LED Lighting: Starbucks saves millions on energy bills

When you're talking about retrofitting a large building like the Empire State Building or replacing bulbs in thousands of Starbucks stores, the energy savings can be huge.

That's just what Starbucks has found now that the replacing of incandescent and halogen lights in 7,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada has been completed. The company's Director of Environmental Impact said that the program is on target to cut lighting energy consumption by 80 percent.

The good folks at Greenbiz did the math and figured that each 1,000 square foot store was saving $600 a year and reducing CO2 emissions equivalent to 10 barrels of oil. The lights also cut total store energy consumption by 7 percent.

LEDs were installed in the sitting and beverage areas where the color of the light was most important and CFL bulbs were installed in the rest of the store. The energy and cost savings calculated were for the LED lights alone.

How long can food be kept in deep freeze?

How long will that casserole or whole chicken last in the freezer? According to the Food Safety and Inspection Service, food stored in a freezer set at 0 degrees Fahrenheit will stay safe indefinitely. But that doesn't mean the taste and texture will remain the same.

Here is a guide to how long you can freeze foods before you sacrifice quality. Keep in mind that quality does deteriorate the longer food sits in your freezer, so aim to defrost sooner rather than later.

* Bacon: 1 to 2 months
* Breads: 2 to 3 months
* Casseroles: 2 to 3 months
* Cooked beef and pork: 2 to 3 months
* Cooked poultry: 4 months
* Cookie dough: 3 months
* Fruit: 8 to 12 months
* Frozen dinners: 3 to 4 months
* Hot dogs: 1 to 2 months
* Lunch meats: 1 to 2 months
* Sausage: 1 to 2 months
* Soups and stews: 2 to 3 months
* Uncooked chicken (parts): 9 months
* Uncooked chicken (whole): 1 year
* Uncooked steaks, chops, or roasts: 4 to 12 months
* Uncooked ground meat: 3 to 4 months
* Vegetables: 8 to 12 months

Nasa: Moon's water is useful resource

There are oases of water-rich soil that could sustain astronauts on the Moon, according to Nasa. Scientists studied the full results of an experiment that smashed a rocket and a probe into a lunar crater last year.

The impacts kicked up large amounts of rock and dust, revealing a suite of fascinating chemical compounds and far more water than anyone had imagined.

A Nasa-led team tells Science magazine that about 155kg of water vapour and water-ice were blown out of the crater. The researchers' analysis suggests the lunar regolith, or soil, at the impact site contains 5.6% by weight of water-ice.

Aspirin 'helps protect against bowel cancer'

Aspirins are already widely used to help protect people against strokes and heart problems, although many healthy middle-aged people do not take them because of the risk of side-effects. But researchers said their findings - published by the Lancet - "tipped the balance" in favour of taking them.

They followed up four study groups over a period of 20 years to identify the impact of regular small doses of of the drug - the tablets given for medical reasons are often a quarter of a strength of those used to treat headaches.

They found it reduced the risk of the incidence of bowel cancer by 24% and of dying from the disease by 35%.

And even though regular aspirin use can have side-effects, the researchers said it was still worthwhile as on such low doses these tended to be relatively minor, such as bruising or nose bleeds.

One in 20 people in the UK develops bowel cancer over their lifetime, making it the third most common cancer. About 16,000 people die each year as a result of it.

The findings build on previous research on the issue, and come after the government announced earlier this month it was looking to start a new screening programme for bowel cancer for 55-year-olds.

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga bet on social web

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga will invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web. The lion's share of the sFund's $250m (£160m) will come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. "We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

That was a view backed by KPCB partner John Doerr, best known for investing in Amazon, Google and Netscape.

"These social networks are going to go from a half a billion people to billions of people connected on the planet and so represents an extraordinarily exciting time on the internet," he told BBC News. "Think of it as a quarter-billion-dollar party. The third great wave of the internet is mobile and social together. It's going to be tectonic," added Mr Doerr.

Galaxy Found more than 13 Billion light years away

The oldest and most distant object in the universe - a galaxy so far away that its light has taken 13.1 billion years to reach the Earth has been discovered by Astronomers. The galaxy, which was spotted by Europe's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is the most remote cluster of stars, gas and dust ever measured.

