While many people say that “too much iPod” can cause hearing loss, a group of doctors on the other hand are using iPods to improve their listening skills.
The problem: Currently, a previous research shows that doctors get an average of only 40% in correctly identifying heart sounds. Now imagine if your doctor said that all is OK but there is really something wrong – he just didn’t hear it properly… Hmmm…
The solution: Train them to identify these sounds better
A new research involving 149 general internists listened 400 times to five common heart sounds during a 90-minute session using iPods. The result? The average score doubled to 80%. Now that’s a definite improvement.
Proficiency with a stethoscope—and the ability to recognize abnormal heart sounds—is a critical skill for identifying dangerous heart conditions and minimizing dependence on expensive medical tests, said lead researcher Dr. Michael Barrett, clinical associate professor of medicine and cardiologist at Temple University School of Medicine and Hospital. “It’s important to know when to order a costly echocardiogram or stress test,” Barrett said.
Barrett believes the skill of learning heart problems is best learned through intensive drilling and repetition, not by traditional methods, usually a classroom lecture or demonstration in medical school and then on the job.
Now I can begin to hear the sound of relief.
How small is the smallest pair of scissors that you’ve ever seen? An inch? A centimeter? Well, things just got a way lot smaller with what a group of Japanese scientists have made. They’re so small that you can’t use them with your bare hands. In fact, they’re so small that they’re used to cut molecules.
The scissors are just three nanometers, or billionths of a meter, long. This makes them more than 100 times smaller than a wavelength of violet light.
Just like real shears, the molecular device that researcher Takuzo Aida at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have designed consists of a pivot, handles and blades. The team presented their findings today at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago.
The blades are made of rings of carbon and hydrogen known as phenyl groups.
The pivot is a molecule dubbed chiral ferrocene, which essentially sandwiches a round iron atom between two carbon plates. The carbon plates can rotate freely around the iron atom.
The handles are organic chemical structures dubbed phenylene groups. These are tethered together with azobenzene, a molecule that reacts to light. Shining visible light on the scissors makes the azobenzene expand and drive the handles apart, closing the clipper blades. Shining ultraviolet rays on the shears has the opposite effect.
Such a tiny scissors can have many uses and larger versions of it might even be attached to miniature robotic devices that can be sent into the body to remove tumors and treat other diseases. Reminds me of the movie Inner Space.
Now, grandma, where did you put the scissors?
Yes, they did it! Scientists managed to store data in bacteria and if you think nanotechnology is cool then I’m sure you wanna check this out. Scientists at Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus developed a technique that allows data to be added to the genome of common bacteria.
Researchers said that upto 100 bits – that’s about 12 bytes – can be stored on each organism and they were even successful in storing the phrase “e=mc2 1905″ to the DNA of a common soil bacteria. The storage capacity may be little if you think of just a single organism but try to imagine the billions of bacteria all over the globe. A megabyte of data can be stored in only about 84,000 organisms.
The better part of this technique is that bacteria replicate themselves and when they do, they also replicate the data that was attached to them. Now this is self-replicating multiple backup systems – talk about redundancy! No more need to worry if you’re data was lost.
So what are the possible uses? One thing that can be done is to store special markers to identify legitimate versions of pharmaceuticals. Another use would be to use these bacteria in building a self-sustaining archival system. Thing is, whenever data can be stored, you can start counting on bacteria and this particular method in the future. After all, who ever thought 100 years ago that data can be stored in hard drives, CDs, and chips?
I can’t wait to buy my first 500GB backup drive made from common bacteria. 
This article was derived from LiveScience.com
My refurbished Compaq Presario is one of Presario’s V2000 Series. The exact model is V2607CL and all I can say is that it performs oh so well! How did I get it? Well, it was given to me as a gift in exchange of a few ‘programming’ labor. I tried to take some photos of this “new” laptop of mine but my camera sucks so I decided to just go for photos available online. I tried searching for ‘large’ photos but the biggest I can get is the one on the right… promise, I’ll take a good shot of my laptop this week so you guys will believe me. Hehehehe.
Being a techie guy myself, I know you’re pretty much interested with the specs so here they are:
- AMD Turion 64 Mobile Technology 1.8 GHz
- 512 MB DDR SDRAM
- 100GB Hard drive @ 4200 RPM
- 14in. WXGA TFT Active Matrix Widescreen Display
- Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Operating System
- Dual Layer DVD±RW/DVD-RAM Optical Drive
- ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M IGP Graphics Processor
- Altec Lansing Speakers
- 1 x Type I/II PC Card Slot
- 3 x USB 2.0
- 1 x IEEE 1394a (FireWire)
- VGA out
- Integrated Fax Modem
- Integrated 10/100 Network Card
- Integrated Wireless Lan
- S-Video out
How does it work? It works perfectly and flawlessly and I love it. Since it was just a gift, I had no idea how much it costs so I decided to search online and found out that it’s pretty cheap at only $600.
Thinking of buying one for yourself? Click here to Compare Prices!
