• Generation X More Loyal to Religion
• Drink Water to Curb Weight Gain? Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method
• Capacity for Exercise Can Be Inherited: Finding Suggests Pharmaceutical Drugs  Can Be Used to Alter Activity Levels in Humans
• Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don’t Really Like Unselfish Colleagues
• ‘Charitable’ Behavior Found in Bacteria
• Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function
• Starvation Keeps Sleep-Deprived Fly Brain Sharp
• Eating Berries May Activate the Brain’s Natural Housekeeper for Healthy Aging
• Roots of Gamblers’ Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making

Generation X More Loyal to Religion: Generation X, the set of Americans who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is often branded as a rules-rejecting, authority-questioning group. But when it comes to religion, new research has revealed that Gen-Xers are surprisingly loyal to their faith — a finding that also suggests the rising non-religious tide in the United States may be leveling off. A new study showed that Gen-Xers are, in comparison with their Baby Boomer predecessors, far more likely to adhere to their religion. In fact, Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely than Gen-Xers to “disaffiliate” from their faith. As Generation X continues to grow older, this loyalty may translate into a more stable nation in terms of its religiosity, he said.
Though Generation X’s religious adherents are relatively durable, the generation as a whole is still more likely than previous ones to be raised with no religious preference, according to the research. Religious non-affiliation in the United States grew from between 6 percent and 8 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to nearly 16 percent by 2006.

Drink Water to Curb Weight Gain? Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method: Scientists report results of a new clinical trial confirming that just two 8-ounce glasses of water, taken before meals, enables people to shed pounds. “We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.”
“People should drink more water and less sugary, high-calorie drinks. It’s a simple way to facilitate weight management.” …Water may be so effective simply because it fills up the stomach with a substance that has zero calories. People feel fuller as a result, and eat less calorie-containing food during the meal. Increased water consumption may also help people lose weight if they drink it in place of sweetened calorie-containing beverages.
Diet soda pop and other beverages with artificial sweeteners may also help people reduce their calorie intake and lose weight. However, she advised against using beverages sweetened with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup because they are high in calories. A 12-ounce can of regular soda pop, for instance, contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar. Davy noted that that nobody knows exactly how much water people should drink daily. The Institute of Medicine, an agency of The National Academies, which advises the Federal Government on science, says that most healthy people can simply let thirst be their guide. It does not specify exact requirements for water, but set general recommendations for women at about 9 cups of fluids – from all beverages including water – each day, and men at about 13 cups of fluids. And it is possible to drink too much water, a situation that can lead to a rare, but serious, condition known as water intoxication.

Capacity for Exercise Can Be Inherited: Finding Suggests Pharmaceutical Drugs Can Be Used to Alter Activity Levels in Humans: Biologists have found that voluntary activity, such as daily exercise, is a highly heritable trait that can be passed down genetically to successive generations. Working on mice in the lab, they found that activity level can be enhanced with “selective breeding” – the process of breeding plants and animals for particular genetic traits. Their experiments showed that mice that were bred to be high runners produced high-running offspring, indicating that the offspring had inherited the trait for activity.
“Our findings have implications for human health. Down the road people could be treated pharmacologically for low activity levels through drugs that targeted specific genes that promote activity. Pharmacological interventions in the future could make it more pleasurable for people to engage in voluntary exercise. Such interventions could also make it less comfortable for people to sit still for long periods of time.”

Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don’t Really Like Unselfish Colleagues: You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with? That’s right: Other people really can’t stand them. Four separate studies have found that unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island. They found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they “raise the bar” for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad. It doesn’t matter that the overall welfare of the group or the task at hand is better served by someone’s unselfish behavior. What is objectively good, you see as subjectively bad.”
The do-gooders are also seen as deviant rule breakers. It’s as if they’re giving away Monopoly money so someone can stay in the game, irking other players to no end. The researcher would now like to look at how the do-gooders themselves react to being rejected. While some may indeed have ulterior motives, it’s more likely they actually are working for the good of an organization. Excluded from the group, they may say, “enough already” and simply give up. “But it’s also possible that they may actually try even harder.”

