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Typography (Etymology: typos—type, graphos—written) is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning).


Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic designers, art directors, comic book artists, graffiti artists, and clerical workers. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users.

Typography refers to the arrangement of text on a page, and appears in some form or another in all instances of written communication. Depending on the purpose, typography can be used for optimum readability, impact, or an artistic statement. Some graphic designers work totally in text, and study typography extensively while they perfect their art. Quality typography can make a big difference in communications, because it can impact the way the reader sees and feels about the topic being discussed.

At the most basic, typography is a combination of font, size, spacing, and color. For example, wiseGEEK articles use a clear sans serif font in a moderate size, arranged on the screen for maximum readability. The text is black on a pale background, further enhancing the readability, and links within the text stand out because they are underlined, and in a different color. The overall purpose behind the typography of the article is to clearly communicate written information to a reader.

This is also the case with typography in newspapers, books, and other sources of information. Newspaper typography is a carefully balanced art form, as the compositors of the newspaper must be able to fit the required text within certain page restrictions. The newspaper staff must also make decisions about the sizing for headlines, and the placement of material on the page. The next time you see a physical newspaper, examine the typography more closely, and see if you can observe patterns in the way articles and photographs are laid out on the page. You should be able to immediately distinguish the lead article, for example, as it should instantly draw your eye.

However, typography can also be elevated into an art form. The best examples of highly artistic typography are found in advertising design. For example, most consumers associate particular fonts with certain branded products, because the advertising campaign featured distinctive use of those fonts. The design teams behind the advertising campaign made a series of design roughs which probably included a variety of fonts so that the designers and company executives could decide on a design which best represented the company.

Especially in modern art, typography is also used to convey an artistic statement. Famous works of modern art often include the use of text as a visual medium, sometimes alone, and sometimes with image. The font, letter spacing, and color are all important considerations for maximum visual impact. Small changes in the typography can radically alter the look and feel of a piece, and numerous computer graphic design programs make it easier for designers to modify their typography to perfection. Classic typography, using movable type and a press, required a close eye to detail, and an ability to extrapolate the final look of the piece from limited visual information.

They call it the Net-Zero Energy home. It has ground source heat pumps (promising a 30% reduction in energy use), photovoltaic arrays, supplementary wind power, high efficiency appliances and battery storage, all talking to each other through a Home Energy Manager.

That's a lot of impressive technology. But are green gizmos the best way to achieve net zero energy?

Kevin Nolan, vice president of technology at GE's Consumer & Industrial unit, shows off GE's demand response appliances and Home Energy Manager

GE says that the net-zero energy house will cost 10% more than a conventional house. That's a lot of money; if people would pay that much for extra insulation and better windows they would probably save 30% of their energy costs without fancy heat pumps. But they won't, and when builders offered it, few took them up on it.

Moresco notes that Passivhaus design easily achieves 80% reduction in energy use without any high-tech gizmos, just insulation, tight envelope and orientation.

General Electric has the kind of reputation that can make this kind of hardware mainstream, and can generate a volume big enough to support an infrastructure of sales, installation and maintenance that doesn't exist today. There are tens of thousands of existing houses that can be upgraded with it.

But if you are starting from scratch, it is better to design so that you have less expensive technology to pay for and maintain, not more. Go for efficiency, not green gizmos.

Teens in Documentary Say Oral Sex 'Not That Big of a Deal' and Get Paid for Sexual Favors

They don't give their names, but viewers can see their faces plainly and what these teens are saying is shocking parents. Pre-teens and teens are engaging in sexual activity at an earlier age.

"I ended up having sex with more than one person that night and then in the morning I was trying to get morning-after pills," one of the girls said. "I was, like, 14 at the time."

It's just one of dozens of stories from teenage girls in a new documentary by Canadian filmmaker Sharlene Azam that aims to shed light on the secret, extremely sexual lives of today's teens.

After four years researching for the documentary, Azam told "Good Morning America" that oral sex is as common as kissing for teens and that casual prostitution -- being paid at parties to strip, give sexual favors or have sex -- is far more commonplace than once believed.

