Doughnut Day June 2, 2006

Didn't know that there is a National Doughnut Day?! Well there is! Krispy Kreme is celebrating by giving away a free doughnut of your choice.

Make sure you stop on by your local store to get one. Yummy!

The Evolution of Honda's Asimo Robot

A look at the history and evolution of Honda's Asimo Robot.

If you can, check out the Asimo show at Disneyland in Anahiem, CA.

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An Alignment of the Stars and Planets

The month of June is going to be filled with some great night sky observing.

Read more about An Alignment of Stars and Planets at Science@NASA.

Striking photo of land erosion in New Mexico

An amazing view of land erosion from 30,000 feet above New Mexico.

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HIPerWall: New Vistas in Scientific Visualization

Innovative ways of envisioning scientific phenomena are on the rise in data-rich research environments. Case in point is the HIPerWall. The HIPerWall, funded by the National Science Foundation, is a massively tiled, grid-based display built using fifty 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays and twenty-five Power Mac G5 computers at the UC Irvine campus.

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Earth's ozone layer appears to be on the road to recovery.

Current trends might actually be helping. The global ozone layer could be restored to 1980 levels sometime between 2030 and 2070.

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Towel Day, May 25th

In remembrance of Douglas Adams, author of the book, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, carry your towel with you throughout the day on Thursday, May 25th.

Read more about Towel Day.

Things to do with a MacBook...

The things you can find on YouTube.

The latest find I read about on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Check out the application MacSaber and then watch the video.

Very amusing...

Voyager 2 Detects Odd Shape of Solar System's Edge

Voyager 2 could pass beyond the outermost layer of our solar system, called the \"termination shock,\" sometime within the next year, NASA scientists announced at a media teleconference today.

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New Nike + iPod Sports Kit

Nike and Apple have teamed up for the Nike iPod Sports Kit. A sensor is located in the Nike shoes and, with a wireless adaptor connected to your iPod Nano, the sensor data is transmitted to your iPod while you work out. Now your Nano is a fancy pedometer!

Read more about the Nike iPod Sports Kit.

Shopping for a Hubble Telescope?

A friend forwarded this along to me...

Just in case you are thinking of owning your own Hubble Telescope. Read more by visiting Telescope.com. Amusing indeed!

Real Time Satellite Tracking using Google Maps

I read about this site at the Bad Astronomy Blog. It is a very cool website overlaying satellite tracking data with Google Maps. It has an array of satellites from Hubble to GPS and Weather satellites. It even shows you the latitude and longitude for the closest land location that one could see the satellite all in real time.

Play here at the Real Time Satellite Tracking site.

Why do girls lose interest in math and science?

Government data show that girls fall behind boys in math and science as they progress through school. In the fourth grade, 68 percent of boys and 66 percent of girls say they like science, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

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Discovery of Triple-Neptune System

Astronomers have discovered 3 Neptune-sized planets circling star HD 69830 in the constellation Puppis. The planets were discovered using the 3.6 meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Read Extrasolar-planet hunters find triple-Neptune system from New Scientist.

Amusing cat videos

Okay, have you figured out we like cats yet?

If not, these videos on YouTube should convince you that we are:

Talking Cats and Funny Kitties

eBay rules that New Zealand not for sale

What will they think of next?

An eBay trader in Australia tried to sell the country New Zealand! The bid started at one cent and was up to 3,000 Australian dollars before eBay pulled the auction.

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SCUBA diving bugs

From a CBC's Quirks and Quarks, an interview with a researcher who learned how bugs SCUBA dive, complete with their own BCD and oxygen supply.

Evolution of Dance

A friend forwarded this video to me. I do not want to spoil it so all I will say is that this video made me cry I was laughing so hard.

The Evolution of Dance on YouTube.

Cuteness!

If you ever feel down, I have found the website for you.

Click on over to Cute Overload and enjoy the imagery. I guarantee it will put a smile on your face!

[Update] Here is another cute and funny site: Stuff On My Cat

Air Purifiers Can Create Indoor Air Pollution

Not all indoor air purifiers are the same. Ionic air purifiers can emit ozone as a byproduct of the ionization process.

Read more via the LiveScience article "Isn't it Ionic? Air Purifiers Make Smog". Check whether your indoor air purifier is safe via the California Air Resources Board website.

Microbes Convert Wastewater into Useable Electricity

Millions of tiny microbes infest the water carrying the detritus of human life and society. Some of them steadily break down the organic material in waste streams and produce electrons in the process.New research shows how such biological power plants can be stacked to create usable current.

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"Spore" Demonstration

A twenty minute presentation demonstrating the new video game "Spore" from the E3 conference going on this week in Northern California.

Looks like an amazing game. We hope to see it out someday.

