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A small stone artifact recovered from a Paleo-Eskimo site on Baffin Island is important evidence of a Viking presence in Arctic Canada around 1000 CE, says a team of scientists led by Dr Patricia Sutherland of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

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In 30 B.C., the Roman architect Vitruvius wrote down an ancient recipe for mortar that, as it happens, could make modern buildings more durable and environmentally friendly.

The crucial ingredient, volcanic sand, has long been credited with the longevity of Rome’s ancient monuments, including the Pantheon, Hadrian’s Temple, Trajan’s Market, and the Baths of Diocletian.

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So far, it has brought as much fear as hope. Since Chinese-speaking surveyors, backed by Nicaraguan soldiers and police, began assessing land and houses along the canal’s proposed 278km (172-mile) route a few months ago (see map), peasants fearful of their land being expropriated have taken to the streets 16 times. On December 10th several thousand, shouting “We don’t want the Chinese”, protested in Managua, the capital, despite police efforts to keep them in their villages, activists say. Boatmen in Punta Gorda on the Caribbean coast have refused to ferry heavy machinery to be used to begin construction, fearing their livelihoods will be harmed.

And the Occupy Whatever people say: [chirp] … [chirp] … [chirp] ….

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Gotta love Australians.

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“Woz” has lived in Australia on and off for a few years now and recently picked up a gig as an adjunct professor at Sydney’s University of Technology. According to The Australian Financial Review he’s now taken the plunge and moved down under to become, if you will, The Woz-ard of Oz.

Don’t blame him.

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Cell biologist Andrew Hessel of Autodesk is designing viruses in software to attack a specific individual’s cancer and then using DNA Printers to create the viruses as a drug.

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I am not making this up.

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Better and better.

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Blood, as the vital and life-sustaining passageway through the body, has a strong incentive to flow as easily as possible — in all cases except that of injury. With a cut or larger bleeding injury, platelets rush to the opening, part of the body’s desperate action to cut off what had moments ago flowed so freely. That switch takes time, and as good as platelets are, in trauma situations or on the battlefield, they might not work fast enough unaided. Now, a team of scientists at Texas A&M, Harvard, and MIT just developed an injectable gel that uses synthetic nanoplatelets to staunch the bleeding.

My Macintosh is sick, so blogging will be light until it gets fixed.

Science-Fiction Door Decals. You, too, can live behind an airlock door.

Stun Gun iPhone Case. Now you’re talkin’.

Neck Massager with Wireless Remote Control.

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Both good things. At last, a useful piece of ‘wearable’ tech.

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Legend has it that in the 1960s, one Daniel da Silva returned to his native Portugal following a stint in France and Belgium, with a vision of adapting the classic grilled ham and cheese croque-monsieur for local palates.

The result was the Francesinha (“Frenchie”), an example of what happens when you take a simple sarnie, crank it up to 11 with the addition of meaty overdrive and then douse it in alcohol-heavy sauce.

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When you think of bionic exoskeleton suits, images of futuristic high-tech super soldiers often come to mind. Think Tom Cruise in this summer’s sci-fi flick Edge Of Tomorrow, or Ripley taking on the queen xenomorph in Aliens. While militaries across the world are certainly interested in designing weaponized exo-suits for their armies of the future, powered exoskeletons are actually finding a much more benevolent niche right now: patient rehabilitation.

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Leaves … cows … demonstrators … it’s all good.

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Gee, I wonder why.

The end is in sight for the meter reader, who each month faithfully tramps through the flower beds or into the basement, flashlight and clipboard in hand, to record electricity use.

They are being phased out because tens of millions of new meters talk directly to the electric company. The meters can record use by the hour, changing the price as the market changes and telling the customer — or maybe even the appliances themselves — the best time to buy energy.

But this is not happening. Although the goal is to shift consumption to off-peak hours when cheaper, cleaner electricity is available, experts say it is still many years away, despite billions in federal subsidies that have helped finance the switch to the so-called smart grid.

Your tax dollars at work.

25 Amazing Life Hacks You Won’t Believe You Didn’t Know.

Edible Greeting Cards. I am not making this up.

Shoulder Bag With Pop-Up Tablet Holder. For those who are insecure with their geek status.

New Pills Make Farts Smell Like Chocolate.

Pressure Oven.

Bubble-Wrap Suit.

‘You Suck at Parking’ Business Cards.

Ring Weeder.

Liquid Plastic Welder.

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One of the two men involved pleaded guilty to the attacks in 2012. The other remained at large. Police had a suspect, but they couldn’t pin the crime on him due to a twist of genetic fate: He had an identical twin brother, and DNA from the condom matched both siblings. But now, a decade after the assaults, scientists have developed a genetic test that can distinguish between identical twins, and it may be used in court for the first time in this case.

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Parents are discovering that having government employees responsible for educating their kids is not a recipe for success.

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The dynomak is a variation of the most popular type of research fusion machine, the tokamak. Essentially, a tokamak is a doughnut-shaped machine that generates helical magnetic fields by combining toroidal fields (which go around the doughnut’s equator) with poloidal fields (which wrap around the outside of the doughnut). These fields have to be strong enough to keep plasma stable and contained indefinitely at the tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius necessary to induce fusion.

Magazine stool.

Bacon-making kit.

Keyboard-shaped-waffle maker.

Self-defense keychain.

Melting Nazi-Face Candle. For the man who has everything but puberty.

12-in-1 Scissors.

LED Keychain Light. I have one of these and wouldn’t be without it.

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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In the end it wasn’t vampires that the castle owners of Transylvania had to worry about, it was Communists.

