Seems like caffeine itself is basically not bad for kids beyond obvious stuff like keeping them from sleeping, suppressing appetite, coming in drinks with tons of sugar, etc.
I only know about this because of XKCD, but it's still pretty awesome...
Using a specially designed enclosure, 201 children 2 to 5 years of age took part in tests in which six devices were used, including two developed in the course of this experiment as the result of observation of behavior...Of those who let themselves out, one-half did so in less than 10 seconds. One-third of the children emerged unruffled, about half were upset but could be comforted easily, and a small group (11%) required some help to become calm.
Nice database of places that are hosting multidisciplinary academic conversations.
I've been hearing about this work for years now. It's nice to see a good writeup.
Very long, and very convincing, argument about why Brix are a crap measure of food quality.
"Two recent articles call for an openness revolution in science: one on GigaOM and the other in the Wall Street Journal. But they’ve got it all wrong. These folks are missing that the process of scientific discovery is not, at its core, an open process. It only becomes an open process at the point of publication."
Drugs may also let us fly around and shut lasers out of our fingertips!
"A common use of Flickr is to find photos. But what about finding a new species of insect? Insect biosystematist Dr. Shaun Winterton discovered a photo on Flickr of a green lacewing taken by Hock Ping Guek (known as Kurt on Flickr). The insect was not identifiable as a known species to Winterton, and after collaborating with the photographer, a specimen was collected in the Malaysian rainforest. Further examination showed that this indeed was a new species. The discoverers named it Semachrysa jade. The discovery was published in ZooKeys and the abstract reads: A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in Malaysia (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae): the confluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy."
"If you are a scientist or engineer, programming can enable you to work 10 to 100 times faster, and to come up with more creative solutions than colleagues who do not know how to program."
