Surface Earth > Archive by category 'Tech/Science'

Archive for the ‘Tech/Science’ Category

Researchers probe 200-year-old shipwreck off RI

Thursday, February 9th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo/David Klepper

WESTERLY, R.I. (AP) -- For two centuries it rested a mile from shore, shrouded by a treacherous reef from the pleasure boaters and beachgoers who haunt New England's southern coast.

Now, researchers from the U.S. Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.

"The Revenge was forgotten, it became a footnote," said Charlie Buffum, a brewery owner from Stonington, Conn., who found the shipwreck while diving with friend Craig Harger. "We are very confident this is it."

On Wednesday, Buffum and Harger braved the raw weather of Block Island Sound to accompany the researchers as they surveyed the wreck site. The Navy - along with help from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - is using high-tech sensor equipment to map the site, a first step toward retrieving possible artifacts.

If they're successful, they will illuminate a critical episode in the life of one of the nation's greatest naval officers. Perry is remembered as the Hero of Lake Erie for defeating the British navy in the War of 1812. He was famous for reporting simply "we have met the enemy and they are ours" after the decisive Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.

Two years earlier, the Revenge and its 25-year-old commander were en route from Newport, R.I. to New London, Conn., when the ship hit a reef in heavy fog. The area is infamous for its rocky, tide-swept reefs that lurk just beneath shallow waters.

When the Revenge struck the reef, Perry ordered the crew to dump some of the ship's cannons to lighten the load. The mast was cut. But it wasn't enough to free the ship.

The crew abandoned the Revenge, and not a single man died. But Perry's career was almost scuttled along with his ship.

The South Kingstown, R.I., native was court-martialed, and though he was exonerated, his career languished. Until he was posted to the Great Lakes.

"He was a rising star," said David Skaggs, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University who has written a book on Perry. "But then his ship runs aground. Running a ship aground is not a helpful thing for your career."

Harger and Buffum found the shipwreck six years ago after beer-fueled bull sessions in Buffum's brewery. Both men were experienced recreational divers. Buffum was fascinated by Perry and by shipwrecks off the Rhode Island coast.

They obtained an underwater metal detector and calculated the Revenge's likely resting place by analyzing currents and the location of the reef.

"We knew where he was going, we knew the area," said Harger, of Colchester, Conn. "We sat around in Charlie's brewery talking about where it might have gone."

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Creation at the Hands of Man – Are We as Good as God?

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

CREATION-OF-ADAM
 

First of all, in order to delve into this profound topic, one must ask themselves “Do I believe in God?” And even then, the term God is capricious because it seems so limiting, trying to define a supreme entity far beyond our comprehension. (more…)

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Is Geoengineering the Solution to Global Warming?

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Geo-engineering
 
Geoengineering is a vague term that can describe an assorted variety of methods. Lately, scientists have been seriously considering extreme measures to mitigate the impending doom of global warming. (more…)

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Groups sue over Navy sonar use off Northwest coast

Thursday, January 26th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo/Anonymous

SEATTLE (AP) -- Conservationists and Native American tribes are suing over the Navy's expanded use of sonar in training exercises off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts, saying the noise can harass and kill whales and other marine life.

The environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups filed the lawsuit Thursday against the National Marine Fisheries Service, saying it was wrong to approve the Navy's plan for the expanded training.

They said the regulators should have considered the effects repeated sonar use can have on those species over many years and also required certain restrictions on where the Navy could conduct sonar and other loud activities to protect orcas, humpbacks and other whales, as well as seals, sea lions and dolphins.

Instead, the Navy is required to look around and see if sea mammals are present before they conduct the training.

Kristen Boyles, a Seattle-based attorney with Earthjustice, said it's the job of the fisheries service to balance the needs of the Navy with measures to protect marine life.

"Nobody's saying they shouldn't train," she said. "But it can't be possible that it's no-holds-barred, that there's no place where this can't happen."

In 2010, the fisheries service approved the Navy's five-year plan for operations in the Northwest Training Range Complex, an area roughly the size of California, about 126,000 nautical square miles, that stretches from the waters off Mendocino County in California to the Canadian border. The Navy has conducted exercises in the training range for 60 years, but in recent years proposed increased weapons testing and submarine training.

The groups want the permit granted to the Navy to be invalidated. They are asking the court to order the fisheries service to study the long-term effects of sonar on marine mammals, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act and other laws.

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Ovarian Cancer – The Silent Killer

Monday, January 23rd, 2012


 
Ovarian Cancer is known as “The Silent Killer” because it is usually detected in late stages when the prognosis is much worse for the patient. (more…)

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The Toxicity of Plastic Cities

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012


 
Plastic was once touted as being the more environmentally friendly alternative to such practices as paper bags that kill trees or using ivory or tortoise shells for storage, endangering animal species to the brink of extinction. (more…)

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Russia says its spacecraft may crash into Atlantic

Friday, January 13th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo/STR

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's space agency has adjusted its forecast for the crash of a failed spacecraft, saying it may shower its fragments into the south Atlantic.

Roscosmos said the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe could plummet to Earth Sunday or Monday anywhere along a broad swath between 51.4 degrees north and 51.4 degrees south.

It said Friday that the mid-point in the two-day window would have the craft crashing into the ocean about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of the coast of Chubut province in southern Argentina. It said the precise time and place of the uncontrolled plunge can only be clarified later as the probe draws closer to Earth.

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Scientists say cut soot, methane to curb warming

Thursday, January 12th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo/Toby Talbot

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An international team of scientists says it's figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.

They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming - methane and soot.

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.

Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.

Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.

All 14 methods - capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection - are being used efficiently in many places, but aren't universally adopted, said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.

If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) in the next four decades. But controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius). It also would increase annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons (135 million metric tons).

Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining. Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a byproduct of burning and is a big problem with cook stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.

Reducing methane and black carbon isn't the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, Shindell said.

And shifting the pollution focus doesn't mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: "The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future."

It all comes down to basic chemistry. There's far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are way more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.

A 2007 Stanford University study calculated that carbon dioxide was the No. 1 cause of man-made global warming, accounting for 48 percent of the problem. Soot was second with 16 percent of the warming and methane was right behind at 14 percent.

But over a 20-year period, a molecule of methane or soot causes substantially more warming then a carbon dioxide molecule.

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NASA questions Apollo 13 commander’s sale of list

Friday, January 6th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo

MIAMI (AP) -- NASA is questioning whether Apollo 13 commander James Lovell has the right to sell a 70-page checklist from the flight that includes his handwritten calculations that were crucial in guiding the damaged spacecraft back to Earth.

The document was sold by Heritage Auctions in November for more than $388,000, some 15 times its initial list price. The checklist gained great fame as part of a key dramatic scene in the 1995 film "Apollo 13" in which actor Tom Hanks plays Lovell making the calculations.

After the sale, NASA contacted Heritage to ask whether Lovell had title to the checklist. Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage, said Thursday the sale has been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry. The checklist, he said, is being stored for now in the company's vault.

Rohan said Lovell provided a signed affidavit that he had clear title to the ring-bound checklist, which is standard procedure. Heritage does robust business in space memorabilia and this is the first time NASA has ever raised questions about ownership of its items, he added.

"It's one that is near and dear to our hearts," Rohan said of the space collectibles business. "We, like a lot of people, consider these astronauts to be national heroes."

The latest inquiry follows a federal lawsuit NASA filed last year in Miami against Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell seeking return of a camera he brought back from his 1971 moon mission. That lawsuit was settled in October when Mitchell agreed to give the camera to NASA, which in turn is donating it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said the lawsuit and Lovell inquiry do not represent an aggressive, broad new agency effort to recover space items.

"It's a challenge to continually monitor the growing auctions community, which is usually how these items come to light," he said in an email. "This latest issue demonstrates a need to reach out to former astronauts and other former agency personnel who may have these kind of items."

Lovell, 83, lives near Chicago and owns a restaurant bearing his name in Lake Forest, Ill. In an email Friday to The Associated Press, the former astronaut said he is "seeking a meeting with NASA administration to clear up this misunderstanding." He did not elaborate.

The Apollo 13 moon mission was aborted about 200,000 miles from Earth when an oxygen tank exploded on April 13, 1970, causing another tank to fail and seriously jeopardizing the three-man crew's ability to return home. Astronaut Jack Swigert famously said "Houston, we've had a problem here" after the explosion.

The crew was forced to move from the command ship into the attached lunar landing module for the return flight. Lovell's calculations on the checklist were key in transferring navigation data from the command craft to the lunar module.

NASA has raised questions about title rights for three other space items Heritage had sold in the same November auction. Two were from Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikart: a lunar module identification plate that brought more than $13,000 and a hand controller that received a $22,705 bid. The space agency also targeted a fourth item, a hand glove worn by Alan Shepard during training for Apollo 14, that brought more than $19,000.

In an email to Heritage, NASA Deputy Chief Counsel Donna M. Shafer said there was no indication the agency had ever transferred ownership of any of the items to the astronauts.

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The Irony of the Stem Cell Debate

Friday, January 6th, 2012


 
Stem cell research remains to be an antagonistic topic inciting debate over its morality and ethics. (more…)

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Now you see it, now you don’t: Time cloak created

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
AP Photo
AP Photo/Heather Deal

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.

Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don't see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It's not just that the thief is invisible - his whole activity is.

What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it's not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

We see events happening as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it's a continuous flow of light. In the new research, however, scientists were able to interrupt that flow for just an instant.

Other newly created invisibility cloaks fashioned by scientists move the light beams away in the traditional three dimensions. The Cornell team alters not where the light flows but how fast it moves, changing in the dimension of time, not space.

They tinkered with the speed of beams of light in a way that would make it appear to surveillance cameras or laser security beams that an event, such as an art heist, isn't happening.

Another way to think of it is as if scientists edited or erased a split second of history. It's as if you are watching a movie with a scene inserted that you don't see or notice. It's there in the movie, but it's not something you saw, said study co-author Moti Fridman, a physics researcher at Cornell.

The scientists created a lens of not just light, but time. Their method splits light, speeding up one part of light and slowing down another. It creates a gap and that gap is where an event is masked.

"You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place," said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. "You just don't know that anything ever happened."

This is all happening in beams of light that move too fast for the human eye to see. Using fiber optics, the hole in time is created as light moves along inside a fiber much thinner than a human hair. The scientists shoot the beam of light out, and then with other beams, they create a time lens that splits the light into two different speed beams that create the effect of invisibility by being too fast or too slow. The whole work is a mess of fibers on a long table and almost looks like a pile of spaghetti, Fridman said.

