Eideard

Researchers have demonstrated a prototype device that can rid hands, feet, or even underarms of bacteria, including the hospital superbug MRSA.

The device works by creating something called a plasma, which produces a cocktail of chemicals in air that kill bacteria but are harmless to skin. A related approach could see the use of plasmas to speed the healing of wounds…

Plasmas are known as the fourth state of matter, after solid, liquid, and gas. They are a soup of atoms that have had their electrons stripped off by, for example, a high voltage.

The new research focuses on so-called cold atmospheric plasmas.

Rather than turning a whole group of atoms into plasma, a more delicate approach strips the electrons off just a few, sending them flying…

The resulting plasma is harmful to bacteria, viruses, and fungi – the approach is already used to disinfect surgical tools…

Professor Gregor Morfill said that more testing of the devices is necessary before they end up in widespread use, but he said that there is already significant interest from industry.

RTFA. The systems have been miniaturized enough to be battery-operated and portable.

Cripes, I can see them supplanting underarm deodorant sticks someday.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Germany’s top army officer has resigned over the disclosure that the defence ministry had withheld information about civilian casualties caused by a Nato air strike in Afghanistan.

The resignation of Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the Bundeswehr’s chief of staff, along with that of ministry state secretary Peter Wichert, was announced by Germany’s new defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg during a parliamentary debate on the future of Germany in Afghanistan.

Schneiderhan’s resignation amounts to an admission by the defence ministry that it suppressed information about civilian casualties which was ordered by the Bundeswehr – even though it had numerous sources of information, including from its own military police.

According to Nato information, 142 insurgents and civilians were killed in the attack on 4 September on two oil tankers, which had been seized by the Taliban in the northern region near Kunduz.

The then defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, initially dismissed reports that civilians had been among the victims. The ministry later backtracked, saying some civilians had been killed.

Now, Former German Defense Minister and current Labor Minister Franz Josef Jung has resigned over the fatal Afghan airstrike…

The German newspaper, Bild, said it had access to confidential documents and it posted a video of the airstrike on its Web site. It said German Col. Georg Klein was not able to rule out the possibility of civilian victims before he ordered the strike.

The newspaper said a report dated Sept. 6 — two days after the strike — made clear that it was impossible for Klein to verify information his informant had provided before he called in the airstrike.

Jung said Friday he was taking responsibility for miscommunication following the incident.

Bild reported that for days after the incident, Jung — who was then defense minister — repeated that there had been no civilian victims. That was despite Jung having videos and documents that proved the defense ministry knew about civilian victims and also had insufficient information before the strike was ordered.

The Fog of War claims victims at the top as well as on the battlefield. Though, of course, those at the top don’t get bloodied except in the metaphor.

Major social networking websites have been criticised for not introducing a help button for children to report concerns about grooming and bullying.

Jim Gamble, from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), hit out at the sites as one site, Bebo, adopted the button. He said there was “no legitimate reason” why other sites like MySpace and Facebook had not done the same.

Ceop – the UK law enforcement agency tasked with tracing online sex offenders – says its Report button receives 10,000 hits a month on other websites. Clicking the button allows users to contact specially trained Ceop officers for advice. It also provides details of local police and links to 10 other sources of help including Childline.

The person that goes on with harmful intent – whether it’s the bully or whether it’s the paedophile – they know when they see it that there is an active deterrent here

Gamble added: “I am applauding Bebo – it’s taken us three years to get here. But I don’t understand – and there is more than Facebook in this – I don’t understand the logic for the others not following suit.”

Surely, the big social networking sites can afford to include a simple, easy means for a young ‘un to reach out for aid.

To design a lightweight anchor that can dig itself in to hold small underwater submersibles, Anette (Peko) Hosoi of MIT borrowed techniques from one of nature’s best diggers — the razor clam.

“The best anchoring technology out there is an order or magnitude worse than the clam — most are two or three orders worse,” says Hosoi…

Using relatively simple anatomy, the bivalve burrows into the bottom of its native mudflats at a rate of a centimeter per second. Hosoi’s studies of the physics behind this remarkable ability have revealed that the digging is accomplished in two motions — a push upwards with its foot, which mixes the grains of solid into the liquid above, and a synchronized push down.

By borrowing this principle, Hosoi and graduate student Amos Winter have created a simple robot that is now being tested out in the salt water mudflats off of Cape Cod. It digs just as fast as the living clam and is “small, lightweight, and does not use a lot of energy,” says Hosoi.

I never met a clam I didn’t like. Especially with melted butter and a little garlic.

Yes, of course, the project rocks, too.

Ain’t any cloud of smoke hovering overhead either!

Norway has opened the world’s first osmotic power plant, which produces emissions-free electricity by mixing fresh water and sea water through a special membrane.

State-owned utility Statkraft’s prototype plant, which for now will produce a tiny 2-4 kilowatts of power or enough to run a coffee machine, will enable Statkraft to test and develop the technology needed to drive down production costs.

The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing electricity…

Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy with experience in hydropower that provides nearly all of Norway’s electricity, aims to begin building commercial osmotic power plants by 2015…

Osmotic power, which can be located anywhere where clean fresh water runs into the sea, is seen as more reliable than more variable wind or solar energy.

Cripes – it’s been too many decades since I encountered osmosis. Reverse osmosis, pressure-driven, is pretty common here in high desert country. Purifying brackish underground reservoirs into potable water.

RTFA. Sounds interesting and productive.

