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An artificially excavated limestone pit in the south of France will soon host star-making technology, New Scientist reports. “If all goes well,” the magazine explains, in a few year’s time the pit will “rage with humanity’s first self-sustaining fusion reaction, an artificial sun ten times hotter than the one that gives our planet life.”

We have the technology … I hope.

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In any neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), every baby is connected to dozens of monitors. And each monitor is streaming hundreds of readings per second into various data systems. They can generate alerts if anything goes severely out of spec, but in normal operation, they just generate a summary report for the doctor every half hour or so.

IBM discovered that by applying machine learning to the full data stream, they were able to diagnose some dangerous infections a full day before any symptoms were noticeable to a human. That’s amazing in itself, but what’s more important is what they were looking for. I expected them to be looking for telltale spikes or irregularities in the readings: perhaps not serious enough to generate an alarm on their own, but still, the sort of things you’d intuitively expect of a person about to become ill. But according to Anjul Bhambhri, IBM’s Vice President of Big Data, the telltale signal wasn’t spikes or irregularities, but the opposite. There’s a certain normal variation in heart rate, etc., throughout the day, and babies who were about to become sick didn’t exhibit the variation. Their heart rate was too normal; it didn’t change throughout the day as much as it should.

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There are more, but let’s face it, if the title were Top 246 reasons, who would look?

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The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

Heh.

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The plasma gun or “flashlight” requires just a 5V battery to produce enough cold plasma to kill even heat-resistant and antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Enterococcus faecalis (a nasty gastrointestinal bug). Because the plasma’s heat ranges from 20 to 23°C (68 to 73°F), it doesn’t damage the skin. The bacteria-busting raygun – the work of scientists from China and Australia – costs just $100 to manufacture.

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I don’t care what you call it, I want one.

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The Telegraph has a new and greatly improved method of doing photo slideshows.

When I went aloft through the lubber’s hole
The mate, he cried, ‘Why, damn your soul!’…

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In common with its venomless modern cousin, Titanoboa crushed its prey before swallowing the squashed victim, and could doubtless have ingested Jennifer Lopez in one mighty gulp.

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A private laboratory in New Jersey is claiming to have fulfilled two key conditions of a workable fusion energy system: it’s confined atomic nuclei in an ion “bottle”, and heated them to 1.8 billion degrees Celsius.

The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc work, published in the American Institute of Physics’ Physics of Plasmas journal, reports that the high-density deuterium ion fusion reactions were confined “for durations of 7-30ns in the cores of plasmoids with typical radii of 300-500 ?m”.

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Called Ralstonia eutropha H16, the bacterium uses electricity to fixate carbon dioxide into alcohols (which are merely carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen arranged in a different order). In theory the hydrogen atoms could be produced by solar panels, but for safety reasons the team instead created formic acid using electricity. The bacteria feasts on the formic acid to produce the combustible alcohol.

So much for global warming.

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“Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain’s connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables — folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,” explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School. “This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate species.”

Bruce Bartlett points out some inconvenient truth.

BLUF: People acted to minimize their tax liability, shifting income around and moving overseas. Funny how that works.

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Nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean?

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Because life is only good when it’s Star Trek good.

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That ought to solve the ‘kill an endangered species for political correctness’ problem.

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The Lovecraft tradition carries on.

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Figured I’d drop this in here just to confuse people.

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We have the technology.

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Exposure to germs in childhood is thought to help strengthen the immune system and protect children from developing allergies and asthma, but the pathways by which this occurs have been unclear. Now, researchers have identified a mechanism in mice that may explain the role of exposure to microbes in the development of asthma and ulcerative colitis, a common form of inflammatory bowel disease.

No doubt this explains the robust health that kids in the ga-hetto have always enjoyed. Or maybe having yo momma on crack is not what they meant.

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China is to abolish the transplanting of organs from executed prisoners in the next five years, because they are not as healthy as those who have not served jail time.

Other than that, of course, the program was a great success. Look for Thomas Friedman to praise it in his next column, and the Democrats in Congress to adopt it in a major election coming soon to a theater near you.

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More peer-reviewed science contradicting the warming-alarmist “scientific consensus” was announced yesterday, as a new study shows that the well-documented warm period which took place in medieval times was not limited to Europe, or the northern hemisphere: it reached all the way to Antarctica.

The research involved the development of a new means of assessing past temperatures, to add to existing methods such as tree ring analysis and ice cores. In this study, scientists analysed samples of a crystal called ikaite, which forms in cold waters.

But but but … there’s a Consensus!

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Obama apology anticipated presently.

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Forget the obsessive-compulsive tracking of every event in your life — the real killer feature of Facebook Timeline is the huge banner-style cover photo that’s become the de rigeur way to express yourself online. Members of Congress have joined in with relish, too, carefully selecting images for maximum constituent impact, and the Washington Post has collected some of the best. From inspiring landscape photography to abstract shots of the American flag, it’s all right there on Facebook.

The only surprise here is that the compulsive narcissists in government have taken so long to clasp to their bosoms the chief vehicle for displaying compulsive narcissism in our time. But, then, Congress specializes in locking the barn door after the horse has gone, gotten hooked up, had a passel of colts, and come back in search of food stamps and housing assistance, so perhaps this is the first sign that Facebook is, like, so over.

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A Japanese researcher has used thousands of strands of spider silk to spin a set of violin strings.

