Moments of Awareness

A linen bra found in an Austrian castle in 2008. The garment dates back 600 years. CREDIT: Archeological Institute of the University of Innsbruck View full size image A surprisingly modern-looking linen bra dating back 600 years has been found in a medieval castle in Austria. According to the Associated Press, the lingerie was first discovered in 2008, but the garments have flown under the radar until now. The finding is a surprise to fashion historians, who have believed that the bra was a relative newcomer to the clothing scene, dating back only a century or so. "We didn't believe it ourselves," Beatrix Nutz, the University of Innsbruck archeologist who discovered the garments, told the AP . "From what we knew, there was no such thing as bralike garments in the 15th century." [ Cleavage Countdown: 8 Facts About Breasts ] High School Educa...

Robert Downs was arrested after police found his camouflaged residence in a county park, where he was cultivating marijuana. (Los Angeles Sheriff Parks Bureau) An elaborate and illegal camouflaged residence, outfitted with bunk beds and a barbecue patio, has been discovered near a Los Angeles County animal refuge. Eight months ago, Robert Downs, 51,  set up a small structure in the woods near the Tujunga Ponds Wildlife Sanctuary in Sunland, Calif. To hide his home from police, Downs, who was previously homeless, sprayed it with camouflage paint and cut down nearby trees, said Johnie Jones, a deputy in the Parks Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. [...] Full article (and news video) at  abcnews.go.com The video at the end of the article will give you a chuckle if ya watch the whole thing. :D Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

President Barack Obama meets with his national security team in 2010. Flickr/White House The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Obama administration over the deaths of three American citizens who were killed by US drone strikes in Yemen last year. Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed in the same attack in early September; Awlaki's 16 year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in a separate strike later that month. "This suit is an effort to enforce the Constitution's most fundamental guarantee, the guarantee of due process," said Jamil Jaffer, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU on a conference call with reporters. "Ten years ago extrajudicial killing by the United [...] Full post at  motherjones.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

The National Ignition Facility set a record of laser shots on July 5 by delivering 1,000 times more power than what the U.S. uses. CREDIT: Damien Jemison/LLNL View full size image A U.S. fusion lab has made a record-shattering laser shot that focused a cluster of lasers on a single target like a mini Death Star. The new record for the highest-power laser shot paves the way for the lab's efforts to create sustainable fusion energy, similar to what takes place in the fiery heart of stars. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of power during its historic test shot on July 5 — about 1,000 times more power than the entire United States uses at any given time. That power came from 1.85 [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily , a sister site to LiveScience. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @ News_Innovation , or on Facebook . Full article at  livesc...

[T]he Number One way that most of us know what we know is … autonomous, firsthand, curiosity-driven, wide-ranging, self-directed, trial and error, immediate feedback, personal experience. [...] Full post at  dangerouslyirrelevant.org   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

Among the deluge of advice on how to be healthier, a new study suggests changing just two particular habits would go a long way toward helping people shape up: Get off the couch, and eat more fruits and vegetables. People in the study who were told to follow those two bits of advice not only did so but changed other unhealthy habits in the process. Meanwhile, those in the study who were working toward other combinations of goals, such as exercising more and eating less fat, fared less well overall. "Americans have all these unhealthy behaviors that put them at high risk for   heart [...] Full article at  foxnews.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

With more than half the U.S. currently in drought, concerns have mounted over the consequences of the arid climate on the country's crop yields. But droughts have far reaching effects beyond the farm, including many effects on human health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Here are seven potential health concerns that occur with drought: Bad air Droughts can reduce air quality and compromise the health of people with certain conditions, according to the CDC. During a drought, dry soils and wildfires increase the amount of airborne particles, such as pollen and smoke. [...] Full article at  vitals.msnbc.msn.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

YouTube has announced a new feature to protect people in videos of protests, for example, from retaliation from oppressive governments. The new "Blur All Faces" tool detects faces in a video and blurs their features. The results look a little like the blurred faces of people caught by happenstance in Google Street View images.  Families may also like to use the tool to blur out kids' faces in videos of birthday parties or soccer games,  YouTube wrote in a blog post . "Our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube," the company wrote. Witness, a nonprofit group that supports the video recording of human rights [...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This story was provided by InnovationNewsDaily , a sister site to LiveScience. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation , or on Facebook . Full article at  livescience.com   Posted via email from Moments of Awareness

By Clay Dillow Posted 04.02.2012 at 12:38 pm   5 Comments Robot Pebbles The "smart sand" would be made up of much smaller units akin to these cubes, which each contain a small amount of computing power and attach themselves to their neighbors via electropermanent magnets that allow them switch their magnetism on and off with a single jolt of electricity. M. Scott Brauer via MIT News It sounds like something out of a fantasy film: a vat of sand into which you plunge a small object only to watch the sand bind together to form larger copies of the same object. Such “smart sand” isn’t exactly a reality just yet, but a team at MIT’s Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) has a vision for tiny granules --“smart pebbles”--imbued with a small amount of computing power and covered in magnets on the outside. Piled together in a heap, the small amount of computing power in each grain would become a single distributed comput...

The remains of two cavemen, yielding the oldest DNA yet of modern humans, were discovered at La Brana Aritero site in Leon, Spain. CREDIT: Alberto Tapia View full size image What may be the oldest fragments of the modern human genome found yet have now been revealed — DNA from the 7,000-year-old bones of two cavemen unearthed in Spain, researchers say. These findings suggest the cavemen there were not the ancestors of the people found in the region today, investigators added. Scientists have recently sequenced the genomes of our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans . When it came to our lineage, the oldest modern human genomes recovered yet came from Ötzi the Iceman , a 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps in 1991. Researchers have salvaged DNA from even older human cells, but this comes from the mitochondria that generate energy for our bodies...