Here’s a product for anyone who has ever huffed and puffed on the treadmill, while wishing they had done a better job of keeping fit. A new device called Oxyfit claims to make the workout experience a little easier by pumping oxygen-rich air directly into your breathing space. (Air out in the wild contains about 20 percent oxygen.) The increase in oxygen flow, claim the makers, will maximize your workout.

Japan Trend Shop sells the product, and extolls the merits of Oxyfit:

Not only can this help with fatigue and other symptoms of low oxygen, but it can actually boost brainpower and metabolism as well. More oxygen lets you run farther, work longer, and even lose weight! An increased supply of oxygen speeds up your body’s metabolic engine, burning more calories and stimulating fat loss. Finally, the improved circulation from increased oxygen levels can produce nootropic (brain-stimulating) and anti-aging effects (through increased moisturization of the skin).

Oxyfit doesn’t come cheap. It’s a whopping $2,681 plus $49 in shipping. For that money, marketers says you get an advanced electronic oxygen generation pack, a lithium-ion battery that provides 1.5 hours of run-time, a charger, and an oxygen tube. But the effectiveness of this expensive gadget is is up for debate.

For years, athletes like biker Lance Armstrong have trained at high altitudes because the thin air causes the body to create more red blood cells that carry oxygen. This meant that when Armstrong competed at normal altitudes, his body was able to flood oxygen to his muscles. With an artificial oxygen unit, some argue, the body soaks in the available fresh oxygen from the kit, but as a result the body isn’t prompted to produce more red blood cells. So a better alternative might be to forget the gadgets, and go for a jog in the mountains instead.

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Image: Oxyfit

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute.

“OBJECTIVES: To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. DESIGN: Longitudinal cohort study. SETTING: Research institute employing about 140 people. SUBJECTS: 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life. RESULTS: 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons’ value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons. CONCLUSIONS: The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.”

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Ralph, Ed, and Audun for today’s ROFL!

Photo: flickr/sunshinecity

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Good idea: High school issuing laptops to its students so they can access school materials at any time. Bad idea: High school administrators using the webcams in those computers to spy on the students at home.

Ridiculous as it may sound, that’s exactly what a lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. District Court alleges a Pennsylvania school did. The parents of Blake J. Robbins sued Lower Merion School District, saying that administrators remotely accessed the webcam to spy on their son. Nowhere in any “written documentation accompanying the laptop,” or in any “documentation appearing on any Web site or handed out to students or parents concerning the use of the laptop,” was any reference made “to the fact that the school district has the ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam at any time the school district wished to intercept images from that webcam of anyone or anything appearing in front of the camera,” the complaint states [Courthouse News].

How did the family find out about this surveillance? Assistant principal Lindy Matsko tried to discipline young Blake Robbins for undisclosed bad behavior in his own home (though what exactly makes high school principals think they have the right to regulate the entire world has always escaped me). And to prove the allegations, Matsko produced a photo from the webcam of Robbins’ computer.

Before we go off a cliff in condemning Lower Merion, though, we haven’t heard their side of it yet. Things may not have played out exactly as the suit alleges. If it was a MacBook, for example, Blake may have used the built-in Photo Booth software to take a picture of himself doing something questionable while at home, which may or may not be against the school’s policy. If that photo got posted online or even synced back with the school’s admins the next day, it’s possible that Matsko was given access to the photo for disciplinary purposes [Ars Technica]. It’s no stretch to believe that a high school-aged person would do this, especially one not considering the fact that webcams can be remotely accessed.

Even if Robbins were foolish enough to photograph himself, though, the school still must account for what Robbins father says: That Matsko confirmed to him the administration has the ability to remotely access the cameras. Never mind that the school owns the computers; just having the ability to spy into private homes sets the school up for a public relations fiasco, even if they hadn’t blatantly used the ability to try to punish a student.

The school’s leaders have yet to issue its defense to these charges. They better have a good one.

