] Windows could trap the sun's energy to heat hot water.
] Sensors that measure the carbon dioxide exhaled by people
] in a room could determine whether the air conditioning
] needs to be turned up.

This is Janelane's area of expertise, and has gotten my interest in recent months. Its foolish to think capturing more oil reserves or discovering a new energy source is a sustainable way to live. We need to not only reduce consumption, but make what we use much more energy effecient. So many processes we depend on (ie internal compustion engine) lose so much energy in heat, that even a few percentage points of improvement will drastically change things for us.

Smart buildings gain momentum

] If we accept the idea that we are born with a large
] amount of damage, it follows that even small improvements
] to the processes of early human development%u2014ones
] that increase the numbers of initially functional
] elements%u2014could result in a remarkable fall in
] mortality and a significant extension of human life.
] Indeed, there is mounting evidence now in support of the
] idea of fetal origins of adult degenerative diseases and
] early-life programming of aging and longevity.

Why we break

] Researchers from Kentucky and the Netherlands say they
] are ready to perform a face transplant. The procedure
] involves replacing someone's entire face with a dead
] donor's face.
]
]
] "There arrives a point in time when the procedure should
] simply be done. We submit that that time is now," wrote
] the researchers in the American Journal of Bioethics.
]
] People with faces disfigured by severe burns, cancer or
] by accident would be prime candidates for the new
] procedure.

crazy!

Face Transplant Procedure Ready: Surgeons

] Having introduced Bayes' Theorem explicitly, we can
] explicitly discuss its components.
]
] p(A|X) = p(X|A)*p(A)
] ---------------------
] p(X|A)*p(A) p(X|~A)*p(~A)
]

[shudders] probability... [shudders]

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning

To prove if time travel exists, you shouldn't go reading a Modern Physics book or Scientific American, I propose you could do it all but conclusively with a study of history.

If people have, in the future, figured out how to travel to the past, I assume there will be traces. Traces that further travel is, for some reason, unable to erase or prevent. I have no way to know or prove this assumption is true. If, however, it is, we should be able to find these traces in history.

We are looking for someone who appears suddenly in a culture they are unfamiliar with, and would have to use their advanced knowledge of either technology/science or knowledge of future events to survive. Look for people who had advanced ideas or are generally viewed as "ahead of their time," whose lifestyle or views dramatically clashed with their culture (they had difficulty adapting to what they see as a primitive or stupid cultural rules like slavery, inequality, religous rule, etc), and/or whose origins and birthpalce are in question. Someone like say Galileo or better yet Bohr. Detailed examinations of their works could share clues to higher knowledge not possible to the time period (ie a^x+b^y=c^z with no proof in the margin of a math text). Further, look for isolated discoveries (use of geometry before greeks, etc). While this could be simply derived works (greeks learned geometry from someone else) geographically isolated areas help support this (geometry in South America). An examine of how unique this knowledge is to see the chance of it independentally being discovered (ie the pyramids look the same in SE asia, Egypt, and SA not because of aliens, but because the only way to build tall structures with primitive materials is to distribute the weight of the higher levels over larger, lower layers, [ie a triangle], and hence a pyramid)

As someone could influence events without seeming personally responsible, examine people in an advising capacity, especially during war periods. Looking at events that all seemed to "by chance" favor one side, and apply a normal distribution to these outcomes. Did the outcomes favor one side more than they should have. Then see if technology/intrigue unnaturally influenced the distribution (ie did the US always seem to have luck on their side because they had borken codes?).

It seems to me the ideal time frame to examine would be 500 AD - 1950. During this time the ability/money/culture to educate large quantities of people were minimized, and an outstanding person would be easier to find.

Discuss, and remind me never to eat lots of chicken while staying up until 3am readin "Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich"

I think Virgil showed this to me a while back, and I ran across it today. A nifty way to explore physics

Hyper Physics

] Check this shit out (Fig. 1). That's bonafide, 100%-real
] data, my friends. I took it myself over the course of two
] weeks. And this was not a leisurely two weeks, either; I
] busted my ass day and night in order to provide you with
] nothing but the best data possible. Now, let's look a bit
] more closely at this data, remembering that it is
] absolutely first-rate. Do you see the exponential
] dependence? I sure don't. I see a bunch of crap.
]
] Christ, this was such a waste of my time.
]
] Banking on my hopes that whoever grades this will
] just look at the pictures, I drew an exponential through
] my noise. I believe the apparent legitimacy is enhanced
] by the fact that I used a complicated computer program to
] make the fit. I understand this is the same process by
] which the top quark was discovered.

Funniest. Lab Report. Ever.

Kovar/Hall

] This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of
] what our universe actually looks like.

An Atlas of The Universe

Voice-stress analysis, an alternative to the polygraph as a method for lie detection, is already widely used in police and insurance fraud investigations. Now, however, it is being touted as a powerful and effective tool for an array of new applications -- everything from the screening of potential terrorists in the nation's airports to catching wayward spouses in messy marital disputes. Despite its booming popularity, a number of federally sponsored studies have found little or no scientific evidence to support the notion that existing voice-stress technologies are capable of consistently detecting lies and deceptions.

Research casts doubt on voice-stress lie detection technology