Holiday

Be Safe

 this

 New 
Year's 

Eve

Note to the reader:  

We Were just Wondering will return to its normal format on Thursday, January 2, 2014

Muscle Madness

Scientists have developed a new robotic 'muscle', thousand times more powerful than a human muscle, which can catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself - faster than the blink of an eye.

Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in US demonstrated a micro-sized robotic torsional muscle/motor made from vanadium dioxide that is able to catapult very heavy objects over a distance five times its length within 60 milliseconds.

"We've created a micro-bimorph dual coil that functions as a powerful torsional muscle, driven thermally or electro-thermally by the phase transition of vanadium dioxide," said study leader, Junqiao Wu.

"Using a simple design and inorganic materials, we achieve superior performance in power density and speed over the motors and actuators now used in integrated micro-systems," Wu said.

What makes vanadium dioxide highly coveted by the electronics industry is that it is one of the few known materials that is an insulator at low temperatures but abruptly becomes a conductor at 67 degrees Celsius.

This temperature-driven phase transition from insulator-to-metal is expected to one day yield faster, more energy efficient electronic and optical devices.

However, vanadium dioxide crystals also undergo a temperature-driven structural phase transition whereby when warmed they rapidly contract along one dimension while expanding along the other two.

This makes vanadium dioxide an ideal candidate material for creating miniaturized, multi-functional motors and artificial muscles.

Wu and his colleagues fabricated their micro-muscle on a silicon substrate from a long "V-shaped" bimorph ribbon comprised of chromium and vanadium dioxide.

When the V-shaped ribbon is released from the substrate it forms a helix consisting of a dual coil that is connected at either end to chromium electrode pads.

Heating the dual coil actuates it, turning it into either a micro-catapult, in which an object held in the coil is hurled when the coil is actuated, or a proximity sensor, in which the remote sensing of an object causes a "micro-explosion," a rapid change in the micro-muscle's resistance and shape that pushes the object away. 

It's Just Happiness

It is better to be right 

than to be happy...  

right?

As part of an unusual experiment, the husband was instructed to “agree with his wife’s every opinion and request without complaint,” and to continue doing so “even if he believed the female participant was wrong,” according to a report on the research that was published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The husband and wife were helping a trio of doctors test their theory that pride and stubbornness get in the way of good mental health. In their own medical practices in New Zealand, they had observed patients leading “unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy.” 

If these patients could just let go of the need to prove to others that they were right, would greater happiness be the result?

Based on the assumption that men would rather be happy than be right, a husband was told to agree with his wife in all cases. However, based on the assumption that women would rather be right than be happy, the doctors decided not to tell the wife why her husband was suddenly so agreeable.

Both spouses were asked to rate their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the happiest) at the start of the experiment and again on Day 6. It’s not clear how long the experiment was intended to last, but it came to an abrupt halt on Day 12.

“By then the male participant found the female participant to be increasingly critical of everything he did,” the researchers reported. The husband could not take it anymore, so he made his wife a cup of tea and told her what had been going on.

That led the researchers to terminate the study.

Over the 12 days of the experiment, the husband’s quality of life plummeted from a baseline score of 7 all the way down to 3. The wife started out at 8 and rose to 8.5 by Day 6. She had no desire to share her quality of life with the researchers on Day 12, according to the report.

Still, the team was able to draw some preliminary conclusions.

“It seems that being right, however, is a cause of happiness, and agreeing with what one disagrees with is a cause of unhappiness,” they wrote. They also noted that “the availability of unbridled power adversely affects the quality of life of those on the receiving end.”

Sunday Funnies

Caturday

Yours doesn't look much better ya know...

T. G. I. F. Solitude

We could stay right here for days...

Me too...

Same here...  but, I gotta go...

A Cat's Appetite

A cat-and-mouse game played out in a Chinese village 5,300 years ago is helping scientists understand how wild felines became the tame pets we know today.

Cat Goddess Bastet

Scientists believe it was the cat's appetite that led to domestication. Grain stored by ancient farmers was a magnet for rodents, which in turn attracted wild cats. Over time, the cats adapted to village life and became tame around their human hosts.

This is, at least, the leading theory, derived from archaeological evidence in the Middle East, rather than China. But bones recently discovered in a Chinese village add weight to the idea that felines took on pest-control duties in ancient times, says researcher Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis.

Marshall co-authored a report on fossil research, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, focused on an agricultural village in northern China, sheds light on the poorly understood history of felines. The earliest representations of domesticated cats originated in Egypt over 1,000 years later.

