Blog

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

I had been thinking about how this week’s mine accident that claimed 25 lives is just one more way the true cost of coal is being revealed.

Coal is only cheap if you fail to factor in the loss of life, the long-term human health effects, the environmental devastation both in the immediate area of coal mining, the regions near coal-fired plants and finally, to the Earth’s atmosphere. Do these costs need to be more far-reaching before we face these facts?

While I was thinking along these lines, Lester R. Brown’s column on just this point arrived. We’ve printed his book excerpt about how to tackle this problem of assigning reality-based costs to fossil fuels. In this piece, Brown, the founder of Earth Policy Institute, discusses how our lawmakers could stage in these real costs by taxing dirty fuels in much the same way we, finally, taxed cigarettes to take into account the horrible human toll of tobacco use.

Even today, the now fairly high cost of a pack of cigarettes doesn’t approach the even higher public health costs exacted by smoking. Coal taxes could not be expected to suddenly cover the full breach between today’s price and one that covers coal’s damage. But they could begin to address this inequity, and in the process the money raised could be used to lighten the tax burden for individuals. But I’ll let Brown explain more about the tax shifting policies that are already working elsewhere.

And if you’re thinking, well that sounds good, but what about our dependence on coal? We need the electricity. I agree, we surely do. Coal supplies nearly half of the electricity used in the U.S. That’s got to be taken into consideration. Americans aren’t ready to wake up tomorrow and turn the furnace off, or walk around in dark houses without TVs and working appliances.

But we’ve got to start the transition. Like a smoker, to beat that analogy into the ground, we’ve got to get a nicotine patch. We’ve got to get beyond coal, which is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gases worldwide.

Smoking comes to mind here because we still have an estimated 1,500 miners dying every year from Black Lung disease. In their case, though, this degenerative lung condition is an unavoidable occupational hazard.

Today a different story came out that raises some hope. The American Wind Energy Association reported that despite one of the worst economic downturns in decades, wind power continued to grow rapidly in 2009, with a robust diversification of the industry and workforce spreading across the nation. (Of course, some of the projects were running on plans put in place before the collapse.)

Wind now provides nearly 2 percent of Americans’ power, with other renewable energy sources (including solar, biomass, wood and geothermal power) supplying another 1.8 percent of the energy we use. The rest of our energy comes from hydropower (which can be characterized as clean, but not as much as wind and solar), natural gas, nuclear power and King Coal, which provides 45 percent of our energy needs.

What can an individual do to help change the mix, to push it toward renewables? Two things come to mind. You can check your power provider and see if they have a clean energy option, or switch to a clean energy power provider. Options are growing almost daily, and chances are that the costs and choices have improved since you last checked.

Make that three things: You can also consider reducing your own consumption with on-site wind or solar power, or through efficiency measures.

Finally, if you want to advocate for clean energy, let your elected officials know you support a federal Renewable Electricity Standard. A RES is under consideration as part of the energy bill pending in the U.S. Senate. It would mandate that the nation derive a certain percentage of its power from clean, renewable sources like wind and solar and geothermal facilities. The numbers haven’t been finalized yet; climate/energy legislation that passed the house targeted 20 percent renewable energy by 2020. Some argue that interim goals need to be set, like reaching 10 percent renewables by 2012 (which would not include hydropower). But let’s not get lost in the details here.

A RES sends a signal to industry, financiers, governments, educators and the world. It would keep America in the hunt for clean tech, and clear the path to the future. Instead of marking time until the next coal tragedy, the next mountain top laceration, the next alert that greenhouse gases are rising, we’d be moving in a positive direction.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

In a move that was widely expected, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens announced his intention to resign from the high court in a letter to President Obama dated Friday. Stevens resignation gives Obama his second opportunity to make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court and sets up a near certain Senate confirmation battle this summer.

In his letter to the president, Stevens concluded that “it would be in the best interests of the Court to have my successor appointed and confirmed” before the next high court term starts in October. He will remain on the bench through the end of the current term which is likely end in late June.

Stevens has been on the bench longer than any other current member of the Supreme Court and was a federal appellate judge in Chicago in 1975 when President Gerald Ford picked him for the high court.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement Friday saying Stevens “has enriched the lives of everyone at the Court through his intellect, independence, and warm grace. “

Stevens impact in the bench was immediate as his vote helped forge a narrow majority to reinstate the death penalty. But by 2008, Stevens concluded the way capital punishment was carried out by states was pointless and “patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment.”

