McPherson along with his colleagues Alastair Robinson and Volker Heinrich have discovered more than 20 new varieties of pitcher plant in recent expeditions and have also made two rediscoveries.

One of those rediscoveries, Nepenthes deaniana, was first recorded in 1907 but was subsequently lost when the Philippine National Herbarium in Manila was bombed towards the end of World War II.

McPherson and his team believe they are the first explorers to observe the plant in the wild in over a century.

The Nepenthes deaniana produces a spectacular, football-sized, red pitchers that are large enough to catch insects and small animals.

In many of the traps, McPherson's team found giant centipedes and 10 centimeter-long spiders.

Wow...check out the first picture!

Botanists discover new rat-eating plant - CNN.com

Meggy Jr RGB is a handheld platform for developing your own pixel-scale video games.

So cool.

Meggy Jr RGB

If you like beer, go drink a Terrapin Reunion '09. This year, its a double wheat beer, and 100% of the proceeds go to fund cancer research! For those memestreams beer lovers that live by a Taco Mac, you can find it on tap there right now!

Terrapin Reunion '09

New iPhone app out co-developed by memestreams user K and friend Aaron. Please support them by checking it out (and purchasing it!):)

kobeFit strives to have the most varied and complete list of high quality fitness activities available so you'll never have to compromise. That means we don't stop at having a full complement of weight training exercises, but include dozens of sport, cardiovascular, and whole-body activities. The exercise browser was designed for extreme ease of use, letting you find exercises in a snap. And if we've still somehow left out your favorite exercise, kobeFit will let you add it effortlessly.
Build & Schedule Workouts

A great set of exercises truly shines when combined to make your perfect workout. kobeFit lets you build simple or complex routines from scratch with just a few taps. Group your exercises, vary your sets, time & distance and see it all at a glance. kobeFit even lets you create Supersets and Compound Sets if you like. It's all up to you.

kobeFit makes it easy to keep up with your fitness program by letting you schedule your routines with no hassle, offering one-touch access to your scheduled workout, and providing a clear and sortable list of what's coming up.

Want a change of pace, or don't have time to build a new routine? With kobeFit, that's no problem... You can always start an instant workout and pick your exercises as you go. The exercise browser makes picking exercises so quick and easy, you don't need to worry about wasting time tapping through endless screens to get what you want.
Track Your Progress

As easy as it is to use, kobeFit is above all about, well, fitness. To help you meet your fitness goals we've included a rich set of features to record, track and visualize your progress. Enter measurements for your weight, resting heart rate or numerous other body metrics. Take self-progress photos with the iPhone's built in camera. And because nothing shows progress better, kobeFit provides beautiful charts that let you see in a single glance how you're doing.

For true motivation, kobeFit lets you set goals for any of the body measurements it tracks. Whether you want to lose 10 pounds or gain an inch of muscle on your biceps, kobeFit lets you set the mark and help you get there. Your Goal targets are visible right on the built in charts, so you know just how close you're getting!

kobeFit

hehehe

Piled Higher and Deeper

At birth, Becca Hill weighed just 13 ounces. That's as much as a medium-sized apple, three and a half chocolate bars or a can of Coke.

My friend Nancy gave birth (a little over a year ago) to Becca - a beautiful (but very tiny) little girl. Today, you can read about Becca's story online at the Tennessean.

13 ounces at birth, Becca is Tennessee's tiniest baby to survive | tennessean.com | The Tennessean

This is fun!

Craftzine.com blog : Fireworks Animation by PES

Happy 4th of July memestreams!

Here in the States, we celebrate our independence every 4th of July by blowing up things in the sky.

In fact, ever since Taoist monks created fireworks, cultures around the globe have used them to ward off evil spirits, pray for happiness, celebrate birth, death, weddings, the new year… just about anything.

Consider it a basic truth of the human condition: we like things that go boom.

And for almost as long as fireworks have been around, photographers have been taking dark and blurry photos of them.

But listen up: Firecracker photography may seem difficult, but follow some simple rules and you’re virtually guaranteed good results.

Photojojo » 11 Tips for Sparkling Fireworks Photos

I hope to see more of this type of thing....taking literature and "livening" it up a bit with some zombie action!! Totally got to grab a copy of this. In the mean time, I just picked up "Why we make mistakes" which I haven't started yet, but a friend recommended it...looks like fun.

Acidus wrote:

Jill is reading this. It is excellent.

RE: Just add Zombies

Can burning excess fat be as easy as exhaling? That's the finding of a provocative new study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who transplanted a fat-burning pathway used by bacteria and plants into mice. The genetic alterations enabled the animals to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet.

The feat, detailed in the current issue of Cell Metabolism introduces a new approach to combating the growing obesity problem in humans. Although the proof-of-concept study is far from being tested in humans, it may point to new strategies for borrowing biological functions from bacteria and other species to improve human health.

Technology Review: Making Fat Disappear