E.T., Why Don’t You Just Call? – “An innovative new radio telescope has given new life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, leading one of the leaders of the search to make a bold prediction…”

Space Torso Reveals Cancer Risk for Astronauts – “Cancer and other health concerns skyrocket for astronauts living beyond the protective environment of Earth’s magnetic shield for periods of six months or longer, say researchers looking into the effects of radiation on the human body…”

Hunks get more sex, but there’s a price to pay – “Skinny men have new reason to celebrate. Well, kind of. Beefcakes may be able to attract women by rippling their muscles, but the downside of all that brawn is a poor immune system and an increased appetite, a new study finds…”

Why You Can’t Search The Word ‘Sex’ On Bing – “Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft Corp., doesn’t return any result for one of the most searched terms from India: sex. However, if you tell the search engine that you’re from the USA, or any one of the European countries (users can easily change country without even logging in), and bingo, several links are returned. If you say you are from China or an Arabian country, or Hong Kong or Singapore, again, no luck…”

CupCake CNC:

A cheaper, lighter and longer-lasting alternative to modern batteries – “MOBILE phones looked like bricks in the 1980s. Indeed, they were so cumbersome that most were installed in cars. That was because the batteries required to power them were so hefty. When lithium-ion batteries were invented, mobile phones became small enough to be carried in a pocket or slipped into a handbag. Now a new design of battery that uses oxygen from ambient air to power devices could provide even smaller and lighter sources of power. Not only that, such batteries would be cheaper and last for longer between charges…”

New Air France debris found, explosion unlikely – “Search crews flying over the Atlantic found debris from a crashed Air France jet spread over more than 55 miles of ocean on Wednesday, reinforcing the possibility it broke up in the air…”

Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action – “For “Genesis,” an eight-year project now more than half completed, he is piecing together a visual story about the effects of modern development on the environment. Yet rather than document the effects of, say, pollution or global warming directly, he is photographing natural subjects that he believes have somehow “escaped or recovered from” such changes: landscapes, seascapes, animals and indigenous tribes that represent an earlier, purer — “pristine” is a favorite word — state of nature…”

More Accurate Touch Screen Keyboard on the Way to Android? – “A British inventor named David Baker has filed a patent for what he’s calling the Crocodile Keyboard, which is a touchscreen keyboard with upsidedown triangles for keys. Mr. Baker claims that this design will result in far less by way of typos…”

The cloud with no name: Meteorologists campaign to classify unique ‘Asperatus’ clouds seen across the world – “Whipped into fantastical shapes, these clouds hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm. But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognised with a name.”

While many still struggle to find a purpose for using Twitter – “While many still struggle to find a purpose for using Twitter, and Twitter ceases to generate revenue for itself (though it’s coming sooner or later), the social network continues to take the world by storm. Naturally there are plenty of opportunities there or businesses to capitalize on…” See also: Median # of tweets = 1

They Might Be Profitable: AMD’s six-core “Istanbul” reviewed – “Yesterday the embargoes lifted on reviews of AMD’s six-core Opteron server processor, codenamed “Istanbul,” but for all that’s riding on Istanbul there weren’t that many reviews out there…” See also: Facing customer skepticism, AMD remakes it chip-design engineering process

MoD admits use of controversial ‘enhanced blast’ weapons in Afghanistan – “British pilots in Afghanistan are firing an increasing number of “enhanced blast” thermobaric weapons, designed to kill everyone in buildings they strike, the Ministry of Defence has revealed…”

Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month – “Here’s something that people with poor or no vision will be excited about: three patients had their sight restored in less than a month by contact lenses cultured with stem cells…” See also:

Just because it has AWD, that doesn’t make it an off-roader – “Just because a vehicle has a high riding stance and all-wheel drive, that doesn’t qualify it as an off-roader. That’s why when BMW introduced the X5 it was labeled as a “Sports Activity Vehicle” not an SUV. BMW designed the X5 knowing full well that the majority of largely suburban SUV buyers never even think about going off-road. Unfortunately, it appears that one driver, who evidently rented this X5 in Istanbul, never got that message…”

Hybrid hearts could solve transplant shortage – “”IT’S amazing, absolutely beautiful,” says Doris Taylor, describing the latest addition to an array of tiny thumping hearts that sit in her lab, hooked up to an artificial blood supply…”

Is Science As Important As Football? – “Let’s talk about football. Sports, especially at the high school level, are extremely dangerous. So many children are injured on a regular basis that you don’t even hear about it. Many of these injuries are relatively minor, just a broken bone or perhaps a torn ligament that puts the child in a cast for a few months. But a substantial number cause permanent disability and death. This carnage could easily be avoided by switching to video football. Graphics are very realistic these days; students could study tackles from all angles in complete safety. Gymnastics students could do their routines on a Wii Fit board, and video screens are readily available for exercise bicycles, eliminating open-road bicycle riding, a major killer of children…”

Reading the Surface of the Brain – “A technology currently used to monitor epilepsy is being adapted into a neural interface for people who are paralyzed or have motor impairments from neurodegenerative disease. Neurolutions, a startup based in St. Louis, is developing a small, implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands…”

NILFS: A File System to Make SSDs Scream – ” NILFS2 (New Implementation of a Log-Structured File System Version 2) is a very promising new log-structured file system that has continuous snapshots and versioning of the entire file system. This means that you can recover files that were deleted or unintentionally modified as well as perform backups at any time from a snapshot without a performance penalty normally associated with creating snapshots. In addition, there is evidence that NILFS has extremely good performance on SSD drives…”

PC Touch Screens Move Ahead – “For years, companies have dabbled with the touch-screen technology that lets people poke icons on a display to accomplish tasks like picking a seat at an airport check-in kiosk. Apple elevated such technology from a novelty to a must-have feature on mobile devices with its iPhone. People can flip through pictures with a flick of a finger or make a document larger by pressing two fingers against the screen and stretching them out. Now both personal computer manufacturers and software makers hope to do more with touch on larger devices by giving people a 10-fingered go at their screens…”

[[[Jump to IR #297]]]