2007 September

You care for an iPod nano to protect your investment. Portable music players may be getting more affordable, but no one wants to replace their music player on a daily basis. Taking care when using the iPod nano or making connections prolongs the enjoyment you will get out of your machine and makes your iPod [...]

The NASA-managed Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) instrument settled into orbit around Earth in 1997 and took its first measurements of ocean color. A decade later, the satellite’s data has proved instrumental in countless applications and helped researchers paint a picture of a changing climate. NASA recognized the satellite’s tenth anniversary today with briefings at [...]

Smithsonian researchers are among the leaders in a worldwide effort to revolutionize the way scientists identify species in the laboratory and in the field with a technique called DNA barcoding. Similar to the barcode that identifies an item at the grocery store, a DNA barcode is used to identify and distinguish biological species.
This month, scientists [...]

Homeowner’s insurance protects you against the loss of personal property and possessions. Homeowners are required to have this kind of insurance before getting a home loan. However, there is more to consider than just the cost of coverage when buying homeowner’s insurance.
Look for "replacement cost" homeowner’s insurance, if available. Such a policy will help you [...]

Steve Irwin was more than a crocodile hunter. He was deeply passionate about the animal kingdom at large, and it’s fitting that a turtle he and his father discovered in 1990 has been honored with his name. Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo reports:
Television personality Steve “Crocodile Hunter” Irwin and his father, Bob, caught a unknown turtle [...]

Why the same sweaty man smells pleasant to one person and repellant to another comes down to the smeller’s genes.
Duke University Medical Center researchers demonstrated that genetic variants of odor receptors within the nose determine how a particular odor is perceived. The researchers, led by Duke’s Hiroaki Matsunami, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular genetics and [...]

By creating your own e-mail mailing list, you can send copies of a message to a large or small group of recipients. It’s a handy way to keep in touch with family or work groups or to distribute a newsletter to people who share your interest in a particular topic.
Collect the e-mail addresses of the [...]

Rising sea-surface temperatures in the Barents Sea, northeast of Scandinavia, are the prime cause of the retreating winter ice edge over the past 26 years, according to research by Jennifer Francis, associate research professor at Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS). The recent decreases in winter ice cover is clear evidence that Arctic [...]

Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, all using less power and space than current memory technologies.
Ritesh Agarwal, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials [...]

Television shows are downloaded illegally when they are transferred from person to person online without the express written consent of the copyright owner. This problem has existed since the invention of videotaping, but it has been exacerbated by the growth of the Internet. There are many ways to legally download television shows that are inexpensive [...]

Children with amblyopia (commonly known as lazy eye) need only wear an eye patch for three to four hours a day for 12 weeks to improve vision, say researchers in a study published on bmj.com today.
Patching for all waking hours for up to several years, which is often recommended, is almost certainly excessive, they argue.
Amblyopia [...]

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to review Apple’s 3rd generation iPod nano, and needless to say, we came away impressed with the latest carnation of the iPod family. Apple is too good at what it does, and it shows. Today, we have the iPod Classic in our lab, and unfortunately, we don’t know what to [...]

New research led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory physicist Matthias Bode provides a more thorough understanding of new mechanisms, which makes it possible to switch a magnetic nanoparticle without any magnetic field and may enable computers to more accurately write and store information.
Bode and four colleagues at the University of Hamburg [...]

London Authority (GLA) takes radical steps, one of which could be the removal of all cars from both inner and outer London, according to a report published today.
The GLA is committed to reducing London’s carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 20251, but most climate scientists argue that even more rapid reductions will be needed if [...]

What happens to poetry in the Digital Age? In one of the first academic works in the field, Swedish researcher Maria Engberg has studied how the ability of the computer to combine words, images, movement, and sounds is impacting both writing and reading.
The dissertation, to be publicly defended on September 14, has been jointly submitted [...]

Computer models now under development could enhance the design of sports equipment to help people of all abilities realise their sporting potential.
The models, more sophisticated and more specialised than others previously used in sports equipment design, produce unprecedentedly realistic simulations of how potential ball designs, for instance, will actually behave when in use.
This data can [...]

From the fall of the Tower of Babel to the Esperanto global language movement, many humans have dreamed of sharing a common tongue. Despite the Internet’s promise of global communication, language barriers remain. Even pictures on the Web get lost in translation.
“Images are universal, but image search is not,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor of [...]

Picture this — IV (intravenous) lines in a sorghum field. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. It’s one way that scientists at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station are researching crops that may contribute to the biofuel revolution.
In Beaumont, Dr. Lee Tarpley, plant physiologist, and College Station colleague, Dr. Don Vietor, professor of crop physiology, [...]

A sweeping review of research studies of aspartame says there is no evidence that the non-nutritive sweetener causes cancer, neurological damage or other health problems in humans
Looking at more than 500 reports, including toxicological, clinical and epidemiological studies dating from 1970’s preclinical work to the latest studies on the high-intensity sweetener, along with use levels [...]

Prof. Ehud Assia, of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine is, quite simply, a rock star in the field of eye surgery.
One of a small number of surgeons in the world who currently perform a complicated form of glaucoma surgery, Prof. Assia has developed a novel laser device that promises to revolutionize treatment of [...]