In One Hour, For Less Than a Buck, a Sensor Made of Jell-O and Foil Detects Acute Pancreatitis | Popular Science

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/less-buck-sensor-made-jell-o-and-foil-detects-acute-pancreatitis-one-hour
Now that's the kind of science I love.  TE

An entertaining X-factor audition - what a difference from beginning to end

An entertaining audition for X-factor,
and another one:


And here's a great before --> after comparison:

Caper berries

Delicious - all the flavor of capers and more. I had them with snapper and broccolini, and they complimented each other perfectly. TE
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caper

NYTimes: Distilling the Wisdom of C.E.O.’s

"There was a time when simply having certain information was a competitive advantage. Now, in the Internet era, most people have easy access to the same information. That puts a greater premium on the ability to synthesize, to connect dots in new ways and to ask simple, smart questions that lead to untapped opportunities"
[Have to have]
-passionate curiosity [wonder why things work the way they do, whether it can be improved]
-battle-hardened confidence [how did you handle a failure?]
-team smarts [good sense of how people will react to one another]
-a simple mindset [in powerpoint presentations, forget the 'power' - get to the 'point': avoid 'death by powerpoint']
-fearlessness [do you twitch when things operate smoothly, wanting to shake it up a bit?]..."so few people live that way and bring this attitude to work. It is risky. You may unsettle people by shaking up the status quo. But if you have the best interests of the organization in mind, you can unlock new opportunities for the company and for yourself."

Interviews with more than 70 leaders for the Corner Office columns have shown some traits that successful executives share and look for when hiring. http://nyti.ms/gVDyrI

How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

"

 after just a few days, the four- and six-hour group reported that, yes, they were slightly sleepy. But they insisted they had adjusted to their new state. Even 14 days into the study, they said sleepiness was not affecting them. In fact, their performance had tanked. In other words, the sleep-deprived among us are lousy judges of our own sleep needs.

"

For most of us, eight hours of sleep is excellent and six hours is no good, but what if we split the difference? http://nyti.ms/ftXHgn

NYTimes: Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You

Mea culp - I'm guilty of this.
In the digital revolution, it's become fashionable to be rude. http://nyti.ms/fMrVwG

NYTimes: How to Fix (0r Kill) Web Data About You

"For a glimpse of your mosaic, type your name into Spokeo.com. Prepare to see estimates of your age, home value, marital status, phone number and your home address, even a photo of your front door"

Marketers, employers and even thieves can piece together mosaics of who you are from your online activity. There are ways, however, to manage the way you look. http://nyti.ms/hzu9MY

-Tom. " 

NYTimes: Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

"Sitting is a lethal activity...This is your body on chairs: Electrical activity in the muscles drops — "the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse," Hamilton says — leading to a cascade of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes rises."

A growing body of research suggests that watching your diet and exercising a few times a week is not enough to offset sedentary time. http://nyti.ms/if0eXl

See also -

The health hazards of a sedentary lifestyle not mitigated by exercise

"The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/the-hazards-of-the-couch/?emc=eta1

and

The Men Who Stare at Screens

"...the beneficial effect of regular exercise is totally negated by 11 hours or more of driving, or 23 hours or more of watching TV per week.TE

"The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/phys-ed-the-men-who-stare-at-screens/?emc=eta1

Is Sugar Toxic?

That the sweet stuff makes us fat is something we take for granted. That it might also be making us sick is harder to accept. http://nyti.ms/fnOnfc

How accurate are weather forecasts?

I've often wondered how accurate a forecast is, especially when they forecast 10 days out.  Who tracks these numbers to see if they're even worth paying attention to? Well, of course there's a website (scroll down for the weather accuracy data), and the numbers are better than I thought.  Read the page for the details, but this graph shows that the weatherman's prediction up to 7 days out was better than the almanac, and better than assuming today's weather will repeat itself for so many days (persistence). TE

Primero Hay Que Aprender Español. Ranhou Zai Xue Zhongwen. - NYTimes.com

Why are all these parents making their kids learn Mandarin? Spanish is so much more useful in America. TE
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/opinion/30kristof.html

BBQ pork recipe for the oven: Ribs Without Smoke

Chefs can work wonders with pork ribs by braising them in the oven, instead of cooking them outdoors the way it's done in barbecue country. http://nyti.ms/etsdgW

-Tom.

A table that's a computer screen

The entire table surface is the computer screen. A business can sit with their client over the table and view stuff together. I'd live to see speech recognition, so the table would display what everyone's talking about. How often do you sit around saying 'Whats the name of that movie...'
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

See the CES demo video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

3D No glasses by Jonathan Post

I really thought thus was an April fool's joke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uef17zOCDb8&feature=youtube_gdata_player