It was “a conclusion that the stable ground that he thought he found early on wasn’t proving as stable as he would have liked,” Stewart Baker, a former Stevens law clerk told Fox News.

Stevens was born in 1920 and raised in his beloved hometown of Chicago. His family ran the old Stevens Hotel on Michigan Avenue until the Great Depression knocked them out of business. In between his college studies at the University of Chicago and Northwestern Law School where he finished first in his class he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was awarded a bronze star for his work as part of the famous Codebreakers stationed in Hawaii.

In 1947, Stevens did a one year clerkship for Justice Wiley Rutledge. A man Stevens would later call a hero. It is perhaps because of this experience that Stevens would make sure he engaged his clerks in the day-to-day operations of the Court.

“That may not sound that unusual but in many of the other chambers,” observed Abner Greene, a former clerk and now law professor at Fordham University. “A lot of work was done by memo writing. The clerks would write memos to the justice. There would be set meetings every week to talk to the justice. But with Justice Stevens, it was an on-going legal discussion. Which is the best opportunity”

While Stevens has remained a prolific writer, his voice on the Court didn’t really emerge until the 1990’s when he became the longest-serving associate justice. This position–second only to the Chief Justice in influence–allowed him to craft close majorities in dozens of cases. This skill enabled Stevens to pick up the crucial fifth vote in a string of War on Terror cases from 2004-2008 challenging the Bush Administration’s handling of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

“In all of those cases, it’s Justice Stevens who is assigning the opinion to Justice Kennedy. It’s not like Justice Kennedy walks in and picks it up,” Green observed.

Stevens is known for his intellect and even temperament and as a rabid Chicago Cubs fan who a few years ago threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Wrigley Field. And he was there in 1932 as a 12 year old boy and saw Babe Ruth hit his famous “called shot” home run in the World Series.

“He really did it. There’s no doubt about it,” Stevens said several years ago. “I saw it and I remember it. Of course, there are millions of people who claim to have been here. But I really was.”

In 2000, the Supreme Court was called upon to effectively decide that year’s presidential election. Stevens came out on the short end of that decision. “Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

In recent years, Stevens maintained that his conservative principles never changed during his time on the Court. Rather it was the justices around him and perhaps the country too that became more conservative than he.

In a little meeting with the press last week, President Obama said that contrary to his request, his presidential Cadillac limousine will not be going hybrid to save planet Earth.

“I asked can we make these cars hybrids,” Obama said at a town hall in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Secret Service said no. Now, the reason is not because Secret Service are bad guys. It’s because the cars that I’m in are like tanks.”

Basically, Obama’s limousine weighs about two to three times more than a normal car. Meaning that if it’s attacked, a hybrid system wouldn’t provide enough performance in terms of acceleration over a standard gasoline engine.

The Obama administration announced last week that they have purchased more than 5,000 hybrids as a part of the federal fleet – 100 of them being the Chevrolet Volt.

Source: ABC News

Late Thursday night the U.K. Parliament passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill, which grants the U.K. government sweeping new powers to control access to the Internet.

The Digital Economy Bill has been the subject of heavy entertainment industry lobbying and widespread concern amongst U.K. citizens and telecommunications companies because it included provisions that would allow the U.K. government to censor websites considered “likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright,” and disconnect the Internet connection of any household in the U.K. with an IP address alleged to have engaged in copyright infringement. Despite the many concerns expressed with the Bill’s provisions, including questions by some Members of Parliament about whether these provisions could be used to block access to the Wikileaks website, the bill was rushed through Parliament — apparently with several amendments that we’re still assessing — after only two hours of debate in a special late-night “wash-up” session.

If you’re in the U.K., we encourage you to join the Open Rights Group’s campaign and express your views to your MPs now. You might also want to switch to an Internet Service Provider that understands the implications of the Digital Economy Bill and is willing to commit to protecting your civil liberties, like Talk Talk.

Enter the Motorola DEXT and Motorola DEXT (Round of applause). Despite MotoBlur not being among the most popular of the Android flavours, I am quite excited to see it enter the Canadian market. We will see soon, as there is no official release date, what MotoBlur is all about when Rogers launches the Motorola Quench, to Bell the Motorola DEXT, and recently as well to Telus the Motorola Backflip. Should you want to experience the Bell Motorola DEXT visit <www.bellmotodext.ca>. To get a feel for the Rogers Motorola Quench you can visit the Motorola Website.

