Month: May 2007

How Your Mouse Moves Your Cursor

1-click Award by 株式会社リクルートメディアコミュニケーションズ

Ever wonder how the cursor moves on your screen, when you move your mouse?

Well, this link will reveal the secret. It will take a while to load, after you move your mouse over it and click. But were talking about some pretty sophisticated micro-technology here, so it is worth being a little patient to expand the limits of our knowledge.

After the image loads, slowly loads move your mouse’s cursor over the light gray circle in the middle of the screen and all will be revealed. Thanks to Chip Welfeld for bringing this technological marvel to our attention.

Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we?

Best Life Magazine: Health & Fitness: Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we?
A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility…and worse. Thanks to Penelope Miler for this. To learn mo go to www.algalita.org

How to use the Same Password Safely

PwdHash

Face it, most of us can’t remember all of those paswords, so we tend to use the same ones ovr and over. THe problem is if someone gets hold of it and knows where you bank or goes to E-Bay with it… wel you get the idea. Well some boys from Stanford brought us Google. Now that Stanford Security lab has posted this simple free tool, which you can download to use.

PwdHash is an browser extension that transparently converts a user’s password into a domain-specific password. The user can activate this hashing by choosing passwords that start with a special prefix (@@) or by pressing a special password key (F2). PwdHash automatically replaces the contents of these password fields with a one-way hash of the pair (password, domain-name). As a result, the site only sees a domain-specific hash of the password, as opposed to the password itself.

Scientists create ‘plastic’ blood

BBC NEWS | England | North Yorkshire | Scientists create ‘plastic’ blood
the artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to be kept cool and can be kept for longer.

The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body.

The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing

Food Five-Second Rule

The Five-Second Rule Explored, or How Dirty Is That Bologna? – New York Times
Professor Dawson and colleagues placed test food slices onto salmonella-painted surfaces for varying lengths of time, and counted how many live bacteria were transferred to the food.

On surfaces that had been contaminated eight hours earlier, slices of bologna and bread left for five seconds took up from 150 to 8,000 bacteria. Left for a full minute, slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood.

The infectious dose, the smallest number of bacteria that can actually cause illness, is as few as 10 for some salmonellas, fewer than 100 for the deadly strain of E. coli.

Of course we can never know for sure how many harmful microbes there are on any surface. But we know enough now to formulate the five-second rule, version 2.0: If you drop a piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that just a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think about where you dropped it and whether or not it’s worth eating.

Born to be Fat

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside – New York Times
krispy-kreme-bacon-cheddar-cheeseburgers There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

80 percent of the offspring of two obese parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight. 70 percent of the variation in peoples’ weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease. ibeatanorexia

The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight

Continue reading “Born to be Fat”

Mega-yacht Still Marooned off Key West

Palm Beach tycoon’s mega-yacht still marooned off Key West
Palm Beach tycoon Peter Halmos has spent $1 million to gently free his mega-yacht from a federal marine sanctuary off Key West.

But the effort has failed. With another hurricane season beginning June 1, he may have no choice but to drag the vessel out. Continue reading “Mega-yacht Still Marooned off Key West”

Encyclopedia of Life

Encyclopedia of Life
Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.

Opensecrets.org–Money in politics data

Opensecrets.org–Money in politics data

Tom Cruise was forced to scream “Show me the money!” .

“Deep Throat” advised Woodward & Bernstein to”Follow the money”to uncover the Watergate scandal. Now you can yourself by following a few clicks of your mouse at the opensecrets.org web-site.

Globalizations’ Win-Win Game

Enterprise Resilience Management Blog: Globalizations’ Win-Win Game
Many people still perceive globalization as a contest in which there must be winners and losers. If China rises, for example, they assume that someone else (e.g., the U.S.) must fall.

It’s ironic that Americans need to save more and the Chinese need to spend more in order to foster global economic growth. Both countries, however, need to better invest in their people. Investment in human capital is always a good idea. The more educated a work force becomes, the less likely it is to be exploited. The healthier a work force, the more productive it becomes. The more productive it becomes, the wealthier it becomes. The wealthier it becomes, the more concerned it becomes with the environment. It is a righteous cycle from which everyone eventually benefits.