Month: July 2007

Tiny brain no obstacle to French civil servant

Scotsman.com News – Latest News – Odd – Tiny brain no obstacle to French civil servant
A man with an unusually tiny brain managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, caused by a fluid buildup in his skull, French researchers reported on Thursday.

Scans of the 44-year-old man’s brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.

“He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant,” Dr. Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal. On neuropsychological testing, he proved to have an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 75: his verbal IQ was 84, and his performance IQ 70.

Zoom liquid lenses for digital cameras

» Zoom liquid lenses for digital cameras | Emerging Technology Trends | ZDNet.com
Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have developed zoom lenses which closely replicate the working of the human eye. These adaptive lenses should be manufactured at a dramatically smaller size than conventional zoom lenses without compromising clarity. After being granted no less than 5 U.S. patents, the UCF team has licensed the technologies to a manufacturing company. So we might soon get better zoom lenses in our cell phones and digital cameras.

The Spy Who Won The Vietnam War

PERFECT SPY BY LARRY BERMAN
During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA’s William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages to the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, “We are now in the U.S. war room.” For more than twenty years, An lived a dangerous lie and no one knew it because he was a master of both his jobs. After the war, An was named a “Hero of the People’s Army” and promoted to general – one of only two intelligence officers to ever achieve that rank.

C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success

C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success – New York Times
Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete. Forget finding the business best-seller list in these libraries.

Perhaps that is why — more than their sex lives or bank accounts — chief executives keep their libraries private.

Top Selling U.S.Restaurant

Tao Las Vegas – Venetian Hotel – Setting Restaurant Records by Selling the Sizzle – New York Times
Tao Las Vegas, the highest grossing independent restaurant in the United States, according to Restaurants & Institutions magazine, which for 24 years has been ranking the top 100. In 2006, its first full year open, Tao did $55.2 million in business, or $16 million more than its closest competitor, Tavern on the Green in New York.

Even judged against other huge-volume restaurants, where revenues in the tens of millions are not unusual, Tao is setting a new standard. In figures for 2000, when Tavern on the Green was in the No. 2 spot behind Windows on the World, the gap between them was a razor thin $485,000. http://www.taolasvegas.com/

Ethanol kills the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone Could Reach Record Size
The dead zone of lifeless water in the Gulf of Mexico could exceed the largest size ever recorded, in 27 years of monitoring, a team of federal and university scientists said today.

At 8,500 square miles — roughly the size of New Jersey — it has the potential to be more than 75% larger than the 4,800-square mile average recorded since 1990, and more than 25 % bigger than last year’s 6,662-square mile zone. Thanks to Natalia for this. Continue reading “Ethanol kills the Gulf of Mexico”

Unbeatable Checkers Computer

news @ nature.com – Checkmate for checkers – Computer program is unbeatable at English draughts.
Long-time world checkers champion Marion Tinsley consistently bested all comers, losing only nine games in the 40 years following his 1954 crowning. He lost his world championship title to a computer program in 1994 and now that same program has become unbeatable; its creators have proved that even a perfectly played game against it will end in a draw.

Jonathan Schaeffer and his team at the University of Alberta, Canada, have been working on their program, called Chinook, since 1989, running calculations on as many as 200 computers simultaneously. As Chinook has worked out all relevant lines of play, it needs virtually no time to ‘think’ to work out each perfect move in a game. The results were announced today in the journal Science1. The paper and supporting materials, including the ability to play Chinook, are available on the web at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook.

Powerball wife out of jail

Daily Independent (Ashland, KY) – Powerball wife out of jail
The wife of Powerball winner David Edwards was released from the Boyd County Detention Center on Wednesday, under the condition that she pay the $17,000 she owes in child support.

Shawna Edwards, 32, has been in the county jail for nearly a month after she was arrested on a warrant charging her with failing to make child support payments on two children she had previous to her marriage to David Edwards. She also served 10 days in jail for giving police officers a false name when she was arrested. Thanks to Melinda for sending us this one. Continue reading “Powerball wife out of jail”