Why 1 means "one", and 2 means "two" ?

The numbers we all use (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) are known as "arabic" numbers to distinguish them from the " Roman Numerals" (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, etc). Actually the arabs popularized these numbers but they were originally used by the early phonecian traders to count and keep track of their trading accounts.
Have you ever thought why ........ 1 means "one", and 2 means "two"? The roman numerals are easy to understand but what was the logic behind the Phoenician numbers?It's all about angles!
It's the number of angles. If one writes the numbers down (see below) on a piece of paper in their older forms, one quickly sees why. I have marked the angles with "o"s.
No 1 has one angle. No 2 has two angles. No 3 has three angles. etc. and "O" has no angles

Star with comet's tail

Astronomers have captured the first image of a comet-like tail behind a star. The star, Mira, is named for the Latin word meaning "wonderful." The tail is 20,000 times the distance between Pluto and our sun. Mira is hurtling through space at 291,000 miles per hour.

From NASA:
"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star," says Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology. "It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake." Martin is the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (telescope), and lead author of a Nature paper appearing today to announce the discovery. Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. Mira is an older star called a red giant that is losing massive amounts of surface material. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets and possibly even life to form. This tail material, visible now for the first time, has been released over the past 30,000 years. "This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved," says co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. "We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life."

Mini-telescope eye implant

When implanted in the eye, mini-telescopes like this one could help aging individuals with macular degeneration, a disorder of the retina affecting more than 1.75 million people in the United States alone. The implant was a huge help for two thirds of more than 200 patients who participated in a recent clinical trial. The developers of the technology, VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, hope that FDA approval for the mini-scope is imminent. From Scientific American:
The implantable mini-scope... works with the eye's cornea like a telephoto system, rendering an enlarged retinal image designed to reduce the area of diminished vision. Once implanted, the device protrudes 0.1 to 0.5 millimeter beyond the surface of the pupil but does not touch the corneal endothelium, a layer of cells lining the back of the cornea. This is not an easy fix, however, and surgeons are developing special techniques to properly and swiftly implant the device without damaging the eye. The device is a compound telescope system that consists of a glass cylinder that is 4.4 millimeters in length and 3.6 millimeters in diameter and houses wide-angle micro-optics.

Never lose your wristwatch again

Programmable Subcutaneous Visible Implant
Just what I want…surgery to implant a watch in my arm. Joy!
Notice how the draftsman goofed? Shouldn’t the display on the clock be upside down (or the thumb on the other side of the hand) so the wearer could read it right side up? Of course, at least this way you can see what time it is before the inventor backhands you across the face for mocking his invention.

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation.
Global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the twentieth century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes, "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations," which leads to warming of the surface and lower atmosphere by increasing the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes have probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950, but a small cooling effect since 1950. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists is the only scientific society that officially rejects these conclusions. A few individual scientists disagree with some of the main conclusions of the IPCC. Climate models referenced by the IPCC project that global surface temperatures are likely to increase by 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) between 1990 and 2100. The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a millennium even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. This reflects the large heat capacity of the oceans.
An increase in global temperatures is expected to cause other changes, including sea level rise, increased intensity of extreme weather events, and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.
Remaining scientific uncertainties include the exact degree of climate change expected in the future, and how changes will vary from region to region around the globe. There is ongoing political and public debate on a world scale regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Making Rain

Click on the pic to enlarge

Waterproof LCD

Though we don’t have much information on this LCD, it does appear to be fully-functional underwater.

Phantom Park

The Phantom Park Lift is capable of lifting “two 5000-pound vehicles at once — and the top of the elevator functions as the garage floor for that second vehicle.”

Wall-Mounted Fireplace

Stylish yet simple, this wall-mounted fireplace by Vertigo fixes to any wall and features patented catalytic technology. It’s priced at around $2,400 and requires a natural gas hookup.
Ok, so maybe installation isn’t as easy as hanging a picture since you do require a natural gas hookup, but I bet this will draw a lot more attention than a photo of the family dog. And besides providing obvious mood lighting and extra heat the Vertigo also has a patented catalytic system that will burn off the odorous and stale air in whatever room it’s mounted in.