The featured specs for both phones are as follows:

Motorola DEXT (Bell Mobility)

• 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and video capture
• Full HTML Web Browser
• Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS
• 3.1″ HVGA Touch Screen with 320 x 480 pixels resolution
• Slide-out QWERTY Keyboard
• Android Apps & Media Player

Motorola Quench (Rogers Wireless)

• 5.0 megapixel camera with autofocus and video capture
• Full HTML Web Browser
• Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS
• 3.1″ HVGA Touch Screen with 320 x 480 pixels resolution
• Android Apps & Media Player

Let us know if you’re interested in getting a Motorola device running MotoBlur. What do the US and international readers think of their MotoBlur devices?

Might We Suggest…

• Detailed Look at Motorola Cliq
  The fine folks at T3 are among the first to really get their hands on the upcoming Motorola CLIQ/DEXT handset.  They’re big fans of the MOTOBLUR interface and the widgets that come with it.  They do…

A federal judge has awarded $2.6 million to seven Virginia families in the first Chinese drywall lawsuit verdict, but collecting the actual award may be difficult. 

The decision, issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon, could set the tone for hundreds of other lawsuits in both federal and state courts. However, it is unclear how the plaintiffs will recover money from the defendant in this case, Taishan Gypsum Co., since civil lawsuit decisions are not enforced in China.

Taishan did not respond to the lawsuits or send anyone to represent the company in the U.S. federal court. Some plaintiffs attorneys have recommended that Taishan inventory on ships in U.S. waters and on U.S. soil be seized.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), federal investigators have received nearly 3,000 complaints from across the United States from homeowners who say that toxic wallboard from China releases sulfuric odors, causes health problems, and corrodes wiring and appliances. Many of the problems with the Chinese drywall have been confirmed by laboratory testing.

Fallon’s summary judgment in the first lawsuit to go to trial details the extensive amount of gutting that will be required to remove the traces and side effects of Chinese drywall from the plaintiffs’ homes. Not only must all the drywall be removed, even if it was mixed with non-toxic wallboard, but all of the copper pipes, electrical wiring, many of the appliances, and all cabinets, trim, moulding, countertops, carpets, hardwood flooring, and bathroom fixtures must be replaced as well.

The lawsuits were limited to property damage, and did not address some homeowners’ concerns that Chinese drywall sulfur emissions could be affecting their health.

The judgment comes just days after the CPSC and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released interim remediation guidance (pdf) for removing toxic Chinese drywall. Like Fallon’s ruling, the guidance recommends that consumers remove all drywall and replace electrical components, wiring, gas service pipes, and also recommends replacement of safety equipment like fire sprinklers, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

Millions of sheets of toxic drywall were imported from China into the United States between 2004 and 2007 due to a domestic shortage caused by a housing boom and construction following a serious of hurricanes that struck the southeastern United States. The CPSC has confirmed more than 6 million sheets were imported into the country in 2006, and additional temporary support personnel are being brought in to verify more shipments.

A number of homeowners throughout the United States have filed contaminated Chinese drywall lawsuits against manufacturers and distributors. In June 2009, all of the federal drywall litigation was consolidated and centralized in an MDL, or Multidistrict Litigation under Judge Fallon.

To date, the only foreign drywall supplier that has agreed to participate in the lawsuits is Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co., a subsidiary of a German company. Knauf has been sued by both homeowners and homebuilders, and the company has said it will work with state and federal regulators to address plaintiffs’ concerns. A separate trial was held against Knauf earlier this year, but Fallon has not yet issued a ruling on that case.

While admitting that he did make some mistakes during his tenure, Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan defended his record last week, arguing that his policy of keeping interest rates low did not contribute to the financial collapse.

Testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Greenspan, who was chairman of the Fed from 1987 to 2006, was bombarded with questions from panel members who were highly critical of his lack of response concerning irresponsible mortgage lending.

"Very simply, Mr. Chairman, why…did you not act to contain abusive, deceptive subprime lending?" asked panel chairman Phil Angelides. "Why did you allow it to become such an infection in the marketplace?"

