Earnings from February and March
April 3rd, 2013Here are Cryptogon’s earnings from February and March.
In February, the total came to $759; a very rare earnings miss. You may have picked up on the fact that this site lives or dies by the U.S. Amazon commissions. Cryptogon readers backed off on Amazon purchases in February, and that’s pretty much the amount by which we missed the $1000 goal.
Moving on to March, the total came to $1240.23. That’s a great result.
Here’s how March worked out:
AM $60
Amazon $563.80
Amazon.ca CA$6.15
Amazon.co.uk £11.74
Anonymous $90
CD $25
DA $25
DS $50
Eileen $75
ID €25
JB $25
KM £50
MW $20
nonsolodenti.net $90
Pookie $75
TM $10
Take the two months together and we’re looking pretty good.
Thanks very much to everyone who kept us going over February and March. Obviously, I appreciate the direct contributions, which are mostly from people who have given far too much already. But looking through those Amazon totals… You guys are force on that thing. There are commissions on single items that range from $0.00 (people buying used books for a penny) up to $35 for a high quality chainsaw. The range of what’s in between is mind boggling. Video rentals, vitamins, tools of every description, books by the truckload, toys, food, cookware… It’s all counting towards the goal. Well, except those used books that cost a penny, but shine on you crazy diamonds who use the affiliate links to buy those! I salute you.
Now, I’d like to acknowledge a very special gift from the Banana Farmers, who are long time Cryptogon supporters from Hawaii. Instead of a check this year, they sent a heavy box full of delicacies that they and other family members produce themselves on their properties in Hawaii. The box contained dried organic bananas, dried organic pineapple rings, a range of hand crafted organic chocolates and three pounds of organic Kona coffee beans. Yeah, man! WOW!
I’ve been drinking coffee since my early 20s, but I’ve never tried Kona coffee before. Trying some had been on my To-Do list for a long time, but it hadn’t happened. (In case you don’t know, Kona coffee is VERY expensive.) Needless to say, I was thrilled to see those packs of coffee beans.
Everything was delicious beyond description. I asked the Banana Farmers if they would like me to promote their businesses on Cryptogon, but it turns out that all of the dried bananas and chocolate products are sold locally and the dried pineapple rings and coffee are not for sale (these are gifts for family and friends). This is keeping them busy enough for now. I could provide a bit more detail, but if their small island community is anything like my small island community… It’s a village. I hope that I haven’t said too much already, in terms of maintaining their privacy.
Thank you, Banana Farmers.
Stanford Bioengineers Make Transistor from Genetic Materials
April 3rd, 2013Via: Extreme Tech:
Bioengineers at Stanford University have created the first biological transistor made from genetic materials: DNA and RNA. Dubbed the “transcriptor,” this biological transistor is the final component required to build biological computers that operate inside living cells. We are now tantalizingly close to biological computers that can detect changes in a cell’s environment, store a record of that change in memory made of DNA, and then trigger some kind of response — say, commanding a cell to stop producing insulin, or to self-destruct if cancer is detected.
Euro Area Unemployment at Record 12 Percent
April 2nd, 2013Via: AP:
The eurozone economy has passed another bleak milestone.
Official figures Tuesday showed that unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro has struck 12 percent for the first time since the currency was launched in 1999.
Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said the rate in February was unchanged at the record high after January’s figure was revised up to 12 percent from 11.9 percent.
Spain and Greece have mass unemployment and many other countries are seeing their numbers swell to uncomfortably high levels as governments across the region enact tough austerity measures to get a handle on their debts.
WHO Investigating H7N9, New Chinese Bird Flu Strain
April 2nd, 2013Via: U.S. News and World Report:
At least four people in China have been infected with a new strain of bird flu, known as H7N9— and two of the people who have contracted the disease have died, according to the World Health Organization.
The cases were confirmed to be the new strain of bird flu late last week by the China CDC—two of the cases were found in Shanghai and one in the Anhui province. A fourth case was confirmed by the state-run CCTV news channel Tuesday. That case occurred in Nanjing, in eastern China.
According to WHO, sufferers experienced a “respiratory tract infection with progression to severe pneumonia and breathing difficulties. Two of the four victims have died, with a third in critical condition.
WHO says it is “following the event closely” but it has not been able to identify where the disease was contracted and whether or not the virus is transmissible between humans. According to local news reports, some of the victims worked closely with poultry.
The Monsanto Protection Act
April 2nd, 2013Via: Democracy Now:
President Obama outraged food activists last week when he signed into law a spending bill with a controversial rider that critics have dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act.” The rider says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks.
$100-Million Brain-Mapping Project
April 2nd, 2013Via: io9:
President Obama announced plans this morning for a long-term research project to improve our understanding of the brain. Comparing it to the Human Genome Project, Obama said the brain-mapping initiative could lead to cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and autism, while fueling economic growth and job creation.
…
BRAIN stands for “Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies,” and the last word in that acronym is a telling one. When we spoke with Rafael Yuste (one of the neuroscientists whose advice the Obama Administration has sought in planning the initiative) back in February, he told us that the endeavor would be first and foremost “a technical development project.” The ultimate goal of the BRAIN may be to create a functional map of neuron activity throughout the human brain, but charting such a map is – as of today – impossible.
To create such a map will require tools that can measure the activity of any one of the brain’s tens of billions of neurons, along with the activity of any and all neurons it’s connected to. Scale this measurement up to the level of the entire brain and you’ve got yourself a functional activity map. Neuroscientists recently managed something akin to this in zebrafish embryos; but doing the same for a human brain – which contains about 85,000 times more neurons than that of a zebrafish – will require nothing short of a technological revolution in the field of neuroscience.
…
On the public-funding front, the NIH will be joined by the National Science Foundation and DARPA in supporting the Initiaive. Private partnerships include the Allen Institute, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Kavli Foundation, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
California State Government Net Worth: -$127.2 Billion
April 2nd, 2013Via: The Sacramento Bee:
Were California’s state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.
The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue.
The Brussels Business: Who Runs The European Union?
April 2nd, 2013Via: The Brussels Business:
Research Credit: RP
What Does a Tablet Do to the Child’s Mind?
April 2nd, 2013Via: New York Times:
I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic.
We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and 7-year-old Luca, would not stop fighting. The arguments — over a fork, or who had more water in a glass — were unrelenting.
Like a magician quieting a group of children by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, my sister reached into her purse and produced two shiny Apple iPads, handing one to each child. Suddenly, the two were quiet. Eerily so. They sat playing games and watching videos, and we continued with our conversation.
After our meal, as we stuffed the iPads back into their magic storage bag, my sister felt slightly guilty.
“I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over,” she told me. Then she asked: “Do you think it’s bad for them? I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future.”
I did not have an answer, and although some people might have opinions, no one has a true scientific understanding of what the future might hold for a generation raised on portable screens.
“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.” “Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.”
But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.
Nearly One in Five High School Age Boys and 11 Percent of School-Age Children Over All Have Received a Medical Diagnosis of ADHD
April 2nd, 2013Profits.
Via: New York Times:
Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children.
The figures showed that an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 through 17 had received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis at some point in their lives, a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 53 percent rise in the past decade. About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis.
“Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, “Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.”
And even more teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychiatric Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills.