‘Charitable’ Behavior Found in Bacteria: In studying the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the researchers found that the populations most adept at withstanding doses of antibiotics are those in which a few highly resistant isolates sacrifice their own well being to improve the group’s overall chance of survival. This bacterial altruism results when the most resistant isolates produce a small molecule called indole. Indole acts as something of a steroid, helping the strain’s more vulnerable members bulk up enough to fight off the antibiotic onslaught. But while indole may save the group, its production takes a toll on the fitness level of the individual isolates that produce it. “We weren’t expecting to find this. Typically, you would expect only the resistant strains to survive, with the susceptible ones dying off in the face of antibiotic stress. We were quite surprised to find the weak strains not only surviving, but thriving.” The fact that the full complexity of bacteria strains can now be more accurately understood has significant ramifications for the medical community. “Now, when we measure the resistance in a population, we’ll know that it may be tricking us. We’ll know that even an isolate that shows no resistance can put up a stronger battle against antibiotics thanks to its buddies.”

Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function: Even moderate exercise — in this case walking at one’s own pace for 40 minutes three times a week — can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks. Previous studies have found that aerobic exercise can enhance the function of specific brain structures, Kramer said. This study shows that even moderate aerobic exercise also improves the coordination of important brain networks. “The higher the connectivity, the better the performance on some of these cognitive tasks, especially the ones we call executive control tasks — things like planning, scheduling, dealing with ambiguity, working memory and multitasking.” These are the very skills that tend to decline with aging.

Starvation Keeps Sleep-Deprived Fly Brain Sharp: As anyone who has ever struggled to keep his or her eyes open after a big meal knows, eating can induce sleepiness. New research in fruit flies suggests that, conversely, being hungry may provide a way to stay awake without feeling groggy or mentally challenged. …The findings add a new wrinkle to the complex relationship between sleep and dietary metabolism. Scientists recognized about a decade ago that inadequate sleep results in obesity and contributes to the development of diabetes and coronary disease. Until now, no one had connected genes linked to lipids with regulation of the need for sleep. Like humans, flies deprived of sleep one day will try to make up for it by sleeping more the next day, a phenomenon referred to as sleep debt. Sleep-deprived flies also perform poorly on a simple test of learning ability.
Studies in other labs have shown that starvation or, in the case of human volunteers, fasting leads to less sleep. More recent research has also shown that starvation can change the activity levels of genes that manage storage and use of lipids. Scientists tested the starving, sleepless flies for two markers of sleep debt: an enzyme in saliva and the flies’ ability to learn to associate a light with an unpleasant stimulus. Both tests showed that the starving flies were not getting sleepy. “From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. If you’re starving, you want to make sure you’re on the top of your game cognitively, to improve your chances of finding food rather than becoming food for someone else.”

Eating Berries May Activate the Brain’s Natural Housekeeper for Healthy Aging: Scientists have reported the first evidence that eating blueberries, strawberries, and acai berries may help the aging brain stay healthy in a crucial but previously unrecognized way. Their study concluded that berries, and possibly walnuts, activate the brain’s natural “housekeeper” mechanism, which cleans up and recycles toxic proteins linked to age-related memory loss and other mental decline. Previous research suggested that one factor involved in aging is a steady decline in the body’s ability to protect itself against inflammation and oxidative damage. This leaves people vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases, heart disease, cancer, and other age-related disorders. “The good news is that natural compounds called polyphenolics found in fruits, vegetables and nuts have an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect that may protect against age-associated decline.”
…Their past studies, for instance, showed that old laboratory rats fed for two months on diets containing 2 percent high-antioxidant strawberry, blueberry, or blackberry extract showed a reversal of age-related deficits in nerve function and behavior that involves learning and remembering. In the new research, they focused on another reason why nerve function declines with aging. It involves a reduction in the brain’s natural house-cleaning process. Cells called microglia are the housekeepers. In a process called autophagy, they remove and recycle biochemical debris that otherwise would interfere with brain function. “But in aging, microglia fail to do their work, and debris builds up. In addition, the microglia become over-activated and actually begin to damage healthy cells in the brain. Our research suggests that the polyphenolics in berries have a rescuing effect. They seem to restore the normal housekeeping function. These findings are the first to show these effects of berries.”
The study provides further evidence to eat foods rich in polyphenolics. Although berries and walnuts are rich sources, many other fruits and vegetables contain these chemicals ― especially those with deep red, orange, or blue colors. Those colors come from pigments termed anthocyanins that are good antioxidants. He emphasized the importance of consuming the whole fruit, which contains the full range of hundreds of healthful chemicals. Frozen berries, which are available year round, also are excellent sources of polyphenolics.

