India Continues to Blog

The Indian Government recently tried to stiffle free speech of many of its citizens by blocking their access to certain blogs and blogging sites. This was in reaction to the recent terror attack in Mumbai, the blogosphere and many people around the world felt that India reacted too strongly.

India has announced that they wanted to selectively censor some pages and that “Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs.”

Well, today, the Indian Government has said that itwon’t ban bloggers. Free speech online can continue in India!

Accelerating Developments for Green Cars

smart car
A few car makers are actively trying to make our over-reliance on oil less of an issue. The most interesting one is the car made by Tesla motors.
Here is a quick round-up of recent announcements:

Toyota is thinking of making a ethanol-powered vehicle in the “near term” and is “pursing a plug-in hybrid vehicle” for the USA’s auto market.

“DaimlerChrysler has turned its popular teeny Smart car into an EV. The electric version of the Smartfortwo will be available for lease to 100 customers in Great Britain in November.”

A car made by Tesla Motors (who gets funding from Google founders and a Pay-Pal founder) has made and electric car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about four seconds.

Go green cars go!

Musicians In New Orleans Build A Village

A 23-year-old saxophone player named Dan Oestreicher and other fellow residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans have come together with Habitat For Humanity to build a “Musicians Village”. The new housing program aims to provide affordable housing for victims of last years hurricaine as well as to bring together the musicians in the area. The concept was dreamed into frution with the help of Harry Connick Jr and sax player Branford Marsalis. The only catch is that they have to help build it! They must spend 350 hours pounding nails and cutting drywall, and the result will be a community based in commradere and good tunes!

Students Cleanup Their ‘Hood

Students at Spain Middle School, which is nowhere near Spain, in fact the school is in Detroit Michigan. Detroit is renowned for it’s urban areas that are falling apart, well these kids had enough. For a school project they utilized technologies used by NASA and marketing corporations, GIS – also known as Geographic Information Systems.

They went around their neighborhoods documenting all things wrong. They plotted the location of say an abandoned car and took a picture of it and went on to the next sign of urban blight. After collecting all their data they took the next logical step.

“They students have compiled their material into Power Point presentations for Detroit city council members, highlighting areas that have been neglected and need improvement. They were able to show, for example, that the number of abandoned homes in one neighborhood had increased by more than 50 percent. The Wayne County prosecutors’ office began targeting the area.”

With GIS technology becoming more accessible hopefully we can see it used for more projects like this and maybe for tracking environmental damage too.

Scientists Regrow Damaged Nerve Cells in Rats

In an amazing new discovery (ScienceDaily), Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan have been able to regrow damaged nerve cells in lab rats. The researchers used an enzyme called sialidase from bacteria to treat the rats’ spinal cords.

There is hope that the proceedure will also work on other types of spinal cord injuries.
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