Artificial DNA and Geratric Wiis

[dracodraconis]

Source: PhysOrg They say sex sells... but only if what you're selling is sex. A recent study showed that viewers have a harder time remembering products advertised during programs with a great deal of sexual content than they do remembering products advertised during similar programs with no sexual content. On the other hand, men tended to be better at recalling products if the advertisement contained sexual images. Sexual images in advertisements tended to cause women to make a negative association with the product. The moral: make the programs nonsexual and the adverts sexy if you want to sell man stuff.

Source: DailyTech You're never too old to learn something new. Consider the retirement home in Chicago that has been taken over by Wii-madness. “I've never been into video games, but this is addictive," says one 72 year old resident. Not only is it increasing the activity level of the retirement home residence, grandkids visit often to help grandma and grandpa learn how to play some of the games, making this a highly social activity. Looks like a win-win situation to me.

Source: DailyTech Continuing with their plans for developing a range of nonlethal methods for crowd control, the US military is exploring the use of "...a 7.3 million candela strobe floodlight system to incapacitate crowds of people." They hope to demonstrate the product some time next year. So now you have a choice, fry or be blinded. Or stay home.

Source: New Scientist Japanese scientists are exploring the idea of using live bacteria loaded with artificial DNA as a from of data storage. Although the details are sketchy at this point, you would store data in the system by modifying the artificial DNA chains. They anticipate that the data would then be safe for up to 1-million years as it is passed down through generations. To demonstrate this, they encoded the message "E=mc^2 1905" into artificial DNA and inserted it into a colony of bacteria. They encoded the data in four different sequences to provide redundancy against mutations. Could bring a whole new meaning to the term "computer virus".... Honey! My memory stick's coughing up green phlegm again.

Source: PhysOrg A group of researchers are beginning a project to convert videos of lip motion into text. They want to explore the feasibility of computerized lip reading for crimefighting.