GEN-ERIC News

August 27th. The automobile was only a few years old when drivers began to get into trouble for speeding. The first known speeding ticket was issued to cab driver Jacob German in 1899 in New York City, cited by a policeman on a bicycle for driving at the breakneck speed of 12 miles an hour on Lexington Avenue. His license and registration were not confiscated, because neither were required until two years later. Across the nation, more than 100,000 people a day receive speeding tickets. The average citation costs $150 and often, a hefty increase in insurance rates. Nearly 43,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the U.S. In more than 13,000 of these cases, speed is a factor in the accident.

Call it a new type of fishing “net": studying the ocean by connecting the seafloor to the Internet. The first step of NEPTUNE, a joint U.S.-Canadian effort to create the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory, was made last week when the French ship Ile de Sein laid down submarine fiber-optic cables in the Pacific Ocean. Fiber-optic cables can transmit more data at a faster pace than other technologies. The Canadian section of the observatory, supported by the University of Victoria in Canada, will be built off the west coast of Vancouver Island. NEPTUNE Canada will connect hundreds of oceanographic instruments to the Internet by way of a 500-mile (800-kilometer) long fiber-optic cable that encircles the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. The plate, which is named after a Greek explorer, is sliding under the western side of the North American plate. The instruments include underwater microphones that will “eavesdrop on the ocean"; sensors that will monitor nutrient levels; and various video cameras, wave sensors, and seismometers.

For the first time, organo-sulfur compounds found in garlic have been identified as effective against glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor equivalent to a death sentence within a short period after diagnosis. Researchers studied three pure organo-sulfur compounds (DAS, DADS, and DATS) from garlic and the interaction with human glioblastoma cells. All three compounds demonstrated efficacy in eradicating brain cancer cells, but DATS proved to be the most effective. The study will be published in the September issue of the American Cancer Society’s journal, Cancer. Cancer cells have a high metabolism and require much energy for rapid growth. In this study, garlic compounds produced reactive oxygen species in brain cancer cells, essentially gorging them to death with activation of multiple death cascades.

Perfect pitch, the ability to identify the absolute pitch of musical notes, looks to be the product of a small number of genes, according to a new University of California study. Many traits, such as high blood pressure or height, have genetic links but span a broad spectrum with relatively few people having extreme measurements. But with perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch, a person either has it or doesn’t, according to UC researchers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “This striking, bimodal distribution resolves the question of whether absolute pitch ability lies in the tail of a continuous perceptual spectrum or, rather, defines a distinct perceptual trait,” the researchers said. Judging by the fact that most people score either very well or very poorly, though, the researchers suggest that “AP ability could be governed by the influence of only one or a few genes.” Perfect pitch may seem an amazing gift, but as the study authors point out, the visual equivalent isn’t. Humans generally are pretty good at identifying the frequency of light they’re seeing with a color label. Although perfect pitch appears to be a genetic trait, early exposure to music or musical training appears to influence its development in those with the right DNA.

More than 130 veterans of the Iraq war now face the daunting challenge of learning to live with a missing arm. To make that transition easier, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has launched a $55-million project that pools the efforts of prosthetics experts nationwide to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the functions of a natural limb. If all goes well, by 2009 the agency will petition the Food and Drug Administration to put the arm through clinical trials. This summer the team hit a critical milestone when it finished Proto 2, a thought-controlled mechanical arm—complete with hand and articulated fingers—that can perform 25 joint motions. This dexterity approaches that of a native arm, which can make 30 motions, and trumps the previously most agile bionic arm, the Proto 1, which could bend at the elbow, rotate its wrist and shoulder, and open and close its fingers. A person wearing a Proto 2 could conceivably play the piano. The next steps are to shrink the battery, develop more-efficient motors, and refine the bulky electrodes used to read electrical signals in muscles.

