All Entries in the "Science & Technology" Category

High Tech Research from U.S. Going to China

American companies have been trying, and failing, to compete against state-subsidized companies all around the world. No company or industry can stand against the national champions of Europe and Asia.

American companies have been trying, and failing, to compete against state-subsidized companies all around the world. No company or industry can stand against the national champions of Europe and Asia. They often face only two possible choices; American companies can either be put out of business, or they can relocate to compete.

Increasingly, according to The New York Times, those relocations are ending up in China.

China offers a wealth of opportunities for productive industries. It has 1.4 billion consumers who have more collective purchasing power with each passing day. It has a government willing, and able, to pay a premium in exchange for new facilities. More importantly, China has almost no worker protections, wage standards, or environmental regulations.

When faced with the possibility of paying an American $20 per hour to do a job cleanly and safely, or paying a Chinese worker a fraction of that cost with no other cost considerations, a firm would be foolish to stay here.

Full Story: High Tech Research from U.S. Going to China | Economy In Crisis.

OPS: When it comes to high-tech RESEARCH is the future.   The future of the US is being sold out

Invisibility Cloak Closer Than Ever To Becoming A Reality

From Grimm’s fairy tales to Harry Potter, the cloak of invisibility has played a major role in fiction. Now scientists have taken a small but important new step toward making it reality.

Researchers at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they were able to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies.

Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said.

Full Story: Invisibility Cloak Closer Than Ever To Becoming A Reality.

EXCEL ART: 17 Awesome Drawings Made With Microsoft Excel

To most of us, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets looks like an endless field of rows and columns. But artist Danielle Aubert sees more than empty cells waiting for data input and equations.

Aubert uses Excel as a drawing tool, ‘changing cell preferences for background color, fill pattern, and border styles and from time to time inserting “comment” boxes and letters or words,’ the artist explains.

Aubert created three series of Excel Drawings. Every day or so she would create a new worksheet. The 16-day series she published as a book; the 58-day series she set up as a multi-page spreadsheet and rendered it for the Web; and the 4.5-month series she made into a time-lapse video. All three can be viewed on her website, DanielleAubert.com.

Check out her Excel Art in the slideshow below.

Full Story: EXCEL ART: 17 Awesome Drawings Made With Microsoft Excel (PHOTOS, VIDEO).

NASA Captures Gorgeous ‘Cosmic Rose’ In Berkley 59 Cluster (PICTURE)

NASA’s WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope has turned up yet another stunning image that captures a star cluster NASA likens to a ‘cosmic rosebud blossoming with new stars.’

The infrared image is of a grouping of young stars at the Berkeley 59 cluster, which is located around 3,300 light-years from Earth in the Cepheus constellation.

NASA highlights what’s seen on the WISE image:

The stars, called the Berkeley 59 cluster, are the blue dots to the right of the image center. They are ripening out of the dust cloud from which they formed, and at just a few million years old, are young on stellar time scales.

The rosebud-like red glow surrounding the hot, young stars is warm dust heated by the stars. Green “leafy” nebulosity enfolds the cluster, showing the edges of the dense, dusty cloud. This green material is from heated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, molecules that can be found on Earth in barbecue pits, exhaust pipes and other places where combustion has occurred.

Full Story: NASA Captures Gorgeous ‘Cosmic Rose’ In Berkley 59 Cluster (PICTURE).

Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

Full Story: Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely | Threat Level | Wired.com.

OPS:  So the obvious question becomes are these Toyota acceleration problems connected to hacking the cars computer? Is this what Toyota is really afraid will come out?  Are other car companies building this in?  Is  your car rigged like this?

FCC’s Broadband Plan: Who’s for It-and Against It

Since the FCC formally revealed its plan to expand broadband access on Tuesday, the idea has been generally well-received. And really, what’s there to protest so far? The plan’s stated goal is to connect “100 million households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second service, building the world’s largest market of high-speed broadband users and ensuring that new jobs and businesses are created in America.” It also stresses making broadband faster and more powerful.

So far the only group consistently cited as being the “loser” in all of this is the National Association of Broadcasters, which has expressed reservations about losing its portion of the airwaves to make room for the broadband providers. But which industry players stand to win big if the plan moves forward? Here’s what the Post reported on this point:

Full Story: On The Hill: FCC’s Broadband Plan: Who’s for It-and Against It.

Scientists use Visible Light to Break Down Carbon Dioxide

We all are familiar with the effects of carbon dioxide on our environment. Carbon dioxide is responsible for causing the greenhouse effect. If scientists can breakdown this gas into other form it would lead us to reduce the concentration of this gas into environment substantially. It would mean dealing with the root cause of the problem. Now scientists are trying out to get hold of an organism which could help in the breakdown of carbon dioxide.

Steve Ragsdale who is a biological chemist from University of Michigan; he and his research assistants Elizabeth Pierce and Fraser Armstrong along with his team from the University of Oxford in the U.K. are working towards breaking down carbon dioxide into benevolent form. It is being said that they have devised means to efficiently turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide with the help of visible light, such as sunlight. In this collaboration between Ann Arbor and Oxford they have divided their work. Ragsdale’s laboratory at the University of Michigan Medical School is performing the biochemistry and microbiology experiments. Armstrong’s lab is looking after the physical- and photochemical applications. Ragsdale’s lab received funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health. They have published their findings in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

If scientists can successfully convert carbon dioxide into some useful compound commercially using little energy then we can effectively deal with the ill effects of greenhouse. Some organisms are engaged in this work. Ragsdale tries to explain this phenomenon, “This is a first step in showing it’s possible, and imagine microbes doing something similar. I don’t know of any organism that uses light energy to activate carbon dioxide and reduce it to carbon monoxide, but I can imagine either finding an organism that can do it, or genetically engineering one to channel light energy to coax it to do that.”

Full Story: Scientists use Visible Light to Break Down Carbon Dioxide.

Scientists crack opium poppy’s genetic code

Researchers have discovered the genes that allow the opium poppy to make codeine and morphine, according to a new study.

The findings could lead to engineered plants and micro-organisms that efficiently make codeine, one of the most widely prescribed painkillers in the world, the researchers said.

Unlike morphine, codeine cannot be easily converted to heroin.

“The enzymes encoded by these two genes have eluded plant biochemists for a half-century,” said Peter Facchini, a professor at the University of Calgary in Canada and co-author of the paper.

“In finding not only the enzymes but also the genes, we've make a major step forward,” he said in a press release.

Full Story: AFP: Scientists crack opium poppy’s genetic code.

Vast F.C.C. Plan Would Bring Net to More in U.S.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing an ambitious 10-year plan that will reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network.

The plan, which will be submitted to Congress on Tuesday, is likely to generate debate in Washington and a lobbying battle among the telecommunication giants, which over time may face new competition for customers. Already, the broadcast television industry is resisting a proposal to give back spectrum the government wants to use for future mobile service.

The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries. It also signals a shift at the F.C.C., which under the administration of President George W. Bush gained more attention for policing indecency on the television airwaves than for promoting Internet access.

Full Story: Vast F.C.C. Plan Would Bring Net to More in U.S. – NYTimes.com.

Brain scan can read people’s thoughts: researchers

A scan of brain activity can effectively read a person’s mind, researchers said Thursday.

British scientists from University College London found they could differentiate brain activity linked to different memories and thereby identify thought patterns by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The evidence suggests researchers can tell which memory of a past event a person is recalling from the pattern of their brain activity alone.

“We’ve been able to look at brain activity for a specific episodic memory — to look at actual memory traces,” said senior author of the study, Eleanor Maguire.

“We found that our memories are definitely represented in the hippocampus. Now that we’ve seen where they are, we have an opportunity to understand how memories are stored and how they may change through time.”

Full Story: Brain scan can read people’s thoughts: researchers – Yahoo! News.

When Are You Dead? Science Just Made the Work of Religion a Bit More Difficult

A recent study of brain activity in those thought to be in a “vegetative” state blurs the line between life and death.

When are you dead?

This is a tricky question, where science and religion often hide, or collide. It’s answered in a diversity of ways by different cultures at different times, by different physicians in different hospitals, different shamans in different tribes. Is it when your heart stops working (as in Japan and Shintoism)? When your soul leaves your body (as in Tibet and Buddhism)? When your brain stops working? When a certain part of your brain stops working? Who decides when you’re dead?

Can you be dead in body, but not in mind? Vice versa?

Cogito ergo sum?

A new study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine adds intriguing neuroscientific fuel to the fires already ablaze around these questions.

Full Story: When Are You Dead? Science Just Made the Work of Religion a Bit More Difficult | Belief | AlterNet.

Powering Up Electronics With Cotton Fabric? It’s Happening

Cornell University is about to have a fashion show. And at that fashion show will be clothing made of fabric that is simply electrifying. No, really. Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of Fiber Science and Apparel Design, has developed cotton threads that, while remaining flexible and comfortable to wear, can conduct electric current as well as a metal wire. Simply knotting the threads is enough to create a complete circuit. A solar-powered dress with this technology literally woven into its fabric will be featured at the upcoming fashion show. But how it works sounds a little familiar.

According to the press release, “Using multidisciplinary nanotechnology developed at Cornell in collaboration with the universities at Bologna and Cagliari, Italy, Hinestroza and his colleagues developed a technique to permanently coat cotton fibers with electrically conductive nanoparticles. “We can definitively have sections of a traditional cotton fabric becoming conductive, hence a great myriad of applications can be achieved,” Hinestroza said.”