Researchers found evidence that rodents threatened the village grain supply by burrowing into storage vessels that were designed to keep them out.

The ancient feline bones revealed chemical signatures indicating the animals had eaten rodents that in turn fed on millet, a grain crop known to be harvested by the villagers.

It is possible the cats were not wild, but rather were domesticated elsewhere and brought in for pest-control purposes, Marshall said. Either way, the ancient bones help fill a gap in the hypothesis of feline domestication, she said.

Greger Larson of Durham University, UK called the new research "an important step forward" in an area that has previously attracted less study than the domestication of dogs, pigs and sheep.

Holiday

Merry

 Christmas

 &

 Happy

Holidays

Note to the reader:  

We Were just Wondering will return to its normal format on Friday, December  27, 2013

Holiday

Merry

 Christmas

 &

 Happy

Holidays

Note to the reader:  

We Were just Wondering will return to its normal format on Friday, December  27, 2013

Holiday

Don't be a Grinch

Merry

 Christmas

 &

 Happy

Holidays

Note to the reader:  

We Were just Wondering will return to its normal format on Friday, December  27, 2013

Baby Boomers Bust

Lee Manchester (below), a 61-year-old former mid-level manager and entrepreneur who lost two jobs in the aftermath of the financial crisis, talks about how she downsized and is living with a friend on Cape Cod. Like many baby boomers, she is less secure financially and prepared for retirement than her father, who's 87. 

For the first time in generations, the next wave of retirees will probably be worse off than the current elderly. Manchester speaks at the cottage she shares in Wellfleet, Massachussets. (Source: Bloomberg)

Eighty-seven-year-old Lew Manchester Buddhist temples has just returned from a three-week trip touring in Laos and cruising the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. His 61-year-old daughter Lee lives year-round in the basement of her friend’s Cape Cod cottage, venturing into the winter cold to get to the bathroom.

Lew is making the most of his old age. Lee is paring back and lightening her load as she looks ahead to her later years. Both worked all their lives, both saved what they could. Yet Lew, a son of the Great Depression and former company man, and Lee, a baby boomer who has pursued careers as an entrepreneur and a mid-level manager, are winding up in two very different economic strata.

 “Timing is everything and my dad’s timing with jobs, real estate and retirement benefits was better,” said Lee.

While plenty of baby boomers, born from 1946 to 1964, have become affluent and many elderly around the U.S. face financial hardship, the wealth disparity of this father and daughter is emblematic of a broad shift occurring around the country. 

A rising tide of graying baby boomers is less secure financially and has a lower standard of living than their aged parents. 

An Arab Warning

Saudi Arabia has warned it has been forced to go its own way in foreign policy as its Western allies seek diplomatic solutions to the war in Syria and crisis with Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to London said US-led diplomacy in the region was risking the stability of the Middle East.

Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al-Saud said his country is determined to independently arm Syria rebels and could not stand idly by while thousands of children were being killed by Syria’s regime.

Despite almost a century of friendly ties with countries such as Britain and America, the oil rich monarchy can no longer follow its allies as they pursue diplomacy with its Middle Eastern enemies.

“We believe that many of the West’s policies on both Iran and Syria risk the stability and security of the Middle East,” he wrote in the New York Times. “The West has allowed one regime to survive and the other to continue its program for uranium enrichment, with all the consequent dangers of weaponization.”

The comments come as Syria opposition officials report that Western diplomats have privately said that next month’s peace talks may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad from power. 

At a summit of opposition backers in London last week, the opposition was told that the transitional arrangements must preserve key parts of the current regime.

“Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue,” said one senior member of the opposition said.

High level warnings from Saudi royals over the West’s betrayal of previously shared foreign policy goals have also included demands for the Gulf countries to have a seat at negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence, said Riyadh felt the US and its allies had worked behind its back to achieve a diplomatic accord with Iran.

“It is important for us to sit down at the same table,” he said. “We have been absent.”

Prince Turki added that the US had “given the impression” it would take actions against Syria but had subsequently not delivered.

Saudi Arabia still expects its allies to challenge the two regimes over the bloodshed in Syria but is finding that West is refused to take action, Prince Mohammad added. 

As a result Saudi Arabia would take its own approach to the conflict, and orchestrate its own financial and military strategy of support to the Syrian rebels.

“To do otherwise is to walk on by, while a humanitarian disaster and strategic failure continue to fester,” Prince Mohammad wrote.

