12 car innovation we cant wait to see/ – “Some may remember that back in the 1980s power windows were regarded as a luxury item in an automobile. Others may remember that in those very years we were imagining the automobile of the early 2000s as something spectacular and Star Trek like. It turns out that the automobile has evolved and matured into a rather safer, more comfortable and more reliable technology. But what will it be like in the near future? Laser guided navigation, talking cars, truly automated driving, holograms and in-vehicle broadband internet are just a few of the answers to that question…”

Small Reactors Generate Big Hopes – “A new type of nuclear reactor—smaller than a rail car and one tenth the cost of a big plant—is emerging as a contender to reshape the nation’s resurgent nuclear power industry….”

Integrating translation into Google Goggles – “Yesterday, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Eric Schmidt and I demonstrated a prototype version of Google Goggles that showcases the potential of integrating Google’s machine translation and image recognition technologies. In the video below, you’ll see how we use Goggles to take a picture of a German menu and instantly translate the text into English…”

Extreme Breath-Holding: How It’s Possible – “A Swiss freediver held his breath underwater for 19 minutes and 21 seconds, according to news reports this week. The gasp-inducing feat beat the previous world record by 19 seconds, and blew away the record of 17 minutes and four seconds that magician David Blaine set on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2008…”

The Case For An Older Woman – “As you can see, a man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger women. Meanwhile his upper acceptable limit hovers only a token amount above his own age. The median 31 year-old guy, for example, sets his allowable match age range from 22 to 35—nine years younger, but only four years older, than himself. This skewed mindset worsens with age; the median 42 year-old will accept a woman up to fifteen years younger, but no more than three years older…”

The extreme – and violent – methods used to keep Apple’s secrets – “Exposed: the bizarre and brutal lengths suppliers go to to preserve Apple’s famed secrecy…”

Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought – “The human mind is a wonderful thing. Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. For example, every time your eyes are open, you brain is constantly being bombarded with stimuli. You may be consciously thinking about one specific thing, but you brain is processing thousands of subconscious ideas. Unfortunately, our cognition is not perfect, and there are certain judgment errors that we are prone to making, known in the field of psychology as cognitive biases. They happen to everybody regardless of age, gender, education, intelligence, or other factors. Some of them are well known, others not, but all of them are interesting. I am sure everyone will find that one has happened to them, (I myself have been prone to several) and now will recognize when they are making an error in the future…”

Opel Flextreme GT/E concept adds Volt drivetrain to larger car – “Think of the Opel Flextreme GT/E concept as a bigger Chevrolet Volt (or Opel Ampera if you’re European). The idea behind this concept, which will debut at the Geneva Motor Show, is to show how the Volt’s extended-range electric vehicle drivetrain can be used in a larger vehicle, in this case a mid-size five-door hatchback. So far, every vehicle shown by General Motors with an ER-EV drivetrain, including the Volt, Ampera and Cadillac Converj concept, has been compact in size…”

How afraid should we be of electromagnetic pulse weapons? – “It’s a scene fit for a Hollywood movie: A terrorist group launches a nuclear weapon from a ship off the coast of the United States. But instead of directly hitting a city or military installation, it detonates miles above the ground, seemingly causing no damage. Almost instantaneously, the lights darken over a large portion of the United States, cars stop in the middle of the road, and computers go dead. Panic ensues and the nation is soon economically and militarily crippled, sent back to the pre-modern era…”

Google’s strategy unveiled: a little bit of everything you do – “Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a keynote address at the Mobile World Congress yesterday, which is worth watching if you have an interest in the future of technology or, well, human life…”

Scientists add to menu of health foods – “Rosemary, chickpeas, exotic carrots, an anti-aging cocktail with a garlic base — add them to the list of powerful disease-fighting edibles, say scientists, who now include them on a roster of foods that do a body good. Green tea, long a favorite of the health conscious, has newly realized benefits, according to new findings released Wednesday…”

Pilot Crashes Into Texas Building in Apparent Anti-IRS Suicide – “A pilot furious with the Internal Revenue Service crashed his small plane into an Austin, Texas, office building where nearly 200 federal tax employees work on Thursday, ignited a raging fire that sent massive plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the seven-story structure…” See alsoPlane Crash Suspect’s Online Diatribe

First Pictures: WISE Telescope Spies Comet, More – “Cold objects emit more energy at long infrared wavelengths than warm objects do, so WISE is particularly sensitive to icy comets and cool, rocky asteroids, she added…”

Steamed: Valve Software Battles Video-game Cheaters – ““Everyone wants to play in a secured service,” says Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development, “and you can’t play securely when someone’s cheating.” So now the company’s engineers are battling cheaters via Valve’s online gaming service, Steam…”

Dwarf helicopters, smart subs, robots to automate Australia – “Meet Hugh F Durrant-Whyte, the man who wants to automate Australia. This master of machines reckons there is an unmanned robot for every labour-intensive and dangerous job in the country…”

The future of magazines:

Made in China: Skill – “One of the most remarkable things about working in China is how much skill the workers have out there. I think the video below speaks for itself. ..”

The Empower, Kinetic Energy-Generating Chair – “The Empower chair generates kinetic energy from its swing and transforms it into electric energy. This might be pretty useful at the airports where is a demand for additional electricity plug always on high level…”

Are you a procrastinator or an incubator? – “What Mark presented was something qualitatively different: a clear sense of deadlines, confidence that the work would be complete on time, certainty that the work would be of superior quality and the ability to subconsciously process important ideas while doing other — often recreational — activities…”

In Blow to Taliban, 2 More Senior Leaders Are Arrested – “Two senior Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days inside Pakistan, officials said Thursday, as American and Pakistani intelligence agents continued to press their offensive against the group’s leadership after the capture of the insurgency’s military commander last month…”

The rich got richer, and paid less taxes – “I can’t say that I was surprised to learn, from a new report by former New York Times tax reporter David Cay Johnston, that “the incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high… in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low…”"

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