WHO study suggests link between cell phones and tumors – “Preliminary results of an International investigation by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest there may be a “significantly increased risk” of some types of brain tumors after use of mobile phones for a decade or more…”

The $10 Phone Bill – “The $116 billion business of selling cell phone calls in the U.S. faces a long, ugly decline. That petrifies just about everyone in the industry except Roger Linquist…”

5 million Star Trek pirates vs. 1 FCC broadband plan – “Paramount Pictures says the widespread availability of a bootleg version of Star Trek means it needs to get tough on Internet users and websites, maybe even Google, Yahoo, and Bing. But what does this have to do with the FCC’s national broadband plan? Everything, says Paramount…”

Lab-created skin helps wounds heal – “Now, doctors who specialize in wound management are growing skin to help people like Tomas save their limbs and extremities. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies are extracting collagen — a protein that makes up 75 percent of skin — from donated skin and creating grafts, or patches, that can induce a patient’s own skin to grow. The donated skin can come from a variety of sources: anything from a pig’s pancreas to a baby’s foreskin…”

SIMPLE SECRET OF A HEALTHY HEART – “GENTLE exercise can dramatically cut the danger of an early death from heart disease, according to new research…”

Japanese fishing trawler sunk by giant jellyfish – “A 10-ton fishing boat has been sunk by gigantic jellyfish off eastern Japan…”

Windows 7 is $30 for .edu addresses – “Enter your college/university email address to see if you qualify. Check your email inbox to learn if you can purchase…” See also this page which checks if your machine can upgrade to Windows 7.

Swiss crackdown on ‘suicide tourism’ could spell end of Dignitas clinic – “Swiss crackdown on ‘suicide tourism’ could spell end of Dignitas clinic…”

Timeline: The secret history of swine flu – “Six months ago, swine flu emerged as a massive threat to global health. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but our timeline explains how the origins of the H1N1 pandemic go back more than a century…”

statistics, vaccines and viral evolution – “How many times have you heard people tell you that flu vaccines are a waste of time because they still end up getting the flu anyways? And considering that about 5 to 20% of people in the U.S. could get the flu every year, depending on the severity of the strain, the number of vaccinations and exposure to the contagion in large and concentrated populations, flu shots do seem like a relatively fruitless effort at first. However…”

Inside one of the world’s largest data centers – “”I think, I’m not 100 percent sure, but I think this could be the largest data center in the world,” said Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services for Microsoft’s data center operations. Even with only half the site ready for computers, the center has 30 megawatts of capacity–many times that found in a typical facility…”

Burmese Pythons in Florida – Current Status of the “Florida Python” – “Burmese pythons are one of the largest snakes in the world. They can be found in the rainforest regions of Southeast Asia, and also in … the Florida Everglades. Yes, you read that correctly. This massive constrictor is now well established in the Everglades National Park and other parts of the Sunshine State…”

Japanese freighter makes re-entry – “Japan’s new space freighter has burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere after completing its mission to the International Space Station (ISS)…”

Laser accelerated protons to the highest energies so far – ” Laser-particle acceleration is an emerging area of physics that is expected to further significant future advances in modern cancer radiotherapy. An international team of physicists, which also includes scientists from the Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD, Germany), has succeeded in accelerating protons to energies never before achieved with laser-particle acceleration. Radiation in this energy range is for example needed to treat eye cancer….”

Robot fish could monitor water quality – “Nature inspires technology for an engineer and an ecologist teamed up at Michigan State University. They’re developing robots that use advanced materials to swim like fish to probe underwater environments…”

Erbium and the Interwebz – “The internet would not be what it is today if not for the little known metallic lanthanide Erbium…”

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives? – “What if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues? “

Depression link to processed food – “Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests…”

A Molecule of Motivation, Dopamine Excels at Its Task – “If you’ve ever had a problem with rodents and woken up to find that mice had chewed their way through the Cheerios, the Famous Amos, three packages of Ramen noodles, and even that carton of baker’s yeast you had bought in a fit of “Ladies of the Canyon” wistfulness, you will appreciate just how freakish is the strain of laboratory mouse that lacks all motivation to eat…”

Invisible hand in invisible matter – “An international team of astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious ‘dark matter’ and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity…”

Long-range Taser raises fears of shock and injury – “INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea – even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher…” See also:

Car maker develops its own flower species – “Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere…”

Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix – “When surveying the goals of transhumanists, I found it striking how heavily many of them favor conventional engineering. This seems inefficient and inelegant, since such engineering reproduces slowly, clumsily and imperfectly, what biological systems have fine-tuned for eons, from nanobots (enzymes and miRNAs) to virtual reality (lucid dreaming). Recently, I was reading an article about memory chips. (See Resources) In it, the primary researcher makes two statements that fall in the “not even wrong” category: “Brain cells are nothing but leaky bags of salt solution,” and “I don’t need a grand theory of the mind to fix what is essentially a signal-processing problem…”

Dollar Homes Lack Buyers – “Officials in suburban Barrington put three homes up for a sale at just a dollar a piece – a dollar! – and didn’t get a single bidder…”

Beijing’s first snow of season ‘artificially induced’ – “Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported…”

NSW high school laptops put to use for games and MSN Messenger – “Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came to power on top of a raft of election promises, one of which included laptops for high school students. While the deployment was not without controversy thousands upon thousands have now been distributed in NSW. Yet, forum postings reveal students are using them for game playing and online chat right in front of oblivious teachers…”

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