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Bits of Russia space probe set to fall Jan. 15

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

MOSCOW (AP) -- Fragments of a failed Russian space probe are now expected to fall to Earth on Jan. 15, officials said Wednesday.

The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was launched Nov. 9 on what was supposed to have been a 2 1/2-year mission to the Mars moon of Phobus to take soil samples and fly them back to Earth, but it became stuck in Earth's orbit and attempts to send commands that could propel it toward the Mars moon were unsuccessful.

As the probe's orbit slowly deteriorated, space officials predicted it would come crashing down between late December and late February.

A precise date was given Wednesday by a spokesman for the air and space defense troops, who said any fragments that do not burn up in the atmosphere are expected to fall to Earth on Jan. 15.

The date could still be affected by external factors and Defense Ministry troops are monitoring changes in the probe's orbit, Russian state news agencies quoted Alexei Zolotukin as saying.

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Are Biofuels Our Hope For the Future?

Sunday, January 1st, 2012


 
It is undeniable that we need to globally transition our fuel resources from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. However, (more…)

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Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified corn

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

One of the nation's most widely planted crops - a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide - may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.

The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid's sophisticated weaponry.

When it was introduced in 2003, so-called Bt corn seemed like the answer to farmers' dreams: It would allow growers to bring in bountiful harvests using fewer chemicals because the corn naturally produces a toxin that poisons western corn rootworms. The hybrid was such a swift success that it and similar varieties now account for 65 percent of all U.S. corn acres - grain that ends up in thousands of everyday foods such as cereal, sweeteners and cooking oil.

But over the last few summers, rootworms have feasted on the roots of Bt corn in parts of four Midwestern states, suggesting that some of the insects are becoming resistant to the crop's pest-fighting powers.

Scientists say the problem could be partly the result of farmers who've planted Bt corn year after year in the same fields.

Most farmers rotate corn with other crops in a practice long used to curb the spread of pests, but some have abandoned rotation because they need extra grain for livestock or because they have grain contracts with ethanol producers. Other farmers have eschewed the practice to cash in on high corn prices, which hit a record in June.

"Right now, quite frankly, it's very profitable to grow corn," said Michael Gray, a University of Illinois crop sciences professor who's tracking Bt corn damage in that state.

A scientist recently sounded an alarm throughout the biotech industry when he published findings concluding that rootworms in a handful of Bt cornfields in Iowa had evolved an ability to survive the corn's formidable defenses.

Similar crop damage has been seen in parts of Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska, but researchers are still investigating whether rootworms capable of surviving the Bt toxin were the cause.

University of Minnesota entomologist Kenneth Ostlie said the severity of rootworm damage to Bt fields in Minnesota has eased since the problem surfaced in 2009. Yet reports of damage have become more widespread, and he fears resistance could be spreading undetected because the damage rootworms inflict often isn't apparent.

Without strong winds, wet soil or both, plants can be damaged at the roots but remain upright, concealing the problem. He said the damage he observed in Minnesota came to light only because storms in 2009 toppled corn plants with damaged roots.

"The analogy I often use with growers is that we're looking at an iceberg and all we see is the tip of the problem," Ostlie said. "And it's a little bit like looking at an iceberg through fog because the only time we know we have a problem is when we get the right weather conditions."

Seed maker Monsanto Co. created the Bt strain by splicing a gene from a common soil organism called Bacillus thuringiensis into the plant. The natural insecticide it makes is considered harmless to people and livestock.

Scientists always expected rootworms to develop some resistance to the toxin produced by that gene. But the worrisome signs of possible resistance have emerged sooner than many expected.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently chided Monsanto, declaring in a Nov. 22 report that it wasn't doing enough to monitor suspected resistance among rootworm populations. The report urged a tougher approach, including expanding monitoring efforts to a total of seven states, including Colorado, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The agency also wanted to ensure farmers in areas of concern begin using insecticides and other methods to combat possible resistance.

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NASA probes to arrive at the moon over New Year’s

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/NASA

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun.

NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 3 1/2-month journey.

"We're on our way there," said project manager David Lehman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million mission.

The Grail probes - short for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory - won't land on the lunar surface. Instead, they were poised to slip into orbit to study the uneven lunar gravity field.

Grail-A was scheduled to arrive on New Year's Eve, followed by Grail-B on New Year's Day.

Lehman said team members won't celebrate until both probes are safely in orbit.

It's been a long voyage for the near-identical Grail spacecraft, which traveled more than 2.5 million miles since launching in September. Though the moon is relatively close at about 250,000 miles away, Grail took a roundabout way to save on costs by launching on a small rocket.

Once at the moon, the probes will spend the next two months tweaking their positions before they start collecting data in March. The pair will fly in formation at an altitude of 34 miles above the surface, with an average separation of 124 miles.

The mission's chief scientist, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said many aspects of the moon remain a mystery despite being well studied.

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All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law–and How to Contact Them (Sam Biddle/Gizmodo)

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law—and How to Contact ThemWho's officially on the record backing what could be the worst thing to ever happen to the internet? All of these companies listed below. Don't take our word for it—this list comes straight from Congress. Just FYI.

If you want to get in touch, we've provided a contact list below. Maybe you want to let them know how you feel about SOPA.

SOPA Supporters

60 Plus Association: info@60plus.org

ABC: http://abc.go.com/site/contact-us

Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP): 703-539-ASOP (2767)

American Federation of Musicians (AFM): presoffice@afm.org

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA): (212) 532-0800

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP): atoczylowski@ascap.com

Americans for Tax Reform: ideas@atr.org

Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States: iatsepac@iatse-intl.org

Association of American Publishers (AAP): asporkin@publishers.org

Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies: bob@mcconnell.net

Association of Talent Agents (ATA): rnoval@agentassociation.com

Baker & Hostetler LLP: dholcombe@bakerlaw.com or rokada@bakerlaw.com

Beachbody, LLC: http://beachbody.custhelp.com/app/ask

BMI: newyork@bmi.com

BMG Chrysalis: info@bmg.com

Capitol Records Nashville: ann.inman@emimusic.com and brent.jones@emimusic.com

CBS: http://www.bctd.org/Contact-Us.aspx

Cengage Learning: (800) 354-9706

Christian Music Trade Association: 615-242-0303

Church Music Publishers' Association: (615) 791-0273

Coalition Against Online Video Piracy (CAOVP): (212) 485-3452

Comcast/NBCUniversal: info@comcast.com

Concerned Women for America (CWA): (202) 488-7000

Congressional Fire Services Institute: update@cfsi.org

Copyhype: http://www.copyhype.com/contact/

Copyright Alliance: info@copyrightalliance.org

Coty, Inc.: http://www.coty.com/#/contact_us

Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB): (703) 276-0100

Council of State Governments: membership@csg.org

Country Music Association: communications@CMAworld.com

Country Music Television: info@cmt.com

Covington & Burling LLP: http://www.cov.com/contactus/

Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP: info@cdas.com

Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.: law@cll.com

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP: davebaca@dwt.com

Directors Guild of America (DGA): (310) 289-2000 or (800) 421-4173

Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc.: (212) 633-4400

Elsevier: T.Reller@elsevier.com

EMI Christian Music Group: (615) 371-4300

EMI Music Publishing: (212) 492-1200

ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espn/contact?lang=EN&country=united%20states

Estée Lauder Companies: (212) 572-4200

Fraternal Order of Police (FOP): pyoes@fop.net

Go Daddy: (480) 505-8800

Gospel Music Association: service@gospelmusic.org

Graphic Artists Guild: president@gag.org

Hachette Book Group: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/customer_contact-us.aspx

HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide: feedback2@harpercollins.com or (212) 207-7000

Hyperion: http://www.hyperionbooks.com/contact-us/

Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA): http://www.ifta-online.org/contact

International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees: See Artists and Allied Crafts

International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC): iacc@iacc.org

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW): (202) 833-7000

International Brotherhood of Teamsters: http://www.teamster.org/content/contact-us

International Trademark Association (INTA): customerservice@inta.org or
communications@inta.org

International Union of Police Associations: iupa@iupa.org

Irell & Manella LLP: info@irell.com

Jenner & Block LLP: (312) 222-9350

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP: http://www.kelleydrye.com/contacts/index

Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP: (310) 556-2700

Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP: info@kwikalaw.com

L'Oreal: (212) 818-1500

Lathrop & Gage LLP: http://www.lathropgage.com/contact.html

Loeb & Loeb LLP: http://www.loeb.com/Firm/Contact/

Lost Highway Records: (615) 524-7500

Macmillan: (646) 307-5151

Major County Sheriffs: jrwolfinger@mcsheriffs.com

Major League Baseball: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/help/contact_us.jsp

Majority City Chiefs: dstephens@carolina.rr.com

Marvel Entertainment: (212) 576-4000

MasterCard Worldwide: (800) 622-7747

MCA Records: communications@umusic.com

McGraw-Hill Education: customer.service@mcgraw-hill.com

Minor League Baseball (MiLB): customerservice@website.milb.com or
webmaster@minorleaguebaseball.com

Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC): info@mmtconline.org

Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP: http://www.msk.com/contact/

Morrison & Foerster LLP: eking@mofo.com

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): contactus@mpaa.org

Moving Picture Technicians: See Artists and Allied Crafts

MPA – The Association of Magazine Media: mpa@magazine.org

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM): manufacturing@nam.org

National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators: (518) 432-1100

National Association of State Chief Information Officers: svaughn@AMRms.com

National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA): webmaster@ncta.com

National Center for Victims of Crime: http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?
dbID=DB_Contact764

National Crime Justice Association: info@ncja.org

National District Attorneys Association: (703) 549-9222

National Domestic Preparedness Coalition: info@ndpci.us

National Football League: http://www.nfl.com/contact-us

National Governors Association, Economic Development and Commerce Committee:
webmaster@nga.org

National League of Cities: http://www.nlc.org/about-nlc/contact-nlc

National Narcotics Offers' Associations' Coalition: rmsloan626@verizon.net or http://www.natlnarc.org/default.aspx?page=1011

National Sheriffs' Association (NSA): http://sheriffs.org/content/contact-us

National Songwriters Association: http://members.nashvillesongwriters.com/
webform.php?ViewForm=1

National Troopers Coalition: info@ntctroopers.com

News Corporation: web.queries@computershare.com

Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP: http://www.pbwt.com/contact/

