Category: Health
International Space Station astronauts indulging in urine-drinking party tonight
You wouldn’t think people would ever be pleased to hear they can start drinking their own urine – but the astronauts on the International Space Station are currently over the moon about it.
“There will be dancing later,” Mission Control said, after ISS commander Mike Fincke told Earth that the the orbiting station’s faulty urine processor – which filter space wee, condensation and SWEAT and turns it into lovely drinking water – was finally fixed.
This raises two important questions – how do you dance in zero gravity? And before…
VIDEO: Energy & Efficiency, episode 9
Winter. A terrible time for energy waste, thanks to women always being cold and needing the heating on, plus it’s dark so the only things to do are watching TV and going on the internet. AND you have to have the lights on. It’s a terrifying period of BIG SPENDING on utility bills. If only there was some way to SAVE MONEY and ENERGY during the winter months…
There is! Allow me to introduce the concept of Human Hibernation. It’s insanity that we bother being awake during the boring winter, so I propose a Human Hibernation period from November to March. It’s worked successfully in the animal kingdom for decades – so let’s follow their example and activate hibernate.
Christmas will have to be moved to Easter to accommodate human hibernation, but that’s the only downside…
One-eyed artist plans Borg-like installation of webcam into her spare eye socket
San Francisco-based artist Tanya Vlach lost an eye in a car accident in 2006 – now she’s planning to replace her standard-issue fake eye with a webcam. Preferably wireless – and with a 3x zoom. And infra-red support so she can see what she does in the dark.
Here’s what Tanya asked for in an advert she placed for a suitable technician for the job…
YouTube Video of the Week: Moving treadmill
Okay – I’ve seen some stupid inventions in my time, but this really takes the biscuit. It’s a treadmill that – get this – moves along the road as you run on it. Like the treadmills-in-World of Warcraft video, but in real life. Your fake running gets translated to real movement. How’s that for a waste of time, energy and the planet’s precious natural resources?
(via Burbia)
Related YouTube videos: French bloke chain-surfing | Running through World of Warcraft on a treadmill
The dangers of a full-on MMO addiction
Sit down by the fire, grandchildren, and let me explain to you why getting hooked on an MMO isn’t a good idea. Enter Hu Ange, a 22-year-old Chinese gent, who developed a rather nasty addiction to Legend – a browser-based MMO. He’s now on death row, and has just tried to claim ‘insanity’ as an excuse for his crimes.
What were those crimes? Well, it started when his parents gave him 50,000 yuan (£4.8k or so) to support his seafood business in March 07. He spent it ALL on the game, which allows you to buy virtual weapons and equipment with cash. On July 14 2007, he bought 20 packs of Tetramine, a rat poison, which he then used to poison his father…
iPod headphones a possible KISS OF DEATH for users with pacemakers
Dr William Maisel, a cardiologist at the Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, caused heart-murmurs across the internet this weekend thanks to his claim that music player headphones could break pacemakers – and stop defibrillators restarting dodgy hearts.
It’s all because of the magnets in headphones, which could, possibly, if held very close to them, make pacemakers and other “embedded” medical devices stop working. After testing eight models of headphones on 60 patients with pacemakers, the doctor found that nearly a quarter of patients’ heart devices suffered some sort of interference…
The internet is making your brain better and creating a new master race of geeks
Good at filtering information but only have pretend friends you’ve never met in real life? That’s good! That means you have evolved. You are better than other people. You are the next level of mankind.
That is according to neuroscientist Gary Small, who reckons that our brains are already changing and evolving thanks to modern technology. 24/7 access to facts, trivia about Star Trek, text messages and weather forecasts is making People 2.0 better at filtering out rubbish data from useful fact, making us all much better at instantly deciding what to keep/remember and what to bin/forget…
Scientists invent brain-wiping tool for use on feeble mouse brains
If you’ve just been caught doing something by a mouse, science has come up with a useful way to get you off the hook – it can now erase the memories of mice.
This would also mean you could tell a mouse a joke, erase its memory, then tell it the joke again. A mouse could also watch “Total Recall” and be amazed, then erase its own memory of ever having watched “Total Recall” and be amazed by it all over again. Plus you could buy your mouse the same present for Christmas every year and it would never know. The real-world applications for this technology are boundless…
Man RFID chips himself
It’s probably one of the oldest dilemmas mankind have faced. You need to get your guns from your gun cabinet, but you just can’t be bothered to put in the combination and waste precious seconds when you could be wasting precious people instead.
As luck would have it, one inventor has come up with an ingenious solution: chipping himself with an RFID chip, so he only has to wave his hands in front of the safe to open it.
Philips working on microbubble technology for more targeted cancer treatment
Philips is currently researching into a less invasive procedure for treating patients with cancer and other conditions, using drug-loaded microbubbles.
These bubbles are about the same size as red blood cells, and can be injected into a patient’s bloodstream and then tracked via ultrasound imaging.
Drugs would only be released once they reached the required place – a tumour growth, for example. Not only might this increase the effectiveness of the drug, but cut down on unpleasant side-effects…
