Smell This

The male gypsy moth can 'smell' the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

Cool Charger

 An 8in x 6in universal recharging pad with a conductive surface that powers up to four mobiles and iPods at a time from the mains. You attach a specific adaptor sleeve to the device to charge, then simply place it on the pad.

A recharge is said to take as long as with a conventional charger. The pad comes with one sleeve (you choose), and others can be bought separately, with major phone brands such as Apple, BlackBerry, Motorola and Nokia supported.

The Duracell MyGrid that you see here is one of those that can charge several mobiles at one time including products from Nokia, Motorola, BlackBerry, as well as the iPhone and iPod touch. It should be available in October for $80. 

You have to buy a device (sleeve) to plug into your devices so they can attach to the surface. Seems like a multiple power cord strip with less cords.

Brain Gel

An injectable hydrogel could aid recovery from brain injury by helping stimulate tissue growth at the site of the wound, researchers say.

Research on rats suggests the gel, developed by Dr. Ning Zhang at Clemson University, South Carolina, and made from synthetic and natural sources, may spur growth of stem cells in the brain. She predicted the gel may be ready for human testing in a few years.

Following a brain injury the tissues tend to swell up and this causes the loss of more cells, compounding the damage caused by the original wound. The standard treatments attempt to minimize this secondary damage at the site of the injury, for instance by lowering the temperature or relieving the build up of pressure, but their impact is often limited.

Scientists believe that transplanting donor brain cells into the wound to repair tissue damage is potentially a more productive approach, but while this method has produced limited results when used to treat brain injuries. The donor cells do not tend to thrive at the site of injury, or to stimulate repair. This could be due to inflammation and scarring at the injury site, and the lack of supportive tissue and blood supply to provide the necessary nutrients.

The advantage of the new gel, which is injected into the injury in liquid form, is that it can be loaded with different chemicals to stimulate various biological processes.

First, Dr. Zhang used it to help re-establish a full blood supply at the site of a brain injury in rats, potentially providing a much more friendly environment for donor cells to thrive. In follow-up work, she loaded it with immature human stem cells and the chemicals they needed to develop into fully fledged adult brain cells. After eight weeks of treatment with this mixture rats with severe brain injuries showed signs of making a significant recovery.

Quotable

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." -Ben Franklin

Bad Ad

Wow, this recession really has taken its toll. Now these Benjamin Franklins are only worth 001 dollars each.

Look close.

Quotable

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Scuttlebutt

The origin of the word scuttlebutt, which is nautical parlance for a rumor, comes from a combination of 'scuttle' - to make a hole in the ship's hull and thereby causing her to sink - and 'butt' - a cask used in the days of wooden ships to hold drinking water (or wine). The cask from which the ship's crew took their drinking water, like a water fountain, was the "scuttlebutt".

Even in today's Navy a drinking fountain is referred to as such. Since the crew used to congregate around the scuttlebutt, that is where the rumors about the ship or voyage would begin. Thus, rumors are 'talk from the scuttlebutt' or just 'scuttlebutt'. That reminds me. Did I tell you what Tom said. . .

Mona Lisa

I have noticed that way too many blogs have pictures to reduce the amount of creative writing needed. Here is an example showing the Mona Lisa.

This site that has over four thousand pictures of the Mona Lisa from the sublime to the ridiculous and everything in between. A real time waster, but interesting.

Photoshop Gaffe

This guy is so tough, he can hold hands with himself. Check his left hand.

Opt Out

I was out checking one of my free credit reports the other day and found a tip at the bottom of the page. You can opt out of those annoying credit card and insurance offers for five years by calling 1 888 567-8688. I called and it took about three minutes. BTW, I get one credit report about every six months, because if you get all three together, you have to wait for a full year to get them again for free.

Quotable

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -Winston Churchill

Seeing Molecules

Scientists at IBM Research in Zurich have, for the first time, made an atomic-scale resolution image of a single molecule, the hydrocarbon pentacene.

Atomic-force microscopy works by scanning a surface with a tiny cantilever whose tip comes to a sharp nanoscale point. As it scans, the cantilever bounces up and down, and data from these movements is compiled to generate a picture of that surface. These microscopes can be used to "see" features much smaller than those visible under light microscopes, whose resolution is limited by the properties of light itself. Atomic-force microscopy literally has atom-scale resolution.

Until now it hasn't been possible to use it to look with atomic resolution at single molecules. Researchers overcame this problem by first using the microscope tip to pick up a single molecule of carbon monoxide, which they used to make an image of pentacene. They hope that looking this closely at single molecules will give them a better understanding of chemical reactions and catalysis at an unprecedented level of detail.