Pearson Education: http://www.pearsoned.com/contacts

Penguin Group (USA), Inc.: ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: newsroom@phrma.org

Phillips Nizer, LLP: http://www.phillipsnizer.com/about/contact.cfm

Pfizer, Inc.: https://www.pfizer.com/contact/mail_general.jsp

Proskauer Rose LLP: info@proskauer.com

Provident Music Group: (615) 261-6500

Random House: ecustomerservice@randomhouse.com

Raulet Property Partners: http://www.raulet.com/HTM%20Stuff/ContactUs.htm

Revlon: http://www.revlon.com/Revlon-Home/Revlon-General/Contact.aspx

Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP: http://www.rkmc.com/Contact.aspx

Scholastic, Inc.: http://scholastic.custhelp.com/app/ask

Screen Actors Guild (SAG): saginfo@sag.org

Shearman & Sterling LLP: website.administration@shearman.com

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP: (212) 455-2000

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP: info@skadden.com

Sony/ATV Music Publishing: info@sonyatv.com

Sony Music Entertainment: http://hub.sonymusic.com/about/feedback.php or http://
www.sonyatv.com/index.php/contact

Sony Music Nashville: http://www.sonyatv.com/index.php/contact

State International Development Organization (SIDO): sido@csg.org

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO): nato@natodc.com

The Perseus Books Groups: (800) 343-4499

The United States Conference of Mayors: info@usmayors.org

Tiffany & Co.: http://press.tiffany.com/Customer/Request/ContactUs.aspx

Time Warner: https://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal/about/contactus.ashx

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC): info@ufc.com

UMG Publishing Group Nashville: (615) 340-5400

United States Chamber of Commerce: http://www.uschamber.com/about/contact/submit-
question

United States Tennis Association: https://forms.usta.com/usta/form325815541/
secure_index.html or memberservices@usta.com

Universal Music: communications@umusic.com

Universal Music Publishing Group: umpg.newmedia@umusic.com

Viacom: http://www.viacom.com/contact/Pages/default.aspx

Visa, Inc.: https://corporate.visa.com/utility/contactus.jsp

W.W. Norton & Company: (212) 354-5500

Warner Music Group: http://www.wmg.com/contact

Warner Music Nashville: http://www.warnermusicnashville.com/contact

White & Case LLP: http://www.whitecase.com/ContactUs.aspx

Wolters Kluewer Health: customerservice@lww.com

Word Entertainment: wordtech@wbr.com

[US House of Representatives via Reddit]

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Dawn spacecraft beams back new images of asteroid

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been a fervent photographer, snapping more than 10,000 pictures of the asteroid Vesta since it slipped into orbit around the giant space rock last summer.

The views were taken from a distance away - until now. On Wednesday, the space agency released new images of the hummocky surface as Dawn circled from an average altitude of 130 miles above the surface - the closest it'll get.

From this low orbit, scientists can count numerous small impact craters and see textured grooves and outcrops in sharp detail.

"We're totally thrilled with the data we're getting. It seems to get better," said mission deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $466 million mission.

By inching this close to Vesta, Dawn will use other instruments to measure the gravity field and determine its chemical makeup to better understand its origins.

Dawn will spend the next 2 1/2 months at the current altitude before moving higher to take another round of pictures. By that time, the sun will hit Vesta at a different angle and illuminate sections of the northern hemisphere that had been shrouded earlier.

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Soyuz bound for space station blasts off

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, an American and a Dutchman to the International Space Station blasted off flawlessly from Russia's launch facility in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

Mission commander Oleg Kononenko and his colleagues, American Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are to dock with the space station on Friday.

The blastoff from the snowy launchpad in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, took place without a hitch and the spacecraft reached Earth orbit about nine minutes later. Video from inside the craft showed the three crew members gripping each others' hands in celebration as the final stage of the booster rocket separated.

The three aboard the Russian spacecraft will join three others already on the ISS, NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin. The six are to work together on the station until March.

The launch came amid a period of trouble for Russia's space program, which provides the only way for crew to reach the space station since the United States retired its space shuttle program in July.

The launch of an unmanned supply ship for the space station failed in August and the ship crashed in a Siberian forest. The Soyuz rocket carrying that craft was the same type used to send up Russian manned spacecraft, and the crash prompted officials to postpone the next manned launch while the rockets were examined for flaws. The delayed mission eventually took place on Nov. 14.

Just five days before that launch, Russia sent up its ambitious Phobos-Ground unmanned probe, which was to go to the Phobos moon of Mars, take soil samples and return them to Earth. But engineers lost contact with the ship and were unable to propel it out of Earth orbit and toward Mars. The craft is now expected to fall to Earth in mid-January.

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2 Earth-size planets spotted around distant star

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star outside the solar system, an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.

The discovery shows that such planets exist and that they can be detected by the Kepler spacecraft, said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. They're the smallest planets found so far that orbit a star resembling our sun.

Scientists are seeking Earth-sized planets as potential homes for extraterrestrial life, said Fressin, who reports the new findings in a paper published online Tuesday by the journal Nature. One planet's diameter is only 3 percent larger than Earth's, while the other's diameter is about nine-tenths that of Earth. They appear to be rocky, like our planet.

But they are too hot to contain life as we know it, with calculated temperatures of about 1,400 degrees and 800 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

Any life found on another plant may not be intelligent; it could be bacteria or mold or some completely unknown form.

Since it was launched in 2009, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope has found evidence of dozens of possible Earth-sized planets. But Fressin's report is the first to provide confirmation, said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington. He's a member of the Kepler science team but not an author of the paper.

The researchers ruled out a possible alternative explanation for the signals that initially indicated the planets were orbiting the star Kepler-20. The star is 950 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are part of a five-planet system around the star, and their location challenges current understanding of how planets form, scientists said. In our own solar system, the small rocky planets are closest to the sun, while gaseous giants are on the periphery. But the five-planet system has no such dividing line; big and small planets alternate as one moves away from the star.

That's "crazy," and unexplained by current understanding of how planets form around stars, said study co-author and Harvard scientist David Charbonneau.

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The Impact of Global Warming and What We Can Do to Reduce It

Sunday, December 18th, 2011


 
It has been established by compelling scientific data that the earth’s temperature is rising, (more…)

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Comet defies death, brushes up to sun and lives

Friday, December 16th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A small comet survived what astronomers figured would be a sure death when it danced uncomfortably close to the broiling sun.

Comet Lovejoy, which was only discovered a couple of weeks ago, was supposed to melt Thursday night when it came close to where temperatures hit several million degrees. Astronomers had tracked 2,000 other sun-grazing comets make the same suicidal trip. None had ever survived.

But astronomers watching live with NASA telescopes first saw the sun's corona wiggle as Lovejoy went close to the sun. They were then shocked when a bright spot emerged on the sun's other side. Lovejoy lived.

"I was delighted when I saw it go into the sun and I was astounded when I saw something re-emerge," said U.S. Navy solar researcher Karl Battams.

Lovejoy didn't exactly come out of its hellish adventure unscathed. Only 10 percent of the comet - which was probably millions of tons - survived the encounter, said W. Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which tracked Lovejoy's death-defying plunge.

And the comet lost something pretty important: its tail.

"It looks like the tail broke off and is stuck" in the sun's magnetic field, Pesnell said.

Comets circle the sun and sometimes get too close. Lovejoy came within 75,000 miles of the sun's surface, Battams said. For a small object often described as a dirty snowball comprised of ice and dust, that brush with the sun should have been fatal.

Astronomers say it probably didn't melt completely because the comet was larger than they thought.

The frozen comet was evaporating as it made the trip toward the sun, "just like you're sweating on a hot day," Pesnell said.

"It's like an ice cube going by a barbecue grill," he said.

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Russian customs seize Iran-bound radioactive metal

Friday, December 16th, 2011

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's customs agency announced Friday it has seized pieces of radioactive metal from the luggage of an Iranian passenger bound for Tehran from one of Moscow's main airports.

It was not immediately clear if the substance could be any use to Iran's controversial nuclear program.

Iran's semi-official news agency ISNA confirmed that material had been seized from the luggage of an Iranian passenger in Moscow about a month ago, but denied it was radioactive.

Russia's Federal Customs Service said in a statement that agents found 18 pieces of metal, packed in steel pencil cases, at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after a radiation alert went off. It said the gauges showed that radiation levels were 20 times higher than normal.

Spokeswoman Kseniya Grebenkina told The Associated Press the luggage was seized some time ago, but did not specify when. The Iranian wasn't detained, she said, and it was not clear whether he was still in Russia or not. She did not give his name. The pieces contained Sodium-22, she said, a radioactive isotope of sodium that could be produced in a particle accelerator.

Kelly Classic, a health physicist at the United States' renowned Mayo Clinic, said: "You can't make a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb with it."

"You'd certainly wonder where it came from and why," Classic told The Associated Press. "It's prudent to be a little leery considering where the person's going."

Classic said the isotope can be used in devices that determine the thickness of metals.

Another expert, Michael Unterweger, group leader for the radioactivity group at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, said it can be used as a calibration source for radiation instrumentation.

Unterweger said "it's really strange" that so much Sodium 22 was in the luggage, but if he were the Russian authorities "I wouldn't worry about it."

Iran's ISNA news agency quoted an official at the Iranian Embassy in Moscow as denying that radioactive materials were seized from the luggage of an Iranian passenger bound for Tehran.

"About a month ago, a misunderstanding arose in connection with (an Iranian) student who was carrying some materials for dentistry uses. The issue was quickly resolved and apologies were offered to him," ISNA quoted the official as saying Friday.

ISNA didn't name the official but quoted him as blaming Western media for publishing incorrect information, although the reports first came from the Russian customs service.

"These reports seek to damage Iran-Russia relations," the official was quoted as saying.

Grebenkina said prosecutors have launched a probe into the incident but insisted that the material seized is not highly radioactive.

It was not immediately clear why the agency chose to make the announcement on Friday. Russia, which built the Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran, has aimed to show the international community that its nuclear cooperation with Iran is not connected to Iran's alleged aim of building nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and Israel have not ruled out a military option against Iran's controversial nuclear program. Iran denies the charge, saying its program is geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

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Delhi’s air as dirty as ever despite some reforms

Friday, December 16th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Saurabh Das

NEW DELHI (AP) -- A decade ago, plans for a metro and clean-fuel buses were hailed as New Delhi's answer to pollution. But air in the Indian capital is as dirty as ever - partly because breakneck development has brought skyrocketing use of cars.

