EEG Monitoring Headband Could Track and Catalog Your Emotional Response to Movies – “Plenty of human-gadget interfaces can let you control a robot or a computer with your mind. But these communications are command-based — your PR2 still can’t tell whether you’re asking it for a beer to celebrate, or to drink away your sorrows. An EEG-based affective computing system allows you to communicate your emotions, adding a new layer to human-computer interactions…”

LG planning super e-readers that will make the Kindle look like a toy – “While the e-reader price war continues, LG is quietly making plans to become a major innovator in the e-paper market. According to an SEC filing made last Friday, the company plans to be making big, flexible e-paper screens as well as smaller-size color e-paper by the end of the year…”

Five Ridiculously Cool but Unfortunately Fake Gadgets – “You’re here, so chances are high you’re a prominent member of our ever-expanding geek culture. Of course, there’s the possibility you happened to just stumble upon our site, and haven’t fully revealed yourself as the closet nerd you are (Perhaps just a bit pi-curious?). Well, if the idea of bacon air fresheners and real 8-bit neckties get you all hot and bothered, you’re in the right place, friend…”

New Filter Could Make LCDs >400% More Efficient – “The immensely popular LCDs screens that are found everywhere in the modern home (television, computer, laptop, cellphones, etc) use less energy than CRTs, the previous technology, but they are still far from being optimally efficient. Only about 8% of the light emitted by a LCD’s backlight makes its way out, and the rest is wasted. But that might be about to change thanks to a new filter that could boost that efficiency by more than 400% and allow around 36% of the light to pass through. Read on for more details…”

HP teases 3 new prototypes – “Since the recent HP buyout of PALM we have been waiting for what HP may have in store for us. Well HP’s CTO Phil McKinney has tweeted some pictures of 3 new devices that could be released in the near future. The picture has the devices blacked out so we can only see their outlines but 1 seems to be a tablet, other a phone, and 3rd is something on his wrist maybe a media player? The second link on his twitter status leads us to a SXSW panel that he will be speaking at about devices of the future. So these devices may be further off than we think, or he might bring the future to us now…”

Textron and Carter Aviation or Lockheed Martin Might Build DARPAs Flying Hummer – “The DARPA’s $40 million Transformer project has selected AAI’s concept of a flying car that does not have a shrouded rotor, but it is based on “the slowed-rotor/compound concept, a technology that uses rotor blades heavily weighted in the tips, or high inertia. Lockheed Martin’s concept was reportedly based on its Phantom Works project that combines aspects its Joint Tactical Light Vehicle, a follow-on to the Humvee, with a ducted fan propulsion system to fly…”

Major Hurricane Earl Posing Real Threat to US East Coast – “Hurricane Earl will pose a threat to residents along much of the eastern coast of the United States later this week. If you recall, last week we had Hurricane Danielle that became a powerful hurricane but turned north from the tropical regions into the Central North Atlantic and really was nothing more than a concern for shipping, though it may eventually raise issues along the SE Greenland coast, Iceland, England or mainland Europe. Danielle turned north because there was a trof in between ridge in the North Atlantic and a ridge over the eastern third of the United States. Since that time, the trof lifted up and out and the ridge has filled in to a large degree…”

Seven Evolutionary Leftovers in the Human Body – “Wings on a flightless bird, eyes on a blind fish, and sexual organs on a flower that reproduces asexually—the casual observer might ask, what’s the point? But these vestigial organs and structures, once useful in an ancestor and now diminished in size, complexity, and/or utility, carry important information and give us clues to our evolutionary past…”

Use Microsoft Surface to Control a Swarm of Robots With Your Fingertips – “A sharp-looking tabletop touchscreen can be used to command robots and combine data from various sources, potentially improving military planning, disaster response and search-and-rescue operations. “

BEAR Robot Overview :

Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium – “If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years…”

Novel Thorium Reactor – “The Accelerator Driven Thorium Reactor (ADTR™) power station is the name given by Aker Solutions to the energy source for a new type of nuclear power station. It is targeted towards the global energy market and aligns with fourth generation reactor concepts that will come into being by 2025-2030. The reactor is designed to drive a steam turbine/generator balance of plant similar to other nuclear power stations in design.,,”

The Internet’s Secret Back Door – “Web users in the United Arab Emirates have more to worry about than having just their BlackBerries cracked…”

Digg User Rebellion Continues: Reddit Now Rules the Front Page – “Reddit has taken over the front page of Digg. If Kevin Rose and the rest of the Digg team thought that a long weekend would be enough to calm the furor over the latest changes to the popular site, they were clearly mistaken. Not only did Digg’s users declare today “quit Digg day,” but in order to protest Digg’s new auto-submission system, users are now upvoting every Reddit story on the site. These stories are being submitted to Digg by Reddit itself through the new auto-submission system that is a core part of Digg v4…”

