The American Heart Association is funding a student project to develop a CPR certification program that uses the Nintendo Wii:

A biomedical engineering professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham envisioned a program for home computers that could sync via wireless with the Wii remote, and train users on proper resuscitation of people who have suffered cardiac arrest. The students hope to make the program available for download this fall, free of charge, on the American Heart Association's website.

http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-07/theres-wii-my-cpr

(YouTube Link)

This video is about a man who lives with First-Person Shooter Disease (AKA Duke Nukem's Disease) -- he can only interact with the world in the manner of a video game character.  Yet he bravely struggles on to overcome obstacles of hand-eye coordination and peripheral vision.

Via Geekologie

Craig Nelson offers ten lesser-known facts about the first human moon landing:

6. The "one small step for man" wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.

7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle's door because there was no outer handle.

8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-06/40-years-later-ten-things-you-didnt-know-about-apollo-ii-moon-landing

Abigail Tucker presents some interesting historical facts about the traditional cake served at a wedding in the West:

One early British recipe for “Bride’s Pye” mixed cockscombs, lamb testicles, sweetbreads, oysters and (mercifully) plenty of spices. Another version called for boiled calf’s feet.

By the mid sixteenth century, though, sugar was becoming plentiful in England. The more refined the sugar, the whiter it was. Pure white icing soon became a wedding cake staple. Not only did the color allude to the bride’s virginity, as Carol Wilson points out in her Gastronomica article “Wedding Cake: A Slice of History,” but the whiteness was “a status symbol, a display of the family’s wealth.” Later, tiered cakes, with their cement-like supports of decorative dried icing, also advertised affluence. Formal wedding cakes became bigger and more elaborate through the Victorian age. In 1947, when Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) wed Prince Philip, the cake weighed 500 pounds.

Link

Although I approve of striking a blow against our would-be overlords, this move seems to be needlessly antagonistic:

Japan's legions of robots, the world's largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets. At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair. They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.

It's only a matter of time before rioting, unemployed robots kill us off, or take over and enslave us to work in their mines. Better go get some insurance now.

Link via Geekologie

Musicians and scientists have re-created a lost musical instrument known as the 'lituus':

In 1737-8, Johann Sebastian Bach composed and performed a cantata, “O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht” (”O Jesus Christ, light of my life”). Among the instruments called for in the score are “two Litui.” However, the Lituus is a forgotten instrument. No one has played or heard the instrument in modern times; there aren’t even illustrations of one.

Musicians at a Swiss conservatory, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB), had heard of a computer program developed by a University of Edinburgh Ph.D. student to help in the design of modern brass instruments. The SCB provided a group of Edinburgh scientists with design requirements, such as notes that would have been played with the Lituus, how it sounded and how it might have been played. (Though likely made of wood, the Lituus qualifies as a brass instrument.) The result: a two-and-a-half-meter-long horn made of pine with a flared bell at one end and a mouthpiece made of cow horn at the other. And they built two.

Link

Geek Dad has a list of one hundred skills that he thinks that every geek should know. A few examples:

26. Boot a computer off a thumb drive.
40. Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device.
71. Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv.
84. Know where your towel is and why it is important.
96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising.
100. Get something on the front page of Digg.

What is your geek quotient? What would you add to the list?

Link

Ever cuss a blue streak after hitting your thumb with a hammer? You may be helping yourself cope with pain:

Holy @$#%! According to neuroscientists from Britain’s Keele University, dropping the f-bomb can actually relieve physical pain. In the upcoming August 5th issue of the journal NeuroReport, the researchers say swearing is a different phenomenon than most language. It activates emotional centers in the right side of the brain, rather than those &#*@ing cerebral areas reserved for regular #$#y communication in the left hemisphere.

The researchers had groups of undergraduate students submerge their hands in a tub of witch$@&#* cold water and repeat the swear word of their choice. And students could tolerate the icy abyss much longer than when they were only allowed to say more socially acceptable words. The researchers say the foul-mouthed students also had increased heart rates, which indicates that swearing activates a &#*@ing classic “fight or flight” response. You know, when you act all bad$(# to downplay the fact that you’re scared @$#%^ss.

