The bumps and ridges on this vase are created from a real human fingerprint. Made with rapid-prototyping tech that "reads" your prints and converts them into a 3D object, the vase is designed by Kris Lovett and called "Embossed." The process for creating it is actually fairly simple, and you can get Lovett to make one out of your own fingerprint too.

Design: Flower Vase Made of Human Fingerprints

Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong.
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In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus.

The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so.

But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.

Terry Hartle, vice president of the American Council on Education, which represents higher education in Washington, said the mistakes showed the entertainment industry has unfairly targeted college campuses.

Frauds shouldn't complain about theft.

MPAA admits mistake on downloading study - Yahoo News

HOUSTON - Maria didn't mean to poison her children. Quite the opposite. Worried about her daughters' lack of appetite, the young Houston mother was merely following her grandmother's advice when she gave the two girls and a niece a dose of "greta" — a Mexican folk medicine used to treat children's stomach ailments.
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What Maria, who asked that her last name not be used, did not know then, but now will never forget, is that the bright orange powder is nearly 90 percent lead.

Fortunately, doctors detected the dangerously high levels of the toxic metal in the little girls' blood during a routine checkup a week later.

Folk medicines contain lead - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK A study released by Northwestern University reports that teenagers find online news troubling and a reminder of the world's dangers. Meanwhile, time spent on YouTube or social networking and music downloading sites as a treat.

Memestreams: News without worries.

Report: Teenagers Find Online News Stressful

Most of the bionic eye systems we've seen involve clunky glasses-cam headgear, but the implantable camera now being developed at UCLA does it straight Terminator-style and keeps your face unencumbered. The camera, which researcher Michelle Hauer and her team recently filed a patent for, is small enough to be implanted directly on the eye's lens, and feeds image data to a chip at the back of the eye, where it can either be fed into the optic nerve to aid the blind, or just into a portable hard drive to aid the creepy. Hauer says power will come from on an onboard battery, but we're more interested in the mention of "optical control signals" in the patent application -- and by "interested" we mean "terrified of a zombie android army."

Researchers develop eye-implantable camera - Engadget

Social isolation makes people stressed out and forgetful, but soon a drug could cure this problem. Late last year, scientists isolated a brain enzyme that triggers the "loneliness" feelings during periods of solitude. Replenishing that enzyme in the brain could enhance memory and relieve stress when you're spending a lot of time by yourself working (or space traveling).

People don't need people. People need drugs.

I can't wait to see that hallmark.

Mad Science: A Chemical That Improves Memory (and Cures Loneliness)

Presenting the latest in Japanese technology. If you thought that Candy Girls were realistic then you are in for a big surprise.

Cutie Doll is a brand of companion dolls with a difference. While Candy Girls cost about 600,000 yen (5,641 USD), Cutie Dolls cost only 50,000 yen (470 USD) - not bad for an incredibly realistic companion loaded with the latest technology from the land of the rising sun.

Below: Cutie Doll is designed with the fickle master in mind - if you get bored of her face, you can just rip it off and wrap another one over her head.

Cutie Doll

Woah

YouTube - Dolphin play bubble rings

The LAPD bought four of the $2,500 devices, which at first glance look like Palm Pilots on steroids, and stored 35 crowd control and other commands: "You must immediately leave the area," "Get down from the pole" and "This area has been declared an unlawful assembly..."

Why doesn't it surprise my that translation tech like this will first be used to boss people around.

Translation Gizmos for L.A. Cops | Danger Room from Wired.com

Nice, nasty, charming, chatty, vulpine, vulgar...when we get down to it, just how many personality traits are there? It's a question psychologists and philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries.

In recent years, researchers have tended to agree that personality is pretty much summed up by the Big Five factors of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness. Now Janek Musek at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia has waded into the debate with the suggestion that there exists an overriding personality characteristic - he calls it the 'Big One' - with which all other personality traits are correlated.

Musek tested hundreds of participants using numerous personality measures, including the Big Five Inventory, the Big Five Observer and the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).

Using a statistical technique called factor analysis, Musek found that a single factor explained much of the variance in people's scores on the Big Five Dimensions of personality. This means that someone who scores highly on one of the five factors (in the case of neuroticism, scores are reversed so that a 'high score' reflects emotional stability) is also more likely to score high on the others. In other words, there seems to be some key trait that captures the essence of all these dimensions.

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: In search of the Big One