GE’s All-in-One Kitchen Appliance

Think of GE’s kitchen of the future as a large touchscreen display, it features touch sensors that are spread accross the entire surface, OLED primary lighting, and purifies water via ultraviolet light. This eco-friendly kitchen also allows you to load up dishwashing detergent in bulk and dispenses it using algorithms to minimize leftover cleaning agents in wastewater.

LED Rims

Spinner rims are so yesterday. Rims with built-in color LEDs become reality with “PimpStar”. These fully programmable wheels can display any image, logo, or text using the included software. Prices range from $12,500 (22? w/tires) - $19,500 (26? w/tires).
“The included software allows you to create your own images and send them to each wheel individually or all wheels at the same time as you drive! You can even pre-load up to six images into each wheel and program them to change automatically at the time intervals you select.”

Light-Transmitting Concrete

Architect Aron Losonczi has developed a new type of concrete that transmits light by adding “optical fibers” into the mix. The fibers are used to shift light at each end, producing a “see-through” effect. “Called LiTraCon, the blocks are a combination of “optical fibers” and concrete, mixed so that the fibers create a fine glass aggregate within the concrete.”

Steering Wheel Laptop

If you need another distraction while driving, then check out this strange “Steering Wheel Laptop”. It allows you to “mount your laptop securely on your steering wheel so you can comfortably use your laptop while sitting in the driver’s seat of your vehicle.

Gun Control Security Camera

No other surveillance system quite matches the security of Scott Kildall’s Gun Control, which integrates a “police-issue” revolver and video camera into the killer package seen above. Like something out of a 007 movie, when a person comes into view, the camera and gun both follow.

What if you forget to turn off your “Gun Control Security Camera[s]” before walking in the house?

Unusual Deaths of the 21st Century

21st century :

2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten. This is referred to in the song "Mein Teil" by German NDH band Rammstein.

2003: Brian Wells, a pizza delivery man, was killed by a time bomb which was fastened around his neck. He was apprehended by the police after robbing a bank, and claimed he had been forced to do it by three people who had put the bomb around his neck and would kill him if he refused. The bomb later exploded, killing him.

2003: Brandon Vedas died of a drug overdose while engaged in an Internet chat, as shown on his webcam.

2003: Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist who had lived in the wilderness among bears for thirteen summers in a remote region in Alaska, was killed and partially consumed by bears, along with his girlfriend Amie Huguenard. The incident is described in Werner Herzog's documentary film Grizzly Man.

2005: Kenneth Pinyan of Seattle died of acute peritonitis after submitting to anal intercourse with a stallion in the town of Enumclaw, Washington. Pinyan had done this before, and he delayed his visit to the hospital for several hours out of reluctance for official cognizance. The case led to the criminalization of bestiality in Washington. His story was recounted in the 2007 documentary film Zoo.

2005: 28-year-old Korean video game addict Lee Seung Seop collapsed in an Internet cafe after playing Starcraft for almost 50 consecutive hours.

2006: Steve Irwin, a television personality and naturalist known as The Crocodile Hunter, died when his heart was impaled by a short-tail stingray barb while filming a documentary entitled "Ocean's Deadliest" in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef. 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB operative and Russian expatriate who had been investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was poisoned by polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive metalloid.

2006: Mariesa Weber, a 5'3" Florida woman, fell behind a 6' tall bookcase in her family's home and suffocated. She was not discovered for 11 days; her family thought she had been kidnapped. 2007: Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old woman from Sacramento, died of water intoxication while trying to win a Nintendo Wii in a KDND 107.9 "The End" radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.

2007: Kevin Whitrick, a 42-year-old man committed suicide live on a webcam during an internet chat session.

