Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate | TorrentFreak

As part of an article investigating the growing phenomenon of eBook piracy, a Scandinavian news outlet interviewed a 19 year-old self-confessed pirate who bragged about his activities. To counter his viewpoint a well known author contributed to the piece, stating that she abhors book piracy since it costs her huge amounts of money. However, her moral stance took a bit of a beating when her son let an embarrassing fact slip out.

This weekend Dagens Næringsliv ran an article about book piracy in which they interview 19-year-old Christian Berntsen, a self-confessed book pirate with eyes on the big time. With desires to become “one of the big boys”, Berntsen admitted to running servers in Lithuania which he believes are safe due to their location.

“Books are priced too high,” said Berntsen when justifying his work. “One of the reasons why the pirate world is so big, is that publishers take crazy prices for something that isn’t even in physical form.”

To counter his viewpoint, DN also interviewed Anne B. Ragde, an award-winning author. Unsurprisingly, Ragbe isn’t a huge fan of eBook sharing. In order to thwart piracy, she refused to allow her latest novel to be released as an audiobook since the format is popular with file-sharers and also denied the publication of Russian and Chinese versions.

“Piracy scares the hell out of me. I do not know what to say. I lose sleep at night over it,” said Ragbe. “I have figured out that I’ve lost half a million kronor ($72,500) on piracy of my books, maybe more.”

(...)

In response to a question about her habits when it comes to buying or otherwise acquiring copied or counterfeit items, Ragde’s anti-piracy halo slipped more than a little.

“Pirated handbags? Yes, I do buy them,” she said. “I feel that the genuine Prada bags have such an inflated price.”

Ragbe then reportedly went on to list many other items she’s bought legitimately but was kindly assisted with a further confession by her son, Jo. If her halo had slipped with the bag admission, it was now set to strangle her.

“You have a pirated MP3 collection,” Jo added, helpfully. “We copied the first 1500 songs from one place and 300 from another.”

“Yes,” admitted Ragbe. “There were a lot of things on the iPod.”

More @ TorrentFreak

NASA Finds New Life

NASA Finds New Life

NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth, using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything.
All life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same. NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism—called GFAJ-1—uses the poisonous arsenic for all its building blocks.

more @ Gizmodo

Very cool: 3D Video Capture with Kinect

Amazing Road "Printer"

Liquid antennas turn seawater into signal

Liquid antennas turn seawater into signal



The US Navy has created a device which turns a jet of sea water into an impromptu liquid antenna, creating a powerful, high frequency broadcast tower for ships, emergency situations and easy transportation.

Created by SPAWAR System Center Pacific, the sea water antenna uses the magnetic induction properties of salt to make ordinary ocean water transmit and receive radio signals. As the pillar of water is squirted through the current probe, a magnetic field is created and signal comes through to a hooked-up communication device.

Plus, depending on the height of the stream of water, you can get UHF, VHF and HF broadcasts, all from the same jet of H2O. You can even set up multiple jets of water, at different heights, to broadcast on different bands simultaneously. Handy.

More @ Wired

Canadian scientists transform human skin into blood

Canadian scientists transform human skin into blood

Canadian scientists have transformed pinches of human skin into petri dishes of human blood — a major medical breakthrough that could yield new sources of blood for transfusions after cancer treatments or surgery.

The discovery, by researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., could one day potentially allow anyone needing blood after multiple rounds of surgery or chemotherapy, or for blood disorders such as anemia, to have a backup supply of blood created from a tiny patch of their own skin — eliminating the risk of their body’s immune system rejecting blood from a donor.

more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Canadian+scientists+transform+human+skin+into+blood/3791337/story.html#ixzz14eohpDCS

Ultimate Apple iPhone 4 Costume!

TAMPA, FLA., John Savio (Center), Abigail Gardner (Featured as Apple Employee) This year they're back at it again. John Savio and Reko Rivera went their separate ways. John created the upgraded rendition of the iPhone 4 featured here at 10x to scale, complete with a 40" LED LCD Panel, a Jailbroken iPhone 4, VGA out from the iPohone, LED Back Camera Light, weighs roughly 75 lbs and uses a mini 12v Battery with 2+ hours of battery life. The costume took a total of 3 days / 40 hours to complete.