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Palm Trade-In Program

Trade in your old smartphone or pda for a new Palm Treo Smartphone. 

Learn more from the Palm Trade-In Program website.

Tivo and Brightcove Partner

This new agreement will enable internet video via Brightcove to be downloaded and viewed from a TiVo box. Very cool!

Read the official press release.

Rock Slab Growing at Mt. St. Helens Volcano

Check out the photos and time-lapse video.

Hilarious commericals...

If you have not seen the Trunk Monkey commericals yet then you are missing out. Quite hilarious!

Explosive sting of jellyfish captured on film

The explosion of stingers released when a jellyfish brushes against its victim has been captured for the first time on film. The footage shows what may be the fastest cellular process in nature. What's more the little darts hit with the force of bullets. The most rapid camera available was needed - it takes 1.4 million frames per second

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Hydrogen fuel cells 20 years off, hybrids to become common

A recent report says that hybrids will become very common within the next few years as gas prices rise and people reallize that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are at least 20 years off. Interesting, Toyota has reduced cost of hybrid engine by 2700 to 700 bucks.

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FedEx flights dodging thunderstorms (radar time-lapse)

Radar view of FedEx flights dodging thunderstorms that are moving towards Memphis Int'l airport.

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Google News Cloud

NewsCloud is a site experiment that fetches news from Google News, tries to find tags related to each news and presents a tag cloud of the daily news. During the news process, there's no human intervention. All tags are discovered automatically from Google News by text analysis. The pages are served statically, and are generated every hour.

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Tips for Skywatchers

In celebration of Astronomy Day (May 6), Space.com published a great article for the beginning stargazer.

Tips for Skywatching

Even Garfield has an iPod

One of my favorite comics for a long time. 

Visit Garfield online.

Mac Maintenance Quick Assist

For the newbie or advanced Mac user, this Apple Support Document highlights 10 tips to keep your Mac in optimum form.

Top 10 Tips to Keep Your Mac in Top Form

Living Responsibly

Help to ensure clean and healthy oceans. The Ocean Conservancy has a great list of actions to help preserve our oceans and marine life.

Living Responsibly

Learn how to use Apple's Automator

This site's full of tours, examples and downloads. Very nice resource for any one curious on how to use that fancy Tiger app.

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Students invent natural way to purify polluted water

The three teenagers got the idea from a documentary about a Japanese fish farmer who tossed oyster shells into a pond and found it cleared the dirty water. They began experimenting with scallop shells immersed in dirty dish water. The water cleared in 24 hours. Their research has already won prizes at three science fairs.

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Saturn Moon Has Seas of Sand, Images Reveal

When scientists first started observing Titan, they saw what they thought were oceans. The latest images from NASA's Cassini probe reveal that these dark areas are seas of sand, complete with vast complexes of startlingly Earthlike dunes.

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TiVo's impact on the future of television advertising

This article talks about the future of television advertising and the impact that TiVo and other DVR's have on television advertising. It also contains a statement from a law professor at Duke that says broadcasters offer a program knowing that only a fraction of the audience watches the commercials.

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Electrically Powered Sports Car

The Wrightspeed X1 can do 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds and is completely powered by advanced lithium-ion cells. 

Read more in the Business 2.0 May 2006 Issue and also visit the Wrightspeed Inc. site to learn more about the X1.

Nobel prize-winner Frank Wilczek on physics progress

On the SciAm podcast, Professor Wilczek and his wife Betsy Devine are interviewed about their Nobel experience and the progress and purpose of physics. Listen to the podcast here.

NASA & ESA Release Stunning New Videos of Huygens' Landing on Titan

New views of the most distant touchdown ever made by a spacecraft were released by NASA, ESA & the Univ. of Arizona. The movies show the dramatic descent of the Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan on Jan. 14, 2005. The movies were put together with data from the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer during the 147-minute descent.

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Challenger Center for Space Science Education 20th Anniv. On-line Auction

On-line Auction is from April 24, 2006 - May 29, 2006. Proceeds go to Challenger Center for Space Science Education in order to help "continue the mission" of Flight 51-L into the next decade. More information about the organization and its mission is available at Challenger Center.

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Jupiter in May

For the whole month of May, Jupiter will be unusually big and bright. A great time to go out and take a look!

Read more about viewing Jupiter.

Saturn's rotation puts astronomers in a spin

Saturn is apparently spinning faster than originally thought.

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TiVo Desktop released as a Universal binary

A step in the right direction. Still waiting for TivoToGo for the Mac.

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New Apple Macintosh Ads

Check out the new Mac ads!

Get A Mac Ads

DARPA Urban Grand Challenge is official

"DARPA will award prizes for the top three autonomous ground vehicles that compete in a final event where they must safely complete a 60-mile urban area course in fewer than six hours. First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000."

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