It is so distant, scientists are observing it when the universe was in its infancy - aged just 600 million years old, or four per cent of its present age. Dr Nicole Nesvadba of the Institute of Space Astrophysics in Paris said: 'Measuring the most distant galaxy so far is very exciting in itself, but the astrophysical implications of this detection are even more important.

'This is the first time we know for sure that we are looking at one of the galaxies that cleared out the fog which had filled the very early universe.

The galaxy, named UDFy -38135539, was spotted by the Hubble space telescope last year. Its age has now been confirmed by the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere's Very Large Telescope.. The galaxy, which was spotted by Europe's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is the most remote cluster of stars, gas and dust ever measured.

Do My Assets Look Big?

Kim Kardashian has made sure that her curvy derriere was the main attraction as she shopped for a dress for her 30th birthday. The reality TV star was snapped in Las Vegas, checking out her curves in a white Hervé Léger dress in a dressing room mirror. And she made sure that the dress fitted snugly round her bottom and and bosom as she admired herself in the mirror.

But despite the dress fitting the star in all the right places, she settled for a very short and very tight metallic silver dress that did exactly the same thing.

Kim, who turns 30 next Thursday, was in the Nevada city to celebrate her milestone birthday when she and her sister Kourtney hit the shops. They visited a series of high-end stores hours before heading to a party in her honour at the popular TAO nightclub.

Wearing a similar black and white outfit to the one she travelled to Vegas in the day before, Kim visited the pool at the Venetian hotel and was greeted by a crowd of fans and photographers. Later she and Kourtney enjoyed lunch with friends around the pool in one of the hotel's private cabanas.

Shakira Shows off Her Killer Abs

In her new music video Shakira is back to what she does best. The Colombian singer squeezes into a gold bikini top and sequinned trousers, showing off her killer abs as she shakes those famous hips.

The music video was shot on a stunning Barcelona beach. Shakira, 33, duets with British rapper Dizzee Rascal for her latest offering, Loca. It is the first single from her upcoming album, The Sun Comes Out (Sale el Sol), which is due out on October 19.

In the video, Shakira gets up close and personal a male dancer as they put on a sultry routine together. The storyline see the pop star go on a madcap adventure that includes roller-skating, public wardrobe changes, motorbike riding and dancing around in a fountain.

She filmed the video during a visit to the Spanish city in August. It was directed by long-time Shakira collaborator Jaume de Laiguana. According to the New York Post, Barcelona's authorities are considering fining the singer for stopping traffic as she filmed sequences.

Our New Earth?

The chances that future generations will one day colonise the stars have just got higher. Astronomers tonight announced the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever found - a rocky world three times the size of our own world, orbiting a star 20 light years away..

The planet lies in the star's 'Goldilocks zone' - the region in space where conditions are neither too hot or too cold for liquid water to form oceans, lakes and rivers.

The planet also appears to have an atmosphere, a gravity like our own and could well be capable of life.

The discovery comes three years after astronomers found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star - described by astronomers as being 'in our backyard' in the Milky Way. Researchers say the findings suggest the universe is teeming with world like our own.

'If these are rare, we shouldn't have found one so quickly and so nearby,' Dr Steven Vogt who led the study at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

'The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 per cent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy.'

BlackBerry Maker Unveils 'Playbook' Tablet

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has unveiled its rival to the Apple’s iPad: the PlayBook. Research in Motion (RIM) showed off the tablet for the first time last night and is set to launch it early 2011 in the U.S., with an international rollout due later in the year.

The PlayBook is a smaller, lighter device than Apple’s iPad, which kicked-started the tablet market when it launched in April. It will have a 7-inch screen, making it half the size of Apple's device, and weigh about 0.9 pounds to the iPad's 1.5 pounds. And unlike the iPAd, it will have two cameras, front and back.

The PlayBook will be able to act as a second, larger screen for a BlackBerry phone, through a secure short-range wireless link. When the connection is severed - perhaps because the user walks away with the phone - no sensitive data like company emails are left on the tablet.

Outside of Wi-Fi range, it will be able to pick up a mobile service like 3G to access the web by linking to a BlackBerry.

But the tablet will also work as a standalone device. RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said its goal is to present the full web experience of a computer, including the ability to display Flash, Adobe's format for video and interactive material on the web.

What Catches A Man's Eye

When it comes to seduction, short skirts and high heels have long been women’s weapons of choice. But showing off a bit of leg isn’t the best way to catch a man’s eye, according to scientists.

