daily shriek

driving drowsy is already illegal in NJ

now, you might not think it’s a big deal, but the atlantic city expressway is a remarkably straight, flat stretch of road that can bore even the most highly caffeinated driver to sleep — and most people leaving a.c. just came off hours long gambling binges, not to mention drinking

anyone driving back to philly from america’s playground knows the three signs with flashing yellow light spaced about mile or so apart “STAY AWAKE”, “STAY ALERT”, “STAY ALIVE”

but i’ve always wondered how they would test for drowsiness, and now there’s a simple spit test that detects cancer, gum disease, even drowsiness

in a boon to the green community, a cancer researcher has found that salt water when excited by particular radio frequency separates the hydrogen from the oxygen, allowing it burn

high-speed hydrolysis, if you will

http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/1570

in a sub-atomic game of twister, university of michigan controls remotely entangled atoms, hilarity unfolds as they eject photons in unison!

quantum computing on the horizon

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2198165/spooky-science-paves-way

very intriguing, if a bit dry
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070901/bob9.asp

What’s puzzled economists over the years is why it’s been so difficult for [poor] countries to start up new activities in the hope of spurring economic growth and lifting themselves out of poverty.

Researchers have [now] shown that a country’s competitive edge can spread from one kind of product to another along a well-defined network of links, much as disease epidemics tend to spread among people who are socially connected.

For example, fish exporters are often successful at exporting fresh produce as well. That’s because both activities require similar infrastructures—good roads, ports with refrigerated storage facilities, and bureaucracies able to monitor food safety

The newly charted map of products could help countries design good policies by indicating the most promising paths to creating new industries.

cool stuff, and hopeful too — so much of the foreign aid from the west gets wasted on ineffectual programs — this research may help

this is even cooler than the seti screen saver!

these ubergeeks have generated loads of new deep space images unveiling a brazillion new galaxies upon which human eyes have never gazed, and they need your help to categorize them:

so you can be astro-boy or interplanet janet (she’s a galaxy girl) and explore strange new worlds…
link via good morning silicon valley

so we all know that the people opposed to the idea that human activity is to blame for climate change are only opposed to the idea because they don’t want to be inconvenienced by the changes in human behavior that would be necessary to avert calamity should that idea be definitively proven.

as proof of this, simply listen long enough to any person opposed to carbon reduction, and eventually they will say that they don’t want to have quit driving an suv.

well, a case for this can surely be made in that massive upheavals in the fuel supply will unfairly negatively on the poor, who can scarcely afford cars as it is, and will be mostly affected by job losses, etc.

and the fact that the kyoto protocol exempts china who will soon far surpass america as the number one polluter is a fact that should dampen the party quickly

but to deny the mountain of evidence that global warming exists and is most likely caused by human activity is counter-productive.

to wit, if it turns out that global warming is not caused by carbon-based fuels, and we have successfully converted over to other, cleaner sources of energy, then we will have a cleaner earth, darn. alternately, if global warming is indeed caused by the use of carbon-based fuels, and we have done nothing, we will have face the consequences in the full knowledge that we did nothing to prevent it, and that feeling of shame will probably include the guilt for all sort of ills.

so can we please just quit kidding ourselves and start working toward a cleaner safer world, one in which our entire economy is enslaved to the finite supply of underground petroleum?

just a thought.

• For a 9×9 puzzle to have precisely one solution, the initial entries need to include at least eight of the nine digits
• the smallest number of starter clues on a sudoku puzzle is 17
• Sudoku puzzles are an example of a type of graph known as a Latin square, which mathematicians have studied for centuries
• there are 3,546,146,300,288 (about 3.5 x 10^12) meaningfully different 9-by-9 sudoku puzzles
• no one knows how many sudoku puzzles exist for any grid size exceeding 9-by-9
• For a randomly chosen n-by-n Latin square, the bigger n is, the smaller the probability that it is also a sudoku. In fact, the probability approaches zero as n gets larger
• A mathematical solution to sudoku could have practical applications when viewed as a graph theory problem. For example, scheduling committee meetings for various groups in different time slots can pose a similar mathematical challenge.

and my favorite:

• graph theory shows that a mathematically simple formula exists for the number of possible solutions to a given sudoku puzzle. Unfortunately, there’s a glitch: although the mathematicians proved that the formula exists, they weren’t able to figure out what it is.

hahahahahahhaha

link

apparently boaters on florida’s swanee river are under attack, well having very bad encounters with gulf sturgeons leaping out of the water.

the fish apparently jump out of the water and either hit people speeding by, cause them to wreck in evasive maneuvers or get in their boat and hurt.

sounds fishy you say? well consider that sturgeon “can reach eight feet in length and boast sharp, bony plates that can cut flesh like knives.”

check out the size of these things:

Major Bruce Hamlin, regional commander for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) North Central Region, told the local NewsHerald.com: “The documented strikes for 2006 resulted in the worst year on record, with eight people directly hit by sturgeon and two injured when they swerved to avoid a jumping fish and hit a bridge piling.

you see? that’s why you never go in to the water!

link