004, in which he compresses his ideas into bite-sized chunks:
Gilbert says that because humans can plan for the future, we naturally want to structure our lives in such a way that we are happy, both now and later. But how do we know what will make us happy? We don’t. In fact, we’re surprisingly bad at predicting what will bring us joy. Gilbert asks:
Which future would you prefer? One in which you win the lottery? Or one in which you become paraplegic? Which would make you happier? [...] A year after losing their legs, and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives.
The problem is impact bias, the tendency to overestimate the “hedonic impact” of future events. Put another way, the things that we think will make us happy usually don’t make us as happy as we think they will. Winning the lottery isn’t a panacea. Having an affair with your hot new co-worker won’t be as thrilling as you imagine. And losing a leg isn’t the end of the world.
It turns out that humans are able to synthesize happiness. Many people look outside themselves for fulfillment; they expect to find it in things, or in relationships, or in large bank accounts. But true happiness comes from within. True happiness comes when we learn to be content with what we have.
13 steps to a better life What does all this mean to you? If money won’t bring you happiness, what will? How can you stop making yourself miserable and start learning to love life? According to my research, these are the thirteen actions most likely to encourage happiness:
Don’t compare yourself to others. Financially, physically, and socially, comparing yourself to others is a trap. You will always have friends who have more money than you do, who can run faster than you can, who are more successful in their careers. Focus on your own life, on your own goals.
Foster close relationships. People with five or more close friends are more apt to describe themselves as happy than those with fewer.
Have sex. Sex, especially with someone you love, is consistently ranked as a top source of happiness. A long-term loving partnership goes hand-in-hand with this.
Get regular exercise. There’s a strong tie between physical health and happiness. Anyone who has experienced a prolonged injury or illness knows just how emotionally devastating it can be. Eat right, exercise, and take care of our body. (And read Get Fit Slowly!)
Obtain adequate sleep. Good sleep is an essential component of good health. When you’re not well-rested, your body and your mind do not operate at peak capacity. Your mood suffers. (Read more in my brief guide to better sleep.)
Set and pursue goals. I believe that the road to wealth is paved with goals. More than that, the road to happiness is paved with goals. Continued self-improvement makes life more fulfilling.
Find meaningful work. There are some who argue a job is just a job. I believe that fulfilling work is more than that — it’s a vocation. It can take decades to find the work you were meant to do. But when you find it, it can bring added meaning to your life.
Join a group. Those who are members of a group, like a church congregation, experience greater happiness. But the group doesn’t have to be religious. Join a book group. Meet others for a Saturday morning bike ride. Sit in at the knitting circle down at the yarn shop.
Don’t dwell on the past. I know a guy who beats himself up over mistakes he’s made before. Rather than concentrate on the present (or, better yet, on the future), he lets the past eat away at his happiness. Focus on the now.
Embrace routine. Research shows that although we believe we want variety and choice, we’re actually happier with limited options. It’s not that we want no choice at all, just that we don’t want to be overwhelmed. Routines help limit choices. They’re comfortable and familiar and, used judiciously, they can make us happy.
Practice moderation. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. It’s okay to indulge yourself on occasion — just don’t let it get out of control. Addictions and compulsions can ruin lives.
Be grateful. It’s no accident that so many self-help books encourage readers to practice gratitude. When we regularly take time to be thankful for the things we have, we appreciate them more. We’re less likely to take them for granted, and less likely to become jealous of others.
Help others. Over and over again, studies have shown that altruism is one of the best ways to boost your happiness. Sure, volunteering at the local homeless shelter helps, but so too does just being nice in daily life.
Remember: True wealth is not about money. True wealth is about relationships, about good health, and about continued self-improvement.
UK's Sarah Carmen, 24, is a 200-a-day orgasm girl who gets good, good, GOOD vibrations from almost anything. She suffers from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), which increases blood flow to the sex organs. "Sometimes I have so much sex to try to calm myself down I get bored of it. And men I sleep with don't seem to make as much effort because I climax so easily."
She believes her condition was brought on by the pills. "Within a few weeks I just began to get more and more aroused more and more of the time and I just kept having endless orgasms. It started off in bed where sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm. Then it would happen after sex. I'd be thinking about what we'd done in bed and I'd start feeling a bit flushed, then I'd become aroused and climax. In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200."
She and her boyfriend split— and new partners struggle to keep up with her sex demands. "Often, I'll want to wear myself out by having as many orgasms as I can so they stop and I can get some peace," she said.
2. The Man Who Can't Get Fat
Mr Perry, 59, can eat whatever he likes - including unlimited pies, burgers and desserts - and never get fat. He cannot put on weight because of a condition called lipodystrophy that makes his body rapidly burn fat.