This sounds familiar. If you recall, in January we wrote about scientists at Stanford who are able to coat cotton and fabric in an “ink” of nanoparticles that could effectively turn it into a battery. So it sounds like this is a concept of growing interest across the science community, and perhaps we can expect some real progress in the idea of wearable electronics, especially as researchers make the fabric of ever higher quality:

Full Story: Powering Up Electronics With Cotton Fabric? It’s Happening. : TreeHugger.

Einstein Was Right: General Relativity Confirmed

Score one more for Einstein. A new study has confirmed his theory of general relativity works on extremely large scales.

The study was one of the first rigorous tests of this theory of gravity beyond our solar system. The research found that even over vast scales of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the equations of general relativity predict the way that mass pulls on other mass in the universe.

The new work also helps rule out a competing theory of gravity that seeks to do away with the need for bizarre concepts like dark matter and dark energy that have irked some scientists. This research indicates those pesky ideas may be here to stay.

Full Story: SPACE.com — Einstein Was Right: General Relativity Confirmed.

Salty, sweet: study says fat is the sixth “taste”

People sensitive to the taste of fat tend to eat less of it and are less likely to be overweight, according to Australian research that found human tongues can detect fatty tastes.

Researchers at Deakin University, working with colleagues at the University of Adelaide among others, found that fat was the sixth taste people can identify in addition to the five others — sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein-rich.

In a statement, Deakin researcher Russell Keast said the findings built on previous research in the United States that used animal models to discover the taste for fat.

Full Story: Salty, sweet: study says fat is the sixth “taste” – Yahoo! News.

Porn: Good for us?

Scientific examination of the subject has found that as the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down.

Pornography. Most people have seen it, and have a strong opinion about it. Many of those opinions are negative—some people argue that ready access to pornography disrupts social order, encouraging people to commit rape, sexual assault, and other sex-related crimes. And even if pornography doesn’t trigger a crime, they say, it contributes to the degradation of women. It harms the women who are depicted by pornography, and harms those who do not participate but are encouraged to perform the acts depicted in it by men who are acculturated by it. Many even adamantly believe that pornography should become illegal.

Alternatively, others argue that pornography is an expression of fantasies that can actually inhibit sexual activity, and act as a positive displacement for sexual aggression. Pornography offers a readily available means of satisfying sexual arousal (masturbation), they say, which serves as a substitute for dangerous, harmful, and illegal activities.

Some feminists even claim that pornography can empower women by loosening them from the shackles of social prudery and restrictions.

Full Story: Porn: Good for us? – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences.

Cisco’s Next Generation Internet Means High Speed for ISPs

Cisco’s announces a really, really fast router to beef up the Internet.

Cisco Systems has announced the launch of a super-fast and efficiency-focused technology which will be at the heart of “the next generation of internet.” A key impetus for its development is keeping pace with the growing demand for video, which Cisco calls today’s “killer app.”

To put the power of this router (which will be used by service providers as part of the internet backbone) in perspective, it delivers 333 Tbps. This speed translates into the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress being downloaded in a second. It enables every single person in China to make a simultaneous video call and can deliver every movie ever made in 4 minutes (storage is another matter).

Full Story: Business Technology Solutions | PCMag.com.

Exclusive: Websites like Drudge can spread viruses, ‘non-partisan’ techie warned Senate | Raw Story

The Senate’s environment committee has warned Capitol Hill staffers to avoid the Drudge Report and some other sites over suspicions of viruses, a spokesperson for the committee confirmed to Raw Story Tuesday.

The Drudge Report denied the allegations and mocked the committee in a prominently-featured story, but a CNET report on Tuesday notes that readers have complained about suspicious malware on the site today.

According to Drudge, “The Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works issued an urgent email late Monday claiming the DRUDGE REPORT is ‘responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.’” The article said, “The committee ordered hill staff: ‘Try to avoid’ the DRUDGE REPORT ‘for now’.”

Full Story: Exclusive: Websites like Drudge can spread viruses, ‘non-partisan’ techie warned Senate | Raw Story.

Belgian newspaper issues 3D edition, complete with glasses

A Belgian daily newspaper offered its readers a new perspective on the world Tuesday with a 3D edition complete with special glasses.

All the photos and adverts in La Derniere Heure’s special edition were treated to give them the three-dimensional effect when viewed through the different lenses of the kind well-known to 3D filmgoers.

“The goal was to make the whole paper 3D,” said the French-language paper’s chief editor Hubert Leclercq, who said it took two months to prepare the special edition, which had a higher than normal print run of 115,000 copies, for the newstands.

Full Story: Belgian newspaper issues 3D edition, complete with glasses | Raw Story.

IBM invents Earth-friendly plastic made from plants

IBM researchers on Tuesday said they have discovered a way to make Earth-friendly plastic from plants that could replace petroleum-based products tough on the environment.

The breakthrough promises biodegradable plastics made in a way that saves on energy, according to Chandrasekhar “Spike” Narayan, a manager of science and technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in Northern California.

Almaden and Stanford University researchers said the discovery could herald an era of sustainability for a plastics industry rife with seemingly eternal products notorious for cramming landfills and littering the planet.

Full Story: IBM invents Earth-friendly plastic made from plants | Raw Story.

Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users

Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years.

By early 2011 all hard drives will use an “advanced format” that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.

The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable.

However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format.

Full Story: BBC News – Hard drive evolution could hit Microsoft XP users.

The World’s First Commercial Brain-Computer Interface and the history of BCI

A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a brain and an external device. BCIs are often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature.

The field of BCI has since blossomed spectacularly, mostly toward neuroprosthetics applications that aim at restoring damaged hearing, sight and movement. Thanks to the remarkable cortical plasticity of the brain, signals from implanted prostheses can, after adaptation, be handled by the brain like natural sensor or effector channels. Following years of animal experimentation, the first neuroprosthetic devices implanted in humans appeared in the mid-nineties.

Full Story: Make A History.

New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days

Future Mars outposts or colonies may seem more distant than ever with NASA’s exploration plans in flux, but the rocket technology that could someday propel a human mission to the red planet in as little as 40 days may already exist.

A company founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has been developing a new rocket engine that draws upon electric power and magnetic fields to channel superheated plasma out the back. That stream of plasma generates steady, efficient thrust that uses low amounts of propellant and builds up speed over time.

“People have known for a long time, even back in the ’50s, that electric propulsion would be needed for serious exploration of Mars,” said Tim Glover, director of development at the Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Full Story: SPACE.com — New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days.

Obama to unveil ‘ambitious plan’ for NASA

Details of April 15 space conference will be announced later

President Barack Obama plans to host a conference in Florida next month on his administration’s approach to the next step in space exploration.

The White House says Obama and top officials as well as leaders in space will discuss the future of U.S. efforts in human space flight. Details of the conference, scheduled for April 15, are to be announced later.

America’s space program is in a holding pattern of sorts. Its space shuttle fleet is being retired this year, and the administration is dropping plans for a return to the moon.

Full Story: Obama to unveil ‘ambitious plan’ for NASA – Space- msnbc.com.

When the Truth Is Shown to Be Lies

It’s been a year since President Obama lifted the Bush administration’s restrictions on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Nevertheless, religious opponents of the research still claim that embryonic stem cells have yet to yield any treatments. They insist that adult stem cell research will render embryonic stem cell research unnecessary.

Well, guess what?

The Religious Right’s position on this recently took a big hit with this news:

Massachusetts based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology recently announced that the FDA has granted orphan drug status to MA09-hRPE – an embryonic stem cell derived treatment for a specific form of blindness (Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy). Orphan drug status is targeted to those therapies which are designed to treat fewer than 200,000 Americans and gives ACT access to tax credits, grants for clinical trials, and a seven year exclusivity to market MA09-hRPE. This is the first such FDA approval for an embryonic stem cell derived therapy and ACT plans on using the orphan drug status to accelerate clinical testing. While Advanced Cell Technology has something of a checkered past, this recent FDA status could signal not only an approaching success for the MA09-hRPE treatment, but also a promising advancement in the company’s goal to pioneer new forms of regenerative medicine.

Full Story: Talk To Action | When the Truth Is Shown to Be Lies.

Milky Way Time-Lapse Video Is Gorgeous (VIDEO)

This time-lapse video of the Milky Way, shot over Hawaii, is just gorgeous. As Buzzfeed says, “Time to feel insignificant… in a good way.”

WATCH:

Full Story: Milky Way Time-Lapse Video Is Gorgeous (VIDEO).

Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people have values novel in human evolutionary history, study finds

More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values.  The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.”

“Evolutionarily novel” preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess.  In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are “evolutionarily familiar.”

Full Story: Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people have values novel in human evolutionary history, study finds.

Buzz Aldrin Says Mars Is Within Our Reach — Here’s How

In his recent testimony before Congress, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden told lawmakers the goal of the U.S. space program under President Barack Obama was Mars.

But he also warned that getting to Mars would require a step-by-step evolution, because NASA lacked the technology to safely send astronauts so deep into space. The Obama budget contained the down payment on a Mars mission, with billions set aside for research and testing of advanced, cutting-edge technologies that could be employed to make a mission to Mars a reality.

I believe we can be well on our way to Mars by July 20, 2019 — which just happens to be the 50th anniversary of my Apollo 11 flight to the moon. The plan I’ve designed, called a unified space vision, contains ideas for the development of a deep-space craft that I call the Exploration Module, and development of a true heavy lift space booster evolved from the existing space shuttle.