"If you talk to teens [about oral sex] they'll tell you it's not a big deal," Azam said. "In fact, they don't consider it sex. They don't consider a lot of things sex."

Evidence of this casual attitude may be seen in the fact that more than half of all teens 15 to 19 years old have engaged in oral sex, according to a comprehensive 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics.

'Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss'

In the documentary, "Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss," girls as young as 11 years old talk about having sex, going to sex parties and -- in some extreme situations -- crossing into prostitution by exchanging sexual favors for money, clothes or even homework and then still arriving home in time for dinner with the family.

"Five minutes and I got $100," one girl said. "If I'm going to sleep with them, anyway, because they're good-looking, might as well get paid for it, right?"

Another girl talked about being offered $20 to take off her shirt or $100 to do a striptease on a table at a party.

The girls are almost always from good homes, but their parents are completely unaware, Azam said.

"The prettiest girls from the most successful families [are the most at risk]. We're not talking about marginalized girls," she said. "[Parents] don't want to know because they really don't know what to do. I mean, you might be prepared to learn that, at age 12, your daughter has had sex, but what are you supposed to do when your daughter has traded her virginity for $1,000 or a new bag?"


Sex Favors Traded for Relationship Stability

For some of the girls, the sexual favors are not about clothes or money, but used to keep a relationship together in a chillingly objective way.

"I think there's very much trading for relationship favors, almost like 'you need to do this [to] stay in this relationship,'" one girl told "Good Morning America."

"There's a lot of social pressure," said another. "Especially because of our age, a lot of girls want to be in a relationship and they're willing to do anything."

The girls laughingly admitted they never talk to their parents about their sexual activity.

"I mean, we're not looking for our future husbands," one girl said. "We're just looking for, maybe like ... at our age, especially, I think all of us, both sexes, we have a lot of urges, I guess, that need to be taken care of. So if we resort to a casual thing, no strings attached, it's perfectly fine."

Azam said she thinks the "no strings attached" romances could be a defense mechanism against a greater disappointment.

"A lot of girls are disappointed in love," she said. "And I think they believe they can hook up the way guys do and not care.

"But unfortunately, they do care."

Like we've said before, taking potshots at the scientific inaccuracies of Hollywood blockbusters is as easy as poking fun at the ShamWow guy. But there are some truly scary realities in "Angels & Demons," the sequel to "The Da Vinci Code." And, of course, some scarily obvious falsehoods.

Antimatter!

Early on in the movie a potentially catastrophic vial of antimatter is stolen from CERN setting the plot in motion. Antimatter sounds like a fantasy sci-fi movie product, but it has been created -- at the cost of about $1,772 trillion per ounce. Why? Because it takes enormous energy to create in particle accelerators like CERN. (Remember CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. They've got the huge underground particle accelerator that was supposed to create a black hole and swallow the earth last fall, until an accident took everything offline. Cross your fingers for this fall, when they start the accelerator up again.)
The only reassuring news about antimatter besides its prohibitive cost? The fact that, at this point, there's no way to store it, much less broadcast it on the Internet.

After the jump, learn the truth about the Vatican's leadership and the badass-itude of the Swiss Guard.The Vatican Leadership

Oh Vatican, oh Vatican, who's the most murderous of them all? Yep, probably because of the lousy press from the Catholic Church that followed "The Da Vinci Code," this film played nice with Catholicism's major domos. But in real life, popes and cardinals haven't been innocent when it comes to murder, bribery, rape, incest, etc. Around the time that so many of the fantastic churches in the film were built, for instance, there was Pope Alexander VI (d. 1503). Known as the "STD Pope," Alex allegedly committed his first murder at 12, slept with his daughter, and died drinking poison intended for a potential cardinal.

