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+ - This Solar-Powered Toilet Torches Poop for Public Health-> 2

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes "The goal is to build a self-contained block of toilets, similar to Coca-Cola's community blocks, that can also provide clean water and power for phone charging—to essentially turn toilets into a community center.

"I think it's hard to make sanitation as sexy as a cell phone, but by integrating into the community and making it a hub, it can be something more popular," Linden said.

The toilet itself, called the Sol-Char, is a fascinating bit of engineering. In order to sanitize waste without the help of massive treatment facilities, Linden's team instead designed the toilet to scorch waste in a chamber heated by fiber optic cables that pipe in heat from solar collectors on the toilet's roof.

"A solar concentrator has all this light focused in on one centimeter. It'd be fine if we could bring everyone's fecal waste up to that one point, like burning it with a magnifying glass," Linden said. "But that's not practical, so we were thinking of other ways to concentrate that light.""
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Comment: IP address AND the power switch (Score 1) 103

by billstewart (#46492837) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Management Interface On an IT Appliance?

You've got to set an IP address somehow. Typing a MAC address into your DHCP server isn't a cool way to do it, and you need an address that you know from the outside, not just an address the device can use to talk to servers it already knows about.

The equipment I've been using recently added a front-panel LCD/pushbutton mechanism that lets you set the IP address; previous versions of the hardware required you to either log in with an RS232 console that got a shell prompt or else use a VGA monitor and keyboard (and stupidly, the default on some versions of it required you to use the VGA/keyboard to tell the device to use the serial console.)

And while almost all the rest of the administration gets done using a web GUI, the system (which ran a custom Linux) didn't have an X server, so you typically needed to bring a VGA monitor and keyboard AND a laptop; the current versions let you do a bit more from CLI, so that's slightly less annoying.

But if you want to reimage the box (which you have to do for major version upgrades), ALMOST all of the steps can be done via the serial console. Except for the one step in the middle, where the box remembers its IP address settings but forgets that you were using a serial console instead of VGA, so you still need to have a technician onsite with a VGA, instead of being able to use a modem.

Comment: Re:"Religious Activities" not Religion per se (Score 1) 406

by Tom (#46492707) Attached to: Religion Is Good For Your Brain

Depression is one of the areas I don't like to joke about. /. and the Internet in general do not count, and there are studies to back that up but I can't be arsed to google them for you. You actually need to go outside and physically meet other people to get the benefits of social activities.

Comment: Re:Stress relief (Score 1) 406

by Tom (#46492689) Attached to: Religion Is Good For Your Brain

Alcohol has been shown to be not effective in people suffering from depression. I'm not aware of any studies with sex, though it stands to reason that it will have short-term benefits.

Not that I'd argue pro-religion, that's on the same page as alcohol - even if it helps, you don't want all the payload unless you are already insane. Unfortunately, religions know very well how they work and do prey on the weak.

Comment: wow (Score 1) 406

by Tom (#46492663) Attached to: Religion Is Good For Your Brain

Yes, believing in some soothing bullshit lessens your stress levels, which has all kinds of benefits.

Believing aliens from outer space will save you at the last second will certainly make going into war easier to cope with as well.

Is there a difference between these? Not really, no. It's just that one is socially acceptable thanks to millenia of indoctrination, while the other one strike almost everyone as ridiculous bullshit.

See, the problem with believing in nonsense is that even if it reduces your stress and makes you feel happy and whatever else, ultimately, you still believe in nonsense and with all the downsides that has. There've been a few recent articles on that. For example, the "let's-destroy-the-planet-for-profit" mindset would have a much harder time if its proponents wouldn't believe in an afterlife and would realize this life on this planet is all we've got.

I've had this argument a hundred times, and it never changes. Yes, religion does some good. And for every good it does, it does two evils.

Comment: "Out of Print" may still be in electronic form (Score 1) 74

by billstewart (#46492369) Attached to: Why Are There More Old Songs On iTunes Than Old eBooks?

Lots of books are out of print that were printed since the publishing industry went to digital production systems. That fiction book that's more than a year old and wasn't selling well? It's not coming out on dead trees again, but they've got it in Word. Older books may be in older formats, but even if they're proprietary formats, extracting the text (for books without pictures) isn't that hard.

It's a problem with publishing rights and contracts and publishers' predictions about profitability.

