Stephan: The future. Click through to see the video.
The PaperPhone’s flexible display makes it more portable that any current mobile computer
In an industry where unbreakable and smaller are best, the world’s first interactive paper computer looks set to dominate for years to come.
The PaperPhone has a flexible electronic display that is set to herald a new generation of computers.
Extremely lightweight and made out of a thin-film, the prototype device can do everything a smartphone currently does.
Scroll down for video
Prototype: The PaperPhone has a flexible electronic display, is extremely lightweight, made out of a thin-film, and can do everything a smartphone currently does
Prototype: The PaperPhone has a flexible electronic display, is extremely lightweight, made out of a thin-film, and can do everything a smartphone currently does
It can store books, play music, send text messages – and, of course, make phone calls.
Most impressively, the PaperPhone uses no power when nobody is interacting with it.
Inventor Roel Vertegaal, the director of Queen’s University Human Media Lab in Kingston, Ontario, said: ‘This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years.
‘This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper, meaning that when users are reading they don’t feel like they are holding […]
No Comments
ALEX SEITZ-WALD, - Think Progress
Stephan: This is how the new American slavery is being created.
Even before he was in office, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) proposed privatizing much of Florida’s prison system, and state House and Senate negotiators agreed to do just that Monday as legislators hammer out a budget. The agreement will move thousands of inmates to prisons run by for-profit companies in an 18-county region in Southern Florida.
As the Maimi Herald reported last month, Scott’s plan ‘could open a lucrative door to politically connected vendors who stand to profit.
No Comments
Stephan: Here is another example of the trend tracing the breakdown of American democracy. We face an endless litany of problems and this is what the ideological driven right chooses to focus on.
Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon.
It’s up to Gov. Rick Scott to sign off on two bills passed in the Florida Senate and House Wednesday which target droopy drawers and bestiality.
The bestiality bill (SB 344) bans sexual activity between humans and animals and has been championed for years by Sen. Nan Rich, from Sunrise.
Rich took up the anti-bestiality fight after a number of cases involving sexual activity with animals in recent years, including a Panhandle man who was suspected of accidentally asphyxiating a family goat during a sex act and the abuse of a horse in the Keys. The bill would make such acts a first-degree misdemeanor.
Also passed by the House and Senate Wednesday is the so-called ‘droopy drawers bill’ (SB 228), will will force students to hike up their pants while at school.
Students caught showing their underwear or butt crack could face suspensions and other punishments.
No Comments
LEONARDO TRASANDE and YINGHUA LIU, - HealthAffairs Journal
Stephan:
A 2002 analysis documented $54.9 billion in annual costs of environmentally mediated diseases in US children. However, few important changes in federal policy have been implemented to prevent exposures to toxic chemicals. We therefore updated and expanded the previous analysis and found that the costs of lead poisoning, prenatal methylmercury exposure, childhood cancer, asthma, intellectual disability, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were $76.6 billion in 2008. To prevent further increases in these costs, efforts are needed to institute premarket testing of new chemicals; conduct toxicity testing on chemicals already in use; reduce lead-based paint hazards; and curb mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
In 2002 Philip Landrigan and colleagues estimated the annual costs for four chronic childhood conditions-lead poisoning, childhood cancer, developmental disabilities, and asthma-that could be attributed to environmental factors. The authors found that these costs totaled $54.9 billion in 1997 dollars, or 2.8 percent of US health care costs in 1997.1 The intent of this analysis was to inform decisions by policy makers to allocate sufficient resources toward prevention of exposures to lead, methylmercury (a form of mercury that has been found to be harmful to the developing brain), certain pesticides, and outdoor air pollutants that are hazardous […]
No Comments
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This is all part of the growing food crisis. This is what the Deniers are supporting because this will not allow anything be done to stop it. So far we have been lucky, but food is a global system. It is for this, as one of several reasons, that I so strongly support localism and gardening.
WASHINGTON – Climate change has stunted the worldwide increase in corn and wheat yields since 1980 by 3.8 and 5.5 percent respectively, according to a new study in the journal Science.
Without global warming, total harvests of both crops would have been significantly larger than they were, the statistical analysis found.
The shortfall equals the annual yield of corn in Mexico, some 23 metric tonnes, and wheat in France, about 33 metric tonnes.
One of the country’s with the largest crop loss was Russia, where wheat production fell some 15 percent.
The study estimates that the global drop-off in production may have caused a six percent hike in consumer food prices since 1980, some $60 billion per year.
Net impact on rice and soybean was insignificant, with gains in some countries balancing losses in others, according to the study.
The researchers, led by David Lobell of Stanford University, noted one ‘startling exception’: the United States isn’t getting hotter, nor are its crop yields less than they might have been without climate change.
‘The results are a reminder that while the relationship between crop production and climate change is obvious on a global scale, models that zoom in… on a country-by-country basis won’t necessarily see the same effects,’ […]
No Comments