Roots of Gamblers’ Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making: Gamblers who think they have a “hot hand,” only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making “rational” decisions. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational. “The overarching idea is that there is typically structure in the world, and it makes sense that when we make decisions, we try to understand the structure in order to exploit it. One of the simplest kinds of ‘structure’ is when the outcome that just occurred tells you something about what is likely to happen next. Where people go astray is when they base their decisions on beliefs that are different than what is actually present in the world. In the coin example, if you toss a coin five times and all five times are heads, should you pick heads or tails on the next flip? Assuming the coin is fair, it doesn’t matter – the five previous heads don’t change the probability of heads on the next flip – it’s still 50 percent – but people nevertheless act as though those previous flips influence the next one.”
When things are actually independent over time, meaning they don’t have any structure, people will interpret results through possible structures, a way of thinking often seen among gamblers. For example, gamblers who win three hands in a row, may believe themselves to be “hot” and thus more likely to win the next hand. The research showed that similar behaviors are seen even in an optimal, fully rational computer learner given similar incorrect beliefs about the world. Furthermore, when the context of the task was changed so that subjects understood that the outcomes were actually independent, a drastic shift in their behavior was noted, with subjects all doing the “right” thing for the way the world actually worked. “This demonstrates that given the right world model, humans are more than capable of easily learning to make optimal decisions.”

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• Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance
• More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist
• Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline
• Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent
• Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction
• Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death
• New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes
• A Blood Test for Depression?
• 3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled

Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance: New research shows that having some kind of lucky token can actually improve your performance — by increasing your self-confidence. …Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves. Just wishing someone good luck — with “I press the thumbs for you,” the German version of crossing your fingers — improved volunteers’ success at a task that required manual dexterity.

~Of course, this is still a form of delusion. Everyone tested in the study was superstitious and had a lucky charm. I’d like to see a study or two that involved people who don’t rely on superstition as well. I think if a person understands the delusion of superstition, they will therefore not need the “lucky” feather in their cap. They will have appropriate self-confidence based on their actual abilities. Still, it’s an interesting study.

More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist: Half the people in North America and Western Europe get insufficient amounts of vitamin D. “Elsewhere, it is worse, given that two-thirds of the people are vitamin D-insufficient or deficient. It is clear that merely eating vitamin D-rich foods is not adequate to solve the problem for most adults.” Currently, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for people up to 50 years old; 400 IU for people 51 to 70 years old; and 600 IU for people over 70 years old.
“There is a wide consensus among scientists that the relative daily intake of vitamin D should be increased to 2,000 to 4,000 IU for most adults,” Norman says. “A 2000 IU daily intake can be achieved by a combination of sunshine, food, supplements, and possibly even limited tanning exposure.” While there is now abundant data on vitamin D and its benefits, Norman believes there is room for more study.
Because vitamin D is found in very few foods naturally (e.g. fish, eggs and cod liver oil) other foods such as milk, orange juice, some yogurts and some breakfast foods are fortified with it. The fortification levels aim at about 400 IU per day.

Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline: An estimated 40 percent to 100 percent of older adults in the United States and Europe are deficient in vitamin D, according to background information in the article. This deficiency has been linked to fractures, various chronic diseases and death. Vitamin D may help prevent the degeneration of brain tissue by having a role in formation of nervous tissue, maintaining levels of calcium in the body, or clearing of beta-amyloid, the substance that forms the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Editorial: “Vitamin D has been known for many years to play a critical role in skeletal health. More recently, observational studies have reported inverse associations between levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, the metabolite that best reflects overall vitamin D status, and the risk of a wide range of disease, including cancer, vascular disease, infectious conditions, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity. …It is now time to test the various hypotheses generated by observational studies of vitamin D in adequately designed and conducted randomized controlled trials.”

Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent: A team of chemists has developed a non-toxic, recyclable agent that can solidify oil on salt water so that it can be scooped up like the fat that forms on the top of a pot of chilled chicken soup. The agent could potentially be used to recover oil lost in the British Petroleum (BP) spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gelling agent developed by his team is environmentally benign. It uses a sugar-based molecule that can be obtained from renewable sources and is biodegradable. In addition, only a relatively small amount of the agent — five percent of the volume of the oil being recovered — is required for the process, which handles a range of oil from crude to vegetable oil, to work.

Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction: The new study found that the intensity of cravings for cigarettes had more to do with the psychosocial element of smoking than with the physiological effects of nicotine as an addictive chemical. …Dr. Dar’s studies conclude that nicotine is not addictive as physiological addictions are usually defined. While nicotine does have a physiological role in increasing cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, it’s not an addictive substance like heroin, which creates true systemic and biologically-based withdrawal symptoms in the body of the user, he says. Dr. Dar believes that people who smoke do so for short-term benefits like oral gratification, sensory pleasure and social camaraderie. Once the habit is established, people continue to smoke in response to cues and in situations that become associated with smoking. Dr. Dar believes that understanding smoking as a habit, not an addiction, will facilitate treatment. Smoking cessation techniques should emphasize the psychological and behavioral aspects of the habit and not the biological aspects, he suggests.

Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death: A new study has found that even light or moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking or cycling, can substantially reduce the risk of early death. the largest health benefits from light or moderate activity (such as walking and cycling) were in people who do hardly any physical activity at all. Although more activity is better — the benefits of even a small amount of physical activity are very large in the least physically active.
The good news from this study is that you don’t have to be an exercise freak to benefit from physical activity. Just achieving the recommended levels of physical activity (equivalent to 30 minutes daily of moderate intensity activity on 5 days a week) reduces the risk of death by 19%, while 7 hours per week of moderate activity (compared with no activity) reduces the risk of death by 24%. “This research confirms that is not just exercising hard that is good for you but even moderate everyday activities, like walking and cycling, can have major health benefits. Just walking to the shops or walking the children to school can lengthen your life — as well as bringing other benefits for well-being and the environment.”

New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes: A new form of paper with the built-in ability to fight disease-causing bacteria could have applications that range from anti-bacterial bandages to food packaging that keeps food fresher longer to shoes that ward off foot odor. …They made sheets of paper from graphene oxide, and then tried to grow bacteria and human cells on top. Bacteria were unable to grow on the paper, and it had little adverse effect on human cells.

A Blood Test for Depression? Researchers evaluated blood gene expression profiles in healthy individuals and patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that was able to distinguish un-medicated MDD patients from healthy controls. “This is a first, but major step in providing a molecular diagnostic tool for depression.” Although psychiatry already has specific criteria for diagnosing mental health disorders, this type of diagnosis would be unbiased and particularly valuable for those with whom it is more difficult to have a conversation. It may also eventually assist in reducing the stigma associated with mental health problems.

3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled: Scientists have developed the next generation non-contact gesture and finger recognition system. The novel system detects hand and finger positions in real-time and translates these into appropriate interaction commands. Furthermore, the system does not require special gloves or markers and is capable of supporting multiple users. This system detects multiple fingers and hands at the same time and allows the user to interact with objects on a display. The users move their hands and fingers in the air and the system automatically recognizes and interprets the gestures accordingly.
Cinemagoers will remember the science-fiction thriller Minority Report from 2002 which starred Tom Cruise. In this film Tom Cruise is in a 3-D software arena and is able to interact with numerous programs at unimaginable speed, however the system used special gloves and only three fingers from each hand.
The FIT prototype provides the next generation of gesture-based interaction far in advance of the Minority Report system. The FIT prototype tracks the user’s hand in front of a 3-D camera. The 3-D camera uses the time of flight principle, in this approach each pixel is tracked and the length of time it takes light to be filmed travelling to and from the tracked object is determined. This allows for the calculation of the distance between the camera and the tracked object.
“A special image analysis algorithm was developed which filters out the positions of the hands and fingers. This is achieved in real-time through the use of intelligent filtering of the incoming data. The raw data can be viewed as a kind of 3-D mountain landscape, with the peak regions representing the hands or fingers.” In addition plausibility criteria are used, these are based around: the size of a hand, finger length and the potential coordinates.
A user study was conducted and found that the system both easy to use and fun. However, work remains to be done on removing elements which confuses the system, for example reflections caused by wristwatches and palms which are positioned orthogonal to the camera.
“With Microsoft announcing Project Natal, it is likely that similar techniques will very soon become standard across the gaming industry. This technology also opens up the potential for new solutions in the range of other application domains, such as the exploration of complex simulation data and for new forms of learning.”

