Your blood flow could charge your cell phone.
It’s not science fiction any longer.
A graduate student in Jerusalem has developed a series of jewelry that can be used to charge electronics like cell phones.
The project by Naomi Kizhner is called “Energy Addicts.” There are three pieces of jewelry: the Blinker, the E-pulse and the Blood Bridge. The Blinker would extract energy by using the movement of the eyelids. The Blood Bridge is connected to the veins in the lower arm.
Kizhner says there is no current plans to market the products worldwide but were designed to show that it’s possible to use the body’s ordinary functions for biometric electronics.
“I wanted to provoke the thought about how far will we go to in order to ‘feed’ our addiction in the world of declining resources,” she told Cosmo.
A Korean research unit earlier this year released a thermoelectric bracelet that could turn body heat into electricity, similar to the movie The Matrix.
The year’s most powerful storm is focusing on Okinawa.
Japan, which has been recovering from a strike from Typhoon Phanfone last week that dumped heavy rain and battered the country with high winds, is directly in the path of Typhoon Vongfong.
Vongfong is classified as a “Super Typhoon” and is over open water. The Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center says the storm has sustained winds of 179 miles per hour and gusts over 219 miles per hour. Forecasts say the sustained winds will strengthen to 190 miles per hour at the storm’s peak.
Vongfong is the sixth “Super Typhoon” in the Pacific this year. While the storm season has seen half the usual amount of storms, the number of Super Typhoons is double the season average.
Japanese officials are concerned about the storm striking so soon after Phanfone, which disrupted air and sea travel, led to the disappearance of two American soldiers and forced suspension of searches for bodies on Mount Ontake.
Japanese officials say at least 36 people are feared dead after the unexpected eruption of Mount Ontake.
Rescuers on the peak say they’ve discovered five more bodies under the grey ash that makes the mountain look like the surface of the moon. The search for victims is being suspended because of fears of toxic gases breaking through the mountain.
At least 12 people are confirmed to be dead with 63 injuries. At least 8 are missing and officials say it’s likely the missing people are dead.
The eruption of the mountain’s over 10,000-foot peak struck when hundreds of climbers were on the mountain. The mountain is a site where families would take children to see the leaves change color or to enjoy the breathtaking views.
Now, the paths on the mountain have ash as much as knee-deep.
The last major eruption of the mountain was in 1979 although there was a minor eruption seven years ago.
Japan’s Metrological Agency said they might reconsider their surveillance system for volcanoes.
Scotland is looking at the possibility of breaking out the snowplows.
IN AUGUST.
A wave of bitter Arctic cold is predicted to descend over the British Isles and bring the coldest wave of weather in August since 1919. Temperatures are forecast to be near freezing overnight and there is a chance of snow and sleet over parts of Scotland.
The high temperatures are not expected to climb about 48 degrees with high winds bring wind chills to well below freezing. The Met Office reports that it’s possible some areas will not even reach 40 degrees during the cold wave.
The normal high temperatures for the region in August run from 75 to 78 degrees.
Complicating the situation is heavy rain that is predicted to hit the islands for the next few days. With the land already saturated from a hurricane that came through weeks ago, the likelihood is high for flooding on top of the frigid temperatures.
‘The weather is certainly looking disappointing for the next couple of weeks,” forecaster Billy Payne of MeteoGroup said, tongue firmly in cheek. “It’s going to be cool and rather unsettled – there’s not much to be optimistic about.”
Scientists are tracking an asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth and could end all life on the planet in 2880.
The asteroid apparently is continuing a collision course despite any gravitational factors that should be weighing on it as it passes other celestial objects. Researchers at the University of Tennessee are tracking the object called 1950 DA.
The scientists have already calculated that attempting to blow up the asteroid would not be effective because it would break into smaller pieces that would have the same trajectory and thus cause more significant impacts.
The scientists say that the asteroid’s impact would have the same force as 44,800 megatons of TNT. Tsunamis would swamp the globe and the climate change would be devastating to human life.
The University of Tennessee team found that the asteroid is rotating so rapidly that it “defies gravity”. The forces holding the asteroid together have never been previously detected by scientists.
The findings were published in the journal Nature.