After 3 years of therapy, Rom Houben communicates via touchscreen – with 1 finger
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.

Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years.

Then a neurologist, Steven Laureys, who decided to take a radical look at the state of diagnosed coma patients, released him from his torture. Using a state-of-the-art scanning system, Laureys found to his amazement that his brain was functioning almost normally.

Laureys…discovered that although Houben was completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it was just that he was unable to communicate the fact…

Houben realised when he came round after his accident, which had caused his heart to stop and his brain to be starved of oxygen for several minutes, that his body was paralysed. Although he could hear every word his doctors spoke, he could not communicate with them.

“I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,” he said, via his keyboard…

Laureys concluded that coma patients are misdiagnosed “on a disturbingly regular basis”. He examined 44 patients believed to be in a vegetative state, and found that 18 of them responded to communication.

“Once someone is labelled as being without consciousness, it is very hard to get rid of that,” he told Der Spiegel.

Here is a medical instance where extra attention, additional testing over time, may produce dramatic results. Very different from care designed only to extend the process of dying.

The story is terrible – of course – 23 years trapped inside indifference because no one knew he was alive and conscious within a dysfunctional body. RTFA. And join the world of praise for Steven Laureys whose care and curiosity reopened the door to life for Rom Houben.

After the Vegas DEFCON ATM debacle where hackers hacked hackers by setting up a fake ATM in front of the facilities security office, I needed to see how stupid easy it was to buy an ATM and just set it up anywhere. So my search began.

I started looking on e-bay and found plenty of new and used ATMs ranging from $500-2500 but quickly determined I didn’t want to pay $300 for shipping. Next was Craigslist…

I quickly found an ad from a bar north of Boston. They were selling pool tables, Budweiser neon signs and an ATM. I took my hacker with me and met Bob. Bob rented a room above the bar and was doing the deed for the owner. The bar was an old relic that was closing and liquidating its grungy assets. The ATM was sitting right next to the bar covered in 5 years of beer. Thank heavens they were smart enough to cover the keypad in clear plastic…

Needless to say I wanted to unbolt this thing as quickly as possible, get out of there and douse myself head to toe in pure alcohol hand sanitizer. After my hacker played with the manual, got it working and determined it was worth the financial risk, we loaded it on my trailer, paid $750 (down from a grand) and brought it home and put it in my garage.

My hacker comes over to my garage, manual in hand, all giggly, like hackers sometimes do and says “Watch this”. He punches the master codes to access the machines data on a device called an eprom and hundreds of credit and debit card numbers just start falling all over the floor…

Here’s the first of a few upcoming videos of what happened next:

This could make you never want to use an ATM ever again. And stay out of sleazy bars.

As many of you know, last year’s list of the “World’s Ugliest Buildings” not only made the front page of Yahoo.com, but caused quite the controversy in Boston where some took issue with our choice of Boston City Hall as the world’s ugliest building.

As comprehensive as the list was, there are still dozens of buildings out there that make us want to avert our eyes when we walk by, so with that in mind, we’ve compiled our 2nd Annual List of The World’s Ugliest Buildings! Enjoy!

From the merely unpleasant to the borderline criminal, ugly buildings somehow manage to pop up in even the prettiest cities. With this in mind, VirtualTourist.com has announced its 2nd Annual List of the “World’s Top 10 Ugly Buildings,” as decided by its members and editors. VirtualTourist.com general manager, Giampiero Ambrosi discusses the list’s significance: “Many of these buildings don’t have the warmth of an ice cube while others don’t even seem completed. Either way, they make for very interesting conversation.”

My personal best goes to #8, Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I wish it would finish falling down.

Physicists returned to their future on Friday. About 10 p.m. outside Geneva, scientists at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, succeeded in sending beams of protons clockwise around the 17-mile underground magnetic racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment.

For physicists, the event was a milestone on the way back from disaster and the resumption of a 15-year, $9 billion quest to investigate laws and forces that prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old…

The first time protons circled the collider, on Sept. 10, 2008, the event was celebrated with Champagne and midnight pajama parties around the world. But the festivities were cut short a few days later when an electrical connection between a pair of the collider’s giant superconducting electromagnets vaporized…

Physicists and engineers have spent the past year testing and making repairs. While they have not replaced all the faulty connections, they have patched things up enough to allow the collider to run at less than full speed…

CERN’s director, Rolf Heuer, said in a statement, “It’s great to see beam circulating in the LHC again,” but he and others cautioned that there was a long way to go before the collider started producing the physics it was designed for…

If all goes well, CERN says, the protons will start colliding at comparatively low energies in about a week.

Bravo! Have a much safer journey, this time, folks.

Poisonally, I’d initiate a chargeback against whoever did the faulty wiring.

India has approved plans for a huge increase in the amount of electricity it generates from solar power.

It aims to boost solar output 1,000-fold over 12 years from its current negligible level. Its 20 gigawatt target would power several big cities.

The government wants to reduce India’s dependence on coal and boost the export industry for solar power equipment…

The $19 billion three-phased plan aims to boost solar power output across the country from close to zero to 20 gigawatts by 2022.

It is hugely ambitious and has been welcomed by the country’s renewable energy suppliers, although some say it is unclear where the money will come from, says the BBC’s technology correspondent Mark Gregory…

India hopes to build a solar power industry that matches early leaders in the sector such as China, Germany and Japan.

The more the merrier. The economies of scale kick in faster with global production.