Bill Gates No Longer World’s Richest Man
Posted on March 17, 2010 Leave a Comment
Bill Gates No Longer World’s Richest Man
Carlos Slim Helu takes No. 1 spot on Forbes World’s Billionaires list as a record 164 10-figure titans return to the ranking amid the global economic recovery.
For the third time in three years, the world has a new richest man.
Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil ( AMX - news - people ), Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires.
Slim’s fortune has swelled to an estimated $53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in 12 months. Shares of America Movil, of which Slim owns a $23 billion stake, were up 35% in a year.
Creationists: Museum ‘makes up’ facts about evolution
Posted on March 16, 2010 Leave a Comment
Creationists: Museum ‘makes up’ facts about evolution
They plan to become doctors, researchers and professors, but these students from Liberty University, an evangelical school, also believe God created the Earth in a week, some 6,000 years ago.
Each year, a group of biology students at the Christian university based in Lynchburg, Virginia, travels to the Natural History Museum in Washington to learn about a theory they dismiss as incorrect — Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The young “creationists” examined a model of the Morganucodon rat, believed to be the first and common ancestor of mammals that appeared some 210 million years ago.
Lauren Dunn, 19, a second-year biology student, was unimpressed.
Better Loving Through Chemistry
Posted on March 13, 2010 Leave a Comment
Better Loving Through Chemistry
If finding true love were an exact science, we wouldn’t need matchmakers, singles bars or, of course, online dating services.
Like job seekers who take the Myers-Briggs personality test to help steer them to suitable professions, we’d simply take a relationship test, whose results would identify our most compatible types of mates and rule out the frogs. Problem solved.
Of course, Cosmopolitan magazine has been running pop psychology love quizzes — “Which Bachelor Is Right for You?,” “Is He Naughty or Nice?” — for decades, prompting young women the world over to assess how sexually or socially compatible they might be with their objects of desire.
Now, a handful of dating Web sites are competing to impose some science, or at least some structure, on the quest for love by using different kinds of tests to winnow the selection process. In short, each of these sites is aiming to be the Netflix of love.
Inside the twisted world of couples therapy
Posted on March 13, 2010 Leave a Comment
Inside the twisted world of couples therapy
Marie and Clem, one of several couples in Laurie Abraham’s “The Husbands and Wives Club,” met sweetly in college; he arrived late for class, she admired his muscular physique. Before long it was parties, flowers and kisses.
But 20 years into their marriage, their relationship isn’t going very well: Marie won’t respond to Clem’s sexual advances; Clem can’t seem to tell her how he feels about anything; and when the two have a massage-focused couples therapy session, it ends with Marie rubbing Clem’s shoulders with “tears streaming down her face and dripping onto his forehead.” In the hopes of salvaging their marriage, the couple have signed up for an unconventional year-long group therapy program with psychotherapist Judith Coché, in which five couples talk openly about their marital problems in a group atmosphere.
Abraham’s noteworthy book chronicles a year in the life of Coché’s group, and follows the five couples as they undergo financial crises, struggles with impotence, accusations over porn use, and, in one case, a bisexual past. The result is a fascinating — and at times infuriating — book that captures the ways marriage, monogamy and psychotherapy can be both affirming and destructive.
Oil Stones: A Soviet City in the Middle of the Sea
Posted on March 13, 2010 Leave a Comment
Oil Stones: A Soviet City in the Middle of the Sea
In 1940s and 1950s, right after the World War 2 Russia had to recover from the consequences of the Nazi invasion. Lots had to be done and as we know to complete something you need to have enough energy. And energy at that times as well as it is much likely now meant oil.
At that times the known oil reserves differed from what people in Russia know about it now. The main places to drill for oil was Southern Russia on contrary to frozen Northern Siberian regions as it’s for now. And the gemstone of the Soviet Oil production was Caspian sea region, mainly the territories that are an independent state of Aizerbajan now.
A New Way to Make Useful Chemicals from CO2
Posted on February 1, 2010 Leave a Comment
A New Way to Make Useful Chemicals from CO2
A copper-based catalyst helps turn the gas into antifreeze and household cleaners.
When it’s exposed to the elements, the surface of copper turns green because it reacts with oxygen. But now scientists have discovered a copper-based material with a surprising property: it reacts with carbon dioxide in air rather than oxygen. Though the reaction is not a practical way to remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it does provide an alternative new route, using a cheap, nonpetroleum feedstock, to make useful chemicals.
Researchers have been looking for such a material for a long time, taking a cue from plants, which use atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce a wide range of useful materials. But previous approaches have fallen short in a variety of ways. For example, they’ve required large amounts of energy and concentrated streams of carbon dioxide rather than the trace amounts found in air. One of the big challenges is that materials tend to preferentially react with oxygen, which is much more reactive than carbon dioxide and far more abundant. Oxygen makes up over 20 percent of the atmosphere, whereas there are only a few hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide.
Toyota Sees Robotic Nurses in Your Lonely Final Years
Posted on January 31, 2010 Leave a Comment
Toyota Sees Robotic Nurses in Your Lonely Final Years
Now Toyota, looking ahead at the second half of this century, sees a mounting health care crisis and aging population coming to Japan. It sees a future where manufacturing robotic workers is the hot new industry and “autonomation” takes on a whole new meaning.
And the first place we might see these robots is in hospitals.
Japan’s aging population and low birthrate point to a looming shortage of workers, and Japan’s elder care facilities and hospitals are already competing for nurses. This fact has not escaped Toyota, which runs Toyota Memorial Hospital in Toyota City, Japan. Taking a lead from Honda, Toyota in 2004 announced plans to build “Toyota Partner Robots” and begin selling them in 2010 after extensive field trials at Toyota Memorial.
Mom Questioned for Posting Photo of Baby Smoking on Facebook
Posted on January 30, 2010 Leave a Comment
Mom Questioned for Posting Photo of Baby Smoking on Facebook
Topping the list of idiotic things to share on Facebook, 18-year-old mother Rebecca Davey of Southend, Essex (in the UK), posted a photo of her six-month-old son Ollie with an unlit cigarette in his month.
The Daily Mail reports that the smoking baby photo alarmed a few online friends, who reported Davey to the local authorities.
The Google Decade Ends
Posted on January 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
As we near the end of the second decade of the Internet as a mass medium, no one can deny that the last 10 years have been all about Google (GOOG). When the aughts began, Google was a clever search algorithm with a little venture capital but no CEO, no substantial brand recognition, and no clear way to make money. Now, it’s a verb, a tech empire, and a public company with a market capitalization just shy of $200 billion (and sitting on $20 billion in cold, hard cash).
Company by company, industry by industry, the growth of Google can be measured by the rivals who are dead, dying, or struggling to live. Here’s a sampling of the butcher’s bill.
Stuck Mars Rover About to Die?
Posted on January 27, 2010 Leave a Comment
Stuck Mars Rover About to Die?
Built to rove for 90 days, Spirit has lasted six years on Mars. But now it’s stuck and may lose power by May. Even standing still, though, Spirit can do a surprising amount of science, NASA says.
NASA’s Mars rover Spirit passed its six-year anniversary January 3rd, but the upcoming Mars winter may spell the end for the ‘all-terrain’ vehicle.
Last year, Spirit’s wheels broke through a crusty Mars surface layer and became trapped in the loose sand hidden underneath. Here, a NASA scale model mockup is seen trying to maneuver out of the predicament.