Communications researcher Friedhelm Hillebrand and his friends performed a very serious experiment in 1985, and by “very serious experiment,” we mean he typed random sentences and counted all the letters, spaces, and punctuation marks, and that’s it. They found that such sentences were almost always shorter than 160 characters. They also found that postcards most frequently had less than 150 characters. Maybe he also tried typing a very common sentence among his circle of friends, like “Find me in a room, naked, with a big black dildo shoved up my ass,” and even that clocked at a satisfying length. Armed with this information, he convinced his colleagues working on the then-nascent Franco-German Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) that 160 characters were more than sufficient for short messaging service. A kitten died. The End.

More from the wikipedias.

That messy human business of getting old and dying is going to be kaput by 2029, so say aging and increasingly desperate top scientists. They’re descending on Manhattan Beach from November 13 to 15 and do some top scientist stuff, like talk about gene therapy, nanotechnology and “Organ Re-Growth and Transplantation,” and maybe slap one another top-scientist high-fives.

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Ray Kurzweil really can’t be stopped — at least not from talking. Although die-able and really old himself, he wants people to understand death is really an “option,” or at least your punishment for being stupid or having no money. And that technology, and any other shiny thing, really gets him hard.

For Kurzweil, the crux of the singularity is that the pace of technology is increasing at a super-fast, exponential rate. What’s more, there’s also “exponential growth in the rate ‘ of exponential growth”. It is this understanding that gives him the confidence to believe that technology – through an explosion of progress in genetics, nanotechnology and robotics – will soon surpass the limits of his imagination.

It is also why, in addition to bananas and the odd beneficial glass of red wine, he follows a regime of around 200 vitamin pills daily: not so much a diet as an attempt to “aggressively re-programme” his biochemistry. He claims that tests have shown he aged only two biological years over the course of 16 actual vitamin-popping years. He also says that, thanks to the regime, he has effectively cured himself of Type 2 diabetes. Not even open-heart surgery, which he underwent last year, and from which he made a rapid recovery (“a few hours later I was in the next room, and sent an email”) could dent his convictions. On the contrary, he thinks that the brevity of his convalescence is proof positive that the pills are working. If he slows down the ageing process, he reckons, he’ll be around long enough to witness the arrival of technology that will prolong his life… forever.

Whoa! Attaboy, happy man!

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With BrainPort, the device being developed by neuroscientists at Middleton, Wisc.–based Wicab, Inc. (a company co-founded by the late Back-y-Rita), visual data are collected through a small digital video camera about 1.5 centimeters in diameter that sits in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. Bypassing the eyes, the data are transmitted to a handheld base unit, which is a little larger than a cell phone. This unit houses such features as zoom control, light settings and shock intensity levels as well as a central processing unit (CPU), which converts the digital signal into electrical pulses—replacing the function of the retina.

From the CPU, the signals are sent to the tongue via a “lollipop,” an electrode array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the tongue. Each electrode corresponds to a set of pixels. White pixels yield a strong electrical pulse, whereas black pixels translate into no signal. Densely packed nerves at the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical signals, which feel a little like Pop Rocks or champagne bubbles to the user.

It remains unclear whether the information is then transferred to the brain’s visual cortex, where sight information is normally sent, or to its somatosensory cortex, where touch data from the tongue is interpreted, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee Arnoldussen says. “We don’t know with certainty,” she adds.

[a demo of the BrainPort, featuring a hot model whose tongue you'd wanna put things on]

link: “Tasting the Light: Device Lets the Blind “See” with Their Tongues“

A US weapons lab on Friday pulled back the curtain on a super laser with the power to burn as hot as a star.

The National Ignition Facility’s main purpose is to serve as a tool for gauging the reliability and safety of the US nuclear weapons arsenal but scientists say it could deliver breakthroughs in safe fusion power.

“We have invented the world’s largest laser system,” actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a dedication ceremony attended by thousands including state and national officials.

“We can create the stars right here on earth. And I can see already my friends in Hollywood being very upset that their stuff that they show on the big screen is obsolete. We have the real stuff right here.”

NIF is touted as the world’s highest-energy laser system. It is located inside the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory about an hour’s drive from San Francisco.

Equipment connected to a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that exist at cores of stars or giant planets.

NIF will be able to create conditions and conduct experiments never before possible on Earth, according to the laboratory.

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Adding small amounts of metal to spider silk – a material already stronger and lighter than steel – makes it up to 10 times tougher, German researchers report.

The scientists devised a way to incorporate zinc, titanium and aluminium ions into natural spider silk. They say the method could one day prove useful for creating super-strong textiles, surgical thread or even synthetic bones.

“We might be able to use the process to toughen artificial materials,” said co-author Mato Knez, based at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle.

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University of Washington researchers are reporting that they created chlorotoxin-bound nanoparticles that have an augmented anti-brain cancer properties. These novel compounds, composed of an iron oxide nanoparticle core linked to an amine-functionalized poly(ethylene glycol) silane and chlorotoxin, a scorpion venom, seem to have substantially enhanced cellular uptake, hence their anticancer properties.

And we’d block-quote more from the research, but that would make us feel so retarded, so just check out the page, after which give the good news to whoever has brain cancer in your neighborhood. Jolly good times!

These batteries are made up of yeast, which in turn feed on the glucose in blood to produce enough energy to power devices like, say, pacemakers. That’s one step right there toward efficient cyborg-ification.

The new fuel cell consists of a colony of Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the kind of yeast commonly used in brewing and baking – encapsulated in a fuel cell made of a form of silicone called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The prototype is 15 millimetres square and 1.4 mm thick.

Methyl blue – a chemical often used to stain biological samples – is used as the electron mediator. This steals some of the electrons produced when the yeast metabolises glucose and delivers them to the anode side of the cell, creating a small current. On the cathode side, hydrogen ions that diffuse out of the yeast cells combine with oxygen to create water.

The yeast-based fuel cell produces around 40 nanowatts of power, compared to the microwatt a typical wristwatch battery might produce, Chaio says. That might be enough power for some devices if it were coupled with a capacitor to allow energy to be stored. The yeast could also be genetically engineered to boost its power output.

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Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata is wearing in space a new no-stink underpants. He’s seen here (below) very very happy that his claustrophobic space capsule doesn’t smell of pee, anymore. Nothing like a pair of underpants that stays fresh for seven days can bring a smile to that face.

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In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.

The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.

“We’d be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of power,” says Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who once worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the birthplace of some of the deadliest weapons known to man. More recently he worked on the mosquito laser, built from parts bought on eBay.

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