Invisibility One Step Closer?

Only a very small step mind you, as Japanese professor Yutaka Tamaru of Mie University unveils his newest creation, a transparent goldfish. Apparently the hapless creature was developed to make it easier for Japanese school students to study, so they wouldn’t have to cut them open, which has a certain irony considering some Japanese culinary practices… The skin and scales have no pigment so the heart, brain, eyes and other organs can clearly be seen. Since there’s no need for this animal to go under the knife it’s whole life cycle can be closely monitored and the good news for this specimen is that it is expected to live for around 20 years. Incidentally, this isn’t the first see-through animal developed in Japan and transparent frogs are apparently going to go on sale in the next few months.

How to Make the Planet Sustain Life for Longer

Astronomers have known for a long time that the Sun is currently at the middle of its life cycle, having already burnt for more than 4.6 billion years. As a yellow main sequence star, it is expected to live a full life of about 10 billion years, but naturally, during this time, it will evolve. Sadly for Earth, this implies it expanding as it turns into a red supergiant, eventually engulfing the entire planet within its mass. Things are considered to start getting pretty worse in about one billion years, when astronomers believe the heat will be so great that our planet will become uninhabitable.

However, this theory has recently been contested by a group of experts from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who say that we could make the planet able to support life even beyond the 1 billion years marker currently theorized. But, in order to do that, we’d have to get into some pretty serious geoengineering schemes. Read more

Infants Get Learning Lag from Watching TV

Infants who spend a lot of time in front of the TV may set themselves up for difficulties in learning later on in life, a new scientific research shows. It would appear that even babies under 1 or 2 years of age are capable of “zoning out” in front of the screen, and that this type of behavior may translate into less time spent with their parents, and, possibly, difficulties paying attention and learning when they grow a little older. The investigation was ordered and paid for by the LENA Foundation.

“We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why,” shared for LiveScience University of Washington School of Medicine professor of pediatrics Dimitri Christakis, who was also the lead researcher on the new study. Read more

New shoes for better sex

In yet another first for the world’s premier athletic footwear manufacturer, Nike announced Tuesday the nationwide launch of the Air Fornicator, a lightweight copulating shoe designed to maximize sexual performance.

“Nike is proud to continue its commitment to new and innovative products with the first ever sneaker developed exclusively for sex,” president and CEO Mark Parker said. “Stylishly sculpted and contoured for enhanced comfort, the featherlight Air Fornicator provides superior energy return to reduce fatigue and boost the libido.”

“With this shoe you will last longer, experience more pleasure, and fuck smarter,” Parker added.

According to a Nike press release, the Air Fornicator’s cutting-edge support system creates maximum foot stability, which in turn improves coital alignment, increases clitoral stimulation, and deepens penetration. The revolutionary midsole component reportedly works to adapt to the user’s pelvic motions and cushions the overall shock of repetitive grinding. Read more

Pavement P.U.M.A

Okay, forget all my previous Christmas present lists, the new one has only one item on it, a Segway/GM P.U.M.A. That stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility and basically it’s a sit-down Segway, for two people. Like the Segway it scoots around on two wheels, balanced by lots of chips and motion sensors; the small wheels front and back are only for use when the machine is parked. It looks like a real hoot to drive; there are videos on the Segway site and You Tube that are well worth watching. It’s electric, obviously, so it’s very green and apparently it will be capable of going 20km between charges. Read more

12 Euphemisms Used to Mislead You

Here is a list of the 12 most misleading sets of words that we could find in use, most of them in the United States, which seems to have a real appetite for calling things by names they have nothing to do with. These are just a few examples.

Binocular Deprivation means no more no less than to sew an animal’s eyes shut during an experiment, for various purposes. The technique is widely used in research labs worldwide, and is meticulously described in each paper featuring the procedure.

Biosolids is just another word for sewage sludge, and is employed in official documents instead of other terms. This word, like many others from the list, is only meant to make a bad thing sound good, and has nothing to do with being politically correct. It’s all about PR and image. Read more

Sun Powered Shades

Sadly very few solar powered gadgets are actually green. Hardly any of them will ever recover the energy expended in their manufacture during their working lives, let alone the couple of weeks most of them last, until the novelty has worn off, but that’s another story. No, we’re here to tell you all about a pair of sunglasses fitted with solar panels that can be used to charge an MP3 player or mobile phone. Solar cells are notoriously inefficient and your face would probably burn off long before a useful charge was achieved. I may be wrong, the designers, Hyun-Joong Kim and Kwang-Seok Jeong have used organic dye type cells, which they claim to be both cheap and efficient, but given the relatively small surface areas of the cells, and the need to face directly into the Sun to get the best charge, it all seems a bit dubious.

How Music Would Sound in Other Worlds

How many of you have ever wondered about how a song played on, say, the Martian surface would actually sound? Assuming you pressed the “play” button on a Hi-Fi audio system, would Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” sound the same as on Earth, as you would expect? Scientists say that no, it would not, and explain why. Just like the outer space causes sound to travel with extremely high difficulty, because it lacks a proper propagation medium, so does the less dense atmosphere of other planets.

This is why, in the Martian atmosphere, for instance, you would barely hear anything at all, let alone perceive every note or, even less likely, enjoy the richness of Bach’s music. “Sound doesn’t travel very far on Mars,” explained Amanda Hanford, an acoustics doctoral degree candidate at Penn State University. Read more

Halloween Through the Ages

As we all know, Halloween is a worldwide holiday, taking place on October 31 and linked to celebrating the spirits of the dead. Still, this is pretty much all that the celebrations have in common in the parts of the world where they are held. While Halloween was imported in most of the countries during the last part of the 20th century, the customs have been adapted or linked to local tradition, events and beliefs. Today’s access to media helps the holiday and its most popular customs in being embraced by more and more nations. Still, the international symbol of the holiday remains the Jack-o’-lantern.

Halloween eve, on October 30, called Mischief Night in the US (with the Devil’s Night variation in Detroit), or Miggy Night in some regions in England, is practically an opportunity to cause mayhem, from its metaphorical acceptance (throwing eggs or letting neighbors’ cattle roam loose) to its literal one (setting fires, or performing actions leading to an increase in gang criminal activity). Read more

Hide Your Secrets In Reef Stash Sandals

Imagine you are traveling and you get pick pocketed. Would be a nightmare, right ? So sometimes it’s important to have some cash saved with you which you can use in such emergencies.

But the question is where to put this cash so that you can use it anytime when you’re on the road. That’s where these Reef Stash Sandals come into picture which let you store that extra money, safely hidden away from onlookers’ eyes. Also these sandals could come in very handy if you’re going to the beach and don’t want to carry your heavy wallet. But make sure you don’t lose these sandals on the beach.