YouTube link.

"Filmed in the style of a nature documentary and narrated by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons, this "mockumentary", though lighthearted in tone, hammers home the stark reality of California’s plastic bag pollution situation."

The video was created to generate support for a bill before the California legislature which will ban single-use plastic bags, limit distribution of paper bags, and encourage the use of reusable bags.

More information is available at Heal the Bay.

Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.

YouTube link.

Jensen Kimmitt, the Canadian national champion, won in Category 1A ("1A-The player uses a long sleeping yo-yo to perform string tricks which usually require the manipulation of the string.")

Chemists at the University of California Davis are claiming that a majority of samples of imported "extra virgin" olive oils failed to meet expected criteria.

To be extra-virgin, olive oil can't be rancid or doctored with lesser oils. Shoemaker wasn't all that surprised that many of the 14 major brands failed certain tests... "We do spectroscopic studies looking for oxidation," he says. That means the oil's old or spoiled. Shoemaker also tests fatty acids "to make sure the oil is all from olives and not from soybean, sunflower or other types of oil."

The study was funded by the California Olive Oil council, so it's not surprising that representatives of olive oil importers are questioning the validity of the data.

There's never been a legal definition in the U.S. for any grade of olive oil, but mounting concern over truth-in-olive-oil-labeling has drawn in the USDA, and new American regulations will conform to international standards. Starting in October, olive oil from every olive oil-producing country, including America, will be subject to random sampling off retail shelves.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128702706.  Photo: Publications International, Ltd.

Biophysicists from the State University of New York (S.U.N.Y.) at Buffalo have successfully altered the behavior of a worm by remote control.  They inserted magnetic nanoparticles into nematodes, then used magnetic fields to open temperature-sensitive ion channels.

Within five seconds of applying the magnetic field, 34 out of the 40 worms in the study stopped in place, and 27 of those worms moved backward, as though retreating from a dangerous heat source. The nematodes without magnetic nanoparticles continued to wriggle forward, completely unaffected by the magnetic field.

The ultimate goal is to apply the technology to human physiology.  Ion channels are basic components of virtually all living cells.  The ability to open and close such channels therapeutically might provide new avenues for cancer chemotherapy and treatment of neurological and endocrine diseases.

Link (with brief video).  Publication.  Image credit.

Perception of color by the human eye is surprisingly dependent on colors surrounding the object in question.   All of the hearts in the checkerboard above are exactly the same cyan color, even though they appear to be shades of green and blue.  "The image, by Kitaoka, is based on the dungeon illusion discovered by vision scientist Paola Bressan of the University of Padua in Italy."

The same principle applies to the pair of wolves in these figures.  When the graded-color background is removed, their identical coloring is obvious - but even in retrospect it is difficult to discern that similarity in the situation on the left.

These two illusions are samples from a set of 26 assembled at Scientific American for their Illusions: Colors Out of Space slideshow.

Link.

YouTube link.

Prepared by students at Kansas State University, this short video summarizes "some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime."

The methodology is explained here, along with a textual summary of the contents.   Responses to the video on a variety of education-related websites range from praise and sympathy to disagreement and dismissal.

Via Libraryland, where there is also a response by faculty at the University of South Carolina.

A roar of welkome through the welkin
Is certain proof you'll find the Elk in;
But if you listen to the shell,
In which the Whelk is said to dwell,
And hear a roar, beyond a doubt
It indicates the Whelk is out.

The Octopus or Cuttle-fish!
I'm sure that none of us would wish
To have him scuttle 'round the house,
Like Puss, when she espies a mouse:
When you secure your house-hold pet,
Be very sure you do not get
The Octopus, or there may be
Domestic in-felis-ity.

Two selections from a collection of 50 in How to tell the Birds from the Flowers and other Wood-cuts: A Revised Manual of Flornithology for Beginners, by Robert Williams Wood, published in 1917 and now available fulltext at Project Gutenberg.

Via The Owl Hooteth.  [n.b. - "welkin" is an archaic term for the sky]

Esref Armagan was born blind to an impoverished Turkish family.

First, using a Braille stylus, he etches an outline of his drawing... When he is satisfied with his drawing, he starts to apply the oils with his fingers. Because he applies only one color at a time (the colors would smear otherwise), he must wait two or three days for the color to dry before applying the next color

His work has been displayed at dozens of exhibitions in Turkey and in Europe.  A gallery of his work (non-flash version).

Previously on Neatorama:  The Blind Painter (a different one).

Link, via The Oyster Club.

