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Eco Factor: Energy-saving house relies on passive solar gain.

Don McLean of McLean Architects has designed a sustainable house for his family that offers green suburban living in a challenging site north of Glasgow. Dubbed the Beacon, the house is located on a south facing site, which maximizes passive solar heat gain to reduce overall energy consumption.

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Are you giving any food gifts this year? You might want to think about including a card with instructions or ideas about how to use your fabulous gift. You may use your signature spice rub or vanilla-infused liquor every week, but other people might not catch on so quickly!

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Eco Factor: Concept cellphone designed to be powered by solar energy.

Providing an answer to the growth in the number of cellphones and the energy they require to keep running, industrial designer Liu Hsiang-Ling has come up with a concept cellphone that runs on the abundant energy provided by the sun.

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Google’s self-proclaimed goal is to organize the world’s information and, for the most part, it sticks to that. Once in a while though, it’s not satisfied with what it finds or the way the information is available elsewhere, so it just builds its own resource. And when you’ve got thousands of the world’s brightest engineers and designers working for you, it’s no surprise if you usually get it right. There are maybe thousands of dictionary tools and websites out there, yet Google must have felt that the space wasn’t catered to very well, so it released its own full-blown dictionary tool complete with definitions, synonyms and everything else you’d expect.

Google hasn’t made any official announcement and it looks like the tool is just being rolled out in its current form. Things get a little murky as google.com/dictionary has been around for almost a year now as a stand-alone service. It was initially part of the Google Translate set of tools. However, up till recently it served as an aggregator of results from the various dictionary sites around the web.

The site is pretty much what you’d expect from a Google dictionary. A query will return all the usual info found in any dictionary, no surprises here. It also returns definitions from the web, like it has done for a while now, and … (read more)

BOSCH Elektrowerkzeuge adwarded the company of RÖHM with the title “Supplier of the Recognition 2009” in the fields of quality and technology/innovation. Already for the third time in a row the RÖHM GmbH succeeded, in contrast to its competitors, and received this important title as one and only supplier in the field of clamping devices.

Criteria for this award are the services rendered during the current business year. As a result of highest standards of quality and continuous research and development the RÖHM GmbH convinced for the third time in a row and is thereby the top supplier of BOSCH in the field of clamping devices. The solemn presentation of prices took place within the “supplier´s day 2009” near the Hungarian manufacturing base Miskolc, where the best suppliers of the electro tool maker were invited. With this award BOSCH honours the engaged and fair cooperation as a important module for the common business success. Thanks to the close cooperation with BOSCH, RÖHM is always close to its clients and in this way able to synchronise products and performances individual with their requirements.
Manager of the RÖHM GmbH, Dr. Michael Fried: “The award “Supplier of Recognition” for the third time in a row is a great honour for the company and confirms us in our conduct and in our decision pro location Sontheim.”

Going green is the motto with every product manufacturer including the cell phone producers. Heres an interesting list of mobile phones, your key to carrying out green communication.

After the Rapid7 acquisition of Metasploit, things are beginning to shift in the Vulnerability Scanning and Penetration Testing market. The basic trend is one of merging the small independent players into larger organizations with a product portfolio covering a wider area.

Rapid7 published the NeXpose Community edition, which pairs with Metasploit. At this moment it still has some early adoption issues – like problems with working on Windows 7, but these will be resolved.

The NeXpose Community may prove to be a strong adversary to Nessus in the free tools market, and by presenting the possibilities of NeXpose to a wider community it will enter the minds of more potential commercial users.

But apparently the competition is not sleeping either. For around a year, there is a joint discount offer on a set of products by Tenable Networks Security, Immunity Inc and DSquare Security. This set creates a great overall product:

1. Nessus being the vulnerability scanner
2. Immunity CANVAS being one of the commercial leaders in penetration testing frameworks and
3. DSquare enriching the set with additional exploit packs for CANVAS

While this joint offer is not new, with the current moves from Rapid7, it may be quite possible for the other players to join forces for a stronger approach to the market.

What do you think? Is the merger of Tenable and Immunity possible? Will it provide a better product and will the users benefit?

Related posts
Nessus vs Retina – Vulnerability Scanning Tools Evaluation
Tutorial – Using Ratproxy for Web Site Vulnerability Analysis

ethorad writes “In the UK, in an attempt to promote the work the police do, some forces name and shame criminals that they catch and prosecute. All good so far as it helps the community see that crimes are being tackled (assuming they are …)

However the Ministry of Justice has now said that police forces who do that must remove the details from their website after one month. Yeah, good luck with that. Place your bets now on how many third party websites (especially local community ones) will start scraping the details from police websites for long term storage?”

