Friday, November 23, 2012
PLASTIC SKIN, HEAL THYSELF
Artificial skin, which is used to help burn victims (among other purposes), has come a long way, but it still falls short of the real thing, particularly when it comes to repairing itself. Now researchers at Stanford University have developed a plastic skin that can conduct electrical signals, much the way real skin signals the brain, and heals itself, when damaged, faster than real skin. The plastic is made of long chains of molecules joined by hydrogen bonds that break apart easily but also reconnect easily. Pressed together for a few seconds, the stuff regains its conductivity and strength in about a half-hour.
The new material, which the scientists are calling the first of its kind, is described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE
A man who allegedly told police he drank five beers while waiting for a pizza lost control of his car and smashed into a house, greeting the startled homeowner by saying, “You want some pizza?’’ The homeowner felt his house shake, and downstairs found a dazed William Kise, 41, in the driver’s seat of a rubble-covered Mustang, with a box of pizza and some hot sauce in his back seat. Kise offered to share, but despite his generosity, was arrested and charged with drunk driving.
TODAY IN HISTORY
NOVEMBER 23
1958: Future President Ronald Reagan and future first lady Nancy Davis Reagan star together in the coincidentally titled A Turkey for the President, a GE Theater television production.
1963: William Hartnell stars as the time- and space-traveling Doctor in the premiere of the science fiction series Doctor Who on the BBC. The show is still on the air as the longest-running science fiction program in broadcast history, with Matt Smith as the 11th and newest actor to play the Doctor.
1976: Jacques Mayol becomes the first man to dive without equipment to a depth of 100 meters below the ocean surface, off the coast of Elba, Italy.
2005:Ellen Johnson Sirleaf elected president of Liberia; first woman leading African country.
1889:The first jukebox goes into operation in San Francisco - it would later become a national phenomenon.
1936:Henry Luce, publisher of "Time" & "Fortune magazines, launches magazine "Life"
AND I QUOTE
"Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift which is why they call it the present."-Bill Keane
Thursday, November 22, 2012
THE NEXT BIG THING?
GOOD WEEK FOR
Slow and steady, after a tortoise from Alamogordo, N.M., that went missing from its home was found 10 days later, 50 miles away.
Cheap praise, after a Japanese study found that compliments can help improve student and employee performance as much as monetary rewards. “To the brain, receiving a compliment is as much a social reward as being rewarded money,” said researcher Norihiro Sadato.
SERIOUSLY?
A 3-year-old Oklahoma boy has been fined $2,500 for urinating in his own front yard. Ashley Warden says her son Dillan is being potty-trained, and had only just pulled down his pants when a passing cop “asked for my license and told me he was going to give me a ticket for public urination.” The Wardens will fight the fine in court.
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