10 Interesting Links From April 17th
- Sleep May Prepare You for Tomorrow by Dissolving Today’s Neural Connections | 80beats | Discover Magazine – Sleep may be a way to sweep out the brain and get it ready for a new day of building connections between neurons, according to two new studies of fruit flies. The studies support the controversial theory that sleep weakens or entirely dissolves some synapses, the connections between brain cells. “We assume that if this is happening, it is a major function, if not the most important function, of sleep” [Science News], says Chiara Cirelli, a coauthor of the first study, published in Science.
- Hoping to Make iPhone Toys as a Full-Time Job – NYTimes.com – fter the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.
When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.
The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.
On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.
- There’s Twitter the company, and twitter the medium | Technology | Los Angeles Times – Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter.
The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs a short walk from his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”
- Brewing Compost Tea – Fine Gardening Article – Why go to the extra trouble of brewing, straining, and spraying a tea rather than just working compost into the soil? There are several reasons. First, compost tea makes the benefits of compost go farther. What's more, when sprayed on the leaves, compost tea helps suppress foliar diseases, increases the amount of nutrients available to the plant, and speeds the breakdown of toxins. Using compost tea has even been shown to increase the nutritional quality and improve the flavor of vegetables. If you've been applying compost to your soil only in the traditional way, you're missing out on a whole host of benefits
- TopatoCo: Time Traveler Essentials Shirt – This shirt has how-to information on all of the low-hanging fruit of our modern age. Go back in time wearing this and you'll invent heavier-than-air flight! YOU'LL discover penicillin. YOU'LL be the first to isolate aluminum. Did you know aluminum used to be more valuable than gold? YOU'RE GONNA BE RICH.
- New Mexico Independent » Roman Coliseum to be lit in honor of New Mexico – On Wednesday, the Roman Coliseum, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, will be lit in honor of New Mexico repealing the death penalty.
- Cost Of Living Now Outweighs Benefits | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – A report released Monday by the Federal Consumer Quality-Of-Life Control Board indicates that the cost of living now outstrips life's benefits for many Americans.
"This is sobering news," said study director Jack Farness. "For the first time, we have statistical evidence of what we've suspected for the past 40 years: Life really isn't worth living."
- 10 years later, the real story behind Columbine – USATODAY.com – A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.
- Driver logs 9th DWI arrest in 3rd state – The more Rio Rancho police dug the more DWI arrests in three states they found for a man stopped for a traffic violation Saturday and charged with drunken driving for the ninth time.
- Piñon pines in danger, Biosphere study shows – Piñon pine trees, a foundation of ecosystems in the Southwest, will die faster and in greater numbers as rising temperatures from global warming intensify the effects of even short droughts.
Working in the famed Biosphere 2 lab, University of Arizona researchers for the first time isolated heat as a factor in tree deaths. They found that an increase of only about 7-degrees Fahrenheit could trigger piñon die-offs five times more frequently than under existing conditions. Many climate studies say temperatures could rise that much by the end of the century.
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