In response, Greenspan noted several steps that the Fed took under his leadership to prevent irresponsible lending, and claimed that he made the correct decisions 70 percent of the time, according to Fox News. He refused to mention the specific failures that he felt he was responsible for.

Greenspan also indicated that the Federal Reserve helped to temper the economic recession through the decision he made in the early 2000s, CNN.com reports.

"We did do almost all of the things that you are raising," Greenspan told the panel. "And the consequence of that, I think, is that things were better than they could have been."

The union that represents Los Angeles police officers says the number of civilian vacancies in the LAPD means officers are increasingly being diverted from the streets to perform administrative duties.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League said the department was authorized last June to employ nearly 4,000 civilians but now has fewer than 3,000, and that the figure is expected to drop below 2,900 by July 1.

League President Paul Weber said that every 100 officers pulled from field work to back-fill vacant civilian positions equates to removing about 30 police cars citywide. He said line officers are reporting daily that they are spending increasing amounts of time in police stations performing administrative tasks, rather than patrolling the streets.

Even before the city’s current budget crunch, Los Angeles police managers complained that their civilian ranks were severely understaffed. Civilian employees perform much of the department’s paperwork and day-to-day processing of data and information.

The union’s statement comes as a new fiscal year approaches, with the prospect of even greater reductions in the LAPD’s civilian workforce.

— Richard Winton

Photo: An LAPD patrol car. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Like it or not, Google Chrome proved to be quite a revolution in web browsing, despite its many initial flaws and shortcomings, and most competing browsers borrowing a thing or two from it since then. And the trend continues: Mozilla seems to be taking more and more cues from Google Chrome.

The idea for th… (read more)

The inimitable Howard Davidowitz on whether he has been completely wrong over the past year and whether America is in the midst of a glorious recovery:

Retail analyst Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Co. has always been one of our viewers’ favorite guests. Howard’s flamboyant bearishness won hearts and minds all through the financial crisis, and we–and you–never get tired of hearing from him.

But Howard has been bearish for a year now–all through one of the most amazing bull runs in history.  Against all odds, the U.S. economy appears to be gathering steam by the day, charging out of the worst recession since the Great Depression and heading toward a strong recovery.

So what does Howard think about that?  Has he changed his tune?  Was he completely wrong?

NO WAY!!!

In Howard’s view, nothing has changed.  Howard thinks the U.S. is still careening down the road toward a hell of fiscal instability, over-indebtedness, ballooning budget deficits and interest payments, and declining living standards.

The U.S. is broke, Howard says.  The current “sucker’s rally” will end up like all the sucker’s rallies that have tormented Japan for the past two decades.  It will be a false dawn that will momentarily distract everyone from the enormous fiscal challenges we face … and then reality will take hold again.

We won’t be able to get out of our pickle without tremendous pain, Howard says.  The American people are figuring that out.  And the American people won’t stand for the status quo anymore.

Earlier:

• Retail sales up but America in “dramatically worse shape” versus year ago
• Wall Street-D.C. bigwigs “buried our country … sold us down the river,” Davidowitz says

Join the conversation about this story »

iPhone OS 4 has over 100 new features. However, some of those features (or all of them) won’t be available on older versions of the iPhone/iPod Touch. Wonder how you’ll fare? Read on.

iPhone 3GS / iPod Touch 3rd-Gen

Both of these will get full compatibility; the whole shebang. Note that the third-gen iPod will only support all the new features on models with 32 or 64GBs of memory; the 16GB model was really a second-gen iPod, which is discussed below.

iPhone 3G / iPod Touch 2nd-Gen

Some compatibility. Multitasking will not be available due to a lower amount of RAM (128MB vs. 256 on the newer models) and a slower processor. It’s not clear yet whether multitasking is the only new feature that’ll be missing. Nor is it clear as to whether Apple will be charging iPod Touch users a fee to upgrade like they did with iPhone OS 3.

iPhone / iPod Touch 1st-Gen

Apple hasn’t officially said anything on these two yet, and that’s likely a sign that you won’t be able to run OS 4 at all. At least those of you still using these dinosaurs have a new iPhone to look forward to in June.

iPad

Obviously, the just-released iPad will be able to run the new OS. It’s worth mentioning because the update won’t be available until the Fall, which seems like a long time considering that the iPhone and iPod Touch are getting the update this summer.

How do you feel about Apple’s compatibility decisions? The inevitable course of progress, or a slap in the face?

