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The treatment involved removing cataracts from the children’s eyes to allow the remaining stem cells to regrow functional lenses.

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Exploding killer lakes may sound like the subject of a Stephen King novel but they’re actually out there, waiting to strike with a CO₂ cloud that suffocates every living creature in its path by sucking the oxygen out of the air.

In 1986 Lake Nyos near the border of Nigeria unleashed a deadly CO₂ cloud upon the people who lived in the valley below, killing over 1700 villagers and at least 3000 head of cattle.

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National intelligence services (like the CIA and MI6) continue to find themselves relying more and more on civilian sources for the best data and analysis. A recent example was revealed because of all the anxiety over the huge numbers of illegal migrants trying to get into Europe and other Western countries, many of them by boat. Turns out that the best tool for reducing the use of ships for smuggling was an Israeli firm that built a business on creating a database of normal, and abnormal (and usually illegal) behavior by ships at sea for shipping and maritime insurance companies.

This data was easier to collect since the 1990s when all larger ships were required to use the AIS (Automated Identification System) which is essentially an automatic radio beacon (transponder) that, when it receives a signal from a nearby AIS equipped ship, responds with the ship’s identity, course, and speed. This is meant to enable AIS ships to avoid collisions with each other. An AIS activity database makes it possible to identify patterns of normal and abnormal behavior. The abnormal behavior, like arriving outside a port and waiting for several days to enter, is what smugglers are often forced to do to avoid arrest. Same thing with travelling outside the most efficient (in terms of fuel used and weather encountered) routes. With enough of this data and a thorough analysis it is very difficult for seagoing criminals to escape detection. Now that navies and coast guards are increasing using this “maritime BI (Business Intelligence)” tool to more quickly shut down the criminal gangs making over a billion dollars a year from all this people smuggling.

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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There’s lots of data, especially the comparison of rental rates for moving trucks into and out of California, to show the steady exodus of prosperous Californians and their businesses. The truck rental companies will almost give you a one-way truck to move from Texas to California, but charge a lot for a one-way truck from California elsewhere, which tells a lot.

A few years ago I was at a panel of business executives who bemoaned California’s high taxes and unfriendly regulatory environment, but who said their headquarters and major operations would stay put for the time being because they had long-term leases on building facilities, and as such it would cost more to move now than they’d save on lower costs elsewhere. But when those leases ran out. . .

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The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham announced this week that it had charged a former employee of Brink’s with stealing $196,000 from a federal reserve bank. Not that big of a deal as these things go, except that it was all in quarters. 784,000 quarters, to be exact.

The archetype two-big gangster.

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Well, obviously, we can’t have that.

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Scientists have made a dissolvable patch that can deliver vaccines — potentially eliminating the need for needles entirely.

The new vaccines are delivered simply by laying a tiny patch onto a person’s finger, before it dissolves into their skin. As such, it could vastly reduce the spread of diseases, by making the delivery of vaccines much more effective and cheap.

The new technology is made of a dissolvable material, meaning that when it is placed onto the skin it will dissolve straight away.

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For some reason, either because the color scheme offered better camouflage or simply random chance, the leopards in this region are almost entirely black, which makes them really difficult to tell apart. Until now. In a new study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, researchers found that by using infrared cameras, they could actually see a leopard’s distinctive pattern of spots.

When a person looks at a black leopard, the distinctive pattern of spots (unique to each leopard) blends in with the dark fur. But cameras equipped with an infrared flash (usually used to take night pictures) can see the subtle difference between the two dark colors of fur. The resulting photograph of a leopard shows a unique pattern of spots that researchers can use to identify animals, and get a better idea of how many rare black leopards are left in the wild.

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

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You knew it was something.

Egg Ninjas. Go ahead, laugh, but they work.

Smart Jump Rope.

Anti-Theft Lunch Bags. Kinda gross but I bet they work.

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Because it’s Friday, and who wants to work on a Friday?