Unusual Deaths of the 20th Century

20th century :
number of performers have died of natural causes during public performances, including:
1943: Critic Alexander Woollcott suffered a fatal heart attack during an on-air discussion about Adolf Hitler.
1958: Gareth Jones, actor, collapsed and died while in make-up between scenes of a live television play, Underground, at the studios of Associated British Corporation in Manchester. Director Ted Kotcheff continued the play to its conclusion, improvising around Jones's absence.
1960: Baritone Leonard Warren collapsed on the stage of the New York Metropolitan Opera of a major stroke during a performance of La forza del destino. The last line he sang was "¿Morir? Tremenda cosa." ("To die? A tremendous thing.")
1971: Jerome Irving Rodale, an American pioneer of organic farming, died of a heart attack while being interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show. When he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?". The show was never broadcast.
1984: Tommy Cooper collapsed from a massive heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act, on the popular ITV variety show, Live from Her Majesty's.
1987: Dick Shawn, a comedian who starred in the 1968 movie The Producers, died on stage of a heart attack. While portraying a politician, he announced, "if elected, I will not lay down on the job," then lay down on stage and never stood back up.
A number of performers have died from unnatural causes during a practice or public performance, including:
1925: Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart, a circus strongman and Jewish folklore hero died during a demonstration in which he drove a spike through five one-inch thick oak boards using only his bare hands when his knee was accidentally pierced. The spike was rusted and caused an infection which led to fatal blood poisoning. He was the subject of the Werner Herzog film, Invincible.
1972: Leslie Harvey, guitarist of Stone the Crows was electrocuted on stage by a live microphone.
1976: Keith Relf, former singer for British rhythm and blues band The Yardbirds, died while practicing his electric guitar, electrocuted because the guitar was not properly grounded.
1999: Owen Hart, a professional wrestler for WWE died during a PPV event when performing a stunt. It was planned to have Owen come down from the rafters of the Kemper Arena on a safety harness tied to a rope to make his ring entrance. The safety latch was released and Owen dropped 78 feet to the ground. The PPV continued even after he was pronounced dead.
1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning six years after receiving a toe injury when he kicked his safe in anger at being unable to remember its combination code.
1912: Tailor Franz Reichelt fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he'd told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.
1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, died of drowning while trapped under ice. Although the details of his murder are disputed, he was allegedly placed in the water through a hole in the winter ice after having been poisoned, bludgeoned, castrated, and shot multiple times in the head, lung, and liver.
1920: Baseball player Ray Chapman was killed when he was hit in the head by a pitch.
1923: George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon becomes the first to die from King Tut's Curse after a mosquito bite on his face becomes seriously infected.
1923: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, Sweet Kiss, went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.
1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.
1927: Isadora Duncan, dancer, died of accidental strangulation and broken neck when her scarf caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.
1933: Michael Malloy, a homeless man, was murdered by gassing after surviving multiple poisonings, intentional exposure and being struck by a car. Malloy was murdered by five men in a plot to collect on life insurance policies they had purchased.

1935: Baseball player Len Koenecke was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of an aircraft he had chartered, after provoking a fight with the pilot while the plane was in the air.
1941: Sherwood Anderson, writer, swallowed a toothpick at a party and then died of peritonitis.

1943: Lady be Good, a USAAF B-24 bomber lost its way and crash landed in the Libyan Desert. Mummified remains of its crew, who struggled for a week without water, were not found until 1960.
1944: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
1947: The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders were found dead in their home in New York. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
1960: In the Nedelin disaster, over 100 Soviet missile technicians and officials died when a switch was turned on unintentionally igniting the rocket, including Red Army Marshal Nedelin who was seated in a deck chair just 40 meters away overseeing launch preparations. The events were filmed by automatic cameras.
1967: A flash fire began in the pure oxygen atmosphere during a training exercise inside the unlaunched Apollo 1 spacecraft, killing Command Pilot Virgil I. Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. The door to the capsule was unable to be opened during the fire because of its specific design.
1967: Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy.
1973: Péter Vályi, finance minister of Hungary fell into a blast furnace (some sources say a pit of molten iron) on a visit to a steelworks factory at Miskolc.

