N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.11.01 Issue No. 215

Don't you just hate it when you have to do something, something you've done
before long time ago, and now you can't remember how to do it properly? So I'm
supposed to make a backup copy of this DVD. (Legally, ok?) I remember simply
doing a copy and paste from the DVD drive to the hard disk. Of course, due to
copy protection, Windows will only allow you to do this a certain number of
times. Now it doesn't work for me. I did some bit of online research, and this
is what I found out.

Basically, most DVD content are CSS-encrypted. Ever if they're in digital
format, it's physically impossible to make a 1-for-1 copy of DVDs because blank
DVDs have built-in anti-copy protection. What you do, download a copy of DVD
Decrypter. This piece of software is quite old already, and not publicly
available. I'm sure you know where to search for it though. DVD Decrypter
extracts the keys and uses them to decode the files. It's quite versatile - it
can extracts the files to your HDD or it can save everything as an ISO image.
Assuming your DVD is single-layer (4.7GB DVD-5), you can use the same software
to burn the resulting ISO to a blank DVD. In my case, my source disc is a DVD-9,
so I have to either split the files to fit 2 DVDs or re-encode to compress the
movie into one disc. Another software called DVDFab can do both pretty good.
It's so good, it can check how much disk space is left and adjust how aggressive
the compression needs to be.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the DVD rippers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 100 Petabits per Second.Kilometer
* Taking Showers Bad for Health
* Time Telescope
* NSW's Unhackable Netbooks
* Nuclear Batteries
* Computers to Mark Essays
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________100 PETABITS PER SECOND.KILOMETER_________
http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/alcatel-lucent-boosts-fiber-speeds-by-10x-in-lab/

Scientists at Bell Labs have set an optical transmission record that could
deliver data about 10 times faster than current undersea cables, resulting in
speeds of more than 100 Petabits per second.kilometer. This translates to the
equivalent of about 100 million Gigabits per second.kilometer or sending about
400 DVDs per second over 7,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Paris
and Chicago.

Such capacity increases on undersea cables are important. A single home isn't
sending about 400 DVDs per second, however, as video becomes increasingly
available and downloaded on the web, entire neighborhoods and geographic regions
will get there, and that capacity increase is reflected in the growth of
long-haul networking demand. The transmissions were not just faster, they were
accomplished over a network whose repeaters are 20 percent farther apart than
commonly maintained in such networks, which could decrease the costs of
deploying such a network.

To achieve these results, researchers from the Bell Labs facility in
Villarceaux, France used 155 lasers, each operating at a different frequency and
carrying 100 Gigabits of data per second. The team multiplied the number of
lasers by their transmission rate of 100 Gigabits per second and then multiplied
the 15.5-Terabit-per-second result by the 7,000-kilometer distance achieved. The
combination of speed multiplied by distance expressed as bit per
second.kilometers is a standard measure for high-speed optical transmission.


_________TAKING SHOWERS BAD FOR HEALTH_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8254206.stm

Showering may be bad for your health, say US scientists, who have shown that
dirty shower heads can deliver a face full of harmful bacteria.

In the Proceedings journal, the study authors say their findings might explain
why there have been more cases of these lung infections in recent years, linked
with people tending to take more showers and fewer baths. Water spurting from
shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in
the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs, say the
scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. While it is rarely a
problem for most healthy people, those with weakened immune systems, like the
elderly, pregnant women or those who are fighting off other diseases, can be
susceptible to infection. They may develop lung infection with M. avium and
experience symptoms including tiredness, a persistent, dry cough, shortness of
breath and weakness, and generally feel unwell.

When the researchers swabbed and tested 50 shower heads from nine cities in
seven different states in the US, including New York City and Denver, they found
30% of the devices posed a potential risk. Levels of Mycobacterium avium in
showerheads were 100 times higher than those found in typical household water
supplies.

Since plastic shower heads appear to "load up" with more bacteria-rich biofilms,
metal shower heads may be a good alternative. Showers have also been identified
as a route for spreading other infectious diseases, including a type of
pneumonia called Legionnaires' disease and chest infections with a bacterium
called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Hot tubs and spa pools carry a similar infection
risk, according to the Health Protection Agency.


_________TIME TELESCOPE________
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17867-time-telescope-could-boost-fibreopti\
c-communication.html

A "telescope" that can magnify time could dramatically increase the amount of
data that can be sent through fibre optic cables, speeding up broadband internet
and other long-distance communications.

It isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the
global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second. But
more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, says Mark Foster at
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague
Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses". An optical
lens can deflect a light beam into a much smaller area of space; a time lens
deflects a section of a light beam into a smaller chunk of time.

The Cornell team made their time lenses using a silicon waveguide that can
channel light. An information-carrying pulse made from a series of small laser
bursts signalling digital 1s and 0s travels through an optical fibre and into
the waveguide. As it enters, it is combined with another laser pulse from an
infrared laser. The infrared pulse vibrates the atoms of the waveguide, which in
turn shifts the frequencies of the data-carrying pulse before it exits the
waveguide and passes into an optical fibre beyond.

The front of the [data-carrying] pulse is shifted down in frequency and the end
is shifted up in frequency within the silicon waveguide. Because the speed of
light passing through a medium depends on its frequency, the front of the pulse
is slowed down while its rear speeds up. At the time lens's focal point, the
rear of the pulse catches up with the front, producing a fleeting image with a
spectrum encoding the entire light pulse.

The Cornell team compressed a light pulse carrying 24 bits of data in this way.
They used a second time lens to convert the compressed image back into a 24-bit
light pulse like the one they started with. The second lens was more powerful
than the first, however, so the second 24-bit pulse was 1/27th the length of the
one that went in: the pulse duration shrank from 2.5 nanoseconds to 92
picoseconds, but no information was lost.

Put simply, the system is able to send 27 times as much information on the same
wavelength channel. The only downside is a small lag (about a millisecond) in
the data stream.


_________NSW'S UNHACKABLE NETBOOKS_________
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/156528,nsw-seeks-to-build-unhackable-netbook-netwo\
rk.aspx

The NSW Department of Education in Australia is using asset-tracking software,
RFID tags, and BIOS-embedded filtering smarts to roll out 240,000 netbook
computers into what CIO Stephen Wilson calls "the most hostile environment you
can roll computers into" - the local high school.

Over four years, some 240,000 Lenovo netbooks, funded under the Federal
Government's Digital Education Revolution initiative, will be offered to
students in year nine. The netbooks can be kept until year 12, or permanently
should the student finish his or her studies at the school.

They are armed with an enterprise version of the new Windows 7 operating system,
Microsoft Office, the Adobe CS4 creative suite, Apple iTunes, and content geared
to students. Although the netbooks are loaded with many hundreds of dollars of
software, 2GB RAM and a six-hour battery, the cost to the NSW Department of
Education is less than $500 a unit.

Underneath the covers of the netbooks - and within the network that controls
them - lies a great deal more smarts to ensure that the total cost of ownership
of each machine does not blow out. At the physical layer, each netbook is
password-protected and embedded with tracking software at the BIOS level of the
machine. That is administered through an enterprise services bus, which also
connects the Remedy suite for asset management, Active Directory for
authentication and Aruba's Airwave for wireless network management. If a netbook
were to be stolen or sold, the department can remotely disable it over the
network. Even if the hard drive of the machine was swapped out or the operating
system wiped, it would be useless to unauthorised users. While there is a serial
number and barcode on each computer, the department said that thieves or
students might be able to remove them. To combat this, it is using passive RFID
chips on every machine that will enable them to be identified "even if they were
dropped in a bathtub".

The department used the AppLocker functionality within Windows 7 to dictate
which applications are installed. Web access on the netbooks is filtered
according to a corporate security policy (using McAfee's SmartFilter technology)
plus an additional SOCKS-based proxy client, which provides web filtering at the
network layer. The devices also use Microsoft's Forefront Antivirus technology.


_________NUCLEAR BATTERIES_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8297934.stm

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces
energy from the decay of radioisotopes. As radioactive substances decay, they
release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical
current.

The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as
much charge as standard batteries. They have developed it in an attempt to scale
down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro-
and nano-electromechanical systems (Mems and Nems).

Nuclear batteries are an attractive proposition for many applications because
the isotopes that power them can provide a useful amount of current for
phenomenally long times - up to hundreds of years or more. As a result, they
have seen use in spacecraft that are fired far off into the cosmos. But for
applications here on Earth, their size has limited their use.

The Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon, employed a liquid semiconductor to
capture and utilise the decay particles. They are now working to further
miniaturise the batteries. And although the whole idea hinges on the use of
radioactive materials, the devices are safe under normal operating conditions.


_________COMPUTERS TO MARK ESSAYS_________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/25/robots-to-mark-english-essays

The owner of one of England's three major exam boards is introducing artificial
intelligence-based automated marking of English exam essays in the UK. Pearson,
the American-based parent company of Edexcel, is to use computers to "read" and
assess essays for international English tests in a move that has fuelled
speculation that GCSEs and A-levels will be next.

All three exam boards are now investing heavily in e-assessment but none has yet
perfected a form of marking essays using computers – or "robots" – that it is
willing to use in mainstream exams. Academics and leaders in the teaching
profession said that using machines to mark papers would create a "disaster
waiting to happen".

The Times Educational Supplement (TES) reports that the Pearson Test of English
Academic, an English­language exam, was launched on 26 October. It includes
essay questions and will be used in 20 countries, including the UK, to rate
applicants' English skills before they are admitted to university. Computers
have been programmed to scan the papers, recognise the possible right responses
and tot up the marks. Pearson claims this will be more accurate than human
marking, and eliminates human elements such as tiredness and subjectivity.

Other exam boards said the adoption of computers to mark beyond their current
use in multiple choice tests was inevitable.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Sugar on a Stick
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry

LiveUSB Creator
https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

ASCIIpOrtal
http://cymonsgames.com/asciiportal/

LegalTorrents
http://www.legaltorrents.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I've heard that most of common house dust comes from dead human skin cells. If
this is so why are abandoned houses so dusty?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
  ~ Eleanor Roosevelt


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Is banging your head against a wall a waste of time?

Not necessarily -- Banging your head against a wall can burn up to 150 calories
per hour.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
These two strings walk up to a bar. The first string walks in and orders and the
bartender throws him out and yells "I don't serve strings in this bar. The other
string ruffs himself up on the street and curls up and orders. The bartender
shouts, "Hey, didn't you hear what I told your buddy?" The string says "Yeah."
The bartender says, "aren't you a string?" The string says, "No, I'm a frayed
knot."


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.10.11 Issue No. 214


It's been almost a month since we bought the Samsung LA32B650 LCD TV. After all
the hype and excitement, I'm now starting to have a feel of what this TV can
(and cannot) do. First off, the unit has two USB 2.0 ports. One to handle USB
sticks, and the other to handle USB hard disks. If it finds mp3 files, it will
play them. If it finds photos, you may view them in a slideshow. If it finds
DivX movies, you can watch them. Then there's Content Library. The TV has
pre-installed Flash content, which includes a recipe book, an art gallery, a
game and a fitness video. According to the manual, one can get new content from
the Internet, which I did, but I was never able to get the TV to display. The
functionality is there, but doesn't seem to support additional modules. Next I
tried to Internet widgets. You get the local weather, news from USA Today, and
videos from YouTube. Obviously, you have to connect the TV to your broadband
router first. That YouTube widget is really a good way to use up your excess
bandwidth quote. As for DLNA Wireless, I still can't get that to work. Not with
Windows Media Player 11 or Tversity. The DLNA server can see the TV, but not
vice versa. Workaround for now is to use UPnP auto-discovery on the Xbox to talk
to the DLNA/UPnP server on my laptop, and stream content over to the Samsung TV.
More work needed.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell Samsung about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Steel Velcro
* Video Ads in Paper Magazines
* Nokia's Pay-by-Phone Service
* Roads Paved with Solar Panels
* Cancer Breathalyzer
* Seeing with Tongues
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________STEEL VELCRO_________
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17739-extreme-steel-velcro-takes-a-35tonne\
-load.html?full=true&print=true

German engineers have taken inspiration from the simple Velcro and created a
version of the hook-and-loop concept with enough steely strength for extreme
loads and environments.

Called Metaklett, a square metre of the new fastener is capable of supporting 35
tonnes at temperatures up to 800 ºC, according to the inventors at the Technical
University of Munich, Germany. The fastening is made from perforated steel
strips 0.2 millimetres thick, one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and
the other sporting jagged spikes. And just like everyday Velcro it can be opened
up without specialised tools and used again.

Conventional hook-and-loop fasteners are used for everything from bandages to
cable boots in aircraft and securing prosthetic limbs. The inventors reckon the
spring-steel fastener is tough enough to be used for building facades or car
assembly. Metaklett can support maximum weight when pulled on in the plane of
the strips, and a square metre can hold a perpendicular load of 7 tonnes.


_________VIDEO ADS IN PAPER MAGAZINES_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8211209.stm

The first-ever video advertisement was published in the September 18 editions of
the US show business title Entertainment Weekly distributed in Los Angeles and
New York. The technology is likened to the Daily Prophet - a newspaper with
moving pictures described in the Harry Potter books.

The slim-line screens are about the size of a mobile phone display. The chip
technology, used to store up to 40 minutes of video, is activated when the page
is turned. The screens come with rechargeable batteries.

Obviously this new technology will cost more than normal print ads. Although in
an increasingly competitive market, advertisers have realised that it is more
important than ever to create attention for their product.

It is not the first time that publishers have experimented with digital
technology in magazines. Last year, for example, men's lifestyle magazine
Esquire published the first using e-ink technology, with a cover that flashed in
alternating patterns. E-ink is the technology used in the Sony Reader and Amazon
Kindle electronic books. Americhip, the developer of video-in-print, has also
created magazine technology that appeals to various senses, including smell.


_________NOKIA'S PAY-BY-PHONE SERVICE________
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352056,00.asp

World's top mobile phone maker Nokia said it would launch a mobile financial
service next year targeting consumers, mainly in emerging markets, with a phone
but no banking account. Called Nokia Money, the service was based on the mobile
payment platform of Obopay, a privately-owned firm that Nokia invested in
earlier this year, and it is now building up a network of agents. Obopay, which
uses text messaging and mobile internet access, charges users a fee to send
money or to top up their accounts.

Mobile money is one of the hottest topics in the wireless world, but so far
take-up of services has been limited mostly to a few emerging markets, as in
developed countries, the popularity of online banking has been a brake on mobile
money. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a U.S.-based
microfinance policy and research centre, has said the market for mobile
financial services to poor people in emerging markets will surge from nothing to
$5 billion in 2012. Nokia Chief Development Officer Mary McDowell also noted
that there are 4 billion mobile phone users globally but only 1.6 billion bank
accounts and 1 billion credit cards.

The announcement is the latest push by Nokia to diversify its business as global
handset sales have gone from slowing down over the past few years to contracting
due to the recession. Nokia did not announce any partnerships with operators or
financial institutions, only saying that Nokia Money would be rolled out
gradually to selected markets starting in early 2010.


_________ROADS PAVED WITH SOLAR PANELS_________
http://green.autoblog.com/2009/08/28/solar-roadways-get-prototype-funding-from-d\
ot/

What about replacing petroleum-based asphalt on the road with solar panels?
Solar road technology that promises to produce clean electricity, replace power
transmission and information infrastructure, requires no plowing and lights up
to provide navigational and safety information. The technology looks so
promising the US Department of Transport has seen fit to award Solar Roadways
$100,000 to construct the first 12' by 12' Solar Road panel.

The panels that make up the road consist of three layers. The base contains
power and data lines and is overlaid by the electronics strata that contains
solar cells, LEDs and supercapacitors which would produce and store electricity
while the LEDs would "paint" the surface with light. This layer also holds the
microprocessors and communications device that would make highways
"intelligent". The top layer is made of glass that should supply the same
traction as asphalt, is strong enough to handle whatever traffic can dish out
and protect the electronic goodies below. There will also be embedded heating
elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice buildup, providing for safer
winter driving.

Replacing asphalt roads and parking lots with Solar Roadway panels will be a
major step toward halting climate change. Fully electric vehicles will be able
to recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, finally making electric cars
practical for long trips. Scott Brusaw, the guy who came up with the Solar
Roadways idea, estimates that is will take roughly five billion (a stimulus
package in itself) 12' by 12' Solar Road Panels to cover the asphalt surfaces in
the U.S. alone. If every street, driveway and parking lot was replaced with his
invention, it would supply three times as much electricity as was used in the
U.S. in 2003 - almost enough to power the entire world.


_________CANCER BREATHALYZER_________
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/40263

Researchers in Israel have invented a new type of breath test for detecting lung
cancer in patients using carbon-based sensors embedded with gold nanoparticles.
Lung cancer accounts for more than a quarter of all cancer-related deaths with
an estimated 1.3 million people dying from the condition worldwide each year.
Breath testing is an established, non-invasive method that works by linking
"volatile organic compounds" (VOCs) with specific forms of lung cancer. The
drawback of this method at present is that it requires collecting samples and
analysing them using techniques such as mass spectrometry and infrared
spectroscopy. Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology and his
colleagues have now developed a new device for detecting cancer in breath, which
could provide an almost instant diagnosis of a patient's health.

When a patient breathes into the device, particulates in the breath accumulate
on the carbon layer and the sensor swells, pushing the gold nanoparticles
further apart, which in turn, alters the resistance of the film. Each type of
particulate has a unique effect on the resistance, which can be measured by
having a current flow through the sensor. Having inserted the new sensor into a
breath-test device, the researchers then carried out a series of tests for
calibration purposes. By recruiting 96 volunteers – 40 lung cancer patients and
56 controls – the team built up a catalogue of VOCs based on the electrical
signals that were present in the breath of lung cancer sufferers but not in the
breath of controls.

In a break from the convention in medical innovation, the researchers claim that
full clinical trials may not be necessary to take this new technology to a stage
where it is hospital-ready. They believe instead that they could prove the
device's accuracy using a series of "artificial mixtures" of particulates that
could simulate cancerous and healthy breath. In addition to lung cancer, this
new device has also been used to promising effect in the diagnosis of other
diseases including renal failure.


_________SEEING WITH TONGUES_________
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=device-lets-blind-see-with-tong\
ues

A new device called the BrainPort aims to partially restore the experience of
vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the
tongue's surface to send light signals to the brain. About two million optic
nerves are required to transmit visual signals from the retina—the portion of
the eye where light information is decoded or translated into nerve pulses—to
the brain's primary visual cortex. With BrainPort, the device being developed by
neuroscientists at Middleton, Wisc.–based Wicab, Inc., visual data are collected
through a small digital video camera about 1.5 centimeters in diameter that sits
in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. Bypassing the eyes, the
data are transmitted to a handheld base unit, which is a little larger than a
cell phone. This unit houses such features as zoom control, light settings and
shock intensity levels as well as a central processing unit (CPU), which
converts the digital signal into electrical pulses—replacing the function of the
retina.

From the CPU, the signals are sent to the tongue via a "lollipop," an electrode
array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the tongue. Each
electrode corresponds to a set of pixels. White pixels yield a strong electrical
pulse, whereas black pixels translate into no signal. Densely packed nerves at
the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical signals, which feel a little
like Pop Rocks or champagne bubbles to the user.

Wicab will be submitting BrainPort to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for
approval, and the device could be approved for market by the end of 2009 at a
cost of about $10,000 per machine.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Give Me Something to Read
http://givemesomethingtoread.com/

ScreenSnapr
http://screensnapr.com/

How a construction crane is erected
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/video-how-a-construction-crane-is-erected\
/

Google Fast Flip
http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

TxtNinja
http://www.txtninja.com/
Converts text to image

FastCopy
http://www.ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Just what is baking soda made of? Is it really safe to make cookies with a
product promoted to clean carpets, refrigerators, and de-stink your shoes?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman
really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a
century.

  ~ Mark Twain


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What makes 111,111,111 so special?

If the number 111,111,111 is multiplied by itself, the result is all of the
digits in ascending to descending order, or 12,345,678,987,654,321.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A cabbie takes a woman to her destination, but when they get there, she doesn't
have any money. The cabbie tells her he has to get paid, so she pulls up her
skirt, and says "What about this?" The cabbie says "Don't you have anything
smaller?"


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.08.24 Issue No. 213

Just when you thought digital point-and-shoots can't get any better, camera
manufacturers come up with something novel. A few years ago, it's a race to have
the most number of megapixels and the biggest zoom. Digicams started with 1
megapixels, then 3MP, then 5MP, then 7MP. Nowadays, (for the average user)
there's no point of going more than 10MP. Optical zooms went from 3x optical
zoom to 12x to 20x. Anything more than that, you'll need two tripods - one for
the camera body and one for the protruding lens. As for features, you've got
face detection, blink detection, Bluetooth to synch pictures with your computer,
WiFi to upload pictures to Facebook, GPS to tag your photos with global
coordinates. Just the other day, I read about cameras with blink detection.
Coupled with face detection, the camera will be able to indicate that one of
your subjects has blinked, so you can take another shot before everyone walks
away. Another camera comes with dual LCD screens - front and back. While
pointing the camera at yourself, you can compose pictures using the smaller
front LCD. Handy for photographers who are loathe to ask other people to take
their pictures. When will it all end?

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the shutterbugs about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Carbon-Eating Green Cement
* Artificial Bone Made of Wood
* Paper-Thin Batteries
* Drug-Tainted Paper Bills
* New Digital Album Format
* Parents Baffled by Scientific Questions
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________CARBON-EATING GREEN CEMENT_________
http://snipurl.com/qrico

A British start-up company developing a cement that absorbs carbon dioxide has
raised 1 million pounds to fund its work, underscoring the growing interest in
eco-friendly construction ventures. Novacem, a spin-out from Imperial College
London, is one of a number of young companies tapping new technologies to reduce
the cement industry's notoriously large carbon footprint.

The trick is to make cement from magnesium silicates rather than calcium
carbonate, or limestone, since this material does not emit CO2 in manufacture
and absorbs the greenhouse gas as it ages. Novacem Chairman Stuart Evans said
the cash injection from Imperial Innovations, the Royal Society Enterprise Fund
and the London Technology Fund would help fund a pilot plant that should be up
and running in northern England in 2011. The company is working with Rio Tinto
on the supply of raw materials and is in discussions with a number of cement
makers on future commercial production, which could be around five years away.

With an annual production of more than 2.5 billion tons, conventional Portland
cement is responsible for an estimated 5 percent of global CO2 emissions, more
than the airline industry. Novacem estimates that for every ton of Portland
cement replaced by its product, around three-quarters of a ton of CO2 is saved,
turning the cement industry into a big emitter to a big absorber of carbon.


_________ARTIFICIAL BONE MADE OF WOOD_________
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/08/10/artificial-bone.html

A new procedure to turn blocks of wood into artificial bones has been developed
by Italian scientists, who plan to implant them into large animals, and
eventually humans. Wood-derived bone substitute should allow live bones to heal
faster and more securely after a break than currently available metal and
ceramic implants.

To create the bone substitute, the scientists start with a block of wood -- red
oak, rattan and sipo work best -- and heat it until all that remains is pure
carbon, which is basically charcoal. The scientists then spray calcium over the
carbon, creating calcium carbide. Additional chemical and physical steps convert
the calcium carbide into carbonated hydroxyapatite, which can then be implanted
and serves as the artificial bone. The entire process takes about one week and
costs about $850 for a single block. One block translates to about one bone
implant.

Wood-based implants would have several advantages over traditional titanium or
ceramic implants. Since their physical structure is more spongy than solid, like
many metal or ceramic implants, live bone should grow into wood-derived bone
substitute quicker and more securely. Paradoxically, metal or ceramic implants
meant to prevent bone breaks can sometimes cause them. Current implants are
significantly harder than the bone that surrounds them. Natural bone can flex
slightly. In fact, stress helps build stronger bones. However, wood-derived bone
substitute are still not cleared for use in humans. The scientists are currently
limited to sheep. Application in humans is likely years away.


_________PAPER-THIN BATTERIES________
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218400704

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems,
together with colleagues from Chemnitz University of Technology and Menippos
GmbH (all based in Chemnitz, Germany) collaborated on the product development of
printable batteries that pattern organic semiconductors onto paper-thin,
flexible substrates. They are targeting applications such as smart credit cards
with battery-powered displays to show balances and other account information.

Fraunhofer's batteries use zinc anodes and manganese cathodes, which react with
one another to produce electricity. The materials slowly dissipate over the
lifetime of the battery, making them suitable for short-term applications like
greeting cards with built-in music players. The batteries are printed using a
silk screen printing process in which a rubber lip presses the organic
semiconductor materials through a screen onto a flexible substrate. The
lithographic-like technique uses templates to pattern layer upon layer--each
about the width of a human hair--of battery components until enough bulk has
been achieved for a particular application.

Printable batteries for smart cards would weight less than 1 gram and measure
less that 1-mm thick. The organic materials produced 1.5 volts per cell, like
conventional batteries, but use no hazardous chemicals like the heavy metals in
conventional rechargeable and alkaline batteries.

Fraunhofer researchers said their battery is working in their lab, and its
partners estimate that the first commercial designs will be ready for beta
testing later this year. The researchers are aiming at a price point under 10
cents per card.


_________DRUG-TAINTED PAPER BILLS_________
http://snipurl.com/qridi

A team from University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth has found that bills from
the US and Canada are highly likely to have trace amounts of cocaine, showing
for the first time a growing prevalence in the abuse of the drug.

A worldwide study of bills from over 30 cities in five countries found a
startling statistic: "cocaine is present in up to 90 percent of paper money in
the United States, particularly in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and
Detroit. The scientists found traces of cocaine in 95 percent of the banknotes
analyzed from Washington, D.C., alone." What is intriguing is that a study
conducted two years ago showed 67 percent of bills had traces of cocaine.

How the drug gets on the bills is well-understood. Money changes hand during a
drug deal (of course), but bills are also used in the consumption of cocaine as
the drug can be rolled into a bill and snorted. The city with the greatest
chance of finding traces of the drug was DC. Salt Lake City bills were the least
likely to be contaminated.

In comparison, Canadian bills came back at 85% contamination while Brazil's
banknotes registered at 80%. China and Japan had the lowest levels, with China
at 20 percent and Japan at 12 percent (though only 16 bills were studied from
Japan). Despite the high incidence level in the US, researchers do not think
there is a health concern among the general public when handling the bills.
Experts say that for the most part, you can't get high by sniffing a regular
banknote, unless it was used directly in drug uptake or during a drug exchange.
It also won't affect your health and is unlikely interfere with blood and urine
tests used for drug detection.


_________NEW DIGITAL ALBUM FORMAT_________
http://snipurl.com/qridt

Forget WAV, MP3 and M4A – major labels have something new in mind, and it's
called CMX. Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are reportedly preparing a new
digital album format that will include songs, lyrics, videos, liner notes and
artwork.

It's a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a brand new look, with
a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you're not
just going to get the 10 tracks, you're going to get the artwork, the video and
mobile products. However, this may be of little interest if CMX isn't compatible
with iTunes, the default music software for iPods, iPhones and Apple computers.
Whereas labels are eager to resuscitate the album format in an age of singles,
Apple is concerned with selling hardware, including a tablet computer rumoured
to be launching this fall.

The news comes just weeks after reports of a similar project, Cocktail, being
developed by Apple. According to the Times, Apple rejected CMX and instead began
work on an in-house alternative. It is not clear how Cocktail and CMX will
differ, other than ownership.

The major labels plan to launch CMX, which is just a working title for the
format, in November. It will reportedly be "soft-launched" with a few select
releases.


_________PARENTS BAFFLED BY SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8195805.stm

A recent survey of UK parents with children aged five to 16 showed that four in
five have been stumped by a science question posed by their children. More than
half of the 1,002 parents surveyed thought their children knew more about
science than they did. And 20% of parents said they felt silly when they did not
know the answer to their children's questions.

The top three most-asked questions were: "Where do babies come from?", "What
makes a rainbow?" and "Why is the sky blue?".

The survey was carried out to mark the launch of a new website by the Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills. The website - Science: So what? So
everything - gives information to parents on answering those tricky questions
from children, as well as downloadable activity sheets and ideas of places to
visit.

How to answer about where babies come from? The website explains that babies are
created when a cell from the mother and a cell from the father join together or
"fuse".
After the two cells fuse, the site goes on, they divide over and over again to
create a ball of cells called an embryo that goes on to become a baby that grows
inside the mother for nine months. The website explains how a rainbow is made
from light and water - with help from the sun. And the sky is blue, it says,
because the sun produces white light which is made up of all the colours of the
rainbow. But a clear, cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the
air scatter blue light from the sun more easily than they do red light.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Stop Playing Homework and Do Your Video Games - A Video Game Quintet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJrGYpYx8CQ

Omegle
Talk to Strangers!
http://www.omegle.com

io9
We come from the future.
http://io9.com/

Mindcipher: Challenge yourself...
http://mindcipher.net/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If two bits make 25 cents, then there are eight bits in a buck. But there are
also eight bits in a byte. Does this mean a byte is worth a buck?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
  ~ Albert Einstein


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Can you use a marinade again?
According to food experts, marinades for meat are for a one-time use only. You
should never save and reuse a marinade.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Two atoms run into each other. The first says: "Oh no, I've lost my electron!"
The second says: "Are you sure?" The first says: "I'm Positive!"
Bonus joke: Two muffins are sitting in an oven. The first says "Wow it's hot in
here." The second says "AAAHHHH! A talking Muffin!"


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.07.27 Issue No. 212

Just came back from a holiday in Beijing, and if you're into shopping (cheap
shopping, that is), Beijing is the place to be. Let's not talk about the fake
bags and imitation clothes, or the knockoff watches and counterfeit Sony
digicams and Apple iPhones. Tech-wise, we saw something really cool, original
and innovative. I'm talking about this wristphone watch. It's kinda chunky, but
it works. It's got a small, colour touchscreen display that functions as a soft
keypad. Using a supplied stylus, you tap on the screen to make calls or send
SMS. With Bluetooth support and supplied Bluetooth earpiece, you can listen to
your calls wirelessly. That is, if you don't like using the built-in speaker.
The wristphone can even play MP3s and videos. If the internal 1MB is not enough,
you can expand the memory using a microSD card. It's even got a video camera
(for video calls?).

Ah, the wonders of miniaturization!

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the honeymooners about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Wireless Power Harvesting
* Gold Vending Machines
* Apple to Patent Special 911 Calls
* Mind-Controlled Wheelchair
* Windows 7 on Thumb Drives?
* Fuel Tank with Feathers
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________WIRELESS POWER HARVESTING_________
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/22764/

Nokia is developing technology that could draw enough power from ambient radio
waves to keep a cell-phone handset topped up. According to Markku Rouvala, a
researcher from the Nokia Research Centre, in Cambridge, U.K., ambient
electromagnetic radiation--emitted from Wi-Fi transmitters, cell-phone antennas,
TV masts, and other sources--could be converted into enough electrical current
to keep a battery topped up.

His group is working towards a prototype that could harvest up to 50 milliwatts
of power--enough to slowly recharge a phone that is switched off. Current
prototypes can harvest 3 to 5 milliwatts. The Nokia device works on the same
principles as a crystal radio set or radio frequency identification (RFID) tag:
by converting electromagnetic waves into an electrical signal. To increase the
amount of power that can be harvested and the range at which it works, Nokia is
focusing on harvesting many different frequencies (between 500 megahertz and 10
gigahertz) using a wideband receiver.

Nokia is being cagey with the details of the project, but Rouvala is confident
of a product within three to four years.


_________GOLD VENDING MACHINES_________
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5554972/Gold-so\
ld-like-chocolate-from-German-vending-machines.html

TG-Gold-Super-Markt plans to install vending machines at 500 locations including
train stations and airports selling the precious metal across Germany. The
company, based near Stuttgart, hopes to tap into the increasing interest in
buying gold following disillusionment in other investments due to the economic
downturn.

Gold prices from the machines – about 30 per cent higher than market prices for
the cheapest product – will be updated every few minutes. Customers using a
prototype "Gold to go" machine at Frankfurt Airport had the choice of purchasing
a 1g wafer of gold for €30, a 10g bar for €245, or gold coins. A camera on the
machine monitors transactions for money laundering controls.

According to GFMS, the London-based precious metals consultancy, interest in
gold has risen during the financial crisis. Retail demand reached an estimated
108 tonnes in 2008, up from 36 tonnes in 2007 and 28 tonnes in 2006.


_________APPLE TO PATENT SPECIAL 911 CALLS________
http://hothardware.com/News/Patent-could-ease-emergency-cellphone-calls/

Engineers from Apple have applied for a patent on an "emergency" mode for cell
phones that would squeeze every last drop of energy out of the batteries.

The process would do a variety of things. First off, it would disable
"non-essential hardware components" and applications on the phone, reduce power
to the screen (i.e., it would get darker) and potentially reduce the phone's
processor speed. It also would make it harder to disconnect the call and enable
"emergency phrase buttons" on the phone. GPS might not be considered
non-essential, however, as it could help emergency workers find the caller -
quite useful in case the caller, say, breaks his leg hiking in a remote area.
Also, if it's an emergency and you can't speak, you can press a button and a
pre-determined "emergency phrase" is spoken for you.

The application also indicates there would be a way to prevent an emergency call
from being disconnected without confirmation from the caller. Even if the caller
hit disconnect, he might have to type in a code or otherwise indicate that he
meant to hang up. The disconnection method could be customized, making it as
difficult or as simple as the user preferred, even making it depend on what kind
of emergency call.


_________MIND-CONTROLLED WHEELCHAIR_________
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218101872

Toyota researchers in Japan have built a brain/machine interface (BMI) that has
been demonstrated to control a wheelchair using a person's thoughts. The system
enables a person to make a wheelchair turn left or right to move forward simply
by thinking the commands. The response time is in 125 milliseconds.

The BMI was developed at the BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC), a
2-year-old research center established by Japan's government research unit RIKEN
and Toyota Motor, Toyota Central R&D Labs, and Genesis Research Institute. The
BTCC's system uses several sensors placed over the areas of the brain that
control motion to measure electrical activity in the region. The electrical
impulses triggered by the rider thinking of turning or moving the wheelchair are
picked up and analyzed by an onboard laptop that passes the commands on to the
wheelchair. The system has an emergency stop that can be activated by the user
puffing his cheeks.

The BMI adjusts itself over time to the characteristics of each driver's
brainwaves. If a person dedicates three hours a day to using the system, the BMI
can reach 95% accuracy in a week. Plans are underway to use the technology in a
wide-range of applications centered around medicine and nursing care.
Researchers are working on increasing the number of commands that can be given
to contol different devices.


_________WINDOWS 7 ON THUMB DRIVES?_________
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/258811/microsoft-to-offer-windows-7-on-usb-thumb-dri\
ves.html

Microsoft is reportedly considering offering Windows 7 on USB thumb drives to
allow netbook owners to upgrade their machines. Windows has, until now, only
been distributed on DVDs or via download. However, netbooks don't come with
optical drives and downloading an operating system is a frankly painful
experience.

The Windows 7 ISO weighs in at 2.3GB, which would take several hours to download
on an average broadband connection and potentially do serious damage to a
customer's broadband data cap. Consequently, the company is exploring
alternative means of distributing the OS, including USB flash drives.

Microsoft has designed Windows 7 Starter especially for the netbook market,
which doesn't include many of the more demanding features, such as Aero Glass
and Media Center.


_________FUEL TANK WITH FEATHERS_________
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/06/feathered_fuel_tank_soak\
s_up_h.html

Engineers from the University of Delaware have discovered a way to store large
amounts of hydrogen fuel using carbonized chicken feathers, which could help
pave the way to clean, green cars.

Hydrogen is three times the energy content of gasoline on a pound-for-pound
basis, but this potent fuel is hard to squeeze into small spaces. Scientists
have long known that hydrogen sticks well to carbon surfaces. Research has
focused on tiny nanotubes, but they are expensive: a 20-gallon tank of them can
cost more than $1 million. Chicken feather fibers are mostly composed of
keratin, a natural protein that forms strong, hollow tubes. The breakthrough
moment came when researchers heated feathers to 700 degrees, causing a process
called carbonization that created billions of tiny pores. They had found an
ideal place to pack large amounts of hydrogen. The new feather-based material
can be produced at a small fraction of carbon nanotubes' cost. A 20-gallon
feather-based tank would be about $100.

Don't expect to see hydrogen cars zipping along for another decade or more --
storage is just one of the problems. Production of hydrogen is another. A number
of institutions, including Oregon State University, are looking at ways to
convert sunlight to hydrogen.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com

DTXTR
http://www.dtxtrapp.com/index.htm
SMS translation tool

mozo
http://mozo.com.au/
Aussie finance comparison site

Timeline: The Evolution of Life
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17453-timeline-the-evolution-of-life.html?\
full=true

FAIL Blog
http://failblog.org/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How do those dead bugs get into closed light fixtures?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
  ~ Frederich Nietzsche


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Does recycling steel help?
Every time a ton of steel is recycled, it means 2,500 pounds of iron ore, 1,000
pounds of coal, and 40 pounds of limestone will not have to be mined from the
Earth.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
What happened to the gay magician?
He disappeared with a poof.


