More Robot Stuff

Albert Hubo is 3.3-foot-tall battery-powered walking humanoid with realistic, human like facial expressions. The robotic body was developed by researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and the head is a creation of Hanson Robotics, a Texas company that makes interactive conversational robots.

Committees

"Committee - A group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done." Fred Allen

"If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be 'meetings'." Dave Barry

Global Warming

New York Times April 24, 2009 by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center at Copenhagen Business School - "If the Kyoto agreement were fully obeyed through 2099, it would cut temperatures by only 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit."

National Priorities

Below are the results from a national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward the press, politics, and public policy issue), conducted Jan. 7-11, 2009, among 1,503 adults. (results +/- 3%) Contrast these results with the current administration's plan to spend billions of our tax dollars to reduce global warming.

Did you notice where fixing the environment is, third from last, and the last item on the list? Hmmm. . . Helloo White House, are you dyslexic?

Bacon

You have eard of 'What Would Jesus Do' - Here is another idea.

Speaking of Bacon

You are more likely to die from a coconut falling on your head than from Swine Flu - Oh, I mean H1N1

The U.S. government and the World Health Organization are taking the swine out of "swine flu," but the experts who track the genetic heritage of the virus say this: If it is genetically mostly porcine and its parents are pig viruses, then it is swine flu.

Scientifically this is a swine virus. Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade.

BTW - The US government is ditching the swine label because many people are afraid to eat pork and hurting the $97 billion US pork industry. The experts who point to the swine genetic origins of the virus agree that people can't get the disease from food or handling pork, even raw. Eat more bacon.

Iodine

Iodine was discovered in 1811 by accident by Bernard Courtois. He had a factory that produced saltpeter (potassium nitrate), which was a key ingredient in ammunition. He had figured out how to fatten his profits and get his saltpeter potassium for next to nothing by getting it from the seaweed that washed up daily on the shores. Iodine is plentiful in saltwater and concentrated in seaweed. All he had to do was collect it, burn it, and extract the potassium from the ashes.

One day, while his workers were cleaning the tanks used for extracting potassium, they accidentally used a stronger acid than usual and mysterious clouds billowed from the tank. When the smoke cleared, he noticed dark crystals on all the surfaces that had come into contact with the fumes.

When he had the crystals analyzed, they turned out to be a previously unknown element, which he named iodine, after the Greek word for “violet.” It was soon discovered that goiters, enlargements of the thyroid gland, were caused by a lack of iodine in the diet. That's why iodine is now added to table salt and goiters are mostly a thing of the past.

Artificial Legs

The picture is a twenty dollar prosthetic knee joint, developed by Stanford’s JaipurKnee Project team, during prototype testing last August. The knee joint was on display April 8, 2009 at the university.

The team studied the mechanics of high-end titanium knee joints in the US, which cost from $10,000 to $100,000. The team also surveyed the materials used to build cheap prosthetics for developing countries and designed a versatile knee joint made from an oil-filled nylon polymer. The self-lubricating joint has greater flexibility, demonstrating a much higher performance.

They fitted 43 of these joints to date in India, for field tests to improve the model. The plan is to produce 100,000 during the next few years. One more example of how healthcare does not have to be expensive.

Eyes

The term "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is not from your mother. It is from ancient Rome, where the only rule during wrestling matches was no eye gouging. The only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eyes out. And I thought my mother made that up.

Bananas

The banana fruit is a berry and does not grow on a tree, but actually grows on the world's largest herb and is a member of the lily family.

Scientists at the Texas A&M University's institute for biosciences and technology are working on ways to grow vaccines inside bananas.

Dishwasher Robot

Anybots, in Mountain View, Calif., is developing tele-operated mechanical servants like Monty, a two-armed wheeled robot equipped with gyroscopes, force sensors, and actuators powered by ultracapacitors.

Japan had them for a few years and are on to the second generation. Cool stuff and it works for nothing. If you want to see more, check this link to YouTube.

Something to Laugh About

In a 2007 study, allergy researcher Hajime Kimata of Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital in Japan measured levels of the hormone melatonin in the breast milk of nursing mothers before and after the subjects watched either a comic Charlie Chaplin video or an ordinary weather report.

Melatonin regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is often disturbed in the allergic skin condition atopic eczema, which all of the 48 babies in the study had.

Kimata found that laughing at the funny film, but not hearing the weather report, increased the amount of melatonin in the mothers’ milk. In addition, the laughter-fortified breast milk reduced the allergic responses to latex and house dust mites in the infants. Thus, making a nursing mom laugh might sometimes serve as an allergy remedy for her baby. Laughter is even more important this month, because April is Humor month.

National Museum of Funeral History

Here is a place to go for a few chuckles. It’s motto “Any Day Above Ground is a Good One.” The Museum is in Houston and opened in 1992. You can view exhibits that include a Civil War embalming display and a replica of a turn-of-the-century casket factory.

It also has a collection of fantasy coffins designed by artist Kane Quaye. The collection includes a casket shaped like a chicken, a Mercedes-Benz, a shallot, and an outboard motor, all based on the dreams and last wishes of his clients. Sounds like a fun place.

Chocolate Sniff

A new way of eating chocolate - by breathing it.

Chocolate without the calories is yours if you inhale chocolate when Le Whif goes on sale later this month in four luscious flavors: mint chocolate, raspberry chocolate, mango chocolate, and plain chocolate. I'll have my coffee with a sniff.