Citywide pollution sensors routinely register levels of small airborne particles at two or sometimes three times its own sanctioned level for residential areas, putting New Delhi up with Beijing, Cairo and Mexico City at the top of indexes listing the world's most-polluted capitals.

Sunrises in India's capital filter through near-opaque haze, scenic panoramas feature ribbons of brown air and everywhere, it seems, someone is coughing.

"My family is very worried. Earlier, the smoke and dust stayed outside, but now it comes into the house," said 61-year-old shopkeeper Hans Raj Wadhawan, a one-time smoker now being treated for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at the Delhi Heart and Lung Institute.

"I can see the air is bad again, and I can feel it in my chest."

New Delhi could lay some of the blame on its own success. Its recently minted middle class adds 1,200 cars a day to the 6 million on roads already snarled with incessantly honking traffic. Generous diesel subsidies promote the use of diesel-powered SUVs that belch some of the highest levels of carcinogenic particles, thanks to their reliance on one of the dirtiest-burning fuels and low Indian emissions standards.

"The city has lost nearly all of the gains it made in 2004 and 2005," said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of research at the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment.

New Delhi has undergone head-spinning expansion as Indian economic reforms in the 1990s ushered in two decades of record growth. Once a manageable capital of 9.4 million where cows, bicycles and bullock carts ruled the road, New Delhi today is a gridlocked metropolis and migrant mecca now home to 16 million. Authorities have scrambled to deal with everything from rocketing real estate prices to overflowing garbage dumps.

Efforts to clean the air, it seems, have only just begun.

The capital saw some success after a 1998-2003 program removing power plants from the city center and adopting compressed natural gas, CNG, for running buses and rickshaws. The buses had run on diesel, and the rickshaws on gasoline and highly polluting kerosene. Of all possible fuels, CNG releases the smallest amounts of particulate matter.

But just a few years later pollution levels are back up, with levels of airborne particles smaller than 10 micrometers - called PM10s - often near 300 per cubic meter, three times the city's legal limit of 100 - and well above the World Health Organization's recommended limit of 20.

The tiny particulate matter, sometimes called black carbon or soot, is small enough to lodge in people's lungs and fester over time. WHO says the stuff kills some 1.34 million people globally each year.

Studies on the Indian capital put the number of such deaths in the thousands.

It worsens in the dry winters, as winds die down and pollution pools over the Delhi plains. Vehicular smog mixes with smoke from festival-season fireworks as well as countless illegal pyres of garbage burned by homeless migrants to stay warm as temperatures near freezing. And the booming construction scene, free for a few months from monsoons, sends up clouds of dust.

"Our biggest challenge is the vehicles, but building roads is not the answer," Roychowdhury said. "We badly need second-generation action to restrain this increasing auto dependence."

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Body hair: The not-so-naked ape

Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Good night. Sleep tight. Mind the bugs don’t bite

MUCH ink and many electrons have been spilled on the question of human hairlessness: why, as Desmond Morris put it in the title of a book published in 1967, Homo sapiens is “The Naked Ape”. This lack of hair has been attributed to everything from a putative aquatic period in the species’s past to the advantages of displaying a healthy skin to members of the opposite sex.

Less attention has been paid, though, to the fact that humans are not really hairless at all. Per square centimetre, human skin has as many hair follicles as that of other great apes. The difference is not in the number, but in the fineness of the hair that grows from those follicles. These fine human hairs do not seem to be performing any of the functions of their counterparts in more hirsute species (insulation and, through colouration, either signalling or camouflage). So what are they for?

That is a question addressed by Isabelle Dean and Michael Siva-Jothy of Sheffield University, in Britain, in a paper in Biology Letters. Their conclusion is that humans have fine body hair to serve as an alarm system.

Ms Dean and Dr Siva-Jothy were testing the idea that fine body hairs (known, technically, as vellus and terminal hairs) are there to alert their owner to creepy crawlies such as bed bugs, which might be intent on biting them, and that the hair may also get in the way of such arthropods’ activities, giving the owner more time to react before he is bitten.

The standard “lab rat” for this sort of experiment is the university student, and Ms Dean and Dr Siva-Jothy managed to recruit 29 eager volunteers for their study—19 men and ten women. Each had a patch of skin on one arm shaved, marked with a pen and surrounded by petroleum jelly (to fence the bed bugs in), and a commensurate patch on the other marked and surrounded, but not shaved.

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The Higgs boson: Fantasy turned reality

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

WELL, they’ve found it. Possibly. Maybe. Pinning down physicists about whether they have actually discovered the Higgs boson is almost as hard as tracking down the elusive subatomic beast itself. Leon Lederman, a leading researcher in the field, once dubbed it the “goddamn” particle, because it has proved so hard to isolate. That name was changed by a sniffy editor to the “God” particle, and a legend was born. Headline writers loved it. Physicists loved the publicity. CERN, the world’s biggest particle-physics laboratory, and the centre of the hunt for the Higgs, used that publicity to help keep the money flowing.

And this week it may all have paid off. On December 13th two of the researchers at CERN’s headquarters in Geneva announced to a breathless world something that looks encouragingly Higgsy.

The Higgs boson, for those who have not been paying attention to the minutiae of particle physics over the past few years, is a theoretical construct dreamed up in 1964 by a British researcher, Peter Higgs (pictured above), and five other, less famous individuals. It is the last unobserved piece of the Standard Model, the most convincing explanation available for the way the universe works in all of its aspects except gravity (which is dealt with by the general theory of relativity).

The Standard Model (see table) includes familiar particles such as electrons and photons, and esoteric ones like the W and Z bosons, which carry something called the weak nuclear force. Most bosons are messenger particles that cement the others, known as fermions, together. They do so via electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. The purpose of the Higgs boson, however, is different. It is to inculcate mass into those particles which weigh something. Without it, or something like it, some of the Standard Model’s particles that actually do have mass (particularly the W and Z bosons) would be predicted to be massless. Without it, in other words, the Standard Model would not work.

The announcement, by Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli—the heads, respectively, of two experiments at CERN known as ATLAS and CMS—was that both of their machines have seen phenomena which look like traces of the Higgs. They are traces, rather than actual bosons, because no Higgs will ever be seen directly. The best that can be hoped for are patterns of breakdown particles from Higgses that are, themselves, the results of head-on collisions between protons travelling in opposite directions around CERN’s giant accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Heavy objects like Higgs bosons can break down in several different ways, but each of these ways is predictable. Both ATLAS and CMS have seen a number of these predicted patterns often enough to pique interest, but not (yet) often enough to constitute proof that they came from Higgses, rather than being random fluctuations in the background of non-Higgs decays.

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Global Warming by Any Other Name…

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011


 
With the conclusion of the recent climate talks in Durban, South Africa, the importance of the general public accepting global warming as a reality is of the essence. (more…)

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Usenix: Google deploys IPv6 for internal network (Joab Jackson/ITworld.com)

Monday, December 12th, 2011

December 09, 2011, 10:05 AM — In a project that has taken longer than company engineers anticipated, Google is rolling out IPv6 across its entire internal employee network.

Google network engineer Irena Nikolova discussed the company-wide implementation at the Usenix Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference, being held this week in Boston. There, she shared some lessons that other organizations might benefit from as they migrate their own networks to the next generation Internet Protocol.

From the experience, Google has learned that an IPv6 migration involves more than just updating the software and hardware. It also requires buy-in from management and staff, particularly administrators who already are juggling too many tasks. And, for early adopters, it requires a lot of work with vendors to get them to fix buggy and still-unfinished code. "We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported," the paper accompanying the presentation concluded.

"I think everyone who has tried to migrate to IPv6 has run into the same problems we have," Nikolova said.

The project, which has been under way for about four years, turned out to be a larger endeavor than the engineering team had anticipated. It is only half way finished. But the company has made significant gains in this time. About 95 percent of Google's engineers now have IPv6 access on their desks. Eventually, the company plans to have an IPv6-only network.

The project was started in 2008 by a small group of Google engineers, some of whom worked on it in the 20 percent of their work time that Google allots for its engineers to pursue their own pet projects. The goal was "IPv6 everywhere," Nikolova said.

Part of the interest in the upgrade was practical. Even though it was a private network, Google's internal network used public IP addresses, and Google was running out of internal IPv4 addresses. Also, Google engineers were developing IPv6 versions of Google's own tools and applications and needed to test this software internally before releasing it to the public.

Lastly, Google engineers realized they faced a chicken-and-egg problem with deploying IPv6. Like many organizations, the company has been slow to adopt IPv6 due to the lack of third party applications running on IPv6, which, in turn, are scarce because few organizations run IPv6 networks.

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Japan launches its 2nd spy satellite this year

Monday, December 12th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan successfully put a spy satellite into orbit on Monday and expects to complete its network of intelligence-gathering satellites with another launch next year.

Japan's space agency, JAXA, said the launch from the remote southern island of Tanegashima went off without a hitch and the radar-equipped satellite is functioning properly. It was the second launch of the year, following a successful liftoff in September.

Officials refused to provide details of the satellite's capabilities.

Japanese media reports say it will augment the optical satellites Japan has already launched by providing data of what is happening on the ground at night or through cloud cover.

Japan launched its first pair of spy satellites in 2003, prompted by concerns over North Korea's missile program. It currently has four optical information-gathering satellites in orbit, though the latest of those is not fully operational yet.

It previously launched two radar intelligence satellites, but both malfunctioned.

The satellite launched Monday is expected to begin gathering intelligence in a few months, an official with the Cabinet Satellite Information Center told The Associated Press. He requested anonymity because details of the program are classified.

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UN climate talks on edge heading into final hours

Friday, December 9th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- The United States, China and India could scuttle attempts to save the only treaty governing global warming, Europe's top negotiator said Friday hours before a 194-nation U.N. climate conference was to close.

After two weeks of negotiations, talks went through the night Thursday with delegates struggling to keep Durban from becoming the graveyard of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

"If there is no further movement from what I have seen until 4 o'clock this morning, then I must say I don't think that there will be a deal in Durban," said Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action.

Greenpeace director Kumi Naidoo led dozens of activists chanting, "Climate justice now!" and singing outside the main session Friday. U.N. police blocked them from the hall as delegates lined a staircase and balcony overlooking the protest, snapping pictures with small cameras and mobile phones.

The protest was meant to "inject some urgency into the process," Naidoo told The Associated Press, accusing governments of "playing political poker with the future of our planet."