Read it. And watch the videos.

The Wintergatan Marble Machine was built by Swedish musician Martin Molin of the band Wintergaten. It’s a hand-made machine that powers a kick drum, bass, vibraphone and other instruments using a hand crank and 2,000 marbles.

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A major British discovery is expected to lead to revolutionary bespoke treatments for patients with advanced cancer that could enter trials within two years.

The scientists behind the breakthrough believe they have identified the “Achilles’ heel” of cancer cells.

In a video about the findings, Cancer Research UK, described how immune cells could be marshalled to exploit this weakness.

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Greenland’s snowy surface has been getting darker over the past two decades, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt, a new study of satellite data shows. That trend is likely to continue, with the surface’s reflectivity, or albedo, decreasing by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century, the study says.

While soot blowing in from wildfires contributes to the problem, it hasn’t been driving the change, the study finds. The real culprits are two feedback loops created by the melting itself. One of those processes isn’t visible to the human eye, but it is having a profound effect.

The results, published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere, have global implications. Fresh meltwater pouring into the ocean from Greenland raises sea level and could affect ocean ecology and circulation.

“You don’t necessarily have to have a ‘dirtier’ snowpack to make it dark,” said lead author Marco Tedesco, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and adjunct scientist at NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. “A snowpack that might look ‘clean’ to our eyes can be more effective in absorbing solar radiation than a dirty one. Overall, what matters, it is the total amount of solar energy that the surface absorbs. This is the real driver of melting.”

Watch it.

Can’t really blame them.

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Turns out a fingerprint can be “spoofed,” just like a password. Jason Chaikin, president of New York City-based Vkansee, which develops fingerprint-based security systems, says he can hack the fingerprint sensor of an iPhone in 10 minutes.

At his booth at the Mobile World Congress here, he showed Digits how. The good news: It still takes a bit of work, as well as cooperation from the victim.

Bad news for Stupid People.

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Kelly Potter, 35, was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer in July 2015 and was among the first to be enrolled on a cancer vaccine trial that will run over the next two years involving up to 30 volunteers.

Medical researchers have designed the vaccine to encourage the immune system to react against a part of the cancer cell that allows it to continuously replicate without ever dying.

Multipurpose tables.

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It was just over a century ago when the nation changed the process for selecting U.S. senators. The 17th Amendment gave voters the power to elect senators, who had previously been elected by their state legislatures.

Regret for that constitutional amendment has lingered with some Americans, particularly among conservatives. Among its critics was the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia. And in Utah on Wednesday, a debate that may seem obscure or obsolete was live on the state legislative floor.

The Utah Senate passed a resolution urging the state’s congressional delegation and “all the members of the United States Congress” to propose a repeal of the 17th Amendment.

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And took their own sweet time about it.

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I guess there’s not a lot to occupy your time in New Zealand.

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 A possible hidden chamber within the ancient tomb of Tutankhamun is “full of treasures,” Egypt’s tourism minister has promised.

When was the last time an Arab kept a promise?

“We do not know if the burial chamber is Nefertiti or another woman, but it is full of treasures,” he told the newspaper. “It will be a ‘Big Bang’, the discovery of the 21st century”.

The code name for this project is ‘Al Capone’s Safe’. Geraldo is in discussions with the network.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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I am not making this up.

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Despite the taboo around “hearing voices”, more than 80 per cent of the people questioned said they heard an inner voice while reading to themselves and only 11 per cent said they did not.

Several respondents said they only heard it sometimes, depending on other factors including their interest in the text, and some perceived their own voice while others detected a range of characters, friends and family members, in emails for example.

I know I do, especially if I’ve heard the author speak; his (or her) voice automatically comes up.

(Neil Gaiman, I’m looking at YOU.)