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The web can be a wonderful resource for all kinds of information, but language is as much of a barrier as ever. It doesn’t really matter if you can access a piece of information if you can’t understand it. Translation tools have been around for years now, and Google is certainly interested in the space. Google Translate is a very useful tool, if not perfect, but, even after the recent update, using it still requires too many steps for most cases. Google knows this, so it took the obvious step, it integrated translation features into the search engine.

“Today, we’re excited to introduce a new “Translated search” tool in the Search Options panel that makes finding and reading content written in other languages easier. Translated search is great because it helps you find information from sites written in other languages. We’ve offered this feature in Google Translate for a while, but now we’re integrating it fully into Google search, making it easier for you to find and read results from pages across the web, even if they weren’t written in a language you speak,” Maureen Heymans, technical lead, and Jeff Chin, product manager, wrote.

Among the Search Options available on the search engine there is now a “Translated search” link. This opens up a box on top of the results whe… (read more)

The range of structural Farbolt rivets has been enlarged for high resistance to rust and mechanics high resistance.

Now is also manifactured the Farbolt rivet in austenitic A2 stainless steel.

Technical details in our website dedicated to our products.

Our range of blind rivets includes several hundred standard articles.
Special rivets manufactured according to drawings are supplied on request.

With this application, you can define your Conveyxonic belt for your roller conveyor in just a few clicks!

This simple, quick and efficient application guides you in dimensioning and using Conveyxonic belts, which are already widely used by conveyor system and component manufacturers.

1.Enter your chosen parameter(s):
– motor
– load to be carried,
– or selected belt.

2.The Wizard immediately figures out the rest for you.

This free software, available upon request, is a real innovation in the field of roller conveyors.

Don’t wait any longer, request it now!
[email protected]
www.hutchinsontransmission.com

Pocketnow have published another unboxing of the upcoming HP Glisten, which should appeal to fans of front-facing keyboards.

Read more at Pocketnow here.

A businesswoman who had been harassed by an anonymous Wikipedia contributor just won a landmark legal battle to have her accuser’s identity revealed. The victim reportedly had someone write ‘confidential and sensitive’ details about her professional life and that of her child’s on her online encyclopedia page. She also received anonymous threatening letters suggesting that her accuser would reveal other incriminating information to the press.

The website has now been ordered to release technical information in order to help track down the blackmailer. This case is the latest example of Wikipedia – which has approximately 325 million visitors a month and can be edited by anyone – being used for malicious or mischievous reasons.

Around 10 million women at high risk of breast cancer are eligible to take a drug called tamoxifen to prevent the cancer. Yet, very few women choose to take the drug for prevention.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center recently studied women at high risk of breast cancer who were eligible for the drug. They developed custom decision aids explaining the risks and benefits of tamoxifen for each woman in the study.

Despite the availability of information about tamoxifen, most women in the study elected not to take the cancer-preventing drug. Of the 632 women in the study, 80% were worried about side effects. The study results were reported in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

Senior author Peter Ubel, M.D., professor of internal medicine and director of the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan said:

“Experts have bemoaned the dearth of women taking these pills, worried that word has not gotten out about tamoxifen’s ability to prevent breast cancer in high risk women. Our study shows that even when the word does get out, most women are too concerned about the pill’s side effects to want to take it.”

Only 6% of women in the study said they were likely to take tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention. Three months later, fewer than 1% of women in the study had started taking the drug.

Tamoxifen’s side effects include:

• Increased risk of endometrial cancer and uterine sarcoma
• Increased risk of blood clots and cataracts
• More common side effects: symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes, irregular menstrual periods, headaches, fatigue, nausea, vaginal dryness or itching

(Source: National Cancer Institute)

Note: Some of the side effects mentioned above are rare, and not all women experience all side effects. Visit cancer.gov for more information on tamoxifen studies and side effects. Tamoxifen is also used to treat breast cancer.

If you’ve declined tamoxifen, what were your reasons?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Tamoxifen for Breast Cancer Prevention

Eco Factor: Concept shower designed to cut water consumption.

When water conservation is a demand, cutting down on shower use could be a beneficial solution. However, there is no dearth of ecofriendly showers and concepts that let you enjoy a hot shower after a tiring day at work, while saving water and energy at the same time. Industrial designer Alemina Vranas from the University of New South Wales has proposed a water-saving shower system that can transform your showering experience into an oasis of comfort.

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What I am about to tell you might be utter nonsense. My sole qualifications are that in recent months I have done a lot of binging and recovering. I certainly don’t advocate this, and I’m usually quite annoyed with myself when it happens; but given it does, one must be prepared.

The 3-day plan places structure and context around what I think are important principles, but I suggest you tailor your own strategy based on those principles, rather than assume the three-day timeline has any special meaning.