Greenpeace announced later that Naidoo, who had been an observer at the talks, had been barred from the conference after leading the largest protest since it opened nearly two weeks ago. Earlier this week, an American college student heckled U.S. delegate Todd Stern as he delivered a speech. She was ejected from the hall and banned from the conference. Six Canadians also had their conference credentials lifted after staging a demonstration during an address by their environment minister, Peter Kent.

On Thursday at a meeting along the sidelines of the summit attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, scuffles broke out between his supporters and environmentalists holding up posters reading, "Zuma stand with Africa, not with USA," and "Zuma don't let Africa fry."

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Prime Indonesian jungle to be cleared for palm oil

Friday, December 9th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Heri Juanda

ACEH, Indonesia (AP) -- The man known as Indonesia's "green governor" chases the roar of illegal chainsaws through plush jungles in his own Jeep. He goes door-to-door to tell families it's in their interest to keep trees standing.

That's why 5,000 villagers living the edge of a rich, biodiverse peat swamp in his tsunami-ravaged Aceh province feel so betrayed.

Their former hero recently gave a palm oil company a permit to develop land in one of the few places on earth where orangutans, tigers and bears still can be found living side-by-side - violating Indonesia's new moratorium on concessions in primary forests and peatlands.

"Why would he agree to this?" said Ibduh, a 50-year village chief, days after filing a criminal complaint against Aceh Gov. Irwandi Yusuf.

"It's not just about the animals," he said, men around him nodding. "Us too. Our lives are ruined if this goes through."

Irwandi - a former rebel whose life story is worthy of a Hollywood film - maintains the palm oil concession is by the book and that he would never do anything to harm his province.

But critics say there is little doubt he broke the law.

The charges against him illustrate the challenges facing countries like Indonesia in their efforts to fight climate change by protecting the world's tropical jungles - which would spit more carbon when burned than planes, automobiles and factories combined.

Despite government promises, what happens on the ground is often a different story. Murky laws, graft and mismanagement in the forestry sector and shady dealings with local officials means that business often continues as usual for many companies.

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Another Earth?: Home away from home

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

ONE of the more memorable slogans to come out of the climate-change talks in Durban over the past few days is: “there is no planet B”. But what if there were? Over the past couple of decades astronomers have logged thousands of so-called “exoplanets”—worlds which orbit stars other than the sun. On December 5th the scientists in charge of Kepler, a space telescope designed to look for such planets, confirmed their instrument’s discovery of its first Earthlike world. It is dubbed, rather unromantically, Kepler 22b.

The existence of this planet, which circles a star 600 light-years away, in the constellation of Lyra, had previously been suspected. Kepler, which belongs to NASA, America’s space agency, works by observing dips in a star’s brightness as a planet passes in front of it. It flags likely looking reductions as “candidate planets”, of which Kepler 22b was one. But three passes are needed to confirm a planet’s existence, and Kepler 22b has now passed this test. Crucially, it orbits well within its star’s “Goldilocks zone”: neither too close nor too far away for liquid water (and therefore, perhaps, life) to exist on its surface.

It joins two other Earthlike planets—Gliese 581d and HD 85512 b—discovered by another instrument within the past few years. In truth, the term “Earthlike” is a stretch. Kepler 22b has a radius 2.4 times that of Earth, and if it is made from roughly the same stuff its surface gravity will also be about 2.4 times as strong. But NASA’s astronomers remain unsure whether it is predominantly gaseous, liquid or solid.

Nevertheless, Kepler 22b is the most promising exoplanet yet found. Unlike the others, which skirt the edges of their stars’ Goldilocks zones, Kepler 22b orbits comfortably within its own. NASA’s researchers reckon its surface temperature is about 22°C, compared with 15°C (at least for now) on Earth. Its parent star is similar to the sun, again unlike those of the other two candidates, both of which orbit cooler, dimmer stars. Indeed Gliese 581d’s parent is a red dwarf—the tiniest stellar species. That means its Goldilocks zone is so close to it that the planet may be tidally locked, as the moon is to the Earth. If that were the case, one side of Gliese 581d would be permanently lit (and heated) while the other experienced unending darkness.

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Study faults partial radiation for breast cancer

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- New research casts doubt on a popular treatment for breast cancer: A week of radiation to part of the breast instead of longer treatment to all of it.

Women who were given partial radiation were twice as likely to need their breasts removed later because the cancer came back, doctors found.

The treatment uses radioactive pellets briefly placed in the breast instead of radiation beamed from a machine. At least 13 percent of older patients in the U.S. get this now, and it is popular with working women.

"Even women who aren't working appreciate convenience," but they may pay a price in effectiveness if too little tissue is being treated, said study leader Dr. Benjamin Smith of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Results were to be reported Wednesday at a conference in San Antonio along with a more positive development: a new test that may help show which women need only surgery for a very early type of breast cancer called DCIS. The results suggest that about three-fourths of the 45,000 women diagnosed with DCIS annually in the U.S. could skip the radiation and hormone-blocking pills usually recommended to prevent a recurrence.

About 230,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S., most in an early stage. Typical treatment is surgery to remove the lump, followed by radiation every weekday for five to seven weeks. That's tough, especially for older women and those in rural areas.

Doctors hoped that a shorter approach, called brachytherapy, would be just as good with fewer side effects. To do it, they temporarily place a thin tube into the cavity where the tumor was.

"You come in twice a day and there's a machine that puts in a radiation seed that stays there a few minutes and then you go home," Smith explained.

Treatment takes only five days and the total radiation dose is comparable to the longer method. But a smaller area - just around the lump - gets treated instead of the whole breast.

Although at least three companies sell equipment for brachytherapy, no big studies have tested its safety and effectiveness.

Researchers looked at Medicare records on 130,535 women who had lumps removed and radiation. Less than 1 percent chose brachytherapy in 2000 but that rose to 13 percent by 2007.

After accounting for differences in age, tumor size and other factors, researchers found that within five years, 4 percent of brachytherapy patients needed surgery to remove the breast where the original tumor had been versus only 2 percent of those given traditional radiation. Hospitalization, infections, broken ribs and breast pain also were more common with brachytherapy.

It remains experimental, and women who want it should join a more rigorous study of it going on now, said Dr. Peter Ravdin, breast cancer chief at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

"I'm putting patients on the trial" and not recommending it otherwise, he said.

Brachytherapy costs about twice as much as standard radiation, estimated at $10,000 to $20,000.

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Biologists monitor crocodiles at nuclear plant

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) -- An unexpected but fruitful relationship has blossomed between two potent forces in the swamps of South Florida: the American crocodile, and a nuclear power plant.

The reptile has made it off the endangered species list thanks in part to 168 miles of manmade cooling canals surrounding Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern corner of the Florida peninsula. It turns out that Florida Power and Light was building prime croc habitat just as virtually every other developer was paving it over.

Federal wildlife officials give the state's largest public utility part of the credit for a five-fold increase in the species' population in Florida. There are only two other sanctuaries for the crocodiles, which are still considered threatened.

"The way the cooling canal system was designed actually turned out to be pretty good for crocodile nesting," said John Wrublik, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It wasn't designed for crocodiles, but they've done a very good job of maintaining that area."

Hundreds of crocodiles, as long as 15 feet and as heavy as one ton, roam the swampland surrounding the power plant. They're monitored by wildlife biologists hired by the utility, who sometimes need quick reflexes to keep all their fingers.

On one recent nighttime survey, Mario Aldecoa jumped from an airboat in total darkness and darted into the bushes to grab a 13-pound crocodile to mark it for identification.

"It's usually just adrenaline and instinct," he said.

The American crocodile is often confused with its plentiful cousin, the alligator. Alligators are black, have broad, rounded snouts and are found throughout the deep South. Crocodiles are grayish, have narrow tapered snouts and are so sensitive to cold that their only U.S. habitat is in South Florida.

South Florida's rampant development eroded the crocodile's habitat over decades of booming growth. By the 1970s, there were less than 300 in the state. The federal government had classified the species as endangered, meaning it was in danger of becoming extinct.

In 1977, Florida Power employees stumbled upon a crocodile nest in the plant's cooling canal system. A monitoring program set up a year later was originally intended to ensure the plant did no harm to the species, but ended up recording the facility's role in the crocodile's rebound. Dozens of other protected species, including the manatee and loggerhead turtle, also are found on the utility's properties across the state.

There are more than 1,500 American crocodiles in South Florida today. An opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May 2006 noted that the increase in has been attributed to Florida Power's management activities in its cooling canals.

Canals and berms such as those found at the power plant site provide nesting habitat that has "to some extent compensated for the loss of habitat elsewhere," explained Frank Mazzotti, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida.

The recirculating water system at Turkey Point works somewhat like the closed cooling system in a car. Eight large, powerful circulating water pumps take cooling water from canals at Turkey Point and circulate it through a condenser. The water then flows back to the closed-loop canal network, which essentially serves as a giant radiator.

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Human Breast Milk from Cows not Moms

Sunday, December 4th, 2011


 
Perhaps it’s because my own mother only breast-fed me for two weeks before she had to go back to work, (more…)

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Ex-UN climate chief to AP: talks are rudderless

Sunday, December 4th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam

DURBAN, South Africa (AP) -- Yvo de Boer said he left his job as the U.N.'s top climate official in frustration 18 months ago, believing the process of negotiating a meaningful climate agreement was failing. His opinion hasn't changed.

"I still have the same view of the process that led me to leave the process," he told The Associated Press Sunday. "I'm still deeply concerned about where it's going, or rather where it's not going, about the lack of progress."

For three years until 2010, the Dutch civil servant was the leading voice on global warming on the world stage. He appeared constantly in public to advocate green policies, traveled endlessly for private meetings with top leaders and labored with negotiators seeking ways to finesse snags in drafting agreements.

In the end he felt he "wasn't really able to contribute as I should be to the process," he said.

Today he can take a long view on his years as a Dutch negotiator in the 1990s and later as a senior U.N. official with access to the highest levels of government, business and civil society. He is able to voice criticisms he was reluctant to air when he was actively shepherding climate diplomacy.

Negotiators live "in a separate universe," and the ongoing talks are "like a log that's drifted away," he said. Then, drawing another metaphor from his rich reservoir, he called the annual 194-nation conferences "a bit of a mouse wheel."

De Boer spoke to the AP on the sidelines of the latest round of talks in this South African port city, which he is attending as a consultant for the international accounting firm KPMG.

World leaders have failed to become deeply engaged in efforts to reach an international accord to control greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming, he said. In recent years, their inattention has been compounded by their preoccupation with the economic and Eurozone crises.

