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Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Outrage as toy company creates ‘crystal meth lab’ for children with Breaking Bad play sets -

Outrage as toy company creates ‘crystal meth lab’ for children with Breaking Bad play sets - 



Children can now build their own drug dens with a shocking new play kit inspired by TV show Breaking Bad.

The sell-out £160 kit, branded ‘SuperLab’, lets any child or adult recreate Walter White’s notorious crystal meth lab.

Complete with protective masks, drug paraphernalia, figurines and a version of the car from the show, infants can even reenact scenes from the series.

The toy looks similar to a classic Lego set, although it is not connected to the Danish company in any way and was made by a separate firm.

‘Bricking Bad’ allows children – or adults – to construct the industrial meth lab set up by Walter White and drug boss Gustavo Fring

The 500-brick set, made by Citizen Brick in the United States, comes complete with figures of the main characters and enables you to build the entire meth lab
The RV used by the characters to rustle up their drugs. Customers are given all the drugs paraphernalia with the kit

Outraged commentators took to Twitter to speak out against the bizarre toy.

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Massive 'Comet Of The Century' Could Light Skies Up For Weeks In December, January... -

Massive 'Comet Of The Century' Could Light Skies Up For Weeks In December, January... - 



A comet looping behind the sun could emerge this fall as a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, or it may not. Mike Schuh has more on what he calls the “intergalactic snowball.”

Educators have a different take.

“It’s called Comet ISON,” said Jim O’Leary of the Maryland Science Center.

NASA provided an image of ISON (agove). It has a small head and a big tail.

“That tail can get tens of millions of miles long, so it’s huge,” O’Leary said.

But in its middle, it’s just dirt and ice three miles across.

Three miles is large enough to comfortably fit between the shores spanned by the Bay Bridge and its approach ramps.

“It could be the comet of the century,” O’ Leary said. “That is what some people are calling it, and we’re not that far into the century you know.”

It’s certain to light up the winter sky. That is, unless it doesn’t. They don’t know if the sun will blast it to shreds.

“It’s only passing through one diameter away from the sun, 700,000 miles, through the hot corona. That might be enough to blast it apart,” O’Leary said.

In that case, it could turn into smaller comets or disappear completely.

And if it doesn’t bust apart it will be visible for weeks, from December in through January.



Read more - 
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/09/10/if-the-sun-doesnt-blast-it-comet-ison-will-soon-light-up-the-sky/

STUDY: Men With Smaller Testicles Are Better Fathers... -

STUDY: Men With Smaller Testicles Are Better Fathers... - 



Men with small testicles are likely to be more nurturing and better fathers to their children.

A new study from Emory University finds that men who tend to be a loving parent also have smaller testicles. The research, released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved 70 men of varying ethnicities — most were Caucasian, five were Asian and 15 were African-American – with at least one child under two years old.

Prior studies have suggested that decreases in testosterone may suppress mating efforts, which potentially channels a man’s energy toward the care of infants and make these men more empathetic.

“Our data suggest that the biology of human males reflects a trade-off between mating and parenting effort,” says Emory anthropologist and study lead author James Rilling,

This study showed that men with smaller testes exhibited more nurturing activity in their brains when shown pictures of their children. Also, separate surveys from their respective female partners showed that these men were more involved in the upbringing of their children.

“I wouldn’t want to say that men with large testes are always bad fathers but our data show a tendency for them to be less involved in things like changing diapers, bathing children, preparing meals, taking them to the doctor and things like that,” said Rilling.

“The correlation is stronger between sperm count and sperm quality and testicle size,” Rilling explained. “Bigger size, better, healthier sperm.”

Larger sized testicles seemed to indicate men who were built for competition with other men to make women pregnant, but not so much to care for the child.

“Mothers definitely have more of an impact on child development, but fathers are also important and their role is understudied,” said Rilling.

The exact measurements of a “large” or “small” testicle were not made clear in the study.

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'Artificial egg' made from PLANTS backed by Bill Gates set to revolutionize cooking... -

'Artificial egg' made from PLANTS backed by Bill Gates set to revolutionize cooking... - 



A radical ‘artificial egg’ backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today.
Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise - without a chicken ever coming close to the production process.
The team today started selling their ‘plant egg’, called Beyond Eggs, in Whole Foods in California - and say it could soon be available in supermarkets worldwide.

‘We want to take animals out of the equation,’ said Josh Tetrick, the firm’s founder. ‘The food industry is begging for innovation, especially where animals are involved - it is a broken industry.’

Tetrick’s idea was to find a mix of easy-to-grow plants that, when mixed together in the right way, replicate the taste, nutritional values and cooking properties of an egg.
This, he believes will allow the firm to produce its substitute for mass market foods - and to allow developing worlds to grow their own versions with added nutrients.
‘Eggs are functionally incredible, they do everything from hold oil and water in mayo to making the muffin rise and holding scrambled eggs together,’ he said ‘I started to think what if we can find plants that can do this. We have about 12 plants pre-selected, including a pea already widely grown in Canada. There’s also a bean in South Asia that is incredible in scrambled eggs.’

The firm is already in talks with major food manufacturers around the world - including several in the UK, to replace eggs in supermarket products with their alternative.
So far, he says the team has perfected an egg substitute for mayonnaise, and one for cakes.
'We can make really good mayonnaise, we’ve done taste tests against market leaders, and beaten them consistently. In the world of cookies, we’ve trialled our products with everyone from Bill Gates to Tony Blair, both of whom couldn’t taste the difference.
'Bill Gates became an advisor to the company, and has been one of its most vocal supporters in the Silicon Valley world where Hampton Creek is based.


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Device uses GPS to deliver electronic commands to dogs... -

Device uses GPS to deliver electronic commands to dogs... - 

You Can 'Steer' Your Dog With This Device

It seems like every other day we read about some far-out, new technology that makes us scratch our heads and say, "What the heck?" In this series, we'll take a look at all types of crazy new gadgets, apps and other technologies -- and the entrepreneurs dreaming them up.

You've already trained Fido to sit, stay, fetch and roll over. But what if, for some crazy reason, you needed Fido to do something but you were unable to give him verbal commands?

It's something researchers at Alabama's Auburn University are working on. Mechanical engineers Jeff Miller and David Bevly have developed a device they say can help dogs "hear" commands that are delivered electronically by a human with a controller.

The device is a pack worn on the back of a dog that consists of a microprocessor, wireless radio, GPS receiver and something called an "attitude and heading reference system," according to a report in gizmag. A command module on the pack delivers vibrational and audio tone cues that the dog has been trained to respond to.

While something like this might be a bit much for the family dog, it could someday be useful for canines used in rescue missions where voice commands aren't possible or by police for drug busts and other types of arrests.

"An eventual goal of the work would be to not only guide the canine to a predetermined location, but also to be able to recognize when a canine detects something of interest," Miller and Bevly wrote in their 160-page dissertation on the device. "For example, the canine could demonstrate some known response (walking in a circle or sitting down) upon detecting narcotics."

Tests of the device show accuracy of obedience of almost 87 percent, gizmag says.

Development is still under way. But I want to know: Will this someday steer Fido to retrieving my lost socks and morning paper with nothing more than a click of a remote control? Hands down that'd be cooler than robotic cockroaches, right?

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