Interesting reading…

Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More - “The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature. But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act…” For more on the LHC see: How the Large Hadron Collider Works

Can a Swimsuit Be Too Good? - “Officials muddle over their options for fairness as records begin falling due to a single high-tech suit…”

Scientists find that squid beak is both hard and soft, a material that engineers want to copy - “How did nature make the squid’s beak super hard and sharp — allowing it, without harm to its soft body — to capture its prey?”

The Rebirth of Buses: N.Y. to D.C. for $1 - “Imagine traveling from New York to Washington — and back — for less than the cost of a gallon of gas. Sounds impossible, right? Not anymore…”

Buyers’ Revenge: Trash the House After Foreclosure - “The stucco subdivisions of Las Vegas are caught up in the nation’s foreclosure crisis. These days, bankers and mortgage companies often find that by the time they get the keys back, embittered homeowners have stripped out appliances, punched holes in walls, dumped paint on carpets and, as a parting gift, locked their pets inside to wreak further havoc. Real-estate agents estimate that about half of foreclosed properties to be sold by mortgage companies nationwide have “substantial” damage, according to a new survey by Campbell Communications, a marketing and research firm based in Washington, D.C…”

Meditation Can Wish You Well, Study Says - “In the same way that training in sports or chess or music produces functional and structural changes in the brain, the Wisconsin researchers wanted to see if cultivating compassion through the practice of meditation also produced brain changes — suggesting that compassion could be viewed as a learned skill. The study involved 32 people: 16 Tibetan monks and lay practitioners, who had meditated for a minimum of 10,000 hours throughout their lifetime (the “experts”); and 16 control subjects, who had only recently been taught the basics of compassion meditation (the “novices”)…”

Bizarre ball of twisted metal space junk falls from the sky into farmer’s backyard - “Outback farmer James Stirton’s property consisted of little more than a herd of cattle and a sea of dust - until a curious object from outer space dropped in. Mr Stirton scratched his head in wonder as he stared at the mangled ball of metal…”

The chimp who thought he was a boy - “Raised like a son by a New York City family as part of a language experiment, Nim Chimpsky was shipped away when funds ran out. A new biography tells Nim’s story…”

YouTube Debuts Viewer Analytics Tool - “Online video makers can now watch those watching their videos. Google’s YouTube on Thursday released YouTube Insight, a free video analytics tool designed to help video makers understand more about where their viewers are and how those viewers found their videos…”

Nanomaterial turns radiation directly into electricity - “The materials they are testing would extract up to 20 times more power from radioactive decay than thermoelectric materials, they calculate. Tests of layered tiles of carbon nanotubes packed with gold and surrounded by lithium hydride are under way. Radioactive particles that slam into the gold push out a shower of high-energy electrons. They pass through carbon nanotubes and pass into the lithium hydride from where they move into electrodes, allowing current to flow…”

Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border - “Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future…”

Light Meters React to the Highway Traffic - “A cool new display in Germany currently provides a colorfully visual sample of the adjacent ongoing traffic…”

A New Goldmine For Intel: The $6 Atom Processor - “Mountain House (CA) - Intel is gearing up to launch what may be its most important product since the Pentium processor: The Atom CPU targets key growth markets and could ship hundreds of millions units within a few year. While much of the success will depend on unit numbers, sources told TG Daily that Atom will be big cash cow for Intel…”

Toyota Prius - Power Split Device (PSD) - “If you have no mathematical or mechanical understanding of hybrid technology or even regular engine components, this will help you get a feel for how the PSD allows the car to use power from an internal combustion engine (ICE) , as well as 2 electric Motor/Generators (MG1 and MG2), all spinning at different and variable speeds. The PSD even allows the smaller of the two Motor/Generators, MG1, to act as a starter for the ICE, thereby eliminating another component of a traditional gasoline engine…”

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