Negotiators have been at the job so long - since the 1992 climate convention - that they have lost touch with the real world, he said. But it wasn't their fault.

"I completely understand that it is very difficult for a negotiator to move if you haven't been given a political sense of direction and the political space to move," he said, chatting on a hilltop terrace overlooking the Indian Ocean.

Rather than act in their own national interests, many leaders look to see what others are willing - or unwilling - to concede.

"You've got a bunch of international leaders sitting 85 stories up on the edge of a building saying to each other, you jump first and I'll follow. And there is understandably a reluctance to be the first one to jump," he said.

The 2009 Copenhagen summit was a breaking point. Expectations soared that the conference would produce an accord setting firm rules for bringing down global carbon emissions. When delegates fell short, hopes remained high that President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, most of Europe's heads of government and more than 100 other top leaders would save the day at the last minute.

De Boer said he spent the last 24 hours of the summit in "a very small and very smelly room" with about 20 prime ministers and presidents, but the time was not ripe for the hoped-for international treaty.

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Federal report: Arctic much worse since 2006

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal officials say the Arctic region has changed dramatically in the past five years - for the worse.

It's melting at a near record pace, and it's darkening and absorbing too much of the sun's heat.

A new report card from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rates the polar region with blazing red stop lights on three of five categories and yellow cautions for the other two. Overall, these are not good grades, but it doesn't mean the Arctic is doomed and it still will freeze in the winter, said report co-editor Jackie Richter-Menge.

The Arctic acts as Earth's refrigerator, cooling the planet. What's happening, scientists said, is like someone pushing the fridge's thermostat much too high.

"It's not cooling as well as it used to," Richter-Menge said.

The dramatic changes are from both man-made global warming and recent localized weather shifts, which were on top of the longer term warming trend, scientists said.

The report, written by 121 scientists from around the world, said statistics point to a shift in the Arctic health in 2006. That was right before 2007, when a mix of weather conditions and changing climate led to a record loss of sea ice, from which the region has never recovered. This summer's sea ice melt was the second worst on record, a tad behind 2007.

"We've got a new normal," said co-author Don Perovich, a geophysicist at the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Research and Engineering Lab. "Whether it's a tipping point and we'll never recover, who's to say?"

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Palaeontology: The hare and the tortoise

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

FASHION affects all human activities, and science is not exempt. In the field of palaeontology, for example, the stock of crocodiles is rising. Their role in Mesozoic ecosystems, including as predators of dinosaurs, has been reassessed over the past few years—and their diversity of forms (even including herbivorous species) is becoming increasingly apparent. This shift of perception is causing fossil hunters to take a renewed look at crocodiles, dinosaurs and the similarities and differences between them.

One such study, conducted by Sarah Werning of the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues, is reminiscent of Aesop’s fable about the hare and the tortoise—with dinosaurs playing the role of the cocky lagomorph and crocodiles that of the slow but steady chelonian. One of the traits which allowed dinosaurs to dominate the fauna of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods was that they grew rapidly. This is clear from their bones, which show four traits associated in living animals with fast growth: that they have numerous canals through which blood vessels would have passed for the transport of nutrients; that those canals are arranged in complex networks, rather than running separately through the bone; that fibres of collagen (a protein which helps make bone supple) are loosely organised within them, rather than being tightly packed; and that they have large clusters of cells called osteocytes, which are important in the formation and maintenance of bone. In these characteristics, dinosaur bones are similar to those both of mammals and of dinosaurs’ modern descendants, the birds, and dissimilar to those of both ancient and modern crocodiles.

Dinosaurs are not unique in showing signs of rapid growth, though. Pterosaur bones have similar features, as do those of several other groups of Mesozoic reptiles. Ms Werning therefore decided to trace the phenomenon of rapid growth back as far as she could in the fossil record, by examining the bones of a wide variety of species.

The upshot, she discovered, was that the features indicating rapid growth were added one by one during the Triassic (the period immediately before the Jurassic). That is not terribly surprising. What is surprising is that all of these features were present in the last common ancestor of dinosaurs and crocodiles. The former, in other words, perfected rapid growth and went on to dominate the Mesozoic, while the latter gave it up.

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Sustainable Alternatives to GMO Products

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011


 
Genetically Modified Organisms, also known as GMOs, have become an established threat to our health, environment and the economic security of our community. (more…)

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Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Todd Paris

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Massive amounts of greenhouse gases trapped below thawing permafrost will likely seep into the air over the next several decades, accelerating and amplifying global warming, scientists warn.

Those heat-trapping gases under the frozen Arctic ground may be a bigger factor in global warming than the cutting down of forests, and a scenario that climate scientists hadn't quite accounted for, according to a group of permafrost experts. The gases won't contribute as much as pollution from power plants, cars, trucks and planes, though.

The permafrost scientists predict that over the next three decades a total of about 45 billion metric tons of carbon from methane and carbon dioxide will seep into the atmosphere when permafrost thaws during summers. That's about the same amount of heat-trapping gas the world spews during five years of burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels

And the picture is even more alarming for the end of the century. The scientists calculate that about than 300 billion metric tons of carbon will belch from the thawing Earth from now until 2100.

Adding in that gas means that warming would happen "20 to 30 percent faster than from fossil fuel emissions alone," said Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "You are significantly speeding things up by releasing this carbon."

Usually the first few to several inches of permafrost thaw in the summer, but scientists are now looking at up to 10 feet of soft unfrozen ground because of warmer temperatures, he said. The gases come from decaying plants that have been stuck below frozen ground for millennia.

Schuur and 40 other scientists in the Permafrost Carbon Research Network met this summer and jointly wrote up their findings, which were published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

"The survey provides an important warning that global climate warming is likely to be worse than expected," said Jay Zwally, a NASA polar scientist who wasn't part of the study. "Arctic permafrost has been like a wild card."

When the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists issued its last full report in 2007, it didn't even factor in trapped methane and carbon dioxide from beneath the permafrost. Diplomats are meeting this week in South Africa to find ways of curbing human-made climate change.

Schuur and others said increasing amounts of greenhouse gas are seeping out of permafrost each year. Some is methane, which is 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.

In a recent video, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Katey Walter Anthony, a study co-author, is shown setting leaking methane gas on fire with flames shooting far above her head.

"Places like that are all around," Anthony said in a phone interview. "We're tapping into old carbon that has been locked up in the ground for 30,000 to 40,000 years."

That triggers what Anthony and other scientists call a feedback cycle. The world warms, mostly because of human-made greenhouse gases. That thaws permafrost, releasing more natural greenhouse gas, augmenting the warming.

There are lots of unknowns and a large margin of error because this is a relatively new issue with limited data available, the scientists acknowledge.

"It's very much a seat-of-the-pants expert assessment," said Stanford University's Chris Field, who wasn't involved in the new report.

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UN warns 25 pct of world land highly degraded

Monday, November 28th, 2011

ROME (AP) -- The United Nations has completed the first-ever global assessment of the state of the planet's land resources, finding in a report Monday that a quarter of all land is highly degraded and warning the trend must be reversed if the world's growing population is to be fed.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that farmers will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world's expected 9 billion-strong population. That amounts to 1 billion tons more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200 million more tons of beef and other livestock.

But as it is, most available land is already being farmed, and in ways that often decrease its productivity through practices that lead to soil erosion and wasting of water.

That means that to meet the world's future food needs, a major "sustainable intensification" of agricultural productivity on existing farmland will be necessary, the FAO said in "State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture."

FAO's director-general Jacques Diouf said increased competition over land for growing biofuels, coupled with climate change and poor farming practices, had left key food-producing systems at risk of being unable to meet human needs in 2050.

"The consequences in terms of hunger and poverty are unacceptable," he told reporters at FAO's Rome headquarters. "Remedial actions need to be taken now. We simply cannot continue on a course of business as usual."

The report was released Monday, as delegates from around the world meet in Durban, South Africa, for a two-week U.N. climate change conference aimed at breaking the deadlock on how to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

The report found that climate change coupled with poor farming practices had contributed to a decrease in productivity of the world's farmland following the boon years of the Green Revolution, when crop yields soared thanks to new technologies, pesticides and the introduction of high-yield crops.

Thanks to the Green Revolution, the world's cropland grew by just 12 percent between 1961 and 2009, but food productivity increased by 150 percent.

But the U.N. report found that rates of growth have been slowing down in many areas and today are only half of what they were at the peak of the Green Revolution.

It found that 25 percent of the world's land is now "highly degraded," with soil erosion, water degradation and biodiversity loss. Another 8 percent is moderately degraded, while 36 percent is stable or slightly degraded and 10 percent is ranked as "improving."

The rest of the Earth's surface is either bare or covered by inland water bodies.

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Restaurants plan DNA-certified premium seafood

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Restaurants around the world will soon use new DNA technology to assure patrons they are being served the genuine fish fillet or caviar they ordered, rather than inferior substitutes, an expert in genetic identification says.

In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration officially approved so-called DNA barcoding - a standardized fingerprint that can identify a species like a supermarket scanner reads a barcode - to prevent the mislabeling of both locally produced and imported seafood in the United States. Other national regulators around the world are also considering adopting DNA barcoding as a fast, reliable and cost-effective tool for identifying organic matter.

David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Washington-based Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said he has started discussions with the restaurant industry and seafood suppliers about utilizing the technology as a means of certifying the authenticity of delicacies.

"When they sell something that's really expensive, they want the consumer to believe that they're getting what they're paying for," Schindel told The Associated Press.

"We're going to start seeing a self-regulating movement by the high-end trade embracing barcoding as a mark of quality," he said.

While it would never be economically viable to DNA test every fish, it would be possible to test a sample of several fish from a trawler load, he said.

Schindel is organizer of the biennial International Barcode of Life Conference, which is being held Monday in the southern Australian city of Adelaide. The fourth in the conference series brings together 450 experts in the field to discuss new and increasingly diverse applications for the science.

Applications range from discovering what Australia's herd of 1 million feral camels feeds on in the Outback to uncovering fraud in Malaysia's herbal drug industry.

Schindel leads a consortium of scientists from almost 50 nations in overseeing the compilation of a global reference library for the Earth's 1.8 million known species.

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Mexico acknowledges 2nd Mayan reference to 2012

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's archaeology institute downplays theories that the ancient Mayas predicted some sort of apocalypse would occur in 2012, but on Thursday it acknowledged that a second reference to the date exists on a carved fragment found at a southern Mexico ruin site.

