Archive for August 12th, 2008sciencehabit writes “A Science Magazine investigation uses clues from a key document unveiled last week to reconstruct the trail that led the FBI to Bruce Ivans. Among the revelations: Anthrax fingerprinting wasn’t critical to the investigation, as many reports have suggested. Rather, brute-force genetic sequencing, with the help of the J. Craig Venter Institute, helped crack the case. New potential motivations by Ivans are also revealed.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Hugh Pickens writes “For a long time, humans were pretty dumb, doing tiny but make ‘the same very boring stone tools for nearly 2 million years,’ states Philipp Khaitovich of the Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai. Then, 150,000 years ago, our big brains suddenly got smart. We started innovating. We tried different materials. We started creating art and maybe even religion. To comprehend what caused the cognitive spurt, researchers examined chemical brain processes known to have changed in the past 200,000 years. Comparing apes and humans, they found the most robust differences were for processes involved in energy metabolism. The finding suggests that increased access to calories spurred our cognitive advances, even though definitive claims of causation are premature. In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, thereby freeing up calories for our brains. This day, humans have relatively small digestive systems and allocate around 20% of their total energy to the brain, compared to approximately 13% for non-human primates and 2-8% for other vertebrates. While other theories for the brain’s cognitive spurt have not been ruled out, the finding sheds light on what made us, as Khaitovich put it, ’so strange compared to other animals.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot. An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here’s the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. “Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He’s not accused of aiding terrorists, synthesizing explosives, nor even of making illegal fireworks. Deeb fell afoul of the Massachusetts authorities for… doing experiments… Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for [the Massachusetts town of] Marlboro stated, ‘I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would think about to be a customary home occupation.’ Grant me to translate Ms. Wilderman’s words into plain English: ‘Mr. Deeb hasn’t actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don’t like what he’s doing because I’m ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I’ll abuse my power to steal his property and shut him down.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Iddo Genuth writes “Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have recently designed a contact lens prototype with a built-in pressure sensor using a novel process that etches little electrical circuits within a soft polymer material. The new development could help glaucoma patients to measure their current risk factor, thus replacing the current methods which require the constant visit of a clinician.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Filed under: Economic data, Housing, Federal Reserve, Recession
Among the findings:
These figures are unbelievable. They underscore that the housing market is nowhere near a bottom. The effects of the downturn will be felt for years to come since the biggest asset of many Americans is their home. You have to pity people who are trying to move closer to their jobs because of high gas prices. They are screwed no matter what they do. “For homeowners who need to sell, this is a gravely serious situation,” Zillow’s Stan Humphries stated in an interview with Bloomberg. “It can also be harmful to communities where the number of unsold homes adds more to inventory and puts downward pressure on prices.” The housing market won’t improve until the massive amount of unsold inventory is cleared out, including “spec homes” being put up by builders in the hopes of luring buyers. Things are going to remain unsightly for a while.
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College Students Can Save Money on Textbooks During Back-to-School - MarketWatchPosted by: admin in Today NewsCollege Students Can Save Money on Textbooks During Back-to-School - MarketWatch
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