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.05.14 Issue No. 211

Some interesting things I've noticed in Jakarta:
  - 80% of the cars on the road are either vans or SUVs. 15% are motorbikes. 80%
of those motorbikes have 2 passengers.
  - Very tight security. Doesn't matter where you go - hotels, shopping centres,
office buildings. If you're on a car, the security guards will check the trunk,
check the inside of the car, and use a mirror to check the underside of the car.
Before you enter a building, you'll be asked to surrender your bags and mobile
phone and keys, and go through a metal detector.
  - Absolutely no handkerchiefs for sale in all of the shops and shopping centres
I've been to. I don't even want to ask the sales staff because it could be a
prohibited item here. Am I the only guy who still uses handkerchiefs?

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the people of Jakarta about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Instant Sunglasses
* Paper Speakers
* 500GB Holographic Discs
* World's First Solar-Powered City
* Cybernetic Suit
* World's Fastest Camera
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________INSTANT SUNGLASSES_________
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/424/1

Researchers at Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan have developed a material that
almost instantaneously changes from clear to dark blue when exposed to
ultraviolet (UV) light, and it just as quickly reverts to clear when the light
is turned off.

In its natural state, hexaarylbiimidazole (HABI) is colorless, but when
ultraviolet light breaks one of the bonds in the molecule, it produces a version
that is dark blue. The problem has been that the transformation takes tens of
seconds or longer, so the only commercial application has been sunglasses that
slowly darken. Through simulations and laboratory experiments, they found that
by adding naphthalene to the compound, they could accelerate the color change to
about 180 milliseconds. Adding a compound called cyclophane instead of
naphthalene improved the clear-to-blue conversion even more--to about 30
milliseconds. Better still, the cyclophane version of HABI reverts just as
rapidly to its colorless state when the UV light source is turned off. And the
compound is so stable that the reactions can be repeated thousands of times.

If added to Plexiglas or other lens materials, the modified version of HABI
would allow sunglasses to instantaneously darken in sunlight and turn clear
equally rapidly whenever their wearer moves indoors. HABI's properties could
also make it a prime candidate for a new generation of optical data-storage
devices, in which its color on/off ability could substitute for the magnetic
on/off switches that underlie today's electronic data-storage devices.


_________PAPER SPEAKERS_________
http://snipurl.com/hxwlt  [www_itworld_com]

A Taiwanese research group has developed stereo speakers in paper, which will
lead to low-cost speakers perfect for thin devices such as LCD TVs or even
talking movie posters to be used as advertisements.

Engineers at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) have
already produced rolls of paper stereo speakers and say they will be used in
cars starting from next year. They are also planning a splash introduction of
the new technology at a big exhibition in Taipei next year in which they will
unroll a three-story high banner that can blare out tunes.

Called Flexispeaker, the special paper is made by sandwiching thin electrodes
that receive audio signals and a prepolarized diaphragm into the paper
structure. A special Flexpeaker adapter between the MP3 player and the speaker
is used to play music through the paper. The goal for the researchers is to be
able to mass produce standard poster-size speakers (A2, or 60centimeters by
44cm) costing just US$20 each. Movie makers could then put out posters with
soundtrack music or movie highlights emanating from them as people walk by.

One limitation with Flexpeaker is that while it's very good with sounds at
frequencies between 500Hz to 20KHz, it doesn't handle low frequency sounds well.
That problem can be offset by adding a subwoofer to any system with the paper
speakers. The paper speakers are so thin that they're perfect for the current
push to ultra thin LCD TVs, a maker simply has to add a subwoofer to make a
quality sound system.


_________500GB HOLOGRAPHIC DISCS________
http://snipurl.com/hxwn9  [www_nytimes_com]

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital holographic
storage that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100
DVDs.The data is encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive
material. The holograms act like microscopic mirrors that refract light patterns
when a laser shines on them, and so each hologram's recorded data can then be
retrieved and deciphered. Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far
more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer,
high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of
marks across the surface of a disc.

To date, holographic storage has not been on a path to mainstream use. The G.E.
development, however, could be that pioneering step. The researchers, working at
the G.E. lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., north of Albany, makes use of smaller, less
complex holograms — a technique called microholographic storage. The recent
breakthrough was a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of their holograms,
putting them at the bottom range of light reflections readable by current
Blu-ray machines.

In G.E.'s approach, the holograms are scattered across a disc in a way that is
similar to the formats used in today's CDs, conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD,
DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has
attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray is available in 25-gigabyte
and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes. When Blu-ray was
introduced in late 2006, a 25-gigabyte disc cost nearly $1 a gigabyte, though it
is about half that now. G.E. expects that when they are introduced, perhaps in
2011 or 2012, holographic discs using its technology will be less than 10 cents
a gigabyte — and fall in the future.


_________WORLD'S FIRST SOLAR-POWERED CITY_________
http://snipurl.com/hxwnz  [www_inhabitat_com]

Florida's next big community isn't for retirees — it's for solar energy buffs.
Florida Power & Light and development firm Kitson & Partners are collaborating
on Babcock Ranch, a 17,000-acre solar-powered city near Fort Myers. The
community will run entirely on a 75 megawatt, $300 million solar-powered
generator, and will also use smart grid technology to let all inhabitants of the
community monitor their power consumption.

Electric vehicles, able to plug in for recharge at convenient community-wide
recharging stations, will glide along avenues beneath the glow of solar-powered
street lamps. Ingenious, revolutionary Smart Grid technologies will monitor and
manage energy use while Smart Home technology will allow residents to operate
their homes at maximum efficiency, thereby reducing energy costs.

If all goes according to plan, construction on Babcock Ranch's solar facility
will begin later this year and construction of the city center will commence
next year. All homes and businesses in the city will be certified according to
Florida Green Building Council standards. The community will ultimately contain
19,500 homes and 6 million square feet of retail and light industrial space, but
Babcock Ranch won't just have ample room for homes and businesses - the
community will also have over 8,000 acres reserved for greenways and open space.


_________CYBERNETIC SUIT_________
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/robotics/i-am-ironman

Cyberdyne Corporation of Japan, in conjunction with Daiwa House, has begun mass
production of a cybernetic bodysuit that augments body movement and increases
user strength by up to tenfold.

Called a HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) suit, it works by detecting faint
bioelectrical signals using pads placed on specific areas of the body. When a
person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles
via motoneuron, moving the musculoskeletal system as a consequence. At this
moment, very weak biosignals can be detected on the surface of the skin. HAL
catches these signals through a sensor attached on the skin of the wearer. Based
on the signals obtained, the power unit is controlled to wearer's daily
activities.

Among the potential applications, Cyberdyne is emphasizing helping people with
movement disabilities, augmenting strength for difficult industrial tasks,
disaster rescue, and entertainment. The HAL suit is not currently available. But
according to Nikkei News, Daiwa and Cyberdyne are planning an annual production
of 400 units and they should be marketed at approximately $4,200 US dollars.


_________WORLD'S FASTEST CAMERA_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8025211.stm

Developed by the University of California, Los Angeles, the camera's "shutter
speed" is just a half a billionth of a second, and it can capture over six
million images in a second continuously. Its "flashbulb" is a fast laser pulse
dispersed in space and then stretched in time and detected electronically. This
approach will be instrumental in imaging fast-moving or random events, such as
communication between neurons. What's more, the camera works with just one
detector, rather than the millions in a typical digital camera.

Dubbed Serial Time-Encoded Amplified imaging, or Steam, the technique depends on
carefully manipulating so-called "supercontinuum" laser pulses. These pulses,
less than a millionth of a millionth of a second long, contain an enormously
broad range of colours. Two optical elements spread the pinprick laser pulses
into an ordered two-dimensional array of colours. It is this "2-D rainbow" that
illuminates a sample. The result is an image that represents a snapshot just 440
trillionths of a second long. The researchers used a laser that fired more than
six million pulses in a second, resulting in as many images. However, they say
that the system can be improved to acquire more than 10 million images per
second - more than 200,000 times faster than a standard video camera.

The team is working to extend the technique to 3-D imaging with the same time
resolution, and to increase the effective number of "pixels" in a given image to
100,000.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Carl Sagan's The Dragon in My Garage
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

ListenToYouTube.com
http://www.listentoyoutube.com/

How to Sign S60 Apps
http://thenokiablog.com/2009/04/05/how-to-get-certificate-to-sign-and-install-un\
signed-s60-apps/

Konami Code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_code

Konami Code Sites
http://konamicodesites.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Since there is a speed of light and a speed of sound, is there a speed of smell?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman
really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a
century.
  ~ Mark Twain


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Would you get less wet by running in the rain?

Actual mathematical equations devoted to this popular question have suggested it
is true, though not for the simple reasons you might think. Complexities include
factoring in the number of rain drops hitting the walker's head versus smacking
the runner's chest.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Q : What's orange and sounds like a parrot?
A : A carrot.


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.04.15 Issue No. 210


I'm cleaning up my mailboxes again, and I suddenly realized how many
e-newsletters I have subscribed to that I don't read anymore. When I first got
on the Internet bandwagon, I subscribed to Bob Rankin's Tourbus. Back then, I
had enough time to read through the whole newsletter and visit all the
interesting links mentioned. I also subscribed to Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome,
the geek newsletter. At that time, it was only the website and the newsletter.
That was before Lockergnome had the blogs, the forums, the Youtube channel,
Gnomedex, etc. Another fixture is Randy Cassingham's This Is True and his sister
newsletter The True Stella Awards. Very funny, smart, and interesting read.

Then I started subscribing to Dictionary.com's Word fo the Day, WhatIs Word of
the Day, Quote of the Day, tech newsletters, market alerts, news, jokes, etc. At
some point, I just slowly stopped reading all those newsletters. They're still
archived in subfolders, piling up everyday. Good thing there's a
search-and-delete function. Very handy.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the email hoarders about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Stink-Free Underwear
* Lossless MP3
* Fastest Wind-Powered Car
* 500Mbps VDSL2
* Self-Healing Polymer
* Logging Kesytrokes from Thin Air
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________STINK-FREE UNDERWEAR_________
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090323/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_space_underwear

Japan has the answer for teenagers who dislike changing their underwear - a line
of odour-free underwear and casual clothing called J-ware. Created by textile
experts at Japan Women's University in Tokyo, the clothes are designed to kill
bacteria, absorb water, insulate the body and dry quickly. They are also
flame-resistant and anti-static, not to mention comfortable and stylish.

Japanese astronaut Takao Doi gave the clothes a trial run during a shuttle
mission last year. Even after a vigorous workout, Doi's clothes stayed dry.
Koichi Wakata, the first Japanese astronaut to live on the International Space
Station, is testing the clothes. J-ware should reduce the amount of clothing
that needs to be sent to the space station, which has no laundry facilities.
Toting cargo into orbit is expensive, so having clothes that stay fresh for
weeks at a time should result in significant savings.
The Japanese space agency plans to make the clothes available to NASA and its
other space station partners once development is complete. A commercial line
also is in the offing.


_________LOSSLESS MP3_________
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49301678,00.htm

French media behemoth Thomson has announced mp3HD, a new lossless 'hybrid' MP3
format, which not only offers the sound detail lost in a normal MP3, but remains
compatible with your existing MP3 player or iPod. Simply put, it works by
storing a conventional lossy MP3 track that standard players can play, alongside
a 'lossless' version -- both audio streams are contained in one single MP3 file.
It's similar to how hybrid SACDs work. Ideally this would appeal to users who
want to enjoy lossless audio at home, and universally compatible MP3s on the
commute, without having to rip two versions of the same song.

There are some issues though. Firstly, file size. A normal 320Kbps MP3 of a
sample Pink Floyd song was just 14.6MB, and 320Kbps is all you'll hear if you
listen to an mp3HD track on your iPod. But the lossless audio stored in the file
will be stored on your iPod nevertheless, taking up precious storage space.
(Although it should be pointed out that the hybrid files are smaller than the
combined size of a FLAC and 320Kbps MP3, although are less efficient to encode
than FLAC.) The second problem concerns compatibility. The reason for MP3's
ubiquity in the marketplace, is their small size and compatibility with almost
anything you throw at them. With mp3HD, not only are file sizes massive (making
them impractical for small flash players), but you need to install plug-ins on
your computer. True backwards compatibility would mean no additional software or
updates were required.

In conclusion, mp3HD will undoubtedly appeal to archivists with hard drives in
their portable music players (such as the iPod classic or Archos 5). But for the
chap on the street it'll be small, convenient, decent-enough-sounding MP3s all
the way.


_________FASTEST WIND-POWERED CAR________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7968860.stm

Richard Jenkins, a British engineer from Hampshire, has broken the world land
speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. Mr. Jenkins reached 126.1mph
(202.9km/h) in his Greenbird car on the dry plains of Ivanpah Lake in Nevada.
American Bob Schumacher set the previous record of 116 mph in 1999, driving his
Iron Duck vehicle.

The Greenbird is a carbon fibre composite vehicle that uses wind (and nothing
else) for power. The only metalwork used is for the wing bearings and the wheel
unit. The designers describe it as a "very high performance sailboat" but one
that uses a solid wing, rather than a sail, to generate movement. Due to the
shape of the craft, especially at such high speeds, the wings also provide lift;
a useful trait for an aircraft, but very hazardous for a car. To compensate for
this, the designers have added small wings to "stick" the car to the ground, in
the same way Formula 1 cars do.

Mr Jenkins, from Lymington, spent 10 years designing the vehicle, with Greenbird
the fifth vehicle he has built to try to break the record.


_________500MBPS VDSL2_________
http://snipurl.com/g4uwg  [www_itnews_com_au]

In a live demonstration of a new VDSL2-based technology, Ericsson has achieved
data transfer rates of more than 0.5 Gbps at 500 metres over twisted copper
pairs using "vectorised" VDSL2.

Vectorised VDSL2 is said to enable extremely high end-to-end transmission rates,
improving VDSL2 performance by reducing noise originating from the other copper
pairs in the same cable bundle. This increases capacity and reach, boosting the
number of customers that can be connected. Vectoring technology also decouples
the lines in a cable (from an interference point of view), substantially
improving power management, which can reduce power consumption. VDSL2-based
technology also offers unprecedented speeds on existing copper lines, opening up
new opportunities for operators to provide customers with broadband services
such as IPTV. It also makes it possible to use existing copper networks as a
backhaul for radio base stations, accelerating future rollout of HSPA and
LTE-based high-speed mobile broadband services.

Standards for VDSL2 and line bonding are available today. The standardisation of
vectoring is ongoing and is expected by the end of 2009.


_________SELF-HEALING POLYMER_________
http://snipurl.com/g4uww  [arstechnica_com]

Material scientists Biswajit Ghosh and Marek Urban from the University of
Southern Mississippi have created a new polymer that can fix its own scratches
under regular sunlight, a feat that has no end of practical applications.

At the core of their design is polyurethane, which is an elastic polymer that
already has decent scratch resistance. To enhance its ability to withstand
mechanical damage, Ghosh and Urban added two more components, OXE and CHI. OXE
has an unstable chemical structure (a four-membered ring containing three
carbons and one oxygen) that makes it prone to being split open. CHI is UV
sensitive. The idea is that, if the polyurethane gets damaged by a scratch, the
unstable ring structure of OXE will open to create two reactive ends. Then, UV
light can trigger CHI to form new links with the reactive ends of OXE and
thereby fix the break in the polymer.

In experiments, Ghosh and Urban purposefully created scratches in films of their
polyurethane-CHI-OXE material and tested to see if it mended itself under UV
light. When they placed the damaged film under a 120 W fluorescent UV lamp, the
scratches became negligible within half an hour. This repair reaction can work
under a variety of conditions, ranging from dry air to high humidity.

The ability to use natural sunlight for self-repair and the simple design are
advantageous, but this polymer system still needs some work before it can be
released commercially. For example, the researchers must figure out what happens
if a second scratch occurs directly where a previous scratch was mended. They
also need to determine the shelf life of their three-component polymer.


_________LOGGING KEYSTROKES FROM THIN AIR_________
http://snipurl.com/g4uxk  [www_itworld_com]

Researchers discovered new ways to read what you're typing by aiming special
wireless or laser equipment at the keyboard or by simply plugging into a nearby
electrical socket.

A team from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne did its work over the
air. Using an oscilloscope and an inexpensive wireless antenna, the team was
able to pick up keystrokes from virtually any keyboard, including laptops. With
the keyboard's cabling and nearby power wires acting as antennas for these
electromagnetic signals, the researchers were able to read keystrokes with 95
percent accuracy over a distance of up to 20 meters (22 yards), in ideal
conditions. Even encrypted wireless keyboards are not safe from this attack.
That's because they use a special algorithm to check which key is pressed, and
when that algorithm is run, the keyboard gives off a distinctive electromagnetic
signal, which can be picked up via wireless.

Using similar techniques, Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele
Bianco say they get accurate results, picking out keyboard signals from keyboard
ground cables. Their work only applies to older, PS/2 keyboards, but the data
they get is pretty good. On these keyboards, the data cable is so close to the
ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable,
which acts as an antenna. That ground wire passes through the PC and into the
building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a
computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. They believe
they could pick up signals from a distance of up to 50 meters by simply plugging
a keystroke-sniffing device into the power grid somewhere close to the PC they
want to snoop on. Because PS/2 keyboards emanate radiation at a standard, very
specific frequency, the researchers can pick up a keyboard's signal even on a
crowded power grid.

The Ecole Polytechnique team has submitted their research for peer review and
hopes to publish it very soon.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Diplodocs
http://safemanuals.com/
Search for user manuals online

ShareBee
http://www.sharebee.com/
Upload, distribute, update.

Readability
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

GMail Tips
http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If girls just want to have fun, why do they make it so hard and expensive to
play with them?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
  ~ Bertrand Russell


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Where did Arabic numerals originate?
Arabic numerals are not Arabic; they were invented in India.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
At the end of a particularly severe winter, we removed the protective covers
from our cabin cruiser and found that the weight of the snow had broken the
windshield. I drove to the local glass shop, where I paid $110 for a
replacement.

The owner asked if I'd like them to install it, but I said I could handle it
myself.

I managed to climb up the ladder to the deck before dropping the glass.
Sheepishly I returned to the shop. The owner showed no emotion as he cut the
second glass.

When I saw another $110 charge, I said, "I thought I might get a break on the
second piece of glass."

"I did give you a break," he replied.

"How so?" I asked.

"I didn't laugh, did I?" he answered.


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.03.31 Issue No. 209

Just how hard is it to hack into a secured wireless access point? I've heard
stories about people war-driving around the block and cracking WEP keys in a
matter of seconds or minutes. Intrigued, I thought I might do some research and
try it myself. If you believe the YouTube videos, it's as easy as downloading
the Aircrack-NG suite. Using airodump, you listen in to a particular channel and
capture a bunch of WEP IVs. Then using aircrack, it reads the capture file and
attempts to crack the key.

Not as easy as I thought. Apparently, not all WiFi cards can snoop. With
airodump, it seems to support only HermesI/Realtek and Aironet/Atheros-based
cards. I had Wireshark set to capture in promiscuous mode, but all I see are
traffic to/from my laptop. Maybe the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN doesn't
support promiscuous mode. Maybe it's a driver issue. Maybe the OS doesn't allow
snooping. Lots of maybe. As an alternative, I downloaded a BackTrack3 live CD.
Didn't detect the built-in WiFi on my Lenovo T61. Didn't detect the Siemens
SpeedStream WiFi card on the Thinkpad 600E. I give up. Might be easier to just
knock on the neighbor's door and ask for the WEP/WPA key.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my way by
clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss a topic. If you
think Nybble is good enough, do tell the WiFi pirates about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Largest Prehistoric Snake on Record
* Terabit Ethernet
* Micro-USB Chargers for All
* 250 DVDs in a Quarter-Sized Device
* Sony Introduces Blu-Spec CD
* Oldest Human Hair Found
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________LARGEST PREHISTORIC SNAKE ON RECORD_________
http://www.physorg.com/news152969011.html

Scientists have recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake
whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons
seem a bit cuter and more cuddly. Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its
discoverers, the size of the snake's vertebrae suggest it weighed 1140 kg (2,500
pounds) and measured 13 metres (42.7 feet) nose to tail tip. According to the
Guinness Book of World Records, the longest snake ever measured was 10 meters
(33 feet) in length. The heaviest snake, a python, weighed 183 kilograms (403
pounds).

Crews led by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of
Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History discovered the fossils in the
Cerrejon Coal Mine in northern Colombia, and together with lead-author Jason
Head, now of the University of Toronto-Mississauga, used its size to make an
estimate of Earth's temperature 58 to 60 million years ago in tropical South
America. Paleontologists have long known of a rough correlation between an age's
temperature and the size of its poikilotherms (cold-blooded creatures). Over
geological time, as ages get warmer, so does the upper size limit on
poikilotherms. Assuming the Earth today is not particularly unusual, Head and
Dr. Jonathan Bloch, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida
Museum of Natural History, estimated a snake of Titanoboa's size would have
required an average annual temperature of 30 to 34°C (86 to 93 F) to survive. By
comparison, the average yearly temperature of today's Cartagena, a Colombian
coastal city, is about 28°C.


_________TERABIT ETHERNET_________
http://bit.ly/mp7pn

Researchers from Australia, Denmark, and China have combined efforts to show the
feasibility of terabit-per-second Ethernet over fiber-optic cables. The solution
involves a photonic chip that uses laser light for switching signals, and a form
of the exotic material type, chalcogenide.

Individual lasers, operated by conventional electronics, can inject dozens of 10
Gbps streams, but in terms of retrieving that multiplexed data at these very
very high bit rates, beyond 40 Gbps, electronics is not fast enough. In
conjunction with a Danish research organization at the Technical University of
Denmark, which has been working on high-speed optical networking, CUDOS (Centre
for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems) developed a photonic
integrated circuit that uses lasers and light in the same way a conventional
electronic integrated circuit uses electrons and transistors.

One of the key breakthroughs researchers made wasn't so much in speed but in
practicality. By using relatively traditional methods to etch a circuit out of a
glassy form of a chalcogenide, arsenic trisulfide (As2S3), researchers were able
to reduce the waveguide that demultiplexed an incoming signal from tens of
meters down to 5 cm.

Silicon-based chips could also be used in principle to achieve similar, but
slower results, but the researchers' ultimate goal was to create fully photonic
chips in the same foundries that now make CMOS (complementary metal oxide
semiconductor) integrated circuits.


_________MICRO-USB CHARGERS FOR ALL________
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/17/standard_charger/

An alliance of operators and handset manufacturers has blown a substantial hole
in the mobile accessories market by agreeing on a standard power charger for
mobile phones. Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, 3, AT&T, mobilkom Austria,
T-Mobile, Telenor Telstra, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson have
agreed a micro USB standard for all mobile phones.

It's not the first time micro USB has been proposed as a universal mobile
charger. The GSMA announcement piggybacks an OMTP recommendation. OMTP is a
talking-shop for operators who want to undermine the differentiation of handsets
and so tilt the loyalty of consumers away from handsets. GSMA didn't say when
the certified compatible charger will appear but it has set a target for 50 per
cent of phones shipped in 2012 to use this charger. This might prove tough.
Higher data speeds, for instance the ability to capture hi-def video on a
mobile, will need a better connector than micro USB. This can be solved with two
connectors.


_________250 DVDs IN A QUARTER-SIZED DEVICE_________
http://bit.ly/rLGjo

A new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of
Massachusetts Amherst may drastically increase the ability of devices to store
things. The method lets microscopic nanoscale elements precisely assemble
themselves over large surfaces.

Molecules in the thin film of block copolymers - two or more chemically
dissimilar polymer chains linked together - self-assemble into an extremely
precise, equidistant pattern when spread out on a surface, much like a regiment
of disciplined soldiers lining up in formation. For more than a decade,
researchers have been trying to exploit this characteristic for use in
semiconductor manufacturing, but they have been constrained because the order
starts to break down as the size of the area increases. Once the formation
breaks down, the individual domains cannot be read or written to, rendering them
useless as a form of data storage. To overcome this size constraint, the
researchers conceived of the elegantly simple solution of layering the film of
block copolymers onto the surface of a commercially available sapphire crystal.
When the crystal is cut at an angle - a common procedure known as a miscut - and
heated to 1,300 to 1,500 degrees Centigrade (2,372 to 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit)
for 24 hours, its surface reorganizes into a highly ordered pattern of sawtooth
ridges that can then be used to guide the self-assembly of the block polymers.
With this technique, the researchers were able to achieve defect-free arrays of
nanoscopic elements with feature sizes as small as 3 nanometers, translating
into densities of 10 terabits per square inch. One terabit is equal to 1
trillion bits, or 125 gigabytes.

Other research teams across the country are engaged in similar efforts to break
the size barrier of self-assembled block copolymers, but this new project by the
UMass Amherst-UC Berkeley scientists differs in that it does not rely upon
advances in lithography to achieve its goals. An added benefit is that this
technique is more environmentally friendly than photolithography, which requires
the use of harsh chemicals and acids.


_________SONY INTRODUCES BLU-SPEC CD_________
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49301249,00.htm

Sony's new Blu-spec CD format promises better-quality CD experience without
having to upgrade your CD player, employing the same technology used to author
Blu-ray discs to master standard CDs.

Blu-spec CDs are written using the shorter-wavelength blue laser diodes used in
Blu-ray disc production. These blue lasers are far more accurate when it comes
to burning pits in the readable surface of CDs, theoretically improving final
sound reproduction, due to the reduction of reading errors when the disc is
spinning in typical CD players.

Not everyone is convined though. CNET points out that unlike Super Audio CD or
DVD-Audio discs, Blu-Spec CDs use the standard 16-bit, 44KHz audio encoding, so
you're not gaining additional sonic data. You do get "improved error
correction", but the CD format already incorporates Cross-Interleaved
Reed-Solomon Coding error correction. Still, s initially releasing 60
back-catalogue titles on the format, including work from The Clash, Miles Davis
and ELO, some of which are available on Amazon.com now.


_________OLDEST HUMAN HAIR FOUND_________
http://bit.ly/QBpiS

The oldest known human hairs could be the strands discovered in fossil hyena
poop found in a South African cave. Researchers discovered the rock-hard hyena
dung near the Sterkfontein caves, where many early human ancestor fossils have
been found.

Each white, round fossil turd, or coprolite, is roughly 0.8 inch (2 centimeters)
across. They were found embedded in sediments 195,000 to 257,000 years old.
Until now, the oldest known human hair was from a 9,000-year-old Chilean mummy.
The sizes and shapes of the coprolites and their location suggest they came from
brown hyenas, which still live in the region's caves today.

Backwell and her colleagues used tweezers to extract 40 fossilized hairs
resembling glass needles from one of the hyena coprolites.
Scanning-electron-microscope images revealed wavy bands of scales on the hairs—a
pattern typical of modern primates, with human hair being the closest match.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
IYHY.com - Make It Mobile
http://www.iyhy.com/
Converts website to text-only

Zamzar
http://www.zamzar.com/
Free online file conversion

Font Generator
http://www.yourfonts.com/
Make your own handwriting fonts for free

OwnerIQ
http://owneriq.net/
Search for user manuals online


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How long is three shakes of a lamb's tail? Where can I get a lamb that's been
calibrated against the international atomic clock?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
  ~ Lisa Hoffman


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Should you slurp when you eat your noodles?

Dining etiquette in Japan is tricky. It is considered extremely impolite to pour
one's own drink when eating with others you pour your companion's drink and your
companion pours yours. On the other hand, it is considered normal and
nonoffensive to make loud slurping sounds when eating noodles in Japan.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
At the end of a particularly severe winter, we removed the protective covers
from our cabin cruiser and found that the weight of the snow had broken the
windshield. I drove to the local glass shop, where I paid $110 for a
replacement.

The owner asked if I'd like them to install it, but I said I could handle it
myself.

I managed to climb up the ladder to the deck before dropping the glass.
Sheepishly I returned to the shop. The owner showed no emotion as he cut the
second glass.

When I saw another $110 charge, I said, "I thought I might get a break on the
second piece of glass."

"I did give you a break," he replied.

"How so?" I asked.

"I didn't laugh, did I?" he answered.


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in progress.
Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to improve Nybble. Just
hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.03.02 Issue No. 208


Be very careful of what you write online. They say on the Internet, no
one knows if you're a dog. Even if you're a dog, whatever you write or
post is searchable and archived, and you never know if and when it'll
come back to bite you. Heck, I search for my name, and a few posts
that I made 10 years ago on a Linux sysadmin forum is still out there.

I was going through my blog stats and looking through the keywords
that point to my blog. Mostly, it's my Xbox hacking guide, or the DIY
Halloween costume, or the Singapore chicken rice recipe. Today I found
a hit on my Fotoexpression article, coming from feblog.com.
Fotoexpression is the name of the photography service that I'll be
using soon, and feblog.com is their blog site. So apparently, these
guys regularly trawl the Internet looking for references to their
company. Fortunately, I didn't write anything negative about them, or
else who knows what might happen to my photos.

Like I said, be careful about what you write out there. All your posts
are belong to us.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the bloggers
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Cellular Army Attacks Cancer
* Wireless Internet using Visible Light
* Coffee Reduces Alzheimer's Risk
* Smallest Writing in History
* World's First Flying Car
* Cheap, Super Efficient Light LEDs
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________CELLULAR ARMY ATTACKS CANCER_________
http://snipurl.com/cw676  [www_newscientist_com]

Implants that sit in the body and reprogram a person's immune cells
could be used to treat a range of infectious diseases and even cancer.
In a trial on mice with an aggressive melanoma that usually kills
within 25 days, the new treatment saved 90% of the group.

Their breakthrough involves implanting cylinders of an FDA-approved
biodegradable polymer into the body. The implants release a particular
variety of the cell-signaling molecules called cytokines - a sort of
molecular perfume that is irresistible to a certain kind of
immune-system messenger cell. These dendritic cells are attracted into
the pores of Mooney's implant, where they are exposed to antigens -
the molecular signatures of the cancer, bacterium or virus being
treated - and a danger-signal chemical derived from bacterial DNA.
This alert signal makes the dendritic cells flee to the nearest lymph
node, where they meet up with the immune system's "killer" T-cells and
program them to hunt down the invading cells.

In tests, the researchers implanted cylinders with a diameter of 8.5
millimetres into mice and two weeks later injected the animals with
highly aggressive melanoma cells. Mice implanted with 'blanks' -
cylinders lacking any chemical additives - developed large tumours
within 18 days and had to be euthanised. However, 90% of the mice
given the full treatment were cured.

The team thinks modified versions of the material could be effective
against a range of cancers and infectious diseases. These might also
help reprogram the immune system to combat autoimmune diseases such as
type 1 diabetes, caused by immune cells destroying insulin-producing
cells in the pancreas.


_________WIRELESS INTERNET USING VISIBLE LIGHT_________
http://snipurl.com/cw68a  [www_sctimes_com]

Inventor John Pederson says visible-light embedded wireless data
communication is the next step in the evolution of wireless
communications, one that will expand the possibilities in phone and
computer use. The connection provides Web access with almost no
wiring, better security and with speeds more than eight times faster
than cable.

Pederson is unveiling the technology on his 50th birthday at an
invitation-only reception at Apollo High School. Pederson graduated
from the school in 1977 and has tested some of his projects there.
Pederson hopes this one takes off in the form of better cell phone and
computer communications. Pederson said the opportunities are endless,
and he probably hasn't even considered them all. It could provide real
time Global Positioning System tracking to allow governments to
inventory and track property. Cell phones and laptops could be used on
airplanes because this wireless technology would not interfere with
navigation systems. Because light does not travel through walls, cell
phones and government and banking information would be more secure.
Pederson said he already has spoken to federal Homeland Security
officials about possible uses.

The LVX System, as it is called, requires just the plug-in for the box
that catches the signal from the chip in the LED light and sends it
into the computer. The box is slightly bigger than a deck of cards. To
use the technology, cities and states would have to install LED lights
with the specialized chips on poles along roadways. Companies that
make phones and computers would have to buy the software the
Pederson's company provides and install it in laptops. Cellular
telephone makers would have to make phones designed to work with light
LED lights.


_________COFFEE REDUCES ALZHEIMER'S RISK________
http://snipurl.com/cw6az  [news_theage_com_au]

Middle-aged people who drink moderate amounts of coffee significantly
reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a study by
Finnish and Swedish researchers showed. The study, which was also
conducted in cooperation with the National Public Health Institute in
Helsinki, was based on repeated interviews with 1,409 people in
Finland over more than two decades. They were first asked about their
coffee-drinking habits when they were in their 50s and their memory
functions were tested again in 1998, when they were between 65 and 79
years of age. A total of 61 people had by then developed dementia, 48
of whom had Alzheimer's, the researchers said.

It's unclear how moderate coffee drinking helped delay or avoid the
onset of dementia, but coffee is known to contain strong antioxidants,
which are known to counter Alzheimer's. Some studies have also shown
that coffee helps protects the nerve system, which can also protect
against dementia. The research showed "insignificant" benefits to
drinking more than five cups of coffee a day when it came to
protecting against dementia.


_________SMALLEST WRITING IN HISTORY_________
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january28/small-012809.html

Stanford researchers have reclaimed bragging rights for creating the
world's smallest writing, a distinction the university first gained in
1985 and lost in 1990. The researchers encoded the letters "S" and "U"
(as in Stanford University) within the interference patterns formed by
quantum electron waves on the surface of a sliver of copper. The wave
patterns even project a tiny hologram of the data, which can be viewed
with a powerful microscope. How small is the writing? The letters in
the words are assembled from subatomic sized bits as small as 0.3
nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter.

Working in a vibration-proof basement lab in the Varian Physics
Building, Manoharan and Moon began their writing project with a
scanning tunneling microscope, a device that not only sees objects at
a very small scale but also can be used to move around individual
atoms. The Stanford team used it to drag single carbon monoxide
molecules into a desired pattern on a copper chip the size of a
fingernail. By altering the arrangement of the molecules, the
researchers can create different waveforms, effectively encoding
information for later retrieval (using electronic quantum holography).

The true significance of the work lies in storing more information in
less space. The assumption has been that basically the ultimate limit
is when one atom represents one bit, and then there's no more room—in
other words, that it's impossible to scale down below the level of
atoms. In Stanford's experiment, the researchers have stored some 35
bits per electron to encode each letter. And they've written the
letters so small that the bits that comprise them are subatomic in
size. So one bit per atom is no longer the limit for information density.


_________CHEAP, SUPER-EFFICIENT LED LIGHTS_________
http://snipurl.com/cw6be  [www_newscientist_com]

UK materials scientists have discovered a cheaper way to produce LED
bulbs, which are three times as efficient as fluorescent lamps.
Although the ultimate dominance of LED lights has long been predicted,
the expense of the super-efficient technology has made the timescale
uncertain.

Gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs have many advantages over compact
fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and incandescent bulbs. They switch on
instantly, with no gradual warm-up, and can burn for an average of
100,000 hours before they need replacing - 10 times as long as
fluorescent lamps and some 130 times as long as an incandescent bulb.
The cost of production has kept the LEDs far from homes and offices,
however. Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other
solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate
of silicon as it cools. Researchers from the University of Cambridge
included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design.
These layers shrink at a much slower rate during cooling and help to
counteract the fast-shrinkage of pure gallium nitride.

A 15-centimetre silicon wafer costs just $15 and can accommodate
150,000 LEDs making the cost per unit tiny. That levels the playing
field with CFLs, which many people only ever saw as a stopgap solution
to the lighting problem. Researchers say LED bulbs based on this new
material could be commercially available within five years.


_________WORLD'S FIRST FLYING CAR_________
http://snipurl.com/cw6c3  [business_timesonline_co_uk]

The world's first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on
the road, is scheduled to take to the air very soon. If it survives
its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform
itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is
expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time. Its
manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal
unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.

The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the
same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air. Terrafugia claims it
will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a
cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only
on roads at up to 90mph. The company had already received 40 orders,
despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000). For an
airplane that's very reasonable, but for a car that's very much at the
high end.

There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a
little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be
straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take
off from a road is Alaska.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Usniff
http://usniff.com/
Torrent aggregator like Pizzatorrent and Speckly.

Torrent2exe
http://www.torrent2exe.com/
Convert your torrents into stand-alone exe files

LCD TV Buying Guide
http://www.lcdtvbuyingguide.com/

Plasma TV Buying Guide
http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If I follow the instructions on my toothpaste tube, which say "for
best results squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten it as you go
up," will this give me whiter teeth and fresher breath?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
If I know what love is, it is because of you.
  ~ Herman Hesse


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What part of your belt is a keeper?
The loop on a belt that holds the loose end is called a "keeper."

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Three tourists climbed up the tower with London's Big Ben and decided
to throw their watches off the top, run down the stairs and try to
catch them before they hit the ground. The first tourist threw his
watch but heard it crash before he had taken three steps. the second
threw his watch and made only two steps before hearing his watch
shatter. The third tourist threw his watch off the tower, went down
the stairs, bought a snack at a shop up the street and walked slowly
back to Big Ben in time to catch the watch." How did you do that?"
asked one of his friends.

"My watch is 20 minutes slow."


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2009.01.20 Issue No. 207


Back from China, WHQ's sister tells me that 512GB USB sticks are
already out on the market. That's GB and not MB! Imagine that, my
Lenovo T61 has only 100GB. The highest-capacity USB sticks I've
seen/heard so far is only 32GB. Quite hard to believe capacities can
jump that fast.