Full Story: Opinion: Buzz Aldrin Says Mars Is Within Our Reach — Here’s How – AOL News.

Do Kinder People Have an Evolutionary Advantage?

“Positive psychology” research indicates that the kinder you are, the more likely you are to survive — and evolve.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.

In contrast to “every man for himself” interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist and author of “Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life,” and his fellow social scientists are building the case that humans are successful as a species precisely because of our nurturing, altruistic and compassionate traits.

They call it “survival of the kindest.”

Full Story: Do Kinder People Have an Evolutionary Advantage? | Personal Health | AlterNet.

Woolly Mammoths Resurfacing In Siberia

A fantastic LA Times article details the recent proliferation of woolly mammoth bones in Siberia. As permafrost in the region thaws, entire villages subsist on trade in mammoth bones — so much so that a new word has been coined: “mamontit, or “to mammoth” — meaning, to go out in search of bones.”

The article has some wonderful details on the art and science of finding the bones:

“You need to have luck to find bones,” said Fyodor Romanenko, a geologist at Moscow State University. “I don’t look for bones. I find them. They find me.”

At HuffPost Green, we’ve been keeping track, not only of resurfacing mammoth bones, but the possibility of mammoth resurrection. Click here to watch the 60 Minutes report on the potential to bring the extinct back to life. Says reporter Lesley Stahl:

Full Story: Woolly Mammoths Resurfacing In Siberia.

NASA radar finds ice on moon’s north pole

A US radar launched into space aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the moon’s north pole, NASA scientists said Monday.

The US space agency’s Mini-SAR radar found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from one to nine miles (1.6 to 15 kilometers), each full of water ice.

“Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it’s estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice,” NASA said in a statement.

Full Story: NASA radar finds ice on moon’s north pole – Yahoo! News.

Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.

Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.

“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”

Full Story: Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says – Bloomberg.com.

Watching two scientific paradigms collapse: GMOs and vaccines

Those promoting genetic engineering have claimed it is the cutting edge of science. Those in opposition are treated as ill-informed. African scientists who reject genetic engineering are treated as a needy, backward underclass and “starved for science.” Vaccines are considered the greatest gift of modern medicine and those opposed are said to be putting others’ lives at risk.

But whatever high ground the biotech and vaccine industries have claimed for themselves scientifically is crumbling. Both paradigms are beginning to collapse.

Genetically engineered food

In India, where Monsanto expected the approval of its first genetically food crop there, Bt-eggplant (to be followed quickly by many others already in the commercial pipeline), questions of terrible science, corruption of agencies and selling out to giant international food companies sprang up.

Senior biologist Pushpa Bhargava, the Supreme Court-appointed special invitee to the 30-member Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) pointed out that the 102-page report:

Full Story: Watching two scientific paradigms collapse: GMOs and vaccines « COTO Report.

NOTE: Mike5000 @ BF

Caltech Researchers Create Highly Absorbing, Flexible Solar Cells with Silicon Wire Arrays

Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells.

“These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials,” says Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor, professor of applied physics and materials science, and director of Caltech’s Resnick Institute, which focuses on sustainability research.

The light-trapping limit of a material refers to how much sunlight it is able to absorb. The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight. “We’ve surpassed previous optical microstructures developed to trap light,” he says.

Full Story: Caltech Researchers Create Highly Absorbing, Flexible Solar Cells with Silicon Wire Arrays – Caltech.

Atom Smasher Restarts In Quest For ‘Secrets Of The Universe’

Operators of the world’s largest atom smasher restarted their massive machine Sunday in a run up to experiments probing secrets of the universe, a spokeswoman said.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, sent low energy beams of protons in both directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border at Geneva, said Christine Sutton.

After a cautious trial period, CERN plans to ramp up the energy of the beams to unprecedented levels and start record-setting collisions of protons by late March, Sutton said.

The restart follows a 2 1/2 month winter shutdown during which scientists made improvements and checked out the smasher’s ability to collide protons at energies three times greater than has ever been achieved previously

Full Story: Atom Smasher Restarts In Quest For ‘Secrets Of The Universe’.

What Came ‘Before’ the Big Bang? Leading Physicist Presents a Radical Theory

String theorists Neil Turok of Cambridge University and Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton believe that the cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes. In their view of the universe the complexities of an inflating universe after a Big Bang are replaced by a universe that was already large. flat, and uniform with dark energy as the effect of the other universe constantly leaking gravity into our own and driving its acceleration. According to this theory, the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.

Turok and Steinhardt were inspired by a lecture given by Burt Ovrut who imagined two branes, universes like ours, separated by a tiny gap as tiny as 10-32 meters. There would be no communictaion between the two universes except for our parallel sister universe's gravitational pull, which could cross the tiny gap.

Orvut's theory could explain the effect of dark matter where areas of the universe are heavier than they should be given everything that's present. With their theory, the nagging problems surrounding the Big Bang (beginning from what, and caused how?) are replaced by an eternal cosmic cycle where dark energy is no longer a mysterious unknown quantity, but rather the very extra gravitational force that drives the universe to universe (brane-brane) interaction.

Full Story: Make A History.

Massive Pharaoh Head Unearthed In Egypt

Archaeologists have unearthed the massive head of one Egypt’s most famous pharoahs who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced Sunday.

The head of Amenhotep III, which alone is about the height of a person, was found in the ruins of the pharaoh’s mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor.

The Egyptian-European expedition under the guidance of German-Armenian archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian has been excavating the temple near the famous seated colossi of Memnon for the last several years.

Full Story: Massive Pharaoh Head Unearthed In Egypt.

1997 DoD Briefing: ‘Others’ can set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely using electromagnetic waves

Presenter: Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen April 28, 1997 8:45 AM EDT

Q: Let me ask you specifically about last week’s scare here in Washington, and what we might have learned from how prepared we are to deal with that (inaudible), at B’nai Brith.

A: Well, it points out the nature of the threat. It turned out to be a false threat under the circumstances. But as we’ve learned in the intelligence community, we had something called — and we have James Woolsey here [*puke*] to perhaps even address this question about phantom moles. The mere fear that there is a mole within an agency can set off a chain reaction and a hunt for that particular mole which can paralyze the agency for weeks and months and years even, in a search. The same thing is true about just the false scare of a threat of using some kind of a chemical weapon or a biological one. There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus [OMG! Who would do such a thing?], and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least. Alvin Toeffler has written about this in terms of some scientists in their laboratories trying to devise certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could just eliminate certain ethnic groups and races; and others [LOL] are designing some sort of engineering, some sort of insects that can destroy specific crops. Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.’

Just switch ‘yours,’ ‘others’ and ‘they’ with ‘U.S.,’ ‘U.S.’ and ‘U.S.’ This was in 1997. Imagine, after eight years of George W. Bush turbo-funding these lunatics, with no end to funding in sight… what they can do now. Oh, BTW. See, also, the list of dead scientists.

The most fascinating might be the Harvard scientist, Dr. Don C Wiley, ‘one of the foremost infectious disease researchers’ in the United States, who ‘got dizzy’ and his car fell off a bridge in Memphis, TN.

The bridge where his car was found is only a five-minute drive away and in the wrong direction from where he was staying, leaving authorities with a four-hour, unexplained gap until his vehicle was found. Now Memphis police are exploring several theories involving suicide, robbery and murder.

…snip…

Statement signed by then President of Russia Vladimir Putin. The statement claimed:

The U.S. is creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high-frequency radio waves … The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms, or from conventional weapons to nuclear weapons. This new type of weapons differs from previous types in that the near-Earth medium becomes at once an object of direct influence and its component.[13]“

Full Story: Citizens For Legitimate Government.

Evolution on the march

New DNA findings show that human genetic mutations are more recent, more rapid than once thought.

Conventional wisdom holds that if you could bring back someone from 40,000 years ago, he or she would blend perfectly well with today’s population.

After all, the fossils show that our ancestors were “anatomically modern” by 100,000 years ago, and by 40,000 B.C., they were creating complex tools and art.

It was easy to assume our species hadn’t evolved much since then.

Now molecular biology is overturning that assumption.

Evidence for more recent evolution is coming not from fossils but from patterns seen in the DNA of contemporary people. Genes show that blue eyes, for example, apparently didn’t exist until 6,000 years ago, and the ability to digest milk goes back just 7,000 years.

Full Story: Evolution on the march | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010.

Glowing Wallpaper Could Be a Better Way to Light Your Home

Thin is in, especially regarding digital displays like television and laptop screens. Now new graphene-based electrode technology has been developed which promises to provide affordable glowing displays which can be applied as wallpaper or applied to ceilings to provide a green, energy-saving alternative to light bulbs, according to ScienceDaily.com.

Today's ultra-thin lighting technology is mostly based on organic light diodes called OLEDs, which are widely used commercially in everything from mobile phones to televisions. Although OLEDs are fairly energy efficient, they have two major drawbacks: they are relatively expensive to produce, and they consist of the metal alloy indium tin oxide which is rare and complicated to recycle.

These concerns are part of what led Swedish researchers from Linköping and Umeå universities, in coalition with American colleagues, to develop a new alternative to the flat screen. Based on organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (or LECs), the transparent electrode is made of the carbon material graphene.

Full Story: Glowing Wallpaper Could Be a Better Way to Light Your Home – GOOD Blog – GOOD.

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

Full Story: Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ – CNN.com.