Long, shapely arms, sported by the likes of Christine Bleakley, Madonna or Courtney Cox, are considered more attractive than endless legs, a study has found. The finding was made after tests on Australian and Chinese men and women by experts at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

During the research, volunteers were asked to watch videos of 96 women aged between 20 and 49 and then to rate each one according to her looks. Results showed that ‘long-armed women’ were consistently considered the most attractive.

Hip and waist size were also regarded as important, along with a woman’s weight and age, but the length of her leg ‘did not contribute significantly to the ratings’. Professor Robert Brooks, who led the study, said: ‘Attractive bodies have a suite of traits in the right combination.

Real Challenger to Apple's iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tab

We heard rumors about the challenger to iPad for several months, now it is time to meet the first real challenger to Apple's iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It will launch in Australia in November for $999 for the 16GB version, the company has confirmed.

Meanwhile, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is preparing to announce its tablet next week at the company's developer conference in San Francisco, The Wall Street Journal reported.

And Dell overnight unveiled its second tablet computer, which like its previously announced Streak also runs Android. It has a 7-inch touchscreen compared to the 5-inch screen on the Streak, but Dell has not yet announced when either of the models would launch in Australia.

Apple has cornered the tablet market since the launch of its iPad but starting from late this year there will be a raft of challengers from companies including Acer, Asus, Dell, RIM, Lenovo, Samsung and Cisco.

Smartphone maker HTC is also working on a tablet but says it will take its time to develop a unique selling point before putting one on the market.

Some commentators have predicted that Apple will unveil a second iPad version with a smaller 7-inch screen to compete directly against this new competition and cheaper reading devices like Amazon's Kindle.

Planets found outside the solar system

Scientists say they've identified a sun-like star with as many as seven different planets — including one that might be the smallest ever found outside the solar system.

If confirmed, the planetary system around HD 10180, a star more than 100 light years distant, would be the richest ever discovered. One astronomer says it's part of a growing body of evidence that the universe is full of planets — and that several could be similar to our own.

"The really nice thing about finding systems like this is that it shows that there are many more out there," said Alan Boss, of the Washington-based Carnegie Institution for Science, who wasn't involved with the find. "Mother Nature really had fun making planets."

Although most of the planets identified are large — about 13 to 25 times the mass of our home — those behind the discovery, announced Tuesday at an international conference in France, say they're nearly certain they've identified one only 1.4 times the size of Earth.

Planets found outside the solar system are called "exoplanets" and this would be the smallest one ever spotted.

Do you know that Chocolate milk can keeps your abs flat?

A glass of skim chocolate milk delivers a great combo of carbs and protein, helping you recover after a workout. Athletes who drank it post-workout had lower levels of muscle damage after four days of intense exercising than those who guzzled water or other recovery drinks, according to findings presented at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in Seattle.

That translates to less soreness and fatigue, so you can get back to the gym and those tummy-toning planks sooner. Simply stir 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder or syrup that has less than 20 g sugar into your milk and sip.

Orange juice, Chamomile tea, Beer and Cranberry juice

Orange juice guards against heart disease: Antioxidants in OJ help protect your ticker by fighting the inflammation that can cause blood vessel damage. Consider this: People who ate fast food with a glass of orange juice had fewer artery-harming free radicals in their blood afterward than those who had their burger and fries with water, a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicates. Isn't that a great reason to choose juice? Just watch the sugars—one cup contains 21 grams and 122 calories.

Chamomile tea can keep you calm: People who downed chamomile extract daily for two months felt significantly less anxious, a study from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reports. Ease into mellow mode at night with a cup of chamomile tea.

Beer may prevent cardiovascular disease: File this under who knew? Compounds found in both regular and nonalcoholic brew may prevent blood thickening that can lead to cardiovascular disease, accord to a study in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Our taste testers for SELF's 2010 Healthy Food Awards loved Budweiser Select 55—refreshing and full-bodied, with only 55 calories per bottle. Toast to your health!

Cranberry juice may prevent gum disease and urinary tract infections: Natural compounds in the juice may ward off gum disease by preventing bacteria from adhering to the teeth below the gum line. Cranberry juice also delivers 39 percent of the daily value for vitamin C per 8 ounces, raises levels of good cholesterol and keeps your urinary tract tip-top. A berry smart sip indeed!