Soon we won’t need hypodermic needles. This device delivers a high-velocity jet of liquid that breaches the skin at the speed of sound: [T]he MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator — a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached...

Who would have guessed: Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S. Between 1997 and 2007, inequality in the U.S. grew by almost 10 percent, making it more unequal than Russia, infamous for its powerful oligarchs. The U.S. is not faring well historically, either. Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution. To...

Isn’t it obvious? This study finds 96% of restaurant entrees exceed USDA limits: [R]esearchers looked at the nutritional content of 30,923 menu items, including those from children’s menus, from 245 brands of restaurants. They found that 96% of them failed to meet recommendations for the combination of calories, sodium, fat and saturated fat set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The restaurants included fast-food, buffet, takeout, family style and upscale restaurants, said Helen Wu,...

Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist and author of Predictably Irrational, has done some research into the gap between what Americans say they want and what our political system (and their voting behavior) has given us. From Radio Open Source: First, when he asks his thousands of respondents to estimate the real division of wealth in the US, and then to propose an ideal distribution, we Americans confirm our sentimental attachment to a polite tilt of privilege. We cherish our mythic legacy of quasi-egalitarian...

Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech: Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man’s version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you’re multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper, [MIT's Erin Treacy] Solovey and her team set up a maze with two remotely controlled robots. The operator, equipped with fNIRS headgear, has...

TechnoLlama, with a view from abroad: From the start the Bill was advertised with an unhealthy dose of jingoism, its proponents sold it as a way to defend against foreign cyber-threats. While not mentioned specifically, the Act talks mostly about US intelligence agencies sharing information with private parties (with adequate security clearance) and viceversa. Checks and balances are supposedly placed on the use of that information and how it is to be stored and handled by the US government. The...

In a rushed vote, the House passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to168. Techdirt’s Leigh Beadon calls it an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American: Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity...

Doctors are asking again: Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades. They plan to discuss studies of psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating depression in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs or alcohol. The results so far are encouraging but also preliminary, and researchers caution...

I accept that multitasking is a myth (in actuality, we’re switch-tasking). But I’ve refused to accept that it’s bad for us. A tiny bit of vindication from Science Daily: Our obsession with multiple forms of media is not necessarily all bad news, according to a new study by Kelvin Lui and Alan Wong from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their work shows that those who frequently use different types of media at the same time appear to be better at integrating information from multiple...

Sweeping the Internets, if you’ve yet to see it (or even if you have) it’s well worth watching (again). Caine’s Arcade, the story of a 9 year old boy in East LA who built an arcade out of cardboard in his dad’s auto parts shop… The icing on the cake, a scholarship fund the filmmaker set up for Caine’s college education. The video was posted Monday; it’s raised more than $90,00 so far. Via.

Outstanding investigation: Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the integrity of school testing. The analysis doesn’t...

Makes this good point: I find most liberals who are critical of Fox news don’t watch it. They have a perspective informed by clips they see on The Daily Show, or the most outrageous thing that they’ve ever seen passed around that Sean Hannity said, but they’re not watching the day-to-day news coverage which is really thoughtful and the probing debates on some of the hot topics of the day. In truth, I get to go on and fight hard for what I believe in. No one tells me what to say. Frankly, I...

In 2008… Media Matters: Following GOP strategy, Fox News is again blaming the Obama Administration for rising gas prices — a claim that has been repeatedly debunked by energy analysts. But back in the summer of 2008 when the average U.S. gasoline price hit a record high of $4.11, Fox said that “no President has the power to increase or to lower gas prices” and the only way to reduce our vulnerability to gas price spikes is to use less oil. Yes, they’re partisan shills...

A Mary­land pedi­a­tri­cian found that seri­ous injuries to pedes­tri­ans wear­ing head­phones have more than tripled in the last six years. Neil Wagner: Look­ing over case reports of pedes­tri­an injuries or fatal­i­ties involv­ing mov­ing vehi­cles between 2004 and 2011, the doc­tor and his team found 116 where the vic­tim was using head­phones. Sev­en­ty per­cent of these acci­dents were fatal. More than two-thirds of the vic­tims were male (68 per­cent) and under the...

TED 2012 Remixed: It’s Time For TED. A video homage that works just as well as a critique… The New Inquiry, Against TED: What began as something spontaneous and unique has today become a parody of itself. What was exceptional and emergent in the realm of ideas has been bottled, packaged, and sold back to us over and over again. The whole TED vibe has come to resemble a sales pitch. It’s tempting to dismiss the “Web 3.0!” “Wave of the future!” atmosphere around TED as simply...

The future is closer than we think. Really: In a small clean room tucked into the back of San Diego–based startup Organovo, Chirag Khatiwala is building a thin layer of human skeletal muscle. He inserts a cartridge of specially prepared muscle cells into a 3-D printer, which then deposits them in uniform, closely spaced lines in a petri dish. This arrangement allows the cells to grow and interact until they form working muscle tissue that is nearly indistinguishable from something removed from...

Stormy weather: The death toll stood at 32 early Saturday, including 14 each in Kentucky and Indiana, three in Ohio and one in Alabama. Tornadoes also were reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Insurance industry leaders who met with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Friday, before the weekend’s mayhem, see humans as a cause: “From our industry’s perspective, the footprints of climate change are around us and the...

Newt & Rick & Mitt see moral decay, but where’s the evidence? The Economist: When considering America’s moral decline, my first instinct was to look at the crime rate. If Satan is at work in America, he’s probably nicking wallets and assaulting old ladies. But over the past several decades the crime rate has fallen dramatically, despite what you may think. The homicide rate has been cut in half since 1991; violent crime and property crime are also way down. Even those...

Rumor has it that Microsoft could have 9 flavors of Windows 8. That’s up from 6 versions of Windows 7. And seven more than Apple’s two versions of OS X: If this key is to be believed, Windows 8 will be available in the six editions of Windows 7 with the addition of Windows 8 Professional Plus, Enterprise Evaluation, and ARM edition. That makes nine Windows 8 versions in all — seven more editions than Apple’s OS X. The difference is important. It speaks to the approach these companies...

AP reports that he “coasted to victory” in Arizona and has a slight lead in Michigan. But… LATimes: Initial exit polling in the Michigan primary suggests that in a tight battle between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, the votes of Democrats could prove decisive in the key Republican presidential skirmish — and more of those votes are going to Santorum. According to CNN, 10% of those who voted in the primary identified themselves as Democrats, representing a larger share of the...