So how do they do it? Stack the flash chips on top of each other? Make
the USB sticks 16x as long? Built-in extreme compression? Wrong. It's
simple - just fake it. Get some cheapo low-capacity thumbdrives, and
hack the controller such that it thinks it has a high-capacity memory
chip, hence the OS will report a higher value. When the user tries to
fill up the USB key beyond its real capacity, some of it just
disappears into the void. As a consequence, the user ends up with
either missing or corrupted files.

Remember, boys and girls, if something sounds too good to be true,
then it probably is.


Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the napping
drivers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Injectable Liquid Bone
* Computer Font with Holes
* Graphite-Based Memory
* Random Numbers from Lasers
* Coffee Grounds as Biodiesel Fuel
* Jamming Cellphones while Driving
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________INJECTABLE LIQUID BONE_________
http://snipurl.com/ae1vb

British scientists have invented artificial 'injectable bone' that
flows like toothpaste, and hardens in the body. This new regenerative
medicine technology provides a scaffold for the formation of blood
vessels and bone tissue, and can also deliver stem cells directly to
the site of bone repair. Not only does the technique reduce the need
for dangerous surgery, it also avoids damaging neighbouring areas.
While other older alternatives heat up as they harden, killing
surrounding cells, this new 'injectable bone' hardens at body
temperature – without generating heat – making a very porous,
biodegradable structure.

The invention emerged from a combination of research into implant able
scaffolds that encourage new bone to grow and new techniques to
deliver stem cells and drugs to specific sites. These studies spawned
the new concept of an injectable matrix as the building block for
tissue regeneration. The next generation of technologies based on this
method will focus more on the therapeutic drugs and growth factors
that can be delivered alongside the injectable bone to stimulate
tissue repair.

The British team behind the injectable bone won the Medical Futures
Innovation Award recently and are now working towards clinical trials.
They expect the product to be available in the U.S. within 18 months.


_________COMPUTER FONT WITH HOLES_________
http://snipurl.com/ae1wc

Dutch marketing and communications company Spranq has come up with a
novel and free way of slashing printer ink costs by developing a font
with holes in it. The creators of Ecofont took their inspiration from
the holes in Dutch cheese, and aim to cut down on the amount of ink
used when printing documents for daily use.

The font is based on the standard Sans Serif typeface, but has a
number of small circles removed from each letter. The company spent a
long time experimenting with different shapes and sizes to cut down on
the amount of ink used while still maintaining readability. Spranq
reckons that the result is still perfectly readable, but can cut the
amount of ink used by up to 20 per cent.

The Ecofont can be downloaded free
(http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html) although donations are
requested.


_________GRAPHITE-BASED MEMORY________
http://snipurl.com/ae1x6

Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage
medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The
technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of
current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius
and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate.

The researchers were able to grow graphene, which technically is 10 or
fewer layers of graphite, atop silicon and use it to store a bit of
data. The sheets were roughly 5 nanometers in diameter. The new
solid-state memory is one of many next-generation technologies that
could someday replace NAND flash memory at the 20 nanometer (nm) node
size. Others include race track memory and phase-change memory.
Currently, NAND flash memory can be as small as 45nm in size, but
projections show the technology will reach its limit of 20nm by around
2012. By using graphene, bits could be made smaller than 10nm in size.

Unlike NAND flash memory, which is controlled by three terminals or
wires, the graphene memory requires two terminals, making it more
viable for three-dimensional or stacked graphene arrays -- multiplying
a chip's capacity with every layer, according to Tour. But like flash
memory, chips made with graphene will consume virtually no power while
keeping data intact. Graphene generates little heat, making it more
suitable to three-dimensional or stacked memory.


_________RANDOM NUMBERS FROM LASERS_________
http://www.physorg.com/news148660964.html

Scientists from Takushoku University, Saitama University, and NTT
Corporation have discovered a way to generate good-quality random
number sequences at very high rates. Random numbers -- numbers without
any pattern -- are vital to many applications, such as computer
simulations, statistics, and cryptography. There are many ways to
generate them using unpredictable physical processes, including
electric-signal noise and radioactive decay, but these methods cannot
produce the quantities of numbers needed to keep up with the high
data-processing rates of today's computers. By taking advantage of the
physical chaos present in semiconductor lasers, the researchers
achieved random number rates of up to 1.7 gigabits per second (Gbps),
which is about 10 times higher than the second-best rate, produced
using a physical phenomenon.

The scientists reflected part of the laser light back into the laser
using an external reflector. This induces chaos, causing the light
intensity to oscillate wildly. As a result, the light's
electromagnetic signals are highly complex and cover a wide frequency
range. Then, by using a photodetector connected to an
analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the light signals are converted
into random binary numbers suitable for computing and other high-speed
data manipulation.

The group achieved a bit rate of 1.7 Gbps, although future work may
center on devising laser schemes that can achieving rates as high as
10 Gbps.


_________COFFEE GROUNDS AS BIODIESEL FUEL_________
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/acs-wcg121008.php

Researchers in Nevada have discovered that waste coffee grounds can
provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of
biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks.

Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world
each year. The used or "spent" grounds remaining from production of
espresso, cappuccino, and plain old-fashioned cups of java, often wind
up in the trash or find use as soil conditioner. The scientists
estimated, however, that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340
million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply. Spent coffee
grounds contain between 11 and 20 percent oil by weight. That's about
as much as traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm,
and soybean oil.

In their experiment, the scientists collected spent coffee grounds
from a multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They
then used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the oil
into biodiesel. The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually
smells like java — had a major advantage in being more stable than
traditional biodiesel due to coffee's high antioxidant content. Solids
left over from the conversion can be converted to ethanol or used as
compost. The scientists estimate that the process could make a profit
of more than $8 million a year in the U.S. alone. They plan to develop
a small pilot plant to produce and test the experimental fuel within
the next six to eight months.


_________JAMMING CELLPHONES WHILE DRIVING_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/36272

Xuesong Zhou and Wally Curry at the University of Utah have invented
technology that aims to prevent teenagers from using their mobile
while driving. Called Key2SafeDriving, it uses RFID or Bluetooth
wireless capabilities to issue signals from car keys to cell phones to
prevent drivers from talking on their phones or texting while behind
the wheel. Research shows that as many as 1 in 10 teen drivers are
talking on cell phones or texting while driving at any time, and the
possible consequences of such ill-advised multitasking have grabbed
many a headline in recent years.

The system involves a device that envelops a car key and that signals
the cell phone to prevent calls and texting when the key is removed
from it. The cell phone would automatically steer callers into a voice
mail system alerting them that the intended call recipient is driving
and will return the call later (the system does enable 911 calling).

A company called Accendo LC of Kaysville, Utah has licensed the
technology and is working to build it into commercial devices that
could be on the market this year. The company is sorting out how to
bring the technology to market, but one possibility is that it would
be made available through cell phone service companies and could also
be tied in with insurance companies, which might offer discounts for
users.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Small Basic
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

NoDevice.com
http://www.nodevice.com/
Drivers and manuals for download.

Foxtel TV Guide
https://www.foxtel.com.au/EPG/EPG.aspx

RadioBeta
http://www.radiobeta.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
With all the rivers running into the ocean, why doesn't it get any fuller?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Marriage is a school in which the pupil learns too late.


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Where did the name 'Revlon' come from?

Nail polish distributors Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along
with nail polish supplier Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in
the Revlon name, gave birth to the Revlon cosmetics company in 1932.
Starting with just one nail product a nail enamel unlike any before it
the three men pooled their paltry resources and developed a unique
manufacturing process. Using pigments instead of dyes, Revlon was able
to offer to women rich-looking, opaque nail enamel in a wide variety
of shades never before available. In only six years, the company
became a multimillion dollar organization, launching one of the most
recognized cosmetics names in the world.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A southern belle was looking to buy a house. The seller said, "This
house hasn't got a flaw in it!"

The southern belle replied, "My lands! What do y'all walk on?"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
ZScreen
http://www.brandonz.net/projects/zscreen/
Open-source screen capture program

WinWorkBar PIM
http://vetch.magot.pl/

Q-Dir
http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/Q-Dir&language=english

Ecofont
http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.12.14 Issue No. 206


Another car-related innovation I thought of. Aside from rear parking
sensors, why not have front driving sensors as well? This is how it's
supposed to work. You're driving along. The traffic light turns red.
You stop behind a car. You feel like napping a bit, but you can't. You
don't want the car behind you to start blowing its horn when the light
turns green, and your car is stuck in suspended animation because your
eyes are closed. The solution? Front sensors. The moment the car in
front of you starts moving, the front sensors detect this increasing
distance and starts beeping to wake you up. You open your eyes and
drive on. This is definitely a welcome feature for sleepy drivers like me.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the napping
drivers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Thinkpads with SMS Security
* True Waterproof Clothing
* Lasers that Heal
* Water from Air
* Finger Veins as ID
* World's Heaviest Robot
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________THINKPADS WITH SMS SECURITY_________
http://tinyurl.com/5tylt6

Lenovo is adding a new layer of security to its ThinkPad notebooks
that will allow users to disable their laptop by simply sending a text
message through a cell phone. Called Constant Secure Remote Disable,
this new security offering was developed in conjunction with Phoenix
Technologies and embedded within the notebook's BIOS. This new
security feature allows a user to send an SMS (short message service)
text message from a cell phone to a Lenovo ThinkPad that has been lost
or stolen. Once the kill command is sent, the lost or stolen ThinkPad
is either disabled immediately or the notebook is disabled after the
PC has been turned back on. Since hard disk drive encryption will not
work properly if the PC is running or in hibernation mode, this
disable feature ensures that the data is secure by shutting the
machine down and allowing the hard disk drive encryption to work. If
and when the ThinkPad laptop is recovered, the user can restore the
notebook, its settings and the data contained on the PC by entering a
password. To work, however, the stolen or lost ThinkPad must be in
range of the user's GSM network. And obviously, you have to have a WAN
card in the PC (including the SIM) and you must be paying a data plan
for it.

The Lenovo Constant Secure Remote Disable will be a free download and
BIOS upgrade that will be available in either late December or the
first quarter of 2009.


_________TRUE WATERPROOF CLOTHING_________
http://tinyurl.com/5tlqrf

Chemists at the University of Zurich have created the most
water-repellent clothing-appropriate material ever. Drops of water
stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric and a sheet of the
material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to
roll off like marbles. A jet of water bounces off the fabric without
leaving a trace.

The secret to this incredible water resistance is the layer of
silicone nanofilaments, which are highly chemically hydrophobic. The
spiky structure of the 40-nanometre-wide filaments strengthens that
effect, to create a coating that prevents water droplets from soaking
through the coating to the polyester fibres underneath. The silicone
nanofilaments also trap a layer of air between them, to create a
permanent air layer. This fine layer of air ensures that water never
comes into contact with the polyester fabric. It can be submerged in
water for two months and still remain dry to the touch. In addition,
the plastron layer can also reduce drag when moving from water by up
to 20% according to preliminary experiments.

The new coating is produced in a one-step process, in which silicone
in gas form condenses onto the fibres to form nanofilaments. The
coating can also be added to other textiles, including wool, viscose
and cotton, although polyester currently gives the best results.


_________LASERS THAT HEAL________
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21687/

Physicists at Tel Aviv University have developed a laser system that
can be used to heal wounds. In principle, "laser-bonded" healing
offers certain advantages over classic needle-and-thread sutures,
including faster healing, decreased risk of infection, and less
scarring. Researchers have been working toward flesh-welding lasers
for more than a decade, and a number of human trials have shown
promise. But what was lacking, until now, was consistency. Flesh,
blood vessels, and nerves are delicate tissues that can easily be --
for lack of a better word -- overcooked.

To overcome this problem, Abraham Katzir and his colleagues developed
a laser-based system with a feedback loop that prevents overheating.
The group created a pen-sized tool that incorporates optic fibers: one
that channels a carbon dioxide-powered infrared laser to the wound
with pinpoint precision, and another that leads from the pen to an
infrared sensor, which measures the temperature and ensures that the
heat remains within the ideal range, between 60 and 70 degrees. All a
surgeon has to do is move the pen's tip along the cut, strengthening
and sealing the weld with a solder of water-soluble protein.

Until recently, the researchers worked to perfect their technique on
pigs, whose skin is most similar to that of a person. Those studies
told them that their method was sound: the laser-healed wounds were
just as strong, mended faster, and resulted in less inflammation and
infection than normal sutures, since a cut that's welded closed is
better at keeping bacteria out. Now, the group has finished their
first clinical trial on human patients. The researchers are waiting to
see how the closures perform 12 months after surgery before publishing
their results.


_________WATER FROM AIR_________
http://tinyurl.com/6rg73x

Eco-inventors from Canada claim to have found the solution to the
world's worsening water shortages by drawing the liquid of life from
an unlimited and untapped source - the air.

The company called Element Four developed a machine called the
WaterMill, which uses the electricity of about three light bulbs to
condense moisture from the air and purify it into clean drinking
water. From the outside, the mill looks like a giant golf ball that
has been chopped in half: it is about 3ft in diameter, made of white
plastic, and is attached to the wall. It works by drawing air through
filters to remove dust and particles, then cooling it to just below
the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed water is passed
through a self-sterilising chamber that uses microbe-busting UV light
to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires' disease or other
infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a pipe to the
owner's fridge or kitchen tap.

For the environmentally conscious consumer, the WaterMill has an
obvious appeal. Bottled water is an ecological catastrophe. In the US
alone, about 30bn litres of bottled water is consumed every year at a
cost of about $11bn (£7.4bn). According to the Earth Policy Institute,
about 1.5m barrels of oil - enough to power 100,000 cars for a year -
is used just to make the plastic. The process also uses twice as much
water as fits inside the container, not to mention the 30m bottles
that go into landfills every day in the US. But the mill also has
downsides, not least its $1,200 cost when it goes on sale in America,
the UK, Italy, Australia and Japan in the spring.


_________FINGER VEINS AS ID_________
http://tinyurl.com/6au56q

Companies in Europe have begun to roll out an advanced biometric
system from Hitachi that verifies a person's identity based on the
lattice work of minute blood vessels under the skin. Finger vein
authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two
years, is claimed to be the fastest and most secure biometric method.

The pattern of blood vessels is captured by transmitting near-infrared
light at different angles through the finger, usually the middle
finger. This can be done in a small instrument attached to a wall or
as part of an ATM machine. The light is partially absorbed by
haemoglobin in the veins and the pattern is captured by a camera as a
unique 3D finger vein profile. This is turned into a simple digital
code which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an
individual's identity. Even twins are said to have different finger
vein patterns. Hitachi claims that because the veins are inside the
body, invisible to the eye, it is extremely difficult to forge and
impossible to manipulate. While fingerprints can be "lifted" and
retinas scanned without an individual realising it, it is extremely
unlikely that people's finger vein profiles can be taken without them
being aware of it. The gruesome possibility that criminals may hack
off a finger has already been discounted by Hitachi's scientists.
Asked if authentication could be "forged" with a severed finger, the
company says: "As blood would flow out of a disconnected finger,
authentication would no longer be possible."

Hitachi says finger vein authentication is less expensive than iris
scanning or face/voice recognition and that the false rejection rate
is much lower than with fingerprinting.


_________WORLD'S HEAVIEST ROBOT_________
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/06/monster-robot-truck.html

The largest truck in the world is about to become the largest robotic
vehicle in the world. Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon
University have teamed up with engineers from Caterpillar to automate
the 700-ton trucks, which are made to haul loads up to 240 tons from
mines. That's nearly two million pounds of metal, fuel and stone
powered by a 3,550-horsepower, 24-valve engine moving at up to 42
miles per hour, with software and a robot at the wheel.

The Caterpillar trucks will be equipped with numerous high-tech
gadgets and software to keep them on the road. GPS receivers would
continuously monitor the location and direction of the trucks. Laser
range finders would sweep the road in front of the trucks to identify
large objects. Video equipment would then determine if the object is a
hazard, such as a rock, or not. All of the information would then be
run through a computer program that would tell the robotic driver to
avoid the obstacle or not and by how much. The software to run the
trucks will be adapted from CMU's part in the DARPA (Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge, a competition that required
unmanned vehicles equipped with sensors and artificial intelligence
systems to navigate through an urban environment filled with obstacles.

Fully automated mining trucks promise to reduce maintenance costs
while increasing productivity. By running at peak capacity 24 hours a
day, seven days a week, the trucks could be up to 100 percent more
productive. Fully automated consumer vehicles aren't likely to arrive
any time soon. Bits and pieces of the technology, like self-parking
cars and backup warning systems, already exist. More devices will be
added as costs come down, the sensors become better refined, and
drivers come to rely on them more. But drivers are still needed, at
least for now.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Compact Calendar Creator
http://www.chrisryu.com/compact_calendar_creator/en/

Wikitude
http://www.wikitude.org/
Use Wikipedia as location based service.

Gmail Backup
http://www.gmail-backup.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How does a Thermos know whether to keep a liquid hot or cold?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
~ Georg C. Lichtenberg ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
How did they get the ocean in that seashell?

The sound heard by a listener when holding a seashell to his ear does
NOT come from the shell itself. It is the echo of the blood pulsing in
the listener's own ear.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A man was sitting alone in his office one night when a genie popped up
out of his ashtray.

"And what will your third wish be?"

The man looked at the genie and said, "Huh? How can I be getting a
third wish when I haven't had a first or second wish yet?"

"You have had two wishes already," the genie said, "but your second
wish was for me to put everything back the way it was before you made
your first wish. Thus, you remember nothing, because everything is the
way it was before you made any wishes. You now have one wish left."

"Okay," said the man, "I don't believe this, but what the heck. I've
always wanted to understand women. I'd love to know what's going on
inside their heads."

"Sheesh! I wish you'd make up your mind," said the genie as it granted
his wish and disappeared forever, "That was your first wish, too!"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
DVD Flick
http://www.dvdflick.net/index.php
Freeware, opensource DVD authoring tool

Free DVD Creator
http://www.minidvdsoft.com/dvdcreator/index.html
Freeware DVD authoring tool

TreeSize Free
http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.11.14 Issue No. 205

The mobile office has truly come a long way. My colleagues and I were
driving along the freeway to a town 85 kms. away when we got a call
from our client. They want us to join a conference bridge. Sure thing.
What we used: a Nokia E65, a Pop-Port to a 3.5mm audio connector, and
an audio cable to the car stereo's aux in port. By pressing the mute
button at appropriate times, I was hoping the customer wouldn't know
we're not in the office. Next, they wanted us to log on to the network
and implement some changes for them. No problem. What we used: a
Lenovo T61, an Optus Wireless Broadband USB dongle, and an inverter to
power the laptop from the car's 12V port. By connecting to the
Internet, then using a VPN to the intranet, it's as if we're in the
office. All throughout the road trip, our voice and data connections
never dropped. By the time we got to the parking lot at Terrigal,
we've edited some configuration files, restarted processes, and
restored service. Mission accomplished.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the techie road
warriors about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Robotic Plants from Korea
* Breaking the 1000mph Land Speed Record
* Cancer-Fighting Beer
* Aussie Electric Vehicle Network
* Cancer-Busting Robot
* NY Driver's License with RFID
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________ROBOTIC PLANTS FROM KOREA_________
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200810/200810160007.html

The robot research laboratory at Chonnam National University has
developed a robotic plant that has humidifying, oxygen-producing,
aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions, like a real plant. It is 130 cm
tall and 40 cm in diameter and consists of a pot, a stem, and five
buds of a flower reminiscent of a rose of Sharon.

The "plant" responds in various ways to stimuli from outside, such as
approaching persons, music or light. When a person comes within a 40
cm radius of the flower, its supersonic sensor perceives the approach,
the stem bends towards the person, and the buds come into full bloom.
When the person leaves, the plant returns to its original state. If a
person's voice becomes louder than a certain level, the flower buds
will come into bloom, and the stem shakes slightly to suggest a
greeting. When the room lights up, the buds open and close, and when
music is played, the plant dances.


_________BREAKING THE 1000MPH LAND SPEED RECORD_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7685049.stm

The British team that claimed the land speed record in 1997, taking a
car through the sound barrier for the first time, is planning to go
even faster. RAF pilot Andy Green made history in 1997 when he drove
the Thrust SSC jet-powered vehicle at 763mph (1,228km/h). Now he
intends to get behind the wheel of a car that is capable of reaching
1,000mph (1,610km/h).

Known as Bloodhound, the new car will be powered by a rocket bolted to
a Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine. The team-members have been working
on the concept for the past 18 months and expect to be ready to make
their new record attempt in 2011.

The 12.8m-long, 6.4-tonne Bloodhound SSC (Super Sonic Car) will be
expected to travel faster than a bullet fired from a handgun. Its
900mm-diameter wheels will spin so fast they will have to be made from
a high-grade titanium to prevent them from flying apart. The car will
accelerate from 0-1,050mph (1,690km/h) in just 40 seconds; and at its
maximum velocity, the pressure of air bearing down on its carbon fibre
and titanium bodywork will exceed 12 tonnes per square metre.


_________CANCER-FIGHTING BEER________
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleI\
d=9117656

A team of researchers at Rice University in Houston is working to
create a beer that could fight cancer and heart disease. The team is
using genetic engineering to create a beer that includes resveratrol,
the disease-fighting chemical that's been found in red wine.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin had noted that adding small
doses of resveratrol to the diet of middle-aged mice significantly
slows their aging and keeps their hearts healthy. (Resveratrol is a
natural component of grapes, pomegranates and red wine.) They added
that giving high doses to invertebrates extends their life spans, and
high doses also stave off premature death in mice fed a high-fat diet.

The Rice research group came up with the idea of adding resveratrol to
beer during a casual conversation about potential projects to
undertake. The students are now in the process of developing a
genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and
produce resveratrol at the same time. The team turned to the Saint
Arnold Brewing Co., a craft brewery in Houston, for some good
beer-making yeast to use. In general, the addition of the resveratrol
shouldn't affect the taste of the beer, since the chemical is odorless
and tasteless. The modified yeast strain could one day be sold to
breweries where beverage companies could make their own
disease-fighting beer.

The research team is looking to enter their so-called BioBeer in the
annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition next
month in Cambridge, Mass.


_________AUSSIE ELECTRIC VEHICLE NETWORK_________
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5il6f9UKjXLMrq0sQ-Ccd8vh5VANA

A US firm called Better Place unveiled plans to build a massive
one-billion-dollar (667 million US) charging network to power electric
cars in Australia as it seeks cleaner and cheaper options to petrol.

Better Place, which has built plug-in stations for electric vehicles
in Israel and Denmark, has joined forces with Australian power company
AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital to create an Australian
network. Under the agreement, Macquarie will raise one billion dollars
to build electric-vehicle networks in the country's largest cities --
Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane -- while AGL will power the system with
renewable energy.

Under the plan, the three cities will each have a network of between
200,000 and 250,000 charge stations by 2012 where drivers can plug in
and power up their electric cars. In addition, 150 switch stations
will be built in each city and on major freeways, where electric
batteries can be automatically replaced in drive-in stations similar
to a car wash. Under the scheme, drivers will pay to recharge their
cars through various power supply agreements similar to mobile phone
contracts. Drivers can pick a plan and rate that best reflects their
car use.

Franco-Japanese automaker Renault-Nissan and General Motors are both
planning electric cars to debut in the next two years.


_________CANCER-BUSTING ROBOT_________
http://media.www.diamondbackonline.com/media/storage/paper873/news/2008/10/10/Ne\
ws/Robot.Will.Be.Able.To.Detect.Destroy.Breast.Cancer.Cells-3481447.shtml

Mechanical engineering professor Jaydev Desai from the University of
Maryland has spent the past year and a half developing a robot that
can perform biopsies and destroy tumor cells all in one session,
making the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer less
time-consuming and more accurate than ever before.

After a tumor is located on an MRI, the robot will perform a biopsy of
the breast while the patient is inside the scanner. This way, the
doctor who controls the robot can see where the tumor is located
during the procedure. (Since the robot is made of titanium and
stainless steel, it's not affected by the MRI's magnetic field.) If
the biopsy displays cancerous cells, the robot will then insert a
probe into the breast until it reaches the tumor. The probe will then
burn the cancer cells until they are destroyed. This entire process is
conducted while the patient is inside the MRI scanner, so the doctor
controlling the robot can more specifically target the cells. With the
robot, the three months between mammogram and treatment can be reduced
to a hospital visit and the cancer can be stopped before it spreads.

Desai and his team have built only a preliminary model so far. The
final version of the robot will take about four years to complete.
Then, the robot will have to go through FDA approval, follow
guidelines and prove it makes a big difference before it is widely used.


_________NY DRIVER'S LICENSE WITH RFID_________
http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/news/ny-nylice165\
845220sep16,0,5665783,print.story

New York becomes the 2nd US state, after Washington, to offer licenses
that can be shown at the U.S. border instead of a more expensive passport.

The optional license will include a picture and radio frequency
identification tag that can be scanned to verify a person's identity.
The tag will not contain any personal information - only an assigned
number. The enhanced driver's license will satisfy the land and sea
requirements, which take effect June 1, 2009, but not for
international air travel.

The optional license will include a picture and radio frequency
identification tag that can be scanned to verify a person's identity.
The tag will not contain any personal information - only an assigned
number that would be meaningless except to Homeland Security agents.
Drivers, though, should be prepared to offer a stack of identifying
paperwork when they apply for an enhanced driver's license - in
addition to the old license, a birth certificate or other proof of
U.S. citizenship, their Social Security card and two proofs of New
York residency, such as recent property tax bills or credit card
statements. The documents will be scanned for authenticity, a step
that will add 10 to 15 minutes to the application process. All of the
licenses are produced in Albany and mailed to drivers.

The enhanced license, which like the current licenses will be valid
for up to eight years, will cost about $80, compared with $50 for a
basic license and $100 for a new passport.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Media-Convert
http://media-convert.com/
100% free online file conversion

7 Important Fitness Tips for Web Workers
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/10/7-important-fitness-tips-for-web.html

Block Posters
http://www.blockposters.com/
Create large wall posters from any image for free!

14 Simple Ways to Super-Charge Your Brain
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/06/14-simple-ways-to-super-charge-your.html


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
What is bated breath? I think I might have it, and I'm worried. Can my
dentist help?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Age does not protect you from love, but love to some extent protects
you from age.
~ Jeanne Moreau ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
How is a penny different from other coins?

Other than its color, the penny is the only coin currently minted in
the United States with a profile that faces to the right. All other
coins the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, and nickel all
feature profiles that face to the left.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Q: Did you hear about the unique platypus?
A: He was unlike all the otters.

Q: Did you hear about the robbery in the laundry room?
A: Two clothespins held up a pair of pants.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
DivXLand Media Subtitler
http://www.divxland.org/subtitler.php

SubDownloader
http://www.subdownloader.net/
Fast and Easy Subtitle Downloader

Fast Copy
http://www.ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en

MKN TaskExplorer
http://www.mkn-software.de/en/software/desktop/taskexplorer/



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.09.22 Issue No. 204


Everyone knows the importance of doing regular backups, but how many
people actually do it? Last weekend, our IT guys started migrating our
Outlook mailboxes to another server. They sent a mail out telling
people not to use Outlook during a certain time period. By the time we
come back to office on Monday, everything should be there. No emails
will be lost, the whole migration will be transparent to us.

Guess what? Come Monday, I can't connect to the Exchange server. The
status bar would say "Trying...", and eventually end up with
"Disconnected". I rebooted my PC. This time it asks for a password. I
type it in, Outlook says it's wrong. I press ESC, and Outlook goes
into Offline mode. I restarted Outlook. Lucky for me, this time it
didn't ask for a password and connected straightaway. Unfortunately,
my mailbox was totally empty. Everything in my Inbox was wiped clean.
A few of my colleagues were smart enough to either archive their old
mails or backup the whole mailbox prior to the migration. The last
time I allowed the automated backup software to do its work? May.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the email
administrators about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 1 Million IOPS Flash Storage
* Cell-Sized Microbatteries
* Exoskeleton Lets Paraplegics Walk Again
* New Road Concrete Fights Pollution
* New Contact Lenses Tests for Glaucoma
* Special EU Radio Spectrum for Car Talk
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________1 MILLION IOPS FLASH STORAGE_________
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082808-ibm-flash-memory-million-iops.html?\
hpg1=bn

IBM reveals a research project that's delivering data transfer speeds
of more than 1 million input/output operations per second, two and a
half times faster than the industry's fastest disk storage.

According to IBM, its Project Quicksilver improved performance by 250%
at less than 1/20th the response time, took up 1/5th the floor space
and required only 55% of the power and cooling. It is also two and a
half times faster than its own SAN Volume Controller coupled with
IBM's DS4700 storage. It would also be two and a half times faster
than technology from Texas Memory Systems, which says it has the
world's fastest storage with an IOPS rate of 400,000.

IBM said it has been selling solid-state drives in some BladeCenter
servers since June 2007, but didn't say when Project Quicksilver might
result in a marketable product.


_________CELL-SIZED MICROBATTERIES_________
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/virus-battery-0820.html

MIT engineers have developed a way to at once create and install tiny
microbatteries about half the size of a human cell and built with
viruses -- by stamping them onto a variety of surfaces. The technique
itself does not involve any expensive equipment, and is done at room
temperature.

Batteries consist of two opposite electrodes -- an anode and cathode
-- separated by an electrolyte. In the current work, the MIT team
created both the anode and the electrolyte. First, on a clear, rubbery
material the MIT team used soft lithography to create a pattern of
tiny posts either four or eight millionths of a meter in diameter. On
top of these posts, they then deposited several layers of two polymers
that together act as the solid electrolyte and battery separator. Next
came viruses that preferentially self-assemble atop the polymer layers
on the posts, ultimately forming the anode. The final result: a stamp
of tiny posts, each covered with layers of electrolyte and the cobalt
oxide anode. Then they turn the stamp over and transfer the
electrolyte and anode to a platinum structure that, together with
lithium foil, is used for testing.

The team reports that the resulting electrode arrays exhibit full
electrochemical functionality.


_________EXOSKELETON LETS PARAPLEGICS WALK AGAIN________
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1049215/Paralysed-man-walks-thank\
s-Robocop-style-exoskeleton.html?printingPage=true

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the
suit worn by Robocop, the revolutionary device called ReWalk helps
paraplegics - people paralysed below the waist - to stand, walk and
climb stairs.

The device is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo
Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company. Goffer
himself was paralysed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own
invention because he does not have full function of his arms. The
system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of
motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a
computerized control box and rechargeable batteries. The user picks a
setting with a remote control wrist band - stand, sit, walk, descend
or climb - and then leans forward, activating the body sensors and
setting the robotic legs in motion.

Kate Parkin, director of physical and occupational therapy at NYU
Medical Centre, said it has the potential to improve a user's health
in two ways. Physically, the body works differently when upright. You
can challenge different muscles and allow full expansion of the lungs.
Psychologically, it lets people live at the upright level and make eye
contact.

The ReWalk is now in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical
Centre. It is due to go on sale to the public in 2010 and will cost
around £10,000.


_________NEW ROAD CONCRETE FIGHTS POLLUTION_________
http://www.physorg.com/news137230645.html

Experts from the University of Twente have developed and tested
special concrete paving stones that have the ability of purifying air.
The paving stones contain a titanium dioxide-based additive, which
under the influence of sunlight, binds the nitrogen oxide particles
emitted by car exhausts and turns them into harmless nitrates. When
the rains come, everything is washed clean. Nitrogen oxides, produced
by industry and motor vehicles, are among the main air pollutants that
lead to acid rain and smog.

Developed from a Japanese invention, the bricks are now being put to
the test in Hengelo in the eastern Dutch province of Overijssel. One
half of a road under reconstruction is being paved with the new, green
bricks, and the other half with the ordinary variety. Air quality in
both areas will be measured to show the efficacy of the bricks. The
road iss expected to be finished by year-end. The first air
measurements will be taken early next year, with the first results
expected next summer.


_________NEW CONTACT LENSES TESTS FOR GLAUCOMA_________
http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1278/smart-contact-lenses.html

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have recently
designed a contact lens prototype with a built-in pressure sensor to
measure glaucoma in patients. Currently the only way for patients with
glaucoma to keep tabs on the disease is by visiting a clinician who
administers one of several tests to measure intraocular pressure
(IOP). However, these visits occur usually two or three times a year,
and there is no way to monitor pressure spikes between visits. In
glaucoma, drainage of the fluid that normally delivers nutrients to
and removes metabolic waste from the eye is blocked. Elevated pressure
in the eye ultimately presses on the retina, compromising neural
activity and damaging the optic nerve, resulting in loss of vision.

Designed by Tingrui Pan, assistant professor of biomedical
engineering, the lens may eventually be fashioned into disposable
contact lenses, enabling patients to continuously monitor glaucoma at
home. The contact-lens prototype is made from PDMS, an organic polymer
commonly used to make contact lenses and breast implants. A negative
cutout of a circuit is placed on top of th polymer, and UV light is
used to "etch" the pattern. Afterwards Pan filled the pattern with a
solution of powdered silver, which is a nontoxic metal conductor.
After polymerization, the silver formed a continuous circuit within
the soft polymer.

During initial laboratory tests, it was found that when pressure
within the eye increases the shape of the contact lens will distort,
causing a change in voltage within the wires. This voltage change is
measured and could be a good indicator of IOP. Although the prototype
seems promising, several hurdles remain before it can be practically
used as a contact lens. In the current version, the silver circuit is
opaque and would obviously obstruct vision. Pan says that such a
visible circuit could still be used for short-term, sit-down tests in
the clinic, but nevertheless he looks for materials that could be made
into transparent circuits for longer-term use.


_________SPECIAL EU RADIO SPECTRUM FOR CAR TALK_________
http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1280/cars-that-talk.html

The European Commission has recently decided to reserve, across
Europe, part of the radio spectrum for smart vehicle communications
systems. The decision is part of the commission's overall fight
against road accidents and traffic jams, and the hope is that
vehicles' developers will create wireless communication technology
that will allow cars to "talk" to other cars and to the road
infrastructure providers.

Using wireless communication cars could, for example, warn other
drivers of slippery roads or of a crash which just happened. Smart
vehicle communication systems have the potential to make the lives of
Europe's drivers safer and easier; according to the European
Commission, in 2006 more than 42,000 people died in road accidents in
the European Union and more than 1.6 million were injured. The
decision made is to provide a single EU-wide frequency band that can
be used for immediate and reliable communication between cars and
between cars and the roadside infrastructure. It is 30MHz of spectrum
in the 5.9 Gigahertz (GHz) band which will be allocated within the
next six months by national authorities across Europe, improving road
safety applications without barring other services already in place
(such as amateur radio services).


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
SoundUnwound
http://www.soundunwound.com/
Amazon's new music site

QuarkBase
http://www.quarkbase.com/
Everything about a website

Timeline of Internet Memes
http://www.dipity.com/user/tatercakes/timeline/Internet_Memes
Don't try this at work. Very addictive.


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I just learned to knit, and my sister wants to learn, too. I know it's
not right to share needles, but do you think it would be okay just
this once?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not
like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I
will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.
~ William Arthur Ward ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What do you call a group of felines?

Some names for groups of animals... a bale of turtles, a clowder of
cats, a charm of goldfinches, a gam of whales, a knot of toads, a
streak of tigers.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Five Jewish men who influenced the history of Western civilization.

Moses said the law is everything.
Jesus said love is everything.
Marx said capital is everything.
Freud said sex is everything.
Einstein said everything is relative.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Google Chrome for Windows
http://www.google.com/chrome/
Google browser

PureText
http://stevemiller.net/puretext/
Paste text to any application without formatting

BurnAware Free
http://www.burnaware.com/burnaware_free.html
Ultimate disc-burning freeware

Free Starbucks Coffee Recipe E-Book
http://www.coffeefair.com/free-coffee-recipes-ebook.htm


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.08.31 Issue No. 203

For a while, I thought I had lost Nybble for good. About a month and a
half ago, I logged in to Yahoo!Groups to look up some old newsletters.
I managed to access the Nybble group page fine, but when I click on
the Messages link, I get an "Invalid group" error. The front page used
to have a listing of the recent messages and a message history window,
but they're all gone. Fearing the worst, I Googled for the
Yahoo!Groups "Invalid group" error message. Some people on the Yahoo
forums have reported this problem as early as two years ago. Some
speculate that something went wrong with one of Yahoo's servers, and
all one can do is for Yahoo to fix it. Others have waited for weeks
and months before eventually giving up and creating a new group to
replace the old one. Lucky for me, this egroup is low-traffic, so I
can afford to wait for Yahoo's engineers to fix the problem.

If this should ever happen to you, the best way to contact Yahoo and
report the case is through here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/general.html

At least it worked for me. I got a reply back saying that the server
hosting Nybble had a problem, so they had to do a restore from their
"hot back-up" system. Turns out this "hot back-up" system had a
problem, too, so now they had to turn to their emergency "tape"
back-up system to restore the group. The emergency tapes were in a
remote security location, which added to the delay. Anyway, after
about a month of waiting, Nybble is back...and late again.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Yahoo
engineers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Pioneer Introducing 400GB Optical Discs
* Long-Life Flash Chips
* Reducing CO2 Levels with Lime
* Roundest Objects in the World
* MEDUSA Puts Messages inside Head
* Paper-Based Transistors
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________PIONEER INTRODUCING 400GB OPTICAL DISCS_________
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/79933,pioneer-promises-400gb-optical-discs.aspx

Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which it
claims can store 400GB of data.