Foi divulgado pela divisão brasileira da Citroën ontem, dia 8, o novo vídeo com mais informações a respeito do novo Aircross. O carro que é baseado no C3 Picasso vai entrar no mercado brasileiro a partir do segundo semestre.

Algumas peculiaridades do Aircross são os seus pára-choques mais robustos com detalhes cromados, e um rack de teto. As rodas são de 16 pol. com formato exclusivo do modelo e com um estepe na parte traseira.

Nenhuma informação foi passada a respeito do motor do Aircross, mas acredita-se que seja um motor 1.5 de 16V flex, assim como o C3 atual. Também terá as opções de câmbi manual de 5 marchas ou automárico de 4 marchas.

Via | Carro Online

Why are these called breakfast nooks? Sure, sipping coffee and enjoying toast while reading the paper in the morning light seems the fitting activity in one of these smallish spaces. But we’re sure the owners of these homes tuck in to meatloaf there, too. Either way, we love nooks. The nearer they’re nestled to the kitchen, the better.

Read Full Post

We’ve all experienced the the age-old quandary, “I’m hungry, but I’m too weak/lazy to move my arms, whatever shall I do?” Enter the Food Lift! It’s a revolutionary new product that takes the work out of eating! Simply place the food in the trough and then the dynamo-screw lifts the meal through the tube into your mouth, “like a waiter climbing a staircase.” Try one today!

(Thanks to thespatulaoflove!)

There are lots of pictures of the Giz staff on our site these days. From Mascari in the iPad review to Kyle riding the Honda U3-X, they’re all over the place. What fitting source material for a Photoshop Contest! More »

Gmail Labs, the “Settings” section featuring optional, experimental features for Google’s webmail program has just received two new additions: “message sneak peek” and “nested labels.” Now the sneak peek we definitely like – it lets you preview a message without opening it so you can take immediate action. Handy!

But nested labels is a somewhat curious addition. It turns Gmail’s once-revolutionary “tagging” system into something that more closely resembles the traditional folder structure found in email programs like Outlook. So now you can drag-and-drop your email into these so-called labels and you can create hierarchies, too? Oh, c’mon, Gmail, let’s just call them folders already and be done with it.

Sponsor

The Tagging Revolution

Wait! Before you rush into the comments and declare your love for nested folders, the option you’ve been waiting for since the day you got your Gmail invite back in 2004, hear me out.

I get it – nested folders are great. I’ll probably even use them. (I am nothing, if not a Gmail filter junkie. Nearly everything get tagged upon arrival and a lot gets pre-filed, too).

The point is that these labels were introduced as a major improvement over folders because you could – Wow! – tag email messages with more than one label. That means mail could be tagged “Travel,” “Coupons” and “Southwest Airlines” all at once. And wasn’t that just amazing?

But the problem with Gmail’s tagging system is that there’s no easy way to surface the combination of these tags. For example, what if you want to see all mail tagged “Work,” “From Boss” and “Project X?” Quick! How do you do it? (And don’t tell me to type in some long, complex search query with colons and Boolean operators, either. Tell me how the average email user would do it). The answer? Most people don’t know how. They’re just going to enter a few search terms into the “search mail” box at the top of the screen. Or maybe they’ll head over to the “From Boss” folder and then search for “Project X.”

Missed Opportunity

Sadly, it seems that Gmail really missed an opportunity to take labels to the next level. For example: why can’t there be an easy-to-use function somewhere at the top of the inbox to filter your mail by labels? Why isn’t there an email intelligence system that learns how you label your mail and then starts auto-tagging it for you? Why can’t Gmail figure out that if a particular message matches a filter you designed to label your incoming mail that means the message is not spam? 

No, instead of integrating a sense of intelligence into its filtering mechanisms – efforts that seem well within Google’s capabilities – Gmail’s labels are turning back into the ever-so-innovative folders they were meant to replace.

That’s fine, I guess. I never really thought folders were that bad – it was filtering that needed an overhaul. (Have you used filters in Outlook? Gmail’s are much easier.) But let’s call a spade, a spade. Sure, you can label an email with 10 different tags if you want, but don’t expect to find it later via some sort of advanced filtered search. Gmail’s labels are folders. And tags, god bless ’em, are dead. 