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It makes sense that string cheese was most likely invented in Wisconsin, cheese capital of the United States. Brian (referred to by his first name here to avoid confusion between various members of the Baker family involved in this story), is the president of a family-owned and operated cheese brand named Baker Cheese, a company that has made cheese for nearly 100 years. Over the course of four generations string cheese has become close to the entirety of their business.

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Then there is the computer you use for sous vide, a cooking technique beloved by restaurant chefs — and a truly groundbreaking way of making better meals. In this method, you begin by packing food, usually meat, into a plastic bag. Then you place the bag in a water bath whose temperature is precisely controlled by a computerized thermostat. Then you wait.

After an hour, two hours, or in some cases 72 hours, you will have an exquisitely textured cut of meat — a steak with a uniform pinkness from edge to edge, or chicken so tender it tastes like no chicken you have ever experienced. If you have ever wondered how high-end restaurants get every steak right, every time, it is most likely because they cook sous vide.

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Legions of research teams around the world are now working on proof-of-concept studies that take this tiny step further, engineering microscopic robots that may some day be able to cruise through both the large arteries and small veins of living bodies to perform a wide range of medical feats that would otherwise require invasive surgery.

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Not far off the coast of Ireland’s County Dublin, there’s a private island with some unlikely inhabitants. Along with the native bird colonies and a herd of cattle, the island, called Lambay, is home to Ireland’s only wild mob of wallabies.

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All of the subjects’ blood samples revealed changes in gene expression following meditation. The changes were the exact opposite of what occurs during flight or fight: genes associated with energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion, and telomere maintenance were turned on, while those involved in inflammation were turned off. These effects were more pronounced and consistent for long-term practitioners.

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A new controlled diet study has found that increasing the levels of saturated fat in the diet does not lead to increased levels of saturated fat in the blood. However, increasing the amount of carbohydrates in the diet was found to raise the levels of a fatty acid associated with diabetes and heart disease.

Everything bad is good for you.

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Looks like Michelle Obama will need a new hobbyhorse.

Flash drive cufflinks.

Remote-controlled heated insoles.

Spring-based nutcracker.

Chocolate Cake in a Can.

The Survival Bike.

Guitar Pick Punch. You never know when you’ll need an emergency guitar pick.

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Over the past 100 years, coyotes have, quite literally, been taking over America. They are native to the continent, and for most of their existence these rangy, yellow-eyed canids were largely restricted to the Great Plains and western deserts where they evolved. But after wolves and cougars were exterminated from most of the United States by the 1800s, coyotes took their place. Colonizing some areas at a rate of 720 square miles per year, coyotes now occupy—or “saturate,” as one scientist I spoke with described it—nearly the entire continent. (Long Island is a notable exception.) The animals are now the apex predators of the east. And they’re proving so resourceful that even the last stronghold—the urban core—represents an opportunity to flourish.

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Want to know why your cucumbers are producing flowers but no fruit? It could be that your flowers are only male. Can’t for the life of you figure out what those white spots on your squash plants are? A new app called PlantVillage may be able to help.

Magnetic Shoe Closures.

Uzi Tactical Pen.

Hexagonal Shelving.

Cutting board with built-in knife sharpener.

Kinglock self-tightening nut.

Light-Casting Gloves.

Solar-Powered System Extracts Drinking Water From The Air.

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As well it should.

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It was January in the Texas Panhandle—flat land, big sky, bitter day. On our way out to see the cloned heifers, Jones had stopped to break the ice on some water troughs. The Nance Ranch, on the outskirts of Canyon, is a research facility belonging to West Texas A&M University (WTAMU), where Jones is a graduate student. He manages the ranch and comes to check on the clones every day.

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When fried, the new potatoes, called Innate potatoes, produce less of a chemical called acrylamide. Acrylamide appears in some starchy foods when they’re cooked at high temperatures. It’s most abundant in French fries and potato chips. It also appears in tobacco smoke. Scientists think acrylamide raises people’s risk for certain cancers, but it’s not clear how much acrylamide people to have to eat to raise their risk for cancer… so it’s not clear how much eating Innates would lower their risk, the New York Times reports. Innate potatoes also bruise less than non-GMO potatoes, a quality that farmers and shippers prefer.

Cue outrage from the Regressive Left. (Notice how potatoes are always white? They’re raaaaaaacist.)

[Remind me again why potatoes have to be approved by the Federal government.]

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Why? Because they can.

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

T-Rex Shower Head.

Turkey Lifter.

Space Pirate Watch.

Mini Washing Machine.

Electric Quadrofoil watercraft. Mount a .50-cal on that sucker and you got a deal.

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New Zealand’s Duke Engines has been busy developing and demonstrating excellent results with a bizarre axial engine prototype that completely does away with valves, while delivering excellent power and torque from an engine much smaller, lighter and simpler than the existing technology. We spoke with Duke co-founder John Garvey to find out how the Duke Axial Engine project is going.

This is really slick. Be sure to watch the videos.

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Good luck trying to join the Congressional Black Caucus.

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Skills we may all be needing soon, the way things are going.

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An interesting concept but I doubt that it will scale.

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In other words, sequencing the human genome merely showed us that we had an overwhelming number of mysteries yet to decode. We were like toddlers handed a giant encyclopedia as a means of learning the facts of life – not only could we not read the book, we didn’t even know how many entries it contained.

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The recently delivered bulk carrier, MV Harvest Frost, is the first vessel of its size to use MHI’s proprietary Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS), which reduces the drag between the vessel hull and seawater by blowing air bubbles produced at the vessel bottom. MHI says that use of the system has been proven to help Harvest Frost achieve a 27% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to conventional bulk carriers, exceeding the target figure of 25%.

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Assuming, of course, that that’s what you want to do.

USB Travel Shaver.

Telescoping Snow Broom.

Gorilla Grip Gloves.