Funny Video featuring Google Takeout is a post from: Stuffworks.com

Google has released a new service called Google Takeout which allows you to download all of your data from multiple services like Picassa, Google Contacts and others and download them in a single convenient zip file that can be used to move the data to another service or to make a personal backup.

This hilarious video covers the details of the service and manages to do it without showing you anything about how to use it.

Gingerbread launcher hidden under Honeycomb’s pretty interface is a post from: Stuffworks.com

Google has indicated that tablets and smartphones won’t be sharing the same Android build until Ice Cream Sandwich, scheduled to be released in Q4, though interestingly enough, it turns out that Honeycomb actually has Gingerbread’s interface quietly tucked underneath. According to modder Graffix0214, all you need for making the jump is one simple tweak in a system file: assuming you already have root access, use your preferred method –Pocketables recommends the LCDDensity for Root app –to change the LCD density value to 170 or higher to emulate a smaller, denser display. After a reboot, you should then see the familiar gingerbread launcher.

Visit pocketables for more info and a demo video

Future Medicine is a post from: Stuffworks.com

Functional Medicine

Functional medicine is an alternative modality that focuses on improving the physiological function as a primary method of improving the health of patients with chronic disease.

Therapeusis defines this approach as “personalized medicine” that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes, using your signs and symptoms, to ameliorate chronic conditions.

Functional medicine practitioners provide chronic care management with the belief that:

The Therapeusis program identifies 33 organ systems as a functional assessment based on the results that you enter through our questionnaires. The program will generate 3 areas of concern for the condition(s):

1. Immediate Concerns [Herbs-Vitamins-Minerals]

This is the organ system that is of immediate concern, contributing to your sign and symptoms. Conditions should improve with herbal tea(s), dietary reform, and correcting vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

2. Core Cause [Eclectic Remedy]

This is the organ system that must be dealt with in order to fully remedy the condition(s) and prevent a return of your symptoms. Homeopathic polycrests are known to be most suitable.

3. Anchor Initiators [Subconscious - Emotional]

The anchor point is where you arrived in early life that set the patterns and staging of the adult onset of symptoms. Memories, habits and life style adaptations have weighed in as “viewpoints” or aberrated thinking patterns resulting in unresolved conflicts, avoidance factors, and deep emotional issues. Anchor points are best treated spiritually with methods like counseling, hypnosis, PCT (photocognitive therapy), etc.

When your results are received, simply click on the organ link and retrieve a full explanation page of the gland/organ, diet and lifestyle changes that will improve the condition(s).

Sample results shown below.

MSI New Dual Screen Netbook Tablet is a post from: Stuffworks.com

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a device with dual touch screens that folds up, but it’s the first time we’ve actually seen a working demo of one.  At its CES booth, MSI is showing off its own dual touchscreen tablet prototype and this one really works.

The device was shown in two sizes, a 7-inch and a 10-inch, though the 7-inch wasn’t working or powered on but the 10-inch unit was working. MSI was kind enough to remove the glass casing over it to let Laptop Mag do a  brief hands-on video on Friday and then, on Saturday, to provide a representative to walk them through the tablet’s features.

Tablet Features

The tablet has dual 10-inch capacitive touch screens running at 1024 x 600 each. It sports an Intel Menlow processor, which an MSI rep said was the 1.6-GHz Atom Z530, and runs Windows 7 ($75.99) home premium. The tablet uses an SSD drive (as opposed to a hard drive) which helps it stay slim and power efficient. The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.

A utility on the screen allows you to switch between a couple of different screen modes. By default each screen is treated as an independent desktop so a window that’s maximized on one side won’t carry over to the other. However, the utility lets you switch to single screen mode, where Windows see the two displays as one giant display that is effectively double the horizontal or vertical resolution. You can view either single or dual display modes in portrait or landscape orientations.

Viewing angles were a little poor on the demo unit as colors on one screen would be clear while the other appeared washed out if the screen was folded at certain angles. Our rep said viewing angles are a huge concern that MSI will resolve before bringing a product to market.