Link

Image by flickr user Billie used under creative commons license

The Gibson electric guitar was patented in the United States seventy-two years ago today.  The first electric guitars were developed by the mid-30s in response to the needs of guitarists in jazz orchestras to produce more volume.  These were played flat on the lap and became popular with Hawaiian bands.  Guy Hart, general manager of the Gibson guitar company, worked on a better design in order to exploit this market:

In late 1935, Gibson rolled out the E-150, its first electric, Hawaiian-style lap steel guitar. It came with an amplifier (just like all electric guitars of the era), and the whole package sold for $150 (more than $2,300 in today’s leaf).

Unlike Rickenbacker’s “frying pan,” Gibson’s guitar actually looked like a guitar, complete with round feminine curves, shoulders and scooped waist. Early models were made of aluminum, but in early 1936, Gibson started building them out of the same wood as its acoustic instruments, making the E-150 look more like a traditional guitar.

Soon thereafter, Gibson duplicated the success of the Hawaiian model by adapting one of its more common “Spanish style” guitars into an electric.

Link

Image by flickr user crandlehall2008 used under creative commons license

The United States has few castles, so each one stands out as unusual.  Above is a picture of Martin Castle, built in the 1960-1970s by real estate developer Rex Martin.  He built it when his wife became enamored of castles after a trip to Europe.  Construction was never finished because Martin and his wife divorced.  He has since tried to find a buyer that might want to turn it into a museum.

Link via The Presurfer

Index of castles in the United States

Artist Ioli Kalliopi Sifakaki cast tablewear from her own body parts, and then invited friends to eat dinner from them:

Royal College of Art graduate Iola Kalliopi Sifakaki designed a dinner service cast from her own body and then invited a dozen of her male friends to feast from the tableware.

The dinner service, and the dining furniture Sifikaki designed, are based on the Greek myth of Tantalus, in which Tantalus boils his son Pelops and offers him up as food to the gods to appease them.

Says the artist:

By casting myself, I copy, dismantle and offer parts of me, in order to provoke new, unusual relationships between the maker and the user.

Hmm. I'm thinking of a new product that we can offer in the Neatorama Store....

Link via J-Walk Blog

Esther Schindler played D&D for years, and has discerned principles from those experiences that can be used in her working life:

5.  The best quests require a mixture of skills in the party. Find new friends and cultivate ancillary skills. That pesky little hobbit thief may eat you out of house and home, yet sometimes he comes in pretty handy. This is the point of all those tedious "diversity training" exercises from your HR department; perhaps the message would get across better if they talked about the apparently-weak wizard and the bard with those amazing negotiation skills.

Link via Geek Dad, who notes that July is Dungeon Master Appreciation Month

The desert rhubarb has a remarkable ability to move water in channels down its leaves in a way that lets water penetrate much deeper than other plants can:

Ecologists had been puzzling over the desert rhubarb for years: Instead of the tiny, spiky leaves found on most desert plants, this rare rhubarb boasts lush green leaves up to a meter wide. Now scientists from the University of Haifa-Oranim in Israel have discovered that ridges in the plant’s giant leaves actually collect water and channel it down to the plant’s root system, harvesting up to 16 times more water than any other plant in the region.

“It is the first example of a self-irrigating plant,” said plant biologist Gidi Ne’eman, a co-author on the paper published in March in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal of ecology. “This is the only case we know, but in other places in the world there might be additional plants that use the same adaptions.”

Link

Taser International has developed an extended-range taser. It is a 12-gauge shotgun that shoots a shocking cartridge over 100 feet:

The teases have revealed little actual info, but a Taser press release highlights that the X3 will be the "first multi-shot ECD (electronic control device) capable of simultaneously incapacitating multiple targets." That could put some real scatter in less-lethal shotgun action, but also raises potential safety and abuse questions.

For now, rest assured that the X3 probably won't go off accidentally. A YouTube video shows the device being subjected to electric shocks, and other tests have apparently involved the cartridge "doing 4 foot free-falls on concrete at 20 below," according to a tweet from X3.

http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-07/taser-rolls-out-shocking-devices-shotty

In a busy life, it can be hard to find the time to peruse news sources for the latest things that journalists want us to be panicked about. That's why you can save time by using Doomwatch, which indexes terms used in the UK newspaper The Daily Mail and tells you what to freak out about. Content warning: strong language.

http://www.mydarkmaterials.co.uk/doom/ via The Presurfer