The Bottle Cap Tripod

The Bottle Cap Tripod

He's got a stretchy rubber socket that fits on top of pretty much any kind of bottle, and a standard-issue tripod screw on the other end thatfits most any camera. Need a tripod in a jiff? Grab the nearest soda or water bottle, stick on the Bottle Cap Tripod, and you're set! Self-portraits, group photos on self-timer, and steady low-light shots just became a whole lot easier! More @ The Photojojo Store

Is your future in IT a job in the boonies?

Is your future in IT a job in the boonies?

"Struggling to find a job in IT in and around your home city or suburb? Consider a move to Jonesboro, Ark., Sebeka, Minn., or Macon, Mo. These locales might not jump out as being hotbeds of technology development or home to a large number of businesses or government agencies. But they are places where a growing number of technology workers are settling in order to find jobs in their field.

The source of these jobs is rural outsourcing companies, 'onshore' IT service providers that market their offerings to clients as an alternative to offshoring or keeping IT functions in-house. Because some or all of their facilities are located in lower-cost areas in the United States, these companies can keep fees relatively low for their clients."

More @ InfoWorld

It’s Official: More Private Sector Jobs Created In 2010 Than During Entire Bush Years | NEWS JUNKIE POST

It’s Official: More Private Sector Jobs Created In 2010 Than During Entire Bush Years

The September jobs report was just released and demonstrates that America is on a far slower path to recovery than anyone originally predicted. Despite this, the shedding of government jobs cloaks a glimmer of hope: more private sector jobs have been created this year than during the entire Bush administration. Read that again: 2010 has had more private job creation than during the entire 8 year tenure of George W. Bush.

More from NEWS JUNKIE POST

Baby Born From Embryo Frozen For 20 Years

Baby Born From Embryo Frozen For 20 Years

NewsCore - A healthy baby boy was born from an embryo frozen for almost 20 years in what was hailed Sunday as scientific breakthrough that could allow women to start families much later in life.

The infant's mother, who is 42, underwent infertility treatment for 10 years before she was given the embryo last year. She gave birth to a baby boy in May this year.

News of the birth, reported in the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, comes as British lawmakers extend the period that embryos can be stored for up to 55 years.

The baby boy was born from a batch of five embryos frozen in 1990 in the U.S. by a couple who no longer needed them after they conceived their own child through IVF treatment.

That means the two children are siblings although born 20 years apart.

More @ MyFoxNY

Google: our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles

Official Google Blog: What we’re driving at

Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use.

So we have developed technology for cars that can drive themselves. Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.

Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.

To develop this technology, we gathered some of the very best engineers from the DARPA Challenges, a series of autonomous vehicle races organized by the U.S. Government. Chris Urmson was the technical team leader of the CMU team that won the 2007 Urban Challenge. Mike Montemerlo was the software lead for the Stanford team that won the 2005 Grand Challenge. Also on the team is Anthony Levandowski, who built the world’s first autonomous motorcycle that participated in a DARPA Grand Challenge, and who also built a modified Prius that delivered pizza without a person inside. The work of these and other engineers on the team is on display in the National Museum of American History.

More @ Official Google Blog

Exoskeleton helps the paralysed walk again

Exoskeleton helps the paralysed walk again

Boxtel is wearing a new exoskeleton called eLEGS, which could soon help people with spinal injuries to walk with a natural gait. "Walking with eLEGs took some rewiring and relearning," says Boxtel, "but my body has the muscle memory. And I learned to walk really fast."

eLEGS is being readied for clinical trials by Berkeley Bionics, based in Berkeley, California. Unlike other exoskeletons, such as Raytheon's XOS-2, and Berkeley Bionics's HULC, eLEGS is not intended to augment soldierswith super-human strength, but is specifically designed as a rehabilitation device to help restore walking function to people with spinal cord injuries, as well as improving blood circulation and digestion.

More @ New Scientist

Graphene Will Change the Way We Live

Graphene Will Change the Way We Live

The theory behind the substance graphene was first explored by theoretical physicist Philip Wallace in 1947 as kind of a starting point when he was doing research trying to understand the electronic properties of more complex, 3D graphite. although the name graphene wasn't actually coined until 40 years later, where it was used to describe single sheets of graphite. In other words, it's the name given to a flat monolayer of carbon atoms that are tightly packed into a 2D honeycomb lattice; like a molecular chicken-wire that is one atom thick. It's essentially the basic building block for graphitic materials of all other dimensionalities; it's a stepping stone to building bigger things. Graphene in itself however wasn't discovered until 2004 in its full observable and testable form.

Since then, in the past 6 years, scientists have discovered that the substance retains some amazing properties. Some say that it will be heralded as one of the materials that will literally change our lives in the 21st century. Not only is graphene the thinnest possible material that is feasible, but it's also about 200 times stronger than steel and conducts electricity better than any material known to man—at room temperature. Researchers at Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering who proved that graphene is the strongest material ever measured said that "It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap."

Potential applications for the material include the replacing of carbon fibers in composite materials to eventually aid in the production of lighter aircraft and satellites; replacing silicon in transistors; embedding the material in plastics to enable them to conduct electricity; graphene-based sensors could sniff out dangerous molecules; increasing the efficiency of electric batteries by use of graphene powder; optoelectronics; stiffer-stronger-lighter plastics; leak-tight, plastic containers that keep food fresh for weeks; transparent conductive coatings for solar cells and displays; stronger wind turbines; stronger medical implants; better sports equipment; supercapacitors; improved conductivity of materials; high-power high frequency electronic devices; artificial membranes for separating two liquid reservoirs; advancements in touchscreens; LCD's; OLED's; graphene nanoribbons could be a way to construct ballistic transistors; and nanogaps in graphene sheets may potentially provide a new technique for rapid DNA sequencing.

More @ Big Think

Johnny Depp's surprise visit to London primary school as Captain Jack Sparrow

Johnny Depp's surprise visit to London primary school as Captain Jack Sparrow | Mail Online

It's not every day a Hollywood heart-throb pitches up in your classroom.

But these Greenwich schoolgoers left the rest of Britain's children - if not parents - green with envy when they had a surprise visit from Johnny Depp yesterday.

The star is currently in south-east London filming the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie On Stranger Tides and arrived at the Meridian Primary School dressed in full character as Captain Jack Sparrow.

He made the one-off trip after nine-year-old pupil Beatrice Delap wrote to the star asking for help staging a 'mutiny' against the teachers, as he was filming at the nearby 18th century Old Naval College.

More @ Mail Online

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests • The Register

Poolside guests at a newly-opened Las Vegas hotel have been enjoying the complex's quick-tan facility - a solar "death ray" with the power to burn flesh and melt plastic.

The architects responsible for the MGM Mirage Vdara underestimated the converging power of the building's concave facade, which concentrates a roasting beam onto the pool area.

Barbecued guest Bill Pintas recounted to ABC his midday experience of the ray, as he exited the pool and settled into his lounge chair. He said: "I'm sitting there in the chair and all of the sudden my hair and the top of my head are burning. I'm rubbing my head and it felt like a chemical burn. I couldn't imagine what it could be."

Pintas quickly found out that taking shelter under an umbrella offered no protection from the intense beam, which burned right through a plastic bag the grilled guest was using to carry newspapers.

More @ The Register

The Levytator - Awesome freeform escalator

Kissing - Why do we do it?

Kissing

We love to kiss, and we do it instinctively. The urge to do it springs up from deep within – but why?

One of the answers is the cytomegalovirus.

It has been a hypothesis for a while, but recent research by Colin Hendrie from the University of Leeds may have pinned it down:

“Female inoculation with a specific male’s cytomegalovirus is most efficiently achieved through mouth-to-mouth contact and saliva exchange, particularly where the flow of saliva is from the male to the typically shorter female.”

According to the research, kissing transmits germs from man to woman, and after about six months of it she becomes immune to the bad stuff in the man’s body. By the time the baby is born, it is immune to the things the parents are immune to.

More @ You Are Not So Smart

Stand by Me on Vimeo - FANTASTIC MIX

Stand by Me on Vimeo

Stand by Me from theRedPillRadio on Vimeo.

Passengers heap praise on pilot Jack Conroyd after Delta Flight 4951 scare

'He was our Capt. Sully!' Passengers heap praise on pilot Jack Conroyd after Delta Flight 4951 scare

"Passengers on the jet that made a miraculous safe landing at JFK compared their icy calm pilot Sunday to Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger, the Hero of the Hudson.

The cool and collected flier at the controls was Navy vet Jack Conroyd, 55, who is being hailed for saving 64 lives by effortlessly landing his crippled jetliner Saturday with its right wheel jammed in the up position."

This is a news website article about a scientific finding [parody/ criticism[

This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins | Science

This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges".

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.(...)

More @ guardian.co.uk

Mouseless - an invisible computer mouse

CANCERING: Listening In On The Body's Proteomic Conversation

CANCERING: Listening In On The Body's Proteomic Conversation

W. DANIEL HILLIS: "We make a mistake when we think of cancer as a noun. It is not something you have, it is something you do. Your body is probably cancering all the time. What keeps it under control is a conversation that is happening between your cells, and the language of that conversation is proteins. Proteomics will allow us to listen in on that conversation, and that will lead to much better way to treat cancer."

More @ edge.org

Interesting concept: Mozilla Seabird 2D

Awesome - tap dancing 2.0?

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's on Vimeo

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's on Vimeo

HDR Video Demonstration Using Two Canon 5D mark II's from Soviet Montage on Vimeo.

Google Instant is trying to kill me - The Guardian

Charlie Brooker | Google Instant is trying to kill me | Comment is free | The Guardian

Last week I realised the internet wants to kill me. I was trying to write a script in a small room with nothing but a laptop for company. Perfect conditions for quiet contemplation – but thanks to the accompanying net connection, I may as well have been sharing the space with a 200-piece marching band.

I entered the room at 10.30am. Because I was interested in the phone-hacking story, I'd set up an automatic Twitter search for the term "Coulson" (eavesdropping, essentially: he'd hate it). Whenever someone mentioned his name, a window would pop up in the corner of my screen to alert me. Often their messages included a link to a webpage, which I'd end up skim-reading. This was on top of the other usual web distractions: emails, messageboards, self-deluding "research" on Wikipedia, and so on.

By 1pm I'd written precisely three lines of script. Yet my fingers had scarcely left the keyboard. My brain felt like a loose, whirring wheel that span with an audible buzz yet never quite touched the ground.

At around 2pm, Google announced the final straw.

I'm starting to feel like an unwitting test subject in a global experiment conducted by Google, in which it attempts to discover how much raw information it can inject directly into my hippocampus before I crumple to the floor and start fitting uncontrollably.

More @ The Guardian

David Sedaris and the Stadium Pal @ Letterman

This is hilarious!

Evolution in Action: Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth

A yellow-bellied three-toed skink carrying embryos, visible as light orbs inside its body.

"Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales (map), the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young."

Sharpie liquid pencil

Sharpie liquid pencil

Sharpie is to sell a 'liquid pencil,' a pen with erasable ink made from graphite that only becomes permanent after three days' exposure to the air. In the meantime, it may be rubbed out with a standard eraser. It'll hit stores this fall.

Introducing The NEW Sharpie LIQUID PENCIL [Sharpie via Wired]

From Boing Boing

Counter-inception!

From reddit.

Airships: a second age

Airships: a second age

The future of air travel? The HAV3 prototype in remote-controlled flight

Whatever you want to call it, the new technology has just won the company (or rather, their US defence contractor ally Northrop Grumman) a contract with the United States Department of Defence to the tune of half a billion dollars. In just 12 months the team at Cardington must build a 300ft-long surveillance vehicle capable of staying airborne for 21 days at a time. It will be known as the LEMV (Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle).

