Happy Halloween

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Turning Movie Posters Into Cartoons

Scientists Create Artificial Blood

In a move that is sure to separate the vampire community right down the middle, researchers at the University of Edinburgh have successfully made oxygen-carrying red blood cells.  This is really great.  Keith Richards can have as many as he wants, now.  In movies, forget corn syrup! Why not get the real thing?  And like I said: vampires will now be faced with a moral dilemma. My guess is them sticking with a live human neck.

via Inhabitat

Scientist proves triple rainbows actually exist

A scientist has confirmed the occurrence of a mythical phenomenon, called tertiary rainbows – three rainbows arcing through the sky at once – with real photographs of the events.

Few people have ever claimed having seen the rare phenomena.

In fact, scientific reports of these phenomena, were so rare—only five in 250 years—that until now many scientists believed sightings were as fanciful as Leprechaun’s gold at a rainbow’s end.

These legendary optical rarities, caused by three reflections of each light ray within a raindrop, have finally been confirmed, thanks to photographic perseverance and a new meteorological model that provides the scientific underpinnings to find them.

In addition to the confirmed photo of a tertiary rainbow, the optical treasure hunt went one step further, as revealed in another photo that shows the shimmering trace of a fourth (quaternary) rainbow.

Michael Grossman and Michael Theusner have snapped photos of tertiary rainbows since last year.

A List of Online English Dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Online
Merriam-Webster provides a free online dictionary, thesaurus, audio pronunciations, Word of the Day, word games, and other English language resources.

Dictionary.com
This is a free online English dictionary, thesaurus and reference guide, crossword puzzles and other word games, online translator and Word of the Day.

American Heritage Dictionary
Over 90,000 entries feature 10,000 new words and senses, 70,000 audio word pronunciations, 900 full-page color illustrations, language notes and word-root appendixes.

RhymeZone
A language arts reference tool and comprehensive search engine for words. Includes the functions of a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, and spelling checker, as well as an integrated full-text search engine for all of Shakespeare’s works and thousands of quotations and poems.”

On-Line Medical Dictionary
OMD is a searchable dictionary created by Dr. Graham Dark and contains terms relating to biochemistry, cell biology, chemistry, medicine, molecular biology, physics, plant biology, radiobiology, science and technology. It includes: acronyms, jargon, theory, conventions, standards, institutions, projects, eponyms, history, in fact anything to do with medicine or science.

 

I’m Going to Miss You Steve

Yeah, yeah, I know, that whole “Macs don’t get viruses” story is total crap, but the joke is still cute, so please refrain from starting a flame war in the comments, thank you!

Goodbye Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

Steve Jobs, aged 56,  has died following a longtime battle with cancer.

Jobs resigned from his post as CEO of Apple in August 2011. He was counted among the best and most influential of American entrepreneurs. His death was announced by Apple late Wednesday evening.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

-Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

[Apple]

Try the Tag-It Approach For Increased Daily Productivity

Being stressed and overwhelmed with a lot of work is quite common. Whether it’s real work or a perception of “I’m so swamped”, it is difficult to think straight and fast. To help, we often talk about prioritization, creating SMART goals, etc. Today, let’s look at a hybrid model.

The Tag-It Approach is about setting an order of importance and time to your task list. You don’t want to be spending time on the least important tasks while the more important ones are left unattended. Further, you don’t want to waste time looking for a task that you can knock out before lunch, this list approach will have weigh priority and time so that you can quickly move from task to task.

You can tag tasks using following parameters:

1. Urgent & Important
2. Huge Benefit to Completion
3. Large consequences for delay
4. High on Irritation / Nagging
5. Estimated Time (to complete the task)

1/3rd of sun-like stars have Earth like planets

A mission launched in “search of habitable planets” by NASA has predicted that one-third of “sun-like” stars may have planets similar to Earth.

Analysis of the first 136 days of data of the mission launched by the Kepler orbiting observatory has already begun and scientists are scrutinizing the scans of 150,000 stars and evidence of 1,235 potential planets.

One of the analysis has predicted that one-third of “sun-like” stars with classification F, G or K will have planets similar to the earth.

“About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet,” the Daily Mail quoted Wesley Traub, Chief Scientist with NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program as saying.

F, G and K stars, which are classified according to the characteristics of their spectrum are “sun-like” stars, and the candidates usually targeted by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence in scans for signals from space.