OPS: CwV @ BF -

#1 “The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors,”
I beg to differ.
Liberalism, defined as caring for the group (as opposed to caring only for the self) is a formative evolutionary trait. We band together for protection and food-sharing. Our young are totally dependent for a very long time and so the tribe circles around them and carries them along for it’s group survival. Assuring the wellbeing of all the tribe’s members is essential to the survival of the whole. This is the origin of Socialism, in the very same cave as Monarchy and Capitalism. They are ingrained into all of us in varying degrees. To some extent, a communitarian concept is a little more complex than I, Me, Mine, so it’s not surprising that it takes a tad more intelligence to understand how sharing your kill keeps your wife and kids alive and that furthers your genes.
“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.” JSMill

#2 #1 agree. Also:

….Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said….

“liberalism” is an unconventional philosophy? Jesus was a Liberal. Historically liberalism has been ‘unconventional’ among the Powered elite (probably more to justify THEIR existence then anything else) but as CwV points out for the rest of humanity liberalism has been a survival tool

New ‘alien invader’ star clusters found in Milky Way

As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way — many more than previously thought — are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. The report also suggests there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way rather than the two that were previously confirmed.

“Some of the stars and star clusters you see when you look into space at night are aliens from another galaxy, just not the green-skinned type you find in a Hollywood movie. These ‘alien’ star clusters that have made their way into our galaxy over the last few billion years,” says Terry Bridges, an astronomer at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.

The study (co-authored by Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia) has been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Full Story: New ‘alien invader’ star clusters found in Milky Way.

World’s Largest Solar Powered Yacht Unveiled

No need to hoist the sails aboard this yacht.

Sunshine is all Raphael Domjan, the skipper of a catamaran-style yacht that sports some 5,382 square feet (500 square meters) of solar panels, will need to power the PlanetSolar.

The boat – nearly 102 feet long, almost 50 feet wide and standing 24-1/2 feet high (31 meters by 15 meters by 7.5 meters) was unveiled Thursday at the Knierim Yachtbau shipyard in the northern city of Kiel where it took 13 months to build.

The next step is the formal launching which is slated for April and, beyond that, said spokeswoman Christel Varone, are plans to take the yacht on an around the world journey in 2011.

The boat was designed by PlanetSolar SA of Switzerland.

Full Story: PlanetSolar: World’s Largest Solar Powered Yacht Unveiled.

World’s First Commercial Jetpack To Be Sold For $75,000 (VIDEO)

The Martin Aircraft Company has created the first jetpack that will be commercially available, the Daily Mail reports.

The jetpack has a height of five feet, width of five-and-a-half feet and a length of five feet, and features a dual-propeller construction that uses fans to provide lift instead of jets of exhaust gas.

The company’s chief executive, Richard Lauder, expects the jetpacks will be sold to a variety of different buyers–from emergency service personnel and private users to the military.

Full Story: World’s First Commercial Jetpack To Be Sold For $75,000 (VIDEO).

Senators To NASA Chief: Get A Goal

NASA needs to go somewhere specific, not just talk about it, skeptical U.S. senators told the space agency chief Wednesday.

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget kills the previous administration’s return-to-the-moon mission, sometimes nicknamed “Apollo on steroids.” That leaves the space agency adrift without a goal or destination, senators and outside experts said at a Senate Commerce science and space subcommittee hearing, the first since Obama unveiled his new space plan this month.

On top of that the nation’s space shuttle fleet is only months away from long-planned retirement, an issue for senators from Florida, where NASA is a major employer. And while the new NASA plan includes extra money – $6 billion over five years – for private spaceships and developing new rocket technology, NASA shouldn’t be just about spending, the senators said. It should be about John F. Kennedy-like vision.
Full Story: Senators To NASA Chief: Get A Goal.

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple

A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution. They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Full Story: Make A History.

Aussies to test golden staph vaccine

Australian scientists are developing a potential “blockbuster” vaccine that could protect against golden staph, a leading source of infection in the world’s hospitals.

A major human trial is now getting under way, and more than 400 healthy volunteers are sought across the country to test how their bodies respond to the prototype vaccine.

Dr Peter Richmond said the bacteria, otherwise named Staphylococcus aureus, was posing a rising challenge to health authorities as antibiotic-resistant strains were now commonplace in hospitals and health care facilities.

Full Story: Aussies to test golden staph vaccine.

Saturn Moon ‘Spitting’ PHOTO: NASA Shoots Picture Of Dramatic Plumes On Moon’s Surface

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured unusual photos of Saturn’s moon Enceladus ‘bursting at the seams.’

In a tweet, NASA described Enceladus as ’spitting something’ from its surface, and indeed the images show a series of plumes emanating from the planet’s surface.

NASA explains the images:

Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed “tiger stripes” near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.

More than 30 individual jets of different sizes can be seen in this image and more than 20 of them had not been identified before. At least one jet spouting prominently in previous images now appears less powerful.

Full Story: Saturn Moon ‘Spitting’ PHOTO: NASA Shoots Picture Of Dramatic Plumes On Moon’s Surface.

DNA’s Dirty Little Secret

A forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison.

Three days before Christmas 1972, a twenty-two-year-old nurse named Diana Sylvester wrapped up her night shift at the University of San Francisco Medical Center and made her way to her apartment, halfway between the hospital and Golden Gate Park. She arrived around 8:00 a.m. and set her newspaper and purse on the kitchen table. A few minutes later, Sylvester’s landlord, Helen Nigidoff, heard loud thuds and screams emanating from Sylvester’s unit upstairs. With her apron still on, Nigidoff rang the doorbell before opening a door leading up to Sylvester’s apartment, where she came face-to-face with a stranger. “Go away,” he growled angrily. “We’re making love.” As Nigidoff raced downstairs to call the police, the man ran out of the building holding a denim jacket over his face.

When the officers arrived a half hour later, they found a gruesome scene. Sylvester lay motionless next to the Christmas tree on her living-room floor, her mouth unnaturally agape, blood oozing from her chest like molten lava. An autopsy revealed that Sylvester’s attacker had forced her to perform oral sex and then strangled her, before plunging a knife into her chest two times. One stab pierced her heart. The other tore through her left lung, drowning her in her own blood.

Police immediately scoured Sylvester’s apartment and questioned the landlady, who offered a description of the assailant: white, medium height, and heavy-set, with curly brown hair and a beard. But neither these details nor the bits and pieces of evidence they collected in the months-long investigation that followed were enough to pinpoint the culprit. The few leads investigators turned up fizzled, and the case went cold.

Full Story: DNA’s Dirty Little Secret – Michael Bobelian.

Public health campaigns may need to be designed for people with lower IQs if they are to work.

Do clever people live longer?

London – Intelligence comes second only to smoking as a predictor of heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, suggesting public health campaigns may need to be designed for people with lower IQs if they are to work.

Research by Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) found that lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores were associated with higher rates of heart disease and death, and were more important indicators than any other risk factors except smoking.

Heart disease is the leading killer of men and women Europe, the United States and most industrialised countries.

According to the World Health Organisation, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes accounted for 32 percent of all deaths around the world in 2005.

Full Story: News – Science: Do clever people live longer?.

Same Species, Polar Opposites: The Mystery of Identical Creatures Found in both Arctic and Antarctic Waters

How exactly did identical marine species come to inhabit both the north and south polar regions?

Two years ago, several research vessels shipped out to the North and the South poles to assemble a census of creatures living under the ice. One of the most surprising results was a discovery that 235 identical species lived on opposite sides of the world but were undocumented anywhere else. It’s easy to understand how massive humpbacks can swim from Arctic to Antarctic waters, but most of the miniature worms, snails and crustaceans on the researchers’ list are no bigger than grains of rice. How could tiny creatures adapted for the frigid waters travel 9,500 kilometers through warmer climes to reach the opposite pole?

Under the microscope, these invertebrates sometimes look like shredded plastic bags or shrimp with bullhorns. It’s unclear how they could cross a swimming pool, let alone the globe. So, their “bipolarity” poses a 160-year mystery of the ocean—one that has only grown with time. “If bipolar species are as common as our initial list suggests, it really means we don’t appreciate the mechanisms that are important for connectivity in the ocean as well as we thought,” says Russ Hopcroft, project leader of the Arctic portion of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership’s Census of Marine Life.

Full Story: Same Species, Polar Opposites: The Mystery of Identical Creatures Found in both Arctic and Antarctic Waters [Slide Show]: Scientific American.

AIDS Research: Scientists Report On Way To Derail Spread Of AIDS

A successful AIDS vaccine remains elusive, but researchers say aggressive, early anti-viral therapy might provide a way to derail the spread of disease.

The goal is to catch new AIDS cases early and administer therapy to reduce the amount of virus in the patient’s system.

Anti-retroviral therapy has increased in the past five years. But it’s been given too late in the course of infection.

Full Story: AIDS Research: Scientists Report On Way To Derail Spread Of AIDS.

Unsettled Mechanism of Supernova Detonation Gets a New Twist

Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all

When stellar cataclysms known as type Ia supernovae flare up far across the universe, their brightness and consistency allow astronomers to use them as so-called standard candles to measure cosmological distances. Just over a decade ago, two teams used the supernovae to show that the universe is accelerating in its expansion due to the influence of dark energy, a shocking discovery that thrust type Ia supernovae into the astrophysical limelight. But how exactly did these cosmic mileposts come to be?

A type Ia supernova arises from the explosion of an ultradense stellar remnant known as a white dwarf, but it is less than clear how the white dwarf comes to ignite in a thermonuclear blast. The traditional view held that a white dwarf, locked in a binary pairing with another star, sucked matter from its companion, growing ever larger in size until it could no longer support its own weight. Once a white dwarf reaches the Chandrasekhar limit, roughly 1.4 times the mass of the sun, it contracts and explodes in a massive blast.