Scientists tracking the sun’s activity say the star has gone quiet and the solar maximum for Solar Cycle 24 has likely ended as one of the weakest in over a century.
The weaker than normal solar cycle means that “space weather” has been relatively benign with geomagnetic storms that were much less than feared in early predictions of the solar maximum.
Scientists are warning, however, that in the downturn of weak solar cycles there is a significant possibility of serious solar storms. Strong solar flares are still possible as the sun begins to wind down over the next few years to the solar minimum.
History also shows that a weaker solar cycle means that temperatures on the Earth will be lower than average.
In the last two major periods of low solar activity, 1645 to 1715 and 1790 to 1830, the Earth recorded below-normal temperatures with the latter era being called a “Little Ice Age.” The weaker solar winds can lead to more clouds that keep the Earth cooler by blocking more solar rays.
Some solar scientists say the next cycle, Cycle #25, could be weaker than this one.
The massive supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park is melting roads throughout the national park.
The National Park Service is banning visitors from entering some parts of the park because the roads and the ground has become too dangerous for human passage.
“It basically turned the asphalt into soup. It turned the gravel road into oatmeal,” Yellowstone spokesman Dan Hottle said.
Park officials are telling visitors not to hike into the area because what appears to be solid ground could actually be dirt on top of boiling hot water. They characterized the risk of stepping into potentially fatal pools of water as “high.”
“There are plenty of other great places to see thermal features in the park,” park spokesman Al Nash told The Weather Channel. “I wouldn’t risk personal injury to see these during this temporary closure.”
Scientists last year determined the supervolcano under Yellowstone was twice the size as previously believed by researchers.
Scientists in Britain have developed a test that can detect as much as a year in advance if a patient will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
The test comes after a decade of research by Oxford University and King’s College London. A study showed that the brain develops 10 proteins just before the disease takes hold in the brain.
The doctors hailed the test as groundbreaking because once someone develops Alzheimer’s, there’s no real way to treat it. With the development of an early warning test, doctors hope to find a way to treat a patient to stop the development of Alzheimer’s.
“Although we are making drugs [to treat Alzheimer’s] they are all failing. But if we could treat people earlier it may be that the drugs are effective,” said Simon Lovestone, professor of translational neuroscience at Oxford. “Alzheimer’s begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed with the disease. If we could treat the disease in that phase we would in effect have a preventative strategy.”
The test has been proven to have 87 percent accuracy in predicting the onset of Alzheimer’s.
The Big Bang theory for the creation of the universe has taken a big blow.
A new study conducted by secular scientists based on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, called the “God particle”, shows that the Big Bang would not have been possible for the creation of the universe because of shaking of particles.
“During the early universe, we expected cosmic inflation — this is a rapid expansion of the universe right after the Big Bang,” study co-author Robert Hogan, a doctoral candidate in physics at King’s College in London, said to Christian News Network. “This expansion causes lots of stuff to shake around, and if we shake it too much, we could go into this new energy space, which could cause the universe to collapse.”
The intense shaking in the energy field, known as quantum fluctuation, should have collapsed the entire universe shortly after creation according to the model based on Higgs physics.
The scientists explained the lack of answers and holes in the Big Bang theory by saying their must be some kind of new physics that man hasn’t been able to discover yet.
A new study is showing that environmental toxins are leading to premature aging.
The study says a class of environmental toxins called gerontogens put humans at risk for accelerated again. The toxins can be found in a wide range of items from second-hand cigarette smoke to UV rays and chemotherapy.
“Genetic studies have taught us only 30 percent of aging is genetic, meaning the other 70 percent comes from the environment,” Dr. Norman Sharpless told Fox News. “Having a few [of these cells] is not a big deal. But over the course of a lifetime, as they accumulate, they [contribute to] aging and many of the diseases we associate with aging.”
The study, published in Trends in Molecular Medicine, has allowed the doctors to create a test for substances to see their impact on aging. The aging process begins when the body undergoes a process called senescence where healthy cells are damaged and are no longer able to divide. The test will expose cells to substances until they cause the senescence process.
“Our work reasonably says cigarette smoking is the thing we could really do something about that would benefit the aging biology of a large number of people,” Dr. Sharpless said. “But we’re also reasonably certain there are other gerontogens we don’t know about yet.”