Before I describe the plan, I will say this: my theory is that this approach makes illness less likely because it coaxes the body back to full strength rather than frog-marching it there. Being an obsessive, I have in the past worn the hair shirt on days following bad behaviour. In the past, a few binges close together have caused illness. This year, an unprecedented number of consecutive binges have not yielded illness. Anecdotal, but for me, powerful.

You drink too much alcohol. You probably also eat too much, some or all of which is junk – sugary food, salty food, and processed food – all the things you would normally avoid. The following day, recovery must start.

Day 1: Healthy Food and Fresh air

1. Eat healthy food: but don’t go hungry; eat as much as you need to satisfy. You may be worrying about all the excess calories you ate/drank the day before. Forget it – there will be an opportunity to compensate on days 2 and 3. Perhaps have some healthy treats. Plan to cook your favourite meal .The spectre of comfort eating will loom – if your binge included alcohol, the chances are your salt and sugar balances will be all over the place, so you may want to have more fruit than usual if you are craving sweetness.
2. Don’t try to fast: this will be a struggle if you have a hangover – better to provide your body with the nutrients it has been deprived of forced to give up in the last 24 hours.
3. Don’t go to the gym or exercise: it is tempting to go to the gym on day 1 – you will feel so much better afterwards. But resist this temptation – your body is at a low ebb and the risk of illness is probably greater later on if you kick it while it’s down. Feeling good in the short term does not mean it’s the best thing to do. Let your body recover first, then the benefits of the exercise will be most fully realised, and not at the expense of illness risk. ABOVE ALL, do not do some kind of long, hard cardio session – this will definitely knock back your immune system.
4. Get some air: you won’t get the same buzz as you would from a gym session, but you will feel better nevertheless. A good walk will make you feel better about the night before without hitting your body in any significant way.

Day 2: Fast

1. Fast / reduce your food intake. Today, this will be easier. If you already do intermittent fasting, it will come naturally; if you don’t, then just do whatever you can to reduce your calories and give your system a day of rest.
2. Still don’t go to the gym or do hard exercise! This will be getting tough, but you must continue to resist the temptation. One thing at a time. If you wait one more day then the chances are you won’t suffer a decline in performance as a result of the binge. Plus, if you are fasting or eating less, then the increased appetite from exercise might make it harder, give that you are still not fully ‘in balance’, appetite-wise.

Day 3: Gym/Exercise

1. Go to the gym or do some hard exercise: now you are ready. By now most of the garbage has worked its way through your system and you are restored to something approximating the day before your binge. As well as making you feel good afterwards, the stresses you apply during exercise will now also confer their usual benefits in the medium term. Short, interval-based intense exercise is better – but of course this applies at all times, not just post-binge.

See Also:
Articles on Fasting, Binging and Appetite

Eco Factors: Solar-powered bus shelter made from recycled glass bottles.

We’ve seen glass bottles being recycled to make houses and even temples. Eco-minded artist Aaron Scales has his hands on bottle recycling and has come up with a sustainable bus shelter that has been constructed from soft drink bottles.

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Eco Factor: Dust-repellent nano-coating developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University.

While attempting to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at Tel Aviv University have accidentally discovered a new nano-material that can repel dust and water and could give rise to self-cleaning skyscraper windows and highly efficient solar panels.

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In attempt to prepare for my first night shift, I have taken the liberty of trying to stay up as long as possible tonight, so I can sleep into the day tomorrow. So far? not working. I’ve been tired since 10pm and it now 1:30am.
So far, I have been smart enough to leave some chores for after THE AWESOME BILL MAHER, such as:
-doing the dishes
-ironing my uniforms
-cleaning the kitty litter box
-taking out the garbage

All that held me over until about, oooh, 11:15? yeah. I have also gorged on some Lindt Dark chocolate orange…oops? So much for eating healthy.

In my attempt to stay awake, I purchased some new teas to try out on the night shift. I don’t do coffee.
Black tea it is…

Organic Chai–spiced black tea.

Vanilla Bean–Madagascar vanilla bean with premium black tea.

I’ve tried exhibit A so far and it was pretty good. I’m still undecided how much I like black tea, but I’m learning to like/love it.
Sipped it in this cute cup I bought at the grocery store:

I then proceeded to munch on popcorn and order “The Ugly Truth.” Ugh, I knew it would suck, but it kept me awake.

Here’s some random photos for your viewing pleasure:

Damn, it is only 1:45. My goal was 3am, but I don’t see it happening? I love going to bed…It is like torture staying up:( I really just want to cry right now. I was not meant for the night shift. I like to sleep at 10pm and wake up with the sun!!

I just need to focus on the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
wish me luck

Eco Factor: Low-emission car powered by a hybrid engine.

Volkswagen has unveiled its new low-emission vehicle, the Up! Lite, which gets powered by a hybrid diesel-electric engine. The sporty four-seater is being touted to be a direct cousin to the company’s L1 two-seater car that was showcased at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

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