Reddit Bucks Condé Nast Owners, Runs Pro-Pot Legalization Ads – “The social news site Reddit staged a mini-rebellion Friday, deciding to run ads for a pro-marijuana legalization campaign for free after Condé Nast executives ruled against taking payment for the ads…”

Email needs to be realtime – “Email is the most powerful, flexible, open, and free messaging platform out there. Obviously Posterous loves email, we’re betting our company on it. Yet it seems like everywhere you look, someone is declaring the death of email. The very next second they’re probably using email to send a message to their mom, schedule a meeting, or share files…”

Cracking commercial quantum cryptography: how we did it, in pictures – “We used the same attack to crack systems from two vendors; here is one of them. Below you can see the secure communicating boxes with their internals exposed, Alice at left and Bob at right. In a typical installation they get separated by tens of kilometers of fiber. Our main interest in this attack was to gain control of the single-photon detector in Bob; the next picture shows a close-up of its electronics board. “

Homebrew Cray-1A – “As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in ‘computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the “because I can!” category – I was poking around the internet one day looking for a Cray emulator and came up dry, so I decided to do something about it. Luckily, the Cray-1 hardware reference manual turned out to be useful enough that implementing most of this was pretty straightforward. The Cray-1 is one of those iconic machines that just makes you say “Now that’s a super computer!” Sure, your iPhone is 10X faster, and it’s completely useless to own one, but admit it . . you really want one, don’t you?”

Backscatter Van:

Covering Vaccines – “A little more than two months before, the November issue of Wired magazine had hit newsstands. The cover story was “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-vaccine Movement,” and I had written it. In part, the story was a profile of Dr. Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine and a leading proponent of vaccines for children. But the story also painted a portrait of a passionate movement led by people who believe vaccines injure and kill children. And on Dec. 23, one of those people sued me, Dr. Offit and Conde Nast, the company that publishes Wired, for one million dollars…”

Meet Christine: 49ers cheerleader and biomedical engineer – “Dr. John here… After a great interview with San Francisco 49ers Gold Rush cheerleader Erica, (and as part of our continuing effort to playfully challenge stereotypes and inspire young women to consider careers in science) I thought we’d make it an all-49ers week here on Science Cheerleader!”

Five Years After Katrina, Big Alien Rodents Return – “The 2005 to 2006 trapping season, which runs from November 20 to March 31, yielded 168,843 nutria tails. The 2009 to 2010 season, by contrast, set a record: 445,963 nutria tails, according to state figures. Trappers hunt the rodents for money and discard their carcasses…”

Getting more out of your google searches – “Most people recognize the incredible power that Google Search gives them. A vast amount of information is instantly available at your fingertips. Yet, with all this information, it could become difficult to narrow down exactly what you are looking for. If you find that you often spend several minutes browsing through numerous pages of search results, instead of finding what you need on page one, this post might be able to help you get more out of your Google searches…”

Is Paul Allen’s Patent Madness Really An Attempt To Show The Madness Of Patents? – “Last week, in writing about Paul Allen’s decision to sue (nearly) every big tech company south of Seattle (notably absent: Microsoft and Amazon), I had seen a few people suggest that maybe Allen was doing this to prove how ridiculous the patent system is…”

Man Creates Huge Online Museum for Vintage Calculators – “Emil Dudek, a technology enthusiast who lives in South Wales, U.K., has spent the last eight years acquiring calculators made in the 1970s, taking them apart, photographing them, analyzing the technology and posting it all to his website along with specs and comments on each machine…”

What Booze Looks Like Under a Microscope

Over 50? You Probably Prefer Negative Stories About Young People – “When given a choice, older people prefer to read negative news, rather than positive news, about young adults, a new study suggests. In fact, older readers who chose to read negative stories about young individuals actually get a small boost in their self-esteem, according to the results…”

Google Invests $86 Million In Low-Income Housing – “Google is partnering with U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (USBCDC), a division of U.S. Bank; to create an $86 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund. According to a release issued today, the funding will be used towards the construction and operation of 480 affordable rental housing units for low income families and senior citizens in seven communities throughout the West and Midwest….”

LHC computing grid pushes petabytes of data, beats expectations – “The LHC isn’t simply the most powerful particle accelerator ever created. Handling the huge amounts of data it produces has required the creation of one of the biggest computer grids on the planet. The planning and testing of the compute facilities has been taking place for years, but it’s only recently that the grid has had to deal with the output from actual collisions. How did it do? “From the IT perspective, we didn’t notice when the beams came on,” said CERN’s Wolfgang von Rueden, “We had tested it with much higher throughput conditions.”..”

