The New York Times has an interesting graph depicting the movie box office receipts from 1986 to 2007:
Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time.
Link
via Neatorama

According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy’s goal for 2010 by 10%.

Even with its increased hiring estimates of 1,200 patent examiners each year for the next 5 years, the US Patent and Trademark Office patent application backlog is expected to increase to over 1.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2011 the Government Accounting Office reported today.
The USPTO has also estimated that if it were […]

If you think you’ve seen a lot of amazing clocks in your life, well, here’s your chance to see some that are both remarkable and strange, but at the same time, very cool.
Our judges have spoken.  You may know of a better design, and we’d like to know about it.  But out of the […]

Digging has resumed at a site in the southeastern German town of Deutschneudorf, where treasure hunters believe there are almost 2 tons of Nazi gold and possibly clues to the whereabouts of the legendary Amber Room, a prize taken from a Russian castle during World War II.

Yes, at times this seems a bit gay, but a totally amazing performance.

A Japanese firm on Tuesday unveiled a portable, personal exercise instructor in the form of a headset which will give instant advice by checking the pulse on the wearer’s earlobe.
The “Body Trainer” by Sega Toys Co. comprises a phone to be put in the right ear and a tiny clip to be attached to the […]

If you’re sick of bowling at the local circus known as the bowling alley, why not enjoy a bowling alley in your home? You’ve seen it in movies and on TV. The show Las Vegas comes to mind. You can now have a custom bowling alley in your home too.
United Bowling is a Florida […]

Information about even the tiniest details of our daily lives zooms along neurons in our brains and is processed and saved in some predetermined location. How and what information is stored in the memory is in part dependent on whether an individual is a man or a woman. While the underlying mechanisms that explain memory […]

 
European antitrust regulators on Wednesday fined Microsoft $1.3 billion for failing to comply with a 2004 judgment that the company had abused its market dominance.
The new fine by the European Commission brings the total fines levied on Microsoft to about $2.5 billion in current exchange rates.

 
48% of teenagers bought no CDs at all in 2007, up from 38% in 2006. Music downloads continue to grow, though, with iTunes leading the way.
The illegal sharing of music online continued to soar in 2007, but there was one sign of hope that legal downloading was picking up steam. In the last year, Apple […]

Fish have the limited ability to count directly up to four, say scientists.
Christian Agrillo, an experimental psychologist at the university of Padua in Italy, said that it was during a study on North American mosquito fish that their limited mathematical ability was observed.
The researcher said that the […]

Screen Digest anticipates that sports content will be the single biggest driver of online video consumption in the US and UK, much in the same way that it was a driver of pay-TV adoption.
The number of online sports videos watched will more than double in both the US and UK over the next five […]

When I saw the first part of this video, I was thinking its just a remote control helicopter. But once the pilot took his seat below it, I began to understand the potential here.
Yes, it’s very noisy. And yes, it looks incredibly dangerous. But using something like this to “jump” to the […]

Killer robots could become the weapon of choice for militants, a British expert said on Wednesday. Noel Sharkey (above with robot), professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield said he believed falling costs would soon make robots a realistic option for extremist groups.
Several countries and companies […]

Behold the fluorescent glory of the ECHO PARK TIME TRAVEL MART Marquee. Check it out in person at 1714 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. The Echo Park Time Travel Mart specializes in everything you need for time travel, such as Mammoth Chunks, Barbarian Repellent (warning: doesn’t work for Ostrogoth), and Time-Freezy Hyper Slushy drink among […]

There’s something unusual going on inside a former bank vault hidden beneath a high rise building in Tokyo, Japan: farming! And no, not the illicit kind:
While we’re on the subject of things agricultural and of things covered by just about everyone long before today, there is Pasona O2, a subterranean farm cultivated inside a former […]

Bottom trawling for fish is so destructive to marine environment that its plume can be seen from space!

A color-blind artist who could only recognize black and white shades has learned how to paint with a full palette by “hearing” the hues he cannot see.
Neil Harbisson, 25, has been fitted with a device called an Eyeborg, which converts 360 colors into different sounds.

College students still can’t get enough of Facebook.
According to Youth Trends’ February 2008 “Top Ten List Report,” Facebook was students’ favorite Web site for the seventh straight quarter.
“Among men, CollegeHumor, Break and Digg all experienced gains over the most recent quarter as MySpace missed out making the top ten for the first time in a […]

 
Most Brits remember their first car more readily than their first kiss, according to a new survey.
Getting a set of wheels ranked more highly for young people than their initial embrace, their first boyfriend or girlfriend and their 18th birthday.

A Pew survey of 35,000 Americans shows that more than a quarter of all adults have left the religion they were raised in as a child. The groups showing the most gains are the unaffiliated.

Most people remember the scene in the first Star Wars movie when R2D2 projected a 3-D image of Obi wan into space.  Finally, after more than 30 years, the highly anticipated R2-D2 Video Projector has arrived.

This Softphone concept phone from designer Quian Jiang uses a series of discs that have electronically wired cotton fabric in between. The idea here is that things are soft and flexible. For example, being able to fold up the keyboard would save some space. How about simply squeezing it to initiate or end a […]

A small robotic aircraft powered by rotating “paddle-wheel” wings could yet rule the skies, if renewed interest in an antique design bears fruit.
Several international research groups are working on prototype “cyclogyros”, a design first proposed more than 100 years ago.
A cyclogyro flies using “cycloidal propellers” – several wings positioned around the edge of a rotating […]