It seems that the first US patent for an internal-combustion powered ‘Pogo’ stick was issued to inventor R.J. Mays back in 1950. The jumping machine was intended to run on gasoline, and, according its creator was “…highly efficient and amusing in operation.” It’s not altogether clear whether May’s power-stick ever went into production, but a similar(ish) device, which was granted a US patent ten years later, did. According its inventor Mr. G.

Sea-level rise over the coming century could affect some regions far more than others, according to a numerical model which projects that parts of the Pacific will see the highest rates of rise while some polar regions will experience falls in relative sea levels due to the ways sea, land and ice interact globally.

Next Sunday Italians will vote to change the composition of the two houses of parliament: the "lower" Camera dei Deputati and "upper" Senato della Repubblica. And as often happens with Italian politics, things are complicated. So, despite this site is mostly visited for other reasons than trivialities about politics in foreign countries, I thought I would provide here my own short-sighted, biased panorama of the situation.

If you are a long-time Thor comic book reader, you know Thor's hammer used to be really, really heavy. That means Thor used to be really, really strong. 

Somewhere along the way Big Hulk lobbyists decided that the green guy should be the strongest character in Marvel comics,so writers gave him both virtually unlimited strength and decided that Thor's hammer, the creatively-named Mjolnir (doesn't it just sound like Norse should sound?) was magic, and that is why only he could lift it.  He wasn't the strongest guy around any more, which left it with being supernatural, kind of a cop-out even to me as a kid.

Neurim Pharmaceuticals has announced positive results from a phase II clinical study evaluating the efficacy and safety of Piromelatine (Neu-P11), a novel investigational multimodal sleep medicine developed for the treatment of patients with primary and co-morbid insomnia.

The new results are from a recent double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled, parallel group, non-confirmatory, sleep-laboratory study. The study evaluated piromelatine compared to placebo in 120 adult primary insomnia patients, ages 18 years and older. 

Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini,  Professor of Regenerative Surgery at Karolinska Institutet, has become famous worldwide due to successfully transplanting bioengineered stem cell-based trachea, composed of both artificial and biological material, in patients. That was an important waypoint on the road to the Big 5 organs, which are far largers and more complex.

Next up is the the esophagus and diaphragm and an experimental attempt to regenerate brain material in mice and rats, he said during his seminar at the scientific AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. 

Science has always had a social component. Much of science is a neutral endeavor for the public good but in modern times the political component has meant navigating treacherous social and environmental policy waters. 

Not an easy task when science requires help from outside its field. Different social and science fields use different methods and scientists and policy makers rarely work together.  The government has taken over increased government control of projects and funding since World War II but modern problems mean that modern types of research centers are needed, as are new ways of organizing collaborations between scientists and policy makers - it can't be just political appointees handing out money to research the administration happens to like. 

The Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory (SAIL) has attempted construction of a ‘Synthetic Laughter Generator’ – which could be of use as a responder to their ‘Automatic Sarcasm Recognizer’ previously described.

The Earth just got a few shots across our bow, what with a giant asteroid hurtling between us and the moon, and another (fortunately much smaller) space rock exploding over Russia, causing a surprising amount of destruction.  

So what can we do about the solar system trying to bomb us?  Fortunately, the Space Generation Advisory Council is on the case with its Move an Asteroid contest.

Bacteria didn't just impact our evolution, we impacted the evolution of bacteria also, according to a study of DNA preserved in calcified bacteria on the teeth of ancient human skeletons.

The ancient genetic record reveals the negative changes in oral bacteria brought about by the dietary shifts as humans became farmers, and later with the introduction of food manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution.