Stain is a unique tea cup created by Bethan Laura Wood, a designer from the UK. At first, the cup looks like any other cup, but the natural staining that comes from using the cup reveals a hidden pattern.
Bethan writes: “This project examines the assumption that use is damaging to a product (For example, scratches on an iPod).”
From
this page.
Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5" and 1.8" form factors respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface. Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively.
The SanDisk G3 SSDs are more than five times faster than the fastest 7,200 RPM HDDs and more than twice as fast as SSDs shipping in 2008, clocking in at 40,000 RPM and anticipated sequential performance of 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write.
The G3 SSDs provide a Longterm Data Endurance (LDE) of 160 terabytes written (TBW) for the 240GB version, sufficient for over 100 years of typical user usage.
The SanDisk G3 SSD 120GB is selling for less than $250 and the 60GB SSD is has a price of $149.
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Drew and his mother, a mixed martial arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship fan, started taking classes at Bakersfield Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu about two months ago. The chokehold Drew learned, called a rear naked chokehold, was taught only briefly, instructor Matt Baker said. Drew had practiced, including at home on his mother, she said.
Drew was walking with his neighbor after getting the mail last week when the pit bull started attacking the neighbor's dachshund. She tried to save her dog, but the pit bull started attacking her instead.
That's when Drew, who his mother described as a "passive, sweet little boy" who "gets beat up all the time" in class, stepped in. He wanted to kick it, he said, but thought the dog would just bite his leg. Instead he put the move on him. "He was moving really hard, like one of those rodeo bulls," Drew said. "Then he went limp."
For more than 20 minutes, Drew held the panting dog until Animal Control officials arrived.
The 12-year-old girl is recovering from dog bites to her shoulder. Her family has sent Drew notes and balloons, thanking him for saving her life.
Amy said she is extremely proud of her son, who always sticks up for the underdog and tells Mom not to speed when driving. She said she hopes other parents see the sport as a good self-defense tool.
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By injecting stem cells directly into the brain, scientists have successfully reversed neural birth defects in mice whose mothers were given heroin during pregnancy. Even though most of the transplanted cells did not survive, they induced the brain's own cells to carry out extensive repairs.
Joseph Yanai, director of the Ross Laboratory for Studies in Neural Birth Defects at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, in Jerusalem, says that stem-cell therapies are ideal for treating birth defects where the mechanism of damage is multifaceted and poorly understood. "If you use neural stem cells," says Yanai, "they are your little doctors. They're looking for the defect, they're diagnosing it, and they're differentiating into what's needed to repair the defect. They are doing my job, in a way."
Yanai and his colleagues began with mice that had been exposed to heroin in the womb. These mice suffer from learning deficits; when placed in a tank of murky water, for instance, they take longer than normal mice to find their way back to a submerged platform. And in their hippocampus--an area of the brain associated with memory and navigation--critical biochemical pathways are disrupted, and fewer new cells are produced.
All of those problems are swiftly resolved when the researchers inject neural stem cells derived from embryonic mice into the brains of the heroin-exposed animals. When swimming, the treated mice caught up with their normal counterparts, and their cellular and biochemical deficits disappeared. Yanai announced these findings in 2007 and 2008.
Such dramatic results were surprising, considering that just a fraction of a percent of the transplanted stem cells survived inside the mice's brains. But they are consistent with an emerging consensus of how adult stem cells perform their many functions through so-called bystander or chaperone effects. Beyond simply generating replacements for damaged cells, stem cells seem to produce signals that spur other cells to carry out normal organ maintenance and initiate damage control.
From Technology Review,
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In the Force Trainer, a wireless headset reads your brain activity, in a simplified version of EEG medical tests, and the circuitry translates it to physical action. If you focus well enough, the training sphere, which looks like a ping-pong ball, will rise in the tower.
A state of deep concentration is needed to achieve a Force-full effect. "When you concentrate, it activates the training remote," says Frank Adler of toymaker Uncle Milton Industries, which is creating the Trainer. "There is a flow of air that will move the (ball). You can actually feel like you are in a zone."
From
USA Today
First mooted by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895, the space elevator idea has captured imaginations as what would be the greatest space mission ever conceived.
The idea rests on making use of the outward centrifugal force supplied by the Earth's rotation. Imagine fixing a short length of string to a football and spinning it - the string flies outward and remains taut.
If the centrifugal force provided by the Earth is balanced with its gravitational force - making use of a space elevator cable or tether whose centre of mass is at geostationary orbit - the tether would be held taut permanently, providing a means to propel people and cargo into space.
A long-standing critical issue is how to power the "climber" that would ascend the cable into space. Prevailing ideas include delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, or even from orbiting solar power collectors.
In December the private firm Eurospaceward hosted the Second International Conference on Space Elevator and Tether Design in Luxembourg to discuss such schemes.
But European Space Agency ground station engineer Mr Riise provided a markedly more simple idea.
He proposed sending power mechanically - effectively by providing a carefully timed jerk of the cable at its base.
To demonstrate, he employed a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, and an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick.
Around the broomstick's circumference he tied three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards - meaning it took slightly more force to lower the brush assembly than to raise it.
The vibration from the sander allowed the assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. The net effect: the assembly rose against gravity straight to the top of the stick.
More, with video, from the BBC.
