Jon Stewart is awesome period

Who put the microchip in my benadryl?

Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG is developing a pill containing an embedded microchip, which it hopes to submit for regulatory approval in Europe within 18 months.

The chip is activated by stomach acid and transmits information to a patch attached to the patient’s skin, which then sends it on to a doctor via the Internet or a smartphone.

Chip-in-a-pill may be approved in 2012 | KurzweilAI

Thinking about replacing your home's windows? Go green with solar-powered ones!

A material with semiconducting abilities has been developed which also happens to be largely transparent, paving the way for potential future applications in "energy-generating solar windows, transparent solar panels, and new kinds of optical displays."

Transparent Conductive Material Could Lead to Power-Generating Windows | KurzweilAI

Wake up U.S. government, infrastructure spending = jobs + productivity

Job-Creation Idea No. 13: No Better Time Than Now To Build The Future

A Long-Lasting Universal Flu Vaccine

For decades, researchers have been doggedly pursuing a universal flu vaccine--one that would protect against the evolving influenza virus for years rather than just a single season--with little success. The bug mutates so quickly that a new vaccine must be specially formulated each year. But a relatively new strategy, targeting a rarely seen portion of the virus, is now showing some success.

While vaccines for other infections can create immunity that lasts for decades, the flu virus has proved a more challenging adversary. Because the human immune system is so adept at recognizing it, the virus has evolved the ability to modify its most recognizable protein--called hemagglutinin--from year to year. So every year, six months prior to flu season, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration devises the country's annual vaccine according to its best guess for which strains will be most virulent. And every year, we need another flu shot.

Palese's experimental vaccine, however, targets a part of the hemagglutinin protein that remains relatively stable over time, enabling its broad immunizing effects.

Technology Review: A Long-Lasting Universal Flu Vaccine

Making a Genome Quickly from Scratch

A rapid DNA-synthesis technique has been used to synthesize a complete mitochondrial genome from scratch. The new method will be used to make vaccines rapidly by a startup company called Synthetic Genomics Vaccines.

Technology Review: Making a Genome Quickly from Scratch

Reefer Gladness

Reefer Gladness - NYTimes.com

A little insight on the upcoming vote to legalize and tax marijuana in California.

Stephen Colbert Hearing (VIDEO): Updates From Colbert's Visit To Congress

Stephen Colbert Hearing (VIDEO): Updates From Colbert's Visit To Congress

Yet another step towards a television free world

Miniature device could allow a cell phone to project images on a wall | KurzweilAI
     A new one-cubic-centimeter projector head that can be integrated into a portable computer or mobile telephone has been developed by Lemoptix, a spin-off of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the Maher Kayal Laboratory.

     The projector uses very little energy, requiring on average 30% less current than the matrix- or LED-based technology currently available on the market. It should be available in 2011 for industrial applications, and the following year for consumer electronics, according to Nicolas Abelé, Technical Director of the start-up.

Test tube babies are so 2009

Technology Review: Artificial Ovary Could Help Infertile Women

     First time that a 3-dimensional environment containing the three main types of ovarian cells: theca cells, granulosa cells, and the eggs (oocytes) has been developed. Immediate importance in studying fertility, environmental and pharmaceutical impacts, contraceptive development, and ovarian cancer with future clinical potential in harvesting and maturing eggs safely for infertile women.

I bet this was the reporter's idea

Weekend Chuckles

Job Descriptions

1. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

2. An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

3. A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.

4. An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane, because that decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.

5. A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand.

6. A mathematician is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there.

7. A topologist is someone who doesn't know the difference between a coffee cup and doughnut.

8. A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."

9. A psychologist is someone who watches everyone else when a beautiful girl enters the room.

10. A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.

11. A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

12. A committee is a body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

Screw polysporin, give me some fibronectin for my owie

Harvard scientists have developed a fabric coated with a protein called fibronectin which has the potential for helping wounds heal quickly sans scarring or possibly as a scaffold for growing organs.

Protein pattern: This computer rendering shows ripples on fabric made from protein. Such fabrics could be used as scaffolds for growing organs. Credit: ACS/ Nano Letters

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25918/?nlid=3315

Ninja baseball player

TV Reporter Bloopers

Top 10 funniest news reporter bloopers

Here are the top 5 clips from the cnet news blog by Don Reisinger

I hope none of these guys are getting behind the wheel of a car

Hilarious video of animals getting drunk from fermented fruit.

Good for a chuckle

A woman went to a pet shop and immediately spotted a large, beautiful parrot. There was a sign on the cage that said $50.00.

"Why so cheap?" she asked the pet store owner.

The owner looked at her and said, "Look, I should tell you first that this bird used to live in a house of prostitution, and sometimes it says some pretty vulgar stuff."

The woman thought about this, but decided she had to have the bird anyway.   She took it home and hung the bird's cage up in her living room and waited for it to say something.

The bird looked around the room, then at her, and said, "New house, new madam." The woman was a bit shocked at the implication, but then thought, "That's really not so bad." 

When her two teenage daughters returned from school, the bird saw them and said, "New house, new madam, new girls."

The girls and the woman were a bit offended but then began to laugh about the situation considering how and where the parrot had been raised.

Moments later, the woman's husband Eric came home from work The bird looked at him and said, "Hi, Eric." 

Worse than an oil spill...farming

The Other Gulf Stain - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com
As if the BP oil spill didn't cause enough damage to the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, large amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients from midwest agricultural lands has washed down the Mississippi river and entered the Gulf.

So...what are the repercussions of this?
The abundance of nutrients causes a dramatic increase in the plant life initially (e.g. algal bloom) but then creates what is known as a 'hypoxic zone' or 'dead zone' as all the oxygen dissolved in the water gets used up by the photosynthesizing plants. This has huge ramifications for the animal life in those areas, and could be costlier to the ecosystem and the Gulf fishing economy than the BP oil spill.

The end of tv

A Portable Movie Theater - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com

I knew it was only a matter of time before televisions (even 100" plasma LCD HD ones) would go extinct and I think the beginning of the end has begun. A new portable projector from Tumi can be used on "most video-enabled MP3 players, the Apple iPhone and laptop computers." With the ever-expanding market of online viewing (Hulu, ESPN3, Netflix, etc...) it's only a matter of time before all you'll need for in-home entertainment is an internet connection, a laptop/iPhone, and a wall.

  Generation Kill by Evan Wright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started this book after having watched the HBO mini-series of the same name produced by the same guys who wrote 'The Wire'. There are a lot of characters introduced and missions undertaken by the First Recon Marines during the initial assault of Iraq and it was really helpful for me to picture the real-life men in the book with the actors who portray them so accurately.

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