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Cynicism may be the default reception to cinematic fan theories; yet, occasionally, they’re the only remedy to soothe away certain pains. And there is no prickling discomfort greater for the hardcore Indiana Jones fan than the bitter aftertaste of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s infamous “Nuke the Fridge” scene.

Yes, the film may have been released back in 2008 but, for some, the nightmare stubbornly clings on. The moment of cinema’s great hero, Dr. Indiana Jones, surviving a nuclear blast unscathed by locking himself up inside a lead-lined fridge.

Could there ever be any justification for it? A new fan theory prays there is; and that Jones’ miraculous survival is, in fact, thanks to immortality gained during the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Reddit user That_secret-chord has theorised thus: “Indiana Jones drinking from the Holy Grail helped him survive unlikely scenarios, most notably the infamous fridge scene.”

So now you know. We now return you to your previously scheduled boring life.

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Good, good. Hipsters ought not to be encouraged to breed. Think of it as evolution in action.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, responds to a critic.

Commenting on a Facebook post of mine – a post in which I ridicule arrogant people who distrust individuals to make their own private choices – you say “What you want, and what’s good for you, are often not the same thing. We are all human, after all.”  True.  But it’s also true that what others want for you, and what’s good for you, are even more often not the same thing.  None of us is a god, after all.

Contrary to the presumptions of most behavioral economists and other nanny-staters, the fact that Jones and Smith are sometimes deficient when choosing for themselves in the market does not make them less deficient when choosing for others in the voting booth or in some government office complex.

That’s the practical case against the Nanny State.

One more point: even if I’m terrible at making choices in my own best interest, a fundamental truth is that I own me.  No one else owns me.  No one has a moral right to tell me what to do as regards my own well-being.  I, like any other self-respecting person, would much prefer even to ruin my life if I do so through my own choices than to be to be saddled, bridled, and steered, as if I were a mindless animal, by some pretentious do-gooder to his or her notion of utopia.

And that’s the moral case.

Well done both.

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This very ominous rusted piece of metal would have been state of the art at its time of construction. The estimated top speed was in the range of 250 to 350 km/h. In fact, the american built turbo jet train is currently still the fastest train ever built in North America.

The design of the train really isn’t that complex. As can be noted in the pictures, two standard jet engines, often recycled from airplanes, were attached to the front of the forward most car. With a little aerodynamic re-engineering of the train cars, that’s all it took to pioneer this new technology.

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A new cheaper and more effective genetic test which detects all known inherited heart conditions is expected to be taken up by hospitals.

Current tests assess a small number of genes to identify a limited number of conditions. However, the new blood test detects all conditions which are currently known by clinicians.

By examining 174 genes, doctors are able to identify faults and begin treatment that can minimise the risk of death.

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Not that they had all that much to start with.

Saudi Arabia has started taxing water for residents to try and address the soaring cost of debt as oil revenues decline.

The water tariff comes amid warnings that Saudi Arabia’s groundwater will run out in the next 13 years.

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Well, duh — that’s what supposed to happen when you’re stabbed with a samurai sword.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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While many put finding love down to chance, who we are attracted to may have far less romantic origins and instead be down to our genes.

Researchers have discovered the genes that determine how tall we are may also influence the people we are attracted to, with most people being attracted to partners of a similar height to themselves.

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I am not making this up.

A dozen of the UK’s smartest canines are being trained to master the controls of a light aircraft after a nationwide search to find candidates for the experiment.

Full details of the extraordinary venture – which was first reported on by The Independent last year after amateur fliers at a London airfield spotted a dog grappling with aircraft-style controls – can now be revealed.

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Scientists are now able to diagnose the deadly disease using just a single drop of saliva, known as a “liquid biopsy”.

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

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Is there anything global warming can’t do? Now it seems that there is so much global warming that it is slowing the rise of sea levels.

As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts said Thursday.

Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth’s continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science.

This has temporarily slowed the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent, it said.

