In a previous article I wanted to know if I could use the recording medium from old floppy disk as an infrared (IR) filter to shoot infrared photography on an iPod. I built a simple IR detector using Snap Circuits to test how well the floppy disk would absorb visible light yet let infrared wavelengths pass through. In that circuit I used the photodiode Snap Circuits block (Infrared Receiver U24) as the infrared detector. Even though a photodiode was useful for building a simple IR detector, another electronic component that is often used to detect infrared light is the phototransistor.

Treating patients who suffer from a common condition known as arteriovenous malformation (AVM), which causes blood vessels in the brain to tangle, increases their risk of stroke, a study has found.

People rteriovenous malformation have a better outcome if doctors treat their symptoms only and not the AVM, according to the team of doctors looked at the long-term outcome of patients with the condition, which is caused by abnormal connections between the arteries and veins in the brain. 

Over the next decade, facial transplants will become more common, done at regional hospitals the way heart transplants are done now, according to a retrospective analysis of all known facial transplants worldwide.

The surgeons behind the analysis conclude that the procedure is relatively safe, increasingly feasible, and a clear life-changer that can and should be offered to far more carefully selected patients.  The review team found that the transplants are highly effective at restoring people to fully functioning lives after physically disfiguring and socially debilitating facial injuries, but are not without risks. 

The mobile using public became turned off by QR codes for mobile devices that were nothing but a coupon that they were going to find in the newspaper or on the website.

Similarly, gimmicky contest ads and flashy free-prize messages that can at least be somewhat ignored on a desktop monitor are hard to miss on a mobile, and that may be even more of a turnoff for mobile users.

Yes, you like "Frozen", everyone liked "Frozen". And Idina Menzel blew up the musical "Wicked" when she sang "Defying Gravity" so it's no surprise she blew up "Let It Go" when the catalyst in the Disney hit cartoon came to terms with her arcane gifts - but it's just a cartoon. Much as we might like to think it's permissible to do the same if the reasons are valid, there is a time and a place for such displays.

A corporate board room is likely not that place.

A rare opportunity, a look behind the curtains of "scientific peer review" corrupting science; moreover, revealing sniffs of the swamp that is the established community publishing on memristors - another case of hype in science, but the implications are general and can be only more severe with issues where more money than Hewlett Packard’s is involved, or powerful political interests such as with global warming.

A famous Grouch Marx comedy bit goes that he wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have him as a member. Elitism sells has value.

In a famous "Seinfeld" episode, customers dutifully lined up for lunch and if they deviated from protocol, the Soup Nazi banished them. Such high-falutin' behavior works, according to a new paper in the Journal of Consumer Research. At least when it comes to luxury brands, the ruder the sales staff the better the sales, say scholars from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business. 

Consumers who get the brush-off at a high-end retailer can become more willing to purchase and wear pricey togs.

I can be lazy. I was famous for it as a child. I didn't bother to walk, I didn't bother to talk. When I got older, if I had to do a chore, I found a way to be a screw-up and break something. I had unlimited time for D&D and art and sports, though, and I did well enough in school to get a scholarship to college. Because those things weren't work.

If only I had Alicia Silverstone as a mom, who knows how much more brain power I could have devoted to higher pursuits? Because Silverstone has figured out how to optimize everything. 

New research looking at the success of clinical trials of stem cell therapy shows that, when trials appear to be more successful, more discrepancies in trial data are also evident.

Discrepancies were defined as two (or more) reported facts that could not both be accurate because they were logically or mathematically incompatible. For example, one trial reported that it involved 70 patients, who were divided into two groups of 35 and 80.

The researchers found eight trials that each contained over 20 discrepancies.

The meta-analysis of 49 randomized controlled trials of bone marrow stem cell therapy for heart disease in the British Medical Journal identified and listed over 600 discrepancies within the trial reports. 

One of the foremost biomedical mysteries of the past century is the origin of the 1918 pandemic flu virus and its unusual severity, which resulted in a death toll of approximately 50 million people. 

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) sheds light on the devastating 1918 pandemic and suggests that the types of flu viruses to which people were exposed during childhood may predict how susceptible they are to future strains, which could inform vaccination strategies and pandemic prevention and preparedness.