The Illuminati

OK, here's the problem with the secret society chronology in this movie: most of the groups we're familiar with today, like the Freemasons and the Illuminati, were founded during the Age of Enlightenment, which began in the 1700s. In fact, the Illuminati were founded in 1776 -- a good 100-150 years after the characters (Galileo, Bernini) mentioned in "Angels & Demons" existed. (By the way, the original Illuminati preferred to call themselves the "Perfectibilists," and "The Order of the Bees," neither of which is nearly as sexy or intimidating.)
Other, earlier "secret societies" known to pose a threat to the Church, like the Knights Templar, were ruthlessly stamped out by popes in the 1300s. So poor A&D author Dan Brown was essentially left with a secret society "dead zone" from 1400 to 1700 -- the time of Galileo.

The Swiss Guard

Let's talk about how badass the Swiss Guard is. Would you mess with a Chechen, a Colombian, or an Afghani? Multiply that by 10 and we have the Swiss. Crazy-ass, take-no-hostages mountain people -- these are the men who have ruthlessly guarded the Vatican for 500 years. And those nasty-looking halberds they carry? Renowned since the 16th century for efficiently piercing human skulls. They also carry assault rifles. So don't make fun of their striped pajamas and funny hats the next time you find yourself in Rome.

Symbology

... is a load of crap. I'd love to teach it at Harvard too, but what our esteemed professor Dr. Robert Langdon does is actually some weird combo of western art history and anthropology.

Why is it impossible to teach "symbology"? Because those two crossed keys that mean "Vatican" in the West may mean something entirely different in say, Vietnam. And the whole elements-of-the-earth spiel that works for Langdon in Rome may mean nothing in the Peruvian desert. To be a symbologist, he'd have to have in-depth knowledge of all of the world's cultures in order to properly interpret symbols, which is impossible unless you're Stephen Hawking. Our dear Harvard professor doesn't even know Italian, for Pete's sake.

Kristin Romey is an anthropologist, explorer, former executive editor of Archeology Magazine and, most prestigiously, Asylum's scientific adviser.

Angels & Demons - Official Trailer 1

Angels & Demons - Official Trailer 2

Mars appears to have had running water on its surface about one million years ago, according to new evidence.

Images from a Nasa spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet show fan-shaped gullies on the surface which seem to be about 1.25 million years old, the study says.

They believe the channels were sculpted by surface water from melting ice.

It may represent the most recent period when water flowed on the planet, a team from Brown University in Rhode Island, US, report in the journal Geology.

Gullies on the Red Planet are known to be young features, but scientists have found it difficult to pin down their precise ages.

But Samuel Schon and colleagues from Brown were able to do this using impact craters on a gully system in Promethei Terra, an area of cratered highlands south of the Martian equator.

"You never end up with a pond that you can put goldfish in," Mr Schon explained.

"But you have transient melt water. You had ice that typically sublimates. But in these instances it melted, transported, and deposited sediment in the fan. It didn't last long, but it happened."

The researchers say the discovery of a gully system, even an isolated one, that supported running water as recently as 1.25 million years ago greatly extends the time that liquid water could have been active on the Red Planet.

It also adds to evidence that Mars experienced a recent ice age in which polar ice is thought to have been transported toward the planet's equator, where it settled in mid-latitude deposits.

Separate events

From afar, the gully system looks like one entity several hundred metres wide.

But detailed study of images from Nasa's Mars Reconaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft shows there were four intervals in which water-borne sediments were carried down the steep slopes of nearby features called alcoves and laid down in a deposit called an alluvial fan.

In order to estimate the age of the system, the scientists used a method of counting craters.

Because impacts occur with some regularity, this has become an established way of dating planetary surfaces. More cratered surfaces are deemed older, while smoother surfaces are considered younger.

The researchers accept that because the rate of cratering may shift up and down over time there is a degree of uncertainty in this calculation. But they say this is within acceptable limits.

Mr Schon and his colleagues were able to distinguish four individual "lobe" features which make up the alluvial fan, and determine that each of these lobes must have been deposited in separate events.

One of the lobes was pockmarked with small craters; the scientists identified this as the oldest component of the fan. The other lobes, meanwhile, were unblemished, suggesting they had to be younger.

"We think there was recent water on Mars," said co-author James Head III, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University.

"This is a big step in the direction to proving that."

Using a comparison with another cratered surface 80km to the south-west, the team was able to date the oldest lobe of the fan to about 1.25 million years ago.