Weather has been available on Google Earth for several years, but the latest version has the capacity to show real-time weather information.

To see it, you must first enable the clouds layer, and then zoom in to a location where it’s raining or snowing. Google Earth displays rain and snow only in certain parts of North America and Europe; to see where exactly the new feature is available, enable the radar layer.

Henceforth it will no longer be necessary to get up from one's desk and go to the window to see whether it's raining.

Link and image credit.

A study to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research indicates that high-end fashion items have inconspicuous labels and logos because that's what elite shoppers prefer.

Rather than rely on obvious logos, expensive products use more discreet markers, such as distinctive design or detailing. High-end consumers prefer markers of status that are not decipherable by the mainstream. These signal group identity only to others with the connoisseurship to recognize their insider standing.

Insiders avoid logos “in identity-relevant domains to distinguish themselves from mainstream consumers who buy such products to show they’ve made it.”

Link.  Pictured at left: $4,000 jeans with subtle  diamond rivets.

A new category of shaping garments proposes to do for the buttocks what the brassiere has done for the torso: "you can lift it, round it and shape it."

"It's part of the whole outfit," says Ms. Benson, a 25-year-old assistant to a music manager. Wearing the Booty Pop brand of underwear, which contain egg-shaped foam pads to plump up the posterior, "I look better, I feel better, and as a result, I act better," she says...

The backside has a complicated back story. Large behinds historically have been celebrated as sexy in Latin American and African cultures, even as they were viewed with suspicion further north.

The garments are not conceptually new; Frederick's of Hollywood sold equivalent items fifty years ago.  Skeptics of the recent trend argue that the padded garments are not practical except under heavy fabric such as denim.  But late-night informercials claim that the enhancements replace expensive cosmetic surgery; the Booty Pop company expects to sell a million copies this year.

More information at the Wall Street Journal, which includes an explanatory video.  Image: Sweet Apparel LLC

Dentures that once belonged to Winston Churchill are in the news after fetching £15,200 in an auction.

In his wartime radio broadcasts, Churchill's distinctive voice was instantly recognisable. He wanted it to stay that way, so he had his dentures designed specifically to preserve his lisp...

"Without them, 'Fight them on the beaches' would never have sounded the same. They were vital to the war effort."

"Churchill used to flick out his dentures when he was angry and throw them across the room... My father used to say he could tell how the war was going by how far they flew."

Link.

Someone in Liverpool came up with the brilliant idea of equipping motorcycles with firefighting equipment.

Liverpool is the first city in the UK to roll out two of the £30,000 bikes, which have pumps with a range of 11 metres, in a six-month pilot scheme.  With 50 litres of water and chemical foam on board each specially modified BMW bike, they are capable as a pair of putting out two burning cars in two minutes.

The man in charge of the project added: "We have no intention of using them to replace fire engines.  "Our two biggest work streams are automated fire alarms and anti-social small fires, which is what they will be used for."

It appears to be a very clever idea.  The bikes can navigate through traffic more quickly than full-size equipment, at lower cost and using less manpower.

Link.  Photo: Peter Byrne/PA Wire.

The website for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech is reporting the discovery of carbon buckyballs in space.

"We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space," said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space." Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that will appear online Thursday in the journal Science.

Buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in three-dimensional, spherical structures. Their alternating patterns of hexagons and pentagons match a typical black-and-white soccer ball. The research team also found the more elongated relative of buckyballs, known as C70, for the first time in space. These molecules consist of 70 carbon atoms and are shaped more like an oval rugby ball. Both types of molecules belong to a class known officially as buckminsterfullerenes, or fullerenes.

The extraterrestrial existence of buckyballs has long been predicted, but never previously confirmed.  Nobelist Sir Harry Kroto, discoverer of buckyballs, has said, "All the carbon in your body came from star dust, so at one time some of that carbon may have been in the form of buckyballs."

"Buckyball" rare earth magnets are also available in the Neatoshop.

Link.   Photo: 3D computer model of buckyball molecules, by ALAMY

During the Apollo space program, astronauts were apparently ineligible for traditional life insurance.  So they and NASA came up with an innovative solution.

The answer was provided by NASA in the form of 'Insurance Covers', as seen here, a number of which were given to every crew member and subsequently signed by every astronaut involved, as close to launch as possible. Its value would instantly be high, but would no doubt sky-rocket (no pun intended) should the astronauts never return; the deceased's surviving family then at least safe in the knowledge that in future they could cash-in their makeshift insurance policy if required.

Link (with photos of two additional covers).  Via Reddit.