The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc,
and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer
recordable discs. Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop
because 'crosstalk' from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean
that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible.
Pioneer achieved stability in the playback of recorded signals by
employing a wide-range spherical aberration compensator and
light-receiving element that can read out weak signals at a high
signal-to-noise ratio in the optical pick-up mechanism. The huge
capacity of these discs means that the new technology will be best
suited for applications such large volume data archiving, rather than
consumer use. Pioneer will present the details of this research at the
International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage
2008 in Hawaii.


_________LONG-LIFE FLASH CHIPS_________
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2221522/flash-chip-long-life-created

Japanese scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo have developed
flash memory chips with a potential lifetime of hundreds of years.

Flash memory chips are widely used in products such as Apple's iPhone,
mini notebooks like the Asus Eee PC, video games consoles such as the
Nintendo Wii, flash memory cards for digital cameras and MP3 players
and flash-based SSD hard disk drives. Current flash chips are
estimated to have a useful lifetime of around a decade. However, some
applications that require repeated writing and rewriting of data can
theoretically cause cells to wear out much faster, sometimes rendering
a flash device useless within a few years. The continuing
miniaturisation of conventional Flash memory chips also threatens to
reduce their lifetime.

The new ferroelectric NAND flash memory cell developed by the Japanese
scientists can be scaled down to at least 10 nanometres. The next
generation of conventional flash cells will use a 30 nanometre circuit
density. The ferroelectric flash memory cell can be rewritten more
than 100 million times, compared to a conventional cells lifetime of
around 10,000. To prolong their life, flash memory chips use a
'wear-levelling' process in which all cells are used equally, and worn
out cells are 'retired' without disabling the whole chip. The
ferroelectric cells also use a rewriting voltage of fewer than six
volts, compared to about 20 volts for conventional chips.


_________REDUCING CO2 LEVELS WITH LIME________
http://www.physorg.com/news135820173.html

Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels
in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has
the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the
atmosphere. Shell is so impressed with the new approach that it is
funding an investigation into its economic feasibility.

Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven is the
brains behind the plan to resurrect the lime process. He argues that
it could be made workable by locating it in regions that have a
combination of low-cost 'stranded' energy considered too remote to be
economically viable to exploit – like flared natural gas or solar
energy in deserts – and that are rich in limestone, making it feasible
for calcination to take place on site. For example, Australia's
Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has
10,000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar
irradiation every day.

The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to
seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is
therefore 'carbon negative'. The oceans are already the world's
largest carbon sink, absorbing 2bn tonnes of carbon every year.
Increasing absorption ability by just a few percent could dramatically
increase CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.


_________ROUNDEST OBJECTS IN THE WORLD_________
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14229-roundest-objects-in-the-world\
-created.html

An international group of engineers and craftsmen are on a mission to
build a pair of nearly perfect silicon spheres that are thought to be
the roundest objects in the world. The unusual balls are supposed to
be the standard definition of a kilogram, in terms of a specific
number of atoms.

Over the next few years, groups in Italy, Belgium, Japan and the US
will try to calculate the exact number of atoms in each one. To
determine the volume of each sphere, they will use optical
interferometers to measure its width from 60,000 different points on
its surface. Meanwhile, X-ray crystallographers will take pictures of
the silicon crystal structure to determine the spacing and density of
the atoms. By multiplying volume by density, each group should produce
its own count of how many silicon atoms make up a kilogram.

But even if all of the Avogadro Project's research teams arrive at the
same number of silicon atoms in each sphere, it's far from clear that
the International Committee for Weights and Measures will take up
their definition. That's because some metrologists believe the
Avogadro Project's precision spheres may simply replace one ailing
physical standard with another. Watch this space.


_________MEDUSA PUTS MESSAGES INSIDE HEAD_________
http://magheap.com/article/14764/Crowd-Controlling_MEDUSA_Ray_Gun_Puts_Voices_In\
side_Your_Head_Medusa.aspx

The Sierra Nevada Corporation is ready to begin production on the
MEDUSA, which uses the "microwave audio effect" to implant sounds and
perhaps even specific messages inside people's heads. Short for Mob
Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio, MEDUSA creates the audio effect
with short microwave pulses. The pulses create a shockwave inside the
skull that's detected by the ears, and basically makes you think
you're hearing voices. Lee Sadovnik of Sierra Nevada Corp. said normal
audio safety limits are off the table since the sound bypasses the
eardrums and emanates from within the skull. You cannot block it out.

Scientists want more testing done on MEDUSA because of the perceived
health ramifications of such a device. Lower, hisper-level intensities
work fine, but the higher incapacitating levels expected by the
military could fry more than a few brains out on the battlefield,
maybe even causing neural damage. Other uses for the device? Try
subliminal advertising; or suggestive subconscious comments that you
don't really "hear" but can influence decision-making anyway.


_________PAPER-BASED TRANSISTORS_________
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=987

Portuguese researchers at the Center of Materials Research ("CEntro de
INvestigação em MATeriais" or CENIMAT at the Faculdade de Ciências e
Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL) have created the
first paper-based transistors. To be more precise, they've made the
first field effect transistors (FET) with a paper interstrate layer.

The research team said that there is currently an increased interest
in the use of biopolymers for low-cost electronic applications. Since
cellulose is the Earth's major biopolymer, some international teams
have reported using paper as the physical support (substrate) of
electronic devices. But, until now, no one had ever used paper as an
interstrate component of a FET. So how did the researchers used paper
to build their new transistors? The research team fabricated the
devices on both sides of the paper sheet. This way, the paper acts
simultaneously as the electric insulator and as the substrate.

According to the research team, these new transistors offer the same
level of performance as 'state-of-the-art oxide based thin film
transistors (TFTs) produced on glass or crystalline silicon
substrates.' Possible applications for these paper-based transistors
include new disposable electronics devices, such as paper displays,
smart labels, bio-applications or RFID tags.


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Bakumatsu Koshashin Generator
http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds
"Age" your photos online

Hear Who
http://www.hearwho.com/default.aspx
Converts any text to MP3 audo

WebToMail
http://www.webtomail.co.cc/
Receive webpages via email


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why is it that when I lie in bed at night I can think of dozens of
important things that I have to do the next day, but when I get to
work and turn on the computer, I can't remember any of them?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like
bread, remade all the time, made new.
~ Ursula K. Leguin ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What can an infant do that you can't?

Up to the age of six or seven months, a child can breathe and swallow
at the same time. An adult cannot do this.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A Stanford Medical research group advertised for participants in a
study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. They were looking for therapy
clients who had been diagnosed with this disorder. The response was
gratifying; they got 300 responses the day after the ad came out.

All from the same person.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
AkelPad
http://akelpad.sourceforge.net/en/index.php
Free Windows Notepad replacement

Eye Defender
http://www.eterlab.com/eyedefender/
Freeware rest reminder

Totally Free Burner
Freeware CD/DVD/ISO burner


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.07.16 Issue No. 202

NEWSFLASH!!! We're back! If you haven't noticed, Nybble has been down
for almost a month. Apparently, the server hosting the Nybble group
crashed, and Yahoo tech had to restore from backup tapes. And I
thought all the archives are gone for good. Whew!

My good friend emailed me asking if I sent him a message via
Friendster. Don't think so because I use Yahoo!Mail and Gmail for
that. I checked my Friendster account, and all in all I've sent three
messages. That was long, long time ago. Apparently, the message is
telling my friend that I missed him, and that I want him to check out
my profile in another website. He clicked on the link, and it turned
out to be spam. My sister got the Frienster spam, too. She thought I
really missed her, so she click on the link. Bam, pornsite, NSFW.

That's pretty bad. I rarely log in to my Friendster account. Not sure
whether it's my account that has been compromised, or maybe some
cracker gained a generic backdoor into Friendster. Either way, if you
get a Friendster message from me saying I missed you, that's not me
talking, ok? And for those people who sent me friend requests many
months/years ago, GF convinced me that it's not polite to ignore them,
so I've already accepted. See you all at Facebook.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell your friends
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 120,000-Year Old Bacteria
* Tower of Pisa Stops Leaning
* Fast Flashgun Captures Image of Light
* UNSW's Robotic Clarinet
* Bacteria Produces 'Renewable Petroleum'
* Exciton-Based Transistors
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________120,000-YEAR OLD BACTERIA_________
http://live.psu.edu/story/31052

A team of Penn State scientists has discovered a new ultra-small
species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years
within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles.
The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature,
high-pressure, reduced-oxygen and nutrient-poor habitat makes it
particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in
a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in
the solar system.

This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small
bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through
microbiological filters. In fact, some species have been found living
in the ultra-purified water used for dialysis. The ultra-small size of
the new species could be one explanation for why it was able to
survive for so long in the Greenland glacier. Called Chryseobacterium
greenlandensis, the species is related genetically to certain bacteria
found in fish, marine mud and the roots of some plants. The organism
is one of only about 10 scientifically described new species
originating from polar ice and glaciers.


_________TOWER OF PISA STOPS LEANING_________
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/ar\
chitecture_and_design/article4023126.ece

Eighteen years after it was closed to the public for fears that it
might topple over, the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilised and
has been declared safe for at least another three centuries.

The Leaning Tower is the campanile, or belltower, of the cathedral and
as constructed in three stages, starting in 1173 at the height of
Pisa's military and economic power, and completed two centuries later.
Its medieval architects had got only as far as the third floor when
the structure, built on unstable clay, began to lean in 1178. Benito
Mussolini ordered it to be returned to a vertical position in the
1930s, with concrete poured into its foundations, but the result was
that the tower sank further.

By 1990 it had tilted more than four metres off its true vertical, and
conservationists estimated that the entire 14,500-tonne structure
would have collapsed "some time between 2030 and 2040". After a €30
million operation in which it was anchored to cables and lead
counterweights while 70 tonnes of soil was removed from the north side
– away from the lean – and cement was injected into the ground to
relieve the pressure, the tower reopened at the end of 2001.

A ceremony marking the completion of the final phase of restoration
will be held at the end of the summer, according to Giuseppe
Bentivoglio, technical director of the site.


_________FAST FLASHGUN CAPTURES IMAGE OF LIGHT________
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14172-fastestever-flashgun-captures\
-image-of-light-wave.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14172

Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of
light – 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long.
Such flashes have already been used to capture an image of a laser
pulse too short to be "photographed" before.

The light pulses are produced by firing longer, but still very short
laser pulses into a cloud of neon gas. The laser gives a kick of
energy to the neon atoms, which then release this energy in the form
of brief pulses of extreme ultraviolet light. The trigger pulses fired
at the neon cloud are themselves only 2.5 femtoseconds, billionths of
a millionth of a second, long.

the super-short flashes could let researchers image the movement of
electrons around large atoms. The previous record for the shortest
light pulse was 130 attoseconds, set in 2007. In the future,
scientists hope to produce light pulses of 24 attoseconds, the atomic
unit of time, defined as how long it takes an electron to travel from
one side of a hydrogen atom to the other.


_________UNSW'S ROBOTIC CLARINET_________
http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/articles/2008/jun/robot_clarinet.html

An Australian-designed robot clarinet player has won first prize at an
international orchestra competition.

Developed by a team of engineers and scientists from NICTA and the
University of New South Wales, the robot clarinet player, which
performed The Flight of the Bumblebee and Bolero, has won first prize
at an international orchestra competition, beating a Dutch developed
guitar-picking robot and a Finnish piano-playing machine. Staged in
Athens, the goal of the Artemis Music Orchestra competition is to
raise awareness about the growing capacity and applications of
embedded computer systems.

The judging panel merited the technical difficulty involved in the
design of the robot's 'mouth'. The robotic mouth uses two tiny motors:
one applies force to the clarinet's reed, emulating the action of the
human lip, while the other mimics the action of the human tongue.
Researchers at the Music Acoustics Lab will use the robotic clarinet
to better understand the gestures of human players. According to Prof.
Joe Wolfe from UNSW's School of Physics, "It was a big rush to get a
robot to play in time for the competition, and we didn't have time to
include a lot of what we know from research on human players. This
instrument was a beginner with fast fingers. Next year's model will be
a much better musician: we'll teach it, and it will teach us about the
details of musicianship, too."


_________BACTERIA PRODUCES 'RENEWABLE PETROLEUM'_________
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4133668.ece

Silicon-Valley based LS9 is on an extraordinary race to make
$140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. They're doing this
by genetically altering bacteria, so that when they feed on
agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something
extraordinary. They excrete crude oil. What is most remarkable about
what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global
economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel –
they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil.

LS9's bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth
the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or
nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by
custom-de-signing their DNA. Because crude oil (which can be refined
into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few
molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by
yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling
to get the desired result. Using genetically modified bugs for
fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to
produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of
distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a
substance that is almost pump-ready.

LS9's plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010
and, in parallel, we'll be working on the design and construction of a
commercial-scale facility to open in 2011. It estimates that if it
used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably
cost about $50 a barrel.


_________EXCITON-BASED TRANSISTORS_________
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/78803,lightemitting-particles-to-support-new-form-\
of-computing.aspx

Physicists at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) are using
particles called excitons to develop transistors that could be better
suited to fast communication. By eliminating the need to convert
signals from electrons to photons, the new exciton-based transistors
are expected to break traditional speed barriers between computing and
communications signals.

The new type of transistors process signals using excitons, which like
electrons can be controlled with electrical voltages but unlike
electrons transform into photons at the output of the circuit.
Excitons are formed by linking a negatively-charged electron with a
positively-charged "hole". An exciton decays when the electron and
hole combine, emitting a flash of light in the process. By joining
exciton-based transistors to form several types of switches, the UCSD
physicists were able to achieve switching times on the order of 200
picoseconds.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * The number of moves necessary to solve an arbitrary Rubik's cube
configuration has been cut down to 23 moves.
  * eBay's plan to force all users to use PayPal only has been rejected
by ACCC, Australia's competition regulator.
  * A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have
mandatory obesity checks for all their employees and employees' family
members over the age of 40.
  * Researchers are predicting that one quarter of the world's
population will be connected to the internet within the next four years.
  * Blizzard will start to sell one-time password keychain tokens for
World of Warcraft


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Torrent2exe.com
http://www.torrent2exe.com/
Convert your torrents into stand-alone exe files

VETUSWARE.COM
http://www.vetusware.com/
the biggest free abandonware downloads collection in the universe

Mailinator
http://mailinator.com/index.jsp
Let them eat spam!

Sydney's Top 100 Things to Do
http://www.sydney100.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why does your nose always itch when you attempt some difficult job
requiring both hands, such as threading a needle?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks
degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.
~ Elie Wiesel ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Who was Oscar named after?

The Academy Award statue is named after a librarian's uncle. One day
Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, made a remark that the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar,
and the name stuck.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
John: "What are you reading?"
Andy: "It's a book about electricity."
John: "Oh, current events?"
Andy: "No, just some light reading."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
UltimateDefrag Freeware Edition 1.72
http://www.freewaregeeks.com/UltimateDefrag_Free.html

Email Address Extract
http://www.a1soft.com/emextcom.htm

PyNetMony for Symbian S60 3rd Edition Phones
http://mitglied.lycos.de/gsmplanet/py/pynetmony.html
WarWalking, BlueWalking and 2G/3G Netmonitor

Pictomio
http://www.pictomio.com/Default.aspx
Free photo software for fast 3D graphics cards

Staying One Step Ahead of the Hackers
http://www.lulu.com/content/114991
Free ebook on computer security


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.06.14 Issue No. 201


It seems to me the more a certain piece of hardware is open to hacking
or modification, the more appeal it has. When I was deciding between
the Xbox and the PS2, I decided on the former for that exact reason. A
software mod and an XBMC installation later, I now mainly use the Xbox
to watch movies, instead of playing games. A few months earlier, I
discovered CHDK while browsing around, and my Canon S2 IS is never the
same. Live histograms, superimposed grids, battery life indicator,
extended ISO and shutter ranges, games, you name it. Would I have gone
Nikon if there was no such hack for Canon digicams? Probably not, but
it's really good to know that the hardware you bought actually takes
on more value because of these hacks. Me, I'm still waiting for a new
firmware to come out for the iRiver x20.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the hardware
hackers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 1TB Optical Drive
* Gigapixel Photos from Ordinary Cameras
* World's Fastest 256GB SSD
* 'Paper Towel' for Oil Spills
* NVIDIA Supercomputer
* Nanotubes 'as Deadly as Asbestos'
* Wall-Climbing Robots
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________1TB OPTICAL DRIVE_________
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/28/call_recall_optical_drive/

Call/Recall has announced it is developing a 1TB optical drive and
disk, backwards compatible with Blu-ray, in partnership with the
Nichia Corporation of Japan. Call/Recall began synthesizing 1TB
materials for Nichia's blue-violet laser diodes in December 2007, with
first initial testing successfully completed in March 2008.

Call/Recall is a privately-funded company, founded in 1987 to provide
advanced research into optical storage technologies and ultra-high
storage solutions for military and commercial customers. The company's
patented, 2-photon 3D optical technology is based on optical storage
technology invented by company co-founder Dr. Peter Rentzepis. He is
an optical scientist whose work is at the core of many of the world's
top optical technology providers.

The secret to the 1TB optical disk is the use of a Rhodamine-type dye
in a recording layer. It is excited by laser light and reacts to give
off light when excited by another laser at a different wavelength.
Such light emission or its absence can be used to indicate binary ones
and zeroes. The dye spots are tiny and can exist in 200-250 layers
thus providing the 1TB capacity. The use of a single lens to read
multiple layers is enabled by having a fluid-filled lens and
increasing/reducing the fluid content and thus the lens' profile and
its focal length. The I/O rate is said to be around 100MB/sec, five
times faster than InPhase's holographic drives. The process is not
reversible and produces write-once-read-many (WORM) media.
Reversibility is being worked on and there is a generalised roadmap
out to 5TB, still on CD-sized 120mm platters.


_________GIGAPIXEL PHOTOS FROM ORDINARY CAMERAS_________
http://snurl.com/2i0o6

Scientists at THE Carnegie Mellon University have developed a device
that allows a standard digital camera to take pictures with a
resolution of 1-gigapixel (1,000-megapixels).

The Gigapan is a robotic arm that takes multiple pictures of the same
scene and blends them into a single image. The resulting picture can
be expanded to show incredible detail. The system works by taking a
single picture and then taking an additional 36 horizontal and 10
vertical overlapping shots. Software then merges the images to produce
the final image. No date for the release off the device has yet been
given, but it is expected to retail for several hundred dollars.


_________WORLD'S FASTEST 256GB SSD________
http://www.i4u.com/article17560.html

Samsung Electronics recently announced the world's fastest and
thinnest, 2.5", 256GB multi-level cell (MLC) based solid state drive
(SSD) using a SATA II interface.

Performance data of the new Samsung 256GB SSD features a sequential
read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write
speed of 160MB/s. It is also about 2.4 times faster than a typical
HDD. Furthermore, the new 256 GB SSD is only 9.5 millimeters (mm)
thick, and measures 100.3x69.85 mm.

Samsung's new MLC 256GB SSD, besides being comparable in speed to an
SLC-based SSD, also boasts reliability equal to that of SLC SSDs, with
a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours, while
costing considerably less. Power consumption is also exceptionally low
at 0.9 watts in active mode. Samsung is expected to begin mass
producing the 2.5-inch, 256GB SSD by year end, with customer samples
available in September. A 1.8-inch version of the 256GB SSD is
expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2008.


_________'PAPER TOWEL' FOR OIL SPILLS_________
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oil-paper-0530.html

MIT researchers have created a membrane made up of a mesh of nanowires
with the touch and feel of paper that could be an important new tool
in the cleanup of oil and other organic pollutants.

The material is completely impervious to water, can absorb up to 20
times its weight in oil, and can be recycled many times for future
use. Made of potassium manganese oxide, the nanowires are stable at
high temperatures. As a result, oil within a loaded membrane can be
removed by heating above the boiling point of oil. The oil evaporates,
and can be condensed back into a liquid. The membrane--and oil--can be
used again.

Two key properties make the system work. First, the nanowires form a
spaghetti-like mat with many tiny pores that make for good
capillarity, or the ability to absorb liquids. Second, a
water-repelling coating keeps water from penetrating into the
membrane. Oil, however, isn't affected, and seeps into the membrane.
In addition to its environmental applications, the nanowire paper
could also impact filtering and the purification of water.


_________NVIDIA SUPERCOMPUTER_________
http://www.dvhardware.net/article27538.html

Researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have created a new
supercomputer with standard gaming hardware from NVIDIA. The system
uses four NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, costing less than
4000EUR to build. Thanks to NVIDIA's CUDA technology it delivers
roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of
hundreds of desktop PCs.

The new system is being used by the ASTRA research group, part of
University of Antwerp's Vision Lab, to develop new computational
methods for tomography. On a normal desktop PC their tomography tasks
would take several weeks but on this NVIDIA-based "supercomputer" it
only takes a couple of hours. The medical researchers ran some
benchmarks and found that in some cases their 4000EUR desktop super PC
outperforms CalcUA, a 256-node supercomputer with dual AMD Opteron 250
2.4GHz chips that cost the University of Antwerp 3.5 million euro in
March 2005. It also consumes a lot less power than a real
supercomputer cluster.

Later this summer NVIDIA will unveil new software that will make HD
video transcoding much faster and the firm will also roll out a
software update that will add AGEIA PhysX support to all GeForce 8/9
and GeForce GTX 200 series graphics cards.


_________NANOTUBES 'AS DEADLY AS ASBESTOS'_________
http://itnews.com.au/News/76550,nanotubes-as-deadly-as-asbestos.aspx

A paper to be published in Nature Nanotechnology suggests that
inhaling certain types of nanotubes can lead to the formation of
mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer commonly caused by exposure to
asbestos.

The researchers found that mice exposed to long, straight carbon
nanotubes developed conditions that precede mesothelioma, which can
take as long as 40 years to develop in humans. The infamous building
material is said to have been responsible for billions of dollars in
health and building repair costs.

The researchers did not, however, dismiss all nanotubes as potentially
harmful. The study found that the long thin structures can be harmful
if inhaled, but that shorter or curly nanotubes do not pose any sort
of health risk. Some researchers also noted that the way in which the
tubes become airborne is not yet known.


_________WALL-CLIMBING ROBOTS_________
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;27010113;fp;2;fpid;1

SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization,
has developed a new technology that enables some robots to scale
walls. Wall-climbing robots could be a boon for the US military, which
could use them on reconnaissance or other missions in war zones.

The new electrical adhesive technology called compliant
electroadhesion provides an electrically controllable way to stick
machines to a wall. Since positive and negative charges attract, SRI
researchers induce negative charges into the wall being climbed, while
at the same time imposing positive charges in the robot, using an
on-board battery source. That adhesion lets the robots, using either
feet or tracks, scale a vertical wall. They can even climb walls
covered in dust and debris, or made out of concrete, wood, steel,
glass, drywall, and brick. However, they have a harder time with damp
surfaces. Regular robots, especially those with tracks, can be
retrofitted with the technology and turned into wall climbers. When
the charges are shut off, the adhesion ends.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * HP buys EDS for $14 billion
  * A recent PC World article notes that 20 percent of the U.S.
population has never sent an email
  * US scientists have designed a new spray-on explosive detector
sensitive enough to detect just a billionth of a gram of
(nitrogen-containing) explosive
  * California-based BioArts International is offering five dog-cloning
service slots via an online auction, with bidding starting at US $100,000
  * A recent PC World article notes that 20 percent of the U.S.
population has never sent an email


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Google Calendar Help
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/?fulldump=1

LookTorrent
http://looktorrent.com/
Torrent search aggregator

Cute Overload! :-)
http://cuteoverload.com/
All things cute

Text 2 Mind Map
http://www.text2mindmap.com/
An online text to mind map converter


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do we always turn down the radio in the car when we're trying to
find an address?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is more than just a feeling: it's a process requiring continual
attention. Loving well takes laughter, loyalty, and wanting more to be
able to say, "I understand" than to hear, "You're right."
~ Molleen Matsumura ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What monkey invented the wrench?

The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith
named Charles Moncke.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Dispatcher:  9-1-1 What's  the nature of your emergency?
Caller: My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes
apart.
Dispatcher:  Is this her first child?
Caller:  No, you idiot!  This is her husband!


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Phantasmagoria
http://www.develderby.com/phantasmagoria/
Free image editing application

The Secret story of Star Wars
http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com/book.html

I Will Derive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dpTTpjymE


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.05.13 Issue No. 200


Caught in a traffic jam and watching the sea of red in front of me, it
occurred to me that since the invention of the brake lights, it hasn't
changed much through the years, apart from the introduction of a third
one. Instead of merely being on or off, wouldn't it be nice if brake
lights come in analogue? Depending on how hard the brake pedal is
pressed, the intensity of the brake light varies. If it's a constant
yellow, that means the car in front is slowing down to a halt. If it
jumps from yellow to orange to red, that means the car in front is
braking really hard, and you should be doing the same.

I'm thinking car manufacturers should also install front brake lights.
Sometimes when I want to change lanes, I can't tell for sure if the
car behind me will let me cut in, or will he suddenly speed up to
close the gap. With front brake lights, I can be certain that he's
slowing down, and I can shift lanes safely. Good ideas, huh?

By the way, this is the 200th issue of Nybble. We've come a long way,
baby.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the tailgaters
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 'Youngest Planet' Discovered
* Cup of Coffee a Day Keeps Dementia Away
* Fastest Computer Chip on Earth
* Flowers Less Fragrant
* Smallest Transistor in the World
* Hard Drive with 256-Bit AES Encryption
* Japan Starts Invasive Brain-Machine Interface Research
* Fastest and Cheapest Broadband in the World
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________'YOUNGEST PLANET' DISCOVERED_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7326318.stm

A UK team of astronomers has detected an embryonic planet outside our
solar system that could be less than 2000 years old. The ball of dust
and gas, which is in the process of turning into a Jupiter-like giant,
was detected around the star HL Tau. The disc is unusually massive and
bright, making it an excellent place to search for signs of planets in
the process of formation. The researchers say their picture is one of
a proto-planet still embedded in its birth material.

Using the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in the US, the
researchers studied the system at emission wavelengths specifically
chosen to search for rocky particles about the size of pebbles. The
presence of these pebbles is a clue that rocky material is beginning
to clump together to form planets. In the UK, scientists used the
Merlin radio telescopes based on Jodrell Bank in Cheshire to study the
same system at longer wavelengths. This allowed them to confirm the
emissions were from rocks and not from other sources such as hot gas.

Research leader Dr Jane Greaves said the planet's growth may have been
kickstarted when another young star passed the system 1,600 years ago.
If the proto-planet is assumed to be the same age as the star it
orbits, this would be some one hundred times younger than the previous
record holder, which is confirmed to be 10 million years old.


_________CUP OF COFFEE A DAY KEEPS DEMENTIA AWAY_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7326839.stm

A study done by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation
suggests that coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the
damage cholesterol can inflict on the body. The drink has already been
linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease.

In experiments on rabbits conducted by the University of North Dakota,
just one daily cup of coffee can protect and strengthen a vital
barrier between the brain and the main blood supply. this "blood brain
barrier" is a filter which protects the central nervous system from
potentially harmful chemicals carried around in the rest of the
bloodstream. Other studies have shown that high levels of cholesterol
in the blood can make this barrier "leaky". Alzheimer's researchers
suggest this makes the brain vulnerable to damage which can trigger or
contribute to the condition.

In the experiments, after 12 weeks of a high-cholesterol diet, the
blood brain barrier in those rabbits given caffeine was far more
intact than in those given no caffeine. More research to be done to
determine whether the same effect could be seen in humans.


_________FASTEST COMPUTER CHIP ON EARTH________
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/BUBI10258F.DTL

IBM Corp. began shipping high-end computers built around the fastest
chip on Earth, a microprocessor that can carry out up to 5 billion
instructions per second, surpassing the speediest competing processors
built by rivals like Intel or Sun Microsystems. The new IBM processor,
called the Power6, was designed to run big-ticket, water-cooled
machines that drive corporations or tackle scientific problems, but
slower versions of this same family of chips are already being used in
inexpensive, consumer devices like the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox
and Sony PlayStation. Comparing clockspeeds, the
5-billion-instructions-per second Power6 processor from IBM would beat
such rivals as the 3.73 gigahertz Pentium Extreme and the 2.4
gigahertz UltraSparc T2 from Sun.

IBM Chief Technology Officer Bernard Meyerson makes an example to
explain how fast the Power6 is. In less time than it would take a beam
of light to travel from your knuckle to your fingertip, the new IBM
chip would complete one task and start looking for the next. Light
would presumably have to travel more than a finger's length to get
each task done on the slower processors from Intel and Sun - and at
billions-of-cycles per second, slow is a bit of a misnomer.


_________FLOWERS LESS FRAGRANT_________
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080411-pollution-flowers.html

Researchers at the University of Virginia completed a study suggesting
that flowers do not smell as sweet anymore, as pollutants from power
plants and automobiles destroy flowers' aromas. The scent molecules
produced by the flowers readily bond with pollutants such as ozone,
which destroys the aromas they produce. So instead of wafting for long
distances with the wind, the flowery scents are chemically altered.

According to the study, the scent molecules produced by flowers in a
less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for
roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today's
polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only
200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet]. With flowers no longer
advertising their presence over as large an area, pollinators are
forced to search farther and longer to pick up the hint of their
scent. They may also have to rely more on their sight than what they
smell. The finding could help explain why some pollinators,
particularly bees, are declining in places such as California and the
Netherlands.


_________SMALLEST TRANSISTOR IN THE WORLD_________
http://snipurl.com/28ktw

Researchers from the University of Manchester, UK, have created
transistors one atom thick and ten atoms wide. They were carved from
graphene, predicted by some to one day oust silicon as the basis of
future computing. Silicon cannot form stable structures below 10
nanometres in size, and today's newest chips already have features
just 45 nm across. Graphene, a material made from flat sheets of
carbon in a honeycomb arrangement is a leading contender. The UK team
have now used it to make some of the smallest transistors ever - only
1 nm across that contain just a few carbons rings.

Graphene's carbon-carbon bonds are among the strongest in nature, and
its honeycomb-like structure allows electrons to travel very rapidly.
At the nanometer scale, "quantum dots" of graphene trap electrons
thanks to quantum effects. Applying a magnetic field to the smallest
dots lets current flow again, making a switchable transistor. The
smallest dots that worked as transistors contained as few as five
carbon rings – around 10 atoms or 1nm wide. There are other kinds of
prototype transistors in this size range, but they usually need
supercooling using liquid gas. The new graphene devices work at room
temperature. Another advantage is that graphene transistors were made
in the same way that silicon devices are, by etching them out of
larger pieces of material.


_________HARD DRIVE WITH 256-BIT AES ENCRYPTION_________
http://snipurl.com/28kug

Fujitsu unveils its 2.5" 320GB hard disk drive with automatic
hardware-based encryption to effectively secure data against theft or
loss. According to Fujitsu, the MHZ2 CJ series is the first hard disk
drive in the world to support the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard
(AES). The drive implements the AES hardware encryption directly into
the processor chip of the hard disk drive, resulting in more robust
security and faster system performance than software-based encryption.
The built-in AES automatically encrypts all data when storing it on
the hard disk drive and decrypts the data when read. Unlike
software-based encryption, the key does not reside in the computer's
memory. This makes it more resistant to attack and imposes no
processing overhead on the CPU, optimizing system performance.

The MHZ2 CJ also comes with 7200-rpm rotational speed, and a 3.0 Gb/s
Serial ATA interface. The new series of drives for computers and
external storage devices will be available at the end of May 2008.


_________JAPAN STARTS INVASIVE BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACE RESEARCH_________
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/04/japan-cyborg-research-enters-the-skull/

Researchers at Osaka University are stepping up efforts to develop
robotic body parts controlled by thought, by placing electrode sheets
directly on the surface of the brain. This marks Japan's first foray
into invasive (i.e. requiring open-skull surgery) brain-machine
interface research on human test subjects. The aim of the research is
to develop real-time mind-controlled robotic limbs for the disabled.
Although brain waves can be measured from outside the scalp, a
stronger, more accurate signal can be obtained by placing sensors
directly on the brain — but that requires open-skull surgery, making
it more difficult to recruit volunteer test subjects.

The researchers, who have filed a license application with the Osaka
University Hospital ethics board, are working to enlist willing
subjects already scheduled to have brain electrodes implanted for the
purpose of monitoring epilepsy or other conditions. The procedure,
which does not involve puncturing the cortex, places an electrode
sheet at the central sulcus, a fold across the center of the brain
near the primary motor cortex (which is responsible for planning and
executing movements). To date, the researchers have worked with four
test subjects to record brain wave activity generated as they move
their arms, elbows and fingers. Working with Advanced
Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), the
researchers have developed a method for analyzing the brain waves to
determine the subject's intended activity to an accuracy of greater
than 80%. The next step is to use the data to control robot arms
developed by the University of Tokyo's Department of Precision
Engineering.


_________FASTEST AND CHEAPEST BROADBAND IN THE WORLD_________
http://snipurl.com/28kuk

Broadband over Powerline (BPL) provider Velchip Sdn Bhd has formalised
three major partnerships to advance the world's biggest BPL project
for 60 million users in Indonesia. BPL modems use existing electrical
power lines to deliver high speed Internet access and data transmission.

The first agreement was with investment firm Sarz Al Yahya
Corporation, which will inject project financing of US$14 billion.
Secondly, the company signed with US-based satellite infrastructure
provider STM Networks Inc. who will use five satellites to provide
communications services. Thirdly, a 100-year agreement was exchanged
with Nadhlatul Ulama Indonesia and Manhad Islam Hadhari, the
Indonesian clients responsible for the network of mosques that will be
converted during the BPL project.

According to the company's chief executive officer Suhaimi Abdul
Rahman, the US$14 billion "Smart Mosque" project will be rolled out
over three years in Indonesia and will link together 400,000 mosques
and serve 60 million users. This project will offer users unlimited
high speed Internet connection of 224Mbps (megabits per second) at a
cost of only around RM5 (US$1.58) per user per month, which is the
fastest and cheapest in the world.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * pizza.com domain name sold for US2.6m
  * ISPs have been using deep-packet inspection to spy on the
communications of more than 100,000 US customers
  * Mater Dei High School's entry at this year's Shell Eco-marathon
Americas traveled 2,843.4 miles on a single gallon of gasoline
  * Malaysian candidates for national youth posts required to have
blogs to introduce themselves and their programs
  * 92.3 percent of all email sent globally during the first three
months of 2008 was spam
  * The US will soon be collecting the DNA of anyone who is arrested by
a federal law enforcement agency and any foreigner who is detained
  * PETA offering $1 million to the "first person to come up with a
method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at
competitive prices by 2012"


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
GraphJam: Pop culture for people in cubicles
http://graphjam.com/

FireFTP - The Free FTP Client for Mozilla Firefox
http://fireftp.mozdev.org/

Picasa Help
http://picasa.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Gmail Help
http://mail.google.com/support/?fulldump=1


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If you can hear the ocean in a seashell, why is it that you can't hear
the forest in a pinecone?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.
~ Blaise Pascal ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Who made the foot twelve inches?

If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the
unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his
arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard"
foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
"How long have you been driving without a tail light?" asked the
policeman after pulling over a motorist.

The driver jumped out, ran to the rear of his car and gave a long,
painful groan and put his face in his hands.

He seemed so upset that the cop was moved to ease up on him a bit.

"Come on, now," he said, "you don't have to take it so hard. It isn't
that serious."

"It isn't?" cried the motorist. "Then you know what happened to my
boat and trailer?"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
AVG Free Anti-Virus 2008
http://free.grisoft.com/

iPod Gym Stretching Exercise Videos
http://somatotype.net/iPod_Gym/Stretches.html

Free Printable Paper
http://www.printablepaper.net/


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2008.04.05 Issue No. 199


Got rickrolled yet? Yes? Good for you. No? Don't worry, it's just a
matter of time. It's funny how an 80's icon like Rick Astley can get
resurrected now - for no apparent reason. Don't know what rickroll is?
It's like you're reading this article on The Guardian about Rick
Astley and how his hit song is being used against the Church of
Scientology. The article provides a link to an exclusive interview
with the artist. You click on it, and you get redirected to a YouTube
video of Rick Astley in all his 80's glory singing and dancing "Never
Gonna Give You Up".

Why the sudden resurgence 20 year after? It started at the 4chan.org
message board, where users would trick each other into watching a
video of a duck on wheels. In 2007, someone replaced this with a music
video of Rick Astley's song. And the rick-roll was born. The practice
of rick-rolling gained mainstream attention when masked members of the
anti-Scientology group Anonymous held up boomboxes outside Church of
Scientology centers in New York, Washington, London and Seattle and
chanted "Never gonna let you down!" During April Fools, YouTube
Australia rickrolled its own users. Clicking on any of the featured
videos actually displays you-know-what.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the
Scientologists about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 8-Terabit/sec Optical Transceiver
* Voiceless Speech
* Microchip Fan with No Moving Parts
* Apple Logo Makes You More Creative
* Super-Efficient Light Bulb
* Blue Light to Stay Awake
* Rubik's Cube Solution in 25 Moves
* Array-Based Memory
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________8-TERABIT/SEC OPTICAL TRANSCEIVER_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25514

IBM has developed a prototype chip that could transmit up to 8
terabit/sec of information -- equivalent to about 5,000
high-definition video streams -- using the power of a single 100-watt
lightbulb. The optically-enabled circuit boards, or "Optocards,"
employ an array of low-loss polymer optical waveguides to conduct
light between transmitters and receivers.