The LEMV will hover above Afghanistan at 20,000ft, equipped with the sort of super-powerful cameras that can read a signature on a letter from four miles away. It will be, Taylor says, ‘an unblinking eye’, recording every move made on the ground. In theory, no one will be able to plant a roadside bomb – a device which has claimed the lives of so many British soldiers – without the cameras seeing who did it and, more importantly, where they came from. And, if the LEMV is a success, it could prove to be a tipping point, ushering in a new age of airships.

(...)

Realistically, SkyCats would be most useful in the transport of heavy loads – the largest SkyCat can carry up to 200 tons – to harsh environments, like the Arctic territories of Nunavut. ‘The average age there is 21,’ Taylor says, ‘and it’s got the highest suicide rate, highest drug rate, highest sickness rate in Canada by a long shot. They’ve got nothing – this vehicle will save their lives.

More @ Telegraph

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy

An Introduction to Firefox's Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made

How do you take the social web by storm in a day, winning over even the coldest of hearts and gaining international acclaim - with commercials?

A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that's just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here's how it's going down.

More @ ReadWriteWeb

The Vaccine That Came In From the Cold

The Vaccine That Came In From the Cold - ScienceNOW:

"Scientists say they may have discovered a way to develop cool new vaccines—and they mean that literally. By replacing essential genes in a mammalian pathogen with their counterparts from Arctic bacteria, they have created strains that provoke a protective immune response in mice—but that don't spread to the warm parts of the body where they could do serious harm. The team hopes that the method will lead to a new generation of vaccines for major bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis."

More @ ScienceNOW

RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000

RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000!!!

The RIAA paid Holmes Roberts & Owen $9,364,901 in 2008, Jenner & Block more than $7,000,000, and Cravath Swain & Moore $1.25 million, to pursue its "copyright infringement" claims, in order to recover a mere $391,000. [ps there were many other law firms feeding at the trough too; these were just the ones listed among the top 5 independent contractors.]

More @ Recording Industry vs. The People Blog

Sir, Your Liver Is Ready: Behind the Scenes of Bioprinting

Sir, Your Liver Is Ready: Behind the Scenes of Bioprinting

Say goodbye to donor lists and organ shortages. A biotech firm has created a printer that prints veins using a patients’ own cells. The device could potentially create whole organs in the future.

“Right now we’re really good at printing blood vessels,” says Ben Shepherd, senior research scientist at regenerative-medicine company Organovo. “We printed 10 this week. We’re still learning how to best condition them to be good, strong blood vessels.”

Most organs in the body are filled with veins, so the ability to print vascular tissue is a critical building block for complete organs. The printed veins are about to start testing in animal trials, and eventually go through human clinical trials. If all goes well, in a few years you may be able to replace a vein that has deteriorated (due to frequent injections of chemo treatment, for example) with custom-printed tissue grown from your own cells.

The barriers to full-organ printing are not just technological. The first organ-printing machine will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, test, produce and market. Not to mention the difficulty any company will have getting FDA approval.

“If Organovo will be able to raise enough money this company has [the] potential to succeed as [the] first bioprinting company but only time will show,” says Dr. Vladimir Mironov, director of advanced tissue biofabrication at the Medical University of South Carolina.

More @ Raw File

Water Painting [vid]

Solar plane completes historic 24-hour flight

Solar plane completes historic 24-hour flight - U.S. news - Environment - Green Machines - msnbc.com

PAYERNE, Switzerland — An experimental solar-powered plane landed safely Thursday after completing its first 24-hour test flight, proving that the aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night.

More @ msnbc.com

Emo Labs: The Invisible Speaker System

Mouseless – An Invisible Mouse

Mouseless – An Invisible Mouse

The computer mouse has advanced over the years by trimming down a little, becoming optical, becoming more responsive and becoming wireless to name a few advances. The next step is to get rid of the mouse altogether and have an invisible mouse, also known as Mouseless.