Most experts had cited only one surviving reference to the date in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

But the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that there is in fact another apparent reference to the date at the nearby Comalcalco ruin. The inscription is on the carved or molded face of a brick. Comalcalco is unusual among Mayan temples in that it was constructed of bricks.

Arturo Mendez, a spokesman for the institute, said the fragment of inscription had been discovered years ago and has been subject to thorough study. It is not on display and is being kept in storage at the institute.

The "Comalcalco Brick," as the second fragment is known, has been discussed by experts in some online forums. Many still doubt that it is a definite reference to Dec. 21, 2012 or Dec. 23, 2012, the dates cited by proponents of the theory as the possible end of the world.

"Some have proposed it as another reference to 2012, but I remain rather unconvinced," David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a message to The Associated Press.

Stuart said the date inscribed on the brick "'is a Calendar Round,' a combination of a day and month position that will repeat every 52 years."

The brick date does coincide with the end of the 13th Baktun; Baktuns were roughly 394-year periods and 13 was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas. The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

But the date on the brick could also correspond to similar dates in the past, Stuart said.

"There's no reason it couldn't be also a date in ancient times, describing some important historical event in the Classic period. In fact, the third glyph on the brick seems to read as the verb huli, "he/she/it arrives."

"There's no future tense marking (unlike the Tortuguero phrase), which in my mind points more to the Comalcalco date being more historical that prophetic," Stuart wrote.

Both inscriptions - the Tortuguero tablet and the Comalcalco brick - were probably carved about 1,300 years ago and both are cryptic in some ways.

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Mars exploration: How to land a Mini on Mars

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

EARTH excepted, the most probed and prodded planet in the solar system is Mars. Besides the assortment of craft that have flown by it or gone into orbit around it, three robotic buggies equipped with cameras and scientific instruments have roamed the Martian surface on behalf of NASA, America’s space agency, since 1997.

If all goes according to plan, they will soon be joined by a fourth. On November 26th a new rover, Curiosity, will ascend from Cape Canaveral. If it gets there in one piece, it will examine the climate and geology of Mars and look for any signs of life that might have arisen.

The first of NASA’s rovers, Sojourner, which reached Mars in 1997, was 65cm long and weighed (on Earth, where the gravitational pull is 2½ times Mars’s) 10kg. Spirit and Opportunity, its twin successors, were larger, at 1.6 metres and 170kg. Curiosity, by comparison, is a monster. At 3 metres and 900kg it is the size of a small car. It also uses different technology. The other three rovers were powered by solar panels. Curiosity is powered by plutonium. (Not a full-scale reactor, but a generator that turns the heat of radioactive decay into electrical energy.) This brings three advantages. First, it allows Curiosity to carry more power-hungry scientific instruments than previous rovers. Second, it permits the rover to work through the Martian winter. Third, it avoids the problem of dust accumulating on the solar panels, which gradually sapped the strength of its predecessors.

Curiosity’s size makes getting it safely onto the Martian surface tricky. Previous rovers have deployed parachutes to slow their descents, and have then crashed into the ground using airbags to cushion their impacts. Curiosity is too massive for that approach to work. Instead, NASA hopes to deposit it on Mars using a contraption it has dubbed a skycrane.

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Infantile anaemia: Blood simple

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

CHILDHOOD anaemia is a problem. Around the world, almost a quarter of under-fives suffer from it. And anaemia is not a trivial thing. A child’s development, both physical and mental, is stifled by a lack of iron. The reason is that, besides its well-known role in haemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting molecule in the blood, iron is also involved in many aspects of brain development.

A study just published in the British Medical Journal by Ola Andersson, an obstetrician at the Hospital of Halland in Halmstad, Sweden, suggests that a simple change of medical procedure when a child is born may bring a big reduction in anaemia. That change is not to cut the umbilical cord linking the child with the placenta straight after birth—as is standard practice—but, rather, to give it time to transfer more of the placenta’s contents (particularly its blood) to the child it has been nurturing.

The argument in favour of rapid clamping is that too much blood may flow from the detached placenta to the newly born child, and that this can cause problems of its own. But that is unproven, and would be a strike against evolution because, in nature, the umbilicus of a mammal usually does remain attached to the infant for some time after birth. Only the modern technology of clamps and sharp scissors permits the slithery tube to be dealt with at speed.

To test her idea that extended post partum connection to the placenta is good for a child’s health, Dr Andersson and her colleagues recruited 334 pregnant, non-smoking women whose fetuses appeared to be healthy. When these women came to term, their midwives followed one of two sets of instructions, chosen at random and given to them just before each birth. In 166 cases the newborns had their umbilical cords clamped within ten seconds of delivery. The other 168 had them clamped after at least three minutes had passed.

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Nuance gets awareness boost from Apple’s Siri, smartphones (Larry Dignan/Between the Lines Blog)

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Nuance’s consumer and mobile business popped in the fourth quarter as the launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S generated more interest in the company’s voice software.

The voice recognition company is viewed as a derivative play on Apple’s iPhone 4S growth. For Apple’s Siri to operate it needs the transcribing function Nuance’s software provides.

Nuance alluded to the gains from the iPhone 4S halo in its statement and prepared remarks. Non-GAAP revenue for Nuance’s mobile and consumer business was $118.7 million, up 31.6 percent from a year ago. The company said it landing new bookings and design wins from Amazon, CIBC, Comcast, Daimler, Diebold, Ford, Kyocera, LGE, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, On-Star, Renault, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, State of Maryland, Time Warner Cable, Tom Tom, and ZTE.

Meanwhile, CEO Paul Ricci alluded to the smartphone boost. In a statement, Ricci said:

Recent high-profile speech applications in the smartphone market have increased interest in our solutions, from both manufacturers and users.

Nuance didn’t refer to Apple directly in a statement, but all those Siri commercials can’t hurt interest in voice technologies. Ricci later acknowledged on a conference call that Apple’s Siri was a big help in publicizing voice technologies. In prepared remarks, Nuance said:

In particular, Nuance had strong bookings in the automobile, handset and voicemail-to-text markets. Nuance’s momentum continued in connected car implementations, through a 3-year cooperation agreement signed with BMW, positioning Nuance as the exclusive supplier for dictation services; an agreement with Ford to add language understanding to Ford SYNC services; and the launch of Nuance’s in-car dictation prototype…Demand continues to grow for network-based and hybrid speech capabilities, as evidenced by increases in volumes of Nuance’s network services and recent Nuance Voice Control contracts with HTC and Pantech, including the recent release of additional services in HTC’s T-Mobile 4G Slide.

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GMOs Cause More Problems than Solutions

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011


As advances are made in science and biotechnology, the more the human race begins to dabble in an arena that should solely belong to Mother Nature by developing genetically engineered food. (more…)

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Google Announces Plans To Shutter Knol, Friend Connect, Wave, And More (Jason Kincaid/TechCrunch)

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Since Google CEO Larry Page took the helm this past spring, one of the company’s most visible initiatives has been to trim and shut down its products that haven’t taken off. These have included Aardvark, Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Code Search, Buzz, Jaiku, and even Google Labs — and today, it’s announcing a new batch of products that will be shut down in the coming months.

Among the casualties (some of which had previously been announced): Google’s Wikipedia challenger, Google Knol, Google Friend Connect (which is being supplanted by Google+), and Google Wave — which Google ended development on a year ago and will soon close down entirely.

Knol, in particular, comes as something of a surprise to me — because I figured Google had already shut it down. The site first launched back in 2008 to much fanfare, as Google introduced a potential Wikipedia challenger that would allow article contributors to monetize their content (the idea being that if you wrote content worth reading, you could make some money off of it). But the product languished, and back in July 2010 some extended downtime made us wonder if Google had forgotten about it.

Google didn’t seem to allocate many resources to the project, and it certainly didn’t put much emphasis behind it from a press standpoint — I can’t remember the last time I was pitched on a new Knol feature or milestone. Knol will live on at Annotum.org, which is powered by WordPress and was built in collaboration with Solvitor and Crowd Favorite.

Here’s the full list of products being shuttered, from Google’s blog post:

  • Google Bookmarks Lists—This is an experimental feature for sharing bookmarks and collaborating with friends, which we’re going to end on December 19, 2011. All bookmarks within Lists will be retained and labeled for easier identification, while the rest of Google Bookmarks will function as usual. As Lists was an English-only feature, non-English languages will be unaffected.
  • Google Friend Connect—Friend Connect allows webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a few snippets of code. We’re retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012. We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.
  • Google Gears—In March we said goodbye to the Gears browser extension for creating offline web applications and stopped supporting new browsers. On December 1, 2011, Gears-based Gmail and Calendar offline will stop working across all browsers, and later in December Gears will no longer be available for download. This is part of our effort to help incorporate offline capabilities into HTML5, and we’ve made a lot of progress. For example, you can access Gmail, Calendar and Docs offline in Chrome.

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NASA launching `dream machine’ to explore Mars

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- As big as a car and as well-equipped as a laboratory, NASA's newest Mars rover blows away its predecessors in size and skill.

Nicknamed Curiosity and scheduled for launch on Saturday, the rover has a 7-foot arm tipped with a jackhammer and a laser to break through the Martian red rock. What really makes it stand out: It can analyze rocks and soil with unprecedented accuracy.

"This is a Mars scientist's dream machine," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist.

Once on the red planet, Curiosity will be on the lookout for organic, carbon-containing compounds. While the rover can't actually detect the presence of living organisms, scientists hope to learn from the $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered mission whether Mars has - or ever had - what it takes to nurture microbial life.

Curiosity will be "the largest and most complex piece of equipment ever placed on the surface of another planet," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars exploration program.

Ten feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast, Curiosity is about twice the size of previous rovers Spirit and Opportunity, weighs 1 ton and is loaded with 10 science instruments. Its formal name: Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL.

In a spacecraft first, Curiosity will be lowered to Mars' surface via a jet pack and a tether system similar to the sky cranes used by helicopters to insert heavy equipment in inaccessible spots on Earth. No bouncing air bags like those used for the Mars Pathfinder lander and rover in 1997 and for Spirit and Opportunity in 2004 - Curiosity is too heavy for that.

It is the kind of precision landing that officials said will benefit future human explorers on Mars.

The rover is scheduled to arrive at the mineral-rich Gale Crater next August, 8 1/2 months after embarking on the 354-million-mile voyage aboard an Atlas V rocket.

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Russia is resigned to losing Mars moon probe

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian officials on Tuesday acknowledged that the chances of fixing a space probe bound for a moon of Mars that got stuck in Earth's orbit are close to zero, Russian news agencies reported.

