I'm not a Star Trek fan but this always reminds me of A. C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. It is exciting to live in the future.

It is very easy to make a test that detects 100% of patients who will eventually get a disease. Just make it always say "positive" and you're done. The hard thing is balancing the ability to detect a disease and avoid false negatives (sensitivity) with the ability to detect absence of disease and avoid false positives (specificity). Related to this are the positive predictive negative predictive values. Since Alzheimer's is very difficult to diagnose clinically and the only definitive proof is a biopsy/autopsy, I very much doubt a screening test would exist with a 100 % sensitivity and/or specificity.

Ever watched a Shuttle returning?

Space X is posting updates here: http://www.spacex.com/webcast/ , unfortunately there is no live video feed, only status updates.

Wonder no more: they'll get beaten up just the same. See here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/16/augmented-reality-explorer-steve-mann-assaulted-at-parisian-mcdonalds/

The official site now has a video that includes some of the on-body camera shots, I am sure we will see many more of them as the footage is processed. I believe he had a couple cameras mounted on the suit, so don't worry.

I had the original for 18 years. Then a wire broke in the PS2 cable. It is possibly the best piece of hardware I've ever laid my hand on.

Wait. These articles are able to glorify Putin in anyone's eyes? I thought by now every new piece about how he saved a puppy from a burning house serves only to further ridicule him and make fun of him. He tries so hard that it became a kind of comedy performance. With a lot of these articles, couple years ago, you could mistake them from something from Onion.com. He became a caricature of himself, an iron-fisted evil dictator who's trying so hard people laugh at him.

I am not so sure there is that much to be ticked-off by. Sagan's widow is quoted as saying that "...Sagan would have been thrilled to see his life’s work made available to the public." That does not sound like a greedy estate trying to get rich from selling stuff she inherited (not that there would be anything wrong with that). TFA is unclear on what the money went towards, I can imagine that transporting, sorting, filing and displaying the (large) collection is no easy feat and that the money is perhaps to be spent on that? Mrs. Druyan was not only Sagan's wife but also co-author, I don't see her as waiting for the highest bidder to auction off her inheritance.

"Utterly dominate" as in ~8 % of the mobile phone market? Or ~25 % of the smartphone market? Apple is big, but utter domination looks different, IMO.

While I agree with your point about touchscreens in cars, I don't see this as a solution, since these buttons are not pressed, they are touched, you can't just use tactile feedback to locate the right button and then press it, you'll "press" any button you touch. Still, I am curious where this technology will evolve and what uses it will find.

Didn't Intel do something like this in 1994? :)

Several of my colleagues work/have worked for Doctors without Borders and through them I have met some of their non-medical personnel as well (esp. the logisticians). They strike me as one of the most deserving charities who provide relief without agenda (they are secular). I occasionally donate to other charities as well, but MSF are my No. 1 and I admire their work.

I was going to write basically the same comment. You'd think that if they truly believed they would not have a problem going to a lecture and hearing arguments against their belief. It's the furious opposition to education that betrays how little some people *really* believe. They just cover their ears and go "la la la" not to hear anything that would lead to even worse cognitive dissonance than they already have to face.

Exactly. If the possible answers really were ALWAYS, SOMETIMES, NEVER, I would expect all scientists to answer SOMETIMES, regardless of their own belief/lack thereof.

There was a study done to quantify what people understand under terms such as "sometimes", "usually", "frequently" and so on. It turns out "sometimes" ranges from 1 % to some 80 % (I don't have the exact numbers now, I saw the study in a workshop given by people from the National Board of Medical Examiners).

Without reading the original study though, I am inclined to think that it may be the journalists interpretation of what they think the researchers said.