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Evolution is a sham! The earth is only 6000 years old, therefore there hasn’t been
enough time for all the species to have developed from a single origin. All you have to do is look at the…

Hold it right there!

Science Police. We received complaints that you’ve been willfully ignoring centuries of scientific progress.
Therefore, in accordance with bylaw 27B/6, you’ve forfeited your right to benefit from the technology derived from said science.

What?

We’re confiscating your gadgets.

You can’t do that! I have rights!

Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated with a set of pre-enlightenment equivalents.
To wit: one box of candles, one tinderbox, one quill, one sheaf of parchment, and one goat.

This is outrageous! I’m calling my lawyer!

Good luck with that. The quill gets lousy reception in this area.

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Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin’s birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn’t be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.

A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we’ve come in such a short time!

Think of how we lived just 100 years ago in 1910.

• By 1910 many suburban homes were wired up with power and new electronic gadgets.
• Vacuum cleaners and washing machines had just become commercially available, though still expensive for middle class folks
• The telephone was new, and millions of American homes were connected by manual switchboard
• People relied on the paper for their news, but radio technology was in its infancy
• The age of the airship was in full swing. Only 7 years previously, the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk
• Henry Ford introduced the Model T 2 years before and sold about 10,000 of them this year
• Advances in the use of gases meant the first electric refrigerators and air conditioning units.
• Neon lighting was debuted in Paris
• Inventions included: escalators, teabags, cellophane, instant coffee and disposable razor blades
• Women still had another 3 years of corsets

Things they didn’t have in 1910:

• stainless steel
• zippers
• the modern bra
• the modern band-aid
• the pop-up toaster
• sliced bread

But let’s get back to Liquid Glass. You spray it on. It’s transparent, non-toxic and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat and bacterial infections. It’s flexible and breathable, which means it can be used on all kinds of products.

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

Food processing companies in Germany have already carried out trials of the spray, and found sterile surfaces that usually needed to be cleaned with strong bleach to keep them sterile needed only a hot water rinse if they were coated with liquid glass. The levels of sterility were higher for the glass-coated surfaces, and the surfaces remained sterile for months.

Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses. A year-long trial of the spray in a Lancashire hospital also produced “very promising” results for a range of applications including coatings for equipment, medical implants, catheters, sutures and bandages. The war graves association in the UK is investigating using the spray to treat stone monuments and grave stones, since trials have shown the coating protects against weathering and graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the product on monuments such as the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

Thanks, PhysOrg

A bit more info on it:

The flexible and breathable glass coating is approximately 100 nanometres thick (500 times thinner than a human hair), and so it is completely undetectable. It is food safe, environmentally friendly (winner of the Green Apple Award) and it can be applied to almost any surface within seconds . When coated, all surfaces become easy to clean and anti-microbially protected (Winner of the NHS Smart Solutions Award ). Houses, cars, ovens, wedding dress or any other protected surface become stain resistant and can be easily cleaned with water ; no cleaning chemicals are required. Amazingly a 30 second DIY application to a sink unit will last for a year or years, depending on how often it is used. But it does not stop there – the coatings are now also recognised as being suitable for agricultural and in-vivo application. Vines coated with SiO2 don’t suffer from mildew, and coated seeds grow more rapidly without the need for anti-fungal chemicals. This will result in farmers in enjoying massively increased yields.

…The really clever part is that there are no added nano-particles , resins or additives- the coatings form and bond due to quantum forces. Our research informs us that in all probability, we offer the most versatile coating in the world. This technology is now available for domestic use in Germany. Full scale retail availability in the UK will commence in early 2010.

Nanopool

• Evolution Information
• 100 Years Ago Information

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Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we’re all on the same page:

• Survival of the Fittest
  a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
• Natural Selection
  n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
• Evolution
  Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

I’ve been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I’d write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual.

I heard on The Naked Scientists ( podcast number or which exact one, I’m not sure) recently that humans aren’t really evolving and haven’t for the last couple of thousand years or so. Chris, the Naked Scientist, was talking about something else so it was one of those explanations for something else, not the topic of conversation. So he didn’t go into detail.