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Rep. Mike Coffman (R., Colo.), along with Reps. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), Jared Polis (D., Colo.) and Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) introduced a bill on Thursday that would eliminate the Selective Service System, which they maintain is outdated and unnecessary.

These lawmakers said they hope Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s decision in December to open all combat positions to women will spark a conversation the necessity of the Selective Service System.

“Now that women are eligible to serve in combat roles and Congress debates how to proceed on the issue of draft inclusion, we should consider a full repeal of the draft and the abolition of the Selective Service,” Mr. Coffman said.

Good news. I personally think that conscription is unconstitutional, being contrary to the clear language of the Thirteenth Amendment.

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You too can be Politically Correct … for a price.

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Throughout the fall of 2012, Marie-Sarah Adenis and Thomas Landrain toiled in La Paillasse biohacker space and their apartment on the outskirts Paris, trying to coax bacteria to bleed blue. They scoured more than 200 research papers and spent days growing colonies in their home incubator.

Shortly before Christmas, they settled on a Streptomyces soil bacteria originally discovered in 1908 on a potato plug that has become famous for its antibiotic properties. The bacteria also produces a beautiful, deep blue. Before long, Adenis, a designer, and Landrain, a biologist, had siphoned off their first drop of bacterial ink.

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In 1906, the Royal Navy rendered all other battleships obsolete when it unveiled the HMS Dreadnought: a steam-powered fighting vessel with 12-inch guns and cement-reinforced armor. This past summer, British naval engineers revealed a vision of its successor, the Dreadnought 2050.

The stealthy, semisubmersible ship is designed to move agilely around a battle zone and remain flexible in any type of mission, says Mark Steel, a manager of the Combat Systems Team at BMT Defence Services, a naval design firm involved in the project.

The battleship could function with a crew as small as 50, as opposed to the usual 200. It would serve as a mobile command center, unleashing and directing armies of drones, missiles, and rovers. “Robotics allows us to operate the ship at range to keep people out of harm’s way,” Steel says.

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I guess that’s why Arab soldier are so smart.

(Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?)

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But that trick never works….

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This past weekend, a group of about 100 members of the Free State Project (FSP) gathered for one of their regular meetings in Manchester, New Hampshire. But this particular confab was different, because it was held just days after FSP hit its more-than-a-decade-in-the-making target to get 20,000 liberty-inclined citizens to pledge to move to New Hampshire in the hopes of creating a significant political force in the Live Free or Die State. While over 2,000 Free Staters have already moved to New Hampshire, the rest of the signers will begin migrating over the next few years.

I’d do it myself but my wife is more Texan that I am and won’t move to the Colder Latitudes.

As Brian Doherty noted after the milestone was reached last week, FSP already has a long list of accomplishments in the state, including “getting 15 of their brethren in the state House, challenging anti-ridehail laws, fighting in court for outre religious liberty, winning legal battles over taping cops, being mocked by Colbert for heroically paying off people’s parking meters, hosting cool anything goes festivals for libertarians, nullifying pot juries, and inducing occasional pants-wetting absurd paranoia in local statists.”

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Cranfield University is developing the Nano Membrane Toilet, designed for single-household use (equivalent to ten people). The toilet is designed to accept urine and faeces as a mixture. The toilet flush uses a unique rotating mechanism to transport the mixture into the toilet without demanding water whilst simultaneously blocking odour and the user’s view of the waste.

Solids separation (faeces) is principally accomplished through sedimentation. Loosely bound water (mostly from urine) is separated using low glass transition temperature hollow-fibre membranes. The unique nanostructured membrane wall facilitates water transport in the vapour state rather than as a liquid state which yields high rejection of pathogens and some odorous volatile compounds. A novel nano-coated bead enables water vapour recovery through encouraging the formation of water droplets at the nanobead surface. Once the droplets form a critical size, the water drains into a collection vessel for reuse at the household level in washing or irrigation applications.

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No mention of how much it paid for this, and how the price compares to more conventional power supplies.