1974: Christine Chubbuck, an American television news reporter committed suicide during a live broadcast on July 15. At 9:38 AM, 8 minutes into her talk show, on WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida, she drew out a revolver and shot herself in the head.
1975: On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn literally died laughing whilst watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing whilst watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure.
1977: Tom Pryce, a Formula One driver, and a 19-year-old track marshal Jansen Van Vuuren both died at the 1977 South African Grand Prix after Van Vuuren ran across the track beyond a blind brow to attend to another car which had caught fire and was struck by Pryce's car at approximately 170mph. Pryce was struck in the face by the marshal's fire extinguisher and was killed instantly.
1978: Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated by poisoning in London by an unknown assailant who jabbed him in the calf with a specially modified umbrella that fired a metal pellet with a small cavity full of ricin poison.
1978: Janet Parker, a British medical photographer, died of smallpox in 1978, ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory Parker worked at accidentally released some virus into the air of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.
1981: A 25-year-old Dutch woman studying in Paris, Renée Hartevelt, was killed and eaten by a classmate, Issei Sagawa, when he invited her to dinner for a literary conversation. The killer was declared unfit to stand trial and extradited back to Japan, where he was released from custody within fifteen months.
1981: Boris Sagal, a motion picture-director, died while shooting the TV miniseries World War III when he walked into the tail-rotor blade of a helicopter and was mortally injured.
1982: Vic Morrow, actor, was decapitated by a helicopter blade during filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie, along with two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.
1982: Vladimir Smirnov, an Olympic champion fencer, died of brain damage nine days after his opponent's foil snapped during a match, pierced his eyeball and entered his brain.
1983: A diver on the Byford Dolphin oil exploration rig was violently dismembered and pulled through a narrowly opened hatch when the decompression chamber was accidentally opened, causing explosive decompression.
1983: Tennessee Williams, American playwright, died choking on a bottle cap. He was in a hotel but was too drunk to leave his room or make sufficient noise to attract attention.
1983: Sergei Chalibashvili, a professional diver, died after a diving accident during World University Games. When he attempted a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position, he smashed his head on the board and was knocked unconscious. He died after being in a coma for a week.
1984: Jon-Erik Hexum, an American television actor, died after he shot himself in the head with a prop gun during a break in filming. Hexum apparently did not realize that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, and that this wadding is propelled out of the barrel of the gun with enough force to cause severe injury or death if the weapon is fired at point-blank range.
1987: R. Budd Dwyer, a Republican politician, committed suicide during a televised press conference. Facing a potential 55-year jail sentence for alleged involvement in a conspiracy, Dwyer shot himself in the mouth with a revolver.
1990: Joseph W. Burrus, aged 32, an aspiring magician, decided to perform the "buried alive" illusion in a plastic box covered with cement. The cement crushed the box and he died of asphyxia.
1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players gave him a Gatorade Shower following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football). Some argue this resulted in pneumonia.
1993: Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee, was shot and killed by a prop .44 Magnum gun while filming the movie The Crow. The gun was pre-loaded by the Weapons Master for the set, but the casing for the blank shattered upon firing and the fragments became instant projectiles. They pierced Brandon's chest in five places, some in the heart. It was not instantly recognized by the crew or other actors what had happened, they believed he was still acting.
1996: Sharon Lopatka, an internet entrepreneur from Maryland who allegedly solicited a man via the Internet to torture and kill her for the purpose of sexual gratification. Her killer, Robert Fredrick Glass, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the homicide.
1998: Tom and Eileen Lonergan were stranded while scuba diving with a group of divers off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The group's boat accidentally abandoned them due to an incorrect head count taken by the dive boat crew. The couple was left to fend for themselves in shark-infested waters. Their bodies were never recovered. The incident is depicted in the film Open Water.

Man Invents Steampunk Mechanical Tiger

An artist from Brugge, Belgium has invented the world’s first Steampunk-style mechanical tiger.

An awesome, custom-built mechanical tiger created by a local artist and taken out for its first ride.

Mincemeat and the Imaginary Man

Early in the morning on the 1st of May 1943, a fisherman on a beach in Spain discovered a waterlogged corpse which had washed ashore during the night. The dead man was clothed in British military attire and a life preserver, and he had a briefcase chained to his lifeless body. Apparently a casualty of an airplane accident at sea, the body was transported to the local port, where its discovery was reported to the Nazi officials stationed in the city of Huelva.
From his personal effects, the man was identified as Major William Martin, a temporary captain and acting major in the British Royal Marines. Rather than allowing possible military intelligence to go unintercepted, the local agents for the Abwehr– the German intelligence organization– coaxed the briefcase open to examine its contents. Inside, along with the man's personal effects, the Nazis discovered a personal correspondence between Lt. Gen. Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff, and General Sir Harold Alexander, the British commander in North Africa. This letter described key details of the Allies' plans to invade Nazi-held territory. It seemed that luck was favoring Germany; but the discovery ultimately resulted in disaster for the Nazis.