My ears perked up though because I’ve been vaguely wondering about human evolution in the past several thousand years. Mainly because humans seem to do things backwards from the rest of nature. Or we seem to do that lately in our history.

For instance, we take care of the old and sick, to the point that otherwise frail and less than hearty people are able to reproduce, and to reproduce much longer into older age than ever before. This is when a woman’s eggs may have more genetic defects in them. Which is why women who are pregnant over a certain age are encouraged to get tested for genetic defects more than younger women are.

I have an aunt who was born with a serious birth defect – spina bifida. She needed countless surgeries over her childhood, and several in her adulthood as well. She ended up getting married and having a child, which even a hundred years ago would not have been possible.

There are huge differences in child mortality and survival throughout the world even today, based on availability of medical care, basic nutrition and other factors. But even 100 years ago the infant mortality rate was higher, right? What was it 2,000 years ago when medical care was rudimentary at best?

So what does this do to the gene pool and to human evolution?

I was talking to my friend Jeff about this yesterday and he made a comment that we are evolving, just with machines now. But I would suggest that’s not the same thing. It certainly doesn’t fall into the biological definition of evolution. I’m not saying that we aren’t evolving at all. But we seem to have stalled at least. Instead of natural selection within the human race, we have technology of all different sorts to compensate for whatever lack of genetic strength we may have.

This could be as simple as red headed people living in the Mediterranean. They don’t need to get sunburned and get skin cancer because they can wear sunblock and protective clothing and stay indoors more. Or a child can be born with asthma, something that would have shortened her life long ago, perhaps. Instead while she may take medication and change her lifestyle a bit, she can grow up to have children, who may also be prone to asthma.

Did you see that movie, Idiocracy? I didn’t watch it because, well, it looked really dumb. But the concept is interesting and is something I see in my life nowadays, to a small degree. The premise of the movie, from what I gathered, is that smart people stop having children so only stupid people have kids, giving birth to dumber and dumber people, until everyone is idiotic. I don’t know about that idea. Because both my husband and I are way smarter than our parents. But I do see people who can barely function in society having kids while smart people make the decision to refrain from reproducing.

Here’s another point. Let’s talk about fishing. I’ve been hearing about how we fish and hunt. Humans take the biggest and strongest animals and fish from the population in huge numbers. Now, when it comes to cattle and poultry, we raise what we want to eat. But for fish we still get them from the wild in a lot of cases. The impact on those populations has actually caused the fish to evolve, but in a reverse sort of way.

There was this study published recently which I heard about. Basically they took this population of fish and treated them as if they were being fished as is common practice today – taking the biggest, leaving the smallest. After 12 years they found that the fish had to adapt and start reproducing earlier than they used to. This has a negative impact on the population, which then affects what is available for us to harvest.

In the wild a lion will target the weak and the young, which makes sense. But we don’t do that. We go for the biggest and strongest, leaving the young and weak. We seem to do it backwards. Which seems like it’s bad for the rest of the environment.

The good news is that this reverse evolution can be reversed. I found the fishing study. Here’s a link: ‘Undesirable’ Evolution Can Be Reversed In Fish, By Letting The Big Ones Go

Those are just some ideas I’ve been knocking around in my head. Your thoughts are welcome, as usual.

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In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.

Getting energy from the sun isn’t the hard part, it seems. It’s storing that energy that has been a problem.

These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.

I won’t get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.

Here’s a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.

This is just the beginning though. It’s still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and we’ll see where it all leads us in the near future.

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, we’ll be able to power our homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power our own household fuel cell.

Of course, the power companies will not like this. But hopefully it will all happen anyway.

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Photograph of the electronic eye camera after integration with a transparent hemispherical cap and a simple, single component imaging lens. - Photo by John Rogers

The University of Illinois and Northwestern University have developed an “eye” camera. It combines stretchable optoelectronics and the design is inspired by nature. The layout is based on the human eye, so this camera is the next step towards an artificial retina, a la The Terminator.

It also opens up new possibilities in advanced camera design.

The camera has a simple, single element lens and hemispherical detector. It’s all integrated so that it is about the same shape, size and layout as a human eye.

Schematic illustration of steps for using compressible silicon focal plane arrays and hemispherical, elastomeric transfer elements to fabricate electronic eye cameras. - Photo by John Rogers

Found Here.

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