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Laser Power Systems (LPS) from Connecticut, USA, is developing a new method of automotive propulsion with one of the most dense materials known in nature: thorium. Because thorium is so dense it has the potential to produce tremendous amounts of heat. The company has been experimenting with small bits of thorium, creating a laser that heats water, produces steam and powers a mini turbine.

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Although the Sholes & Glidden is generally regarded as the first production typewriter in history, the Hansen writing ball in fact beat the S&G by no less than four years. The reverend Rasmus Hans Malling Johan Hansen (1835-1890) worked as a teacher and as director of an institution for the deaf and dumb in Copenhagen. It was his desire to enable his pupils to ‘speak with their fingers’ that led him to develop his writing ball.

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“Sleep is such a dangerous thing to do, when you’re out in the wild,” Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish biologist who has been leading research into sleep function at the University of Rochester’s medical school, told me. “It has to have a basic evolutional function. Otherwise it would have been eliminated.”

…

MODERN society is increasingly ill equipped to provide our brains with the requisite cleaning time. The figures are stark. Some 80 percent of working adults suffer to some extent from sleep deprivation. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults should sleep seven to nine hours. On average, we’re getting one to two hours less sleep a night than we did 50 to 100 years ago and 38 minutes less on weeknights than we did as little as 10 years ago. Between 50 and 70 million people in the United States suffer from some form of chronic sleep disorder. When our sleep is disturbed, whatever the cause, our cleaning system breaks down. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology, Sigrid Veasey has been focusing on precisely how restless nights disturb the brain’s normal metabolism. What happens to our cognitive function when the trash piles up?

Electronic Flyswatter

Video Surveillance Clock

Self-Cleaning Plate

Kolibree smart toothbrush

Smart Crock-Pot

Digital Recording Door Viewer

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Now why didn’t I think of that?

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If, of course, that’s what you want.

Me, I’d rather my commute were boring and uneventful … but that’s me.

Left-wing rag Business Insider is distraught.

It’s the bit about ‘Reporters and Correspondents’ that really gets to them.

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PulseWallet is a credit card terminal and register with a built-in biometric palm reader. Inside the reader is an infrared Fujitsu camera that photographs your vein pattern and then pairs it with the credit card you’ve swiped. Once you’ve paired you can hold your hand over any PulseWallet terminal to pay with your credit card. If you’re a business owner, you can hook it up to your POS (point of sale) cash register, or to PulseWallet’s bundled register, which includes a Windows tablet. The whole package is being announced today, and goes on sale next month for a yet-unspecified price.

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Food science has often focused on nutrition or industrial-scale food and flavour production. But over the past two decades, a discipline that blends science and cooking has made its way into universities, restaurants and even home kitchens. Collaborations between scientists and chefs have made advances in the study of gastronomy and spurred culinary innovations that are opening up fresh ways of studying something we often take for granted: the enjoyment of a good meal.

This field is often called ‘molecular gastronomy’, although both scientists and chefs have objected to the term (see ‘Name that cuisine’). Hervé This, a chemist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris, who coined the term in 1988, wanted to establish a new field that uses science to understand what happens to food when it is cooked.

We have the technology.

Temperfect Mug

Kresto hand cleaner

Heated furniture cover

Cool Circuits puzzle

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Hint: Chuck Norris isn’t even on the list.

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 Doctors have long been in the high-stakes information management business. They must quickly sort through a patient’s symptoms, comments, test results, records and history to come up with a diagnosis. The physician brings to each diagnostic encounter a storehouse of knowledge and experience, all that he or she has read and learned over years.

The information overload for doctors is only growing worse. Medical information is estimated to be doubling every five years, and surveys show most doctors can find only a few hours a month to read medical journals. So it is not surprising that automated assistance for doctors has been pursued by researchers and companies for many years. Decision-making in medicine, after all, involves not just time and money, but also human lives.

A worthy goal, but a frustratingly difficult one. Yet in the last few years, real progress is being made in what is called “clinical decision support” technology. And the story in medicine is the same as in so many applications of modern computing: advances in sensors for measuring, calculating power and artificial-intelligence software are opening the door to a new generation of smarter tools.

And about fargin time, too.

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Let’s get right down to the important stuff.

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Dead cow and spuds are the basis of all true civilization.

7-in-1 Emergency Auto Tool

Retractable Spike Snow Boots

Stainless Steel Travel Cup

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 Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in a tiny southwestern French village, where three researchers have revealed the entrance to a cave they insist contains King Solomon’s gold, and possibly the Holy Grail.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

According to the BBC, that is.

