Souping Up Ordinary Light Bulbs

"An ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the University of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100-watt bulb consume less electricity than a 60-watt bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can."

Personally I dislike the compact flourescent bulbs for anything but inaccessible applications. They are costly, have the wrong colour temperature, don't work with dimmers and are difficult to dispose of properly. Rehabilitating incandescent technology sounds good to me.

Viral Videos

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version. Hilarious. Watch for the army of Fonzi clones at about 2 minutes and "that angel guy" at 4:37.

Toy Story 3 Teaser Trailer. Still a year away though.

Lots more at Unruly Media.

Googling Google Using Google

Back in the 90s I used to teach a course I helped to design called "Advanced Internet Research". Pre-Google, AltaVista was the best search engine out there, but you really had to work at telling it what you wanted to find, so we taught people how to construct queries using Boolean syntax. How times change. Google dominates the search engine world. What's odd though is that people use Google today to find stuff they already have. In other words, Google has become the front end to the entire Internet-thingy.

Medical Isotopes - Crisis Or No Crisis?

When Chalk River was shut down for safety reasons two years ago, the government ordered it started up again because of the need for medical isotopes. Now the reactor may never open again and the government says it's not a problem. Crisis or no crisis?

The Toronto Star says Stephen Harper's Conservative government is either dramatically underplaying the current medical isotope crisis or wildly overplayed the last one.

‘Maker Faire’

Maker Faire, the largest festival for Do It Yourself-ers, crafters and hackers, happens this weekend in San Mateo, California. More than 80,000 people are expected to attend this year to check out what the 600 odd makers have to show, including robotics, music, crafts and food. Be sure to keep scrolling.

Discovering Itchy And Scratchy

"Drawing on the power of modern DNA sequencing technology and computational analysis, the research team from NHGRI, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the NIH Clinical Center uncovered a far more diverse collection of microbes on human skin than had been detected by traditional methods that involved growing microbial samples in the laboratory."

Why Do People Still Believe In The UN?

Robert Fulford in The National Post:

"One of the wonders of the world is the reputation of the United Nations. There are many people in many countries who believe (or claim to believe) that it can be relied on for fairness, honesty and competence. Year after year it embarrasses itself through everything from deep bureaucratic corruption to utter failure in dealing with global crises like the genocide in Darfur. Yet somehow its opinions and "facts" still carry weight."

(To this I would also add the IPCC.)

Tiananmen At Twenty

Next Thursday, June 4th is the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

In today's National Post:

"Twenty years after hundreds, possibly thousands, of students died in Tiananmen Square, democracy is still a dream in China. In a country booming with cellphones, televisions and a growing middle class, pro-democracy rallies have been replaced by political apathy."

Opel Canadian?

BBC confirms that “Canadian-Austrian car parts maker Magna International has reached an agreement in principle to rescue GM Europe, owner of Opel and Vauxhall. The agreement was reached with General Motors, but will need to be approved by the German government, which will provide funding to the new owner.”

German-designed cars from a Canadian-owned company. What's not to like? Opel cars (and their Saturn iterations over here) are German cars in the same tradition as VW, BMW, Mercedes-Benz. That is to say solid, no-nonsense, Autobhan-derived, precision transportation. With an emphasis on no-nonsense.

I'd love to see a Canadian Opel. Maybe they could call it an Acadian. Naah. How about Manta? Opel Manta. Nice ring. Opel Magna anyone?

Update: The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription): "Canadian auto-parts supplier Magna International Inc. was selected by the German government early Saturday as a partner for General Motors Corp.'s Adam Opel unit.

The prospective deal for GM's European operations would mark a major breakthrough for Magna and its flamboyant founder, Frank Stronach."

"The Ed Wood Of Automobiles"

Robert Farago, editor of The Truth About Cars interviewed Malcolm Bricklin about his new project: automotive generators that create hydrogen to add to the intake stream replacing some gasoline.

In the comments: "He is kind of like the Ed Wood of automobiles."

