Technology might allow partial invisibility

clipped from technology.newscientist.com While true invisibility cloaks may remain forever a dream, the ability to vanish into an ethereal ray of light is still on the cards. A device that bends microwaves around an object has been shown to render it partially invisible (New Scientist, 28 October 2006, p 29), but Min Qiu of the Royal Institute of Technology in Kista, Sweden, and colleagues argue that total invisibility would require the value of some of the cloak's key electrical and magnetic properties to be infinitely large - something that is impossible. A more realistic goal is to remove the part of the cloak where the values should be infinitely large. They have calculated that the resulting cloak renders someone entirely invisible and leaves only a thin line of light in the object's place. The results will be published in Physical Review Letters.

Author Writes Entire Novel On Cellphone

It was a matter of time I guess. That's some serious dedication there -- though I do wonder if he did any long term damage to his thumbs.

clipped from www.mediabistro.com Author Writes Entire Novel on Cellphone When we say "mobile media," this isn't what we usually have in mind. Still, props go to Robert Bernocco, an Italian IT professional who penned an entire 384-page science fiction novel using the T9 text system on his Nokia cellphone. "It really was a time management issue. He had a book in him and really wanted to write it but found he just didn't have the time to sit and do it on a computer," said Gail Jordan, PR director at the book's publishers, Lulu.com, in the Reuters article.

London is Facebook's Top Network

I definitely would have thought a US network would be in the lead. Definitely wouldn't have guessed Toronto being that prominent.

clipped from www.pcpro.co.uk London has usurped Toronto as Facebook's most popular network. More than 750,000 people have joined the network, almost half of them since May. The web phenomenon of 2007 recently signed up its 30 millionth member, 790,615 of which admit to some kind of affiliation with the UK capital. The UK has 2.1 million Facebook users.

Cannibalistic Sushi

So bizarre. I can see the attraction of the naked body platter, but opening up a fake chest to pull out some raw fish is a bit much,

clipped from www.weirdasianews.com I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body. If that is not weird enough , Japan has just invented another way of eating, where a “body” is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital. You can operate anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.

Federer is the greatest ever

I think he'll end up winning 20 grand slams.

clipped from en.wikipedia.org Roger Federer (IPA pronunciation: [ˈɹɑ.dʒər ˈfɛ.dər.ər][1]) (born August 8, 1981) is a Swiss tennis professional, currently ranked World No. 1. Many experts and many of his own tennis peers believe Federer may be the greatest player in the history of the game.[2][3][4][5][6]

It's just your imagination -- Or is it your memory?

Blowing my mind.

clipped from blog.sciam.com Do you need a hippocampus to imagine a museum? As we explored in the very first Mind Matters post, neuroscientists everywhere agree that the hippocampus is crucial to memory -- but have rich and interesting disagreements about how this brain area creates and manages memory and what roles it might play in cognition. This debate was freshly enlivened in early 2007 when an innovative paper by Demis Hassabis (a former chess prodigy and games designer) and colleagues at the renowned University College London lab of Eleanor Maguire proposed that the hippocampus is vital not just for memory but also for imagination. As hippocampal researcher Andre Fenton notes in his review below, this discovery suggests both a vital new role for the hippocampus and a narrative-building mechanism common to memory, imagination, and thought. Interesting new ground, Fenton finds, but not without its hazards.

Plants on Other Planets May Not Be Green

Fascinating to think about this one. We're so attuned to the green-ness of plants, it's hard to imagine them otherwise (unless you grew up watching under the sea cartoons).

clipped from space.newscientist.com The greenery on other planets may not be green. Astrobiologists say plants on Earth-sized planets orbiting stars somewhat brighter than the Sun may look yellow or orange, while those on planets orbiting stars much fainter than the Sun might look black. Vegetation colour matters to astrobiologists because they want to know what to look for as a sign of life on planets outside the solar system. Terrestrial photosynthesis depends mostly on red light, the most abundant wavelength reaching the Earth's surface, and blue light, the most energetic. Plants also absorb green light, but not as strongly, so leaves look green to the eye. Extraterrestrial plants will look different because they have evolved their own pigments based on the colours of light reaching their surfaces, says Nancy Kiang of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences in New York, US.