He used to be a chubby child, but at age 12 the fat dropped off "almost over night". He initially tried to eat more to gain weight, but it had no effect. Mr Perry, of Ilford in Essex, endured a decade of tests before the illness was diagnosed. It finally emerged that his body produces six times the normal level of insulin. Doctors have admitted that the condition would be a "slimmer's dream".
3. The Man Who Doesn't Feel Cold
Dutchman Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman, is the man that swam under ice, and stood in bins filled with ice. He climbed the Mt. Blanc in shorts in the icy cold, harvested world records and always stands for new challenges.
Scientists can't really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person.
4. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep: stayed awake 24 hours a day for years
Rhett Lamb is often cranky like any other 3-year-old toddler, but there’s one thing that makes him completely different: he has a rare medical condition in which he can’t sleep a wink.
Rhett is awake nearly 24 hours a day, and his condition has baffled his parents and doctors for years. They took clock shifts watching his every sleep-deprived mood to determine what ailed the young boy.
After a number of conflicting opinions, Shannon and David Lamb finally learned what was wrong with their child: Doctors diagnosed Rhett with an extremely rare condition called chiari malformation.
"The brain literally is squeezed into the spinal column. What happens is you get compression, squeezing, strangulating of the brain stem, which has all the vital functions that control sleep, speech, our cranial nerves, our circulatory system, even our breathing system," Savard said.
5. The Girl Who is Allergic to Water
Teenager Ashleigh Morris can't go swimming, soak in a hot bath or enjoy a shower after a stressful day's work - she's allergic to water. Even sweating brings the 19-year-old out in a painful rash.
Ashleigh, from Melbourne, Australia, is allergic to water of any temperature, a condition she's lived with since she was 14. She suffers from an extremely rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria - so unusual that only a handful of cases are documented worldwide.
6. The Woman Who Can’t Forget
That's the story of AJ, an extraordinary 40-year-old married woman who remembers everything.
McGaugh and fellow UCI researchers Larry Cahill and Elizabeth Parker have been studying the extraordinary case of a person who has "nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic" memory of her personal history and countless public events. If you randomly pick a date from the past 25 years and ask her about it, she’ll usually provide elaborate, verifiable details about what happened to her that day and if there were any significant news events on topics that interested her. She usually also recalls what day of the week it was and what the weather was like.
The 40-year-old woman, who was given the code name AJ to protect her privacy, is so unusual that UCI coined a name for her condition in a recent issue of the journal Neurocase: hyperthymestic syndrome.
7. The Girl Who Eats Only Tic Tacs
Meet Natalie Cooper, a 17-year-old teenager who has a mystery illness that makes her sick every time she eats anything. Well, almost anything. She can eat one thing that doesn’t make her sick: Tic tac mint!
For reasons that doctors are unable to explain, Tic tacs are the only thing she can stomach, meaning she has to get the rest of her sustenance from a specially formulated feed through a tube.
8. The Musician Who Can't Stop Hiccupping
Chris Sands, 24, from Lincoln, hiccups as often as every two seconds - and sometimes even when he is asleep. He has tried a variety of cures, including hypnosis and yoga, but nothing has worked. Mr Sands thinks his problem stems from an acid reflux condition caused by a damaged valve in his stomach. "If the acid levels are severe enough they are going to do keyhole surgery and grab part of my stomach and wrap it around the valve to tighten it," he said.
Mr Sands, who is a backing singer in the group Ebullient, said the condition has hampered his career as he has only been able to perform four times. In the next couple of weeks --as of the day of the report--, doctors at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre will put a tube into his stomach to monitor acid levels and decide if keyhole surgery is possible.
9. The Girl That Collapses Every Time She Laughs
Kay Underwood, 20, has cataplexy, which means that almost any sort of strong emotion triggers a dramatic weakening of her muscles. Exhilaration, anger, fear, surprise, awe and even embarrassment can also cause sufferers to suddenly collapse on the spot.
Kay, of Barrow-upon-Soar, Leicestershire (UK), who was diagnosed with the condition five years ago, once collapsed more than 40 times in a single day. She said: "People find it very odd when it happens, and it isn't always easy to cope with strangers' reactions. "
Like most cataplexy sufferers, Ms Underwood is also battling narcolepsy - a condition that makes her drop off to sleep without warning. Narcolepsy affects around 30,000 people in the UK and about 70 per cent of them also have cataplexy.
The Woman Who is Allergic to Modern Technology
For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain. But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to Cell Phones and Microwaves.
The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them. As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy. 'I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,' Mrs Bird said. "My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF".
