Clipmarks | Mohir's clips

One in Four Children Believes it is Against the Law for Women, to be President

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:13:58 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks:

One in Four Children Believes it is Against the Law for Women, African Americans, or Latinos to be President of the United States

A new study in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy explored elementary-school-age children’s views about the role of race and gender in the U.S. presidency. Results indicated that most children are aware that women and people of color have been excluded from the presidency. Surprisingly, one in four children in the study stated that it was currently against the law for women, African Americans, or Latinos to be President. Many children also blamed those who have been excluded, arguing that they lack the necessary attributes to hold the position, including the fact women aren’t as smart as men.

Tags: usa, president, elections

Sexiest Electric Cars from the Paris Auto Show

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:19:44 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: earth2tech.com

This year’s Paris Auto Show is turning out to be the most electrifying one yet, with car makers from all over the world debuting their electric vehicles. The offerings range from far-flung concept cars to very real production models. Solar roofs are a popular theme and lithium-ion battery packs abound. While it will take years to get the world’s cars off petroleum, electric transportation is imminent and the showing in Paris offers a glimpse of what that will look like.

Venturi - Volage

Renault - Z.E. Concept

Chevrolet - Volt

Daimler & Smart - smart fortwo ed

Nissan - Nuvu

Pininfarina - B0 (B Zero)

China Automobile - Chika

Audi/Volkswagen - VW Up! (Maybe)

Tags: cars, green

Stop sending mail you later regret

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:50:11 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: gmailblog.blogspot.com

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.

Tags: email, gmail, regrets

Print What You Like - a cool tool

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:18:21 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: This can be a real help to those of us who print a lot from the web.

Clip Source: www.printwhatyoulike.com

Ever print a webpage only to find your printout is full of ads, empty space and other junk you don't want? PrintWhatYouLike is a free webpage editor that gives you control of how webpages look when printed.

Format any webpage for printing in seconds - no more pasting into Word

Save money and the environment by reducing your paper and ink usage

Make printed web pages more readable by removing ads, widgets and other distractions

Fix broken pages that don't print correctly

Tags: web, internet, internet tools, utilities

Layers of Red Cliffs on Mars (Photo)

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:22:07 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Beautiful photo

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Explanation: How did these layers of red cliffs form on Mars? No one is sure. The northern ice cap on Mars is nearly divided into two by a huge division named Chasma Boreale. No similar formation occurs on Earth. Pictured above, several dusty layers leading into this deep chasm are visible. Cliff faces, mostly facing left but still partly visible from above, appear dramatically red. The light areas are likely water ice. The above image spans about one kilometer near the north of Mars, and the elevation drop from right to left is over a kilometer. One hypothesis relates the formation of Chasma Boreale to underlying volcanic activity.

Tags: photos, nasa, mars

Walking strategies of artifically evolved organisms

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:37:08 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.boingboing.net

[Video]

Here's a mesmerizing ten-minute video from the Darwin@Home project (which harnesses idle computers to simulate evolution) that shows the different, bizarre randomly evolved walking-strategies that have emerged from the simulations. Darwin at Home in Ten Minutes

Tags: evolution

Citroen GTbyCitroen goes from game to reality

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:14:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Sadly, very little is known about the GTbyCitroen in terms of performance, expected cost, or whether it'll reach mass production, but here's hoping. Citroen would earn itself a virtually unlimited amount of kudos if it went ahead and made it for real for real. We might even forgive it for the Citroen Ami.

Clip Source: crave.cnet.co.uk

Citroen's just gone up in our estimation -- way up. At the Paris Motor Show today, it announced it would be the first car manufacturer to build a car originally designed for a computer game -- a bleedin' computer game, we tell you.

The frankly dangerous-looking GTbyCitroen is the brainchild of Polyphony Digital's Kazunori Yamauch, and Citroen's Takumi Yamamoto. It was first designed to hurtle around the virtual tracks of the PS3's Gran Turismo: Prologue, but Citroen -- presumably bored of making Picassos and C5s -- has decided to make one for real.

Clip Source: crave.cnet.co.uk

Okay, so 'for real' is something of an exaggeration, since the GTbyCitroen is still in the concept stage. Visitors to the Paris Motor Show, however, are being given the opportunity to drive one -- virtually -- in a Citroen simulator.

Tags: cars, computers, gaming, citroen

Free-piston engine could be twice as fuel efficient as combustion engines

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:41:43 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: In conventional internal combustion engines, multiple pistons are connected via rods to a crankshaft that, via the transmission, drives the wheels. Free-piston engines do away with the crankshaft: the pistons aren't connected to anything. Instead, two opposing pistons just shuttle back and forth inside a chamber. To generate electricity, the pistons could be equipped with rows of magnets that shuttle past metal coils to create an electrical current.

Clip Source: nextbigfuture.com

Sandia National Laboratory led by Sandia researcher Peter Van Blarigan that has been testing physical components of free-piston engines which could be 50% efficient. This is about twice as good as current gas combustion engines and about as efficient as fuel cells. Fuel cells are too expensive. He is assembling a complete free-piston engine prototype, a project that he expects to complete within a year.

Piston power: In an unconventional engine design, a rod with a piston at either end shuttles between two combustion chambers. Magnets at the center of the rod move past metal coils (orange) to create an electrical current. Credit: Peter Van Blarigan, Sandia National Laboratory

Tags: technology, energy, fuel

Real 3-D Cameras on the market soon

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:38:18 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Camera makers are jumping into the 3-D photo market more than 20 years after the format was laughed out of town and ended up as Michael Jackson's sidekick in Captain Eo.

Recently, Fujifilm announced a two-lensed camera that takes images and movies in 3-D and captures wide-angle photos of single scenes simultaneously. As a result, we've heard some rumbling in the wires about other camera manufacturers coming out with their own version in the next year or so.

Since the lenses are 6-7 cm from each other (or about the same length between most people’s eyes), the Real 3-D's camera processes the images in real time to produce the stereoscopic 'trick' effect that makes them look as if they're floating in air. This is where the processing update of Fujitsu's 'Real Photo Processor 3-D' chip comes in.

The chip blends the dual images and all the important metrics (focus, zoom range and exposure) at once and pushes them out to the LCD, which is also on a 3-D display.

Tags: technology, gadgets, photography

Teaching Bacteria to Behave

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:53:53 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Single-celled organisms could be "trained" to deliver drugs.

A century after Pavlov's dog first salivated at the sound of a bell, researchers are saying that single-celled organisms such as bacteria can be "trained" to react in a similar way. Rather than use complex networks of nerve cells, or neurons, bacteria can "learn" to associate one stimulus with another by employing molecular circuits, according to a multidisciplinary team from Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom.

This raises the possibility that bioengineers could teach old bacteria new tricks by having them act as sentinels for the human body, ready to spot and respond to signs of danger,

The basis for the claim is that single-celled organisms are able to associate stimuli that are applied simultaneously, according to the theoretical model produced by Chrisantha Fernando at the U.K.'s National Institute for Medical Research, in London, and his collaborators.

Tags: bacteria, technology, cellular, medicine

Telling A 15 Billion Year Story In 3 1/2 Minutes

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:54:09 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.ponderabout.com

in the video below, astronomer Carl Sagan, traces events

from the time of the Big Bang to the formation of Life

and he manages to do so, with his brand of poetry,

in only 3 1/2 minutes

[Video]

the above is an excerpt from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,

first broadcast by in 1980, the 13-episode Cosmos was

American public television's most watched series

it remained so for a decade, and today is regarded

as one of the all time geat science documentaries

Tags: cosmology, carl sagan, big bang, history

A True Image from False Kiva

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:10:20 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Explanation: Is there any place in the world you could see a real sight like this? Yes. Pictured above is single exposure image spectacular near, far, and in between. Diving into the Earth far in the distance is part of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, taken with a long duration exposure. Much closer, the planet Jupiter is visible as the bright point just to band's left. Closer still are picturesque buttes and mesas of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, lit by a crescent moon. In the foreground is a cave housing a stone circle of unknown origin named False Kiva. The cave was briefly lit by flashlight during the long exposure. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka reports that getting to the cave to take this image was no easy trek. Also, mountain lions were a concern while waiting alone in the dark for just the right exposure.

Tags: photo, astronomy

Stem cell Advance roundup

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:01:26 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Restoring hearing, fixing spinal cords, fixing hearts and more

Clip Source: nextbigfuture.com

1. Researchers have created healthy stem cells from adult cells--no embryo required and no side effects.

hearing loss due to cochlear damage may be repaired by transplantation of human umbilical cord hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) since they show that a small number migrated to the damaged cochlea and repaired sensory hair cells and neurons.

5. Mayo Clinic investigators have demonstrated that stem cells can be used to regenerate heart tissue to treat dilated cardiomyopathy, a congenital defect.

7. A single cell can repopulate damaged skeletal muscle in mice, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who devised a way to track the cell's fate in living animals. The research is the first to confirm that so-called satellite cells encircling muscle fibers harbor an elusive muscle stem cell.

Identifying and isolating such a cell in humans would have profound therapeutic implications for disorders such as muscular dystrophy, injury and muscle wasting due to aging,

Tags: stem cells

'Pre-crime' detector shows promise

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:02:36 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: That sounds incredibly high at such an early stage in the research - but only tests on vast quantities of real people, rather than eager volunteers, will present any real test.

Questions remain, however, as to how secure the system is. The machines could reveal health conditions like heart murmurs and breathing problems as well as stress levels - which would be an invasion of privacy.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

However, last week, the DHS science unit gave an update on the project, now dubbed the less-hostile-sounding Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) programme. And, if DHS claims are to be believed, the research appears to be getting somewhere.

Some subjects were told to act shifty, be evasive, deceptive and hostile. And many were detected. "We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising," says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception."

Tags: technology, security, terrorism

Lifestreaming sites can organize Web lives

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:27:52 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Friendfeed can gather updates from dozens of social Web sites, making it simple to arrange all my Twitter posts, Gmail Chat status updates and other online tidbits in one profile.
Profilactic: People looking to funnel the most social Web content onto one site may like Profilactic.

The site can tap into almost 200 social media sites, which run the gamut from social review site Yelp to ones I had never heard of, such as TwitPic, which lets you share images on Twitter. Users can also add feeds from other sites.
Swurl: Though it can't gather information from as many sites as FriendFeed or Profilactic, Swurl's looks set it apart.

The site was my favorite in part because of its very clever "Timeline" feature, which let me see all my online activities on one page, organized into a calendar-like grid. I could then click each square of the grid to see details, like the full text of a review of a bar I wrote on Yelp, or larger versions of photos I had uploaded to Flickr

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Slowly but surely, my online life has spiraled out of control. Between posting photos on Flickr, updating my status on Facebook, blogging and commenting on and perusing various other sites, I'm having trouble keeping all my activities straight. And keeping track of what my friends are up to on the Web gets even harder.

But there is a way to keep it all together: lifestreaming sites. These online destinations, many of which are quite new, are like overlooks that offer a panoramic view of what you and your friends are doing on social media sites across the Internet.

They aggregate information not only about what you and your friends are up to

all over the Web

I tested several of these sites to see whether they would help me get organized - better in touch with what my friends are writing and doing. It turns out lifestreaming is useful, though definitely not for everyone.

FriendFeed is an easy-to-use starting point for organizing your Web life and sharing your thoughts about it

Tags: social networking