Picture a beautiful beach spanning miles of coastline, gently lapped by aqua-colored water - and sprinkled with glass. Ouch? Think again. It feels just like sand, but with granules that sparkle in the sunlight. Faced with the constant erosion of Florida’s beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass - crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand - to help fill gaps. It’s only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass. “Basically, what we’re doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state,” said Phil Bresee, Broward’s recycling manager. The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said. “You reduce waste stream that goes to our landfills and you generate materials that could be available for our beaches,” said Paden Woodruff of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The first observance of Labor Day is believed to have been a parade of 10,000 workers on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary. By 1893, more than half the states were observing a “Labor Day” on one day or another, and Congress passed a bill to establish a federal holiday in 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon afterward – designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Loosen the belt buckle another notch America: Obesity rates continued their climb in 31 states last year. No state showed a decline. Mississippi became the first state to crack the 30% barrier for adult residents considered to be obese. West Virginia and Alabama are just slightly behind, according to the Trust for America’s Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention. Colorado continued its reign as the leanest state in the nation with an obesity rate projected at 17.6%. This year’s report, for the first time, looked at obesity rates among children ages 10 to 17. The District of Columbia had the highest percentage – 22.8%. Utah had the lowest percentage of obese youth – 8.5%.

Gallup’s annual Work and Education survey finds that American workers report spending an average of 46 minutes commuting to and from work in a typical day. Workers at higher income levels and those who work at least 40 hours per week tend to have longer commutes than others. The vast majority of workers say their commute is not that stressful, but workers who travel at least an hour each day are much more likely than those who travel less than that to say their commute is stressful.

The risk of massive defaults on subprime mortgages and heavy debts now poses a bigger threat to U.S. economic prosperity than terrorism, a panel of U.S. business economists said on Monday. “The combined threat of subprime loan defaults and excessive indebtedness has supplanted terrorism and the Middle East as the biggest short-term threat to the U.S. economy,” the National Association for Business Economics said. The conclusion was based on a survey of 258 NABE members conducted between July 24 and Aug. 14 and updates one done in March. Only 20% of members said terrorism was now their top concern, compared with 35% in March. “Meanwhile, 18% of those surveyed pointed to the effects of the subprime debacle as their biggest concern, and the related issue of ‘excessive household and/or corporate debt’ was cited by another 14%,” NABE said.

An early warning system to detect and possibly prevent asthma attacks is being developed by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh: Researchers led by Alexander Star, a chemistry professor in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, created a sensor reactive to even minute amounts of nitric oxide, a gas prevalent in the breath of asthmatics, as they describe in the Aug. 22 online edition of the journal “Nanotechnology.” Star also will present his research at the American Chemical Society’s 234th National Meeting slated for Aug. 19-23 in Boston. The sensor consists of a carbon nanotube-a rolled, one-atom thick sheet of graphite 100,000 times smaller than a human hair-coated with a polyethylene imine polymer. Star cased the sensor in a hand-held device that people blow into to determine the nitric oxide content of their breath. The nitric oxide level in the breath of a person with asthma spikes as the airways grow more inflamed. High levels-perhaps two-thirds over normal-may precede an attack by one to three weeks, but possibly earlier depending on the asthma’s severity.

Blood and sweat could power a battery that looks just like a piece of paper, scientists say. “It’s flexible, it can be shaped or folded, you can poke a hole in it and it still works,” says chemist Robert Linhardt, a member of the research team that developed the new battery, which is made from paper and carbon nanotubes. He works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Regular AA batteries, like the ones in your camera, use battery acid to produce a current. But the new paper battery can run on blood or sweat. That means it might ultimately be used to power medical devices like hearing aids or pacemakers. “It could be easily implanted directly under the skin,” unlike metal batteries, which are less flexible, Linhardt says.

1859: Drillers strike oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. It becomes the first commercially viable oil well in the United States, the prototype for future oil well construction, and marks the birth of the U.S. petroleum industry. That the land around Crawford County held plenty of oil was already well-known. What was lacking was an effective method for extracting the crude and getting it to market. Enter Edwin Drake, who had spent the previous decade locating oil deposits in the area for the Seneca Oil Company. Frustrated by the limitations of existing methods of extraction, as well as problems with water seepage, Drake decided on a departure from the usual trench-digging technology. He turned to the methods used by salt-well drillers, which involved sinking a shaft straight to the source while providing more structural integrity. He also devised the drive pipe, made of segmented cast iron, as a boring tool.