Harry Wesley Coover Jr., Inventor of Super Glue, Dies at 94

On By A.P.In Inventions, Super Glue, TechnologyLeave a comment

The man who invented Super Glue died at the age of 94 on Saturday night from congestive heart failure at his home in Kingsport, Tenn.

Dr. Coover discovered super glue accidentally in 1951 when he was experimenting with acrylates for use in clear plastic gun-sights during World War II. He gave up because they stuck to everything they touched.  Later, after his team ruined expensive lab equipment with the substance, Dr. Coover saw an opportunity.  Seven years later, Eastman 910 (super glue) hit the market.

In 2010, Dr. Coover was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by Obama for his invention of “cyanoacrylates – novel adhesives known widely to consumers as ‘super glues’ – which today play significant roles in medicine and industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/business/28coover.html?src=busln

http://www.supergluecorp.com/blog/2010/11/18/dr-harry-coover-inventor-of-super-glue-recognized-by-president-obama/

http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/coover.html

Will Solar Power Solve Our Problems in 20 years?

On By A.P.In Engineering, Science, Solar Energy, Technology, The FutureLeave a comment

Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist and inventor, thinks it will.  We receive 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, and Kurzweil holds that the technology needed for collecting and storing solar energy is about to advance exponentially in accordance with his Law of Accelerating Returns.

Read here:  http://www.livescience.com/4824-solar-power-rule-20-years-futurists.html

Less serotonin makes male mice less choosy about their sexual preference.

On By A.P.In Human Behavior, Science, sexuality, The BrainLeave a comment

Yan Liu and Yun’ai Jiang at Beijing’s National Institute of Biological Sciences found that when male mice have low levels of serotonin in their brains they lose their normal preference for female mice and try to mate equally with both sexes.  When injected with more serotonin, their preference for females is restored. 

Read a summary of the work, just published in Nature, here:

 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/03/23/low-serotonin-mice-less-choosy-about-sex-of-partners/

and here:  http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/71586/title/Brain_chemical_influences_sexual_preference_in_mice

Death by GPS

On By A.P.In Technology, The Desert, The Desert1 Comment

 

People are blindly trusting their GPS, and sometimes getting into trouble.  In Augst 2009, an 11 year old boy died after his mom followed their GPS navigator into Death Valley and they got stranded on a deserted road.

 Read about this phenomenon here:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2014309399_trgpsdanger27.html

Thanks to WRP for bringing this to the attention of the It’s Interesting community.

First Full Face Transplant in the U.S.

On By A.P.In Face Transplant, UncategorizedLeave a comment

A 25 year old former construction worker from Dallas – Forth Worth who was horribly disfigured in a power line accident underwent the first full face transplant in the U.S. with a 15 hour operation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston last week.  He received a new nose, lips, skin, muscle and nerves from an unidentified dead person in an operation paid for by the U.S. military, which wants to use what is learned to help soldiers with severe facial wounds.  As the new tissue is molded onto his bone structure, he will not resemble either what he used to look like, or what the donor looked like. 

Read about it here:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110321/ap_on_he_me/us_face_transplant

 

Deathbed Confession

On By A.P.In Human Behavior, Violence1 Comment

 

On her deathbed dying from breast cancer, Geraldine E. Kelley, 54, told her daughter the grisly tale of how she shot her husband 14 years earlier and stored his body in her freezer, actually shipping it with her when she moved from California to the Boston area.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/r/3932219/detail.html

http://www.taph.com/mummification/mummy-identified-in-baffling-murder-autopsy-gunshot-killed-dad-2.html

Thanks to Dr. R for bringing this one to the attention of the Its-Interesting community.

2 Kids Decided To Become Arms Dealers to the US Military…..

On By A.P.In Human Behavior, Violence, Wealth and PowerLeave a comment

To fight simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and now Libya), our government has outsourced a tremendous portion of America’s military operations.

Inexperienced newcomers Packouz and Diveroli picked the perfect moment to get into the arms business. 

“I was going to make millions,” Packouz says. “I didn’t plan on being an arms dealer forever — I was going to use the money to start a music career. I had never even owned a gun. But it was thrilling and fascinating to be in a business that decided the fate of nations. Nobody else our age was dealing weapons on an international level.”

You really just have to read it to believe it:  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-dealers-20110316