The Clean Energy Scam

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several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
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The Clean Energy Scam (continues)

Boston Dynamics Big Dog (new video March 2008)

Robotics keeps going forward

Embedded Video

Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys

Interesting security exploit

Embedded Video

Autism Breakthrough: Girl's Writings Provide 'Remarkable Insight' on Disorder

"It feels like my legs are on first and a million ants are crawling up my arms," Carly said through the computer.Carly writes about her frustrations with her siblings, how she understands their jokes and asks when can she go on a date."We were stunned," Carly's father Arthur Fleischmann said. "We realized inside was an articulate, intelligent, emotive person that we had never met. This was unbelievable because it opened up a whole new way of looking at her." This is what Carly wants people to know about autism."It is hard to be autistic because no one understands me. People look at me and assume I am dumb because I can't talk or I act differently than them. I think people get scared with things that look or seem different than them." "Laypeople would have assumed she was mentally retarded or cognitively impaired. Even professionals labelled her as moderately to severely cognitively impaired. In the old days you would say mentally retarded, which means low IQ and low promise and low potential," Arthur Fleischman said.

Autism Breakthrough: Girl's Writings Provide 'Remarkable Insight' on Disorder

The anatomy of an illusion, and what it tells us about the visual system

Take a look at this amazing illusion created by Arthur Shapiro



You're looking at two donut-shaped figures whose "holes" are gradually changing color from black to white and back again. It appears that the holes are changing in an opposite pattern -- when one is light, the other is dark, and so on. But if you click to remove the surrounding donuts, you'll see that the two holes are actually changing together.

If you're still not convinced, get a friend to help. One of you looks at the light donut and the other looks at the dark donut. Then each of you says "light" when your donut hole turns light. You'll soon be saying "light" simultaneously!

Shapiro calls this the Contrast Asynchrony illusion, and he argues that it can tell us a lot about how the visual system works. Below is an interactive version of the illusion. You can manipulate all sorts of variables to change the way the illusion appears. There's even more than one way to eliminate the appearance of the illusion entirely.
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Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells

Suuronen and her colleagues -- the project was run jointly with the Helsinki University Central Hospital -- isolated stem cells from the patient's fat and grew them for two weeks in a specially formulated nutritious soup that included the patient's own blood serum.In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or blood vessels.When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said.The block was later transplanted into the patient's head and connected to the skull bone using screws and microsurgery to connect arteries and veins to the vessels of the neck.

Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells

Seven Medical Myths

Ask your doctor how much water you should drink or why you couldn't keep your eyes open after Thanksgiving dinner, and you're likely to get the same misinformation your mother-in-law might dispense. A study published in the December 2007 British Medical Journal tweaked physicians on their acceptance of some widespread medical beliefs that might now be reclassified as old wives' tales. Here's a rundown:

1. Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day
2. We use only 10 percent of our brains
3. Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
4. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
5. Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser
6. Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals
7. Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy

Read the article to find why and how they are all false statements

Seven Medical Myths

How to build a Fireball you can hold in your hands