This established a maximum age for the younger, superimposed lobes.

The researchers suggest the formation developed when ice and snow deposits formed in the alcoves during the most recent ice age on Mars.

About half a million years ago, ice in the mid-latitudes began to melt or, in most instances, changed directly to vapour - a process called sublimation.

The team considered other options, such as groundwater bubbling up to the surface. But they say the most likely mode of formation for the gullies was the melting of snow and ice deposits that created "modest" flows of water.

The finding follows the discovery of water-bearing minerals such as opals and carbonates on Mars.

Proving itself a staggering 42 times faster at rendering JavaScript than IE 7, our benchmarks confirm Apple's Safari 4 browser, released in beta Tuesday, is the fastest browser on the planet. In fact, it beat Google's Chrome, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6 and even Mozilla's developmental Minefield browser.

We used the SunSpider suite of JavaScript tests to determine which browser was the quickest, and the Safari 4 beat every browser in terms of speed, on both a PC running Windows XP SP2, and a Mac running OS X 10.6 with all updates applied.

Below are the actual figures if you want to see how all seven browsers scored against each other, but for quick reference we determined on a PC that Safari was a whopping 42 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, just over six times faster than Internet Explorer 8, 3.5 times faster than Firefox 3, and 1.2 times faster than Google Chrome. Here's Safari versus the rest, excluding IE 7:


Add IE 7's results to the PC graph and witness the shocking truth. These are results from a PC with a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo:

1) Safari 4 (Total time: 910ms)
2) Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136ms)
3) Google Chrome (1,177ms)
4) Firefox 3 (3,250ms)
5) Opera 9.6 (4,076ms)
6) Internet Explorer 8 (5,839ms)
7) Internet Explorer 7 (39,026ms)


On Mac OS X, Safari was four times faster than Firefox 3 and a depressing (for Opera) 7.5 times faster than Opera 9.6.

Results (fastest at the top) on Mac OS X (2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo):

1) Safari 4 (Total time 967ms)
2) Minefield 3.2a1 (969ms)
3) Firefox 3 (3803ms)
4) Opera 9.6 (7322ms)

Release Date: April 3, 2009

Studio: Universal Pictures

Director: Justin Lin

Screenwriter: Chris Morgan

Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Ortiz, Laz Alonso, Gal Gadot, Shea Whigham, Tego Calderon, Liza Lapira

Genre: Action, Thriller

Official Website: FastandFuriousmovie.net

Plot Summary: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker reteam for the ultimate chapter of the franchise built on speed -- "Fast & Furious." Heading back to the streets where it all began, they rejoin Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster to blast muscle, tuner and exotic cars across Los Angeles and floor through the Mexican desert in the new high-octane action-thriller.
When a crime brings them back to L.A., fugitive ex-con Dom Toretto (Diesel) reignites his feud with agent Brian O'Conner (Walker). But as they are forced to confront a shared enemy, Dom and Brian must give in to an uncertain new trust if they hope to outmanuever him. And from convoy heists to precision tunnel crawls across international lines, two men will find the best way to get revenge: push the limits of what's possible behind the wheel.

Click Picture to Enlarge

The imperceptible jumps and jiggles known as "microsaccades" mean that a really steady stare is impossible.

Even when trying to fix a gaze on a stationary target, the eyes are always moving.

Experts have long dismissed these movements as the accidental result of spurious nerve signals. But new research shows they are actively controlled by the same brain region used to scan newspaper columns or track a moving object.

Scientists now think these "microsaccades" provide a vital function by "refreshing" images on the retina which would otherwise fade away.

Dr Richard Krauzlis, from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, focused on the "command centre" in the brain responsible for eye-tracking.

He found that the brain region played an integral part in the mechanism that controlled the movements.

The evidence suggested that the flickering movements were necessary for normal vision, said the researchers, whose findings are reported in the journal Science.

Co-author Dr Ziad Hafed, also from the Salk Institute, said: "Because images on the retina fade from view if they are perfectly stabilised, the active generation of fixational eye movements by the central nervous system allows these movements to constantly shift the scene ever so slightly, thus refreshing the images on our retina and preventing us from going 'blind'."