The capacitive display on the demo unit does not support multitouch, but tapping icons and scrolling through Web pages and PDFs worked well with a single finger swipe. For fast text entry, the tablet features a large, comfortable on-screen keyboard that, when activated, takes up the entire desktop of the bottom screen, assuming you position the tabet in portait mode. Amazingly, the keys offer tactile feedback that makes them feel more like a physical  thanks to built-in haptics technology. The MSI rep said that, in the future, users might be able to adjust the level of feedback to suit their tastes.

The system on display did not have a battery, but MSI told us that they are working hard to find a lightweight, high-capacity solution that will keep the weight of the unit low while providing 8 to 10 hours of battery life.

Future of the MSI’s Tablet

Even though the unit on display was a concept design without a name, MSI Director of Sales Andy Tung told Laptop Mag, the company is working hard to to turn the concept it into a shipping product, perhaps in time for the back-to-school season. None of the specs are certain to make it into the final product, the company still  has lots of work to do. We can imagine that a final product could have multitouch capability and 3G connectivity, two things the demo lacked. There’s no price yet, either, but Tung said they want the tablet to be extremely affordable.

Several journalists have started to call this device an eReader, but we have to squarely disagree. For certain, its design makes it ideal for reading long texts in portrait mode or placing a different page of a book on each screen in landscape mode. However, because it offers a complete Windows 7 experience, it’s also great for surfing the Web, checking e-mail, and viewing media. We can also imagine social media updaters and bloggers using it to update from the road. Some day soon, we may see bloggers sitting next to us at press events using an MSI dual screen tablet to live blog.

If you’d like to see the MSI dual screen tablet in action, check out the videos at Laptop Mag.

Dinosaur Soft Tissue is a post from: Stuffworks.com

To the right you can see a picture of T. rex bone tissue described as “soft,” “fibrous,” “flexible,” and “resilient”.  This tissue is a combination of blood cells and connective tissue that is currently undergoing debate.  It seems that there are 2 lines of theory associated with this discovery:

1. The blood & connective tissue of this T. rex has survived for over 65,000,000 years and preserved due to unknown curcumstances that cannot be explained but must be true based on the idea that the evolutionary model of science and history cannot be questioned.
2. The blood & connective tissue of this T. rex has survived for over 4000 years since the time when it was burried during Noah’s Flood as described in the Bible in Genesis 7 & 8.

Neither group is willing to accept the explaination that the other side gives, however, one of the top research scientists who made the discovery is taking pause to consider what it could mean. 

In an article published in Science in 1993 called  ”Dino DNA: The Hunt and the Hype” by Virginia Morell,  there is an article that referenced then-recent findings of fresh dinosaur tissue:

Mary Schweitzer, a biology graduate student at Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies, was examining a thin section of Tyrranosaurus rex bone…when she noticed a series of peculiar structures. Round and tiny and nucleated, they were threaded through the bone like red blood cells in blood vessels. But blood cells in a dinosaur bone should have disappeared eons ago. “I got goose bumps,” recalls Schweitzer. “It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. I said to the lab technician: ‘The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?’”

It will be interesting to see how evolutionary scientists decide to explain how that blood and connective tissue was able to survive for the supposed 65,000,000 years that they claim it did.

Sailing Rocks is a post from: Stuffworks.com

The classical natural wonders are huge and hard to miss – vast canyons, giant mountains and the like. Many of the most fantastic natural phenomena, however, are also least easy to spot. Some are incredibly rare while others are located in hard-to-reach parts of the planet.

The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert of Death Valley have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known to move up to hundreds of yards at a time. Some scientists have proposed that a combination of strong winds and surface ice account for these movements. However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks starting side by side and moving at different rates and in different directions. Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory as wind speeds of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.

Are you smarter than a 5th grader – Kelly Pickler is a post from: Stuffworks.com

It is hard to pass up a video as funny as this one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Heaviest Element Known to Science is a post from: Stuffworks.com

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.