Big Blue was able to achieve this feat by incorporating a large number
of high-speed channels in these Optocards and packing them closely to
achieve huge densities. Each waveguide channel is smaller in size than
a human hair. In addition to the optical data bus, IBM said it
developed a parallel optical transceiver module with a higher number
of channels and an increased speed of operation: 24 transmitters and
24 receivers that each operate at 12.5 Gb/s. Compared to current
commercial optical modules the transceiver provides 10-fold greater
bandwidth in 1/10 the volume while consuming comparable power

The device was produced as part of an ongoing Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency program to speed up chip-to-chip
communications for supercomputers. These chips could also be used to
enable widespread high definition video sharing and video on-demand by
increasing the bandwidth of video servers. Physicians and researchers
could send large files such as MRIs and heart scans for real-time
analysis and 3-D visualization.


_________VOICELESS SPEECH_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8b  [technology_newscientist_com]

Ambient Corporation introduces the Audeo neckband, which can translate
thought into speech by picking up nerve signals. With careful training
a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a
sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed
wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a
computerised voice.

Users needn't worry about that the system voicing their inner
thoughts. Users must think specifically about voicing words for them
to be picked up by the equipment. At the moment, Audeo can recognise
only a limited set of about 150 words and phrases. At the end of the
year Ambient plans to release an improved version, without a
vocabulary limit. Instead of recognising whole words or phrases, it
should identify the individual phonemes that make up complete words.
This version will be slower, because users will need to build up what
they want to say one phoneme at a time, but it will let them say
whatever they want.


_________MICROCHIP FAN WITH NO MOVING PARTS________
http://itnews.com.au/News/72400,silent-microchip-fan-has-no-moving-parts.aspx

Researchers from Thorrn Micro Technologies with support from the US
National Science Foundation (NSF), has developed a microchip
solid-state fan, touted as the most powerful and energy efficient fan
of its size. The microchip fan has no moving parts, operates silently
and generates enough wind to cool a laptop computer. The device called
RDS5 produces three times the flow rate of a typical small mechanical
fan and is one-fourth the size.

RSD5 incorporates a series of live wires that generate a micro-scale
plasma (an ion-rich gas that has free electrons that conduct
electricity). The wires lie within uncharged conducting plates that
are contoured into half-cylindrical shapes to partially envelop the
wires. Within the intense electric field that results, ions push
neutral air molecules from the wire to the plate, generating a form of
corona wind.

The technology has the power to cool a 25W chip with a device smaller
than one cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make
self-cooling chips.


_________APPLE LOGO MAKES YOU MORE CREATIVE_________
http://www.physorg.com/news125073871.html

According to recent research from Duke University's Fuqua School of
Business and the University of Waterloo, Canada, even the briefest
exposure to well-known brands can cause people to behave in ways that
mirror those brands' traits.

The team conducted an experiment in which 341 university students
completed what they believed was a visual acuity task, during which
either the Apple or IBM logo was flashed so quickly that they were
unaware they had been exposed to the brand logo. The participants then
completed a task designed to evaluate how creative they were, listing
all of the uses for a brick that they could imagine beyond building a
wall. People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated
significantly more unusual and creative uses for the brick compared
with those who were primed with the IBM logo.

The team conducted a follow-up experiment using the Disney and E!
Channel brands, and found that participants primed with the Disney
Channel logo subsequently behaved much more honestly than those who
saw the E! Channel logos.


_________SUPER-EFFICIENT LIGHT BULB_________
http://news.zdnet.com/2422-13568_22-192842.html

A Silicon Valley-based company Luxim has developed a tiny,
full-spectrum light bulb that gives off as much light as a streetlight
while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb gives off light based
on a plasma of argon gas. It operates at temperatures up to 6000K and
produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard
incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new
bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours.


_________BLUE LIGHT TO STAY AWAKE_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8c  [technology_newscientist_com]

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, are testing
blue LEDs that shine light at particular wavelengths to reduce
accidents caused by drowsy drivers. It turns out that bathing night
drivers in the right light can convince the brain it is morning,
increasing their alertness by resetting their body clocks. Nearly 30%
of all fatal accidents involving large trucks in the US happen during
the hours of darkness, according to a recent report by the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Administration, while fatigue causes half of all
truck accidents in the early hours on UK motorways.

Car manufacturers already market systems to warn or wake drowsy
drivers. They use measures of eye movements, blink rates or small
steering-wheel movements to tell if a driver is losing alertness. But
preventing drowsiness in the first place would be more effective.
Scientists are planning experiments on a driving simulator using
different light spectra, of 450 and 470nm, and intensities of 2.5, 5
and 7.5 lux, to see which combination works best without obscuring the
driver's view of the road. An alternative is to build goggles with
blue LEDs for the driver to wear before setting off. Drivers could
take 30-minute "light showers" in truck stops fitted with similar
lights, or the lights could be fitted into truck cabs.


_________RUBIK'S CUBE SOLUTION IN 25 MOVES_________
http://arxivblog.com/?p=332

To be more precise, that's 25 moves or less.

Last year, a couple of fellas at Northeastern University with a bit of
spare time on their hands proved that any configuration of a Rubik's
cube could be solved in a maximum of 26 moves. Now Tomas Rokicki, a
Stanford-trained mathematician, has gone one better. He's shown that
there are no configurations that can be solved in 26 moves, thereby
lowering the limit to 25.

Rokicki's proof is a neat piece of computer science. He's used the
symmetry of the cube to study transformations of the cube in sets,
rather than as individual moves. This allows him to separate the "cube
space" into 2 billion sets each containing 20 billion elements. He
then shows that a large number of these sets are essentially
equivalent to other sets and so can be ignored. Even then, to crunch
through the remaining sets, he needed a workstation with 8GB of memory
and around 1500 hours of time on a Q6600 CPU running at 1.6GHz.

But Rokicki isn't finished there. He is already number-crunching his
way to a new bound of 24 moves, a task he thinks will take several CPU
months. And presumably after that, 23 beckons.


_________ARRAY-BASED COMPUTER MEMORY_________
http://snipurl.com/23j8f  [www_computerworld_com]

Fremont, Calif.-based Nanochip Inc. has developed a new kind of flash
memory technology with potentially greater capacity and durability,
lower power requirements, and the same design as flash NAND.

The capacity of current memory circuits is determined by lithography,
the ability to "print" to a smaller and smaller two-dimensional plane.
The limit is about 32 to 45 nanometers, which describes the smallest
possible width of a metal line on the circuit or the amount of space
between that line and the next line. Nanochip's technology doesn't
have that limitation as its array-based memory uses a grid of
microscopic probes to read and write to a storage material. The
storage area isn't defined by the lithography but by the movement of
the probes. If Nanochip can move the probes one-tenth the distance,
for example, then they can get 100 times the density with no change in
the lithography.

The company said its current generation of probes has a radius smaller
than 25nm, but it projects that eventually the probes could be shrunk
to two or three nanometers apiece. For a first generation, anticipated
in 2010, the company expects a small number of chips to be in excess
of 100GB, but a more realistic number is "tens of gigabytes" per
integrated circuit, a capacity comparable to the current generation of
flash devices.

Current memory chips increase their capacity by packing the
transistors tighter and tighter.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Want YouTube videos in high resolution? Just append &fmt=6 at the
end of the URL.
  * The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that
one in ten Americans are chronically sleep-deprived.
  * NASA running out of plutonium for future space missions as the US
hasn't produced plutonium since 1988.
  * The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe says the universe is 3.73
billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2%
error margin.
  * March 14 is Pi-Day. Why? Because it's 3.14 (MM/DD).



_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Google April Fool's Search
http://www.googleaprilfools.com/

Top 5 April Fool's Day Pranks You Can Build in the Office
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/workshop/4256362.html

Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
http://lifehacker.com/373817/top-10-harmless-geek-pranks

Rickroll Database
http://rickrolldb.com/
Wanna get rickrolled?


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do our heads itch when we think?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes.

~ Anonymous ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Does a snail have teeth?

Snails have teeth. They are arranged in rows along the snail's tongue
and are used like a file to saw or slice through the snail's foot.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A husband and wife were involved in a petty argument, both of them
unwilling to admit they might be in error.

"I'll admit I'm wrong," the wife told her husband in a conciliatory
attempt, "if you'll admit I'm right."

He agreed and, like a gentleman, insisted she go first.

"I'm wrong," she said.

With a twinkle in his eye, he responded, "You're right!"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Tiny USB Office
http://www.xtort.net/office-and-productivity/floppy-office/
Portable office in 2.5MB

PortableApps.com Suite
http://portableapps.com/suite


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.03.17 Issue No. 198


I have just about given up trying to educate my friends as to what is
scam/spam/chain emails and what is not. There's only so many times you
can explain why it's impossible for Ericsson to give away free phones
to everyone. There's no way AOL and Microsoft will be able to track
how many times you have forwarded a piece of email. And there's no
such thing as a virus that will crash your whole computer by
overwriting your boot sector. Frankly, my dear, CNN and McAfee don't
give a hoot even if such a virus exists.

Before, I used to write short dissertations as to why a particular
hoax email can't be true. Then, I started replying with a link to the
appropriate Snopes article. Nowadays, I simply delete the offending
emails. It's like fighting a losing battle. Given that the use of
email is now almost universal, I reckon its proper use, including
email etiquette, should be taught in schools.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the email newbies
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Self-Healing Rubber
* Cheap High-Speed GiFi Chip
* Robot Gas Attendant
* Unlimited Free Music Downloads to LG Mobiles
* Self-Cleaning Clothes
* Harvesting Energy from Clothes
* Speedcabling as a Sport
* Sperm from Bone Marrow
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________SELF-HEALING RUBBER_________
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13354

Polymer chemists at the Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher
Educational Institution (ESPCI) in Paris, France have developed a
self-healing rubber that binds back together after being snapped or
punctured. When the material melds together again, under gentle
compression at room temperature, it has just as much strength as it
had before. The material could eventually make it a cinch to repair
holes in shoes, snapped fan belts and punctured kitchen gloves. It
might also make strange new products possible, for instance bags that
can be ripped open and then resealed.

Regular rubber gets its strength from the fact that long chains of
polymer molecules are coupled, or "crosslinked," in three different
ways: through covalent, ionic, and hydrogen bonding between molecules.
Of these three bond types, only the hydrogen bonds can be remade once
a material is fractured, although normally there are not enough
hydrogen bonds for the rubber to re-couple in this way. The solution,
therefore, is to simply get rid of the ionic and covalent bonds, and
let only the hydrogen bonds perform the crosslinking. The material is
synthesised from fatty acids and urea, which are cheap and renewable.
The only downside is that the material is weaker than regular rubber.


_________CHEAP HIGH-SPEEP GIFI CHIP_________
http://snurl.com/21x75

After almost a decade of R&D, Professor Stan Skafidas and his team at
the Melbourne University-based laboratories of NICTA, the national
information and communications technology research centre, unveils the
"GiFi" chip. The tiny five-millimetre-a-side chip can transmit data
through a wireless connection at a breakthrough five gigabits per
second over distances of up to 10 metres, and is predicted to
revolutionise the way household gadgets like televisions, phones and
DVD players talk to each other. For example, an entire high-definition
movie from a video shop kiosk could be transmitted to a mobile phone
in a few seconds, and the phone could then upload the movie to a home
computer or screen at the same speed.

The team is the first to demonstrate a working transceiver-on-a-chip
that uses CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology -
the cheap, ubiquitous technique that prints silicon chips. The chip
uses only a tiny one-millimetre-wide antenna and less than two watts
of power, and would cost less than $10 to manufacture. It uses the
unoccupied 60GHz "millimetre wave" spectrum to transmit the data,
which gives it an advantage over WiFi (wireless internet).

The high-powered team included 10 PhDs students from the University of
Melbourne and collaborated with companies such as computer giant IBM
during the research.


_________ROBOT GAS ATTENDANT________
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL0448185920080204

After seeing a robot milking a cow, petrol station operator Nico van
Staveren had a eureka moment - why not get robots to fill a car tank?
No messy hands or smell of petrol anymore. So with the help of some
Dutch inventors, they recently unveiled a 75,000 euro (US$111,100)
car-fuelling robot called "Tankpitstop". The first of its kind, it
works by registering the car on arrival at the filling station and
matching it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types. A
robotic arm fitted with multiple sensors extends from a regular gas
pump, carefully opens the car's flap, unscrews the cap, picks up the
fuel nozzle and directs it towards the tank opening, much as a human
arm would, and as efficiently.

Nico van Staveren hopes to introduce the "Tankpitstop" robot in a
handful of Dutch stations by the end of the year. It works for any car
whose tank can be opened without a key, and whose contours and
dimensions have been recorded to avoid scratching.


_________UNLIMITED FREE MUSIC DOWNLOADS TO LG MOBILES_________
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/digitalmusic/0,39029432,49295528,00.htm?fullread

London-based Omnifone announced the launch of MusicStation Max -- a
worldwide mobile music download service that offers 'free' unlimited
downloads of music from the four major labels (Sony BMG, Universal,
EMI and Warner), directly to mobile phones over the air. In the UK,
Omnifone will offer a catalogue of 1.5 million tracks.

The service will launch in the first half of this year with handsets
manufactured by LG. Participating mobile networks will offer the
special MusicStation Max phones, and will offer service plans that
include an unlimited data plan to be used for music downloads. This
lets users download, listen to and store an unlimited number of tracks
from all four major music labels, on their mobile phone. Each
MusicStation Max phone comes with PC and Mac software that's connected
to the phone contract. Every time a song is downloaded to your phone,
the same song is downloaded to your computer for playback through your
PC speakers. It's DRMed, so no transferring to iPods, CDs or other
handsets. After the phone's contract is up, users can continue to play
songs downloaded to their handsets and computers already, or purchase
a new handset in order to continue accessing new music.


_________SELF-CLEANING CLOTHES_________
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/20306/

Researchers at Monash University, in Victoria, Australia, have found a
way to coat fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break
down food and dirt in sunlight. The researchers, led by organic
chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud, have made natural
fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove
food, grime, and even red-wine stains when exposed to sunlight.

Titanium dioxide, which is used in sunscreens, toothpaste, and paint,
is a strong photocatalyst: in the presence of ultraviolet light and
water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose,
organic matter. However, these nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and
are harmless to skin. Moreover, the coating does not change the look
and feel of the fabric. Titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens
such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell
walls of the microorganisms. This should make self-cleaning fabrics
especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings.

To make self-cleaning wool, Daoud and his colleagues use nanocrystals
of titanium dioxide that are four to five nanometers in size. The
researchers chemically modify the surface of wool fibers, adding
chemical groups called carboxylic groups, which strongly attract
titanium dioxide. Then they dip the fibers in a titanium dioxide
nanocrystal solution. In experiments involving red-wine stains,
Titanium-dioxide-coated wool shows almost no sign of the red stain
after 20 hours of exposure to simulated sunlight, while the untreated
wool remains boldly stained. Other stains disappear faster: coffee
stains fade away in two hours, while blue-ink stains disappear in
seventeen hours.

Daoud expects self-cleaning wools to be available in the market within
two years, once sufficient laboratory and industrial trials have been
completed.


_________HARVESTING ENERGY FROM CLOTHES_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7241040.stm

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed
novel brush-like fibres that generate electrical energy from movement.
Weaving them into a material could allow designers to create "smart"
clothes which harness body movement to power portable electronic
gadgets. The team says that the materials could also be used in tents
or other structures to harness wind energy.

The nano-generators, as the technology is known, consist of pairs of
fibres that look similar to tiny, bendable bottle-brushes. At the core
of each fibre is a Kevlar stalk. On the surface, nanowires made of
zinc oxide are grown in solution. One of the bristled fibres is also
dipped in gold to act as an electrode. When the pair is scrubbed
together they create a small amount of electrical energy. Experiments
with the prototypes showed that two 1cm-long fibres could generate a
current of four nanoamperes and an output voltage of about four
millivolts. The team is optimistic they can optimise the design we can
get up to 80 milliwatts per square metre of fabric - that could
potentially power an iPod.

The technology could also find a use in healthcare - powering tiny
medical devices like a true cochlear implant or heart pacemaker, or a
delivery mechanism for subcutaneous drug delivery implants or
antibiotic drug reservoirs for preventing infection in retinal implants.


_________SPEEDCABLING AS A SPORT_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7240939.stm

A new "sport" based around unraveling the mass of wires that can
typically be found beneath computer desks the world over is taking off
in the western US. The first "speedcabling" competition took place in
an art gallery in Los Angeles and was won by LA-based web developer
Matthew Howell.

The challenge was devised by IT professional Steven Schkolne. The idea
came to him two years ago when he started wondering if others shared
both his skill and his passion for detangling cables. Contestants are
faced with a tangled mass of six Ethernet cables of various lengths.
Their task is simply to separate them in the fastest time. To get them
to replicate the conditions of the wires found snaking and choking
their way around hard drive units, monitors and printers in offices
worldwide, Schkolne first started by tangling them in a figure eight.
Then he threw the bundles in a clothes dryer for three minutes - no
longer attached to any computer unit, naturally. After untangling the
Ethernet cables, the contestant is supposed to hold the full cable
above his head. Crucially, the cables also have to be able to carry a
network signal after detangling.

The prize? A $50 gift certificate for dinner at a local Italian
restaurant.


_________SPERM FROM BONE MARROW_________
http://snurl.com/21x76

British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm,
cutting men out of the process of creating life. The breakthrough
paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are
biologically their own. Gay men could follow suit by using the
technique to make eggs from male bone marrow.

According to New Scientist magazine, the researchers at Newcastle upon
Tyne University want to take stem cells from a woman donor's bone
marrow and transform them into sperm through the use of special
chemicals and vitamins. Newcastle professor Karim Nayernia has applied
for permission to carry out the work and is ready to start the
experiments within two months. The biologist, who pioneered the
technique with mice, believes early-stage 'female sperm' could be
produced inside two years. Mature sperm capable of fertilising eggs
might take three more years. Early-stage sperm have already been
produced from male bone marrow.

The team say their technique will help lead to new treatments for
infertility, a little understood condition that affects one in six
couples. Scientists warn, however, that the research is still in its
infancy and any treatment is still many years away from use in
hospitals and clinics. There are also fears that children born from
artificial eggs and sperm will suffer severe health problems, like the
mice in the Newcastle experiments. Couples who have children from
artificial sperm created from women would be able to have girls only.
This is because the female sperm would lack the Y-chromosome needed
for boys. Critics also warn that it sidelines men and raises the
prospect of babies being born through entirely artificial means.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Alcatel-Lucent researchers have recorded an optical transmission
record of 16.4 Tbps over 2,550 km in Villarceaux, France
  * Tiny Alaskan village of Kivalina is suing a multitude of oil, power
and coal companies for contributing to global warming
  * Canon plans to embed photographs with the user's iris metadata for
copyright protection
  * Batteries using QuantumSphere's nanoparticle technology will have
5x more energy density and 3x more power than alkaline cells


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
lrcDB
http://lrcdb.org/

vozMe
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en
Text to mp3

Google Reader Mobile
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/05/google-reader-mobile.html

net2ftp
http://www.net2ftp.com/
A web-based FTP client


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Today I received an issue of Time Magazine dated next week! Have the
publishers of Time finally invented a form of "Time Travel"?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is
essential to your own.
~ Robert Heinlein ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Which company was first in Silicon Valley?

The first "technology" corporation to move into California's Silicon
Valley was Hewlett-Packard, in 1938. Stanford University engineers
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their company in a Palo Alto
garage with $1,538. Their first product was an audio oscillator bought
by Walt Disney Studios for use in the making of Fantasia.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
The Washington Post had a contest wherein participants were asked to
tell the younger generation how much harder they had it "in the old days."
In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In winter,
we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.
In my day, we didn't have rocks. We had to go down to the creek and
wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.
In my day, we didn't have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition
on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated.
Back in my day, they hadn't invented electricity. We had to watch
television by candlelight.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
TipCamp
http://www.utipu.com/app/
Freeware screen recorder

KB Piano
http://gfsoftware.com/kbp_information.html
Virtual piano

Excel Password Remover 98
http://www.straxx.com/excel/password.html



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.02.23 Issue No. 197


Satellite navigation is one of those enabling technologies where once
you've tried it, you wonder how you ever survived without it. Then
again, something has to be said about technology that works so well
that people forego their decision-making abilities in favour of this
navigational aid. We've all heard about the woman who drove along the
railroad tracks for miles until she saw an oncoming train, forcing her
off the tracks. Then, there's this family on vacation who almost made
a right turn down a mountain cliff because the GPS unit told them to.
You hear these stories, and you think those people are newbies; won't
happen to an experienced driver like me.

The thing with GPS is that it simplifies things, makes navigation too
easy. Regardless of how many wrong turns you make, in the end, you
know it'll get you to your destination. This assurance lulls you into
complacency and you start the see the world as a series of lefts and
rights, just like the ones on the GPS screen. Road signs like "No
right turn" or "Left turn only" or "Wrong way, go back" don't register
in your mind because all you're waiting for is for the GPS unit to
tell you what to do next.

Just the other day, on my way to Woolloomooloo, I followed a left turn
that is supposed to bring me to The Wharf. Instead, it led me straight
to an expressway tunnel. Worse, I was on the wrong lane, so I missed
my exit. By the time I got out, I was already at the Supa Centa, and
it's another half hour before I got to my destination.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the satnav
companies about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* World's Most Powerful Rail Gun
* Chinese Weathermen Stops Rain From Falling
* Origami Plane To Launch From Space
* Darkest Man-Made Material Ever
* Japanese Cyborg Farmers
* Edible Antifreeze For Better Ice Cream
* Video Ads On Grocery Carts
* Ethanol For $1 A Gallon
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL RAIL GUN_________
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,160195,00.html

BAE Systems has recently delivered a functional, 32-megajoule
Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun (32-MJ LRG) to the U.S. Naval
Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. Installation of the laboratory
launcher is currently under way, and according to BAE, this is the
first step toward the Navy's goal of developing a tactical
64-megajoule ship-mounted weapon. At 32 megajoules, this new system
appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built - firing rounds at
up to Mach 8, and the Office of Naval Research is installing
additional capacitors at the Dahlgren facility to support it. The
planned 64-megajoule weapon, if it's ever built, could require even
more power -- a staggering 6 million amps.

While the 32-MJ LRG should start firing soon, it could take another 13
years for a 64-megajoule system to be built and deployed on a ship.
The Marines, in particular, are interested in the potential for rail
guns to deliver supporting fire from up to 220 miles away -- around 10
times further than standard ship-mounted cannons -- with rounds
landing more quickly and with less advance warning than a volley of
Tomahawk cruise missiles.


_________CHINESE WEATHERMEN STOPS RAIN FROM FALLING_________
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23136575-5005940,00.html

With no roof on the showpiece Olympic stadium called the Bird's Nest,
the Beijing Meteorological Bureau has been charged with developing
methods of preventing wet weather spoiling what promises to be a
spectacular start to the Beijing Olympic Games on the evening of
August 8. Zhang Qian, head of weather manipulation at the bureau,
believes his guys can do the job. They say they have stopped light
rain from falling in experiments. For cold clouds below zero degrees,
liquid nitrogen is used as a coolant to increase the number of
droplets while decreasing their mean size. As a result, the smaller
droplets are less likely to fall and precipitation can be reduced. For
clouds above zero degrees, the seeing agent silver iodide is used to
accelerate the droplets' collision and coalescence, producing a
downdraft which suppresses the formation of clouds.

The weather bureau is also working hard on preparing for one of the
pre-Games highlights, the ascent of the Olympic torch to the top of
Mount Everest.


_________ORIGAMI PLANE TO LAUNCH FROM SPACE________
http://snipurl.com/207tl

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have teamed up with members
of the Japan Origami Airplane Association to develop a paper aircraft
capable of surviving the flight from the International Space Station
to the Earth's surface.

The researchers have designed an 8-cm prototype origami glider, shaped
like the Space Shuttle, and plan to test its strength and heat
resistance in an ultra-high-speed wind tunnel at the University of
Tokyo's Okashiwa campus (Chiba prefecture). In the tests, it will be
subjected to wind speeds of Mach 7, or about 8,600 kilometers (5,300
miles) per hour. No launch date has been set for the paper spaceplane.
According to the researchers, the origami aircraft is not expected to
burn up on re-entry.


_________DARKEST MAN-MADE MATERIAL EVER_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7190107.stm

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York,
have created the "darkest ever" substance known to science. The
material was created from carbon nanotubes - sheets of carbon just one
atom thick rolled up into cylinders. Researchers say it is the closest
thing yet to the ideal black material, which absorbs light perfectly
at all angles and over all wavelengths. The discovery is expected to
have applications in the fields of electronics and solar energy.

Theory suggests that nanotubes might make a super black object, and
experts are just starting to test these predictions. Experiments
showed that this "forest" of carbon nanotubes was very good at
absorbing light, and very poor at reflecting it. Such technology could
help in producing more efficient solar cells, more efficient solar
panels and any application where you need to harvest light.


_________JAPANESE CYBORG FARMERS_________
http://robots.net/article/2442.html

Researchers at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
graduate school, with support from the Japan Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fisheries, have developed an exoskeleton for farmers.
The idea is to assist the aging Japanese farmers in their daily
routine by giving them greater strength to complete their work, much
of which is manual labor.

The new power-assist robotic suit includes 8 motors on its rigid ABS
resin frame structure, along with various sensors and wireless
networking gear, and weighs 18 kg (just under 40 pounds), yet carries
most of its own weight and places a minimum load on the operator. For
now, the team is working to improve the suit power supplies and
controls to increase operating range, portability, and time. Active
field tests performing actual farming tasks while measuring operator
efficiency and degree of fatigue are planned. They expect the new
robot suit to be in use by 2012, both for agricultural and other
similar operations. The mass-produced version of the suit is expected
to weigh in at 8 kilograms and cost about 200,000 yen.


_________EDIBLE ANTIFREEZE FOR BETTER ICE CREAM_________
http://snipurl.com/207to

Food chemist Srinivasan Damodaran at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, US, is experimenting with edible antifreeze made
from gelatin that could keep ice cream tasty and smooth, and prevent
other frozen foods from being ruined.

The taste of good ice cream depends on a blend of flavour,
temperature, and texture – what food scientists call "mouth feel". The
formation of tiny ice crystals, each around 15 to 20 microns wide, is
crucial to making smooth ice cream. But if ice cream is subjected to
sudden temperature fluctuation – when transported home from the store,
for example – these crystals can grow to 40 microns or larger, as
water melts and refreezes. This can ruin the texture of good ice
cream, making it gritty to eat. It can also damage frozen soft fruits.

Damodaran's antifreeze is made by partly digesting gelatin using an
enzyme found in papaya, called papain. The antifreeze contains
proteins similar to those that help "snow flea" insects survive winter
without freezing solid. By adding this special gelatine into ice
cream, it prevented ice crystals from forming. Damodaran admits it'll
be years before ice cream with edible antifreeze reaches the market.


_________VIDEO ADS ON GROCERY CARTS_________
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080114/D8U5LR780.html

Microsoft is bringing digital advertising to the grocery cart. The
software maker spent four years working with Plano, Texas-based
MediaCart Holdings Inc. on a grocery cart-mounted console that helps
shoppers find products in the store, then scan and pay for their items
without waiting in the checkout line. Starting in the second half of
2008, the companies plan to test MediaCart in Wakefern Food Corp.'s
ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast. Customers with a ShopRite
loyalty card will be able to log into a Web site at home and type in
their grocery lists; when they get to the store and swipe their card
on the MediaCart console, the list will appear. As shoppers scan their
items and place them in their cart, the console gives a running price
tally and checks items off the shopping list.

Aside from that, the system also uses radio-frequency identification
to sense where the shopper's cart is in the store. The RFID data can
help ShopRite and food makers understand shopping patterns, and the
technology can also be used to send certain advertisements to people
at certain points - an ad for 50 cents off Oreos, for example, when a
shopper enters the cookie aisle. Microsoft said it is still working on
how it will present commercials and coupons. In return, advertisers
will get more feedback about which commercials or coupon offers are
effective, because customers either buy the products or accept the
offers on the spot, or they don't.


_________ETHANOL FOR $1 A GALLON_________
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

Illinois biofuel startup Coskata, which is backed by General Motors
and other investors, can make ethanol from just about anything organic
for less than $1 per gallon, and it wouldn't interfere with food
supplies. Its technology uses bacteria to convert almost any organic
material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal
trash, into ethanol.

Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any
organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide
and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical
catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor
containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard
Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process
yields 99.7 percent pure ethanol. The process generates more ethanol
per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less
water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say,
two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a
gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to
produce.

The company plans to have its first commercial-scale plant producing
up to 100 million gallons of ethanol a year by 2011.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Engineered mosquitoes could wipe out dengue fever by causing
newly-born mosquitoes to die before they are able to breed
  * Open-source browser Mozilla celebrates 10th birthday on January 23,
2008
  * Three high-school sophomores in Racine, Wisconsin discovered an
asteroid using a telescope in New Mexico they controlled over the Net
  * Silicon nanowires increasy lithium-ion battery life tenfold
  * US Food and Drug Administration has declared that meat from cloned
animals is safe to eat - no special labeling necessary


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Whatatop - Vote top pictures, submit yours, check their ranking
http://english.whatatop.com/

PizzaTorrent
http://pizzatorrent.com/
Like YouTorrent, but better

F-Secure Health Check
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/onlineservices/fshc.shtml

10 Handy Numbers to Store in Your Mobile Phone
http://www.marcandangel.com/2008/02/13/10-handy-numbers-to-save-in-your-mobile-p\
hone/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
One nostril is almost always easier to breathe through than the other,
and it switches every few hours. Why does that happen?
(No joke.)


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a
human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished
work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why"
for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."
~ Viktor Frankl ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What does it mean "to take pot luck"?

"To take pot luck" means to take whatever is available by chance,
rather than choosing yourself. In the Middle Ages, leftovers were
often thrown into a big pot each day and when you were offered dinner
from the pot, it really was a matter of luck what was in there!
Nowadays, when people are invited to a "potluck dinner," it means
everyone is expected to bring something for everyone else to share. At
least it's not all mixed into one stew.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband. Suddenly
her husband burst into the kitchen. "Careful... CAREFUL! Put in some
more butter! Oh my GOD! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY!
Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my GOD! WHERE are we
going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK! Careful...CAREFUL! I
said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never!
Turn them! Hurry up! Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't
forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the
salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!"

The wife stared at him. "What the hell is wrong with you? You think I
don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"

The husband calmly replied, "I wanted to show you what it feels like
to have you sitting next to me when I'm driving."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
JukeFly
http://www.jukefly.com/
Streams music from your home computer to any browser

TomTom Home
http://www.tomtom.com/plus/service.php?ID=17


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.01.14 Issue No. 196


If you're the paranoid type and are concerned that your Gmail account
will one day disappear or become inaccessible, here's how to back it
up. Basically, you have your main account, and you simply sign up with
Gmail for another account to act as your backup. On the primary
account, under Settings, enable POP for all mail. Select the option to
"Keep Gmail's copy in the inbox when messages are accessed with POP".
On the backup account, also under Settings, configure Gmail to fetch
mail (via POP) from your primary account. Normally, the logical thing
is to leave the original emails on the server. However, this doesn't
work properly, and Gmail comes up with an error message. Just stick
with the default options - the backup account will fetch mails from
the primary one and try to delete them, but the primary account won't
allow the deletion anyway. This is how I've configured my setup, and I
haven't lost any emails so far.

Step 2, under Settings - Accounts of the backup account, add your
primary identity from where to "Send mail as", so that you can still
reply to emails if your primary email account is lost. Also, if you're
using Google's Blogger service, you might want to add your backup
identity as an author and give it admin rights (under Settings -
Permissions), so you can still edit your blog if you lose your primary
account.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Google fans
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Toshiba Builds Micro Nuclear Reactors
* Self-Charging Spy Planes
* Robots on Water
* Chemical Lasers on Planes
* Toshiba Develops Super-Charge Batteries
* Chimps Better than College Kids
* Flirting Bots on the Internet
* Human Evolution Accelerating
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________TOSHIBA BUILDS MICRO NUCLEAR REACTORS_________
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17\
b.html

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro-size nuclear reactors that
is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks.
The new reactor, which measures only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change
everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a
group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want
more control over their energy needs.

The 200kW Toshiba reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally
automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors,
the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction.
Instead, it uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is
effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are
connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The
whole process is self-sustaining and can last for up to 40 years,
producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half
the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to
begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.


_________SELF-CHARGING SPY PLANES_________
http://snipurl.com/1xct5

The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio is developing an
electric-powered micro air vehicle (MAV) for extended surveillance
missions. To extend the plane's limited flight duration, the AFRL has
this idea of making these spy planes "harvest" energy when needed by
attaching itself to a power line. The trick is to make these
remote-controlled MAVs flying at 74kph to latch onto a power line
without destroying itself or the line.

In addition, so as not to arouse suspicion, AFRL says the spy plane
will need to collapse its wings and hang limply on the cable like a
piece of wind-blown detritus. Much of the "morphing" technology to
perform this has already been developed by DARPA, the Pentagon's
research division. Technologies developed in that program include
carbon composite "sliding skins", which allow fuselages to change
shape, and telescopic wings that allow lift to be boosted in seconds
by boosting a wing's surface area.

Regardless of the challenges faced, AFRL plans test flights in 2008.


_________ROBOTS ON WATER________
http://snipurl.com/1xct7

Scientists have discovered years ago that water striders are able to
walk on water by using its long legs to help evenly distribute its
tiny body weight. This way the fragile skin formed by surface tension
supports the bug on the water. What's unknown is how water striders
are able to jump onto water without sinking, until now.

A team of researchers at Seoul National University, led by Ho-Young
Kim and Duck-Gyu Lee, has finally cracked that puzzle. By using a
highly water-repellent sphere, which mimicked the actions of the water
strider's highly water-repellent legs, they were able to determine a
small range of speeds at which the sphere or insect could hit the
water and not sink. Too fast, the sphere would shoot through the
surface of the water. Too slow, it would not bounce back and sink.

The Korean scientists believe their discovery will help create robots
that can travel over still bodies of water. They say the robots can be
used to explore or monitor water quality. Also they could, and it's
highly likely that they will, be used as a form of spy robot.


_________CHEMICAL LASERS ON PLANES_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22975

Boeing recently installed a 12,000-pound chemical laser in a C-130H
aircraft and will now test the weapon, which will fire through a
rotating turret that extends through the aircraft's belly. Boeing's
Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) which is being developed for the
Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with
little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield
and in urban operations.

The ATL is complementary to the Airborne Laser (ABL), which Boeing is
developing for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to destroy airborne
ballistic missiles. The ABL consists of a megawatt-class chemical
laser mounted on a Boeing 747-400 freighter aircraft. According to
Boeing, the C-130H transport, which belongs to the U.S. Air Force's
46th Test Wing, will be modified to carry the high-energy chemical
laser and battle management and beam control subsystems.

Both systems employ a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) that is made
by combining a bunch of nasty chemicals - potassium, peroxide,
chlorine, iodine and other stuff and then fired at supersonic speeds.
Each COIL burst produces enough energy in a five-second burst to power
a typical American household for more than one hour. The system
doesn't so much evaporate its target as melts or damages it rendering
it useless. In the case of using it against missiles, the missile is
typically weakened and then explodes.


_________TOSHIBA DEVELOPS SUPER-CHARGE BATTERIES_________
http://www.dailytech.com/Toshiba+to+Launch+SCiB+Batteries+in+March/article9984c.\
htm

Toshiba announced that it has developed a new type of rechargeable
battery dubbed the Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB). Initially targeted
at the industrial market, Toshiba representatives hint the technology
may eventually find a home in electric vehicles.

The main claim to fame for the SCiB battery is that it can recharge to
90% of total capacity in fewer than five minutes. Toshiba also claims
the battery has a life span of over 10-years. Toshiba says that it
adopted a new negative electrode material, new separators, a new
electrolyte and new manufacturing technology to bring the SCiB to
life. The SCiB batteries can recharge with as much as 50 amperes of
current and but with capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of less than
10%. Toshiba also says the battery has excellent safety with the new
negative electrode material having a high level of thermal stability
and a high flash point. The battery is also said to be structurally
resistant to internal short-circuiting and thermal runaway.

The first of these batteries will be ready for industrial uses in
March of 2008.


_________CHIMPS BETTER THAN COLLEGE KIDS_________
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/03/chimp.memory.ap/

Turns out chimpanzees are better than human adults in tests of
short-term memory. The series of tests were conducted by researchers
Tetsuro Matsuzawa and Sana Inoue of Tokyo University.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the
order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.
They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they
touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares.
The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers
that used to be there. Results showed that the chimps, while no more
accurate than the people, could do this faster. Researchers included
the best-performing chimp Ayumu and nine college students in a second
test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they
were replaced by white squares. When the numbers were displayed for
about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were
both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time. But when
the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a
second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too
short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu
still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.
Even with six months of training, three students failed to catch up to
the three young chimps.