"Let's start from the beginning," Abdel Hakim Karar suggests as he scampers up the north side of an archaeological dig of sun-bleached pink stone and gravel.

When you make your living unearthing the royal riches of ancient Egypt, the beginning is a very distant place indeed – more than four millennia away, during the time of the 6th dynasty. We are standing on the rim of the necropolis of King Teti at Saqqara, where Karar and his team of archaeologists are excavating the tomb of Queen Sesheshet, Teti's mother. The tomb, and the once five-story-high pyramid that accommodates it, was until recently a dump for the sand and detritus of surrounding digs. But the intuitive power of Karar and his inimitable boss, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, rescued it from oblivion last November. It was a once-in-a-lifetime strike – how often does one "discover" a pyramid? – and it may shed light on a particularly notorious episode in a pharaonic tradition of court intrigue and murder most foul.

"We suspected this was the mother's pyramid," says Karar, as he gestures to a horizon line interrupted only by the iconic step pyramid of Saqqara, the Eiffel Tower of its time, built by the legendary 3rd dynasty ruler Imhotep. "Then we came across stones carved with the characters for 'Seshi' and we knew what it was."

The surrounding complex was discovered and unearthed by a fraternity of French and British archaeologists in the mid-19th century. Its centerpiece is the pyramid of Teti, the first ruler of the 6th dynasty, and the subsidiary pyramids of his two principal wives, queens Iput I and Khuit. Like many such digs in Egypt -- a country that, because of its strategically vital location, has played host to several great civilizations -- Saqqara offers a bounty of archaeological wealth beyond what was once the property of pharaohs. Enveloping the site is a containing wall of dung-colored mud bricks built in 330 B.C. by Ptolemy I, the Macedonian general who campaigned with Alexander the Great and who may have been mentored by Aristotle. The U-shaped wall contained a drawing of the funeral procession that followed the death of a sacred bull as ordained under Serapis, the Greek deity promoted by Ptolemy as a way to fuse Hellenist and Greek religions.

Hawass, who began working at the Saqqara necropolis in 1988, says Sesheshet's pyramid "might be the most complete subsidiary pyramid ever found" in the area. It is certainly one of the largest. The remains of its 72-square-foot base suggests a pitch of 51 degrees, a common feature of 5th and 6th century pyramidal design, and a height of 46 feet. Large, smoothly carved blocks of limestone around the southern end of its foundation is all that's left of the casing that gave Egyptian pyramids of the time their clean, elegant lines. The entire structure would have been built with bronze tools.

Karar and his team wait several weeks to open the tomb's burial chamber. "We don't want to disrupt the remains," he explains. When the burial chamber is opened, a sarcophagus is found with a mummy inside. Though her name does not appear within the burial chamber, the evidence points to the burial of a queen, believed to be Sesheshet.

Beginning in the 4th dynasty, the kings of Egypt were careful to commemorate their wives and mothers with regal monuments. (In a monograph published in a 2000 edition of Archiv orientalni, a quarterly Czech archaeological journal, Hawass hinted at the possibility of a third subsidiary pyramid in honor of Teti's mother.) Yet the size and grandeur of Sesheshet's pyramid is as much a political statement as it is an expression of filial piety. Sesheshet came from a powerful family at a time of civil war within the royal clan and she protected Teti for much of his 20-year rule. Sadly for Teti, her talismanic powers did not extend from the grave; after her death, according to the Ptolemaic historian Manetho, Teti was murdered by his own bodyguards working in league with the treacherous Userkare. In testament to the hardboiled political culture of the time, Userkare himself was ousted by Pepy I, son of Queen Iput I, only a few years after he had seized the throne. While Manetho is vague as to Userkare's fate, there are few surviving monuments to his rule, the modern-day equivalent of being airbrushed out of the history books and a fate worse than death in edifice-obsessed ancient Egypt.

