2011 Ford Mustang V-6 With 305 HP Rated At 31 MPG Highway – “Ford’s on a roll lately, selling more cars in the U.S. than General Motors last month. And it’s vowed to achieve best-in-class fuel economy numbers for every new model it launches. So the news today that its revised 2011 Ford Mustang with the 3.7-liter V-6 engine has been rated at 19 mpg city, 31 mpg highway by the EPA is a remarkable achievement…”

Shift to 3-D TV broadcasts will begin with college football fans – “I made a mental note to call my wife and apologize for the money we’ll be dropping on 3-D televisions in the next few years. Because, no matter how attached you are to your current HD flatscreen, you’re going to want to throw it in the trash once you see sports in 3-D…”

Secret millionaire donates her fortune to Lake Forest College. Here’s how she did it. – “Grace Groner’s life doesn’t sound like the stuff of financial legend. After graduating from Lake Forest College in 1931, in the throes of the Depression, she found a job as a secretary for Abbott Laboratories, where she would work for the next 43 years. In 1935, she invested in three shares of the company’s stock, each then worth $60. That decision would made Ms. Groner a millionaire seven times over…”

Bombs away – “Military technology: Elaborate new devices designed to defeat makeshift explosives struggle to gain the upper hand in Iraq and Afghanistan…”

The Toyota Witch Hunt – “The above are two of the thousands of complaints registered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concerning speed control issues with late-model Toyota (TM) Camrys. The media keep saying that “close to 3,000 complaints of uncontrollable unintended acceleration” have been sent to the NHTSA, and doing so may make their audience think each of these “complaints” stems from a legitimate problem—maybe even an accident. Like everything else in this fiasco, that’s overstated…”

Roboplow:

Google says desktop PC is three years from ‘irrelevance’ – “This week, as reported by Silicon Republic, Google Europe boss John Herlihy told a “baffled” conference audience that very soon the smartphone will completely eclipse the desktop. “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant,” he said. “In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”"

10 Harmful Health Myths – “By now you’re savvy enough to raise an eyebrow at a suspicious health “fact” when you hear one. Tampons contain asbestos? Drinking lemonade will make you lose 10 pounds in five days? You’re just not buying it. Unfortunately, some misinformation is only slightly off from the truth, so it’s a little trickier to spot. Watch out for these easy-to-fall-for myths….”

Massive Methane Melt off Siberia – “Arctic seabed stores of methane are now destabilizing and venting vast stores of frozen methane—a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The paper, in the prestigious journal Science, reports the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf—long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane—is instead perforated and leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Melting of even a fraction of the clathrates stored in that shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming. Lead author Natalia Shakhova Shakhova of the International Arctic Research Center tells U of Alaska Fairbanks…”

Could the Mono Lake arsenic prove there is a shadow biosphere? – “Do alien life forms exist in a Californian lake? Could there be a shadow biosphere? One scientist is trying to find out…”

Congresswoman Calls for Congress to Take a Pay Cut – “With so many citizens across American feeling the pinch of the recession and with a bloated budget looming over them, it’s time for members of Congress to take pay cut, some House members are saying…”

Everday looper App:

10 Essential iPhone Apps To Get You Through The Day – “Getting through the day can be tough, whether you live alone or with family, work in a busy office or out of a coffee shop down the road. The only person who can can get you through everything the day throws at you is YOU!. If you’re an iPhone user, you might want to think about using an app or two to give you that little helping hand as you take on the world… from dawn until dusk. Let The Next Web give you a few pointers with 10 essential apps and even more ideas…”

Four Steps to Prepare for the Low-Plastic Future – “The FDA’s reversal of its decision on BPA is one more sign that the way we use plastics today may be on the verge of a significant shift. More and more studies are implicating plastics in health problems ranging from reproductive disruption to obesity to ADHD to cancer. The FDA has vowed to be more responsive to health concerns about plastic. And consumers have shown that they will respond quickly and dramatically to perceived health threats from products, especially when risks are higher for children, as they seem to be with plastic…”

Popular Science Puts Entire Scanned Archive Online, Free – “Gadget nerds: Prepare to lose the rest of your day to awesomeness. PopSci, the web-wing of Popular Science magazine, has scanned its entire 137-year archive and put it online for you to read, absolutely free. The archive, made available in partnership with Google Books, even has the original period advertisements…”

New Sony Gadgets Take Aim at Apple – ” Threatened by Apple Inc.’s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing videogames, according to people familiar with the matter…”

Cloth Simulation

Leaf spectrum

Google facts and figures

Smart men less likely than dumb ones to cheat on lovers: study – “Smart men are less likely than dumb ones to cheat on their partners, according to a British study that was reported in the Daily Telegraph. Unlikely to surprise Elin Nordegren or the legions of other wives whose husbands have strayed, the research showed that men with lower IQs are less likely to remain monogamous than those with higher IQs…”

Research: How You Think About Your Age May Affect How You Age – “The saying “You’re only as old as you feel” really seems to resonate with older adults, according to research from Purdue University. “How old you are matters, but beyond that it’s your interpretation that has far-reaching implications for the process of aging,” said Markus H. Schafer, a doctoral student in sociology and gerontology who led the study. “So, if you feel old beyond your own chronological years you are probably going to experience a lot of the downsides that we associate with aging.”But if you are older and maintain a sense of being younger, then that gives you an edge in maintaining a lot of the abilities you prize.”"

YouTube adds video captions for deaf – “YouTube is making the tens of millions of videos it hosts more accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing by putting automatic captions on them. The Google-owned company said this use of speech recognition technology is probably the biggest experiment of its kind online…”

7 Ways People Woke Up, Pre-Alarm Clock – “Not to, er, sound a note of alarm or anything, but you’ll notice roosters are nowhere to be found on this list. That’s because roosters will (and do) ‘cock a doodle doo all night long, if they’re awake. Trust me. I know this to be true after spending a long, sleepless night at a small inn on a small Greek island in the middle of a brutally cold winter…”

Lost Jewish tribe ‘found in Zimbabwe’ – “Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago. It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin. These tests back up the group’s belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa…”

Mattel Mindflex hack shocks you into serenity – ” Okay, we’re in love with this delightfully evil Mattel Mindflex hack, which delivers an electric shock if you don’t remain calm, but we have to wonder: wouldn’t this thing be amazing if you hooked it up in reverse and punished not thinking enough?”

Yep, There’s a Patch for That – “The average Microsoft Windows user has software from 22 vendors on her PC, and needs to install a new security update roughly every five days in order to use these programs safely, according to an insightful new study released this week…”

Building high-speed wireless in Afghanistan out of garbage – ” Volunteers in Afghanistan — both locals and foreigners from the MIT Bits and Atoms lab — have been building out a wireless network made largely from locally scrounged junk. They call it “FabFi” and it’s kicking ass, especially when compared with the World Bank-funded alternative, which has spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars and only managed its first international link last summer…”

Today’s front pages – “The Newseum displays these daily newspaper front pages in their original, unedited form. Some front pages may contain material that is objectionable to some visitors. Viewer discretion is advised.”

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