Grand Canyon Skyway

When standing at the rail of the observation deck of the Sears Tower– one of the tallest buildings in the world– many visitors experience some degree of vertigo at the brink of the sheer, 1,353 foot drop-off. This is a natural response as the body's self-defense system reminds its owner of the dangers of gravity. If you're not fond of heights, a new construction project underway in Arizona will probably cause that self-defense mechanism to chew its way out of your body and flee for safety. It's called the Grand Canyon Skyway, and it dabbles in altitudes which dwarf that of the Sears Tower.
The horseshoe-shaped walkway, scheduled to open later this year, will jut out seventy feet off the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, suspending its occupants about 4,000 feet above the ground (about thrice the height of the Sears Tower) as they stand on a glass floor, looking down. The walkway's walls will be comprised of the same four-inch-thick glass as the floor, which will leave the spectacular view relatively unobstructed, even for those people who opt to remain on all fours.

Birth of FM Radio

Armstrong's regenerative receiver prototype (1912)In 1934, much of the world was in the grip of the Great Depression. Unemployment was an epidemic, and many businesses struggled desperately to survive. One notable exception to these economic troubles, however, was the radio industry. Broadcasters in the US were making upwards of two billion dollars a year, and they owed much of their success to the innovations of a brilliant man named Edwin Armstrong. Twenty years earlier he had significantly improved the sensitivity and quality of radio receivers with his invention of the regenerative circuit in his junior year of college, and he went on to further improve them with his Super Regenerative circuit and Super Heterodyne receiver. These laid the foundation for the success of radio broadcasting– in fact, almost any radio you buy today will still incorporate these innovations. But in 1933, Armstrong brought about an even more revolutionary change in the broadcasting business: FM radio.
In spite of these brilliant technical achievements, Armstrong saw little financial benefit from his inventions. Many of his ideas were plundered by unscrupulous people, a trend which ultimately led to Armstrong's tragic and premature death.

Why Not a Wind-up Car ?

Many hybrid cars use an interesting system called "regenerative braking" to recapture some of the energy which is wasted with conventional braking systems. On a typical car, each wheel has a rotor disk, and braking is accomplished by causing the brake pads to squeeze the rotor and create friction which slows the car, converting the forward momentum into waste heat. But a hybrid doesn't use the brake pads at all unless you hit the brakes hard… Instead, the car's momentum is used to crank its electric motors, which slows the car while recharging the onboard batteries.
This brilliantly simple system is part of why hybrid cars are so fuel efficient in stop-and-go traffic. But hybrids have their downsides… For one, a modern hybrid's batteries only last 8-10 years on average, and they are extremely expensive to replace, on the order of $3000-7000. Battery disposal is also a sticky problem, since Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries contain hazardous chemicals. In addition, although hybrids save some weight by including a smaller gas engine, they add it all back by including the heavy electrical components: two electric motors and the batteries. Could there be a way of usefully recapturing a car's kinetic energy on deceleration without adding so much weight, and without the expense and environmental impact of batteries? What about a wind-up automobile?

The Alcatraz Redemption

Alcatraz Island (pdphoto.org)Officially, there were never any successful escape attempts from California's notorious Alcatraz Prison. Nicknamed 'The Rock', Alcatraz is located on the tiny island of the same name in San Francisco Bay. It is about one and a quarter miles from the mainland, outside reasonable swimming distance and surrounded by strong ocean currents. This location afforded it formidable defenses against escape. Between 1934 and 1963, when the prison was operating, only fourteen attempts were made; most of the escapees involved were shot by guards or recaptured.
One exception, however, came in 1962. Prisoners Frank Lee Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin had spent months developing an elaborate plan to get out of the imposing structure, as well as a way to cross San Francisco Bay to the mainland with a makeshift raft. After lights-out on the night of 11 June 1962, the trio decided that the time was right and set their plan in motion. After that, however, they were never seen again.

Cellphones to smell in the future ?

Motorola has recently received a patent for a handset which is capable of releasing scents by heating a gel packet, operating on the same principle as that of a plug-in air freshener. The handset comes with a power amplifier that can activate this feature without having the cellphone suffer from dramatic design changes. This is essential since Motorola has long moved on from unwieldy cellphones to their current slick and slim handsets which are the company’s main source of revenue.