And even with books that require scanning, Dover Books did surprisingly good business for years selling fuzzy images of out-of-copyright books; these days it wouldn't be too hard to OCR and reimage most of them, but alternatively bits are cheap enough these days that they could be available in image formats instead of OCR.

Comment: Re:does it add up? (Score 1) 395

by Tom (#46491991) Attached to: Malaysian Flight Disappearance 'Deliberate'

Why go through the effort of 'hiding' the plane?

So they don't shoot you down. If you wanted to commit suicide in this matter, you probably don't want just the plane, you want to fly it into something (9/11 probably gave you the idea).

So no, it doesn't add up - unless some nation shot it down and doesn't want to admit it. But that's as much speculation as anything else.

+ - Why Are There More Old Songs on iTunes than Old eBooks?->

Submitted by Paul J Heald
Paul J Heald writes "The vast majority of books and songs from the 20th Century are out-of-print. New data show music publishers doing an admirable job of digitizing older content, but book publishers fail miserably at putting old works in eBook form. New research by Paul Heald explains why."
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Science

Religion Is Good For Your Brain 406

Posted by timothy
from the still-looking-for-a-nice-atheist-church dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Sheila M. Elred writes in Discovery Magazine that a recent study has found that people at risk of depression were much less vulnerable if they identified as religious. Brain MRIs revealed that religious participants had thicker brain cortices than those who weren't as religious. 'One of the worst killers of brain cells is stress,' says Dr. Majid Fotuhi. 'Stress causes high levels of cortisol, and cortisol is toxic to the hippocampus. One way to reduce stress is through prayer. When you're praying and in the zone you feel a peace of mind and tranquility.' The reports concluded that a thicker cortex associated with a high importance of religion or spirituality may confer resilience to the development of depressive illness in individuals at high familial risk for major depression. The social element of attending religious services has also been linked to healthy brains. 'There's something magical about socializing,' says Fotuhi. 'It releases endorphins in the brain. It's hard to know whether it's through religion or a gathering of friends, but it improves brain health in the long term.'" (Read more, below.)

+ - Religion Is Good For Your Brain

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Sheila M. Elred writes in Discovery Magazine that a recent study has found that people at risk of depression were much less vulnerable if they identified as religious and brain MRIs revealed that religious participants had thicker brain cortices than those who weren’t as religious. “One of the worst killers of brain cells is stress,” says Dr. Majid Fotuhi. “Stress causes high levels of cortisol, and cortisol is toxic to the hippocampus. One way to reduce stress is through prayer. When you’re praying and in the zone you feel a peace of mind and tranquility.” The reports concluded that a thicker cortex associated with a high importance of religion or spirituality may confer resilience to the development of depressive illness in individuals at high familial risk for major depression. The social element of attending religious services has also been linked to healthy brains. “There’s something magical about socializing,” says Fotuhi. “It releases endorphins in the brain. It’s hard to know whether it's through religion or a gathering of friends, but it improves brain health in the long term." Listening to sermons and reading religious works like the Bible may also invoke a cognitive benefit. “You’re exercising your higher cortical function, thinking about complex concepts that require some imagination," says Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health at Duke University and a professor of psychiatry. According to Koenig the benefits of devout religious practice, particularly involvement in a faith community and religious commitment, are that people cope better. "In general, they cope with stress better, they experience greater well-being because they have more hope, they're more optimistic, they experience less depression, less anxiety, and they commit suicide less often. They don't drink alcohol as much, they don't use drugs as much, they don't smoke cigarettes as much, and they have healthier lifestyles. They have stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, probably better cardiovascular functioning, and probably a healthier hormonal environment physiologically—particularly with respect to cortisol and adrenaline And they live longer." So where does that leave non-believers? “Out of luck, I guess,” Koenig jokes. “Actually, I would suspect that people doing the types of things like religious people do — socializing, doing similarly complex cognitive tasks, would have similar benefits. But it is interesting that religion provides that whole package of things that people can adopt and pursue over time.” Dr Dan Blazer says the study is very interesting but is still exploratory and that spirituality may be a marker of something else, such as socioeconomic status. “It’s hard to study these things," concludes Fotuhi . "It’s why research has stayed away from them. But there does seem to be a strong link between spirituality and better brain health.”"

"If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy." -- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitir

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