While Sesheshet's tomb is believed to have been plundered by thieves, like many Egyptian pyramids, the artifacts discovered in Iput I's burial chambers offer a glimpse of what might have been kept there: vessels and dishes made of alabaster and red clay, tools lacquered in gold, a sarcophagus carved from limestone and layered with gypsum, and canopic jars filled with the royal viscera in storage for the afterlife. The walls and pillars of the tomb may depict scenes of court life and religious rites and there will likely be granite stele with inscriptions identifying the royal matron as a "mother of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt."

Karar, who studied at Cairo University and has spent half of his 50 years digging up ancient relics, says he hopes the tomb will also yield new details about how the ancient Egyptians related to other such geopolitical powers as Rome, Nubia, Syria, Greece and Persia. The record of Sesheshet's era is particularly incomplete, he says, which is another reason why the discovery of her pyramid is so significant.

"It's never boring," says Karar of his profession. "Egyptians now appreciate what we do because of the attention it is getting in the media. They no longer take their heritage for granted." Sesheshet, whose name evokes a goddess of history and writing, would have approved.

Gmail users will be able to use some of the webmail app's functions while offline. The feature, which Google says is still experimental, is designed for users who don't necessarily have constant access to WiFi or 3G networks but still want to write and manage e-mail wherever they are. Their actions are saved on the computer and updated to Gmail's servers once a Web connection has been established.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google has officially taken Gmail offline. No, the search giant has not put the kibosh on the popular e-mail service; it's added offline functionality, the company announced Tuesday.

While Web-based e-mail services that are accessible from any computer with a Web connection and a browser are convenient, the applications are sometimes hindered by their Internet tether, Google said. Unless users are at a WiFi hotspot or using a smartphone over a snappy network, accessing Web-based email can be a challenge.

The new offline Gmail functionality is an experimental feature in Gmail Labs. Once they add the feature to their Gmail accounts, users will be able to use parts of the Web-based e-mail service offline.

"It should be no surprise to anyone that Google felt compelled to develop an offline version of Gmail. The entire world isn't wired, and for businesses and consumers, they want to work offline sometimes," Matthew Caine, an analyst at Gartner (NYSE: IT) More about Gartner, told TechNewsWorld.
Gearing Up Gmail Offline

To bring Gmail to the offline world, Google uses Gears, a set of programming tools designed to enable Web developers to create offline versions of Web-based applications. Gears downloads a local cache of a user's e-mail. While a subscriber is connected to the network, the cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers.

When the connection is lost, Gmail will automatically switch into offline mode using the data previously stored on the computer's hard drive rather than data sent across the network. That way, users can continue to use the application.

They can read messages, star and label them, and do many of the same things they are accustomed to doing while using their webmail online, according to Google. Any messages that are sent while the application is offline are placed in the user's outbox and sent automatically when Gmail detects an Internet connection.

For users who are "borrowing" their Internet connection from a neighbor or just have a slow or unreliable connection, there is a so-called flaky connection mode. It uses the local cache as if the user is disconnected, but still synchronizes e-mail with the server Linux MPS Pro - Focus on Your Business - Not Your IT Infrastructure. $599.95/month. Click to learn more. in the background. The goal, Google said, is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience regardless of whether a user is using the data cached on the computer or talking directly to Gmail's server.

Google cautions users that while the company has been using Offline Gmail internally for a while, it is still considered an experimental feature. It will be available in the U.S. and the UK over the next few days.

"You could use a POP or IMAC client on the back end, but what's interesting is that this is an in-browser client and requires very little fuss and bother to set up. It has the potential to bring [Gmail] to the masses offline," Caine said.

"It's a slightly different paradigm -- you're still working in the browser and that architecture, plus the ease of installation will make it attractive compared to the old paradigm of finding Thunderbird and setting it up," he added.

Coffee can do more than just fuel you through an afternoon slump. It might also power your car.

That's the idea behind a new study that turned used coffee grounds into biodiesel fuel. Coffee will probably never replace petroleum, but discarded cappuccino scraps might someday help reduce our impact on the environment, say the study's authors. They imagine a day when the byproducts of your latte end up in the gas tank of your car -- with hardly any waste left behind.

