Americans Giving Up Sex for Interneting?

New technologies, from email to Blackberries, are often blamed for everything from failed marriages to bad sex lives. A recent study claims that a large percentage of Americans are spending less time having sex due to the amount time they spend on the Internet.


However, reading past the publicity grabbing headline, the truth may be
less alarming. Sure, Americans are reducing the amount of face-to-face
time they spend with their friends, but they are replacing it (and
other non-interactive activities like newspaper reading and television
watching) with time on the Internet. They may spend less time
face-to-face, but the net amount of time spent interacting with other
people is increased.

The statement made by the director of the study
that "I don't suppose their partners are too pleased about it" is short
sighted -- the assumption that only one of the partners is online is a
bit antiquated. Perhaps both partners are actually quite enjoying their
time online, and perhaps that time is even spent online with each other.

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Robots turn off senior citizens in aging Japan

Ifbot, the resident robot at a Japanese nursing home, can converse, sing, express emotions and give trivia quizzes to seniors to help with their mental agility. Yet the pale-green gizmo has spent much of the past two years languishing in a corner alone.

"The residents liked ifbot for about a month before they lost interest," said Yasuko Sawada, director of the facility in Kyoto, western Japan, shaking her head as she contemplated the 495,000 yen ($4,300), 45-cm-tall (18-inch-tall) "communication robot".

"Stuffed animals are more popular," she remarked dryly.

High-tech gadgets and futuristic robots which Japan had hoped might lend a hand when the population turns gray haven't caught on with the elderly, who according to forecasts will make up around 40 percent of the population by the middle of the century.

"Most (elderly) people are not interested in robots. They see robots as overly-complicated and unpractical. They want to be able to get around their house, take a bath, get to the toilet and that's about it," said Ruth Campbell, a geriatric social worker at the University of Tokyo.

Japanese manufacturers have learned the hard way that the elderly want everyday products adapted to their needs -- easy to read for those with poor eyesight, big buttons for people with trembling hands and clear audio for the hard of hearing.

Among the most high-profile failures was Hopis, a furry pink dog-like robot capable of monitoring blood sugar, blood pressure and body temperature.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-09-20T102620Z_01_T295471_RTRUKOC_0_US-JAPAN-AGEING-GADGETS.xml

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DNA Barcodes for A Better World

clipped from today.reuters.com New genetic tests could help crack down on illegal food or timber trade, fight malaria or even give clues to how to stop bird strikes with planes Experts have identified DNA "barcodes" -- named after the black and white lines that identify products in a supermarket -- of more than 31,000 species of animals and plants against 12,700 species in 2005 in a fast-growing branch of science "We're building up a reference library of species," said David Schindel of the U.S. Smithsonian Institution who is executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life. About 350 barcode experts will meet from September 18-20 in Taipei A snippet of genetic material can help identity a species by a DNA "barcode" unique to each species in a laboratory process taking a few hours and costing about $2. Barcoding could help, for instance, identify a tiny worm on a shipment of bananas and so settle a dispute about whether it was a harmless pest just picked up at the port of entry or a more dangerous

Firefox Add-On: Wizz RSS 2.1.9.7

Buat yg suka baca2 berita dari Internet dan kebetulan pengguna Firefox, ada add-on yg sangat berguna sekali. Add-on ini jauh lebih enak dibaca dan lebih lengkap daripada hanya memakai Live Bookmark bawaan Firefox. Bagi yg baru mau memulai menikmati dunia RSS software ini sangat membantu Anda.

Sebagai paket awal akan ada banyak link ke situs2 bagus seperti Yahoo!, CNN, ABC, ESPN, BBC, Wired dll. Dengan ditampilkan di Side Bar akan ada 3 jendela, pertama berisi link utama, kedua headline beritanya dan yg ketiga summary berita. Jika Anda klik pada headline akan langsung dibuka pada tab Firefox yg sedang terlihat di layar.

Mau coba? silahkan ke situs Add-On Firefox atau googling aja...