Discuss

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Ford, Racing

A few days ago, Vaughn Gittin Jr. gave a sneak peak of his new 2011 Mustang and hinted that a new sponsor would be involved for the 2010 Formula Drift season. Judging by the green wheels and that the car’s unveiling would be held at Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory in Los Angeles, it was an easy assumption that Monster Energy Drink would be involved. The company is most famous in the motorsports world for sponsoring Ken Block, and both Gittin Jr. and Formula Drift seem like an easy fit. Sure enough, when the wraps were pulled off the new livery featured Monster’s green and black theme.

Like the production 2011 Mustang, Vaughn’s new ride features several new upgrades. The chassis and suspension have been updated using the knowledge gained from the 2009 season, and the looks have been tweaked to match Gitton’s ponycar for the street, the RTR-C Mustang. Falken Tire remains as a sponsor and has provided their brand new RT-615K tires to be sacrificed on track, and a version of Ford Racing’s 4.6-liter supercharged V8 is still under the hood. So what will happen to the 2010 Falken Mustang? Justin Pawlak, who finished ninth last year with a Mazda RX-8 last year, is joining the Falken team and will take over Vaughn’s old Mustang.

We were fortunate enough to receive an invite to the unveiling, and made sure to have cameras in hand. A dark, crowded warehouse isn’t our favorite place to photograph a car, but we did the best we could and have put the resulting images in the high-res gallery below.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Vaughn Gittin Jr. unveils new 2011 Mustang drifter, announces new sponsor originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The standard inkjet printer found in offices around the world is the inspiration for a new medical device that can help patients with severe burns. Researchers at Wake Forest University rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto a burn victim’s wounds, and animal trials showed that the treatment healed wounds quickly and safely. The team says this printing method could be an improvement over traditional skin grafts, which often leave serious scars.

The researchers explain that the device is mounted in a frame that can be wheeled over a patient in a hospital bed. A laser then takes a reading of the wound’s size and shape so that a layer of healing cells can be precisely applied, Reuters reports.

“We literally print the cells directly onto the wound,” said student Kyle Binder, who helped design the device. “We can put specific cells where they need to go.”

In the trials, this treatment completely closed wounds in just two weeks. The “bioprinting” device has so far only been tested on mice, but the team will soon try out the technique on pigs, whose skin is similar to that of humans. Eventually, the team expects to request FDA approval for human trials.

For the treatment, the researchers first dissolved human skin cells from pieces of skin, separating out cell types like fibroblasts and keratinocytes. Reuters writes:

They put them in a nutritious solution to make them multiply and then used a system similar to a multicolor office inkjet printer to apply first a layer of fibroblasts and then a layer of keratinocytes, which form the protective outer layer of skin.

The sprayed cells not only worked themselves into the surrounding skin, they were also incorporated into the skin’s hair follicles and sebaceous glands. Researchers say this may have been possible because immature stem cells were mixed in with the sprayed cells.

Binder told Reuters:

“You have to give a lot of credit to the cells. When you put them into the wound, they know what to do.”

Related Content:

DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Skin
Discoblog: The Body Electric: Turn Your Skin Into a Touchscreen With “Skinput”
Discoblog: When Art Gets Personal: Woman with Skin Disorder Makes Her Body a Canvas
Discoblog: You Got Burned! Wristband Warns Wearers of Impending Sunburn

Image: Epson

Troublesome Creek

Origin of the blue-skinned Fugates of eastern Kentucky

Sometime around 1820, a French orphan named Martin Fugate, carrier of an incredibly rare recessive gene for a disease known as hereditary methemoglobinemia, settled on the banks of Troublesome Creek in Eastern Kentucky and married Elizabeth Smith, carrier of the same incredibly rare recessive gene.
It was a remarkable coincidence with a bizarre result: four of the seven Fugate children were born with bright blue skin that lasted their entire lives. (According to legend, and the image above, Martin Fugate himself had blue skin). The reason for this strange skin disorder was only discovered a century later when it was realized that due to an enzyme deficiency, the Fugatesà­ blood had a diminished oxygen-carrying capacity.
Over the years, the Fugates interbred repeatedly. Blue people proliferated. Six generations later, according to a Science article published in 1982, there were still Blue Fugates roaming the hills of eastern Kentucky.

Read more about Troublesome Creek on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Lost Tribes
Location: Kentucky, US
Edited by: Josh, Dylan