The strings are said to have a “soft and profound timbre” relative to traditional gut or steel strings.

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The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on families and employers. Here are the 5 tax hikes that most hurt seniors.

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The British Library have released the first audio guide to how Shakespeare’s plays would have sounded in the original pronunciation.

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In the district of Asosa, the land is thick with bamboo.   People plant it and manage the forests. They rely on its soil-grabbing roots to stabilize steep slopes and riverbanks, cutting erosion. They harvest it to burn for fuel, to make into charcoal sticks to sell to city dwellers and to build furniture.

Asosa is not in China, not even in Asia.    It is a district in the west of Ethiopia, on the Sudanese border.   To many people, bamboo means China.   But it’s not just panda food — mountain gorillas in Rwanda also live on bamboo.   About 4 percent of Africa’s forest cover is bamboo.

What!? No complaints from the ‘environmentalists’ about introducing ‘invasive species’? Where’s the Sierra Club on this?

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In an article in the March 8 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology, physicists Travis Craddock and Jack Tuszynski of the University of Alberta, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona demonstrate a plausible mechanism for encoding synaptic memory in microtubules, major components of the structural cytoskeleton within neurons.

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After applying 15 engineers to the problem, the team concluded that towing an iceberg from the waters around Newfoundland to the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa, could be done, and would take under five months, though it would cost nearly ten million dollars.

Can Obama and his Federal checkbook be far behind?

Slow news day.

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The days of having to put down bags of shopping in order to open the car boot could soon be over, after Ford unveiled a door that opens when the car’s rear bumper is kicked.

Using sensors in the bumper that are programmed to detect a person’s shin and kicking motion, the boot door will open so long as the car’s owner has the keys somewhere on their person.

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While the pulse produced by a creature’s heart is an age-old indicator of life and death, it’s been a tricky thing for the medical field to replicate — but the pulse doesn’t appear to be necessary for life.

In fact, it ought to be beneficial by evening out your blood pressure and preventing pressure spikes that would stress blood vessel walls.

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And, of course, your friendly local Queer Studies major is going to want to rush right out and do that.

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The immune system response in which antibodies bind to specific molecules they recognize has been exploited to create a self-assembling protein-based transistor.

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In the Jurassic, that is.

The monster bloodsuckers were thought to have used ruggedised straw-like mouths to prey on dinosaurs.

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The answer to a Democrat’s prayer.

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It has been sought for centuries but remained a mystery, still out of reach. Now an expert has pinpointed a site that could be Atahualpa’s resting place: the last Inca emperor’s tomb.

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Fast-food giant McDonald’s has taken ownership of France’s signature bread and decided to start dishing up burgers in baguettes.

McDo, as the French call it, is trying to appeal to more upscale diners by mixing their famous beef burgers with French-made Emmental cheese and mustard.

Starting in April, the 1,228 McDonald’s restaurants across France will feature the limited edition McBaguette.

I am not making this up.

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We have the technology.

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And about time, too.

The breakthrough at the heart of what her group’s ISSCC paper defines as “fully autonomous implantable systems with locomotion” was how to wirelessly supply power to a tiny chip that can swim in your blood – or in any fluid, for that matter. Simply put, earlier assumptions about how electromagnetic power would traverse human tissue were wrong.

It had been assumed for years that the high-frequency waves required for antennas small enough to fit on an intraveneous voyager would be absorbed by muscles, guts, and other innards, but Poon’s research discovered that not to be the case.

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Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Not even a Communist dictatorship can make trains useful.

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They said, ‘It’s a plot to bomb the President.’ and the guys in the field got it garbled. It’s so hard to get good help these days….

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Remember this next time the NIMBY eco-nazis start freaking out.

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Last spring I wrote about Nature Publishing Group’s plan for a $49 electronic textbook packed with interactivity and unlimited content updates for life. The original publication date was scheduled for September 1, 2011, but for a variety of reasons the release was pushed back. Today marks the official launch of “Principles of Biology”.

The future is here, it just isn’t evenly distributed. Yet.

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The 2005 Kashmir earthquake was used as cover by the US to send secret agents into Pakistan tasked with tracking down al-Qaeda operatives and their Pakistani handlers, according to a new book that lifts the lid on the Pentagon’s special operations.

Well, thank God. That demonstrates more intelligence than I’ve seen our ‘intelligence’ agencies demonstrate in my lifetime.

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Chamtech wouldn’t say exactly how this works, but we have a theory: the nanocapacitors naturally form into a pattern that allow them to resonate with the cellphone signal in the air, and charge and discharge rapidly as they get hit by the electro-magnetic waves. This pulse emulates the way a cell tower works, allowing the smaller antennas in your cellphone or MiFi to receive signal from the passive layer sprayed onto the tree, wall, or side of the tent nearby. Because the nanocapacitors would do a lot of the hard work in finding signal, it would also mean that your phone antenna uses less power in order to get a signal, and that your battery could last far longer.

We have the technology.

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In just two years – 2007 to 2009 — the Midwest lost nearly 200,000 people. Where did many of them go? Turns out it’s Texas.

That’s what our Changing Gears public media project found out. Over the past few weeks, our Public Insight journalists Sarah Alvarez and Meg Cramer have been looking at Midwest Migration. They’ve collected hundreds of stories of people who left the industrial Midwest for other places.

I can vouch for that.