Full Story Make A History.

Science of Profit, Corporate Takeover of Science, Wake Up America #2

What influence has corporations and big Pharma had on science and government regulations via the FDA, NIH and CDC? Big money and conflicts of interest have changed the face of science and health care in America….more

Full Story YouTube – Science of Profit, Corporate Takeover of Science, Wake Up America #2.

Pharma corruption of medical science

Beatrice Golomb highlights pharma corruption at the science network. She presents Data from NIH, FDA and JAMA including a meta analysis which reveals that orchestrated pharma strategies disguise bad science to appear positive and certain. An example of multiple orchestration of conflict of interest, is charles Nemeroff now sacked from emory university.

Unfortunately the reaction by most working scientists to this manipulation is drawn out often with nothing happening. Shock first, a period of recovery followed by denial, then perhaps action years later. This gives pharma plenty of time to devise new manipulation strategies.

Beatrice a high status researcher, says it is now very difficult to judge the work of other scientists in regards to medical products. It's not the scientists that are fault, but what happens to their work afterwards.

for an up to date article on this Click Here

Top Secret UFO Files Released By Ministry Of Defense (VIDEO)

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense, the MoD, is releasing secret documents on UFO sightings, the Telegraph reports.

Some of these sightings include a UFO flying over the London soccer stadium Stamford Bridge and a “funny shaped object” spotted above British politician Michael Howard's house. Other reports mention Winston Churchill and someone claims to have seen a flying Toblerone chocolate bar.

Nick Pope, a former Ministry of Defense UFO claim investigator, states that 95% of the reports are ordinary occurrences that people have misidentified or mistaken.

He adds, “But a small percentage of cases–perhaps 2-3%–are very interesting, are genuinely unexplained, and even those of us at the MoD who worked on this issue were puzzled genuinely saying, 'Well, we dont know what it is.'”

Full Story Top Secret UFO Files Released By Ministry Of Defense (VIDEO).

America’s 2020 Broadband Vision

In a month, the Federal Communications Commission will deliver a National Broadband Plan, as it was asked to do by Congress and the President in the Recovery Act. This will be a meaningful plan for U.S. global leadership in high-speed Internet to create jobs and spur economic growth; to unleash new waves of innovation and investment; and to improve education, health care, energy efficiency, public safety, and the vibrancy of our democracy.

I believe this plan is vitally important to America's future.

Studies from the Brookings Institute, MIT, the World Bank, and others all tell us the same thing — that even modest increases in broadband adoption can yield hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Broadband empowers small businesses to compete and grow and will ensure that the jobs and industries of tomorrow are created in the United States.

The economic benefits of broadband go hand-in-hand with social benefits and the potential for vast improvements in the quality of life for all Americans. The National Broadband Plan will describe concrete ways in which broadband can be a part of 21st century solutions to some of our nation's most pressing challenges, including:

Full Story Julius Genachowski: America’s 2020 Broadband Vision.

In a doomsday cyber attack scenario, answers are unsettling

What if a crippling attack struck the country’s digital infrastructure? Experts including current and former officials tackle the question. The results show that the peril is real and growing.

Reporting from Washington – The crisis began when college basketball fans downloaded a free March Madness application to their smart phones. The app hid spyware that stole passwords, intercepted e-mails and created havoc.

Soon 60 million cellphones were dead. The Internet crashed, finance and commerce collapsed, and most of the nation’s electric grid went dark. White House aides discussed putting the Army in American cities.

That, spiced up with bombs and hurricanes, formed the doomsday scenario when 10 former White House advisors and other top officials joined forces Tuesday in a rare public cyber war game designed to highlight the potential vulnerability of the nation’s digital infrastructure to crippling attack.

The results were hardly reassuring.

“We’re in uncharted territory here,” was the most common refrain during a three-hour simulated crisis meeting of the National Security Council, the crux of the Cyber Shockwave exercise.

Full Story In a doomsday cyber attack scenario, answers are unsettling – latimes.com.

OPS:  Of course our eVoting machines are perfectly safe

Broad New Hacking Attack Detected – But Not Stopped

Global Offensive Snagged Corporate, Personal Data at nearly 2,500 Companies; Operation Is Still Running

Hackers in Europe and China successfully broke into computers at nearly 2,500 companies and government agencies over the last 18 months in a coordinated global attack that exposed vast amounts of personal and corporate secrets to theft, according to a computer-security company that discovered the breach.

The damage from the latest cyberattack is still being assessed, and affected companies are still being notified. But data compiled by NetWitness, the closely held firm that discovered the breaches, showed that hackers gained access to a wide array of data at 2,411 companies, from credit-card transactions to intellectual property.

The hacking operation, the latest of several major hacks that have raised alarms for companies and government officials, is still running and it isn’t clear to what extent it has been contained, NetWitness said. Also unclear is the full amount of data stolen and how it was used. Two companies that were infiltrated, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. and Cardinal Health Inc., said they had isolated and contained the problem.

Full Story Broad New Hacking Attack Detected – WSJ.com.

3G demand expanding too fast for networks

AT&T’s mobile service has taken its lumps for its network performance problems, something one of its executives acknowledged is an issue in San Francisco and New York.

But the cause of the problems – new bandwidth-hungry smart phones, mobile applications and Internet browsing, which are all embodied in the iPhone – is increasingly an industry-wide challenge that will probably test the capacity of all networks.

AT&T, the leader in smart phone use, said that wireless data over its networks in the last three years has exploded 5,000 percent.

That growing demand could eventually translate into new pricing tiers designed to curb heavy use by customers. The days of the unlimited data plan, predict several analysts, could be numbered.

Full Story 3G demand expanding too fast for networks.

Eye-Controlled Phone Unveiled By DoCoMo At MWC 2010 (VIDEO)

Forget touchscreens: new technology could let you control your gadgets with your eyes.

A prototype gadget unveiled by NTT DoCoMo at the Mobile World congress 2010 in Barcelona enables users to make calls, play music, and control the phone’s settings just by moving their eyes.

The Telegraph explains how the eye-controlled phone and MP3 player works:

Special electrodes, attached to a set of earphones, are able to pick up the movement of the eye. Eyes have “electrical potential” – positive at the cornea and negative at the retina – and this electrical potential changes depending on the movement of the eyeball. The system works even when a person’s eyes are closed.

The earphone electrodes are able to read these changing currents – known as an electrooculogram – and the mobile phone is pre-programmed to translate that information in to a command. So a user can make or receive a call, simply by moving their eyes to the right, then to the left, then back to the right again.

Full Story Eye-Controlled Phone Unveiled By DoCoMo At MWC 2010 (VIDEO).

nanotech safety: Dangers come in small particles

Hundreds of nanotechnology applications are already in commercial production despite a huge health and safety question mark. Hazards looks at how an industry the safety authorities admit they know precious little about has been allowed to grow, unregulated, into the biggest thing since the microchip.

In the two decades since the birth of the nanotechnology revolution, it has been a strict case of small is beautiful. Dollar signs have blotted out the warning signs, and the technology has developed, as one observer put it, “at warp speed.” This is a modern day gold rush – forget precaution, get to production.

When President Clinton launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative, now third in the research funding pecking order in the US behind the war on cancer and the Star Wars programme, he gushed about the potential. Tiny sensors would in the future speed through arteries detecting cancers at an early stage, exotic new lightweight materials would have be 10 times the strength of steel [1].

Media reports marvel at promised nano-based cancer cures and desktop nanomachine factories. The European Commission talked this year of “atom-scale ‘nano-robots’ that can be injected in the human body to cure diseases, electronic ‘nano-chips’ that can store and process much more information than today’s microchips, ‘nano-fibres’ for better and always-clean clothes, and ‘nano-materials’ for high-performance coatings, for instance in aircraft and space ships.”

Full Story nanotech safety – Hazards Magazine issue 87.

US Broadband Figures Show 40 Percent Lack High-Speed Internet: STUDY

Roughly 40 percent of Americans do not have high-speed Internet access at home, according to new Commerce Department figures that underscore the challenges facing policymakers who are trying to bring affordable broadband connections to everyone.

The Obama administration and Congress have identified universal broadband as a key to driving economic development, producing jobs and bringing educational opportunities and cutting-edge medicine to all corners of the country.

“We’re at a point where high-speed access to the Internet is critical to the ability of people to be successful in today’s economy and society at large,” said Larry Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an arm of the Commerce Department that released the data Tuesday.

Full Story US Broadband Figures Show 40 Percent Lack High-Speed Internet: STUDY.

Vampire Squid Threatened By Human Activity (VIDEO)

The vampire squid is one of many unheard of creatures living in the deep sea. The species, which is technically not a squid, but a cephalopod, had been living fairly anonymously since it first appeared 300 million years ago, even before dinosaurs existed, according to National Geographic. Only now is it getting more attention because its existence could be threatened by human activities, according to a report by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The vampire squid has a unique ability to turn itself inside out when it feels vulnerable to predators. This skill, however, will not protect it against the dangers of human activity:

“They are threatened by ocean warming, decreasing oxygen, pollution, overfishing, industrialization, and dozens of other changes taking place in the deep,” said Bruce Robison, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. “We have a responsibility to learn all we can about these amazing animals and to protect them from the greatest danger to life in the deep– the human species.”

Full Story Vampire Squid Threatened By Human Activity (VIDEO).