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Carmat’s innovative artificial heart — which includes sections of cow tissue — initially won approval in Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Poland, and Belgium earlier this year. The company’s home country of France eventually came on board in September, and Health Minister Marisol Touraine is wasting no time in touting Carmat’s success. “This news brings great pride to France,” she told BFM TV. “It shows we are pioneers in healthcare, that we can invent, that we can carry an innovation that will also bring great hope to plenty of people.” Carmat’s CEO Marcelo Conviti took a more cautious tone. “We are delighted with this first implant, although it is premature to draw conclusions given that a single implant has been performed and that we are in the early postoperative phase,” he said in a statement.

We have the technology.

Beer Concentrate. I am not making this up.

LifeStraw.

3D Printed Guns.

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Draper shared his vision with TechCrunch tonight. He says he’s submitting a polished version to the state’s Attorney General in the form of a ballot proposition proposal within the next 48 hours. “Six Californias” already has a campaign website up and is eager for an army of volunteers.

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When used in trials, the compound gave mice more energy, toned their muscles , reduced inflammation, and led to big improvements in insulin resistance.

Scientists say it actually reversed the ageing process, not just slowing it down, and say that for humans the effect would be similar to a 60-year-old feeling like a 20-year-old.

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“Cost is the big roadblock for algae-based fuel,” said Douglas Elliott, the laboratory fellow who led the PNNL team’s research. “We believe that the process we’ve created will help make algae biofuels much more economical.”

But not, apparently, economical enough to replace regular petroleum. Pity.

Seth Roberts has some advice, with reasons.

I believe Stuart’s discovery is important for two other reasons that might not impress anyone else. One is similarities with my earlier work. First, I’ve found  other “cross-over” interactions with time of day, where something helpful at one time is harmful at another time. Vitamin D in the morning improves sleep, Vitamin D at night harms sleep. Morning faces improve mood, evening faces harm mood. Second, wondering why we like sour, umami and complex flavors was the first thing to suggest to me that we need to eat plenty of fermented food to be healthy. Many facts later, I’m sure this is true. Finally, evolutionary reasoning has helped me find several new experimental effects (morning faces, Shangri-La Diet, flaxseed oil, standing and sleep).

Finally, Stuart’s discovery explains something puzzling I’d noticed repeatedly for years. Now and then I slept unusually well. I’d wonder why — how was yesterday different from usual? — and see that the only unusual thing was that I’d had dinner at a friend’s house. At the times, I guessed that seeing faces in the evening was somehow improving my sleep. This did not make sense in terms of my morning faces work, but a connection between social contact and sleep was well-established. Now I realize that dinner at a friend’s house is one of the few times I eat dessert. A friend told me that when his partner has dinner parties, she serves dessert long after the main course.

More here.

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“We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful,” concluded the authors of the editorial summarizing the new research papers, published Dec. 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.”

Maybe so, but I’m still taking mine.

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Like other organs, eyes sometimes need to be replaced with a transplant, and that transplant comes from a person who agreed to donate their organs upon their death. In the future, it might be a lot easier to acquire an eye transplant thanks to 3D printing. University of Cambridge researchers published a paper today detailing how they used an ink printer to print multiple types of rat eye cells; the first time anyone has been able to keep eye cells healthy and at the right consistency to flow out of a nozzle. It’s a first step toward being able to 3D print an artificial eye for a human.

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The Vatican Library and Oxford University’s Bodleian Library put the first of 1.5 million pages of their precious manuscripts online Tuesday, bringing their collections to a global audience for the first time.

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A mainstay of drive-up bank tellers for decades, a New Zealand cafe is finally taking the pneumatic tube to its logical conclusion: as a delivery mechanism for delicious, nutritive sliders. The Press reports the story of Christchurch’s C1 restaurant, which is in the midst of installing a network of vacuum tubing to connect its kitchen with every single table; when the system is complete late next year, cooks will be able to shoot burgers directly to their customers at over 80 miles per hour inside reinforced aluminum canisters.

Can the flying car be far behind?

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His range of MAG (Magnetic Assisted Geometry) furniture is made of sheet steel and solid wood, with magnets in the wooden parts allowing each piece to be assembled in minutes with no tools.

Because screwdrivers are just so last century.

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How does a mother’s weight-loss surgery affect her child’s risk of obesity? It’s a question scientists have been struggling with since a Laval University study published in April, which looked at children born to mothers who’d undergone gastric bypass surgery prior to their pregnancy. Researchers knew the children were less prone to obesity, but as they tried to figure out why, they found something unexpected. The children’s genes were different — not their genetic code itself, but the markers in between that code. It was a small study, but the results were striking: more than 5,000 genes were expressed differently when parents had undergone the surgery. The surgery had changed something in the mother’s DNA, and when the children were born just a few years later, it appeared to have changed in them too.

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Sitting up straight is not the best position for office workers, a study has suggested.

