Balance Sheet
Assets
Healing Mist
Researchers at Imperial College London find that the anti-inflammatory compound resveratrol, responsible for giving red wine some of its positive health benefits, may be more useful in a different form. Delivered in an aerosol mist, it may treat pulmonary disease, asthma, and perhaps arthritis.
Detector, M.D.
Doctors go WiFi to treat people with Alzheimer's disease. Patients suffering from dementia can be discretely monitored for signs of distress while remaining in their own homes via wearable motion detectors. Such an approach might stave off the day the patients are institutionalized.
Poop Power
Scientists at Pennsylvania State University develop a microbial fuel cell that both treats wastewater and provides energy. The fuel cell captures electrons given off by bacteria as they digest raw sewage and turns the electrons into electricity.
Sounds Good
Big Music takes a hit in two court cases. A Pennsylvania court rules that Net service providers must tell customers when record companies want to subpoena their records in file sharing cases. And a New York court rules that a law against selling bootlegs must not grant "perpetual protection" to live recordings.
Smart Cure
Researchers following up on the Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 find that intelligence is a better predictor of a long, healthy life than is social background. Smart people seem to make smart decisions about their health.
Liabilities
Gitmo Gridlock
Soldiers who were stationed at Guan-tanamo Bay report that most of the detainees have little to no intelligence value and wound up there as a result of decisions made in the field by inexperienced screeners.
Mount Duma
Russia reverses course and votes to approve the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The flip advances Europe's goal of forcing the U.S. to comply with the treaty.
Philadelphia Frisson
The Philadelphia City Council bans foreign outsourcing by any entity with a city service contract. Contractors bidding for work must certify that no work will be performed out of the country.
TiVo Trials
The TiVo nerfs its features in response to complaints from movie studios and other pay-per-view providers. TiVos will now automatically delete recordings of PPV material after an unspecified time, a change evidently needed to win approval for networkable TiVos.
Weed Killers
Some 755,000 persons were arrested for marijuana violations in 2003, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports. That's 45 percent of all drug arrests in the U.S. and more than the total number of arrests for aggravated assault, murder, manslaughter, rape, and robbery.
Beer Corps
A Pentagon lawyer stops beerforsoldiers. com from soliciting donations from the public to, yes, help buy beer for soldiers in Iraq. The site's operator, Sgt. Dale Rogers, called the beer buys a simple "morale builder."