Windows Phone 7 Series RELEASED

Microsoft officially unveiled its new Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Congress 2010.

See photos of the new Windows Phone 7 Series in the slideshow below.

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore introduced the new phone and said that the company’s goal was to create ‘a modern phone that fits people’s complex lives.’ Belfiore added, ‘First, we want a smart design that puts the user at the center of the experience. Second, we wanted to design integrated experiences.’

Early reviews of the Windows Phone 7 Series emphasize how different it is from past iterations of Windows Mobile.

Full Story Windows Phone 7 Series RELEASED: PICTURES Of Microsoft’s New Phone.

Check Out the FCC’s Useless Broadband Competition Map

The Federal Communications Commission released data today detailing the spread of high-speed Internet connections across the nation as of the end of 2008, including this map (click on image for an expanded view). You might be thinking, “Wow, that’s awesome — so why are we spending $350 million to create such a map as part of the broadband stimulus bill?” It’s because the FCC map is worthless.

The map defines broadband as any technology (excluding mobile broadband providers) delivering speeds of 200 kbps down. I challenge folks to surf to Facebook, the new video-heavy CNN site or even get their Gmail over such a connection. It’s not a fun experience. Plus, at those speeds video streaming isn’t going to happen at all.

However, there are only a few areas of the nation that don’t have access to at least 200 kbps at the end of 2008, and according to the map many folks have a choice of between four and six providers. However, given that some of those are undoubtedly meeting the old minimum standard of 200 kbps or even the new minimum standard of 768 kbps, I can’t say this map really proves a competitive broadband market for anyone who wants to do anything more than get email.

Full Story Check Out the FCC’s Useless Broadband Competition Map – GigaOM.

Buzz Changes: Google Drops Auto-Following, Adds Better Disable

Google product manager Todd Jackson apologized on Saturday for “the concern we’ve caused” with the roll-out of Google Buzz, and promised a series of significant changes to the company’s new social-networking service.

“It’s been an exciting and challenging week for the Buzz team. We’ve been getting feedback via the Gmail help forums and emails from friends and family, and we’ve also been able to do something new: read the buzz about Buzz itself,” Jackson wrote in a blog post. “We quickly realized that we didn’t get everything quite right. We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We’ll continue to do so.”

Jackson announced three major changes.

1) Buzz will drop auto-following, and instead suggest people who Gmail users might want to follow when they first sign up for Buzz. “For the tens of millions of you who have already started using Buzz, over the next couple weeks we’ll be showing you a similar version of this new start-up experience to give you a second chance to review and confirm the people you’re following.”

Full Story Buzz Changes: Google Drops Auto-Following, Adds Better Disable.

Dietary formula that maintains youthful function into old age

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process.

The findings are published in the current issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine.

“As we all eventually learn, ageing diminishes our mind, fades our perception of the world and compromises our physical capacity,” says David Rollo, associate professor of biology at McMaster. “Declining physical activity — think of grandparents versus toddlers — is one of the most reliable expressions of ageing and is also a good indicator of obesity and general mortality risk.”

The study found that a complex dietary supplement powerfully offsets this key symptom of ageing in old mice by increasing the activity of the cellular furnaces that supply energy — or mitochondria — and by reducing emissions from these furnaces — or free radicals — that are thought to be the basic cause of ageing itself.

Full Story Dietary formula that maintains youthful function into old age.

U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile

A U.S. high-powered airborne laser weapon shot down a ballistic missile in the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Friday.

The agency said in a statement the test took place at 8:44 p.m. PST (11:44 p.m. EST) on Thursday /0444 GMT on Friday) at Point Mugu’s Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off Ventura in central California.

“The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile” the agency said.

The high-powered Airborne Laser system is being developed by Boeing Co., (BA.N) the prime contractor, and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Boeing produces the airframe, a modified 747 jumbo jet, while Northrop Grumman (NOC.N) supplies the higher-energy laser and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) is developing the beam and fire control systems

Full Story U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile | Reuters.

Brain damage causes spiritual feelings?

Damaged brains escape the material world

Increased feelings of transcendence can follow brain damage, a study of people with brain cancer suggests.

As feelings of transcending the physical world can be part of some religious experiences and other forms of spirituality, the finding may help explain why some people seem more prone to such experiences than others.

The brain region in question, the posterior parietal cortex, is involved in maintaining a sense of self, for example by helping you keep track of your body parts. It has also been linked to prayer and meditation

To further probe its role, Cosimo Urgesi, a neuroscientist at the University of Udine in Italy, turned to 88 people who were being treated for brain cancer.

Full Story Damaged brains escape the material world – life – 11 February 2010 – New Scientist.

Black Hole Simulator Uses Real Star Data To Take You Inside The Black Hole (VIDEO)

Jonathan Turley points HuffPost Tech to a new interactive program which shows what scientists believe it would be like to approach a black hole.

The program uses real star data to to show you what you’d see if you wandered into proximity with a black hole — like how the extreme gravity would appear to “shred” background constellations of stars, “spinning them around as though in a giant black washing machine.” More details from NewScientist:

The program’s creators say it could be an excellent tool to familiarise people with the weird ways that black holes warp light. “It’s useful for people to play around with the parameters to study how, for instance, a black hole would distort the constellation Orion,” says Thomas Müller of the University of Stuttgart in Germany.

A black hole forms when a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the core collapsing to a point with huge density and an enormous gravitational pull. Even at a safe distance from the black hole, its gravity can distort the apparent positions of background stars, an effect called gravitational lensing.

WATCH VIDEO

Full Story Black Hole Simulator Uses Real Star Data To Take You Inside The Black Hole (VIDEO).

Dinosaur Revealed In Full Color (PHOTOS):

First Full-Body Rendering

For the first time, scientists have decoded the full-body color patterns of a dinosaur–the 155-million-year-old Anchiornis huxleyi — a new study in the journal Science says.

That may sound familiar, given last week’s announcement of the first scientifically verified dinosaur color scheme.

But the previous research, published in Nature, had found pigments only on a few isolated parts of dinosaurs–and had used less rigorous methods for assigning colors to the fossilized, filament-like “protofeathers” found on some dinosaur specimens, say authors of the new report.

Read Sloan’s full story here.

SEE photos and drawings of the researchers’ findings:

Full Story Dinosaur Revealed In Full Color (PHOTOS): First Full-Body Rendering.

Scientists discover genes that lead to stuttering

the finding could ease parents’ guilt

Why people stutter has long been a medical mystery, with the condition blamed over the years on emotional problems, overbearing parents and browbeating teachers. Now, for the first time, scientists have found genes that could explain some cases of stuttering.

“In terms of mythbusters, this is really an important step forward,” said Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation.

Researchers taking part in a government-funded study discovered mutations in three genes that appear to cause the speech problem in some people. Stuttering tends to run in families, and previous research suggested a genetic connection. But until now, researchers had not been able to pinpoint any culprit genes.

Full Story Scientists discover genes that lead to stuttering; the finding could ease parents’ guilt – chicagotribune.com.

Google To Build Ultra-Fast Broadband Network

Google Inc. plans to build a handful of experimental, ultra-fast Internet networks around the country to ensure that tomorrow’s systems can keep up with online video and other advanced applications that the search company will want to deliver.

The Google project, announced Wednesday, is also intended to provide a platform for outside developers to create and try out all sorts of cutting-edge applications that will require far more bandwidth than today’s networks offer.

The company said its fiber-optic broadband networks will deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second to as many as 500,000 Americans. The systems will be many times faster than the existing DSL, cable and fiber-optic networks that connect most U.S. consumers to the Internet today at speeds typically ranging from 3 megabits to 20 megabits per second.

Full Story Google To Build Ultra-Fast Broadband Network.

Anything Beyond The Universe? New Theory Changes Our Destiny

We think our destiny is to journey to Mars and beyond. Yet as we build our spacecraft, we’re about to be broadsided – from a different direction – by the most explosive event in history.

In the next hundred years or so science will be able to create realities that we can’t even begin to imagine. As we evolve, we’ll be able to construct other information systems that correspond to other realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.

Space and time are not physical matrices, but simply tools the mind uses to construct reality. These algorithms are not only the key to consciousness, but why space and time – indeed the properties of matter itself – are relative to the observer. But what if we changed the algorithms so that instead of time being linear, it was 3-dimensional like space? Consciousness would move through the multiverse. We’d be able to walk through time just like we walk through space. And after creeping along for 4 billion years, life will finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage.

Full Story Robert Lanza, M.D.: Anything Beyond The Universe? New Theory Changes Our Destiny.

Report: 85.8 percent of all emails were spam

Websense Security Labs Report – State of Internet Security, Q3-Q4 2009

The second half of 2009 saw malware authors focus their efforts to ensure they drove victims straight to them. In contrast to the first half of the year where mass injection attacks like Gumblar, Beladen and Nine Ball promoted a sharp rise in the number of malicious Web sites, Websense Security Labs observed a slight (3.3 percent) decline in the growth of the number of Web sites compromised. Instead, attackers replaced their traditional scattergun approach with focused efforts on Web 2.0 properties with higher traffic and multiple pages.

Over the six month period, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) poisoning attacks featured heavily, and Websense Security Labs research identified that 13.7 percent of searches for trending news/buzz words lead to malware. In addition, attackers continued to capitalize on Web site reputation and exploiting user trust, with 71 percent of Web sites with malicious code revealed to be legitimate sites that had been compromised.