LG to unveil LEX8 3DTV at IFA featuring ‘Nano LED’ backlighting – “Now that LED backlighting has trickled down to nearly every HDTV lineup, it appears the big manufacturers will have to find new ways to differentiate their products, like LG’s upcoming LEX8 television. Set to debut at IFA in Berlin before going on sale in Germany and Korea next month (no word on the US), LG claims that thanks to a ‘thin film of miniscule dots positioned in front of a full array of LEDs’ its Nano Lighting technology…”

Dell’s Aero Smartphone: An Embarrassment to Android – “Today’s revelation of the Dell Aero is one of those sigh-inducing sorts of occasions. The Aero, officially announced this morning, is Dell’s first stab at the smartphone market (by Dell’s definitions, at least — the company released the Streak earlier this month, but it insists the 5-inch call-making device is a tablet and not a phone). Billed as “one of the lightest Android smartphones in the U.S.,” the Aero is now available for $99.99 with a two-year contract from AT&T. So why the harsh words?”

Houses may replace Europe’s largest collection of crops – “New private homes could replace Europe’s largest collection of fruits and berries, if a Russian court rules the land could be sold to property developers. The Pavlovsk experimental station near the Russian city of St Petersburg is the biggest European field seed bank and one of the largest in the world…”

Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’ – “The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of the internet on book sales….”

Key gauge says stocks are dirt cheap now – “With the market down three weeks in a row, investors are understandably grim. But there is a silver lining: Stocks are looking almost as cheap as last year when prices hit 12-year lows — at least according to Wall Street analysts…” See also: Investors braced for week of key data

Atlantis Unveils The World’s Largest Tidal Turbine – The AK1000™ – “Despatching 1MW of predictable power at a water velocity of 2.65m/s, the AK1000™ is capable of generating enough electricity for over 1000 homes. It is designed for harsh weather and rough, open ocean environments such as those found off the Scottish coast. The turbine incorporates cutting edge technology from suppliers across the globe, has an 18 meter rotor diameter, weighs 1300 tonnes and stands at a height of 22.5 meters. The giant turbine is expected to be environmentally benign due to a low rotation speed whilst in operation and will deliver predictable, sustainable power to the local Orkney grid…”

Tethering – “I travel quite a bit, and I have found that the “tethering & portable hotspot” facility in Android 2.2 is just absolutely wonderful. It has saved me considerable money and got me reasonably-good connectivity in places I wouldn’t otherwise have had it; I’m looking at you, big-name US hotel chains…”

Pentagon considers preemptive strikes as part of cyber-defense strategy – “The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary’s computer network overseas – but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the strategy legally…”

ACLU Blasts Jailhouse Pain Ray, Condemns ‘Star Wars Tech’ – “To the shock of absolutely no one, the ACLU hates the idea of blasting Los Angeles prisoners with an invisible heat ray. The civil liberties organization has sent a letter to L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, begging him to not use the pain weapon, less than a week after its installation at the Pitchess Detention Center…”

Hygroelectricity researchers test lightning harvesting – “Move over solar, wind and wave power — there’s a new renewable on the block. Researchers are experimenting with devices that can pull electricity from the air….”

Black holes + dark matter = light – “TWO of the darkest things in the universe may be making light – or at least, radiation. When jets spat out by a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy collide with dark matter, they could produce gamma rays detectable from Earth – possible evidence of the elusive dark stuff…”

One year after double hand transplant, progress elusive – “More than a year after becoming the first person to receive a double hand transplant in the United States, Kepner’s new hands jut from his arms like foreign objects that he cannot control…”

Maps: How Mankind Remade Nature – “As scientists get used to the idea that Earth is in a new geological age, that the Holocene — the last geological age — has been replaced by Anthropocene, they’re figuring out how it got to be that way…”

Did LSD change Britain? – “Sixty-three years ago the first acid trip was taken by an unwitting research chemist, Albert Hofmann, who has died at the age of 102. To its detractors LSD is perhaps the most dangerous drug in the world, but did its advent really change society in Britain and even the way we eat? “

How panhandlers use free credit cards – “What would happen if, instead of spare change, you handed a person in need the means to shop for whatever they needed? What would they buy? Can you spare your credit card, sir? In New York City, an advertising executive recently handed over her American Express Platinum Card to a homeless Manhattan man after he had asked her for change. The man, who had been without home after losing a job, used the card to buy $25 worth of deodorant, water and cigarettes. And then he returned the card…”

The power of anecdotes – “For simpletons and amateurs, there are good research methods, and bad research methods. In reality, different tools are valuable in different situations, and sometimes, even very tiny numbers of people can give you a meaningful piece of information: even an anecdote can be informative…”

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? – “Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think…”

Water way to spend a honeymoon: The ultimate newlyweds suite is a romantic take on the phrase ‘sleeping with the fishes’ – “When it comes to honeymoon destinations, most newlyweds have set aside a nice little bundle for their ultimate getaway. But a unique suite in the Maldives – while offering unbeatable views of the local marine life – is likely to eat up the entire average wedding budget, let alone the honeymoon accommodation costs. Conrad hotels are offering a breathtaking suite at their Maldives Rangali Islands resort, which has to be seen to be believed…”

[[[Jump to - Interesting Reading #564 – Japan’s moon base, 30% MPG Increase, Flying Humvee, 1.25 Solar Gigawatts and much more…]]]

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