Researchers think two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing,
they believe human ancestors gave up much of this skill over
evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language
abilities. The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The
memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found
in children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps
performed better than older chimps in the new study. So the next
logical step is to fix up Ayumu with some real competition on these
tests: little kids.


_________FLIRTING BOTS ON THE INTERNET_________
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9831133-56.html

A word of caution for people who frequent online dating chat rooms.
According to security software firm PC Tools, a program called
CyberLover that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal
information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the
rounds in Russian chat forums.

The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good
enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a
real potential suitor. The software can work quickly too, establishing
up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes. It then compiles a report on
every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.

Among CyberLover's creepy features is its ability to offer a range of
different profiles from "romantic lover" to "sexual predator." It can
also lead victims to a "personal" Web site, which could be used to
deliver malware. Although the program is currently targeting Russian
Web sites, PC Tools is urging people in chat rooms and social networks
elsewhere to be on the alert for such attacks. Their recommendations
amount to just good sense in general, such as avoiding giving out
personal information and using an alias when chatting online. The
software company believes that CyberLover's creators plan to make it
available worldwide in February.


_________HUMAN EVOLUTION ACCELERATING_________
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1043228620071210

Researchers discovered that human evolution has been moving at
breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding
along as some scientists had thought. In fact, people today are
genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than
those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000
years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of
Wisconsin.

Many of the recent genetic changes reflect differences in the human
diet brought on by agriculture, as well as resistance to epidemic
diseases that became mass killers following the growth of human
civilizations. For example, Africans have new genes providing
resistance to malaria. In Europeans, there is a gene that makes them
better able to digest milk as adults. In Asians, there is a gene that
makes ear wax more dry.

The changes have been driven by the colossal growth in the human
population -- from a few million to 6.5 billion in the past 10,000
years -- with people moving into new environments to which they needed
to adapt.

Looking at data from the International HapMap Project, short for
haplotype mapping, scientists can ascertain how recently a given
genetic change appeared in the genome and then can plot the pace of
such change into the distant past. Beneficial genetic changes have
appeared at a rate roughly 100 times higher in the past 5,000 years
than at any previous period of human evolution, the researchers
determined. They added that about 7 percent of human genes are
undergoing rapid, relatively recent evolution. Even with these
changes, however, human DNA remains more than 99 percent identical.
Genetic evidence also shows that people worldwide have been getting
less similar rather than more similar due to the relatively recent
genetic changes.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * 'w00t' been named Word of the Year 2007 by Merriam-Webster
  * Analysis of data from the Cassini probe suggests that Saturn's
rings may be billions of years old
  * MTV to cut down on P2P piracy by offering free South Park downloads
  * Toyota demonstrates a 152 cm (5 ft), two-legged robot dexterous
enough to play the violin
  * Now 24 years old, the US analog cellular network is scheduled to
shut down on Feb. 18, 2008


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Christmas Wonders 2007 Videos
http://christmaswonders.com/2007_Videos.html

ASCII Generator
http://www.network-science.de/ascii/

Top 40+ GIMP Plugins
http://www.techzilo.com/gimp-plugins/

Notpron - The Hardest Riddle Available on the Internet
http://www.deathball.net/notpron/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If Atlas is holding the world on his shoulders, what on the world is
he standing on?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes
you a pianist.

~ Michael Levine ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What was Sleeping Beauty's name?

Sleeping Beauty's name was Princess Aurora. The prince who woke her
with a kiss was Prince Philip.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Four insurance companies are in competition. One comes up with the
slogan, "Coverage from the cradle to the grave."

The second one tries to improve on that with "Coverage from the womb
to the tomb."

Not to be outdone, the third one comes up with "From the sperm to the
worm."

The fourth insurance company really thought hard and almost gave up
the race, but finally came up with "From the erection to the
resurrection."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
ASCII Generator dotNET
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133786

HFS - HTTP File Server
http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/

Blogger Backup
http://www.codeplex.com/bloggerbackup



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.12.14 Issue No. 195


Just the other day I was asking my Finnish instructor where the
nearest Nokia Shop is. He asked if I was shopping for a Vertu. Yeah,
right. I told him that when Vertu first came out, you could buy easily
Vertu fakes in the shops. Better yet, instead of buying a Vertu (real
or fake), just swipe that Vertu demo unit from the Nokia Shop. Install
a ringer and pretend to make calls on it. Anyway, my instructor tells
me that's exactly what happened in their town. It was many, many years
ago; Nokia wasn't even making mobiles yet. There's this guy in their
town who had a cellular phone. So he was inside the town shop chatting
away loudly. Suddenly an old lady had a heart attack, so everybody was
pleading with him to call 911 (or whatever emergency number they use).
He was stunned for a while, then admitted that his mobile was not
actually working. He was so embarrassed he didn't show up in any of
the public places for a year, and did all his groceries in the next town.

Ah, honest Finns. If I were him, I would've claimed that the mobile
ran out of battery, and rush home to charge it. :-)

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Finns about
it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* MIT's Stackable Cars
* Single Carbon Nanotube Radio
* CSIRO's Electrical Shirt
* Kids Treat Robot as a Peer
* Hidden Music in Last Supper
* 3D Models from Vacation Photos
* Japan's Melody Roads
* Laser Link of 1.5 Million Kilometers
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________MIT'S STACKABLE CARS_________
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/110807-mit-reinvents-the-wheel-with.html

Researchers from MIT are working on a design project for the City Car
- a foldable, stackable two-seater vehicle. The frame of the car is
designed to fold in half so the cars can be stacked up eight deep in
one city parking space. In MIT's vision, people would find a stack of
electrical-powered City Cars on nearly every block in the city. When a
user would want to drive somewhere in town, he would swipe a smart
card or cell phone across an electronic reader and take a car out of
the stack. When he gets to a business meeting across town, a shopping
mall or their doctor's office, the driver simply leaves the car in a
stack at his destination. The drivers don't own the cars. They simply
rent them. It's fully self-service. The next person takes a car out of
the stack, and off he goes.

The two-seater is designed to weigh 1,000 to 1,500 pounds. It's
expected to cruise at average city speed limits and may even be
capable of topping 100 miles per hour. One of the more interesting
aspects of the design is that electric motors will be built into each
wheel, along with mechanisms for steering, braking and the suspension.
The car has four of these wheels, and that's what drives the vehicle
forward. The car doesn't have an engine. There are no gears. No
transmission. Having so much of the technology in the robotic wheels
frees up a lot of space throughout the rest of the vehicle, allowing
the team to make it collapsible. While the vehicles are in the stack,
waiting to be rented out, their lithium-ion batteries would be
charging off the city's power grid. But the project is designed to
give power back to the city, too. Solar panels erected on nearby
buildings would feed energy into the charging stations and when the
cars' batteries were full, the excess power would flow into the city's
grid.

The City Car team is in the process of having a prototype of the
vehicle built.


_________SINGLE CARBON NANOTUBE RADIO_________
http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110566

A research team from the University of California at Berkeley has
crafted a working radio from a single fiber of carbon nanotube. Fixed
between two electrodes, the vibrating tube successfully performed the
four critical roles of a radio--antenna, tunable filter, amplifier and
demodulator--to tune in a radio signal generated in the room and play
it back through an attached speaker. Functional across a bandwidth
widely used for commercial radio, the tiny device could have
applications far beyond novelty, from radio-controlled devices that
could flow in the human bloodstream to highly efficient, miniscule,
cell phone devices.

The new device works in a manner more similar to the vacuum tubes from
the 1930s than the transistors found in modern radios. In the new
radio, a single carbon fiber a few hundred nanometers (billionths of a
meter) long, and only a few molecules thick, stands glued to a
negatively charged base of tungsten that acts as a cathode. Roughly
one millionth of a meter directly across from the base lies a
positively charged piece of copper that acts as an anode. Power in the
form of streaming electrons travels from an attached battery through
the cathode, into the nanotube, and across a vacuum to the anode via a
field-emission tunneling process. The stream of electrons along the
nanotube changes when a radio wave encoded with information--simply a
wave of photons that travels in a controlled manner--washes across the
tube and causes it to resonate. This mechanical action is what
amplifies and demodulates, or decodes, the radio signal. The
researchers fine-tune the nanoradio to a frequency, akin to a channel,
by using the electrostatic field between the cathode and anode to
tighten or loosen the nanotube.


_________CSIRO'S ELECTRICAL SHIRT________
http://snipurl.com/1v8qx

CSIRO is receiving $4.4 million worth of funding from the Australian
Defence Department for research into designing clothing which can be
used as a self-recharging electrical source on the battlefield.

Called Flexible Integrated Energy Device (FIED), the electrical shirt
will resemble ordinary garments, and will be used to store and provide
energy over a continuous period of time. It can be charged by either
vibration energy harvesting or through plugging into an electrical
power point. The technology would be unobtrusively incorporated into a
piece of clothing with three components: advanced conductive fabrics
that form the battery, a vibration energy harvesting device and a
rechargeable battery with low flammability and toxicity.

The Defence Department is hoping that once the technology is proven,
it will be used on the battlefield to eliminate the cumbersome and
wasteful batteries that soldiers must carry around to fuel a host of
devices including communications equipment, imaging devices and small
computing equipment. Aside from military applications, CSIRO is
looking to position the FIED as a consumer and sports product where it
could be integrated into garments and used to power heart-rate
monitors, iPods, and even mobile phones or PDAs.


_________KIDS TREAT ROBOT AS A PEER_________
http://snipurl.com/1v8r2

An experiment led by Javier Movellan at the University of California
San Diego, US shows that a giggling robot is sophisticated enough to
get toddlers to treat it as a peer.

In the first long-term study of interaction between toddlers and
robots, researchers stationed Sony's 2-foot-tall QRIO (pronounced
"curio") robot in a classroom of a dozen toddlers aged between 18
months and two years. QRIO stayed in the middle of the room using its
sensors to avoid bumping the kids or the walls. It was initially
programmed to giggle when the kids touched its head, to occasionally
sit down, and to lie down when its batteries died. A human operator
could also make the robot turn its gaze towards a child or wave as
they went away. The researchers then measured the bond between the
children and the robot. Firstly, as with other toddlers, they touched
QRIO mostly on the arms and hands, rather than on the face or legs.
The children also treated QRIO with more care and attention than a
similar-looking but inanimate robot that the researchers called Robby.
Eventually, the children seemed to care about the robot's well being.
They helped it up when it fell, and played "care-taking" games with it
– most commonly, when QRIO's batteries ran out of juice and it lay
down, a toddler would come up and cover it with a blanket and say
"night, night".

One of the problems with past robots was that people quickly got bored
of them. Since QRIO was able to hold children's interest, this study
opens the possibility of robots for classroom applications or for
helping autistic children.


_________HIDDEN MUSIC IN LAST SUPPER_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7088600.stm

Giovanni Maria Pala claimed to have cracked a real Da Vinci code, by
finding musical notes encoded in the masterpiece The Last Supper. The
15th century painting depicts Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles
before his arrest and crucifixion.

According to Mr. Pala's book La Musica Celata (The Hidden Music), each
loaf of bread in the picture represents a note. By drawing the five
lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on
the table and the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent
a musical note. The notes make sense musically when the resulting
score is read from right to left, following Da Vinci's own writing
style. The result is a 40-second "hymn to God" which Mr. Pala
described as "like a soundtrack that emphasises the passion of Jesus".

Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Tuscany's Da Vinci museum, said the
theory was "plausible", though he warns about "a risk of seeing
something that is not there".


_________3D MODELS FROM VACATION PHOTOS_________
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=37724

Researchers at the University of Washington are downloading thousands
of photos from Flickr and using them to recreate 3D models of world
landmarks. Their long-term goal is to be able to reconstruct the
detailed geometry of all the structures on the surface of the Earth.

But the freely available photos do present a challenge: these are
holiday snapshots and personal photos, not laboratory-quality research
images. While some may be postcard-perfect representations of a
setting, others may be dark, blurry or have people covering up most of
the scene. To make the 3D digital model, the researchers first
download photos of a landmark. For instance, they might download the
roughly 60,000 pictures on Flickr that are tagged with the words
"Statue of Liberty." The computer finds photos that it will be able to
use in the reconstruction and discards pictures that are of low
quality or have obstructions. Photo Tourism, a tool developed at the
UW, then calculates where each person was standing when he or she took
the photo. By comparing two photos of the same object that were taken
from slightly different perspectives, the software applies principles
of computer vision to figure out the distance to each point.

In tests, a computer took less than two hours to make a 3D
reconstruction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, using 151 photos taken
by 50 different photographers. A reconstruction of Notre Dame
Cathedral used 206 images taken by 92 people. All the calculations and
image sorting were performed automatically.


_________JAPAN'S MELODY ROADS_________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2209957,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=\
technology

A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a
number of "melody roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music
as they travel. The concept works by using grooves, which are cut at
very specific intervals in the road surface. Just as travelling over
small speed bumps or road markings can emit a rumbling tone throughout
a vehicle, the melody road uses the spaces between to create different
notes. According to reports, the system was the brainchild of Shizuo
Shinoda, who accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a
bulldozer before driving over them and realising that they helped to
produce a variety of tones.

There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan - one of
which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Notice of an impending
musical interlude, which lasts for about 30 seconds, is highlighted by
coloured musical notes painted on to the road. Based on motorist
feedback, the optimal speed for achieving melody road playback is
28mph. Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while
driving around 12mph has a slow-motion effect, making you almost carsick.


_________LASER LINK OF 1.5 MILLION KILOMETERS_________
http://www.oerlikon.com/ecomaXL/index.php?site=SPACE_EN_press_releases_detail&ud\
tx_id=5060

A team from Oerlikon Space demonstrated the feasibility of a laser
link across a distance of 1.5 million kilometres for the first time
ever. In the future, laser links like this one will be able to
transmit data across huge distances through the universe far more
rapidly and efficiently than is possible using conventional radio
links today.

To prove that data transmission across the vast distance of 1.5
million kilometres is really feasible, the Oerlikon engineers had
devised a special experiment in which they set up a laser link between
the islands of La Palma and Tenerife on the Canary Islands. The
transmission unit was modified in such a way that the conditions on
the 144-kilometre stretch between the islands exactly reflected those
that would prevail on a 1.5 million kilometre link through space. In
the course of the experiment, the engineers achieved transmission
rates of over 10 Mbit/sec. At this speed, it would take a mere two
seconds to transmit the entire text of the Bible. The data rate would
also be sufficient to transmit three digital television programmes
simultaneously.

Laser-based data transmission has several advantages over conventional
radio links. Because of the shorter wavelength, lasers can transmit
more data than radio signals in the same period of time. Lasers can
also be far more accurately aligned with the receiver than radio
waves, and therefore require less power for data transmission.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * South Korea to build two robot theme parks in Incheon and Masan for
$1.6 billion by 2013.
  * Physicists from both the University of Surrey and Salford
University have devised a method to trap a multi-colored rainbow of
light inside a prism
  * Research out of the California Pacific Medical Center Research
Institute suggesting that a compound found in cannabis may stop breast
cancer from metastasizing
  * University of Melbourne research fellow Dr John Papandriopoulos
discovers an algorithm to make DSL broadband connections up to 100
times faster
  * A team of University of Tokyo researchers genetically-engineers a
mouse that does not fear cats, simply by controlling its sense of smell


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
String Theory in 2 Minutes or Less
http://discovermagazine.com/twominutesorless

To-Do List Blog
http://www.todolistblog.com/
A blog of to-do lists

howjsay.com
http://www.howjsay.com/
An English Pronouncing Dictionary with Instant Sound

Zamzar
http://www.zamzar.com/
Free online file conversion


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How can we tell if sour cream has gone bad?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have
been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
~ Amy Bloom ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
How can you tell male oysters from females?

The oyster is usually ambisexual. It begins life as a male, then
becomes a female, then changes back to being a male, then back to
being female. It may go back and forth many times.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A man goes to his proctologist and says, "Doc, you gotta help me.
Every time I fart, it sounds like, "Honda."

The doctor says, "You mean you say, 'Honda?'"

"No," the man says. "My farts do."

"OK, open your mouth," says the doctor and looks inside.

After a minute the doctor says, "I'm sorry, I can't help you, you need
to go see a dentist."

The man asks, "Why a dentist?"

The doctor answers, "Because you have an absessed tooth."

"What the heck does that have to do with my condition?"

The doctor says, "Well, didn't you know? Absess makes the farts go Honda!"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Free Linux eBooks
http://freebooks.homelinux.org/

The 20 Best iPod Utilities
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2007/12/05/the_20_best_ipod_utilities.html

Free Screensavers from 9301
http://www.9031.com/downloads/screensavers.html



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.11.13 Issue No. 194

There's this problem that has been bugging me for months already.
Every once in a while I would hear a creaking noise somewhere along
this short corridor leading towards the living room. The noise is not
regular and seems to happen when doors are being opened or closed, or
when someone is passing through. It also seems to happen more at
night. Given that we have timber flooring, my first guess would be a
creaky floorboard. Then again, there would be times when I can still
hear the short, creaking sound even when no one is around. Give that
ghosts and spirits are weightless, my guess was that temperature
differences was causing a tight floorboard to creak. I tried to
pinpoint the source, but it's not easy given the surrounding acoustics.

A few weeks later, the creaking/chirping noise became more insistent
and regular. My dad's theory is a trapped rat in the attic because he
says the sound is definitely coming from above. Turns out he was right
- partly. I looked up and there it was - a fire alarm in need of a
battery change.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the fire wardens
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* UC Berkeley on YouTube
* Ozone Hole Getting Smaller
* Strong-as-Steel Plastic
* Travelex Introduces Space Money
* Heat Sink for the Brain
* Caltech Scientists Create Electronic Nose
* Nano Solar Cells Promise Clean Energy
* Swearing Is Good for Workplace Morale
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________UC BERKELEY ON YOUTUBE_________
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9790452-7.html

UC Berkeley recently announced that it has begun posting entire course
lectures on the Web's No.1 video-sharing site YouTube.

Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the
first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school
said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at
youtube.com/ucberkeley, and it will continue to expand the offering.
The topics of study found on YouTube included chemistry, physics,
biology and even a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005
by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

According to Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for
undergraduate education, "UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public
window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which
will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the
larger community."


_________OZONE HOLE GETTING SMALLER_________
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM6MD7H07F_index_0.html

Some good news for a change. The ozone hole over Antarctica has shrunk
30 percent as compared to last year's record size. According to
measurements made by ESA's Envisat satellite, this year's ozone loss
peaked at 27.7 million tonnes, compared to the 2006 record ozone loss
of 40 million tonnes.

Ozone is a protective layer found about 25 km above us mostly in the
stratospheric stratum of the atmosphere that acts as a sunlight filter
shielding life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Over the last
decade the ozone layer has thinned by about 0.3% per year on a global
scale, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to
marine life.

Scientists say this year's smaller hole – a thinning in the ozone
layer over the South Pole – is due to natural variations in
temperature and atmospheric dynamics and is not indicative of a
long-term trend. Although the hole is somewhat smaller than usual, we
cannot conclude from this that the ozone layer is recovering already.


_________STRONG-AS-STEEL PLASTIC________
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6084

By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in
seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite
plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent. It's
made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer that
shares chemistry with white glue.

The researchers created this new composite plastic with a machine they
developed that builds materials one nanoscale layer after another. The
robotic machine consists of an arm that hovers over a wheel of vials
of different liquids. In this case, the arm held a piece of glass
about the size of a stick of gum on which it built the new material.
The arm dipped the glass into the glue-like polymer solution and then
into a liquid that was a dispersion of clay nanosheets. After those
layers dried, the process repeated. It took 300 layers of each the
glue-like polymer and the clay nanosheets to create a piece of this
material as thick as a piece of plastic wrap.

Further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers
or police and their vehicles. It could also be used in
microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and
valves and unmanned aircraft.


_________TRAVELEX INTRODUCES SPACE MONEY_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7029564.stm

Scientists have come up with a new currency designed to be used by
inter-planetary travellers. Called the Quasi Universal Intergalactic
Denomination, or Quid, it is designed to withstand the stresses of
space travel and has no sharp edges or chemicals that could hurt space
tourists. It was designed for the foreign exchange company Travelex by
scientists from the National Space Centre and the University of Leicester.

According to Professor George Fraser from the University of Leicester,
none of the existing payment systems we use on earth - like cash,
credit or debit cards - could be used in space. Anything with sharp
edges, like coins, would be a risk to astronauts while the chips and
magnetic strips used in our cards on Earth would be damaged beyond
repair by cosmic radiation.

Quids are made of the polymer best-known for its use in non-stick
pans. The Quid "coins" have moulded edges so that they will not damage
anything if they accidentally float free in zero gravity. National
Space Centre scientists predict that regular trips into space will be
commonplace in the next five years and that tourist facilities on the
Moon are a distinct possibility by 2050.


_________HEAT SINK FOR THE BRAIN_________
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/invention/2007/10/brain-radiator.html

In severe epileptic fits, over-excited brain cells fire at such a rate
they can raise the brain's temperature in that area. This causes more
nerves to fire in a feedback mechanism that makes the fit even worse.
One way of preventing such escalating fits is to cool the area of the
brain that is susceptible.

So Takashi Saito and colleagues at Yamaguchi University in Japan have
developed a heat pipe that is surgically implanted into the affected
region of the brain and then connected to a heat sink on the outside
of the skull. This device carries heat away from the affected area,
keeping it cool and reducing the chances of severe epileptic fits in
future.


_________CALTECH SCIENTISTS CREATE ELECTRONIC NOSE_________
http://www.physorg.com/news112269287.html

  The Lewis Group a division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at
Caltech have developed a working electric nose - basically an array of
simple, readily fabricated chemically sensitive conducted polymer film.

An array of broadly-cross reactive sensors respond to a variety of
odors. However, the pattern of differential responses across the array
produces a unique pattern for each odorant. The electronic nose can
identify, classify and quantify when necessary the vapor or odor that
poses a concern or threat.

The electronic nose responds much like the mammalian olfactory sense
produces diagnostic patterns and then transmits the information to the
brain for processing and analysis. The range of uses for the
electronic nose in a commercial setting is phenomenal. The electronic
nose could provide a remote sensing device for oil and gas
exploration, generators, electrical generators and any type of
manufacturing setting where an odor or vapor may be the first signal
of a malfunction.


_________NANO SOLAR CELLS PROMISE CLEAN ENERGY_________
http://snipurl.com/1tjz0

Charles Leiber and his colleagues at Harvard University have developed
solar cells 200 hundred times thinner than a human hair that could
power the nanoscale gadgetry of tomorrow. Virtually invisible to the
naked eye, each single strand of 'silicon nanowire' can convert light
into electrical energy - cranking out up to 200 picowatts.

Two hundred billionths of a watt may not seem much, but at nanoscale
it is enough to provide a steady output of electricity to run ultralow
power electronics, including some that could be worn on -- or even
inside -- the body. It is also clean, highly efficient and renewable.

The solar nanowire looks like a coaxial cable used to hook up cable
television networks: both have a core covered with two layers, but the
similarity stops there. Besides being 100,000 times smaller, the
nanowire is not made of metal but of silicon with three different
types of conductivity arranged as layered shells. Incoming light
generates electrons in the outer shell, which are then swept into the
second layer and the inner core along micropores.


_________SWEARING IS GOOD FOR WORKPLACE MORALE_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20718

According to a research done at the University of East Anglia (UEA),
letting workers swear at will in the workplace can benefit employees
and employers. The study found regular use of profanity to express and
reinforce solidarity among staff, letting them express their feelings,
such as frustration, and develop social relationships. Employees use
swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative,
abusive manner. Swearing was as a social phenomenon to reflect
solidarity and enhance group cohesiveness, or as a psychological
phenomenon to release stress.

The results of the study, "Swearing at work and permissive leadership
culture: when anti-social becomes social and incivility is
acceptable", are published in the current issue of the Leadership and
Organization Development Journal. Researchers said their aim was to
challenge leadership styles and suggest ideas for best practices.
Managers need to understand how their staff feels about swearing. The
challenge is to master the 'art' of knowing when to turn a blind eye
to communication that does not meet their own standards.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * ICANN allows DotAsia to launch .Asia top-level domain
  * Mozilla to develop a fully functional mobile version of Firefox
  * Hitachi promises 4-TB hard drives for desktops and 1-TB laptop
drives by 2011
  * 95% of all email is now spam
  * Bridgestone introduces a 0.29mm-thick e-paper capable of displaying
4,096 colors on an eight-inch display


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time
http://www.idigitalphoto.com/blog/post/improve-your-photos-in-60-seconds.html

The Art and Science of Travelling Light
http://www.onebag.com/

xkcd
http://xkcd.com/
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language

STREETtech.com
http://www.streettech.com/index.php
Hardware beyond the hype


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
No matter whether I put white, blue, red or green clothing in my
dryer, the lint always comes out gray. Why?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To
answer this question at all implies a religion.
~ Albert Einstein ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Why don't skydivers continue to accelerate?

Skydivers accelerate to a terminal velocity of 120 mph (193 km/h).
Earth's gravity is balanced by density of the air at this velocity, so
they fall at a constant rate.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
A lot of people wonder how you know if you're really in love. Just ask
yourself this one question: "Would I mind being destroyed financially
by this person?"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Wired Test
http://kk.org/cooltools/WD200711ZA.2.pdf
A compendium of product reviews

Uncle Mark 2007 Gift Guide & Almanac
http://unclemark.org/unclemark2007.pdf

The Little Book of Semaphores
http://www.greenteapress.com/semaphores/downey05semaphores.pdf

Microsoft Network Monitor 3.1
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=18b1d59d-f4d8-4213-8d17\
-2f6dde7d7aac&displaylang=en



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.10.13 Issue No. 193


I'm now back to using my Palm after a few years' break. I've used a
few Nokia smartphones, but none of them are as handy, convenient, and
extensible compared to a Palm V, even though they come with
high-resolution color screens, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. Nothing beats a
touchscreen and handwriting recognition in terms of menu control and
note taking.

The first I did when I got the Palm sufficiently charged is to seek
out and download the latest versions of the must-have applications -
Commander, Hackmaster, App DA, TealPhone, DateBk, CSpotRun, Parens,
Filez, FlashPro, OmniRemote, List, and the other usual suspects. While
some have new releases, most have stagnated. Worse, some can't even be
found anymore. Either the company has folded up or the software
develop have moved on to other things. So I have to either download
old versions from Palm software repositories or restore from my
backups. Either way, there's no way to register and remove the
nagscreen if the app happens to be shareware. Which brings us to the
question of what happens to a person's intellectual property if he
passes away. Should such software automatically become public domain?
Maybe the author should switch off its shareware status after x number
of years?

Taking it further, what'll happen to our digital assets like email
accounts, online subscriptions, memberships to social networks, blogs,
photo galleries, etc. when we pass away?

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Palm software
developers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Sharp Develops LCD with Embedded Optical Sensors
* Grow Your Own Heart Valve
* Water Vessel Can Travel 5000 Miles on One Tank
* New Mineral Absorbs Radioactivity from Liquid Nuclear Waste
* High-Heat-Resistant Silicon Chips
* Non-Stick Chewing Gum
* Inkjet Technology to Deliver Drugs
* Photocopier Translates Languages
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________SHARP DEVELOPS LCD WITH EMBEDDED OPTICAL SENSORS_________
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=15247

Sharp Corporation has successfully developed a new proprietary System
LCD equipped with touch screen and scanner functions. An optical
sensor is built into each pixel of the LCD panel, eliminating the need
to bond a film to the panel for touch screen functions, and providing
beautiful images without losing display image quality. In addition,
tactile recognition based on simultaneously touching multiple points
on the screen is now possible, a feature previously difficult to
implement. For example, users can easily tap the screen with two
fingers to enlarge or reduce a displayed map. Also, the scanner
function can be used to scan in a business card placed on top of the
screen, and further improvements to this function are expected to
enable fingerprint authentication in the future.

Sample shipments will begin in September of this year, with volume
production slated to start next spring.


_________GROW YOUR OWN HEART VALVE_________
http://snipurl.com/1s4d6

A team of British surgeons led by heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub of
Harefield Hospital, in West London, has developed a groundbreaking
technique that creates heart tissue from stem cells from the patient's
body. Cardiac patients will soon be able to 'grow their own' heart
valves and have them transplanted within weeks of seeing a doctor.
Scientists said the valves would not be rejected after a transplant
because the tissue will have come from the patient and be genetically
identical.

Earlier this year, Sir Magdi's team harvested stem cells from a
volunteer's bone marrow and used a cocktail of chemicals to coax them
into becoming heart cells. Placed on a scaffold made of biodegradable
plastic, the grew and fused together to form discs of heart valve
tissue just an inch wide. As the heart valves developed, the scaffold
decayed, leaving behind solid tissue.

The researchers are due to begin testing the valves in animals this
year and trials on people are expected to follow.


_________WATER VESSEL CAN TRAVEL 5000 MILES ON ONE TANK________
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20631051/

Described as 100 feet long and 50 feet wide, the Proteus is so
efficient that it can travel 5,000 miles — farther than across the
Atlantic — on one load of diesel fuel. Also know as a Wave Adaptive
Modular Vessel, the catamaran looks like a giant water spider, riding
on metal and fabric pontoons that have hinges and shock absorbers to
flex with the motion of the waves, which helps it to skim over the
water at a maximum speed of 30 knots (34.5 mph). The water vessel was
designed by Ugo Conti, an Italian-born engineer and oceanographer.
Conti and his wife Isabella are the co-founders of Marine Advanced
Research, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based firm that built the Proteus for
about US$1.5 million.

The lightweight, low-cost and modular craft is well suited to
scientific and environmental purposes - it will be able to launch and
recover automatic vehicles, do remote vehicle operations, it will be
tested for standard dive support operations, putting instruments on
the bottom, collecting data, etc. Its crew cabin is suspended like a
gondola from its four-legged superstructure, though Proteus can be
fitted with different types of detachable cabins that can accommodate
anything from a honeymooning couple to 12 passengers.


_________NEW MINERAL ABSORBS RADIOACTIVITY FROM LIQUID NUCLEAR
WASTE_________
http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/13304

Russian scientists in the Khibinsky Mountains in the Arctic Circle
have discovered a new mineral that can extract radioactive substances
from any water-based solution. After coming into contact with the
mineral, radioactive water becomes completely safe. It does not yet
have an official name and is known only as number 27-4. For it to be
effective, scientists need tonnes of it and so far they have only
discovered a few grammes. But they are confident that they can
chemically reproduce it on a much larger scale.

Every year ten new minerals are discovered in the Arctic Circle, and
one third of all worldwide mineral discoveries are on the Kolsky
Peninsula.



_________HIGH-HEAT-RESISTANT SILICON CHIPS_________
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19316

NASA researchers have designed and built a new circuit chip that can
take the heat of a blast furnace and keep on performing.

Silicon Carbide (SiC) chips can operate in 600 degrees Celsius or
1,112 degrees Fahrenheit where conventional silicon-based electronics
-- limited to about 350 C -- would fail. In the past, integrated
circuit chips could not withstand more than a few hours of high
temperatures before degrading or failing. This chip exceeded 1,700
hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius - a breakthrough
that represents a 100-fold increase in what has previously been achieved.

The new silicon carbide differential amplifier integrated circuit chip
may provide benefits to anything requiring long-lasting electronic
circuits in very hot environments such as jets, spacecraft and
industrial machinery. In particular, NASA said SiC applications will
include energy storage, renewable energy, nuclear power, electrical
drives. The use of the high temperature packaging and operation of SiC
power modules for its power electronics equipment will bring about the
benefits of increase in power density, reduction in heat sink
requirements (thus smaller size and mass), and higher frequency
operation that also results in lower mass for the filters and
transformers.


_________NON-STICK CHEWING GUM_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6993719.stm

Revolymer, a Bristol University spin-out company, claims that it has
created a new material which can be added to gum that makes it much
easier to remove from surfaces. The material is formed from long
chains of molecules, called polymers, which have both water-loving
(hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic), and therefore
oil-loving, properties. The polymer's affinity for oil means that it
can be easily mixed into the rest of the ingredients needed to create
chewing gum; but it is its attraction to water that gives it its
non-stick abilities.

The researchers have been testing the gum - a working name is Rev7 -
on a number of surfaces. Recent tests on four different types of
paving stones showed that the gum vanished from the surfaces within 24
hours - possibly removed by rain from the UK's very wet summer or
street cleaning - while other gums remained stuck for several days.
Preliminary results suggested the gum with added polymer eventually
dissolves in water.

The company now needs to get its polymer accepted as a food product by
passing EU health and safety tests. It can then go on sale. Professor
Terence Cosgrove, Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, says he is
hopeful that the gum will pass them, and says the product could be on
the market as early as next year, either as a Revolymer product or
through a partnership with one of the major chewing gum manufacturers.


_________INKJET TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER DRUGS_________
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,62032121,00.htm

A Singapore-developed microneedle technology used in Hewlett-Packard's
patented process for its inkjet cartridges, could soon be used in skin
patches to administer drugs.

HP will license its microneedle technology to Crospon, an
Ireland-based medical device maker, to develop and manufacture
drug-laden skin patches for the healthcare market. The transdermal
patch is akin to "a very small infusion pump". Still at the prototype
stage, the patch will likely be 25 mm square in size and 3 mm thick.
It will incorporate an array of microneedles that are between 75 and
100 microns, which will penetrate the top dry layer of the skin, also
known as the stratum corneum. Above the microneedles is an array of
wells that can hold one or a number of drugs. For the actuation of
drugs, the device has "an active mechanism to push the drug through
the needle.

The device will be completed and ready to hit the market in three to
four years' time. By then, it will also have a CPU onboard, likely to
be in the form of "a regular micro controller type system" on flash
memory, and be programmable to deliver one or multiple drugs at an
appropriate dosage and time.


_________PHOTOCOPIER TRANSLATES LANGUAGES_________
http://snipurl.com/1s4d7

Fuji Xerox has developed a prototype photocopy machine that translates
languages at the touch of a button.

The device, currently on show only in Japan, can scan a printed sheet
of Japanese text from a newspaper or magazine and churn out a
translation of it in Chinese, English or Korean while retaining the
original layout. Flip a switch and the linguistic parsing works in the
opposite direction too.

Fuji Xerox's secret lies in networking the unnamed copier to a
dedicated translation server and combining this with algorithms that
can distinguish between text, drawings and lines for maintaining page
layouts.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Indian software firm Wipro outsourcing jobs to the US
  * Implanted RFID microchips and transponders in lab animals and dogs
linked to cancer
  * Mumbai's 500 Internet cafes to install mandatory keystroke loggers
  * Google offers US$30M to first private organization to land a
robotic rover on the moon
  * Japan recently launched its first lunar probe nicknamed Kaguya
after a fairy-tale princess
  * Impassable, ice-locked Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia
open for the first time in history
  * The smiley, first used on Sept. 19, 1982, turns 25 :-)


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Wikipedia's List of Internet Phenomena
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena

Blogger Play
http://play.blogger.com/

Free Online Games
http://freeonlinegames.com/

Seven Wonders of the IT World
http://www.cio.com/article/135700


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I sold my soul last week, and now I'm having regrets. Could I weasel
out of the deal by lying that I only meant to sell my "funky latin soul"?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
~ Groucho Marx ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Can chickens live without a head?

True, and not just for a few minutes. A chicken can stagger around
without its noggin because the brain stem, often left partially intact
after a beheading, controls most of its reflexes. One robust fellow
lived a full eighteen months. Likely he was a real birdbrain, however.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
In an upscale pet-supply store, a customer wanted to buy a red sweater
for her dog. The clerk suggested that she bring her dog in for a
proper fit.

"Oh, no, I can't do that!" the lady said. "See, the sweater is going
to be a surprise!"


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
ASCII Desktop
http://www.viksoe.dk/code/asciidesktop.htm

Defraggler
http://defraggler.com/
Defrags individual files

Puppy Linux
http://puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.09.07 Issue No. 192


Every time I come to KL I can't help but feel frustrated about its
transport system. I'm in a hurry (as always), I head for the ticket
counter, there's a long queue. I go to the ticketing machine, there's
a queue. I get to the head of the queue, I find out the machine
doesn't accept bills. On my lucky days, I find a machine that accepts
both bills and coins. Actually, let me correct that, it accepts one
and only one bill and coins. Problem is, there's no mention of this
limitation on the system. So you spend minutes trying to insert the
next bill into the slot, and the machine won't take it. You wonder
what's wrong, so you cancel the transaction and try again. Until you
get tired of it all and rejoin the ticket counter queue and patiently
wait for your turn. I've since learned my lesson. Nowadays, I always
have the exact change on hand when I approach the machine. Doesn't
help me much when the guys in front of me haven't figured out how to
work the machine. They punch and poke the buttons, and try to jam
bills into slot. Really tempted to jump the queue and do a
"watch-and-learn". Everybody else seems to be content to wait-and-watch.