A zoning law and blueprint flub were the inspiration for this apartment complex. Dutch housing regulations require apartment construction to provide a certain amount of daylight to their tenants–but MVRDV architects forgot to plan for that. Their solution? To hang thirteen of the 100 units off the north facade of the block. The ingenious design saves ground floor space and allows enough sunlight to enter the east or west facade.
2. Floating Castle (Ukraine)
Supported by a single cantilever --and quite discussed at Panoramio, this mysterious levitating farm house belongs in a sci-fi flick. It’s claimed to be an old bunker for the overload of mineral fertilizers but we’re sure there’s a better back story... alien architects probably had a hand in it.
3. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)
Apartments connect and stack like Lego blocks in Montreal's Habitat 67. Without a traditional vertical construction, the apartments have the open space that most urban residences lack, including a separate patio for each apartment.
4. Free Spirit Spheres (British Columbia, Canada)
Free Spirit Spheres can be hung from the trees as shown, making a tree house. They can also be hung from any other solid objects or placed in cradles on the ground. There are four attachment points on the top of each sphere and another four anchor points on the bottom. Each of the attachment points is strong enough to carry the weight of the entire sphere and contents.
The spheres are made of two laminations of wood strips over laminated wood frames. The outside surface is then finished and covered with a clear fibreglass. The result is a beautiful and very tough skin. The skin is waterproof and strong enough to take the impacts that come with life in a dynamic environment such as the forest.
5. Cube House (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Living in a tilted house is much easier than it looks—just ask the people living in these the Kijk-Kubus homes. Architect Piet Blom tipped a conventional house forty-five degrees and rested it upon a hexagon-shaped pole so that three sides face down and the other three face the sky. Each of the cube houses accommodates three floors: a living space including a kitchen, study and bathroom, the middle floor houses bedrooms and the top is the pyramid room that can act like an attic or viewing deck. These houses are quite expensive, but you can satisfy your curiosity by visiting the museum show house.
6. Gangster's House (Archangelsk, Russia)
One-time Russian gangster Nikolai Sutyagin’s home is certainly unusual. The eccentric former convict’s seemingly accidental 15-year project begun in 1992 stands 13 floors, 144 feet high. He claims he was only intending to build a two-story house - larger than those of his neighbours to reflect his position as the city’s richest man.
7. Mushroom House (Cincinnati, Ohio)
So disparate in materials and shapes this hodgepodge house looks like its been welded and glued together. But this is no hobo-construction, it was designed by the professor of architecture and interior design at the University of Cincinnati, Terry Brown, and was recently on the market for an estimated $400K.
8. Upside-Down House (Syzmbark, Poland)
This upside down design seems totally nonsensical–but that is exactly the message the Polish philanthropist and designer, Daniel Czapiewski, was trying to send. The unstable and backward construction was built as a social commentary on Poland’s former Communist era. The monument is worth a trip be it for a lesson in history or balance.
9. Pod House (New Rochelle, New York)
We assumed this oddball home was UFO-inspired, but it turns out the weed Queen Anne’s lace is where it got it's roots. Its thin stems support pods with interconnecting walkways.
Heliotrope Rotating House (Freiburg, Germany)
Green to the extreme, Architect Rolf Disch built a solar powered home that rotates towards the warm sun in the winter and rotates back toward its well-insulated rear in the summer. A house that spins in circles doesn’t sound too stable to us, but for the environment it is worth the risk.
In recent years, people around the world have injured themselves in some rather surprising ways. This list is what I consider the top five strangest accidents that people have had.
The ride had been rented by the girls' parents. Apparently they had been warned of possible dangers of high winds on the release form they signed, but had never actually read the paperwork when they signed it.
The girls suffered only minor injuries.
Man Ties Himself to Scaffolding Then Throws It to the Ground
For safety, whilst working on the 4th floor of the county jail annex, a 24-year-old construction worker tied himself to a piece of scaffolding. He later forgot that he was attached to the scaffolding, and threw it towards the ground. He was pulled down by the piece of scaffolding, causing him to land on top of it, piercing both his legs.
Teacher Tells Students to Tape Him to Wall
As part of a school fund-raising event, a physics teacher told his students to duct tape him to a wall. However, since duct tape doesn't “breathe”, the teacher overheated and lost consciousness. He later said, "I had some fantastic dreams while I was out." Doctors advised that the teacher would have died if the students hadn't acted promptly and removed the tape.
Man Shoots Himself in the Shoulder Twice
In 2001, a Pennsylvania man was curious to find out what it would feel like to be hit by a bullet, so he shot himself in the shoulder with a gun! An ambulance raced to his house, for what was actually the second time, to treat his new gunshot wound. Explaining why he had shot himself on two separate occasions, the man said, “I wanted to see if it hurt as much as it did the first time."