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Image: flickr / racatumba

If I had a TARDIS, you know the first thing I would do is go see what a supernova looks like up close. I’ve even tossed around the idea of a little fanfic… but Megan Argo beat me to it. She’s a radio astronomer at the Curtin University of Technology in Australia, and she wrote up a cute and engaging account of The Doctor and Martha witnessing an unusual exploding star (an audio version of the tale is available too)

The cool thing is, the story she wrote is actually part of a real event: the explosion of supernova SN2007gr, the death of a massive star. 2007gr was a Type Ic supernova, which is a star much more massive than the Sun, but has lost the majority of its outer layers over time due to a super-stellar wind. The core is basically all that’s left, and when it runs out of fuel it collapses and then explodes.

2007gr was seen to have gas screaming away from it at almost half the speed of light, far faster than is typical for an exploding star. That means that the gas was focused into twin beams, probably shaped that way by the material swirling around the newly-formed black hole at its heart that formed in milliseconds after the collapse. It wasn’t strong enough to be a monumentally violent gamma-ray burst, but it instead a sort-of hybrid object, one part normal supernova and one part GRB. We’ve known for some time that there is a connection between the two objects, but the actual events are difficult to study because they’re uncommon. Supernova 2007gr is a rare opportunity to study one in detail.

But not as much detail as we could see if we had a time machine. Oh Doctor, there are some many things you could show us. But, I suppose, most of the fun is in figuring it out for ourselves.

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Image: SN: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; TARDIS: BBC; composition: Megan Argo

Looking at Tom’s excellent post on Mimas, I can’t help but be drawn to its most prominent feature, the crater Herschel.  It’s almost unbelievable that the impact responsible for that didn’t completely destroy the moon.  Here are some other images of Herschel put up on the Cassini website:

NASA/ESA/JPL 072109

NASA/ESA/JPL 060907

If Earth were to carry a crater of equivalent scale, it would be wider than Canada.

NASA/ESA JPL Artwork by David Seal

Its appearance similarities to the Star Wars “Death Star” is completely coincidental.  The crater wasn’t discovered until several years after the movie was made.

NASA/ESA JPL 080505

Amazing…

NASA/ESA JPL 122308 Mimas Against Saturn

Even as California sinks under a massive budget crisis, the $8.7 million the state used to research the use of marijuana for medical purposes now seems money well spent. The state-funded Center for Medical Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego has confirmed that pot is effective in reducing muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and pain caused by certain neurological injuries or illnesses, according to a report issued Wednesday [The New York Times].

In four clinical trials, participants suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS or diabetes, along with healthy volunteers injected with a chili pepper substance to induce pain, were randomly assigned to receive cigarettes filled with marijuana [The New York Times]. The researchers reported that not everybody who smoked marijuana felt better–but a substantial percentage of those who were in pain said they felt better, and the figure was comparable to the percentage of people who experienced relief after taking other pain medications. “I think that clearly cannabis has benefits,” said Dr. Donald I. Abrams, a San Francisco oncologist who led that study. “This substance has been a medicine for 2,700 years; it only hasn’t been a medicine for 70″ [Los Angeles Times].

The federal government currently views marijuana as an illegal substance with no medical value–but this unusual set of studies sanctioned by California could cause lawmakers to question that categorization. Said State Senator Mark Leno: “This is the first step in approaching the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which has invested absolutely nothing in providing scientific data to resolve the debate” [San Francisco Chronicle]. The state’s voters approved medical marijuana in 1996 (13 other states have since passed similar laws), and California has fairly open rules for who is eligible for medical marijuana. Anyone who can get a doctor to write a recommendation, based on just about any medical condition, can buy marijuana in California [Wall Street Journal].

Doctors who conducted the study, however, noted that people who smoke pot must be mindful of what they are inhaling. They pointed out that inhaling any smoke brings potential cardiovascular risks, and also mentioned that their patients reported some mild side effects, including dizziness.

The results of the study come at a time when further funding for the program seems unlikely because of California’s budget crisis. But a California ballot measure that would attempt to legalize the drug’s use by adults 21 and older is likely to come to a vote later this year [Wall Street Journal].

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Image: Flickr/ Neeta Lind