Web security intelligence remains a critical component of any email and data security strategy as illustrated by the continued popularity of blended threats (spam emails with embedded URLs). During the second half of 2009 Websense Security Labs discovered:

Full Story Websense Security Labs Report – State of Internet Security, Q3-Q4 2009 – Websense Features.

Astronaut Tweets Stunning Pictures From Space: PHOTOS Of Kilimanjaro, Haiti, And More

Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut on board the International Space Station, has been sending Twitter pictures from space documenting the stunning views he has seen while in orbit.

The active tweeter (@Astro_Soichi) has snapped and sent TwitPics of the full moon, Haiti after the recent earthquake, Rome, Kilimanjaro, and much more.

Check out some of his pictures from space in the slideshow below!

Full Story Astronaut Tweets Stunning Pictures From Space: PHOTOS Of Kilimanjaro, Haiti, And More.

Stronger Efficiency, Renewables Measures Would Benefit Consumers, Industry

WASHINGTON – February 5 – If Congress passed climate and energy legislation that strengthened the energy efficiency and renewable energy standards in the version the House of Representatives approved last June, consumer electric and natural gas costs would be $113 billion lower by 2030, and emitters would pay 4 percent less in compliance costs, according to an analysis released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The analysis also found that stronger renewable energy and efficiency policies would avoid the need for nearly 50 new nuclear reactors and diversify the nation’s energy mix more quickly than the current bill would.

“Combining a cap on global warming pollution with robust efficiency and renewable energy provisions is the quickest, most cost-effective way to transition to the clean energy economy everyone agrees we need,” said Jeff Deyette, a senior analyst at UCS’s Climate and Energy Program and author of the analysis. “The government’s own conservative data shows that a comprehensive approach is an affordable way to protect the environment. It also ensures that U.S. companies can compete in the emerging international green technology market.”

In August 2009, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analyzed the House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which included a cap on global warming emissions and a combined energy efficiency and renewable electricity standard requiring large utilities to increase their use of efficiency and renewable energy 20 percent by 2025. The EIA analysis showed that the House bill was affordable and achievable, but it also showed that loopholes in its efficiency and renewable energy standard would undermine any substantial growth of renewable energy.

Full Story Stronger Efficiency, Renewables Measures Would Benefit Consumers, Industry | CommonDreams.org.

Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy

First, they teleported photons, then atoms and ions. Now one physicist has worked out how to do it with energy, a technique that has profound implications for the future of physics.

In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM’s Watson Research Center in New York State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from one point in space to another without traversing the intervening space.

The technique relies on the strange quantum phenomenon called entanglement, in which two particles share the same existence. This deep connection means that a measurement on one particle immediately influences the other, even though they are light-years apart. Bennett and company worked out how to exploit this to send information. (The influence between the particles may be immediate, but the process does not violate relativity because some informatiom has to be sent classically at the speed of light.) They called the technique teleportation.

That’s not really an overstatement of its potential. Since quantum particles are indistinguishable but for the information they carry, there is no need to transmit them themselves. A much simpler idea is to send the information they contain instead and ensure that there is a ready supply of particles at the other end to take on their identity. Since then, physicists have used these ideas to actually teleport photons, atoms, and ions. And it’s not too hard to imagine that molecules and perhaps even viruses could be teleported in the not-too-distant future.

Full Story Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy.

Pentagon draws plans for immortal ’synthetic organisms’

The Pentagon’s advanced research division has set aside $6 million from its next budget for research on the creation of “synthetic organisms” whose DNA can be altered to make them live forever, or die on command, and even keep a genetic record of what they have been doing.

In its 2011 budget (PDF, 522 pages), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency lays out its intention to create “BioDesign,” a project to create artificial life, presumably with military purposes in mind.

“BioDesign eliminates the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement primarily by advanced genetic engineering and molecular biology technologies to produce the intended biological effect,” the DARPA document states.

Full Story Pentagon draws plans for immortal ’synthetic organisms’ | Raw Story.

Milky Way’s Most Massive Star Discovered

The Milky Way galaxy’s most massive star has been spotted in a “glowing stellar nursery” in space.

The picture (see below) of the massive Milky Way star was captured by the European Southern Observatory’s aptly named ‘Very Large Telescope,’ which measures 27 feet in diameter.

The telescope, located at Cerro Paranal, Chile, combined data from violet, red and infrared filters to create the image of the Milky Way.

This massive star is housed in the NGC 3603 nebula, in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, which is known as one of the luminous and most compact star clusters. It is located 22,000 light-years away from Earth.

Full Story Milky Way’s Most Massive Star Discovered (PHOTOS).

Security flaw puts iPhone users at risk of phishing attacks

When Apple introduced iPhone OS 3.0, it attempted to beef up the security of over-the-air enterprise management of iPhones by adding support for Cisco Systems’ Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP). However, a flaw in the implementation of the standard could allow hackers to offer mobile configuration files that appear to be from a legitimate source, but may otherwise set your iPhone to access malicious servers.

Ars spoke with a mobile security expert who discovered the problem (who asked to remain anonymous because he did not have approval to talk about the issue). He told Ars that the issue is one of trust: “Who would you trust to change your iPhone configuration over the air? Your carrier? Your company? Your IT security admin?” he asked. Apple uses SCEP as a way for the iPhone to check in with a certificate server to verify that a mobileconfig file has been signed by a trusted source, but flaws in the set-up on the iPhone mean that the process doesn’t always work as intended.

The problem stems from Apple’s method of checking root certificate authorities. Apple added SCEP, which intended to be a protocol to securely verify trust relationships for closed systems, to iPhone OS 3.0. However, a mobileconfig file that uses the older protocol for verification must be sent to the iPhone to initiate SCEP, and this older protocol has a verified flaw in its implementation.

Full Story Security flaw puts iPhone users at risk of phishing attacks (Updated).

Germanium Laser Breakthrough Brings Optical Computing Closer

Researchers at MIT have demonstrated the first laser that uses the element germanium.

The laser, which operates at room temperature, could prove to be an important step toward computer chips that move data using light instead of electricity, say the researchers.

“This is a very important breakthrough, one I would say that has the highest possible significance in the field,” says Eli Yablonovitch, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department of the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the research told Wired.com. “It will greatly reduce the cost of communications and make for faster chips.”

Full Story Germanium Laser Breakthrough Brings Optical Computing Closer | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Obama Budget Cutting NASA Moon Plan

According to Reuters, the budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be expanded, but some opponents feel like the cuts being made will be catastrophic for the agency.

President Obama’s 2011 fiscal budget seems to have struck a chord in virtually all areas of the government and the overall economy. His defense appropriations have drawn criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.

However, one part of the president’s budget that has drawn little public acknowledgment is his decision regarding NASA appropriations and which programs will be discontinued or cut back. Overall, the budget for NASA has been increased by roughly $19 billion for 2011.

According to Reuters, the budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will be expanded, but some opponents feel like the cuts being made will be catastrophic for the agency. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) stated that the budget “begins the death march for the future of U.S. human space flight” with its cancellation of the Bush-era Constellation program.

Full Story Obama Budget Cutting NASA Moon Plan | Economy In Crisis.

Global Censorship Technology Used in U.S.

Deep packet inspection technology monitors everything that goes through the internet. It is readily available in the United States and there’s no legislation that prevents the US government from employing it. Deep packet inspection is currently used in Iran. The Iranian Government has the ability to look through everything, land line telephones, mobile telephones, email, websites, looking for keywords and actually monitoring the entire traffic going through one chokepoint in Iran. Deep packet inspection is the use of sophisticated equipment that literally watches the entire internet for every piece of data, voice, and video looking for key words, such as “rebel” or “grenade.” It is widely known that since 9/11, AT&T and Verizon were being asked by the Bush administration to deploy this sort of off-the-shelf technology. And they did. Again, Obama came out against the law and said we must punish these carriers for doing this, because it’s illegal, and then he flipped under enormous pressure from the lobbies.

Full Story Global Censorship Technology Used in U.S. | The Media Freedom Foundation.

Millennium’s Longest Solar Eclipse As Seen From Space (VIDEO)

Did you miss the solar eclipse on January 15? Now’s your chance to see it–from a satellite’s perspective.

A European satellite launched by the European Space Agency captured the moon passing between the earth and the sun during the most recent solar eclipse, which was the longest of the millennium.

The animation (see video below) shows the solar eclipse as seen from space, and is made up of images that were taken one minute apart. According to Wired, the images from the satellite’s mission are ‘the first of their kind.’

Want to see more awesome space videos? Check out footage captured by NASA of a comet being ‘eaten’ by the sun, or take a virtual flight over the Martian landscape in an animation made out of NASA’s HiRISE images.

WATCH:

Full Story Millennium’s Longest Solar Eclipse As Seen From Space (VIDEO).

Aircraft gets personal with NASA’s Puffin

What takes off like a helicopter, flies like an airplane and makes about as much noise as an electric car?

Why that would be a Puffin, a prototype one-person aircraft that is part of a broader NASA initiative to develop technologies for personal air travel.

No one has ridden inside a Puffin as yet. Right now, it’s a subscale model without a body or tails. But the electric-powered vehicle already has aced one of its most difficult goals: quiet flight.

video at link

Full Story Aircraft gets personal with NASA’s Puffin – Discovery.com- msnbc.com.

Thought-Controlled Lights At Olympics

Thought-controlled lights illuminating Niagara Falls during the winter Olympics? Maybe this will cheer up the Vancouver locals apparently dreading the upcoming games.

