How Much Sugar Really Is in Food?

Sugar is sweet, sugar is delicious, sugar is lovely but sugar can be so terribly bad for you. How much sugar is in foods and drinks you love? Like a soda or orange juice or cereal or even baked beans? Sugar is everywhere! That white cocaine powder adds up. BuzzFeed made a video visualizing the actual grams of sugar in each food and to see the actual snuff is dizzying. Fruit Loops over “healthy” cereal everyday now! [BuzzFeed] More »

Virginia Tech learns how to get hydrogen from any plant, might lower fuel cell costs

Virginia Tech can extract hydrogen from any plant, may lower fuel cell vehicle costs

Hydrogen fuel cell cars have any number of hurdles to overcome, whether it’s widespread adoption or the basic matter of locating a place to fill up. If a Virginia Tech discovery pans out, getting the fuel itself won’t be one of those challenges. The new combination of a polyphosphate with a special blend of enzymes lets researchers extract meaningful quantities of hydrogen from any biological element that includes xylose — in other words, the sugar that’s present in every plant to at least some degree. The process is potentially more eco-friendly than most, as well. While you’d expect it to be renewable given the main ingredients, it also reduces the need for metals and cuts back sharply on the volume of necessary greenhouse gases. Most importantly, the findings could reach the commercial world as soon as three years from now. If they do, they could lower the price of hydrogen fuel by making it more accessible, all the while avoiding much of the guilt trip that comes with using polluting technology to generate clean energy.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Virginia Tech, Wiley

Fedora 18 Spherical Cow brings Linux fans a taste of Cinnamon, new installer

Fedora 18 Spherical Cow brings Linux fans a taste of Cinnamon, new installer

Fedora’s Linux distribution may be competing with Ubuntu for the title of silliest update name, but that doesn’t diminish the impact of what are often significant revisions. See the just-launched Fedora 18 as an example: while it’s called Spherical Cow, it introduces both a simpler installer to replace an aging predecessor as well as the option of using the Gnome 3-based Cinnamon desktop we recently saw in Linux Mint 13. There’s also FedFS, a file system that provides unity between multiple file servers, and newer versions of both Sugar and XFCE for those who prefer different interfaces. If these and many under-the-hood updates can overcome the giggling over rounded bovines, Fedora 18’s download and release notes are ready at the source links.

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Via: Fedora (Google+)

Source: Fedora (1), (2)

Boeing’s Concept SUGAR Plane Plugs In Like a Prius

In November of 2011, American commercial airlines consumed 48.3 million gallons of fuel—every day—and paid a total of $49.8 billion that month to do so. And with increasingly tight operating budgets, fuel efficiency has quickly become a primary concern for the airlines. Boeing thinks one possible solution is its new plug-in hybrid jet concept that burns 70 percent less gas per flight with the help of the local power grid. More »

What Would Happen If Those Coca-Cola Polar Bears Really Drank Soda? [Video]

I once loved everything about soda. Its amazing refreshing ability, its sweetness, its bubbles—it was magic in liquid form. But of course it came with the cost of ridiculous amounts of sugar and calories. So I cut back. But for people who don’t cut back on soda? Watch out. Here’s what would happen if those cute Coca-Cola polar bears really drank soda. More »

Sugar Could Charge up Gadgets Just Like it Gives a Jolt to Kids [Video]

Lithium-ion batteries are the most common technology powering modern devices. But lithium itself is a rare metal that’s hard to come by, and countries that have to import it are developing alternatives. In Japan, researchers at the Tokyo University of Science have discovered a way to make a sodium-ion battery that can be made with plain old sugar. More »

OLPC delivers big OS update with text-to-speech, DisplayLink and WebKit

OLPC delivers big OS update with texttospeech, DisplayLink and WebKit

While most of its energy is focused on the XO-4 Touch, the One Laptop Per Child project is swinging into full gear for software, too. The project team has just posted an OS 12.1.0 update that sweetens the Sugar for at least present-day XO units. As of this latest revamp, text-to-speech is woven into the interface and vocalizes any selectable text — a big help for students that are more comfortable speaking their language than reading it. USB video output has been given its own lift through support for more ubiquitous DisplayLink adapters. If you’re looking for the majority of changes, however, they’re under-the-hood tweaks to bring the OLPC architecture up to snuff. Upgrades to GTK3+ and GNOME 3.4 help, but we’re primarily noticing a shift from Mozilla’s web engine to WebKit for browsing: although the OLPC crew may have been forced to swap code because of Mozilla’s policies on third-party apps, it’s promising a much faster and more Sugar-tinged web experience as part of the switch. While they’re not the same as getting an XO-3 tablet, the upgrades found at the source link are big enough that classrooms (and the occasional individual) will be glad they held on to that early XO model.

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OLPC delivers big OS update with text-to-speech, DisplayLink and WebKit originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Sep 2012 02:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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