Julian Barnes-Dacey, a Syria expert at the European Council for Foreign Relations, said the Saudi leadership viewed support for the Syrian rebels and overthrow of the Iranian-aligned Syrian regime as vital for its own security. 

“There is broad consensus on the need to push hard on Syria because they don’t want the Iranians to gain the upper hand,” he said. “Saudi Arabia is upping its game to help the rebels on the ground. 

This is not just empty talk but is an appeal to the West to stand alongside them as they look to change the end game.” 

Sunday Funnies

Caturday

Whaaaaaaaaaat....

T. G. I. F. Solitude

M O O C S

A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as videos, readings and problem sets, MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for the students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs). MOOCs are a recent development in distance education.

Although early MOOCs often emphasized open access features, such as open licensing of content, open structure and learning goals and connectivism, to promote the reuse and remixing of resources, some notable newer MOOCs use closed licenses for their course materials, while maintaining free access for students.

According to a group called CDTIS, MOOCs promise to open up higher education by providing accessible, flexible, affordable and fast-track completion of universities courses for free or at a low cost for learners who are interested in learning.

The popularity of MOOCs has attracted a great deal of attention from institutions of higher education and private investors around the world seeking to build their brands and to enter the education market.

Institutions will need to look more closely at and learn from the different initiatives outside traditional institutions that are developing new business, financial and revenue models to meet the different needs of new groups of learners in an open higher education marketplace.

Open education brings new opportunities for innovation in higher education that will allow institutions and academics to explore new online learning models and innovative practices in teaching and learning.

At a national and international level, new frameworks for higher education funding structures, quality insurance and accreditation to support different approaches and models for delivering higher education will be required.

Policy makers will need to embrace openness and make education more affordable and accessible for all and at the same time be profitable for the institutions in an open higher education ecosystem.

In this author’s opinion, American educators, need to keep the following in mind:

If you always do

What you always did

Then you will always get

What you always got…

PS -  What is really difficult for a traditional  College Professor to understand, especially those with PhDs is the fact with all that education and very little if any practical  experience       that they might be wrong...

PSS -  And, we have not said anything at all about the new concept of Digital Game Based Learning which is seriously being explored in the military right now and will soon take   over higher education like a tidal wave.

Going Asian

Google has opened its first ever data centers in Asia as it looks to boost its growth further in the region.

The move comes as a growing number of people in Asia - which is home to more than half of the world's population - are getting connected to the internet.

Google said that having data centers in Asia will help it to provide faster and "more reliable" access to its tools and services to users in the region.

The two new centers are based in Taiwan and Singapore.

"The growth in Asia's Internet has been amazing," Joe Kava, said Vice President of data centers at Google. 

"Between July and September of this year alone, more than 60 million people in Asia landed on the mobile internet for the first time which equals to 2 areas the size of Canada and 3 areas the size of Australia.

"And this growth probably won't slow for some time, since the majority of people that have yet to come online also happen to live in Asia," he added.

The rapid speed at which internet users in the region have been growing, has turned Asia into a key market for internet firms.

China - Asia's largest economy - has more 500 million internet users, making its the world's biggest internet market.

Meanwhile, India - the world's second most populous country after China - has seen the number of users double to 200 million just in the last two years.

It took six years to achieve a similar growth in the US, according to Google.

The firm said it plans to invest $600m (£365m) in the long run in the Taiwan data center - the bigger of the two facilities in the region.

NOTE:  This is just more evidence that the Global Economy is shifting from the US to Asia.  So, can you imagine what this will mean for American Workers, the American Lifestyle, and the American Economic Reputation in 3 to 5 years from now?

Selling Defective Breasts

A court in Marseille, France, sentenced the founder of a French company on Tuesday to four years in prison for selling hundreds of thousands of defective breast implants in more than 65 countries.

Jean-Claude Mas, 74, the founder of Poly Implant Prothèse, and four of his former employees were found guilty last spring of aggravated fraud after their company used a less expensive, industrial-grade silicone to fill implants for a decade. The implants ruptured at a much higher rate than the industry norm, leaking silicone into body tissues.

During the trial, which involved 7,400 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers, Mr. Mas acknowledged that his company had used a cheaper, unapproved product in its implants, but he argued that it was not harmful.

More than 16,000 women have had their implants removed since the scandal emerged in 2010. Poly Implant Prothèse, which was founded in 1991, was closed by the French authorities in March 2010.

