Futurist Thomas Frey: Many dental offices today use a device called an intraoral camera to show patients why they need a root canal. With little more than a camera on the end of a lighted wand, the technology gives people a new insider perspective into one of the least observed, yet most used, parts of the human body – the mouth. (Pics)
Since 1999 outstanding student loan debt has grown by more than 511 percent.
“I still have student loans,” David Guard, a graduate of Gettysburg College and American University, told Fox News recently, as lawmakers and the White House bickered over the debt ceiling. “I could see an increase in those interest rates.”
Continue reading… “Will student loan debt be America’s next big bubble?”
What a strange place!
Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the world’s largest salt flat at 4,086 sq miles. The Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of salt crust, which has an extraordinary flatness with the average altitude variations within one meter over the entire area of the Salar…
Forests are absorbing almost 40 per cent of the 38 billion tons of carbon dioxide created by mankind every year.
Researchers at the University of Leeds found forests absorb nearly 40 per cent of man made fossil fuel emissions every year.
Single men could die about a decade earlier than married men. Single women don’t fare much better.
Being single is great, isn’t it? You get to sleep on either side of the bed; you never have to wait for the bathroom; you’ve got all that “me time.” Except, well, you may be one of the unlucky singles who keel over about one decade earlier than your married friends, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Sniffer dogs can detect lung cancer.
Dogs can be trained to accurately identify the scent of lung cancer long before symptoms develop, according to researchers.
Say hello to your dream house if you have ever wanted to live inside the retro-futuristic world of a Jules Verne novel. This $1.75 million New York apartment is packed with giant gears, blimps, and a working porthole.(Pics)
Continue reading… “A steampunk loft with a retro-futuristic look”
A geiger counter is placed in front of sunflowers in full bloom in Fukushima.
Burning strips of paper swirled into the hot summer sky as they carry the names of the dead above a temple in Fukushima where thousands of sunflowers have been planted to help fight the omnipresent radiation.
Continue reading… “Fukushima grows sunflowers to clean up radiation contamination”
Did you know about using Control-F?
Dan Russell, one of Google’s anthropologists, conducted a largeish survey of user behavior and discovered that 90 percent of American Internet users don’t know that crtl-F will let them search documents including Web pages. I recently discovered that a smart and technologically literate friend had never heard of alt-tab for application switching; alt-tab being my single most used key combo!
It strikes me that we could probable come up with a list of ten (or even three) things you could teach to the people around you the next time you sit down to help them with a technology problem, “three things every technology user should know.”
Continue reading… “90 percent of US net users don’t know about ‘crtl-F’”
Trecking down the Amazon on your computer thanks to Google.
Google has teamed up with Amazon for a new project. Well, not Amazon, as in the company that sells the Kindle. No, we’re talking about the great, untamed wilderness of the Amazon rainforest. In a partnership with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, Google aims to use its Street View technology to raise awareness of the world’s largest rainforest and its important ecosystems.
To do this, Google is mapping the byways of the Amazon River…
Continue reading… “Google Street View is using canoes and tricycles to map the Amazon”
Male maturity age has shifted again.
Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to demonstrate this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding…
Continue reading… “Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger”
A new library approach from Canada.
For centuries the public library has been a great source of knowledge through books. Now one library in Canada is opening up the scope of how you acquire knowledge at the library; by offering up skilled people. Why read a history book when you can talk to a historian?
Continue reading… “Canadian library will Loan out people as well as books”