Top 10 dirtiest hotels
What’s the dirtiest hotel you’ve ever stayed in?  
TripAdvisor®, the world’s most trusted source of travel advice, today announced the top 10 dirtiest hotels in America, based on TripAdvisor traveler ratings for cleanliness. For the fifth consecutive year, TripAdvisor reveals the truth about hotels around the world, from the most gleaming to the [...]

Pyramids in China???

Egyptian pyramids? Sure, everyone knows about the ones at Giza – and a few aficionados might know about the 138 others (!) scattered around them. Mesoamerican pyramids? Okay, a lot of folks know about them, too — or even that the great one at Cholula is considered to be the largest one in [...]

Forget roasting a textbook turkey or perfect present-wrapping this month. The real test of Britons’ mettle will come as we try to park in tight spots on busy roads, with 35 million of us heading to the shops over the next few weeks. Help, however, is at hand, as Professor Simon Blackburn, from Royal Holloway, [...]

Trend watcher Pete Cashmore
As 2009 draws to a close, the Web’s attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?
While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:
Real-time ramps up
Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, [...]

Everyone knows that divorce is a frequent problem, but measuring it exactly is not an easy task according to a report from Canada. The Ontario-based Vanier Institute of the Family published its 3rd edition of “Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences” earlier this month.

Honda Hybrid hits pedestrians
Hybrid vehicles, which creep along almost silently at low speeds on electric power, are more likely to hit pedestrians or bicycles than regular cars, a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finds.
 

Friends create great motivation for losing weight
To reach the conclusion, Professor Shiriki Kumanyika and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, conducted the two-year trial. The study included 344 men and women.
The volunteers’ goal was to achieve and maintain a 5 per cent to 10 per cent weight loss. They were educated [...]

Don’t you think a lot more people need to be aware of this?
Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level has a great item up about the growing menace of “money mules.” The term refers to bank customers who’ve been conned into unwittingly laundering cash that hackers have stolen from business bank accounts. The con and the funny [...]

LSD and ecstacy shown to be more effective against anxiety
disorders than Prozac, Zoloft and other “legal” drugs
A growing number of people are taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy to help them cope with a variety of conditions including anorexia nervosa, cluster headaches and chronic anxiety attacks.
The emergence of a community that passes [...]

A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider.
Internet speed and connectivity in Africa’s largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.
Local news agency SAPA [...]

India is sucking 54 trillion liters of water out of the ground every year
India’s thirst for groundwater is threatening a major water crisis, and adding to global sea level rise, says a report.
Virendra Tiwari, from the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, says that satellite measurements have shown that northern India is sucking some 54 [...]

It’s a rough life as a young child in India
Despite India’s economic prosperity, nearly two million children under the age of five, die every year in the country, the highest number anywhere in the world, a media report said today.
More than half of them die the month after birth and 400,000 in their first 24 [...]

Two recent University of Rochester Medical Center studies don’t look good

Two recent studies point out alarming trends in childhood obesity – not only is the group of severely obese children getting larger, but parents don’t even see it. Between 1976 and 2004, the rate of severely obese children – those with BMIs at or above [...]

Large tornadoes occurring near gulf coast.
Tornadoes that occur from hurricanes moving inland from the Gulf Coast are increasing in frequency, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This increase seems to reflect the increase in size and frequency among large hurricanes that make landfall from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Greener Home Competition
Fifty Longmont homeowners could get full-house makeovers.
But that wouldn’t mean new couches, matching drapes and fresh paint.
These makeovers would include installing solar panels, wind turbines and data-control centers to manage energy use and safety systems.
Englewood-based DaVinci Quest is putting together a global contest to invite teams to design environmentally friendly smart homes [...]

When economists fail
It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. [...]

For the 2nd year running, the winner is Chicago
Sinking property values, high unemployment and prices, and poor environments add to the pressure felt by residents in these metros.
Few enjoy their commute. Just ask Stephen Dinwiddie, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago.
“I think anybody who, like I do, commutes on the Kennedy on a [...]

2nd biggest unintentional killer in the US
At least in the United States the second biggest unintentional injury killer (leaving aside murders and suicides) is poisons. Deaths caused by car accidents are now down to only 34k per year, not all that much higher than the 23k unintentional poison deaths. Here are what you need to know about [...]

Unknown biological glob floating down coast of Alaska
A mysterious glob of unknown material up to 12 miles long has appeared off Alaska’s northern coast. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says, “It’s certainly biological. It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind.”

Night with a Futurist: Future of the Smart Grid
Monday’s Night with a Futurist saw Phil Watts discussing the Future of the Smart Grid, and more generally the future of power generation, use, and storage. Watts noted how little the power grid has changed relative to other technology in the 100+ years since its initial creation. [...]

 
Artificial liver for drug tests.
If you have hay fever, headaches or a cold, it’s only a short way to the nearest chemist. The drugs, on the other hand, can take eight to ten years to develop. Until now animal experiments have been an essential step, yet they continue to raise ethical issues. “Our artificial organ [...]

The risk of heart attack is increased by the virus, spread through bodily fluids 
New research suggests that a common infection affecting 60 to 99 per cent of adults could result in high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries – leading causes of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.

Herb Rubenstein, Brent Green, Arjun Sen and Mike Cote at the Startup Junkie Underground
Monday’s Startup Junkie Underground featured ZenMango President Arjun Sen on “Winning Big in a Down Economy.” Sen, bringing experience from retailers including Einstein Bagels and Papa John’s Pizza, began by highlighting the core mantra of his consulting firm: “Guest experience enhancement.” Sen’s [...]

Pablo Picasso, 66, with his son  
Read between the lines of a recent study out of Australia and you can see hints of a coming shift in the gender conversation. Researchers at the University of Queensland found that children born to older fathers have, on average, lower scores on tests of intelligence than those born to [...]

 
If you’re one of the many fans of The Surrogates comic book (soon to be a Bruce Willis movie), then Honda’s new human-to-robot brain interface technology will be welcome news. The Honda Research Institute Japan, ATR and Shimadzu Corporation have come up with a non-invasive control mechanism called the Brain Machine Interface (BMI).