Direct Brain-to-Muscle Electric Circuit

An external electrical circuit connecting the brain directly to a muscle allowed paralyzed monkeys to move their arms, an advance that could lead to neuroprosthetics for humans with spinal cord injuries.

Brain-machine interfaces have previously been used to control robotic arms and computer cursors, but they required researchers to identify entire populations of neurons already associated with movement. By contrast, researchers recently identified neurons not previously associated with motion, then used them to stimulate individual muscles rather than a robotic device.

[ more ] [ nature ]

Stem Cells without Side Effects

Researchers have created healthy stem cells from adult cells--no embryo required.

Last year, researchers announced one of the most promising methods yet for creating ethically neutral stem cells: reprogramming adult human cells to act like embryonic stem cells. That process involved using a retrovirus, but now scientists have found a way to effect the same reprogramming without using a harmful virus--a method that paves the way for tissue transplants made from a patient's own cells.

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Project 10 to the 100th

Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Organized by Google, anyone can submit an idea that can change the world by October 20, 2008. After the voting period, 5 ideas will be selected and a total of 10 million is committed by Google to jump start these ideas.

www.project10tothe100.com

Awaiting the Google Phone

In New York next week, Google and T-Mobile will unveil the long-awaited Google Phone. The device, made by the Taiwanese cell-phone company HTC, is expected to have a large touch screen, a QWERTY keypad, and a 3.1-megapixel camera, among other features. More significant than the gadget itself, however, is the software that it contains: a cell-phone operating system developed by Google called Android.

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Idea paint

A new kind of paint makes your meeting room walls a white-board that you can draw and erase.




See www.ideapaint.com

Google Chrome

Google is planning to launch a webbrowser called Google Chrome that will rival Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox. Here's some background information and new features of Google's Chrome: Google Chrome comic book.

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Side-by-side configuration is incorrect

If you develop a native Windows application with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and try to run it on another machine, you might get an error message complaining about side-by-side configuration is incorrect. The application eventlog (control panel>administrative tools) will reveal that this is related to missing VC90 CRT. So this error message means that your application needs Visual C++ runtime library to function.

Retail version of Visual C++ runtime can be downloaded from Microsoft. Here is the x86 version. On the other hand, the debug version of Visual C++ runtime is not allowed to be distributed due to license issues. So, if you would like to make your application run on a machine without development environment, there are two options.

1) Build your program to statically link the runtime. To do that, in the project property page under "Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Code Generation", change run-time library from "Multi-threaded DLL (/MD)" to "Multi-threaded (/MT)".

2) Build your program to dynamically link the runtime AND install visual c++ redistributable (download link) on the target machine.

Happy coding...

GEMM Therapy

GEMM (Generatore Elettro Magnetico Modulato) is a state of the art therapeutic device generating specially modulated, low power (0.25 watt) radio waves.

The non-invasive GEMM Therapy is based on the breakthrough discovery of Dr Seckiner Gorgun on molecular communication. The GEMM Device can broadcast radio waves at the various electromagnetic resonance language that communicates with the target proteins in the cells who are responsible for regulating biological processes. This direct communication enables GEMM to provide significant therapeutic benefits for a wide range of diseases and medical conditions. GEMM's therapeutic waves are at the target protein's precisely calculated specific resonant frequency in order to give orders to stop, modify or reverse the malfunctioning processes. The Therapy has already been utilized in several hospitals in Turkey, Italy and Germany where medical doctors reported great success.

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View multiple Excel files at the same

There's a simple setting that allows excel to display multiple files next to or on top of each other (like word, pdf, etc.). This is useful especially if you have two monitors or a large monitor and would like to work on two excel files at the same time.

Here's what you need to do:

Excel 2003: Go to "Tools > Options" Select the “General” tab and place a check mark at “Ignore other Applications”.

Excel 2007: Office Button > Excel Options > Advanced Tab > General Section > "Ignore other Applications that use dynamic data exchange"

Click OK and you are done!.

Also note that there's "side by side comparison" feature of Excel.

Breakthrough Battery Life: Up to 19 Hours on a Single Charge

Dell launched new lines of Latitude and Precision laptops, some targeted specifically at "digital nomads." One of the systems boasts a whopping 19 hours of battery life. The company also announced a new dedicated chip and second OS that enables near-instant access to e-mail, calendar and Web without booting Windows.

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