I don’t know about you, but to release a smell that is universally appealing can be a pretty challenging task. You wouldn’t want your handbag to be filled with the same smell that is released from your cellphone all the time, would you? After all, that scenario would mean having everything else in your handbag smell the same as well. Smells are much more invasive than looks, and as it stands, not everybody digs the same handset design, making smells a much harder proposition to put forward to ever finicky consumers.
What happens when a customer is sick of a particular smell - does he/she have to trade in the cellphone, or is there a replacement refill to switch smells? Would the smell replacements be fairly priced? Chances are if a handset utilizing this technology is released, most people will probably ditch the gel packet first and carry on talking like normal, which pretty much defeats the purpose in the first place. I don’t know about you, but having a cellphone that eliminates odors would probably fare better in the long run.

The Gravity Express

About four hundred years ago– sometime in the latter half of the 17th century– Isaac Newton received a letter from the brilliant British scientist and inventor Robert Hooke. In this letter, Hooke outlined the mathematics governing how objects might fall if dropped through hypothetical tunnels drilled through the Earth at varying angles. Though it seems that Hooke was mostly interested in the physics of the thought experiment, an improbable yet intriguing idea fell out of the data: a dizzyingly fast transportation system.
Hooke's calculations showed that if the technology could be developed to bore such holes through the Earth, a vehicle with sufficiently reduced friction could use such a tunnel to travel to another point anywhere on the on Earth within three quarters of an hour, regardless of distance. Even more amazingly, the vehicle would require negligible fuel. The concept is known as the Gravity Train, and though it seems inconceivably difficult to construct, it has received some serious scientific attention and research in the intervening centuries.

You Can Pick Your Doctor, and You Can Pick Your Nose…

There is an Austrian doctor who has gained notoriety by advocating the picking of one's nose and the consumption of the resulting bounty, particularly in children. Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, a lung specialist working in Innsbruck, would have us believe that people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies. His argument stems from the notion that exposing the body to the dried germ corpses helps to reinforce the immune system. The good doctor feels that society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking, and encourage children to take up the habit.

The Seventh Sense

From childhood, we are taught that the human body has five senses. I'm sure we can all recite them: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. This list has remained unchanged since the time of Aristotle. To most people, a "sixth sense" refers either to one outside the realm of the scientific, or one that simply does not exist in most humans.
However, ask a neurologist how many senses the human body has, and you might get a surprising answer. Many identify nine or more senses- some listing as many as twenty-one. The first category of senses is the "special" senses, including the familiar sight, hearing, taste, and smell. The second category is made up of the somatic senses, which we usually lump under "touch"- including our perception of pressure, heat, and pain. The third category, however, is not nearly as well-known. These are the interoceptive senses- those that deal with data originating in the body itself.
It is fairly obvious what happens to a person when a sense fails. Many members of society are missing one or more senses. It is common knowledge that blindness is the absence of sight. Deafness, of hearing. Everyone knows what it's like to lose taste and smell as well; this loss accompanies every head cold. But what happens when the body loses knowledge of itself is a far stranger occurrence.

Lie Detectors Alongside Metal Detectors

Someday in the future, when you're moving through airport security, you may be required to speak to the GK-1 machine before being allowed to pass. As you don a headset, the machine will ask you questions about your criminal intentions, and wait for you to utter your responses into a microphone. Software inside the machine will record your responses, scrutinize them for tell-tale signs of dishonesty, and flag you for further probing if thinks you're a liar.
The GK-1 was developed by Nemesysco, a security outfit in Israel. It uses software to listen for involuntary tremors which arise in the voice of a liar, or so its makers claim. If you have too many tremors in your voice when the machine asks you whether you're a drug smuggler, a terrorist, or some other type of disagreeable person, you'll be "taken aside."

The Truth About Truth Serum

Popular culture makes gratuitous use of powerful lie-repelling agents known as Truth Serums. They are usually depicted as injected drugs which strongly inhibit a subject's ability to lie, causing him or her to mechanically recite the truth to an interviewer upon questioning.
Such drugs have been utilized by some of the three-letter government agencies in the not-so-distant past (CIA, FBI, DOD, KGB, etc.), particularly during the rampant paranoia of the Cold War. And in the aftermath of 9/11, there was some discussion on the idea of bringing them back into use for interrogation. But are these truth serums effective? Do they produce any useful results?