Man Mistakes Sharks for Dolphins
On a Florida beach in 1999, a man was fishing with his friends when he saw fins moving around in the water. “Dolphins!” he excitedly thought, before jumping into the water to swim with them. However, the fins turned out to belong to sharks. His friends managed to fish him out of the water, and he was treated at hospital for shark bites.
Scientists have found a protein that can promote the burning of body fat – a discovery that could lead to new ways to tackle obesity.
Mice injected with a protein called BMP7 increased their production of "good" brown fat cells, while keeping their levels of the normal white fat cells constant.
Fat is a crucial part of the body's regulation of metabolism and body temperature. There are two types of fat cell with different functions: the well-known white fat cells, which store energy and contribute to obesity, and lesser-known brown fat cells that burn calories to generate body heat.
Though people are born with a good supply of brown fat cells, these are usually lost after infancy. Reintroducing brown fat could therefore increase the amount of energy a person burns.
In their experiments, Yu-Hua Tseng's team at the Joslin Diabetes Centre at Harvard Medical School looked at the factors that determine the amounts of different types of fat cell in the body. They identified a protein called BMP7 which promotes the creation of brown fat. Without it, the amount of brown fat in mice ran low.
When the protein was administered artificially, it boosted the amount of brown fat and left the white fat unchanged. The results are published today in Nature.
"As we learn more about the controls of brown fat development, medical interventions to increase energy expenditure by brown fat inducing agents, such as BMP7, may provide hope to these individuals in losing weight and preventing the metabolic disorders associated with obesity," said Tseng.
A separate study led by Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts found that brown fat cells can be made from the same precursor tissue that normally produces muscle cells.
Spiegelman found that a molecular switch called PRDM16 regulates the creation of brown fat from immature muscle cells. Turning off the switch in the lab converted brown fat in mice into muscle cells.
Both studies are published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"Brown fat can increase energy expenditure and protect against obesity," Spiegelman writes. "The epidemic of obesity, closely associated with increases in diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cancer and other disorders, has propelled a major interest in adipose cells and tissues."
The next step, he says, is to find specific drugs and techniques that could help the body make more brown fat cells or else genetically engineer white fat cells to turn brown.
In an accompanying commentary in Nature, Barbara Cannon and Jan Nedergaard, both biologists at Stockholm University, said: "Insights into the developmental origin of brown fat cells are of particular interest because of the ability of these cells to burn fat. But, as is often the case in science, new questions follow new insights."
They add that a thorough understanding the function and creation of brown fat cells could take us closer to the "ultimate goal of promoting the brown fat lineage as a potential way of counteracting obesity."
Water, good ol' H2O, seems like a pretty simple substance to you and me. But in reality, water - the foundation of life and most common of liquid - is really weird and scientists actually don't completely understand how water works.
Here are 5 really weird things about water:
1. Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold Water
Take two pails of water; fill one with hot water and the other one with cold water, and put them in the freezer. The hot one would be frozen before the cold one. But wait, you say, that's counterintuitive: wouldn't the hot water have to cool down to the temperature of the cold water before proceeding to freezing temperature, whereas the cold one has "less to go" before freezing?
In 1963, a Tanzanian high-school student named Erasto B. Mpemba was freezing hot ice cream mix in a cooking class when he noticed that a hot mix actually froze faster than a cold mix. When he asked his teacher about this phenomenon, his teacher ridiculed him by saying "All I can say is that is Mpemba's physics and not universal physics."
Thankfully, Mpemba didn't back down - he convinced a physics professor to conduct an experiment which eventually confirmed his observations: in certain conditions, hot water indeed freezes before cold water*.
Actually, Mpemba was in good company. The phenomenon of hot water freezing first, now called the "Mpemba effect" was noted by none other than Aristotle, Francis Bacon and René Descartes.
But how do scientists explain this strange phenomenon? It turns out that no one really knows but there are several possible explanations, including differences in supercooling (see below), evaporation, frost formation, convection, and effects of dissolved gasses between the hot and cold water.
*In reality - of course - it's much more complex than that: hot water freezes first (it forms ice at a higher temperature than cold water), whereas cold water freezes faster (it takes less time to reach the supercooled state from which it forms ice) - see discussion on our previous blog post about this topic.
2. Supercooling and "Instant" Ice
Everybody knows that when you cool water to 0 °C (32 °F) it forms ice ... except that in some cases it doesn't! You can actually chill very pure water past its freezing point (at standard pressure, no cheating!) without it ever becoming solid.