In addition to imposing the maximum prison sentence on Mr. Mas, the court ordered him to pay a fine of 75,000 euros, or $103,000, and sentenced his former employees to between 18 months and three years in prison. Some of those sentences were suspended. Yves Haddad, Mr. Mas’s lawyer, said that his client would appeal.

Last month a French court ordered a German quality-control company to pay $4,000 each to 1,600 women who received defective breast implants made by PIP. The German company, TUV Rheinland, was accused of granting European Union safety certificates to the defective implants.

About 300,000 women around the world received the implants, which were not approved for sale in the United States.

A breast implant is a prosthesis used to correct the size, form, and texture of a woman’s breast; in plastic surgery, breast implants are applied for post–mastectomy breast reconstruction; for correcting congenital defects and deformities of the chest wall; for aesthetic breast augmentation; and for creating breasts in the male-to-female transsexual patient.

There are three general types of breast implant devices, defined by their filler material: saline solution, silicone gel, and composite filler. The saline implant has an elastomer silicone shell filled with sterile saline solution; the silicone implant has an elastomer silicone shell filled with viscous silicone gel; and the alternative composition implants featured miscellaneous fillers, such as soy oil, polypropylene string.

Hump Day Art

Creative Art

Robbed During Funeral

Police in South Africa say retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu's home was robbed while he was away to attend a memorial honoring Nelson Mandela.

The 82-year-old Tutu previously had his home robbed in August as he and his wife slept inside; however, both were unhurt.  Burglaries and home-invasions frequently occur in South Africa.

However, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said that Nelson Mandela would have been appalled that Afrikaners were excluded from memorial services marking his death.

He highlighted the absence of the Dutch Reformed Church and the limited use of the Afrikaans language at the services.

A mainly Afrikaner party introduced white minority rule, which Mr Mandela opposed, spending 27 years in jail.

But after becoming South Africa's first black president, Mr Mandela preached reconciliation with his former enemies.

Archbishop Tutu also strongly criticized the prominence of the governing African National Congress (ANC) during the week of events following Mr Mandela's death on 5 December.

"I also believe it may have sent out a more inclusive message had the program directors at the Memorial and Funeral - both national and State events - not both been senior office-bearers of the ruling party," he said.

Archbishop Tutu fought apartheid, along with Mr Mandela and the ANC, but has become increasingly critical of the party, welcoming the launch of a new opposition party in June.

He almost did not attend Sunday's funeral for his close friend, saying he had not been invited.

In a statement, he described Mr Mandela as a "nation builder" who "went out of his way" to include Afrikaners after the end of apartheid.

"We were amiss in not being as inclusive as Madiba [Mandela's clan name] would certainly have been," he said.

"To the extent that I can do so meaningfully, I apologize to our sisters and brothers in the Afrikaner Community," he added.

But, the world knows that BONO  was allowed to attend the funeral.

Person of the Year

Pope Francis  

Time’s “Person of the Year.” 

“For pulling the papacy out of the palace and into the streets, for committing the world’s largest church to confronting its deepest needs, and for balancing judgment with mercy, Pope Francis is Time’s 2013 Person of the Year,’” wrote Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs on Francis’s selection.

Pope Francis assumed the papacy in March after his predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict, resigned. In the months since becoming the Roman Catholic Church’s top leader, Francis has been widely credited with reshaping public perception of the Church after years of scandal, building a reputation as a humble reformer.

 “The Holy Father is not looking to become famous or to receive honors. But if the choice of “Person of the Year” helps spread the message of the Gospel … he will certainly be happy about that,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the pope’s press office, in a written statement.

The other finalists were President Barack Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Ted Cruz, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, gay rights activist Edith Windsor and Miley Cyrus.

Pope Francis, recently responded to conservative criticisms that his economic and social ideas smack of communism, said in an Italian newspaper interview on Sunday that he is not a Marxist but that even Marxists can be good people.

Francis also denied reports that he would name a woman cardinal, said there was good progress in cleaning up Vatican finances and confirmed that he would visit Israel and the Palestinian territories next year, La Stampa said.

Last month, American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who has a huge following in the United States, railed against the pope for written comments made on the world economy.

Limbaugh, who is not Catholic, said that parts of the document were "pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope" and suggested that someone else had written the papal document for him. He also accused the pope of going "beyond Catholicism" and being "purely political".

Americans, for some reason, love to find fault with everything but ourselves...