Just a few days ago, I read a local paper that the train operator is
upgrading all ticket machines so that they will be able to accept
multiple bills and issue multiple tickets. About time, I say.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the KTM, ERL,
Monorail, and LRT users about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* 3D Image Projector
* Speed of Light Broken
* Rocket-Powered Bionic Arm
* Colour Displays from Crystals
* Walkman Runs on Bio Battery
* Singapore Airlines to Offer In-Flight Linux
* Internet Access via the Sewers
* LED Incapacitator
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________3D IMAGE PROJECTOR_________
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/02/aist-develops-3d-image-projector/

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology (AIST) with the cooperation of Keio University and Burton
Inc. (Kawasaki, Japan) has developed a device that uses lasers to
project real three-dimensional images in mid-air.

The device creates 3D images by using laser light, which is focused
through a lens at points in space above the device, to create plasma
emissions from the nitrogen and oxygen in the air at the point of
focus. Because plasma emission continues for a short period of time,
the device is able to create 3D images by moving the point of focus.
At the moment, the distance at which the device can project images is
limited to between 2 and 3 meters. Improved laser technology will
enable images to be projected at greater distances and with more color.

This technology may eventually be used in applications ranging from
pyrotechnics to outdoor advertising.


_________SPEED OF LIGHT BROKEN_________
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1295122007

Two German physicists claim to have broken the ultimate speed record -
by making photons travel faster than light using a phenomenon known as
quantum tunneling. According to Einstein's special theory of
relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate
an object through the light barrier.

In an experiment, microwave photons are fired at a cube made up of two
prisms. The photons pass straight through the prisms, as expected. The
prisms are now moved a metre apart. Most of the photons reflected off
the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector. But
a few photons appeared to "tunnel" through the gap separating them as
if the prisms were still held together. Although these photons had
travelled further, they arrived at their detector at exactly the same
time as the reflected photons. In effect, they had travelled faster
than light.


_________ROCKET-POWERED BIONIC ARM________
http://pressesc.com/news/1133/20082007/military-tests-rocket-powered-bionic-arm

A team of mechanical engineers at Vanderbilt University has developed
and tested a rocket-powered bionic arm as part of a $30 million DARPA
program to develop advanced prosthetic devices for the next generation
of super-soldiers.

The mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor can lift (curl) about
20 to 25 pounds, three to four times more than current commercial
arms, and can do so three to four times faster. Tests show that the
mechanical arm also functions more naturally than previous models.
Conventional prosthetic arms have only two joints, the elbow and claw,
but the prototype's wrist twists and bends and its fingers and thumb
open and close independently.

The arm's power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a
special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn and produce
pure steam which is used to open and close a series of valves. The
valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints by belts made of a
special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts. A
small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the
upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours
of normal activity.


_________COLOUR DISPLAYS FROM CRYSTALS_________
http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12534&feedId=online-news_rss2\
0

The first full-colour display made from crystals could be commercially
available in as little as two years, according to Canadian startup
Opalux. The pixels in the device are made from photonic crystals,
similar in structure to the natural gemstone opal. Each crystal is
made from silica microspheres in a repeating 3D pattern which blocks
certain wavelengths of light, or colours, while reflecting others.
Altering the colour of the pixel is simply a matter of changing the
spacing between the microspheres, which is achieved by stretching the
material.

The beauty of the device is that it can produce the whole spectrum of
colours, even ultraviolet and infrared light, using only incident
light. As a result, the expensive colour filters used in every other
colour display on the market today, are no longer needed. And because
the displays use only reflected ambient light, no power is wasted on
backlighting, as in today's mobile phones, for example.

The crystals could also be used to make full-colour flexible
electronic paper, small displays, and large roadside billboards.


_________WALKMAN RUNS ON BIO BATTERY_________
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;2134686198

Sony, one of the world's largest battery makers, said it had succeeded
in creating a battery that produces electricity by breaking down
sugar. The bio cell, which measures 39 millimeters cubed, delivers
50mW (milliWatts) -- a world record for such a cell.

In the bio cell, sugar-digesting enzymes at the anode extract
electrons and hydrogen ions from the glucose. The hydrogen ions pass
through a membrane separator to the cathode where they absorb oxygen
from the air to produce water as a byproduct. The electrons flow
around the circuit outside the device producing the electricity needed
to power it.

A video provided by Sony shows four of the cells connected in series
delivering enough energy to power a Walkman music player. The battery
uses glucose solution as a fuel. A second video shows a small fan
being powered by the cell with a glucose-based sports drink used as
the fuel.


_________SINGAPORE AIRLINES TO OFFER IN-FLIGHT LINUX_________
http://snurl.com/1qeyj

To make flying more enjoyable for its passengers, Singapore Airlines
Ltd. is adding bigger screens, more in-flight movies and a PC, running
Red Hat Linux, in every seat on its newest planes.

A new version of KrisWorld, Singapore Airlines' in-flight
entertainment system, will be rolled out on newer airplanes like the
Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The latest version of
KrisWorld is based on Panasonic Avionics Corp.'s eX2 in-flight
entertainment system and was jointly developed by the two companies.
The system consists of a central Linux server that connects to a
network of PCs installed in every seat on the aircraft. The main
server is equipped with "terabytes" of storage capacity to hold the
content that's made available to passengers - 100 movies, 150
television shows, 700 music CDs, 22 radio stations, and 65 games.

KrisWorld can also be used as a PC and includes Sun Microsystems
Inc.'s StarOffice application suite, which offers a word processor,
spreadsheet, and a presentation program. Every seat is fitted with a
USB (Universal Serial Bus) port that lets passengers access documents
carried on a thumb drive or portable hard disk. The port can also be
used to connect a USB keyboard or mouse, making it easier for business
travellers to create and edit documents without having to dig out
their laptops and power cords. Alternatively, the handsets installed
in each seat that offered controls for the in-flight entertainment
system on one side and a phone on the other, have been replaced with a
model that offers user controls on one side and a QWERTY keypad on the
other.


_________INTERNET ACCESS VIA THE SEWERS_________
http://itnews.com.au/News/59429,university-taps-sewers-for-web-access.aspx

Taking inspiration from Google's latest April Fools' joke, the
University of Aberdeen plans to provide high-speed Internet access to
its students via the sewers.

The university tapped H2O Networks to provide a high capacity link for
the next 10 years. H2O Networks is a deploying dark fibre in the UK's
waste water network to enable connectivity to those who have limited
access. The network is known as 'fibre via the sewer'. As existing
networks become increasingly congested with more cable types, it has
become difficult for network companies to find new pathways. The H2O
Networks development allows universities to use the sewers to set up
their own secure IT and telecoms network, rather than the traditional
disruptive method of digging up roads. The deployment process is a
least 80 percent faster than traditional methods, resulting in
operational networks within weeks rather than months. Every city and
town has ready-made ducts that can be used without causing disruption,
the company said.


_________LED INCAPACITATOR_________
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292271,00.html

The US Department of Homeland Security has granted a contract to
Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., of Torrance, Calif., to develop
what it calls the "LED Incapacitator". The handheld device uses
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to emit super-bright pulses of light at
rapidly changing wavelengths, causing disorientation, nausea and even
vomiting in whomever it's pointed at.

Phase 1 of the contract — creating a working prototype — has already
been completed, and Phase 2 will begin this fall as researchers at
Penn State's Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology put the
puke-saber through its paces. The prototype, 15 inches long with a
4-inch lens, is too large and heavy to be comfortably carried on a
belt. Phase 3 aims to reduce its size.

DHS hopes to equip police, Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen
with the barf-beamers by 2010.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Artificial life may be possible in the next 10 years
  * AT&T discontinues time-of-day service effective Sept. 2007
  * NASA to launch Luke Skywalker's lightsaber into space aboard
Discover in October
  * Acer to acquire Gateway for $710 million
  * Johnson & Johnson is suing the American Red Cross for use of the
red cross symbol
  * Eight-million-year old bacteria thawed from ancient ice and now growing
  * LG Philips develops thin, flexible displays using water-and-oil pixels


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
10 Minute Mail
http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html
Self-expiring email address

Cooking for Engineers
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

10 Ways to Access Blocked/Banned Sites
http://www.webstuffscan.com/2006/11/23/how-to-access-blocked-websites-top-10/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
I have met many people with the last names of North and West, but
never anyone with the last names South or East. Why is this?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
~ Mark Twain ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Which muscle is the strongest?
The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
Did you hear about the ..

Paper company that folded?
Brake company on the skids?
Bra manufacturers that went bust?
Surgeon who was forced to take a cut in his salary?
Cigarette company that went up in smoke?
Baker who was short of dough?
Refrigerator manufacturer that had it's assets frozen?
Corset firm that felt the squeeze?
Upholsterers that couldn't cover their costs?
Adhesive tape company that got into a sticky situation?
Tennis ball manufacturer that ended up in court?
Downfall of the bungee suppliers?
The train company that went off the rails?
The ship building company that sunk?
The dental practice that was rotten to it's roots?


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
NetStumbler
http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/

Notepad++ Portable
http://portableapps.com/apps/development/notepadpp_portable

12-Sided Calendar
http://www.ii.uib.no/~arntzen/kalender/

FoxTorrent
http://foxtorrent.com/
Stream torrents as they download, from your web browser, with zero
configuration needed



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.08.15 Issue No. 191


For my next techie mini-project, I attempted to import four years
worth of Outlook email into Gmail. Can be done, but I tell you it's
not trivial and for people in a hurry. For one, Outlook saves its
folders in PST format, and Gmail can only do POP, not PST. After doing
some intensive research on Google, apparently there's a couple of
tried and tested methods to do this, but again it's not easy and not a
direct import. One method involves getting an email account on a
server that supports IMAP, then drag-and-drop your Outlook folders
into your new account. Ideally, your new mail server should also
support POP, so that Gmail can simply siphon off the emails. Another
method involves importing from Outlook (or Outlook Express) into
Thunderbird, then using a add-on extension called Mail Redirect to
redirect (not the same as forward) emails to Gmail. Yet another method
is to use Mark Lyon's Gmail Loader (GML) to extract emails from an
mBox formatted files (used by Thunderbird) and send them to Gmail.

I used the latter method with a twist. I created a dummy Gmail account
and this is where all my old mail were redirected to (using GML). Then
turning on POP access, I used my real Gmail account to pick up the
emails from the dummy one. Using this indirect route, for some reason,
all my old mails were able to retain their original timestamps instead
of the redirection receipt timestamps. This method takes time though.
For one, GML will only send 1 message every 2 seconds to prevent
abuse. Then, Gmail will only fetch 200 emails every hour. As they say,
patience is a virtue.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Gmail hackers
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Generator Powered by Vibrations
* Liquid Airbags for Electronics
* Most Expensive Toilet in (And out of) This World
* Cure for Fear
* World's Fastest Broadband Connection
* Wild Algae as Aviation Fuel
* Game of Checkers Solved
* Truck-Mounted Laser Guns
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________GENERATOR POWERED BY VIBRATIONS_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6272752.stm

Scientists at the University of Southampton, UK developed a tiny
generator that is powered by natural vibrations. The device is less
than one cubic centimetre in size and uses vibrations in the world
around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device
wobble to generate power. The generator was developed to power
wireless sensors sitting inside air compressors, where replacing
batteries is very difficult. In the future, the generator could be
part of self-powered medical implants such as pacemakers. In a
pacemaker, the beating of the human heart would be strong enough to
keep the magnets inside the device wobbling. It could also be used to
power sensors attached to road and rail bridges to monitor the health
of such structures.

Work on the project was funded by the EU as part of the 14.3m euros
(£9.67m) Vibration Energy Scavenging (Vibes) project that is looking
at how to use environmental vibrations to generate power.


_________LIQUID AIRBAG FOR ELECTRONICS_________
http://storage.itworld.com/4619/070702sony/page_1.html

Sony has filed for a U.S. patent on a liquid airbag for electronics -
hard disks, media players, mobile phones, laptops, etc. The idea is
that the electronics will be wrapped in a fluid-filled bag so if the
outer case suffers a shock, the liquid acts as a cushion. Using a
liquid or gel as a cushioning layer is not new. Sony's new scheme
proposes that the fluid-filled inner skin will also contain "biasing
units" to keep the electronics central, and a system of irises that
adjust their resistance to liquid flow according to the force of
impact. The irises are created by protrusions - the patent calls them
convex portions and apertures -- aligned opposite each other on the
inside walls of the fluid bag. As the walls converge under pressure,
the protrusions come closer together and provide increased resistance
to the flow of fluid, thereby absorbing more shock. Naturally, the
electronics will be in a liquid-tight case.


_________MOST EXPENSIVE TOILET IN (AND OUT OF) THIS WORLD________
http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/the_most_expensive_toilet_in_the_world_purch\
ased_by_nasa.php

NASA is paying $19 million US dollars for a Russian-built
international space station toilet system, considered a bargain
compared to designing one from scratch. The space station toilet will
be installed on the American side in 2008, and will offer more privacy
for a crew expected to double from three to six by 2009. The current
toilet system on the Russian side will remain in place.

The space station toilet physically resembles those used on Earth,
except it has leg restraints and thigh bars to keep astronauts and
cosmonauts from floating away. Fans suck waste into the commode. Crew
members also have individual urine funnels which are attached to
hoses, and the urine is automatically transferred to a device that can
generate potable water.


_________CURE FOR FEAR_________
http://pressesc.com/01184528191_cure_for_fear

MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and
successfully cured it in mice. Researchers from MIT's Picower
Institute for Learning and Memory discovered that inhibiting a kinase,
an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction
of fear learned in a particular context. Conversely, the learned fear
persisted when the kinase's activity was increased in the hippocampus,
the brain's center for storing memories.

In experiments, genetically engineered mice received mild foot shocks
in a certain environment and were re-exposed to the same environment
without the foot shock. The team found that mice with increased levels
of Cdk5 activity had more trouble letting go of the memory of the foot
shock and continued to freeze in fear. The reverse was also true: in
mice whose Cdk5 activity was inhibited, the bad memory of the shocks
disappeared when the mice learned that they no longer needed to fear
the environment where the foot shocks had once occurred.

It is hoped that this study could lead to the first drug to treat the
millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating
fears.


_________WORLD'S FASTEST BROADBAND CONNECTION_________
http://www.thelocal.se/7869/20070712/

Sigbritt Löthberg, a 75-year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden
has been supplied with the world's fastest internet connection - a
blistering 40 Gigabits per second, many thousands of times faster than
the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user
has experienced such a high speed. Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy
1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is
nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high
definition DVD in just two seconds.

The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation
technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two
routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary
transponders. Having Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg as a son
helps, too. Peter, who now works at Cisco, along with Karlstad
Stadsnät, the local council's network arm, has arranged the
connection. Cisco contributed to the project but the point is that
fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and
commercially viable.


_________WILD ALGAE AS AVIATION FUEL_________
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4132048a13.html

Air New Zealand and airliner manufacturer Boeing are secretly working
with Blenheim-based biofuel developer Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation to
create the world's first environmentally friendly aviation fuel, made
of wild algae. If the project pans out the small and relatively new
New Zealand company could lead the world in environmentally
sustainable aviation fuel. The company, formed in October 2005, began
operating in May last year after it met a request from the local
council to deal with excess algae on sewage ponds. Aquaflow created
technology to harvest the sewage pond algae and chemically extract
fatty lipids for fuel.

The fuel is essentially derived from bacterial pond scum created
through the photosynthesis of sunlight and carbon dioxide on
nutrient-rich water sources such as sewage ponds. Air NZ would most
likely test the fuel on one engine while normal aviation fuel would
drive the other engine. Fuel is held in cells on the aircraft that can
be directed to a specific engine. It was reported that algae ponds
totalling 34,000 square kilometres could produce enough fuel to reduce
the net CO2 footprint for all of aviation to zero.


_________GAME OF CHECKERS SOLVED_________
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/full/070716-13.html

A team of computer scientists at the University of Alberta has cracked
the game of checkers. Out of the 500 billion billion possible
positions (5 * 10^20) in the game, their software called Chinook has
determined which 100,000 billion (10^14) are needed for their proof,
and run through all relevant decision trees. The team has posted their
proof online, and you can even play with their unbeatable automaton.

This research has implications beyond the checkers board. The same
algorithm developed by the team to solve games could be helpful in
searching other databases, such as vast lists of biological
information because, in the end they both reduce to the same
fundamental problem: large, compressed data sets that have to be
accessed quickly


_________TRUCK-MOUNTED LASER GUNS_________
http://www.theregister.com/2007/07/23/raygun_lorries_for_us_army/

US arms and aerospace manufacturer Boeing had landed a contract to
develop truck-mounted laser cannons for the US Army. As part of the
Army's High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) project,
Boeing will produce a "rugged beam control system", which will be
mounted on a 20-tonne Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck.

The HEL TD is intended to shoot down incoming enemy artillery shells,
rockets, or mortar bombs. Laser systems which can actually blast
stuff, as opposed to merely lighting targets up for other weapons to
hit, are big and bulky items - hence the big carrying vehicle. The US
forces have already deployed rapidfire radar-controlled guns to defend
some compounds against such incoming attacks, but a laser - if it
could explode its targets reliably - would have some obvious
advantages in terms of speed.

HEL TD is getting only a tentative implementation. Boeing's initial
phase beam-controller development contract is for just $7m, though
there are options allowing funding to go to $50m.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Taser International of Arizona announced plans to equip robots with
stun guns
  * Maslinic acid - a natural compound from dry olive-pomace oil in oil
mills inhibits HIV spread
  * Microholography to store 500GB worth of data on DVD-sized disks
  * Eighty-year old Moebius strip riddle solved at last
  * World's largest telescope, the Great Canary Telescope in the Canary
Islands goes into operation
  * Qantas to offer in-flight wired/wireless broadband and laptop power
across all classes in its new A380s
  * Seagate plans to cease manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of
the year


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Australian POI Files for GPS Systems
http://www.ozpoi.com/

Practical PHP Programming
http://hudzilla.org/phpwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

net2ftp
http://www.net2ftp.com/
A web-based ftp client

Introduction to Signalling System #7 (SS7)
http://www.telecomspace.com/ss7.html

Chinese Literature Classics
http://www.chinapage.com/classic1.html

Stan Rosenthal's Tao Te Ching
http://www.religiousworlds.com/taoism/ttcstan3.html

Web for Mail
http://www.www4mail.org/



_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do actors in porn films always keep their shoes on? Is it just
advertising for the shoe companies or do they just have a foot fetish?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
"My parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India
are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in
India and China are starving for your job.'"
~ Thomas Friedman ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Have women always bought stuff?
Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18) made the following observation about 2,000
years ago: "Women are always buying something."

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
The big San Francisco earthquake occurred on April 18, 1906. The
accompanying fire caused more than 500 deaths. It was the worst
earthquake disaster in U. S. history as well as the deadliest urban
fire. A few years ago, when the big quake hit the Los Angeles area,
part of the damage included the totaling of a car belonging to a
tourist who had driven in from out of state.

When he put in the claim to his insurance company, they re-jected it.
When asked why the claim was not covered, the Insurance company said
it was because the tourist had a no-fault policy. Angry about the
insurance company's decision, the policyholder tried to start a
citizen's organization to fight this kind of rip-off from happening
again. He called it the San Andreas Fund.

However nothing came of it. Hardly anyone would contribute to aid the
fund in its efforts. The general feeling was that charity is one
thing, but this was being generous to a fault.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Quick Month Calendar
http://www.esnips.com/web/qmc
QuickMonth Calendar is a freeware program which displays a small
calendar on your Windows desktop whenever your mouse hovers over the
clock in the system tray.

ZipSlack
http://www.slackware.com/zipslack/
100MB Slackware Linux unde DOS/Windows


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.07.13 Issue No. 190


These days trojans and spyware and malware are getting smarter and
smarter. Whereas before these can be easily dispatched using AdAware
or Spybot S&D, now these nasties need more drastic measures to remove.

In one fell swoop, my laptop got infected with a bunch of downloaders,
a dialer, and an agent. The executables are easy to deal with. Using
Kaspersky's free online scan, you get a list of the offending
programs. You simply terminate their processes via Task Manager, then
delete them from the hard disk. The DLLs are harder to deal with
because they hook onto some critical processes like explorer.exe and
winlogon.exe. This means that you can't delete the DLLs because
they're always in use. If you try to terminate explorer and winlogon,
Windows just hangs, so you still can't delete the DLLs. I deleted all
their registry entries, yet they keep coming back after every reboot.
HijackThis and FileASSASSIN have this "delete-upon-reboot" feature,
but these sneaky malware were able to circumvent that.

I figured since the trojans are hooked onto winlogon, they must be
recreating the registry entries whenever I log off. In the end, I
flagged the bad DLLs for deletion, took out the laptop battery,
forcing an instant shutdown. The next time I powered up, the bad DLLs
are gone.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the malware
authors about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* (Another) New Global Memory Card Standard
* "Star Trek"-Style Teleporter Not Too Far Now
* MIT Demonstrates Wireless Power Delivery
* Interactive Paper with Built-In Speakers
* Self-Healing Polymer System
* Skeletal System as Data Network
* Microwave Turns Plastic to Oil
* Lasers in Hard Drives
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________(ANOTHER) NEW GLOBAL MEMORY CARD STANDARD_________
http://snipurl.com/peep/1o7xc

The Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan produced a new
global memory card standard, called the miCard (Multiple Interface
Card), designed to work in smaller consumer gadgets such as digital
cameras, mobile phones and any device with a USB plug, which are
common on PCs. The miCard will transfer data at 480Mbit/sec, and
throughput will improve over time. The first miCards will be able to
store 8GB of data, but the maximum capacity is expected to top out
around 2,048GB. The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means
most users won't need separate card readers anymore.

The card won the stamp of approval from the MultiMedia Card
Association yesterday and is expected to be available globally
starting in the third quarter. So far, 12 Taiwanese companies have
signed on to manufacture the miCard.


_________"STAR TREK"-STYLE TELEPORTER NOT TOO FAR NOW_________
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2611757.ece

Scientists from the University of Vienna have set a new record in
sending information through thin air using the revolutionary
technology of quantum teleportation. Using quantum entanglement, the
team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles
from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of
Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt.

The experiment shows the potential of quantum entanglement as a means
of communicating sensitive information via satellites using quantum
cryptography, that could effectively deploy an uncrackable security
code. Quantum entanglement relies on the fact that two photons can be
created to behave as a single object, even when separated by large
distances. Meaning, any change to one causes the same change to the
other, essentially making them act as a teleportation device. The way
this is done is via a third photon, which is teleported from the
photon in the transmitting station to the photon in the receiver. In
the process, the third photon becomes entangled with the transmitting
photon and so carries its quantum information to the receiving photon,
which interacts with the third photon in such a way that it becomes
identical to it - hence the information is "teleported".


_________MIT DEMONSTRATES WIRELESS POWER DELIVERY________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6725955.stm

Researchers from MIT successfully tested an experimental system to
deliver power to devices without the need for wires, making a 60W
light bulb glow from a distance of 2m (7ft). Called WiTricity, the
system exploits a phenomenon called resonance that causes an object to
vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied. When two
objects have the same resonance they exchange energy strongly without
having an effect on other surrounding objects.

The test setup consisted of two 60cm (2ft) diameter copper coils, a
transmitter attached to a power source and a receiver placed 2m (7ft)
away, and attached to a light bulb. With the power switched on at the
transmitter, the bulb would light up despite there being no physical
connection between the two. Measurements showed that the setup could
transfer energy with 40% efficiency across the gap. The bulb was even
made to glow when obstructions such as wood, metal and electronic
devices were placed between the two coils.

The researchers are now looking at refining their setup. The goal is
to shrink the size of the system, go over larger distances and improve
the efficiencies.


_________INTERACTIVE PAPER WITH BUILT-IN SPEAKERS_________
http://snipurl.com/1o7xi

Researchers at Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden have created
interactive displays out of billboards by using conductive inks to
print touch sensors and speakers onto paper. On display at the
university are 2-meter high billboards that respond to users' touch by
playing clips from music albums, or spoken dialogue from a comedian.

The billboards are made almost entirely from paper materials, making
them cheap to assemble, and easy to recycle. To make the paper
surfaces interactive, the team screen prints patterns using conductive
inks containing particles of silver that overlap, allowing a current
to flow. On top of this conductive base is a second sheet carrying the
billboard's design. The conductive layer is connected to a power
supply and simple microelectronics that play, pause and rewind sounds
when the correct sensors are triggered. Touch sensors are made using a
fine pattern of conductive lines in which the current flow is altered
when a hand touches it. Speakers are made by printing electromagnets
out of conductive ink and stretching the paper over a cavity like a
speaker cone behind the billboard. The electromagnets vibrate in
response to a current, creating a sound.

Having successfully demonstrated the billboard prototypes, the team is
investigating how the technology could be used on a smaller scale.


_________SELF-HEALING POLYMER SYSTEM_________
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/June/11060701.asp

Imagine a material that can heal itself when it becomes damaged - over
and over again. Taking a leaf out of nature's book, researchers from
the University of Illinois developed a polymer-based system that
relies on an underlying network of vessels - similar to blood
capillaries - that carries a healing agent to areas on the material's
surface that become damaged.

The team used a technique called direct-write to create an epoxy-resin
base infused with a network of interconnected horizontal and vertical
channels 200um in diameter. These channels were filled with
low-viscosity, monomeric dicyclopentadiene - the healing agent. A
solid epoxy resin layer was deposited on top of the vascularised
substrate. After damage occurs at the coating, healing agent wicks
from the microchannels into the cracks through capillary action. Once
in the crack plane, the healing agent interacts with the catalyst
particles in the coating to initiate polymerisation, rebonding the
crack faces autonomically. After a sufficient time period the cracks
are healed and the structural integrity of the coating restored. As
cracks reopen under subsequent loading the healing cycle is repeated.


_________SKELETAL SYSTEM AS DATA NETWORK_________
http://snipurl.com/1o7xj

Funded by Microsoft and Texas Instruments, Lin Zhong and Michael
Liebschner at Rice University in Houston, Texas is undertaking
research to make use of the human skeleton to transmit commands
reliably and securely to wearable gadgets and medical implants.
Wireless radio signals are already used to control gadgets and
implants, but these can suffer interference from Wi-Fi and other
sources. This makes them unreliable and, in the case of medical
implants, potentially dangerous.

So the Rice team decided to investigate using sound instead of radio
waves. To see if bone could transmit digital audio signals over longer
distances - to a headset, say, from a sensor worn on the wrist - the
team applied a small vibrator to various parts of the body. When they
then measured the acoustic signals received elsewhere on the body,
they found that a "frequency shift keyed" (FSK) signal gave the best
distinction between 0s and 1s. They found the skeleton conducted even
low-power vibrations from one location to another with surprisingly
few errors. Pretty amazing considering all the links involved multiple
bones and many joints.

The researchers suggest applications such as a vibrator in a wrist
receiver/transmitter that could tell an implant placed near a bone to
release a drug dose, with the implant then sending back data from its
sensors. Similarly, tooth clacks or finger clicks could be interpreted
by a receiver to activate, say, functions in a phone.


_________MICROWAVE TURNS PLASTIC TO OIL_________
http://snipurl.com/1o7xl

Global Resource Corporation (GRC) in New Jersey, USA is taking
plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil
they were made from, and gas. Key to GRC's process is a machine that
uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act
on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the
appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the
plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and
combustible gas.

Called the Hawk-10, its smaller incarnation looks just like an
industrial microwave with bits of machinery attached to it. Larger
versions resemble a concrete mixer. Anything that has a hydrocarbon
base can be fed into the machine. The process releases hydrocarbon
molecules from the material and it then becomes gas and oil. For
example, running 9.1 kilograms of ground-up tyres through the Hawk-10
produces 4.54 litres of diesel oil, 1.42 cubic metres of combustible
gas, 1 kg of steel and 3.40 kg of carbon black.


_________LASERS IN HARD DRIVES_________
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/628/3

In the race to make computers more powerful and faster, magnets may be
out and lasers may be in. In today's multimedia world, huge amounts of
data need to be transferred quickly to and from the hard drive.
Current data-processing systems use magnets to read the 1's and 0's on
the hard disk, and they can only go so fast. And the awesome promise
of quantum computing remains years away.

Researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands came up
with another candidate. In laboratory experiments, they used laser to
write data to a magnetic hard drive at very high speeds. The technique
works because the photons transmitted by the laser actually carry
angular momentum, allowing them to interact with the hard drive. Also,
each laser pulse heats a tiny space on the disk just enough to make
changing its polarity--thereby storing a bit of data--a little easier.
The key is reversing the polarity of the laser pulses, which can
produce the equivalent of either a 1 or a 0 of binary code on the disk
storage medium. The researchers managed to transfer data at intervals
of about 40 femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second, about 100
times faster than conventional magnetic transfers.

One drawback is that the footprint of the laser pulse on the disk is
about 5 microns wide, which is considerably larger than the footprint
produced by existing data-transfer systems. Researchers are now
working on improvements in the technology that should reduce the
footprint's size to about 10 nanometers. Expect to see a working
prototype within a decade.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Researchers say that boys with longer ring fingers are better at math
  * German engineers develop liquid camera lens that can magnify at the
flick of a switch
  * Forrester Research forecasts 1,000,000,000 computers around the
world by 2008
  * Biologists discover that plants, though lacking cognition and
memory, are able to recognize their relatives
  * Perfect sphere of pure silicon from Australian CSIRO to redefine
scientific definition of the kilogram
  * Venezuelan professor sets longest WiFi link distance record of
about 237 miles
  * World's first ATM installed in a branch of Barclays in Enfield,
north London, 40 years ago


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Open Source Alternative
http://www.osalt.com/

Nokia Open Source Projects
http://wiki.opensource.nokia.com/projects/Main_Page

How the Mouse Pointer Really Works
http://www.1-click.jp/

90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources
http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox/

Online FLV Converter
http://vixy.net/

Save and Download YouTube Videos
http://www.saveyoutube.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, how do I keep lawyers away?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when
known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
~ Paul Valery ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Was there a time when you actually needed to flash a flashlight?

Early hand-held lights used carbo-zinc batteries that did not last
very long. To keep the light burning required that the user turn it on
for a short time and then turn it off to allow the battery to recover.
That's how they became known as a "flashlight."

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
There's a scuba diving geologist who has made it his business to
measure the relative sizes of the rises, drops, cavities and
undulations of coral formations. Of course this can only be done in
the summer months so he takes the winters off to avoid the frigid air.

You may tag him as a frost-free reef ridge rater.


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
30 Free eBooks To Learn Everything You Want to Know About Personal Finance
http://www.mint.com/blog/finance-core/30-free-ebooks-to-learn-everything-you-wan\
t-to-know-about-personal-finance/

Blogger Backup
http://www.codeplex.com/bloggerbackup


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.06.07 Issue No. 189


Walking back home one day, I suddenly remembered an old OPM song
called Out in the Open that I haven't heard for a long, long time. I
know it's from the Metropop song-writing festival, but not the year.
Should be easy to track down on the Internet, right? Not so. A search
for Out in the Open doesn't give me anything relevant. A search for
Metropop gave me a number of songs which cited Metropop as their
origin. Among those are Shine and Bagong Umaga, which are from the
same year when Out in the Open came out, so now I know it's from
Metropop 1996.

Shine is this nice pop ballad penned by Trina Belamide and interpreted
by Ima Castro. I head over to Trina's website and downloaded some of
her other works. I also visited the website of Bagong Barrios, who
sang Bagong Umaga. From the search results, I found out that the UP
Concert Chorus have their own version of Bagong Umaga on Soundclick.
Jumping to Soundclick, I ended up listening to their repertoire. On
the list is our alma mater song UP Naming Mahal. You can stream it,
but you can't download it. I searched some more and ended up with a
link for the DLSU school song. The MP3 file is provided by DLSU
itself. I tried searching for UP Naming Mahal on UP's website, but no
such luck. Out of desperation, I fished around my browser's cache
until I found a cached copy.

So what was I supposed to be searching for again? Oh, right. I
remember the guy's name is Zipeedee or something, so I tried all the
combinations and permutations of Metropop, 1996, Out in the Open,
Zipeedee, OPM, etc., until I get a valid match. The guy's name is
actually Zebedee Zuniga, brother of kilabot-ng-mga-kolehiyala Nonoy
Zuniga, and his singing partner is Angelica. My extended search
brought me to the PhilMUG (Mac Users' Group) forums (of all places),
where PhilMUG administrator Adel Gabot , in one of the posts, admitted
to co-writing the song with Bobby Serrano. Trivia: then-unknown Lani
Misalucha actually auditioned to sing the song, but the songwriters
turned her down. Jeez. More trivia: Bob Serrano also wrote the song
Labing Labing sung by The Tux.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the bored
searchers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Sony Demos Razor-Thin Display
* 28 More Planets Discovered
* Cancer-Killing Electrical Fields
* USB Firewall
* Xerox Printers Print Invisible Ink
* Artificial Blood
* World's First A4 Colour E-Paper
* On-Disc Chip Prevents DVD Theft
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________SONY DEMOS RAZOR-THIN DISPLAY_________
http://tinyurl.com/3deaus

Sony Corporation recently displayed a razor-thin display that bends
like paper while showing full-colour video at an academic symposium in
Long Beach, California for the Society for Information Display. The
display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor (TFT) technology,
which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of
technology called organic electroluminescent display. The latter
technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display
technologies now on the market - liquid crystal displays and plasma
display panels.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin
it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough. Tatsuo Mori, professor
at Nagoya University's Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, said some hurdles remained, including making the
display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs. Sony said plans
for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided.


_________28 MORE PLANETS DISCOVERED_________
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_6010869

A University of California-led research team has discovered 28 new
planets deep in the Milky Way, circling stars not unlike our own -
leading them to conclude that our solar system may not be so special
after all. It is estimated that there may be at least 20 million to 30
million solar systems within the Milky Way galaxy. The newly found
planets, reported at the semi-annual meeting of the American
Astronomical Society in Honolulu, increase to 236 the number of known
planets outside our solar system, called "exoplanets." Several of
these exoplanets are members of multiple-planet systems.

The discovery of these planets suggests that some other solar systems
may share some of the same features as ours. But unlike our solar
system, most of the new systems have planetary orbits that are
elongated, not circular. The resulting vast swings in temperature
would not be conducive to life. Still, the hope is that someday an
Earth-like planet will be found.


_________CANCER-KILLING ELECTRICAL FIELDS________
http://pressesc.com/01180456249_brain_cancer_electric_field

A device that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with
intermediate frequency electrical fields -- called Tumor-Treating
Fields (TTFields) -- doubled the survival rates of patients with
recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and
aggressive type of malignant brain tumor. These survival rates
observed in the data were compared to historical data. The device was
invented by Professor Yoram Palti of the Technion - Israel Institute
of Technology, the leading Israeli biomedical research institution. It
uses electrical fields to disrupt tumor growth by interfering with
cell division of cancerous cells, causing them to stop proliferating
and die off instead of dividing and growing. Healthy brain cells
rarely divide and have different electrical properties than cancerous
brain cells. This allows the device to target cancer cells without
affecting the healthy cells.


_________USB FIREWALL_________
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5094510735.html

Yoggie Security Systems has squeezed a complete hardware firewall for
Windows systems into a USB key sized form-factor. The "Yoggie Pico"
runs Linux 2.6 along with 13 security applications on a 520MHz PXA270
processor. It has 128MB of RAM, and 128MB of flash memory, apparently
divided between 64MB of secure flash and 64MB of boot flash. It can be
connected to a full-speed USB port, and used in conjunction with
low-level Windows drivers that hi-jack traffic at layers 2-3, below
the TCP/IP stack, and route it to USB for traffic analysis. One nice
benefit to the USB-plus-host-driver approach is that it works not only
with wired networks, but for any network interface on the host PC,
including dial-up, WiFi, or even GPRS add-in cards. Once running, the
Pico establishes an SSL (secure sockets layer) http connection to
Yoggie's central servers, where it checks for updated firewall
policies and rule sets. Aside from Windows, drivers for Linux and
MacOS X are planned.

The Pico is based on a highly-miniaturized single-board computer (SBC)
with no less than 12 layers inter-connected via blind vias. The Pico
SBC's two flash chips appear to reside on a separate add-in card
connected via surface-mount connectors. This could give the design
some expandability, should storage needs grow and/or memory
sizes/prices fall.

The Yoggie Pico will ship the first week of June, priced at $180 with
a year's subscription to updates. Subscriptions will cost $30/year
thereafter. Also available for $200 will be a "Pro" version targeting
the enterprise market. It adds VPN features, and is designed to fetch
firewall updates from a local enterprise server rather than Yoggie's
central servers.


_________XEROX PRINTERS PRINT INVISIBLE INK_________
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2138431,00.asp

Xerox announced that its scientists have perfected a new method for
printing hidden fluorescent wording using standard digital printing
equipment and inks. The discovery paves the way for customers and
businesses alike to add an additional layer of security to commonly
printed materials such as checks, tickets, coupons, and other
high-value documents.

