Tag Archive for 'research'

nutrasweet will kill you

myaspartameexperiment
incredible! myaspartameexperiment.com is a very detailed website of an extensive experiment conducted by a private citizen on the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame (nutrasweet). in short: stop using anything with nutrasweet/aspartame today! the experiment was conducted by victoria inness-brown, MA. inness-brown put a group of rats on a steady diet containing nutrasweet for 2 years and 8 months. the aspartame received daily by her rats was equivalent to two-thirds the aspartame contained in a 8 ounce can of diet soda (meaning it was less than the human equivalent of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for aspartame as set by the FDA). the results are startling -the rats fed nutrasweet developed tumors, eye diseases, bone disorders, and eventually died. quoting the website for the basis of the experiment:

“I did my aspartame experiment because my family was addicted to diet soda. After researching the effects of aspartame, I strongly believed the artificial sweetener might one day lead to their illness and even early death.”

WARNING: the website myaspartameexperiment.com contains disturbing images of rats with symptoms of severe diseases and and illness. you can review the setup for the nutrasweet experiment here. fyi: nutrasweet is another bad product made by monsanto (the makers of round-up, agent orange, rBST/rBGH).

don’t frown on the clown

scary clowns apparently word is getting around that clowns are creepy, and possibly even scary. a university of sheffield england study seen on the bbc news states that the majority of children find clown images too scary and that children find clown faces and imagery frightening and unknowable. yikes! perhaps if england had a decent child clown outlet like we do in the states, the thoughts of clowns wouldn’t be seen as so scary.

bread tie research

HORG.com - bread tie species the brilliant minds at the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group (HORG!) provide an excellent and free scientific resource for all to learn from: intensive study and classification of bread tie species. yes, bread ties. you’ve used them all your life, but do you really know them? HORG is here to help. HORG’s research covers bread tie taxonomy, life and habits, known species, and some mutations. from the HORG website:

Class Occlupania (Occlu=to close, pan= bread) are placed under the Kingdom Microsynthera, Phylum Plasticae. Occlupanids share phylum Plasticae with “45″ record holders, plastic juice covers, and other often ignored small plastic objects.

my brain is hurting from the influx of knowledge. i like that - thank you HORG! thank you.

graffiti with lasers

graffiti research lab: laser graffiti the brilliant minds at graffiti research lab (GRL) have come up with another cool way to tag. going beyond their very simple & cool LED throwies (which have gone beyond simple), GRL has made what looks like a laser-tagging/writing system using high end projectors. the system projects laser light onto the sides of buildings in a repeated pattern which spells out words. in the picture, the phrase ‘free berd’ is a word play on the lynyrd skynyrd song and also applies to ‘free berdovsky’, an appeal for the arrest of the 27 year old artist behind the aqua team hunger force LED signs that gave boston reason to descend into madness.

note: about the GRL laser tagging system, it looks like the projectors GRL uses are the very pro yet pricey panasonic PT-D5600’s (please feel free to correct me on that - i recognized the projectors immediately from the pic). these projectors come in at around $6,500+ each. outfitted with a lens, that’s an additional $2,000+ per projector. that would make the complete 2 projector laser tagging system cost around $15,000+ each. the economics of graffiti are definitely changing. AV nerds are taking over! had to happen. link via boingboing.

turning garbage into electricity

moiser biorefinery very cool to read this: scientists at Purdue University have developed a portable generator that turns garbage and trash into electricity. the generator, referred to as a ‘tactical refinery’ (yes, it was developed for the US military) is the roughly the size of a moving van (larger, hi-res picture here). the tactical refinery converts different types of waste and garbage to fuel via two parallel processes and burns the different fuels it creates in a diesel engine. quoting Michael Ladisch, scientist and lead on the tactical biorefinery project: “At any place with a fair amount of food and scrap waste the biorefinery could help reduce electricity costs, and you might even be able to produce some surplus energy to put back on the electrical grid,.” also, much of the generator’s combust/exhaust is carbon neutral. from the article:

The tactical biorefinery first separates organic food material from residual trash, such as paper, plastic, Styrofoam and cardboard. The food waste goes to a bioreactor where industrial yeast ferments it into ethanol, a “green” fuel. Residual materials go to a gasifier where they are heated under low-oxygen conditions and eventually become low-grade propane gas and methane. The gas and ethanol are then combusted in a modified diesel engine that powers a generator to produce electricity.

on a greater scale, i could see these tactical refineries set up in housing districts where people can go to convert their garbage into electricty for their neighborhoods and home. i want it now!

nanotech ‘liquid bandaid’

nanotech stops bleeding future sci-fi medical advances coming your way in the form of a biodegradeable liquid peptides. it’s pour-on nanotechnology with huge beneficial medical applications. researchers at MIT and the university of hong kong have developed a liquid solution that quickly halts bleeding and promotes and accelerates healing. the discovery of the solution came about through experiments in using the solution as a matrix for regrowing brain cells in hamsters. the nano-solution has been tested on liver, skin, lung, blood vessels, and other tissues. quoting from lead researcher Rutledge Ellis-Behnke:

It isn’t clotting that we’re seeing. We tested for all of the things you find in all blood clots; fibrin, thrombin and platelets and none of them were there, said Ellis-Behnke. Either this is acting as some kind of molecular band aid or we are stopping bleeding via a completely new direction that we have never seen before.