Archive for March, 2007

Students Suing anti Plagiarism service TurnItIn

Two students from McLean High School in Virginia are suing the Anti-plagiarism service Turnitin for copyright violations. Turnitin is a company that provides teachers with an easy way to catch students who have plagiarized their papers. It actively crawls the internet archiving and categorizing material posted on websites. When a teacher or student submits a [ READ MORE ]

Google Search Trends

Last year I turned on Google’s search history feature for my account. basically what happens is that Google keeps a record of all searches you do while logged into your account. It also keeps links attached to your search record of any site you went to as a result of the search. This is really [ READ MORE ]

Space junk just misses airliner

A Russian satellite came down in the pacific ocean near New Zealand Tuesday night and narrowly missed an airliner that was flying from Santiago, Chile to Auckland, New Zealand. The Russian space agency had warned New Zealand and surrounding areas that the satellite was coming down, but it wasn’t supposed to be coming down quite [ READ MORE ]

Color Night Vision goggles

A company called Tenebraex has come up with a pair of night vision goggles that can create a color image rather than the traditional green monochromatic view of night vision goggles. The goggles are completely mechanical with no computer parts. So there is no heavy power pack required. The color view does require some light. [ READ MORE ]

High School kid creates Nuclear Fusion at home

Found this story about a High School senior that created nuclear fusion in his home. it seems that he bought all the parts needed from his local Home Depot and Ebay. This is actually a bit scary. Just think, your neighbor might be building a fusion reactor in his basement next door. Check out the [ READ MORE ]

Sugar powered batteries

Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have come up with a fuel cell that can run on nearly any sugar source. It converts the sugar into electricity and potentially can create power sources that are much smaller than current lithium batteries. Converting sugar into power is not a new concept. Several years ago some [ READ MORE ]

Intern selling stolen Civil war documents on Ebay

Denning McTague, an antiques and rare books dealer was interning for the national Archives in Philadelphia last summer. It seems that while he was working there, he walked out with at least 165 civil war documents. Including the official War Department’s announcement of President Lincoln’s death. He then sold them on Ebay to private collectors. [ READ MORE ]

Watches made from Bone and Wood

Found this amazing image of a pocket watch made entirely of Bone. The only things in the watch that aren’t bone, are the metal springs. Apparently the Bronnikov family from Vjatka, Russia made these watches back in the 1800s. The watches today can command up to $25,000 at auction. Each watch was hand carved and [ READ MORE ]

Memory editing using drugs?

Found this article about some scientists that were able to erase a specific memory in lab rats using an experimental drug. They trained the rats to associate a particular sound with pain. They were then able to make those rats forget that sound by giving them a combination of drugs.The scientists say this could be [ READ MORE ]

Teacher texts the cops for weed

Found this interesting story about a teacher who was trying to buy marijuana. It seems that she was trying to set up a meeting with her dealer but got the number wrong. instead of her dealers number, she ended up messaging the cell phone of an offduty cop. The cop thought the messages were a [ READ MORE ]