Flying Quebecois Bananas of the Lone Star State

[dracodraconis]

Source: Scientific American You may recall (unless you've been living under a rock) that there is strong evidence that reducing caloric intake increases your lifespan. Jokes about quality of life aside, recent research indicates that this lifespan extension can be partially undone by the aroma of food. At least in fruit flies, the presence of food odours informed their bodies that caloric restriction was no longer needed and returned their metabolic rates to close to normal. As a result, they died sooner than those on reduced diets but protected from food odour.

Source: Daily Tech A company by the name of Melodis has made available a unique type of search engine. Apparently, by humming or singing a bit of a song, the software will seek out the closest match in its database at return its title. It claims to be able to find songs within about 10 seconds of the user's "input". The website can be found at http://www.midomi.com/ so the more musically gifted of you (I can sing, but I lack a microphone) check it out and let me know how well it works. Users are invited to add performances of their own to add to the music database. If you wanted to have your voice immortalized, this is the way to do it.

Source: MedGadgets Medical researchers have developed a safer and more effective way to ensure oral drugs are administered on time: pack them in your tooth. The Intellidrug system uses a dental prosthetic onto a back tooth. This prosthetic is then regularly filled with the drug to be administered, which is then released at pre-programmed times. it can also monitor blood levels and adjust dosage to ensure the minimum levels are maintained, or stop administering when the levels exceed some preset value. They foresee using this system with drug addicts who are undergoing withdrawal therapy.

Source: Wired News A Montreal artist wants to build a 1,000-foot long blimp shaped like a banana and float it 100,000 feet above Texas. In a word, why?

Source: Technology Review Scientists have developed a new type of organic LED that emits in the near infrared. While a flexible display that is invisible to the naked eye might not seem to be terribly useful, if you are using night vision goggles and performing surveillance then it might be useful to have a display hidden in plain sight, such as on the outfit of someone infiltrating those you are observing.