Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Screen Time Linked to Psychological Problems in Children
October 12th, 2010Via: University of Bristol: Children who spend longer than two hours in front of a computer or television screen are more likely to suffer psychological difficulties, regardless of how physically active they are. The PEACH project, a study of over a 1,000 children aged between ten and 11, measured the time children spent in front […]
New Book Looks at Connection Between Mobile Devices and a Host of Health Problems
October 12th, 2010Is this partially why so many men are shooting blanks? And what is the compelling evidence to suggest that cellphones might be tied to sterility in men? In 2008, researchers found that men with the lowest sperm counts were significantly more likely to keep their phones on their bodies all the time. And it’s been […]
Increasing Use of RFID Tracking for Students
October 12th, 2010Can we get these kids some breakfast sticks? Via: Houston Chronicle: Radio frequency identification — the same technology used to monitor cattle — is tracking students in the Spring and Santa Fe school districts. Identification badges for some students in both school districts now include tracking devices that allow campus administrators to keep tabs on […]
Airport Body Scanners
October 11th, 2010Via: Lew Rockwell: I understand now why the scanners aren’t mandatory. There doesn’t seem to be a need for the authoritarians to officially force everyone through. Everyone around me went through of their own volition. Research Credit: Pookie
Google Developing Autonomous Vehicle Fleet; Humans On Board for Legal Reasons
October 10th, 2010Via: New York Times: Anyone driving the twists of Highway 1 between San Francisco and Los Angeles recently may have glimpsed a Toyota Prius with a curious funnel-like cylinder on the roof. Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of Google, which has […]
Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back
October 8th, 2010“Me and my friend went to the mechanic today and we found this on his car.” Via: Wired: A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether […]
Passat BlueMotion Enters Record Books: Travels 1,527 Miles Without Refueling
October 6th, 2010This is impressive, but you don’t need to own a fancy car to improve mileage by slowing down: Slow down. Air resistance goes up as the square of velocity. The power consumed to overcome that air resistance goes up as the cube of the velocity. Rolling resistance is the dominant force below about 40 mph. […]
Not The Onion: RatCar
October 5th, 2010This attempt was a flop, but with endless grant swindles, more quackademics each year and a steady supply of creatures to butcher in the spirit of Dr. Mengele, who knows? Via: IEEE: “The vehicle moved forward synchronously with a rat when it was placed inside,” says Fukayama, but he adds that the degree to which […]
Schneier on Proposed Key Escrow Rules
October 5th, 2010The most imminent danger would be believing that any of the services mentioned below are actually secure from government surveillance. The new rules would just make it easier for the government to conduct the surveillance on closed systems on a massive scale. Via: Schneier: On Monday, The New York Times reported that President Obama will […]
One Program to Watch Them All: DARPA’s INSIGHT
October 4th, 2010Yet again, it’s the Information Awareness Office by another name. Via: Wired: No surprise that Darpa, the military’s blue-sky research arm, is the agency behind the lofty five-year program, called Insight. The agency’s goal is to replace “largely manual exploitation and…chat-based operator interactions” with a system that mines different inputs, including drone footage and on-the-ground […]
