AUSTIN, Texas –State agencies issue too many reports, a new 668-page report says. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission spent 18 months and canvassed more than 170 agencies and public colleges and universities, checking on all the reports they are assigned to do. The commission found more than 1,600, and state records administrator Michael […]
Month: January 2008
Hatching a plan to prevent cockpit intruders
Twenty-nine years before 9/11, a New York city resident, Gustano A Pizzo, solved the how-do-you-stop-a-hijacker problem. American government officials largely ignored his solution. All except for Duane Reger and Galen Barefoot, examiners in the Patent Office, who granted Pizzo a patent for his “anti hijacking system for aircraft”. Thanks to this, one can now build […]
Unhappiness with chalk
A distinguished mathematics professor, who requests anonymity, writes: I have a complaint and no where to send it – so naturally I am sending it to you. Crayola has made their chalk thinner. It is not much thinner. But it is thinner enough. It is also shorter. I went back to my office and found […]
Sleep in parts
More surprising still, Ekirch reports that for many centuries, and perhaps back to Homer, Western society slept in two shifts. People went to sleep, got up in the middle of the night for an hour or so, and then went to sleep again. Thus night ? divided into a ?first sleep? and ?second sleep? ? […]
Shyam Srinivasan joins LFHCfS
Shyam Srinivasan has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says: I have always wanted to join the LFHCFS. Over the past few years it has become as much of a goal as getting a PhD. Finally, after many months, nay, years of careful grooming and hard work, I feel qualified to submit […]
Things a person cannot learn that a computer can, so they say
Malfeasance is getting its singular day in the sun, so to speak: “No single biometric is suited for all applications,” said Govindaraju, who also is founder and director of UB’s Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors. “Here at CUBS, we take a unique approach to developing technologies that combine and ‘tune’ different biometrics to fit […]
Non-luxuriant flowing hair
An MIT student named Danny, pictured here, had non-luxuriant flowing hair. Reportedly, he has cut it off. Danny is not a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). (Thanks to investigator Norine Bharan for bringing this to our attention.)
Glow, sperm, glow
Professor Andrew Steckl, a leading expert in light-emitting diodes, is intensifying the properties of LEDs by introducing biological materials, specifically salmon DNA. Steckl is an Ohio Eminent Scholar in UC’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He believed that if the electrons’ mobility could be manipulated, then new properties could be revealed. In considering materials […]
Merit Ptah joins LFHCfS
Merit Ptah has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, as an historical honorary member. Ann Sasahara, who nominated her, says: She was, possibly, the first recorded physician in the world (c. 2700 BCE). She was also the first woman in science to be known by name. She had gorgeous, long locks and she […]