Tiny Fish, Big Catch

Scientists have discovered the world’s smallest fish in the threatened swampland of Indonesia. It’s called Paedocypris Progenetica, a distant member of the carp family, and when fully grown it’s the size of a large mosquito.
Skinny, translucent and very elusive, the fish lives in the swamps of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and on Malaysian Borneo. The water the fish lives in is extremely acidic with a pH value of 3. These areas are now being endangered by encroaching forestry and agriculture.
The smallest adult specimen was a female that came to 7.9 millimeters just beating out the previous smallest fish, the dwarf goby, Trimmatom Nanus, at 8 .0 millimeters.
The Paedocypris Progenetica is also the world’s smallest vertebrate.
Evolutionary pressures may have caused the fish to develop highly modified fins to survive in its environment. The head is unprotected by a skeleton. Males also have a tough pad on the front of the pelvic girdle that may be used to help them clutch onto females during mating.

The Most Powerful Bomb Ever Constructed

On October 30, 1961, the most powerful weapon ever constructed by mankind was exploded over the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Sea. The device was code-named "Ivan," and it was a multi-stage hydrogen bomb which was built in only fifteen weeks by engineers in the USSR, using off-the-shelf nuclear weapon components.

It was intended as a display of Soviet superiority during a period of grave tension between the USSR and the United States. The Russians had erected the Berlin wall only two months earlier, and they had just ended a shaky, three-year moratorium on atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Before Ivan, the largest explosion the world had seen was an incredible 15 megatons, an event which caused a mushroom cloud five kilometers across. Ivan's explosion was over three times more powerful, despite the fact that the device was deliberately prevented from operating to its full potential.

Monster Rogue Waves

For centuries sailors have been telling stories of encountering monstrous ocean waves which tower over one hundred feet in the air and toss ships about like corks. Historically oceanographers have discounted these reports as tall tales– the embellished stories of mariners with too much time at sea. But in the last eleven years scientists have discovered strong evidence indicating that such massive rogue waves do exist. The phenomenon has become the subject of recent scientific study, but their origin remains a mystery of the deep.

About one ship is lost every week in the world's oceans, mostly due to poor seamanship or severe weather. But it now seems likely that at least a small percentage of sea disappearances are due to encounters with these destructive waves. Over the years experienced captains have made very credible reports of meeting behemoth waves which appear spontaneously, cause extensive damage to their ships, and shrug back into the sea just as mysteriously as they had appeared. One account describes the appearance of a giant wave trough which onlookers likened to a "hole in the sea", followed by a twelve-story-tall "wall of water." To further compound the mystery, some such waves have been said to appear mid-ocean, and often in calm weather.

Clever Hans the Math Horse

In the late 1800s, a German high school mathematics instructor named Wilhelm Von Osten was pushing a few scientific envelopes from his home in Berlin. Among other things, he was a student of phrenology, the now discredited theory that one's intelligence, character, and personality traits can be derived based of the shape of one's head. But it was his keen interest in animal intelligence that would ultimately win him fame.
Von Osten firmly believed that humanity had greatly underestimated the reasoning skills and intelligence of animals. To test his hypothesis, he took it upon himself to tutor a cat, a horse, and a bear in the ways of mathematics. The cat was indifferent to his efforts, and the bear seemed outright hostile, but the arab stallion named Hans showed some real promise. With further tutelage, Hans the horse learned to use his hoof to tap out numbers written on a blackboard. Much to Von Osten's delight, jotting a "3" on the blackboard would prompt a tap-tap-tap from his pupil, a feat which Hans could repeat for any number under ten.
Encouraged by this success, Von Osten pressed his student further. The scientist drew out some basic arithmetic problems on his chalkboard, and attempted to train the horse in the symbols' meanings. Hans had no problem keeping up with the curriculum, and soon he was providing the correct responses to a variety of math problems including basic square roots and fractions. Hans was proving to be a clever horse indeed.

The Deepest Hole

This is a classic Damn Interesting article which originally appeared on 20 June 2006.

Over forty years ago, researchers in the Soviet Union began an ambitious drilling project whose goal was to penetrate the Earth's upper crust and sample the warm, mysterious area where the crust and mantle intermingle– the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or "Moho." So deep is this area that the Russian scientists had to invent new ways of drilling, and some of their new methods proved quite inventive. But despite the valiant effort which spanned several decades, the Russians never reached their goal, and many of the Earth's secrets were left undiscovered. The work done by the Soviets did, however, provide a plethora of information about what lies just beneath the surface, and it continues to be scientifically useful today. The project is known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole.