Lithium in water ‘curbs suicide’ – “Researchers examined levels of lithium in drinking water and suicide rates in the prefecture of Oita, which has a population of more than one million. The suicide rate was significantly lower in those areas with the highest levels of the element, they wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry…”

Unreal Engine 3 next stop iPhone and iPod games?

12 THINGS COMPUTER USERS SHOULD FEAR IN 2010 – “But Conficker, while no dramatic outbreak, was also no laughing matter to the hundreds of thousands of Web users who were infected. The problem with the hype cycle in computer security news is that it can have an incremental “cry wolf” effect on computer users. The odds that the Internet will topple over in 2010 are, once again, quite low. But serious threats abound and bad guys are mostly still outpacing good guys in our virtual world, which will be slightly more dangerous than this year. Here are 12 reasons why…”

Tech Headlines We’ll be Reading in 2010 – “I’m not very good at standard predictions stories. Instead, I like to imagine what might happen. That’s sort of the same thing, but when your bring imagination into play, the predictions get a little wilder. Some of the things listed below are sure to happen; others are just wishful thinking. Read the imaginary 2010 headlines and then my explanations. See if you can spot the one I think has almost zero chance of coming true. When you’re done, drop your wildest tech predictions for 2010 in the comments below…”

The global warming skeptics v.s the Scientific consensus – Infographic

Who Owns the Arctic? – “Who owns the Arctic Ocean and any resources that might be found beneath those waters? This question has enormous economic significance. The United States Geological Survey estimates that up to 25% of the world’s remaining oil and natural gas resource might be held within the seafloor of the Arctic Region. Significant quantities of other mineral resources might also be present. Control of Arctic resources is an extremely valuable prize. These resources become more accessible as global warming melts the sea ice and opens the region to commercial navigation…”

Aircraft Vapor Trails Responsible for 15-20% of Arctic Warming – “Even though there are an estimated 35 million commercial airline flights per year little research has been done on the effects of aircraft emissions on global warming. Now, scientists at Stanford University have released the results of the first such study conducted in the United States to be based on actual emissions data…”

Feds mull regulating drugs in water – “Federal regulators under President Barack Obama have sharply shifted course on long-standing policy toward pharmaceutical residues in the nation’s drinking water, taking a critical first step toward regulating some of the contaminants while acknowledging they could threaten human health…”

Looking Back at Google in 2009 – “Google is perhaps our decade’s Xerox PARC with a commercial edge, and the speed at which they released products in 2009 was quite immense. This shows they do two things well so far: scaling technology (across different countries and languages, across hundreds of thousands or however many computers), and scaling employee count (nearly twenty-thousand employees and still stuff gets done, from small to big apps). Google is also getting bolder in their attitude; while their older mission poster used to read that Google should “Think and act like an underdog”, a recent Google writing proclaimed a bit of a different angle…”

How To Make Candy as a Christmas Gift:

You Are Here: Geolocation is the Trend for 2010 – “Geolocation will become a huge market in the coming years, much like social media itself. There are more than a dozen companies in the space already, and it seems like every tenth post on TechCrunch lately is about geolocation: Facebook vs. Foursquare, Gowalla, GeoAPI, Social Paradox, SimpleGeo, Google, Rally, and this one about Ambient Streams….”

Single light wave flashes out from fibre laser – “A long-elusive goal of physics has been reached – producing a pulse of light so short that it contains just a single oscillation of a light wave. The flashes are almost as short as a light pulse can be, according to the laws of physics. The new super-short pulses could used as flashguns to sense very small, very fast events such as a single photon interacting with a single electron,..”

OLPC unveils slimline tablet PC – “The group behind the $100 laptop has revealed the design for its latest computer aimed at connecting children in the developing world. The XO-3, as it is known, is a slim-line touchscreen tablet PC…”

Fonolo – “Fonolo is a service that makes it less frustrating to deal with large companies over the phone. Deep Dialing is a way to skip the phone menu when calling large companies.”

