Excessive Mobile Phone Use Affects Sleep In Teens, Study Finds

Teenagers who excessively use their cell phone are more prone to disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9 at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).The study, authored by Gaby Badre, MD, PhD, of Sahlgren's Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden, focused on 21 healthy subjects, between 14-20 years of age, with regular working/studying hours and without sleep problems. The subjects were broken up into two groups: a control group (three men, seven women) and the experimental group (three men, eight women). The control group made less than five calls and/or sent five text messages a day, while the experimental group made more than 15 calls and/or sent 15 text messages a day. The subjects were then asked questions regarding their lifestyle and sleep habits.According to the results, when compared to subjects with restricted use of cell phones, young people with excessive use of cell phones (both talking and text messaging) have increased restlessness with more careless lifestyles, more consumption of stimulating beverages, difficulty in falling asleep and disrupted sleep, and more susceptibility to stress and fatigue. They behave more like larks than owls, suggesting a delayed biological clock.

Harnessing Microbes To Meet Our Future Energy Needs

"When people think of capturing sunlight energy in biomass, they focus on plants, which are familiar. However, plants are quite inefficient at capturing sunlight energy and turning it into biomass that can be used a fuel," Rittmann explains. As a result, plants could provide only a tiny fraction of our society's energy needs. "Obviously, we need the plants for producing food and sustaining natural ecosystems. Plants simply fail the scalability, environmental, and food tests."
In contrast, microoganisms, the smallest forms of life on Earth, can meet the scalability and environmental tests. Rittmann sees a vast untapped potential of using microbes in service to society to meet our energy challenges.
"Photosynthetic bacteria can capture sunlight energy at rates 100 times or more greater than plants, and they do not compete for arable land," Rittmann said. This high rate of energy capture means that renewable biofuels can be generated in quantities that rival our current use of fossil fuels.
In addition, non-photosynthetic microorganisms are capable of converting the energy value of all kinds of biomass, including wastes, into readily useful energy forms, such as methane, hydrogen, and electricity.
"Microorganisms can provide just the services our society needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels," said Rittmann. "Only the microorganisms can pass all the tests, and we should take full advantage of the opportunities that microorganisms present."

Nano-tech Process Produces Plastics That Are 10 Times More Stretchable

Researchers in China report the first successful "electrospinning" of a type of plastic widely used in automobiles and electronics. The high-tech process, which uses an electric charge to turn polymers into thin fibers in the presence of electricity, produced plastic mats that can stretch 10 times more without breaking than the original material and could lead to new uses for the plastic, they say.In the new study, Zhao-Xia Guo and colleagues point out that the original plastic, called polyoxymethylene (POM), is an engineering staple known for its metal-like hardness, light weight, and resistance to chemicals. However, the material is relatively brittle, limiting its applications. Although many different types of plastics have been electrospun into fibers with extended uses and properties, researchers have been unable to spin POM into fibers until now, the researchers say.They report that POM could be turned into nano-sized fibers -- thousands of times thinner than the width of a single hair -- after first dissolving it in a solution called HFIP and then undergoing electrospinning. The process resulted in POM mats with improved stretchability, or ductility, high porosity, and high surface area. Such features could extend the plastic's uses to a wide range of industrial, electronic and medical applications, the researchers say.

Magnet-controlled Camera In The Body

Images from inside the body? It can be done with tiny cameras which the patient has to swallow. In the past there was no way of controlling the device as it passed through the body. Now it can be steered and stopped where desired, and even deliver images of the esophagus.mages of the inside of the intestine can be obtained even today: The patient swallows a camera that is no larger than a candy. It makes its way through the intestine and transmits images of the intestinal villi to an external receiver which the patient carries on a belt. This device stores the data so that the physician can later analyze them and identify any hemorrhages or cysts. However, the camera is not very suitable for examinations of the esophagus and the stomach.

Industrial Nations Vow to Cut Oil Use

AOMORI, Japan (AP) — The world’s leading economies and oil consumers are pledging greater investment in energy efficiency and green technologies to curtail petroleum use. n a joint statement on Sunday, energy ministers from the Group of 8 countries, the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, joined by China, India and South Korea, also urged oil producers to increase output, which has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day since 2005. They also called for cooperation between buyers and producers. But with little prospect for a surge in production anytime soon, the focus of Sunday’s meeting was on what wealthy nations should do to rein in consumption, while reducing carbon emissions blamed for global warming. While the nations did not pledge specific amounts of money, they said they would set goals in line with International Energy Agency recommendations for a vast expansion of investment in renewable energies and energy efficiency. NYTimes-

The G-8 countries said they would begin 20 demonstration projects by 2010.

Military Supercomputer Sets Record

SAN FRANCISCO — An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, N.M. It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion. Before it is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore scientific problems like climate change. The greater speed of the Roadrunner will make it possible for scientists to test global climate models with higher accuracy. To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day. The machine is an unusual blend of chips used in consumer products and advanced parallel computing technologies. The lessons that computer scientists learn by making it calculate even faster are seen as essential to the future of both personal and mobile consumer computing. “We’ve proved some skeptics wrong,” said Michael R. Anastasio, a physicist who is director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This gives us a window into a whole new way of computing. We can look at phenomena we have never seen before.” By breaking the petaflop barrier sooner than had been generally expected, the United States’ supercomputer industry has been able to sustain a pace of continuous performance increases, improving a thousandfold in processing power in 11 years. The next thousandfold goal is the exaflop, which is a quintillion calculations per second, followed by the zettaflop, the yottaflop and the xeraflop. NTYimes-

Will computing ever be able to match the power of the human brain? Does calculating faster lead to becoming self aware? ....Going faster but further away from consciousness..

Beauty

Lavender roses.
Incarnate fragrance,
Priestly hue of dawn,
Spirit unfolding

Even on the road to hell, flowers can make you smile. They are fragile, ephemeral, uncompromising. No one can alter their nature. True, you can easily destroy them, but you will not gain anything; you cannot force them to submit to your will.
Flowers arouse in is and instinct to protect them, to appreciate them, and to shelter them. This world is too ugly, too violent. There should be something delicate to care about. To do so is to be lifted above the brute and to go toward the refined. When we offer flowers on our "altar", we are offering a high gift. Money is too vulgar, food too pedestrian. Only flowers are unsullied. By offering then, we offer purity.
The tenderness of flowers arouses mercy, compassion, and understanding. If that beauty is delicate, so much the better. Life itself is fleeting. We should take the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of temporality.