Just in time for soccer fever, bora.herke decorated 32 regulation-size soccer balls with different materials associated - for good or bad, with certain countries.
And yes, that Sweden ball is covered with pages from an IKEA catalog!
Improv Everywhere brings participatory art (read: prank in public places) to a new level. In this one "mission", 80 people showed up wearing blue polos and khaki pants and "infiltrated" a Best Buy store.
With our main photographer busted, I took out my camera and started taking covert snapshots. One employee caught me in the act and rushed over. As soon as he got to me, I caught him off guard with a question, "Hey, do you know where I can find the right memory cards for my camera?" He stammered for a second and then said, "Sure. They're right over there." I thanked him and was on my way. Another employee caught me moments later in the DVD section, but I disarmed him with a question as well, "Do you know how much the Star Trek DS9 DVDs are? There is no price tag." We chatted for a second about how expensive the set was, and by the time I walked away he forgot all about the camera.
Scientists found that chemicals from gardenia fruit extract used in Chinese medicine for centuries can actually treat diabetes effectively.
The extract has been used in traditional Chinese Medicine to relieve the symptoms of Type 2 diabetes.
Tests on mice showed the extract blocked UCP2's action, and that a chemical called genipin was the active compound.
When genipin was added to pancreatic tissue in the lab, it also reversed faults linked to obesity and high glucose levels in insulin-producing cells.
Collectively, Chinese herbalists shrugged and said, we knew all along. Collectively, big pharmas shrugged and said, there's no profit in herbs - medicine must be chemical/biologics-based & be patent-able.
Geologists studying rock formations called stromatolites found stippled, wavy markings that some claimed to be made by ancient microbes.
The rocks, widely regarded as some of the oldest fossils, are evidence of a 'microbial reef' ecosystem of similar complexity to modern coral reefs, the scientists say.
The rocks bear stippled, wavy markings that many claim are the hallmarks of colonies of ancient microbes. But others argue that the formations, which are more than 3.4 billion years old, are too old to have been made by life, which is thought only to have arisen only a few hundred million years earlier.
Abigail Allwood of Macquarie University in Sydney suggested that because diversity of life had arisen so early on on this planet, life may also have evolved on other planets like Mars (when its condition was more like Earth).
European scientists have designed a robot that can crawl through the human intestines by mimicking the wriggling motion of a polychaete or "paddle worm", a form of undersea worm.
"We turned to biological inspiration because, in the peculiar environment of the gut, traditional forms of robotic locomotion don't work," says Arianna Menciassi, a roboticist from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy.
"Worms have locomotion systems suited to such unstructured, slippery environments." ...
Next, the researchers plan to develop a robot equipped with a camera and light source that can capture video footage as it travels.
This critique of capitalism was printed in 1911 by The Industrial Worker, "the voice of revolutionary labor" newspaper of the radical labor union Industrial Workers of the World.
Can a human live on a constant diet of monkey chow? I'm glad that Adam Scott is doing this super-ultra important experiment for us:
Imagine going to the grocery store only once every 6 months. Imagine paying less than a dollar per meal. Imagine never washing dishes, chopping vegetables or setting the table ever again. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
But can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I'm about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes."
Maybe I'll lose weight. Maybe I'll gain superhuman monkey strength. Maybe I'll go crazy. Maybe it's too late. Check back here every day to follow along with the Monkey Chow Diaries.
A virus called Archiveus is really sneaky - once it infects your computer, it will encrypt your files and hold it for ransom!
This virus swaps files found in the "My Documents" folder on Windows with a single file protected by a 30-digit password. Victims are only told the password if they buy drugs from one of three online pharmacies.
Ms Barrow is thought to have fallen victim when she responded to an on-screen message warning her that her computer had contracted another unnamed virus. The virus asks those it infects to buy drugs on one of three websites to get their files back.
The good news is that anti-virus companies discovered that the password is encoded in the virus itself (yes, that's the password on the left).
Mark Colling of Llanelli, United Kingdom, is building a 19 ft. long model of Titanic and 8 ft. model of the iceberg that sank the original ship, from 5 million matchsticks!
As you may have guessed, Mark "buys his matches in bulk - in batches of 250,000 at a time."
Link - via digg, Thanks Yayo!
A Boston University School of Medicine study reported that kids with strict disciplinarian parents are likely to wind up fat by age 6, possibly as a reaction to stress.
The study covered 872 children who were part of a group enrolled at birth in 1991 in a U.S. Government study and followed for a number of years.
"Among the four parenting styles, authoritarian parenting was associated with the highest risk of overweight among young children," concluded the study published in the June issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
"These results provide evidence that a strict environment lacking in emotional responsiveness is associated with an increased risk of childhood overweight," the study said.
