The dullness may soon be taken out of a rainy day as a range of hi-tech new umbrellas--developed by several different companies--begin to hit the market.
One, the brainchild of an American company, can receive local weather forecasts automatically through a built-in radio receiver in the handle, which receives weather data for 150 US locations via a website called Accuweather.com.
If rain or snow is approaching, a light will illuminate on the base of its handle. The light then flashes in proportion to the likelihood of how bad the weather is going to be, BBC reported.
For example, if there is a one hundred percent chance of rain, it will flash rapidly--and if the possibility is only around ten percent, it will flicker slowly.
For a device more than 4,000 years old, umbrellas have changed comparatively little--but it seems that incorporating modern technology is inevitable.
Scientists at Tokyo’s Keio University are continuing to work on a prototype umbrella that connects to the web via a wireless connection, and then projects images from the internet onto the underside of the canopy.
Known as Pileus, the umbrella allows you to watch videos from online video sites as you walk.
And the entertainment in the rain continues as the brolly allows you to take pictures with a built-in camera, which can then be uploaded onto photo-sharing websites.
There is also a satellite positioning system incorporated in case viewing the sites mean the user loses their way, with a map of the surroundings projected on the underside of the umbrella.
And should you prefer to sit down to view your content, design students from Japan and Korea have been working on a range of innovative park benches adapted for this very purpose.
One is a traditional metal framed bench that includes a device that will hold your umbrella open, so that you can sit peacefully in a park and not worry about getting wet.
Now, that’s an idea that’s definitely got you covered.

Phenolic phytochemicals of apple, banana, and orange prevents neurotoxicity on the cells.

Bananas, apples, and oranges are the most common fruits in both Western and Asian diets, and are important sources of vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
A new study in the Journal of Food Science explores the additional health benefits of these fruits and reveals they also protect against neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, ScienceDaily wrote.
Researchers at Cornell University investigated the effects of apple, banana, and orange extracts on neuron cells and found that the phenolic phytochemicals of the fruits prevented neurotoxicity on the cells.
Among the three fruits, apples contained the highest content of protective antioxidants, followed by bananas then oranges.
The authors concluded “[their] study demonstrated that antioxidants in the major fresh fruits consumed in the United States and Korea protected neuronal cells from oxidative stressÉ.Additional consumption of fresh fruits such as apple, banana, and orange may be beneficial to improve effects in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.“

Giving a woman an infusion of Epsom salts when she goes into premature labor can help protect her baby from cerebral palsy, US researchers reported.
Magnesium sulfate, popularly known as Epsom salts, cut the rate of cerebral palsy in half, Dr. John Thorp, a professor of obstetrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues reported.
“We have a cheap, widely available treatment already in hand that cuts in half the risk of babies being born with an extremely disabling disorder,“ Thorp said in a statement, Reuters wrote.
“And virtually every delivery room in the United States is already stocked with magnesium sulfate solutions that are given to pregnant women during childbirth for other reasons.“
Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical director of the birth defect charity March of Dimes, was more cautious. “I think it is an important study,“ he said in a telephone interview.
But he noted that more study was needed to understand how the treatment works, and said the children were not protected from more subtle brain damage that affected intellectual and cognitive function.
Thorp’s team presented their findings to a meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Dallas.
They gave either magnesium sulfate or a placebo to 2,241 women going into early labor or with ruptured membranes. The women’s pregnancies were at between 24 to 31 weeks--a full-term pregnancy goes 40 weeks.
Babies born as prematurely as that can suffer brain damage and other problems including cerebral palsy, a range of conditions that affect control of movement and posture.
The magnesium did not prevent any deaths among the premature babies. But 4.2 percent of the babies born to women given magnesium developed cerebral palsy, versus 7.3 percent of those born to women who got the placebo.
The researchers followed the infants that were born for up to two years.
It is not clear how the magnesium works but it may stabilize the blood vessels, prevent the damage caused by having oxygen cut off and also help prevent immune system damage to the brain, Thorp’s team said.
“Magnesium sulfate may impact on blood flow in the fetal brain and help to decrease damage in the brain,“ Fleischman said in a telephone interview.
One question he had was why magnesium sulfate could protect against cerebral palsy but not the other brain effects of being born prematurely.

An intriguing geological feature unlike anything previously observed has been discovered on the planet Mercury.
Dubbed “the spider“ by space scientists, it is formed from more than 100 narrow flat-floored troughs radiating from a crater in the center of the 800-mile wide Caloris Basin, Telegraph.co.uk said.
The peculiar formation was photographed by Nasa spaceprobe Messenger which collected more than 1,200 images and collected a range of scientific data during a recent flyby.
Other images show huge cliffs snaking for hundreds of miles across Mercury’s face.
These and other discoveries are the first detailed new observations of the planet since the visit made by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in March 1975. They are forcing scientists to radically re-think how Mercury evolved.
Nasa scientists, currently analyzing the new images and data collected by Messenger as the probe flew 124 miles above the planet, are currently unable to explain how “the spider“ was formed.
Mission co-investigator Dr James Head, of Brown University, Providence, said, “The Spider has a crater near its center, but whether that crater is related to the original formation or came later is not clear at this time.“
Mercury was once thought to have similar characteristics to those of the moon. However impact craters there appear very different from lunar ones and the moon, believed to be geologically dead and sterile, has nothing like the long cliffs that preserve a record of fault activity from early in the planet’s history.
It appears to have volcanoes and there are signs of lava oozing from the planet’s crust.
Sean Solomon. chief mission scientist, of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, said: “This flyby allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data.
Messenger, launched in August 2004, will eventually go into orbit around Mercury in 2011 after a 4.9 billion mile journey through the solar system.

