Whirlpool is scheduled to unveil an upscale electric range, the Polara, featuring an oven cavity that is also a refrigerator.

With 24 hour programming a complex dish can be prepared in the morning or night before, leave it at 40 degrees in the oven, tell the baking element to go on at 4 p.m. You don’t have to worry about burning your dinner if you get stuck late at work. The oven automatically reverts to a warming then cooling mode.

It can be used as an extra mini refrigerator. Food can be left for a day refrigerated. The oven capacity is 3.28 cubic feet.You can also chill in the oven while you cook on the glass top.

The Polara accepts an Internet card, anticipating the arrival of Web connected appliances.

It will be available in July for a suggested retail price of $1799 in white, black, biscuit, and for $100 more, stainless steel finish.

For the Laundry Room

In August, Sanyo Electric Co. introduced a washing machine that washes daily used clothes such as dress shirts, undergarments, pajamas and towels with a "Zero-Detergent Course" and more soiled clothes, like sweat shirts, and jeans with a "Detergent Course."

Instead of using the water from the device’s wash and spin function and detergent to remove dirt from clothing, Sanyo uses ultrasonic waves and electrolyzed water produced by their water purifying, bacteria removing technology in the "Zero-Detergent Course."

Recent reports find the zero-detergent cycle under performs detergents in odor and stain removal for underwear and increases damage to clothes, though it outperforms detergents in removing food stains.

In the five months between the August launch to the end of December 2001, Sanyo racked up sales of 50,000 units for the $900 to $1,000 washing machine.

Sanyo’s advertising agency, Dentsu Osaka, created a commercial spot using a Hawaiian Sumo Wrestler sorting a huge pile of huge clothes. He sorts them into two piles saying, " This needs soap, this doesn’t."

Talk

Your brain is a muscle, so go ahead and flex it!

Marc Marsan in his book, Who Are You When Nobody’s Looking?, offers these suggestions for keeping your mental muscle fit and active:

• Do puzzles, challenging ones, do them everyday or do them quickly.

  Learn to play any musical instrument. Albert Einstein played the violin to chill out.

  Do something artistic. Winston Churchill was known to paint. He wasn’t great, but it developed a dimension he would otherwise never have known.

  Learn to dance. Do the swing, the hustle, mambo, merengue. You’ll be amazed at your raised level of confidence, style and rhythm.

What do you do to keep your mental muscle in top condition?