The Xerox Innovation Group was working on the creation of Xerox's
GlossMark imaging, a technology that uses the differential gloss in a
toner to print a hologram-like image, when one of the members started
to wonder if there was a way to also make fluorescent marks using
conventional toner. The group realized that most paper manufacturers
already inject fluorescent brightening agents in paper to enhance its
"whiteness," so they worked to create certain combinations of toner
that would allow the paper's fluorescence to shine through when
exposed to ultraviolet light. Subsequently, Xerox developed a font
that uses that inherent contrast to essentially "write" hidden
fluorescent letters and numbers. Xerox expects that over time, the
technology will be used in personalized checks that will have the
account holder's signature printed in a fluorescent stripe. A merchant
could then easily compare the fluorescent signature with the actual
one to validate the check.


_________ARTIFICIAL BLOOD_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/north_yorkshire/6645923.stm

Scientists at Sheffield University have developed artificial plastic
blood which could be used as a substitute for the real thing during
emergencies. The artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to
be kept cool and can be kept for longer - meaning large quantities
could be carried easily by ambulances and the armed forces in war zones.

The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom
at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the
body. The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to
produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final
prototype that would be suitable for biological testing.

A sample of the artificial blood prototype will be on display at the
Science Museum in London from 22 May as part of an exhibition about
the history of plastics.


_________WORLD'S FIRST A4 COLOUR E-PAPER_________
http://www.physorg.com/news98244355.html

South Korea's LG Philips LCD announced that it had developed the
world's first A4-sized colour electronic-paper -- a paper-thin and
bendable viewing panel.

The e-paper -- which measures 14.1 inches (35.9 centimetres) across
its diagonal and is just 300 micrometres (0.3 millimetres) thin -- can
display up to 4,096 colours. It is designed to be energy-efficient,
only using power when the image changes on the display.

LG Philips said it developed the world's first 10.1-inch flexible
black-and-white e-paper in October 2005 and a 14.1-inch follow-up --
which matches the most common copy size -- in May 2006.


_________ON-DISC CHIP PREVENT DVD THEFT_________
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18577503/

New technology has been developed to thwart DVD thieves. A chip
smaller than the head of a pin is placed onto a DVD along with a thin
coating that blocks a DVD player from reading critical information on
the disc. At the register, the chip is activated and sends an
electrical pulse through the coating, turning it clear and making the
disc playable.

The radio frequency identification chip is made by NXP Semiconductors,
based in the Netherlands, and the Radio Frequency Activation
technology comes from Kestrel Wireless Inc., based in Emeryville. The
two companies are talking to Hollywood studios and expect to announce
deals very soon. Aside from DVDs, the technology can also be used to
protect electric shavers, ink jet cartridges, flash memory drives and
even flat-screen TV sets by preventing some critical element from
functioning unless activated.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Infrared grills coming soon to a backyard near you
  * $27-Million creationism-espousing museum opens in Petersburg, Kentucky
  * Star Wars celebrates 30 years on May 25
  * Unallocated IPv4 addresses could run out as soon as 2010
  * Newly-found star HE 1523-0901 estimated to be 13.2 billion years old
  * Study at University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height
affects how you think


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
Pipl - People Search
http://www.pipl.com/

musicmesh - a new way to discover music
http://www.musicmesh.net/

The LaptopLock
Data protection and recovery help for lost or stolen laptops
http://www.thelaptoplock.com/

Cool Jargon of the Day
http://jargon.net/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Since there is a speed of light and a speed of sound, is there a speed
of smell?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.
~ Saint Thomas Aquinas ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
Does a kangaroo use its tail to hop?
A kangaroo cannot jump if its tail is lifted off the ground. It needs
its tail for pushing off.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
At his 103rd birthday party, my grandfather was asked if he planned to
be around for his 104th.

"I certainly do," he replied. "Statistics show that very few people
die between the ages of 103 and 104."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
GNUMP3d Streaming MP3/OGG Server
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/

hugin - Panorama photo stitcher
http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

MP3 My MP3 Recorder
Record sounds and music to MP3 Free!
http://mp3mymp3.com/


That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.05.07 Issue No. 188


Ever wondered how those metal studs on the pavements are put in? Well,
wonder no more. The technical term for those studs are ground surface
tactile indicators. They're not there to prevent people from skidding,
as most people think. They are to let the visually-impaired people
know that there's a step coming up. To install the studs, you drill
holes into the pavement, and then pound the studs in with a rubber
mallet. Once those studs go in, they don't come out. Thousands of feet
step on them, the industrial floor cleaners scrub over them, but they
won't come out. In their uninstalled state, they come with this
plastic tip. Once pounded into the hole, the plastic tip implodes,
wedging the stud into the hole for good. Of course, the hole has to be
of a certain size to ensure a tight fit. Legislation also dictates the
material for the studs (marine-grade stainless steel), and how the
studs should be spaced. That's why instead of using a ruler and pencil
to mark out the holes, you're better off getting a pre-drilled metal
template, so you can drill all the holes in one go.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the tradesmen
about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Convertible Blood
* Wi-Fi in the Sky for US Airlines
* Talking Cameras Police England
* UK Inventor Develops Flying Saucer
* Chinese Government Regulate Kids' Internet Time
* Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel
* Kryptonite Found in Serbian Mine
* Internet Speed Records Broken
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________CONVERTIBLE BLOOD_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6517137.stm

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen have developed a way of
converting one blood group into another. The technique potentially
enables blood from groups A, B and AB to be converted into group O
negative, which can be safely transplanted into any patient. This
method of manufacturing universal red cells may substantially reduce
pressure on the blood supply.

The blood cells of people with group A and B blood contain one of two
different sugar molecules, which act as "antigens", triggering an
immune system response. People with AB blood have both types of
molecule, while those with group O blood have neither. Since people
produce antibodies against the antigens they lack, this means that
groups A, B and AB can only be given to patients with compatible
blood, while O - as long as it is rhesus negative - can be given to
anyone.

The new technique works by using bacterial enzymes from
Elizabethkingia meningosepticum and Bacterioides fragilis to cut sugar
molecules from the surface of red blood cells. The researchers found
that enzymes from both bacteria were able to remove both A and B
antigens from red blood cells. However, patient trials will be needed
before the conversion method can be used in hospitals.


_________WI-FI IN THE SKY FOR US AIRLINES_________
http://snipurl.com/1jjt9

After years of discussion and delay, U.S. airlines will start offering
in-flight Internet connections, instant messaging and wireless email
(VoIP not allowed) within 12 months, turning the cabin into a WiFi
"hotspot." Carriers are expected to start making announcements around
the end of the summer, with service beginning early next year. And
airborne cellphone service might not be too far off, too.

Closely-held Colorado-based AirCell paid $31.3 million at an FCC
auction last year to take over radio frequency once used for expensive
air-phone service and reallocate it to Internet and cellphone service.
The Internet service already has the approval of both the FCC and the
Federal Aviation Administration. AirCell will install equipment on
airliners that will act as a WiFi hotspot in the cabin and connect to
laptop computers and devices like BlackBerrys that have WiFi chips. In
all, it will cost about $100,000 to outfit a plane with less than 100
pounds of equipment, and the work can be done overnight by airline
maintenance workers.

What makes the service particularly attractive to airlines is that
they will share revenue with AirCell. The service will cost about the
same as existing WiFi offerings. AirCell says it will charge no more
than $10 a day to passengers. It will also offer discounted options
for customers and tie into existing service programs like T-Mobile,
iPass and Boingo. Speeds will be equivalent to WiFi service on the ground.


_________TALKING CAMERAS POLICE ENGLAND________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm

"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or
committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across
England. About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to
existing cameras. All in all, there are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV
cameras in Britain.

A recent study by the government's privacy watchdog, the Information
Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance
society". Others claim that the scheme has prevented fights and
criminal damage and cut litter levels. In Middlesbrough, staff in a
control centre monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can
communicate directly with people on the street.

The talking cameras will be installed in Southwark, Barking and
Dagenham, in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth,
Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry,
Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington.


_________UK INVENTOR DEVELOPS FLYING SAUCER_________
http://snipurl.com/1jjta

Former hovercraft engineer Geoff Hatton has designed and patented a
flying saucer from his workshop in Peterborough that has grabbed the
imagination of the American military establishment. The 68-year-old
has won a contract with the US government for his 3ft-wide
contraption, a cross between a hovercraft and a helicopter. Unlike a
helicopter, the device is aerodynamically neutral and it can bump into
walls and not smash the rotor. And, unlike a hovercraft, it can fly as
high as you want.

Geoff's Flying Saucers - the original name for his GFS Projects
company - are based on an aerodynamic principle that has been around
for nearly 100 years. Known as the Coanda Effect, after a Romanian
jet-engine pioneer, the principle is today used primarily in
helicopters that have no tail rotors. The dome-shaped object is
powered by an electricity-driven propeller on top that pushes air over
the outer surfaces, and has controllable flaps. It is being considered
for surveillance sorties. Farmers in America already use unmanned
aerial vehicles to inspect crops. Then there's search-and-rescue and
aerial surveying.

The device, which was rejected by the Ministry of Defence, was funded
partly by a £43,000 development grant from the Department of Trade and
Industry five years ago.


_________CHINESE GOVERNMENT REGULATE KIDS' INTERNET TIME_________
http://english.people.com.cn/200704/10/eng20070410_364977.html

The Chinese government has ordered Internet game operators to install
an "anti-online game addiction system" on their games to combat the
rising numbers of school children playing truant or even committing
crimes. The regulation, which took effect on April 15, demands online
operators to set up a "game fatigue system" that encourages players
under 18 to play less than 3 hours a day. Online gamers will also be
required to register using real names and identity card numbers to
indicate if they are younger than 18.

Under the system, the first 3 hours of play for each day is considered
"healthy", during which players will be awarded full points in the
virtual world. The next 2 hours will yield only half the normal points
and there will be no points after 5 hours. After the 5-hour limit,
players will be subjected every 15 minutes to the warning: "You have
entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If
you do not, your health will be damaged and your points will be cut to
zero."

According to the regulators' timetable, online game operators will
have up to four months to install the system; and games not embedded
with the software by July 16 will be shut down. Official statistics
show that the number of Internet users in China reached 123 million in
mid-2006. About 15 percent - or 18 million - were under the age of 18.


_________RUSSIA PLANS WORLD'S LONGEST TUNNEL_________
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=home&sid=a0bsMii8oKXw

Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and
pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65
billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and
electricity from Siberia.

The project, which Russia is coordinating with the U.S. and Canada,
would take 10 to 15 years to complete. The Bering Strait tunnel will
cost $10 billion to $12 billion, and the rest of the investment will
be spent on the entire transport corridor. State organizations and
private companies in partnership would build and control the route,
known as TKM-World Link. Russia and the U.S. may each eventually take
25 percent stakes, with private investors and international finance
agencies as other shareholders.

A 6,000-kilometer (3,700-mile) transport corridor from Siberia into
the U.S. will feed into the tunnel, which at 64 miles will be more
than twice as long as the underwater section of the Channel Tunnel
between the U.K. and France, according to the plan. The tunnel would
run in three sections to link the two islands in the Bering Strait
between Russia and the U.S. The planned undersea tunnel would contain
a high-speed railway, highway and pipelines, as well as power and
fiber-optic cables, according to TKM-World Link.

Rail links in Russia and the U.S., where an almost 2,000- kilometer
stretch from Angora to Fort Nelson in Canada would continue the route,
would cost up to $15 billion. With cargo traffic of as much as 100
million tons annually expected on the World Link, the investments in
the rail section could be repaid in 20 years.


_________KRYPTONITE FOUND IN SERBIAN MINE_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6584229.stm

Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered an unusual mineral
in a mine in Serbia, and enlisted the help of Dr Chris Stanley, a
mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum, when they could not
match it with anything known previously to science. Once the London
expert had unravelled the mineral's chemical make-up, he searched the
web using the mineral's chemical formula - sodium lithium boron
silicate hydroxide - and was amazed to discover that same scientific
name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex
Luthor from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

The only difference is that the new mineral does not contain fluorine
(which it does in the film) and is white rather than green and doesn't
glow; but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the
rock containing kryptonite. The mineral cannot be called kryptonite
under international nomenclature rules because it has nothing to do
with krypton - a real element in the Periodic Table that takes the
form of a gas. Instead, it will be formally named jadarite (after the
place where the Serbian mine is located) when it is described in the
European Journal of Mineralogy later this year.


_________INTERNET SPEED RECORDS BROKEN_________
http://snipurl.com/1jjtb

A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has broken
Internet speed records — twice in two days. Operators of the
high-speed Internet2 network announced Tuesday that the researchers on
Dec. 30 sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard
communications protocols. The next day, using modified protocols, the
team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile
path at 9.08 Gbps.

Researchers used the newer Internet addressing system, called IPv6, to
break the records in December. Data started in Tokyo and went to
Chicago, Amsterdam and Seattle before returning to Tokyo. The previous
high of 6.96 Gbps was set in November 2005. Speed records under the
older addressing system, IPv4, are in a separate category and stand at
8.8 Gbps, set in February 2006.

The Internet2 consortium is planning to build a new network with a
capacity of 100 Gbps - from its current theoretical limit of 10 Gbps.
With the 10-fold increase, a high-quality version of the movie "The
Matrix" could be sent in a few seconds rather than half a minute over
the current Internet2 and two days over a typical home broadband line.
The Internet2 is run by a consortium of more than 200 U.S.
universities. It is currently working to merge with another
ultrahigh-speed, next-generation network, National LambdaRail.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Large caves with openings the size of football fields found on the
surface of Mars
  * Researchers discover that chimpanzee genes seem to have evolved
more than human genes
  * University of Texas designs TRIPS processor with the potential of
reaching trillions of calculations per second
  * Molecules called virus-inhibitory peptides (VIRIPs) found to block HIV
  * Cancer-fighting drug found in soil where Pacific yew trees grow
  * The Government of India is planning to introduce free 2 mbps
broadband for all by 2009


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
foldschool - cardboard furniture
http://www.foldschool.com/

FreeComputerBooks.com
http://freecomputerbooks.com/
Free computer books, tutorials & lecture notes

Common Errors in English
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Neighbor Stealing Your WiFi?
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html

Blue Ball Machine
http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Why do you have to rotate the tires on your car? Don't they rotate
when you drive on them?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
~ Oscar Wilde ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
How strong is stomach acid?

The hydrochloric acid of the human digestive process is so strong a
corrosive that it easily can eat its way through a cotton
handkerchief, and even through the iron of an automobile body. Yet, it
doesn't endanger the stomach's sticky mucus walls.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
The pastor's sermon focused on how God knows which of us grows best in
the sunlight and which of us needs shade.
"For example," he said, "roses must be planted in the sun, but
fuchsias thrive in the shade."
After the service, a woman, her face beaming, approached him.
"Your sermon did me so much good," she said.
Before he had time to gloat too much, however, she added, "I always
wondered what was wrong with my fuchsias."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
101 Shareware and Freeware Programs Every Nerd Needs
http://snipurl.com/1dp6t

GOM Player
http://www.gomplayer.com/main.html



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2007.04.08 Issue No. 187


Once in a while Nokia puts out a great phone. The E65 is one of them.
While most of my colleagues were getting the N73 multimedia phone, a
couple of us decided to go for the E-Series "business" phones even
though they have less features compared to the N-Series. The N73 is
truly one tricked-out phone: 3.2MP camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens,
front-mounted VGA camera for video calls,  built-in stereo speakers,
FM stereo with Visual Radio support, MP3/AAC player, RealPlayer and
Flash players, direct upload to Flickr, QuickOffice, PDF viewer,
infrared, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, 2GB mini-SD card included, etc.
However, it lacks the one thing most E-Series phones have - 802.1g,
commonly known as Wi-Fi. This was the deal-breaker for me, that's why
I chose the E65. First choice was the E70 with the rotating screen and
fold-out full keyboard, but it just can't be found anywhere - even in
Manila. The Nokia Blackberry E61 is just too big for me, and it
doesn't have a camera, so E65 it is.

Two weeks after I bought the E65, I'm still lovin' it:
  - 2MP camera, which is good enough for me
  - QVGA screen with 16M colors, small fonts but awesome resolution
  - 3G speeds and a full-featured browser makes for a pleasant browsing
experience
  - 802.1g support, so I can do VoIP calls (fring, GTalk, Skype), IM
(all flavors), watch YouTube, listen to online radio stations, etc.
using my home broadband connection, instead of eating up my mobile
data package (I'm sure the boss with appreciate this)
  - spring-assisted sliding action (love that thunk sound every time I
push it open)
  - slim and sleek profile, metal and leather finish, tactile keypad
and controls, etc.

And I haven't even started customizing the themes and ringtones,
editing the playlists, uploading my OGGs and JARs, installing
applications, updating bookmarks, etc. Hmm, lots of fun to be had.

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the Samsung and
LG lovers about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Apple iPod as Aircraft Black Box
* Speed of Light Broken
* Nanocoating Creates Non-Reflective Material
* Free In-Home Wireless Broadband from Google
* No S3x for 100 Million Years
* Tata's Compressed-Air Car
* Internet via TV Airwaves
* World's Most Secure Hard Disk
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________APPLE IPOD AS AIRCRAFT BLACK BOX_________
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/02/22/212269/apple-ipod-set-to-swap-wh\
ite-box-for-black-box-as-lopresti-launches-data-recorder.html

Vero Beach, Florida-based LoPresti SpeedMerchants, a light aircraft
manufacturer, announces that it will introduce Apple's iPod device in
the cockpit of its Fury piston aircraft as a flight data recorder
(FDR). The iPod, with suitable software, acts as a hard disk with the
ability to record over 500h of flight time data. It was not
immediately clear from the company's statement which parameters would
be recorded and for what purpose. Recorders are currently used to
collect data for maintenance purposes through system monitoring, for
post-flight analysis in training and safety-monitoring, and, when
suitably protected, for crash investigation.

Once certified, the iPod FDR could be deployed on other light
aircraft. It can also act as an audio recorder, and can be used to
capture two-way cockpit conversation and communication with air
traffic control.


_________SPEED OF LIGHT BROKEN_________
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2000/07/20/speedlight000720.html

According to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing can go
faster then the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per
second. Scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J.
seem to have broken that speed record. In an experiment, the
researchers manipulated a vapour of laser-irradiated atoms that boost
the speed of light waves causing a pulse that shoots through the
vapour about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the
same distance in a vacuum. It raced so fast the pulse exited a
specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it. This
means that, when the waves of the light distorted, the pulse traveled
forward in time.

The experiment doesn't prove that Einstein is wrong though. It only
disproves the general misconception that nothing can move faster than
the speed of light. The scientific statement "nothing with mass can
travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different
belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong.


_________NANOCOATING CREATES NON-REFLECTIVE MATERIAL________
http://www.physorg.com/news91978273.html

A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has
created the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.
With a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the
refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported, the new material
is an ideal building block for anti-reflection coatings. Window glass,
for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45.

Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers
deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top
of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material
used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the
films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with
the blades slightly flattened. The technique allows the researchers to
strongly reduce or even eliminate reflection at all wavelengths and
incoming angles of light.

The new optical coating could find use in just about any application
where light travels into or out of a material, such as high-efficiency
solar cells, brighter LEDs, optical interconnects, high-reflectance
mirrors, etc.


_________FREE IN-HOME WIRELESS BROADBAND FROM GOOGLE_________
http://www.google.com/tisp/index.html

Google recently announced their (beta) TiSP program to provide free
wireless broadband service to people everywhere. To tackle the
last-mile connectivity issue, other companies have used satellite
dishes, copper phone lines, TV coaxial cable, fiber-optic cables,
power lines, etc. Meanwhile, Google is delivering their broadband
service via the users' plumbing system, taking advantage of
preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic
data-transmission capabilities. The Toilet Internet Service Provider
(TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that
will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC
and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

This is how it works. When a user signs up to TiSP, he gets a starter
kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless
router, installation CD, setup guide, and a pair of sanitary gloves.
Put on the gloves, then attach the sinker to one end of the
fiber-optic cable. While grasping both end of the spindle, flush the
weighted cable down the toilet. The cable should quickly unravel as it
navigates through the plumbing system towards one of the thousands of
TiSP Access Nodes, where Google Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs)
will remove the sinker and plug the line into Google's global data
networking system. On your end, attach the cable to the TiSP wireless
router. Insert the TiSP installation CD and run the setup utility,
which will automatically configure your computer's network settings.
That's it.

For best results, Google recommends you wash your hands before surfing.


_________NO S3X FOR 100 MILLION YEARS_________
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1539281.ece

A tiny creature that has not had s3x for 100 million years has
overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety.
Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic
data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of
natural selection.

The microscopic animals, less than four times the length of a human
sperm, are all female, yet have evolved into different species that
fill different ecological niches. Two sister species were found to be
living together on the body of a water louse. One of them specialised
in living around the louse's legs and the other stayed close to the
chest. Genetic analysis showed that the two creatures were distinct, a
fact backed up by observations that each type had differently shaped
jaws. The two species of bdelloid rotifer almost certainly arrived on
the louse as one species and later evolved to take better advantage of
the environment. Asexual animals and plants usually die out quickly in
evolutionary terms but the ability of bdelloid rotifers to diversify
may explain why they have survived so long.


_________TATA'S COMPRESSED-AIR CAR_________
http://gizmag.com/go/7000/

Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, has committed to
produce the world's first commercial compressed-air car. The MiniC.A.T
is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not
welded and a body of fibreglass. The heart of the electronic and
communication system on the car is a computer offering an array of
information reports that extends well beyond the speed of the vehicle,
and is built to integrate with external systems like voice
recognition, internet connectivity, GSM telephone connectivity, a GPS
guidance system, fleet management systems, emergency systems, digital
entertainment, etc. Microcontrollers are used in every device in the
car, so one tiny radio transmitter sends instructions to the lights,
indicators, etc. There are no keys – just an access card which can be
read by the car from your pocket.

Most importantly, it is incredibly cost-efficient to run – according
to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100 kms (about a
tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the
most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a
factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of
motorists drive at less than 60 kms. The car has a top speed of 68
mph. Refilling the car will take place at adapted petrol stations to
administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of
approximately 1.5 Euros, the car will be ready to go another 200-300
kilometres. As an alternative, the car carries a small compressor
which can be connected to the mains (220V or 380V) and refill the tank
in 3-4 hours. Due to the absence of combustion and residues, changing
the oil (1 litre of vegetable oil) is necessary only every 50,000 kms.

At the moment, four models have been made: a car, a taxi (5
passengers), a Pick-Up truck and a van. The final selling price will
be approximately 5.500 pounds.


_________INTERNET VIA TV AIRWAVES_________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031201395.\
html

A coalition of big technology companies wants to bring high-speed
Internet access to consumers in a new way: over television airwaves.
The coalition, made up of Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett-Packard,
Intel and Philips, wants regulators to allow idle TV channels, known
as white space, to be used to beam the Internet into homes and
offices. But the Federal Communications Commission first must be
convinced that such traffic would not bleed outside its designated
channels and interfere with existing broadcasts.

Proponents liken the idea to so-called WiFi signals, which provide
wireless Internet access from phone or cable companies to users in
airports, coffee shops and elsewhere. Several analysts said a
TV-spectrum system might make the most sense in rural areas, where
high-speed Internet access via phone or cable lines is expensive to
deploy. Small companies might build some towers, beam white-space
spectrum to farm homes and cabins, and connect it to an Internet provider.


_________WORLD'S MOST SECURE HARD DRIVE_________
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=8227

Two years after first being announced by Seagate, the world's most
secure hard drive is now set to be put on sale in a real laptop, ASI's
C8015+, costing US$2,150.

As well as on-the-fly encryption integrated into the drive itself
using chip acceleration, the laptop also features a trusted platform
module (TPM), and fingerprint reader, security add-ons that have added
roughly 20 percent to the cost of what is otherwise a mainstream Intel
Core 2 Duo laptop. The drive included is the 80GB 2.5 inch Momentus
5400 FDE.2, but 100Gb, 120Gb and 160Gb versions are also waiting in
the wings.

The main cleverness of the Momentus FDE.2 lies in the way the drive
reads and writes have been tightly entwined with 128-bit AES-based
encryption right down to DriveTrust firmware level. The user has the
power to set a password to access the drive during system boot, but is
otherwise unaware that all data at rest is being encrypted and
unencrypted transparently. Data is never in clear text except when it
is being used by an application. Seagate claims the performance hit
for what is usually a CPU-intensive process is only a couple of
percent thanks to onboard processing, and that the user would not be
aware of any read or write drag.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * NZ TV station 45 South uses $10 kitchen wok as transmitter instead
of paying for a $20,000 commercial link
  * South Korean government drafting an ethical code for human-robot
relations for the coming robotic age
  * Duke graduate designs a remote-controlled fridge that can toss a
beer up to 20 feet
  * Stephen Hawking says that the universe spontaneously popped into
existence from nothing
  * Bill Gates, as Harvard University's commencement speaker in June,
to finally receive his Harvard degree
  * To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Yahoo will be offering unlimited
email storage starting May


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
The Geek's Guide to Getting Free Stuff
http://www.rewardprograms.org/thefreegeek/features/the_geeks_guide_to_getting_fr\
ee_stuff.html

LibriVox
http://www.librivox.org/
Audiobooks for free

Search Clock
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/searchclock/
Visualizing searches over time

4k Java Games
http://javaunlimited.net/games/

Listen to a Movie
http://power.listentoamovie.com/index.php
For the cubicle workers of the world

Everything You Need to Know about IPv6
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ipv6.ars


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
How do those dead bugs get into closed light fixtures?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.
~ Sir Winston Churchill ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
What did table tennis have to do with champagne?

Table tennis was originally played with balls made from champagne
corks and paddles made from cigar-box lids. It was created in the
1880s by James Gibb, a British engineer who wanted an invigorating
game he could play indoors when it was raining. Named "Gossima," the
game was first marketed with celluloid balls, which replaced Gibb's
corks. After the equipment manufacturer renamed the game "Ping-Pong"
in 1901, it became a hot seller.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
I got this powdered water -- now I don't know what to add.
~ Steven Wright


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Yahoo!Go 2.0 (gamma)
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go
Yahoo! on your smartphone

gSyncit
http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/
Freeware Outlook plug-in to keep Microsoft Outlook and Google calendar
in-sync



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.

N Y B B L E   M O N T H L Y   N E W S L E T T E R
A Free Ezine about Anything Tech and Everything Else
2006.03.09 Issue No. 186


Normally I don't watch CSI (NY, Miami, or otherwise). Just the other
night, I caught half an hour of it, and I promise myself (again) I'm
not gonna watch it ever. No, they didn't pull the usual trick where a
smudged fuzzy grainy picture is enhanced until it's crystal clear. I
sort of accepted that already.

In this episode, there's a mad bomber on the loose. Mac and Flack were
inspecting a building when the bomb went off. All the windows got
blown off, and people on the street were thrown to the ground by the
shock wave. Mac got trapped under some rubble, but aside from some
minor cuts, he's perfectly ok - not even any loss of hearing.
(Surprise #1) Flack, OTOH, is not as fortunate. He's got an open gash
on his chest, and a major artery is gushing blood. Mac took a shoelace
and tied up the hole. (Surprise #2) Back at HQ, they're trying to
track down the bad guy, but his mobile is off. Did you know that a
cellphone can be remotely powered on? A few clicks on the keyboard and
voila! (Surprise #3) I'm not saying that's impossible, but don't tell
me everyone in the US has a smartphone. Try doing that to a Nokia
3210. Hah! Then they tried to locate the mobile using (gasp!)
triangulation. A few clicks on the keyboard and voila! They locate the
building where the bad guy is holed in. (Surprise #4) Gosh, if
triangular is so effective and accurate, we wouldn't need GPS anymore.
Later, the bad guy used a phone booth and called Mac on his mobile.
Stella whipped out her mobile, rang up Technical Services, and asked
for a trace on Mac's phone. What the?!

Let me tell you how it works, lady. First, I gotta verify your
identity - complete name, home address, birthday, and mother's maiden
name. Then I check whether you have the proper clearance to request
for a trace. If I'm in doubt, I'll have to escalate and check with
your boss. Then I need to know who in the world Mac is and look up his
mobile number from the records. I pause the Solitaire and/or Sudoku
game I'm playing and log on to the monitoring system. By the time the
program loads (in Windows) and I'm ready to start the trace, the bad
guy has already terminated the call, and is already finishing his
dessert. Welcome to the real world!

Have an answer, comment, suggestion, or violent reaction? Send them my
way by clicking on Reply or join nybbletalk@yahoogroups.com to discuss
a topic. If you think Nybble is good enough, do tell the CSI
illusionists about it. Thanks.


_________TABLE OF CONTENTS_________
* Energy-Saving Ethernet
* Harder than Diamond
* Robotic Garage in New York Chinatown
* Dirt-Cheap, Patent-Free Cancer Cure
* Brain Scan Reads Your Mind
* Growing Teeth from Single Cells
* Inkless Printer
* Laser for Military Use
* Nybblets
* Likeable Links
* Questionable Question
* Quotable Quote
* Trivial Trivia
* Laughable Laugh


_________ENERGY-SAVING ETHERNET_________
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/020207-ieee-energy-efficient.html

Bet you didn't know that lowering your Ethernet speed can save power,
huh? That's what the guys at IEEE are looking into. Switching from
1Gbps to 10Mbps, the power consumption of a network device drops from
4W to around 0.6W. By seamlessly throttling between 10Mbps and 10Gbps,
the guys reckon U.S. companies could collectively save $450 million a
year in power costs.

Basically, the Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) study group needs to
rethink the process of auto-negotiation — a link-detection technology
in Ethernet, where a switch and a NIC (network interface card or LAN
card for dummies out there) determine what speeds are supported
(10/100/1000Mbps) and establish the link rate. The auto-negotiation
process have to become more real-time (from 1.4 seconds to 1
millisecond) so that a GigE-enabled laptop would switch to 10Mbps when
idle, maybe 100Mbps during low-bandwidth activities, such as e-mail or
Web surfing, and burst to 1000Mbps when downloading large files or
streaming video.


_________HARDER THAN DIAMOND_________
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn11093

By mixing particles of the mineral barium titanate and molten tin,
scientists at Washington State University and Wisconsin-Madison
University, both in the US, and from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany
were able to create a material that is stiffer than diamond. The
material's stiffness results from the properties of the barium
titanate pieces. As the material cools, its crystal structure changes,
causing its volume to expand. Since the material is trapped within the
tin matrix, strain builds up inside the barium titanate. At certain
temperatures, that stored energy is released to counter an external
bending force - giving the material its stiffness.


_________ROBOTIC GARAGE IN NEW YORK CHINATOWN________
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/16625858.htm

New York is getting its first automated parking in Chinatown. No, you
won't see a humanoid robot step into your car to park it. Instead, the
garage itself does the parking. Built by Automotion Parking Systems,
the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Stolzer Parkhaus, the garage is able
to squeeze 67 cars in an apartment-building basement that would
otherwise fit only 24. This is done by doing away with the entry/exit
ramps and the maneuver space typically required.

To park a car, the driver stops the car on a pallet and gets out. The
pallet is then lowered into the innards of the garage and transported
to a vacant parking spot by a computer-controlled contraption similar
to an elevator that also runs sideways. When the owner comes back for
the car, the underground system goes into motion to retrieve it.
Because it parks cars two deep in some slots, it sometimes needs to
shuffle cars around to retrieve others. Before the car is lifted to
the surface, a turntable turns the car around, ensuring that it's
returned facing out into the driveway, eliminating any need to back
out of the garage.

Parking rates will be competitive – about $400 monthly or $25 per day.


_________DIRT-CHEAP, PATENT-FREE CANCER CURE_________
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325874.700-cheap-safe-drug-kills-\
most-cancers.html

Scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have been
testing a cheap and simple cancer drug called dichloroacetate (DCA)
that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality".
DCA has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders
and so is known to be relatively safe. Better yet, it has no patent,
meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly
developed drugs.

DCA works by re-activating the mitochondria of the cancer cells. This
in turn activates apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells
self-destruct, and orders the abnormal cells to die. Normal healthy
cells are left untouched. On the negative side, DCA can cause pain,
numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a
price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers.


_________BRAIN SCAN READS YOUR MIND_________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2009217,00.html

A team of researchers at University College London, Oxford University
and Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in
Germany have developed a technique that allows them to look deep
inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. In
experiments, volunteers were asked to decide whether to add or
subtract two numbers they were later shown on a screen. Before the
numbers flashed up, they were given a brain scan using a technique
called functional magnetic imaging resonance. The researchers then
used a software that had been designed to spot subtle differences in
brain activity to predict the person's intentions with 70% accuracy.

Researchers are now calling for an urgent debate into the ethical
issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading
can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations
of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report"
era, where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the
strength of an incriminating brain scan. And we wouldn't want that,
would we? The technology could also drive advances in brain-controlled
computers and machinery to boost the quality of life for disabled people.


_________GROWING TEETH FROM SINGLE CELLS_________
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070219/sc_nm/teeth_mice_dc;_ylt=Ap1UHTHqFBVdVPB7xSa\
EwkzMWM0F

Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science in Chiba, Japan
announced that they had grown normal-looking teeth from single cells
in lab dishes, and transplanted them into mice. They used primitive
cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a
framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together.
After growing them, they found their structures had matured into the
components that make teeth, including dentin, enamel, dental pulp,
blood vessels, and periodontal ligaments. The teeth also grew and
developed normally when transplanted into a mouse.

According to the scientists, the experiment provides the first
evidence of a successful reconstitution of an entire organ via the
transplantation of bioengineered material.


_________INKLESS PRINTER_________
http://www.tfot.info/content/view/115/58/

Xerox is developing a new printing technology which does not require
ink of any kind. Instead of ink, the new technology uses a special
reusable paper which can be printed and erased dozens of times using a
modified multifunction printer. The printer uses a special ultraviolet
(UV) light source to "write" on the paper at 150dpi. No ink of any
kind is used in the process and the resulting printed pages do not
smudge or smear when touched. The pages do degrade over time and
currently can last between 16-24 hours before returning to their
original blank form. The paper developed by Xerox apparently includes
photochromic compounds (such as spiropyran) which exhibit heliochromic
properties. That is, they darken when exposed to U.V. radiation and
fade in the absence of U.V. light.

Xerox is now in the process of perfecting the technology. Although the
technology is still in the early stages of development, it has the
potential to cut printing costs and reduce office paper usage
dramatically.


_________LASER FOR MILITARY USE_________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6380789.stm

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California
are hard at work to bring about a powerful enough laser for military
use. The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) has achieved 67
kilowatts (kW) of average power in the laboratory. Six to eight months
down the road, the SSHCL's power output could break the "magic" 100kW
mark required for the battlefield. Such a laser could be used to
destroy rockets, mortars or roadside bombs.

SSHCL uses an array of many diodes - not dissimilar to the LEDs used
in bicycle lights and remote controls - to generate a beam. Chilled
water is piped through the diode array and other components of the
laser to cool it down during operation. In contrast to a continuous
wave (CW) or "always-on" beam, the SSHCL generates a pulsed beam which
fires 200 times a second at a wavelength of one micron. In its 25kW
configuration and a 2.5-sq cm. spot size on a one-inch thick steel
target, the laser can blow a hole through it in seven seconds.

The team believes that a 100kW mobile version of the laser could be
contained in a 9m- (30ft-) long trailer.


_________NYBBLETS_________
  * Chinese scientists control pigeons' movements using brain implants
(on the pigeons)
  * NASA plans for permanent moon base
  * GMail now open to all
  * Richard Branson offers $25M bounty for global warming fix
  * World's largest tropical glacier, the Quelccaya ice cap, vanishing
  * Intel's 80-core Terascale processor achieves 1.8TeraFlops


_________LIKEABLE LINKS_________
First-Aid Guide - MayoClinic.com
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/FirstAidIndex/FirstAidIndex

CrossEngine
http://www.crossengine.com/
Search across the major search engines on one interface.

ASCII-O-Matic
http://www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/
Convert your digital image to ASCII.

Free Subway Maps
http://www.amadeus.net/home/new/subwaymaps/en/index.htm

77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better
http://oedb.org/library/college-basics/hacking-knowledge


_________QUESTIONABLE QUESTION_________
Who is General Failure and why is he trying to read my C: drive?


_________QUOTABLE QUOTE_________
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already
three parts dead.
~ Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) ~


_________TRIVIAL TRIVIA_________
To what unusual use did the Finns put saunas?

Until the 1920s, babies in Finland were often delivered in saunas. The
heat was thought to help combat infection, and the warm atmosphere was
considered pleasing to the infant. The Finns also considered sauna as
a holy place.

Source: Arcamax Trivia


_________LAUGHABLE LAUGH_________
"This house," said the real estate salesman, "has both its good points
and its bad points. To show you I'm honest, I'm going to tell you
about both.

The disadvantages are that there is a chemical plant one block south
and a slaughterhouse a block north."

"What are the advantages?" inquired the prospective buyer.

"The advantage is that you can always tell which way the wind is blowing."


_________DOWNLOADABLE DOWNLOAD_________
Jodix.com Free RM to MP3 Converter
http://www.rm-mp3.org/free-rm-mp3-converter.exe
Convert your RealMedia files (*.ra, *.rm, *.rmvb) to mp3 for free.

Ubuntu Linux Bible
http://ebookspyder.net/index.php/2007/03/03/ubuntu-linux-bible.html



That's all for this week. Nybble is and will always be a work in
progress. Please do send me your comments and suggestions on how to
improve Nybble. Just hit the reply button to you know, reply.