OutiÕs Vibe Body Sound headphones use bone conduction technology to send vibrations through the skull bones directly to the inner ear rather than through the ear canal.

New headphones can enable music lovers to enjoy their music while still hearing the outside world at the same time.
Outi’s Vibe Body Sound headphones use bone conduction technology to send vibrations through the skull bones directly to the inner ear rather than through the ear canal, according to Physorg.com.
The Vibe Body Sound headphones aren’t the first consumer product to use bone conduction technology. Some hearing aids, military headsets, and even cell phones have employed the technique, for reasons including the ability to hear better in noisy environments. However, most of these devices have not become very popular, which may be partly due to the lack of voice clarity for some of the products.
The Vibe Body Sound headphones use the latest in bone conduction technology to try to have the best of both worlds: high quality music with the ability to carry on a conversation at the same time.
Unlike normal headphones that are embedded in your ear, the bone conduction headphones clip on to your outer ear and conduct vibrations through the skin, cartilage and skull bones. The sound completely bypasses the normal hearing route through the outer and middle ear, and researchers have verified the safety of the direct “hearing through your bones“ route.
When the vibrations reach your inner ear, “you hear them clear as a bell,“ according to online seller Think Geek. “Feel the music, don’t just hear it.
The high-frequency driver rumbles and buzzes on your ear, further immersing you in a musical experience.“ Even though the headphones are on the outside of the ear, supposedly the vibrations required for the wearer to hear the music are small enough that people nearby wouldn’t necessarily hear the music, too--at least, no more so than with normal headphones.
Because the wearer’s ear canal remains uncovered, they’re still able to hear sounds from the environment. While sometimes listeners may enjoy immersing themselves completely in music, at other times, it’s necessary to hear other sounds.
For example, the ability to hear cars when crossing the street or hear someone call your name in public can be vital for the safety of the listener and others. Outi also explains that, because the headphones are clipped to the outside of the ear, they avoid damaging the ear like normal headphones.

Oh, it brings such blessed relief and now scientists can tell you why--scratching an itch temporarily shuts off areas in the brain linked with unpleasant feelings and memories.
“Our study shows for the first time how scratching may relieve itch,“ Dr. Gil Yosipovitch, a dermatologist at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said in a statement, Reuters said.
Prior studies have shown that pain, including vigorous scratching, inhibit the need to itch. Yosipovitch and colleagues looked at what goes on in the brain when a person is scratched.
He and colleagues used a technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging to see which areas of the brain are active during scratching. They scratched 13 healthy people with a soft brush on the lower leg on and off in 30-second intervals for a total of five minutes.
Scratching reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex--areas linked with pain aversion and memory.
And the more intensely a person was scratched, the less activity they found in these areas of the brain.
“It’s possible that scratching may suppress the emotional components of itch and bring about relief,“ Yosipovitch said.
But they also found why one scratch often begets another.
Scratching increased activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex, a pain center, and in the prefrontal cortex, which is linked with compulsive behavior.
“This could explain the compulsion to continue scratching,“ Yosipovitch said.
The researchers noted that the study is limited because people were not scratching in response to an actual itch.
But they said understanding what goes on in the brain may lend clues about how to treat people tormented by chronic itch, including people with eczema and many kidney dialysis patients.

Birds could identify at least two coordinates roughly corresponding to geographic latitude and longitude.

Eurasian reed warblers captured during migration and then dumped 1,000 km (620 miles) off course were able to find their way back to their original route, according to a study suggesting some birds can truly navigate.
According to Reuters, this means that the birds could identify at least two coordinates roughly corresponding to geographic latitude and longitude and suggests they are not limited to north-south direction as some had thought, the researchers said.
“This finding is surprising and presents a new intellectual challenge to bird migration researchers, namely which cues enable birds to determine their east-west position?“ Nikita Chernetsov at the Zoological Institute in Russia wrote in the journal Current Biology.
The researchers found that after dropping the warblers off 1,000 kilometers east, the birds somehow corrected their direction by shifting their orientation to get back on the correct path home.
Other studies have suggested that birds use the position of the sun or geomagnetic information to determine latitude, which defines north or south location, the researchers said.
The Russian team said migrating birds such as the warblers might rely on two internal clocks, one to set their “home time“ and the other to their wintering grounds. Geomagnetic information might also play a role, they said.
“We have experimentally shown beyond reasonable doubt that long-distance, intercontinental avian migrants can correct for east-west displacements during their return migration in spring,“ Chernetsov wrote.
“This means that they can determine geographic longitude, even though we do not currently know how they do it.“