The concept was created by Pranav Mistry along with Patti Maes and Liyan Chang and basically gets rid of the mouse completely.

By using an IR sensor with some custom software, the movements of a hand on a desk can be interpreted in to mouse and finger movement allowing users to simple glide their hand on a desk and tap the desk with their finger.

Via Gadget Venue

Schoolboy makes Spiderman machine | Quirky News | Orange UK

Schoolboy makes Spiderman machine

"A Cambridge schoolboy has converted two budget vacuum cleaners into a Spiderman gadget which helps him scale walls.

Hibiki Kono, 13, a big fan of the superhero, made the incredible climbing machine using the suction from two Tesco Value vacuum cleaners."

More @ Orange UK

Flying car production rolls forward

Flying car production rolls forward - CNN.com

The Transition Roadable Aircraft carries two and will cost nearly $200,000.

A highway-worthy airplane moves one step closer to production with a recent weight exemption approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Transition Roadable Aircraft, developed by Massachusetts-based engineering firm Terrafugia, will be allowed a maximum takeoff weight of 1,430 pounds, the same allowance made for aircraft designed to operate on water.

Other planes in the class, called Light Sport Aircraft, are limited to a maximum takeoff weight of 1,320 pounds.

"The main reason for that additional weight is the additional safety features that the Transition has -- because it's designed to be operated on the road -- that aren't found in other light aircraft," said Anna Dietrich, Terrafugia's chief operating officer.

A protective safety cage, airbags and an energy absorbing crumple zone are among the extra features.

More @ CNN.com

Foetus 'cannot feel pain before 24 weeks'

Foetus 'cannot feel pain before 24 weeks'

"Nerve endings in the brain are not sufficiently formed to enable pain to be felt before 24 weeks, according to the report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which had been commissioned by the Department of Health."

More @ Telegraph

Stem cells reverse blindness caused by burns

Stem cells reverse blindness caused by burns

"Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells - a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.

The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision."

More @ KansasCity.com

Beach Art

More @ BoredVille

Artist completes 700 hour stare | Quirky News | Orange UK

Artist completes 700 hour stare | Quirky News | Orange UK

A Serbian artist has completed the world's longest ever piece of performance art by staring at members of the public for 700 hours.

Marina Abramovic sat for seven hours a day, six days a week, on a chair for her installation, entitled The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Visitors were invited to sit in a chair facing her and simply return her silent gaze.

Celebrities including Bjork, Lou Reed, Marisa Tomei and Isabella Rossellini were among the 1,400 people who came and sat opposite the artist, who always dressed in a long cassock.

More @ Orange UK

Google Employees Sleep In Alien-Like Pods

Google Employees Sleep In Alien-Like Pods

How does Google keep its employees fresh for long days and nights of working? With sleep pods.

More @ Gizmodo

Super Mario Beatbox

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator

First replicating creature spawned in life simulator

A first for the game, the replicator demonstrates how astounding complexity can arise from simple beginnings and processes - an echo of life's origins, perhaps. It might help us understand how life on Earth began, or even inspire strategies to build tiny computers.

The Game of Life is the best-known example of a cellular automaton, in which patterns form and evolve on a grid according to a few simple rules. You play the game by choosing an initial pattern of "live" cells, and then watch as the configuration changes over many generations as the rules are applied over and over again (see "Take two simple rules").

More @ New Scientist

USA vs England in Lego [Video]

Insulin that doesnt need a fridge or a needle

Insulin that doesnt need a fridge or a needle

A young Monash University chemist and her colleagues have successfully strengthened insulin's chemical structure without affecting its activity. The new insulin structure means that it won't need refrigeration.

The team from Monash University's Chemistry Department in the Faculty of Science has just filed a series of patents with the support of their long term commercial partner ASX-listed Circadian Technologies. Together, they're negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to start the long process of getting the invention out of the laboratory and into the homes of people with diabetes.

Team researcher Bianca van Lierop said they're also using their knowledge to develop a form of insulin that could be delivered by pill.

More @ Sciguru.com