The year in tech:

The Top 10 tech trends of 2009 – “At year’s end, we’re connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing…”

Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come – “Want a hint as to where Firefox will go next? As a product visual designer at Mozilla, Stephen Horlander is the kind of guy who can make things happen — so when he shares updates and mockups on Firefox 4′s user interface, we tend to pay attention. He outlines five portions of a screenshot teaser that’ll get a much cleaner, more streamlined facelift. Our favorite takeaway is the singular app button for menu navigation. Several variations are shown, but if you ask us, we’re currently fond of the setup above. As Horlander notes, the design’s in constant flux, but what we’re seeing is certainly promising…”

Photovoltaic cells that look like shining sequins – “These pretty looking hexagonal solar cells have been made from crystalline silicon using micro-electric and micro mechanical manufacturing process. The utility of these remarkable cells is that these are able to produce the same amount of electricity using about a hundred times less material than the normal solar cells and thus are less expensive and more efficient…”

Microsoft Security Essentials Ranks as Best-Performing Free Antivirus – “Anti-malware testing group AV-Comparatives.org not only gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal, but now they’ve given it their best ranking in their performance test as well…”

Whaddaya Mean Obama Hasn’t Done Anything? – “These days, the argument that Obama hasn’t accomplished anything may be the only example of real bipartisanship in America. Here’s the conventional wisdom in a single paragraph: Three hundred and sixty-four days after he was elected president, Obama is still stuck in Iraq, hasn’t closed Guantánamo, is getting deeper into Afghanistan, hasn’t accomplished health-care reform or slowed the rise in unemployment. His promises of bipartisanship are a punch line (see above). And there’s still no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What a failure! What a splash of cold water in the face of all our bold hopes! But the conventional wisdom is insane. Consider the record…” See also: The Obameter: Tracking Obama’s Campaign Promises

Girl demonstrates the nuclear power of makeup (18 Photos)

Polluting pets: the devastating impact of man’s best friend – “Man’s best friend could be one of the environment’s worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle…”

The History of NASA Ames:

New Yorkers beware! New cockroach hits the Big Apple – “In fact, they found that 16 percent of food items were mislabeled, including cheeses labeled sheep’s milk that were actually made of cow’s milk, a potentially dangerous labelling error for those with allergies. But perhaps the biggest surprise for the researchers was the discovery of “a genetically distinct ‘mystery’ cockroach that might be a new species.”"

It’s A Blue Moon New Year’s Eve Party! – “Although there were 41 Blue Moons in the twentieth century, there was one of only four during an eclipse, and the only total eclipse of a Blue Moon in the twentieth century. A Blue Moon happens every 2.7 years because of a disparity between our calendar and the lunar cycle. The lunar cycle is the time it takes for the Moon to revolve around Earth: 29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes.”

Move over, Schrödinger’s cat… – “Talking quantum physics with a dog may seem a tad eccentric, but Orzel’s new book is a true delight to read. Orzel, a blogger and physics professor at Union College in New York, explains all the weird and wonderful features of the quantum world through conversations with Emmy – and even though it’s gimmicky, it works…”

Web ‘cure’ for temporary tinnitus – “Two teenage students and their teacher say they have a web-based cure for the ringing in the ears experienced after exposure to high volumes. Their website, Restored Hearing, sells 60 minute-long therapeutic “hums”, which they say have a 99% success rate…”

NEGLECTED CLIMATE STRATEGY: EMPOWER WOMEN, SLOW POPULATION GROWTH – “In contrast, there are sensible, low-tech ways to reduce our collective carbon footprint for relatively little cost, at far less risk, and with substantial social benefits. Voluntarily slowing population growth is one of them…” See also: Africa’s population boom traps children in poverty

Welcome to Jay Leno’s Garage:

Where is the Data Center Going? Top Trends Today – “It is projected that the world’s information base-the raw material for databases-will be doubling in size every 11 hours by 2010, with obvious implications for data centers. 3 Already, the amount of information transmitted globally over the Internet is doubling annually and will continue to do so for at least the next five years, according to market researcher IDC. Databases are growing because bigger databases return greater benefits to their users. Growth is fastest among very large databases, with the biggest database in Winter Corp.’s most recent survey coming in at three times the size of the largest reported two years earlier…”

San Andreas found extremely sensitive to stress – “Parts of the San Andreas Fault are so sensitive to stress that the faint gravitational tug of the sun and the moon may be enough to cause tiny tremors 15 miles underground, a team of UC Berkeley seismologists has found…”

Balloon boy parents are sent to jail for hoax – “The parents who pulled the balloon boy hoax in hopes of landing a reality TV show were sentenced to jail Wednesday — 90 days for him, 20 days for her — and barred from profiting from their newfound celebrity status for the next four years. Choking back tears, Richard Heene apologized in court for the frenzy he caused when he claimed his 6-year-old son Falcon had floated away in a giant helium balloon shaped like a flying saucer…”

Apple Tablet Finally Arriving in January? – “With the news that Apple has rented a stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for a major January announcement comes renewed speculation that the debut of the long-awaited Apple tablet device is at hand…”

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