"It's a very simple two-step process," said Susanta Mohapatra, a chemical engineer at the University of Nevada, Reno. "We can definitely make a big impact on our environment with fuel made out of nature."

Scientists have known for decades that coffee beans contain oil. Mohapatra and colleagues, however, were the first to analyze coffee grounds.

Used grounds usually end up in landfills, though gardeners sometimes use them as compost material. The scientists collected used grounds from Starbucks, which gives bags of grounds away as part of the company's "Grounds for your Garden" program.

To prepare the grounds for analysis, the team first dried them in an oven. They mixed the resulting powder with a combination of solvents that caused the oil to separate from the solution. They extracted the oil, saving the solvents for the next round of processing. The remains could still be used as compost, ethanol feedstock, and fuel pellets.

"We're not wasting anything," Mohaptra told Discovery News. "It's a recycling process."

The study showed that used grounds contain about 15 percent oil by weight, depending on the type of coffee. That's not too far off the proportions in soybean, rapeseed, and palm oils, which are also used as sources for biodiesel. And coffee oil is more stable than these other sources because of its high antioxidant content, found the study, which appeared in December in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Around the world, growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee each year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The scientists estimate that spent grounds could add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the global fuel supply.

Mohapatra envisions a streamlined coffee recycling system, in which the same trucks that deliver beans to Starbucks could pick up the brewed waste and head to a biodiesel plant. The plant would be close by, to save on transportation costs and emissions.

Coffee grounds appear to produce high-quality oil, granted Robert McCormick, an engineer at The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. But, he said, coffee probably won't be a practical solution to the world's energy needs.

For one thing, the country's main sources of biodiesel -- cooking oil and animal fat -- are 100 percent oil, compared to coffee's 15 percent. And even when a cafe brews a large amount of coffee, relatively few grounds are left behind. It takes 50 gallons of spent grounds to produce just 1 gallon of oil, Mohapatra said.

Still, McCormick commends the researchers for thinking outside the box about the world's energy issues.

"Anything that takes a waste product and makes a fuel out of it is really a positive," he said. "This is pretty cool."

Two photographs of Madonna set to appear in a Christie's auction next month will probably sell for at least $10,000 each, according to estimates posted on the company's Web site.

One, a full-frontal nude black-and-white photograph of the singer, was taken in 1979 by celebrated American photographer Lee Friedlander for a series of nudes he was working on, said Milena Sales, a spokeswoman for the auction house.

Madonna was about 20 when the photograph, one of several, was taken.

A handful from the shoot appeared in Playboy magazine in 1985, Sales said. Christie's put price estimates for the photograph at $10,000 to $15,000.

The second photograph of Madonna was taken in the 1980s by Helmut Newton.

In the Newton photograph, which is in color, Madonna is wearing a short dress and black stockings with garters. The circumstances behind the photo shoot were not immediately clear.

The auction will take place in New York on February 12.

From the noisy and lovable Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the time-traveling DeLorean in "Back to the Future," flying cars have been a fixture of movies and science fiction that never quite cut it in the real world -- until now.

A flying car devised by a British inventor and a team of engineers took off from London on Wednesday on an epic journey to Timbuktu, Mali, in West Africa -- a trip they hope will prove the fantasy has become reality.

The "Skycar" is a road-legal all-terrain buggy with a huge rear propeller and a fabric wing, the result of 18 months of design and research.

"We started with a car rather than starting with an aircraft and made a car into an aircraft," said Skycar's creator, Giles Cardozo. "It's a really exciting piece of kit to drive but of course, it also flies."

The Skycar's 3,720-mile (6,000-kilometer) trip will take it through France, Spain and Morocco, then the Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali to the famously isolated city of Timbuktu.

Its design gives it the performance of a motorbike while also allowing it to fly over impassable terrain and the sand seas of the Sahara, the designers said. They hope to fly over the Straits of Gibraltar.

In propeller mode, the engine makes a lot of noise. The two-person seat is a tight fit with room for a driver and a passenger who controls the car in flight.

Experienced adventurer Neil Laughton is the designated pilot of the craft on its epic journey.