Scottish and Canadian researchers used a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to show it places an unnecessary strain on your back.

They told the Radiological Society of North America that the best position in which to sit at your desk is leaning back, at about 135 degrees.

Everything bad is good for you.

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Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Gotta love that Global Warming.

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 Canada’s postal service said Wednesday that it would cease home delivery over the next five years, and substantially increase postal rates.

…

In place of home delivery, Canadians who live in cities would have to pick up their mail and parcels at so-called community mailboxes, which would be established in neighborhoods across the nation. (Apartment-dwellers would continue to pick up their mail in their buildings.)

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A teen playing the knockout game in Las Vegas failed to knock out his would-be female victim, only to have her turn on him and beat him until her boyfriend intervened, sparing the hapless attacker further pain.

They gonna diss you back in the ‘hood, gettin’ beat up by a white girl.

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Why should the Air Farce have all the fun?

Lock Pick Earrings

d20 Whiskey Stones

Inverse Umbrella

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Nearly one-fifth of the metal elements present in modern tech products have no replacement candidates if supplies are exhausted, according to a study by Yale University.

In fact, the survey of 62 metals important to modern technology finds that not one of those metals has an “exemplary” alternative to take its place if reserves were to run low.

So enjoy them while you can.

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Bet they want somebody else to pay for it….

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Imagine, if you will, a thin layer of ‘bureaucrat’ spread overall like frosting on a wedding cake.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Consider the numbers: in 2008, ABC News reported 97,848 background checks on Black Friday. In 2009, the numbers remained somewhat static but then began to grow exponentially as the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats began to flex their muscles.  By 2011, there were 129,166 background checks on Black Friday alone.

As the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported, the jump in 2011 marked “a 32.01 percent increase over” the sales on 2008 Black Friday–the year Obama was first elected.

In 2012, the number of Black Friday background checks rose to 154,873. Remember that because numerous guns can be purchased with each background check, these figures don’t even begin to indicate how many firearms may actually have been sold.

Cordless automatic stirrers

3D Clue game

Gifts for the Chef

Jet Capsule

Dungeon-Building Dice   — Gamer? Lazy? We got you covered….

Your Very Own Cold Fusion Reactor

Handwarmer with Smart Phone Recharge

AeroMobil Flying Car

WeMo Light Switch

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David Niven is no doubt turning over in his grave.

In 1621, the English hadn’t gotten around to adopting the Gregorian calendar yet, so their year was 10 days behind what we know now.

The traditional harvest feast in Europe was Martinmas, held on November 11.

Add 10 days to November 11 and you get November 21, which this year falls on the third Thursday of November.

So all you people who are celebrating Thanksgiving today are a week late.

Just so you know.

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Q. Your new book begins with a falsehood that has endured to the present: That people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat.

A. Yes, and even cultivated people still repeat it to this day. The official culture in the Middle Ages was absolutely convinced that the earth was spherical and they accepted the Greek idea of the measure of the equator. It’s just intellectual and cultural laziness. We are also continuously told that during the Middle Ages they burned witches, when the real burning of witches started in the Renaissance.

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As the heart pumps blood around the body, the aorta – the main vessel from the heart – stretches to accommodate the blood-flow. In most people it relaxes back to normal size, but for people with Marfan syndrome it can fail to recover, gradually enlarging over time.

From an early age, Mr Golesworthy was fully aware he was living with the risk his aorta could one day stretch so much it would burst. And during a regular check-up in 2000, he was told the time had come to consider pre-emptive surgery.

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In fact, many of the supposed negative costs of cars are purely imaginary, while others are rapidly declining. Each year’s crop of new cars is safer, more fuel-efficient and less polluting than before. Department of Energy data show that in 1970 cars used twice as much energy per passenger mile as did mass transit. Today, they are practically tied, and in a few years driving will use less energy and emit less pollution than public transit.

For more than 60 years, Americans have consistently spent around 9% of their personal incomes on driving, even though per-capita miles have tripled since 1950. According to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics—counting both user costs and subsidies—public transportation costs nearly four times as much per passenger mile as driving, while Amtrak costs well over twice as much.

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

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Doctors began using phages to treat bacterial infections nearly a century ago, but the idea that phages could protect against food-borne pathogens came about in the past decade. “The food industry isn’t known for its quick adaptation for new innovations,” says Dirk DeMeester, director of business development for Micreos Food Safety, the Dutch company that developed Listex. Yet the idea seems to be slowly gaining traction. DeMeester declined to provide sales figures, but he hinted that business is booming. “Our growth is exponential,” he says. “People are starting to understand that it’s more than just a good idea. It’s going to be an industry standard.”

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So much for the ‘family farm’.