Toronto-based company InteraXon (which specializes in thought controlled computing) is planning an installation where visitors will be able to control live light shows at Niagara Falls with their thoughts, from Vancouver. The project, Bright Ideas, is described as the the wold’s largest thought-controlled experience.

As Gizmodo points out, it’s not exactly what it sounds like. Bright Lights “doesn’t let you decide what color the lights should be or how brightly they should shine, and it can’t tell if you’re specific thought is, say, ‘Lights, I command thee!’” Still, you put on the headset and the lights will respond to your brain’s electrical output.

From the press release:

Full Story Thought-Controlled Lights At Olympics: ‘Bright Lights’ Installation Lights Up Niagara Falls.

9 Coolest High-Tech Winter Accessories (PHOTOS)

Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil has spoken, and we’ve got another six weeks of winter to go.

But thanks to new tech that helps keep dry things dry, and warm things warm, there’s no need to suffer through the rest of the winter in icy discomfort.

From ski masks that use exhaled breath to heat your face (the robot look is an added bonus) to ski pole thermoses, HuffPostTech brings you the coolest, craziest winter wear to help you beat the winter blues.

Check out this awesome gear, then see our collection of the geekiest sweaters ever!

Full Story Winter Wear: 9 Coolest High-Tech Winter Accessories (PHOTOS).

Internet surfers caught in a web of depression

A “dark side” to the internet suggests a strong link between time spent surfing the web and depression, say psychologists.

British scientists found that the longer people spent online, the less likely they were to be happy.

A small group of the worst affected individuals were both depressed and addicted.

But it was not clear whether using the internet causes mental health problems, or whether people with mental health problems are drawn to the internet.

Full Story Internet surfers caught in a web of depression – Yorkshire Evening Post.

NASA Spots Mysterious Space Debris Suggestive Of Asteroid Collision (PHOTO)

NASA scientists have spotted a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern with trailing streamers of dust that is unlike any image astronomers have seen before.

The behavior is not typical of comets, UCLA investigator David Jewitt explains, and researchers believe something unprecedented has been spotted:

This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. [...] The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.

Across the vastness of space, chances are slim that scientists would have a camera pointed in the right direction and set to capture images at the moment two random asteroids collide. These conditions, it seems, haven’t been met until now.

If what astronomers believe is correct, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 happened to be correctly oriented just as two asteroids slammed into each other 90 million miles away from the Earth.

Full Story NASA Spots Mysterious Space Debris Suggestive Of Asteroid Collision (PHOTO).

5 Ways Techno-Gadgetry Is Bringing Out the Worst in Humanity

Everything from handy gadgets like cell phones and iPods to user-friendly weaponry like Tasers have changed the way we work, play and police.

“It’s not technology we have to worry about, it’s the humans,” Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, editors of the academic technology and culture journal CTheory, once argued to AlterNet, in an article about the Pentagon’s plan to fund packs of man-hunting robots. “Why blame technology? It generally does what it is coded to do. It’s the human sentient understanding of how to take cruel advantage of human weakness that’s the problem.”

Indeed, humans are exceptional when it comes to using technology to prey upon weaknesses, in themselves, their cultures and their markets. But even when technological solutions arise for navigating problems as mundane as they are obstructive, there tends to be some variation of consequence. Let’s just call it “techno-blowback.” As developmental biologist and cyborg theorist Donna Haraway once famously explained, “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.” We can’t take technology out of our humanity any more than we can take humanity, and its dangerous games, out of our technology. So we walk the tightrope between both, trying not to fall as we steadily transform a cyborg future in which we may no longer be able to distinguish them anymore.

Full Story 5 Ways Techno-Gadgetry Is Bringing Out the Worst in Humanity | Media and Culture | AlterNet.

Obama cancels Moon return project

US President Barack Obama has cancelled the American project designed to take humans back to the Moon.

The Constellation programme envisaged new rockets and a new crewship called Orion to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2020.

But in his federal budget request issued on Monday, Mr Obama said the project was “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation”.

It was draining resources from other US space agency activities, he added.

Full Story BBC News – Obama cancels Moon return project.

Tobacco Plants Tapped to Grow Solar Cells

Genetically engineered viruses injected into tobacco plants trigger the plants to grow solar cells.

Tobacco plants could help wean the world from fossil fuels, according to scientists from the University of California, Berkeley.

In a paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters, Matt Francis and his colleagues used genetically engineered bacteria to produce the building blocks for artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells. The technique could be more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells and could lead to cheap, temporary and biodegradable solar cells.

“Over billions of years, evolution has established exactly the right distances between chromophore to allow them to collect and use light from the sun with unparalleled efficiency,” said Francis. “We are trying to mimic these finely tuned systems using the tobacco mosaic virus.”

Full Story Tobacco Plants Tapped to Grow Solar Cells : Discovery News.

HIV/AIDS drug puzzle cracked

Scientists say they have solved a crucial puzzle about the AIDS virus after 20 years of research and that their findings could lead to better treatments for HIV.

Health

British and U.S. researchers said they had grown a crystal that enabled them to see the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV and is a target for some of the newest HIV medicines.

“Despite initially painstakingly slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded,” said Peter Cherepanov of Imperial College London, who conducted the research with scientists from Harvard University.

The Imperial and Harvard scientists said that having the integrase structure means researchers can begin fully to understand how integrase inhibitor drugs work, how they might be improved, and how to stop HIV developing resistance to them.

Full Story HIV/AIDS drug puzzle cracked | Reuters.

Academics fight rise of creationism at universities

A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.

In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April.

Full Story Academics fight rise of creationism at universities | World news | The Guardian.

NASA To Outsource Space Travel To Private Companies As Part Of Obama’s Budget Proposal

Getting to space is about to be outsourced.

The Obama administration on Monday will propose in its new budget spending billions of dollars to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate spacecraft for NASA and others. Uncle Sam would buy its astronauts a ride into space just like hopping in a taxi.

The idea is that getting astronauts into orbit, which NASA has been doing for 49 years, is getting to be so old hat that someone other than the government can do it. It’s no longer really the Right Stuff. Going private would free the space agency to do other things, such as explore beyond Earth’s orbit, do more research and study the Earth with better satellites. And it would spur a new generation of private companies – even some with Internet roots – to innovate.

But there’s some concern about that – from former NASA officials worried about safety and from congressional leaders worried about lost jobs. Some believe space is still a tough, dangerous enterprise not to be left to private companies out for a buck. Government would lose vital knowledge and control, critics fear.

Full Story NASA To Outsource Space Travel To Private Companies As Part Of Obama’s Budget Proposal.

OPS: Another Dangerous and Stupid move.

Incredible Images Of Electricity (PHOTOS):

Hirushi Sugimoto’s ‘Lightning Fields’

Forget acrylics and oils. Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto works with electricity.

Using hundreds of thousands of electric volts, a metal table, and a camera, Sugimoto captures the sparks, movement, and dynamism of electric charge in his ‘Lightning Fields’ series. (see photos below)

Wired explains how Sugimoto creates his photos:

He wields a Van de Graaff generator to send up to 400,000 volts through film to a metal table. The resulting fractal branching, subtle feathering, and furry whorls call to mind vascular systems, geologic features, and trees. “I see the spark of life itself, the lightning that struck the primordial ooze,” Sugimoto says.

Sugimoto writes in a description of his work,

The idea of observing the effects of electrical discharges on photographic dry plates reflects my desire to re-create the major discoveries of these scientific pioneers in the darkroom and verify them with my own eyes.

Full Story Incredible Images Of Electricity (PHOTOS): Hirushi Sugimoto’s ‘Lightning Fields’.

Maya Tomb Find Could Help Explain Collapse

Mexican archaeologists have found an 1,100-year-old tomb from the twilight of the Maya civilization that they hope may shed light on what happened to the once-glorious culture.

Archaeologist Juan Yadeun said the tomb, and ceramics from another culture found in it, may reveal who occupied the Maya site of Tonina in southern Chiapas state after the culture’s Classic period began fading.

Many experts have pointed to internal warfare between Mayan city states, or environmental degradation, as possible causes of the Maya’s downfall starting around A.D. 820.

Full Story Maya Tomb Find Could Help Explain Collapse.

Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time by Feather Study

“Dino fuzz” pigment discovery in feathers may strengthen dinosaur-bird link.

Pigments have been found in fossil dinosaurs for the first time, a new study says.

The discovery may prove once and for all that dinosaurs‘ hairlike filaments—sometimes called dino fuzz—are related to bird feathers, paleontologists announced today. (Pictures: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed by Feather Find.)

The finding may also open up a new world of prehistoric color, illuminating the role of color in dinosaur behavior and allowing the first accurately colored dinosaur re-creations, according to the study team, led by Fucheng Zhang of China’s Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology.

The team identified fossilized melanosomes—pigment-bearing organelles—in the feathers and filament-like “protofeathers” of fossil birds and dinosaurs from northeastern China.

Full Story Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time by Feather Study.

AT&T Admits Wireless Service In New York, San Francisco ‘Below Target’

Stung by complaints about dropped calls and slow wireless downloads, AT&T Inc. is going to spend an additional $2 billion to improve its network this year.

The country’s largest telecommunications company has faced an aggressive ad campaign from Verizon Wireless that attacks the quality and range of AT&T’s network.

On Thursday, AT&T executives spent an unprecedented amount of time on their fourth-quarter earnings conference call to defend the wireless network and detail how they plan to make it better.

Full Story AT&T Admits Wireless Service In New York, San Francisco ‘Below Target’.