"I'm a bit nervous, but that's what adventure and exploration's all about," Laughton told CNN.

Although some eccentric-looking flying cars have been attempted before, Cardozo and his team of engineers say advances in flexible wing technology have made their car more practical, with more precise handling and increased safety over traditional rigid wings.

The flexible wing is folded and packed in the back of the car when driving on the road and can deploy immediately when it is ready to fly.

The car, which runs on biofuel, has a takeoff speed of 73 km/h (45 mph) and requires a distance of less than 200 meters (220 yards), meaning it can take off on a beach or in a park.

He admits the Skycar has trouble in high wind or turbulence, but it has some safety measures.

"It will be easier and safer to fly than any other aircraft, as it has no pitch control and (is) therefore impossible to stall or dive," the inventors say. "Should the engine fail, the pilot would simply glide down into the nearest field or strip of sandy desert. In the event of catastrophic wing failure, car connection system failure or mid-air collision, an emergency ballistic reserve parachute can be deployed."

The expedition hopes to help out some charities along the way, and if it is successful the car's creators hope to market it commercially.

"If people see the fun in this and it catches on, I think it could be a great fun toy," Cardozo said. "It's not your everyday means of transport by any means, but it's a great, fun alternative way of getting around -- like a quad bike, like a Jet Ski, like anything like that."

Cardozo hopes his "toy" will arrive in Timbuktu by late February, proving that flying cars aren't just the stuff of movies or children's stories anymore.

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Fans of kung fu legend Bruce Lee will soon be able to take a tour of the star’s residence.

Hong Kong property tycoon Yu Pang-lin has been given the green light to transform the two-storey town house into a museum honouring the film icon.

The 5,700 square-foot, two-storey town house in a Kowloon suburb where Lee spent the last months of his life is currently a love motel which provided hourly room rentals.

Bruce Lee fans have been struggling for years to save the house from such an inglorious fate and Yu finally made a surprise decision last year to donate it to the city where the martial arts master first shot to fame.

“Both sides have now reached a consensus to go ahead and essentially proceed with this good plan,” Yu told reporters after a meeting with government officials.

“I’m 88 years old now and hope that while I’m still alive I’ll be able to see this Bruce Lee museum completed,” he added.

Hong Kong’s Commerce and Economic Development Bureau has agreed to preserve the “original outlook of the building and its features”, recreating parts of the home to revitalise it as a long term sustainable tourism attraction.

Yu said that he wants the site to include a library, martial arts centre and a movie theatre to fully commemorate Lee’s life a philosophy.

Born in San Francisco, Lee was widely regarded as the most influential martial artist of the twentieth century. His movies “Fist of Fury,” “Game of Death” and “Enter the Dragon” changed and influenced martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world.

Hong Kong’s Bruce Lee fan club welcomed the breakthrough plan, and expressed hopes that the residence will prove to be as big a draw as other global memorial sites such as the Beatles Story in Liverpool and Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Tennessee.

It wasn't a very Happy New Year for owners of Microsoft's Zune.

Thousands of the MP3 music players froze on New Year's Eve around the world due to what Microsoft described as a bug in the device's internal clock.

The bug only affected the original, 30-gigabyte version of the music player that was introduced by the Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft in 2006 as its answer to Apple's wildly popular iPod.

Later devices with 80GB and 120GB of memory were not affected.

Microsoft was alerted to the problem when Zune forums and discussion boards lit up overnight with complaints from Zune owners around the world that their devices players had stopped working.

Many of the messages were signed "Victim of the December 31st 2008 Zune 30 Meltdown!" and the mass Zune stoppage gave rise to puns such as "Zunesday" and "Z2K," a reference to the millennium Y2K bug.

Microsoft initially put out a statement saying owners of the 30GB Zune may experience "issues" when booting up the device, asked for patience and apologized for the inconvenience.

Several hours later, another statement on Microsoft's zune.net explained the problem and said it would essentially self-resolve.

"There is a bug in the internal clock driver causing the 30GB device to improperly handle the last day of a leap year," Microsoft said.

"The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009," it said. "We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow.

"By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on," it advised users.