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A Collaborative Peer-to-Peer Handphone...Free of Charge !!!

A new way of making calls directly between phones, for free, is being trialled by a Swedish company.

Swedish company TerraNet has developed the idea using
peer-to-peer technology that enables users to speak on its handsets
without the need for a mobile phone base station. The technology is designed for remote areas of the countryside or desert where base stations are unfeasible.

The TerraNet technology works using handsets adapted to
work as peers that can route data or calls for other phones in the
network. The handsets also serve as nodes between other handsets,
extending the reach of the entire system. Each handset has an effective
range of about one kilometre. This collaborative routing of calls means there is no cost to talk between handsets. When a TerraNet phone is switched on, it begins to look
for other phones within range. If it finds them, it starts to connect
and extend the radio network.

While individually the phones only have a maximum range
of 1km, any phone in between two others can forward calls, allowing the
distance to double. This principle applied many times creates a mini
network.


TerraNet phones currently only work with a special handset -
although Mr Carlius said he hopes that it will eventually be a feature
available on all phones, like Bluetooth. He said that were this to happen, it could potentially
spell the end for the current Global System for Mobile (GSM)
communications model. About 70% of all mobile phones use this
technology.

Mr Carlius said that mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson
had invested around £3m in TerraNet, and this indicated that the
business model for the network is sound.

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IBM and Sun Joins Hand For OpenOffice.org

After a few years of flirting with the idea of
developing its own suite of applications, perhaps under the Lotus
banner, that support the OASIS OpenDocument format, IBM has decided to
join Sun Microsystems in the development of OpenOffice.org, the
principal open source ODF applications suite.

Sun currently produces the commercial
ODF-supporting suite StarOffice; and since late 2005, when Sun and IBM
openly courted development groups to meet at IBM's Armonk headquarters
to plan the future of ODF together, observers speculated IBM could be
working on an "Office killer" to go up against Microsoft.

Linux Foundation attorney and board member Andrew
Updegrove saw IBM's move today not only as express support for
OpenOffice but tacit support for StarOffice as well. "With OpenOffice
available for free, and StarOffice at a very significant discount from
[Microsoft] Office, OpenOffice clearly offers the most credible and
formidable ODF-compliant competitor to Office,"

source: http://www.betanews.com/article/IBM_to_Develop_OpenOfficeorg_with_Sun/1189463043

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Fuel Out Of WasteWater? A Possibility...

Prairie Village, Kansas-based Nowa Technology
has come up with a wastewater treatment plant that sucks out materials
from wastewater and some of these removed products can be consumed as a
diesel additive. It depends on what's in your wastewater, but Nowa CEO
Richard Nelson says you find the fuel there quite a bit.
You can mix it 50-50 with diesel and get about the same amount of energy as pure diesel, according to Nelson.

Water remains one of the growth areas in clean tech, but it doesn't
nearly get as much focus as biofuels and solar power. One of the fears
about the water market is that the main customers are slow-moving
municipalities

That's a misperception, asserted Jeff Green, CEO of NanoH2O, a
desalination company that grew out of research at UCLA; 70 percent of
the water that gets used goes to agriculture while 20 percent goes to
businesses. Many of these companies have their own private purification
systems.

"We are trying to make desalination competitive," Green said.
In urban centers, water sells for around 25 to 50 cents a cubic meter.
Water run through standard desalination processes sells for 50 cents to
$1 per cubic meter. Nanotechnology and new membranes will bring the
price down, he said.

Another interesting water company at the show is WaterLink
Systems, which studies weather patterns and conditions and releases
irrigation to farmers accordingly. One of the company's systems, bought
by industrial water uses and agribusiness, can save up to a million
gallons annually, according to CEO David Chacon.

The company actually grew out of the Three Mile Island nuclear
disaster, said Chacon. After that debacle in 1978, two scientists tried
to come up with a system that would use meteorological data to help
rescue crews get people out of dangerous areas.

source: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9776545-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1023_3-0-5

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