Ezra Levant Praises Stephen Harper

From Ezra Levant's op-ed in today's Toronto Star:

"At its convention this Sunday, the Canadian Jewish Congress will honour Prime Minister Stephen Harper with its Saul Hayes Award. It's unusual for the CJC, many of whose members have long favoured the Liberals, to give an award to a Conservative Prime Minister. But in Harper's case, it's well-deserved."

When To Say "I love you"

At Marginal Revolution, the economists ask.

"This question applies not at the beginning of the relationship, but after a few years or more. Sure, you love the person but this is economics and we think at the margin."

The Ying & Yang Of Global Warming

Kofi Annan's think tank Global Humanitarian Forum has issued a new report on global warming:

"Climate change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030."

"To avoid the worst outcomes, the report says efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change must be scaled up 100 times in developing countries. International funds pledged for this purpose amount to only $400 million, compared with an average estimated cost of $32 billion annually, it notes."

This report starts with the premise that global warming is caused by humans and then extrapolates extravagant death tolls. It then puts an enormous price tag on mitigation.

The real hard science of global warming is quite different. It contradicts warmist dogma, thus exposing a political agenda.

Update: More discussion at SmallDeadAnimals

Men In Power

Men in Power is a student organization at the University of Chicago (also on Facebook) that promises to help men get ahead professionally. As sure as night follows day, critics are charging that its premise is misogynistic and serves no purpose. Well who could have predicted that?

Founder Steve Saltarelli, the president of Men in Power:

"The group would not be against or in any way attempt to inhibit the advancement of women. We would simply advocate for men in the same manner that female groups advocate for women. Anyone with an interest in both studying and learning from men in powerful positions, as well as issues involved with reverse sexism, may become a member of MiP."

Read the comments that follow the article too. Although true misogyny is rare nowadays, sadly misandry is commonplace.

Bing Challenges Google

Search engines come and go with varying degrees of hype and usefulness. But Google is the thousand-pound sumo. No one has been able to successfully compete with Google, let alone defeat it. But Microsoft will try. Again. This time Microsoft's search challenger is called Bing.

Update: Go Bing yourself.

Female Doctors Hurt Productivity

In the National Post:

"The growing ranks of female physicians in Canada will slash medical productivity by the equivalent of at least 1,600 doctors within a decade, concludes a provocative new analysis of data indicating that female MDs work fewer hours on average than their male colleagues."

Updating The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

The latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as DSM-V, will be landing with a massive thunk on physicians', psychologists' and researchers' desktops in 2012, but until then, the American Psychiatric Association still has a lot of work to do in determining how the guide will be updated. That's because the current DSM-IV came out in 1994. And mercy how the world changes in 18 years. I doubt DSM-VI will wait until 2030.

Reversing Heart Failure With An Injection

University at Buffalo researchers have demonstrated for the first time that injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure.

New Blood Test Sharpens Prostate Cancer Diagnosis

A new blood test - the six-gene molecular diagnostic test - used in combination with conventional prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening sharply increases the accuracy of prostate cancer diagnosis, accurately detecting prostate cancer more than 90 percent of the time.

The new test could eliminate tens of thousands of unneeded, painful, and costly prostate biopsies annually, according to a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Earlier studies suggest that the conventional PSA test is 60-70 percent accurate in detecting cancer.

More prostate cancer links on the right sidebar.

Biocomputing - Teaching Bacteria To Count

Biomedical engineers at Boston University have taught bacteria how to count. Professor James J. Collins and colleagues have wired a new sequence of genes that allow the microbes to count discrete events, opening the door for a host of potential applications.

"These are such basic tools that it's really hard to say what thousand things they might be used for in the future," said Ari Friedland, a graduate student in Collins' lab and a co-author of the paper. "Consider computing – what does one transistor do for you? Not that much, but if you pack a few thousand onto a chip, then you really have some power. These are fundamental biocomputing devices."

Living computers in our lifetime. Imagine that.