Scientist know a lot about supercooling: it turns out that ice crystals need nucleation points to start forming. These nucleation points could be anything from gas bubbles to impurities to the rough surface of the container. Without these things, water would continue to be a "supercooled" liquid well below its freezing point.
When nucleation is triggered, then a supercooled water would "instantly" turn into ice, as this very cool video clip by Phil Medina of MrSciGuy shows:
Note: Similarly, superheated water remains liquid even when heated past its boiling point.
3. Glassy Water
Quick: how many phases of water are there? If you answer three (liquid, gas, and solid) you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice.
Remember the supercooling we talked about before? Well, it turns out that no matter what you do, at -38 °C even the purest supercooled water spontaneously turns into ice (with a little audible "bang" no less). But what happens if you continue to lower the temperature? Well, at -120 °C something strange starts to happen: the water becomes ultraviscous, or thick like molasses. And below -135 °C, it becomes "glassy water," a solid with no crystal structure. (Source)
4. Quantum Properties of Water
At a molecular level, water is even weirder. In 1995, a neutron scattering experiment got a weird result: physicists found that when neutrons were aimed at water molecules, they "saw" 25% fewer hydrogen protons than expected.
Long story short, at the level of attoseconds (10-18 seconds) there is a weird quantum effect going on and the chemical formula for water isn't H2O. It's actually H1.5O! (Source)
5. Does Water Have Memory?
In the alternative medicine of homeopathy, a dilute solution of a compound can is purported to have healing effects, even if the dilution factor is so large that statistically there isn't a single molecule of anything in it except for water. Homeopathy proponents explain this paradox with a concept called "water memory" where water molecules "remember" what particles were once dissolved in it.
This made no sense to Madeleine Ennis, a pharmacologist and professor at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ennis, who also happened to be a vocal critic of homeopathy, devised an experiment to disprove "water memory" once and for all - but discovered that her result was the exact opposite!
In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn’t contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths’ claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.
So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.
You can understand why Ennis remains skeptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry. (Source)
So far, other scientists failed to reproduce Ennis' experimental findings (throughout, Ennis herself was skeptical of the result's interpretation that water has a "memory" but maintained that the phenomenon she saw was real).
More recently, a team of scientists at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Max Born Institute in Germany, studying water dynamics using fancy multi-dimensional nonlinear infrared spectroscopy did find that water have a memory of sorts - in form of hydrogen bond network amongst water molecules. Problem for homeopathy was, this effect lasted only 50 femtoseconds (5 x 10-14 seconds)!
Ice spikes are, well, spikes that grow out of ice cube trays. They look like stalagmites found in caves, and you can make 'em yourself using distilled water. Kenneth G. Libbrecht of SnowCrystals explains:
How do Ice Spikes Form?
Ice spikes grow as the water in an ice cube tray turns to ice. The water first freezes on the top surface, around the edges of what will become the ice cube. The ice slowly freezes in from the edges, until just a small hole is left unfrozen in the surface. At the same time, while the surface is freezing, more ice starts to form around the sides of the cube.
Since ice expands as it freezes, the ice freezing below the surface starts to push water up through the hole in the surface ice (see diagram). If the conditions are just right, then water will be forced out of the hole in the ice and it will freeze into an ice spike, a bit like lava pouring out of a hole in the ground to makes a volcano. But water does not flow down the sides of a thin spike, so in that way it is different from a volcano. Rather, the water freezes around the rim of the tube, and thus adds to its length. The spike can continue growing taller until all the water freezes, cutting off the supply, or until the tube freezes shut. The tallest spike we've seen growing in an ordinary ice cube tray was 56mm (2.2in) long. (Source)
Bonus 2: Make Instant Snow with Boiling Water
What do you get when you throw boiling water to the air in subzero weather? Instant snow. Interestingly, it only works with boiling hot water:
These aren't the only things weird about water. We didn't talk about how water density changes with temperature (ice, for instance, is less dense than water so it floats - a key property of water that made life possible in the oceans and lakes). Nor did we talk about the weirdly strong surface tension of water, ordered clustering of liquid water, and so on. If you are interested, check out the Anomalous Properties of Water article by Martin Chaplin
Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. If you are in a lecture, for example, you can also take a picture of the blackboard with your phone, upload it to the Evernote server, and thanks to Evernote's clever OCR algorithms, even pictures of handwritten notes become instantly searchable. 
The 
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The standard tool for doing extensive bibliographies in academia is 
As much as teachers don't like sites like these, 
Quick: how many phases of water are there? If you answer three (liquid, gas, and solid) you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice.
In the alternative medicine of homeopathy, a dilute solution of a compound 