The unmanned $170 million Phobos-Ground was launched two weeks ago and reached preliminary Earth orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. Russian engineers have been trying to retrieve data from the probe as it passes over their territory but haven't established contact.

"We have to be realistic. Since we haven't been able to get in touch with it for such a long time, chances to accomplish the mission are very slim," Roscosmos deputy chief Vitaly Davydov said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.

Davydov said that Russian engineers can keep trying until the end of the month to fix the probe's engines to steer it to its path to Phobos, one of Mars' two moons.

Russian scientists could fix the problem if the probe failed because of a software flaw, but some experts think that the failure was rooted in hardware that's difficult to fix.

The failure of the probe could see Russia change its priorities in space research. The Russian space agency will more likely focus on Moon research instead of studying Mars, Davydov said.

The failed spacecraft is 13.2 metric tons (14.6 tons), and most of that weight, about 11 metric tons (12 tons), is highly toxic fuel.

Davydov said Tuesday that Phobos-Ground could crash to Earth some time between late December and late February. The site of the crash cannot be established more than a day in advance, he said.

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Whales in the desert: Fossil bonanza poses mystery

Saturday, November 19th, 2011

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- More than 2 million years ago, scores of whales congregating off the Pacific Coast of South America mysteriously met their end.

Maybe they became disoriented and beached themselves. Maybe they were trapped in a lagoon by a landslide or a storm. Maybe they died there over a period of a few millennia. But somehow, they ended up right next to one another, many just meters (yards) apart, entombed as the shallow sea floor was driven upward by geological forces and transformed into the driest place on the planet.

Today, they have emerged again atop a desert hill more than a kilometer (half a mile) from the surf, where researchers have begun to unearth one of the world's best-preserved graveyards of prehistoric whales.

Chilean scientists together with researchers from the Smithsonian Institution are studying how these whales, many of the them the size of buses, wound up in the same corner of the Atacama Desert.

"That's the top question," said Mario Suarez, director of the Paleontological Museum in the nearby town of Caldera, about 700 kilometers (440 miles) north of Santiago, the Chilean capital.

Experts say other groups of prehistoric whales have been found together in Peru and Egypt, but the Chilean fossils stand out for their staggering number and beautifully preserved bones. More than 75 whales have been discovered so far - including more than 20 perfectly intact skeletons.

They provide a snapshot of sea life at the time, and even include what might have been a family group: two adult whales with a juvenile between them.

"I think they died more or less at the same time," said Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Pyenson and Suarez are jointly leading the research.

As for why such a great number perished in the same place, Pyenson said: "There are many ways that whales could die, and we're still testing all those different hypotheses."

The scientists have yet to publish their findings about the fossil bed and the extensive remains, which began to emerge in June last year during a highway-widening project that is now on hold.

So far, the fossils have been found in a roadside strip the length of two football fields - about 240 meters (260 yards) long and 20 meters (yards) wide.

Pyenson said the spot was once a "lagoon-like environment" and that the whales probably died between 2 million and 7 million years ago.

Most of the fossils are baleen whales that measured about 8 meters (25 feet) long, Pyenson said.

The researchers also discovered a sperm whale skeleton and remains of a now-extinct dolphin that had two walrus-like tusks and previously had only turned up in Peru, he said.

"We're very excited about that," Pyenson said in a telephone interview. "It is a very bizarre animal."

Other unusual creatures found elsewhere in the fossil-rich Atacama Desert include an extinct aquatic sloth and a seabird with a 5-meter (17-foot) wingspan, bigger than a condor's.

Erich Fitzgerald, a vertebrate paleontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, emailed that the latest find is very significant.

"The fossils are exceptionally well preserved and quite complete - a rare combination in paleontology and one that will likely shed light on many facets of the ... ecology and evolution of these extinct species," Fitzgerald said.

He said it's possible "these fossilized remains may have accumulated over a relatively long period of time."

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DNA Testing for the Wrongly Convicted

Friday, November 18th, 2011

DNA Evidence Frees Man Convicted Of Bronx Rape 21 Years Ago: Alan Newton is my Hero

Advancements in forensic DNA testing are expected to improve the efficacy of our criminal justice system, but is the technology being utilized as it ought to be?

(more…)

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Wanted: Astronauts; Missing: US rocket to fly them

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/James Blair

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Looking for a job? NASA is hiring astronauts. You can even apply online at a giant government jobs website.

There's only one hitch: NASA doesn't have its own spaceship anymore and is sending fewer fliers into orbit right now.

"The experience is well worth the wait," promised NASA flight crew operations director Janet Kavandi as the space agency started a public search Tuesday for new astronauts.

There will be flights, but not many, with the space shuttle fleet retired. A handful of astronauts each year are launching on a Russian Soyuz spaceship to the International Space Station for six-month stays.

In about three to five years, NASA hopes to purchase trips for astronauts headed to the space station on American-built commercial rockets instead. And eventually, NASA hopes to fly astronauts in a government owned Orion capsule to an asteroid or even Mars, but those pioneering trips are more than a decade away.

With veteran astronauts leaving the space agency, Kavandi said NASA is afraid it will not have enough astronauts, something a National Research Council report pointed out in September.

NASA needs about 55 astronauts, and with a new class of nine graduating earlier this month, the astronaut roster is up to 58. One of those new astronauts will get to fly to the space station as early as 2013, Kavandi said.

"We're ready to serve, we're ready to get going," new astronaut Serena Aunon said Tuesday at NASA headquarters.

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Russia still unable to communicate with Mars probe

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian space engineers are still struggling to fix a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit.

The Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Ground) was launched Wednesday and reached preliminary orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. The unmanned probe will come crashing down in a couple of weeks if engineers fail to fix the problem.

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported Sunday that efforts to communicate with the spacecraft have so far been unsuccessful. The agency said U.S. and European space engineers also were attempting to retrieve data from the probe as it passed over their territory.

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Astronomers shed light on early stars in cosmos

Thursday, November 10th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Daniel Ceverino

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- After decades of scouring the universe, astronomers finally have found two immense clouds of gas that are pristine - free of the metals fired out into the cosmos by stars.

The findings, published in Thursday's Science journal, provide the first solid detection of primitive, uncontaminated gas and support the long-standing theory as to how the chemical elements were formed in the early universe. It is these types of pure gas clouds that formed the first stars.

The research also suggests that stars have not succeeded at distributing metals throughout the entire cosmos; astronomers consider metals to be heavier elements like carbon, silicon, iron, even oxygen.

A separate study in the same issue of Science concludes the early stars were much smaller than thought - tens of times bigger than our sun, versus hundreds of times bigger.

"There's kind of been this missing link in this picture of how elements form. We haven't been able to detect what we expect to be out there, which is otherwise primordial material, stuff that would be metal-free," said co-author J. Xavier Prochaska, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

"This is the first solid detection of such gas," he said in a phone interview. "It's something we expected to find at some level, but it has been challenging to find it."

The two pristine gas clouds were formed 2 billion years after the Big Bang creation of the universe.

Prochaska, along with lead author Michele Fumagalli, a graduate student at Santa Cruz, and John O'Meara, an astronomer at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., discovered the two clouds by analyzing light from quasars. They used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

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Russia struggles to save Mars moon probe

Thursday, November 10th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

MOSCOW (AP) -- As Russia's space agency struggled Thursday to fix a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth's orbit, some experts said the chances of saving the $170 million craft looked slim.

Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said efforts to communicate with the unmanned Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Ground) spacecraft hadn't brought any results yet. The probe will come crashing down in a couple of weeks if engineers fail to fix the problem.

The Phobos-Grunt was launched Wednesday and reached preliminary orbit, but its engines never fired to send it off to the Red Planet. Kuznetsov said controllers on Thursday will continue attempts to fix the probe's engines to steer it to its path to one of Mars' two moons, Phobos.

Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin, said the system that keeps the spacecraft pointed in the right direction may have failed. Other space experts suggested that the craft's computer failure was a likely cause.

If a software flaw was the problem, scientists can likely fix it by sending new commands. Some experts think, however, that the failure was rooted in hardware and will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

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Astronomy: Throwing money into space

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

THE Hubble space telescope, an orbiting observatory launched in 1990 by NASA, America’s space agency, has been one of that agency’s most successful missions since the Apollo moon shots in the 1960s and 1970s. It has produced a string of scientific achievements: confirming that most galaxies have a black hole in the middle; providing a front-row seat for the collision, in 1994, of a comet with the planet Jupiter; and helping to uncover the strange fact that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. But beyond the science, it has also been a public-relations hit. Its beautiful images have introduced a generation to the wonders of astronomy.

So in 2002, when the agency considered plans for a successor that would study the universe in infra-red, rather than visible light, would be ready to fly in 2010 and would cost just $2.5 billion, saying “yes” was easy. Nine years later, NASA is regretting that decision. The James Webb space telescope (JWST), as the new machine is called, is still in the workshop, and its launch date has been set back repeatedly (2018 is the latest official estimate). Its cost has gone up to $8.8 billion, a figure that, if history is any guide, could rise still further. Which would be embarrassing at the best of times, but with public-spending cuts looming and NASA’s budget flat for the foreseeable future, it is causing real strains.

In July, irritated by the JWST’s rising costs, the House of Representatives tried to cut $1.9 billion from NASA’s budget for next year, in an attempt to have the project cancelled. On November 1st, after lobbying from the telescope’s defenders (particularly the American Astronomical Society), the Senate passed a bill that restored the telescope’s funding.

But it is not just politicians that are restive. Astronomers have long worried that the ballooning costs of the telescope would affect NASA’s other science projects. Officially, the space agency will say only that other missions will be delayed, but there are fears that some could be cut completely. One potential sacrifice is WFIRST, an infra-red space telescope intended for launch in 2020. This is designed to probe the nature of “dark energy”, which is thought to be responsible for the quickening expansion of the universe that Hubble helped bring to the world’s attention. A string of other, smaller projects could suffer as well.

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Biggest asteroid in 35 years swings close to Earth

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Leonard Ortiz

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier zipped by Earth on Tuesday in the closest encounter by such a massive space rock in more than three decades. Scientists ruled out any chance of a collision but turned their telescopes skyward to learn more about the object known as 2005 YU55.

Its closest approach to Earth was pegged at a distance of 202,000 miles at 6:28 p.m. EST. That's just inside the moon's orbit; the average distance between Earth and the moon is 239,000 miles.

The last time a large cosmic interloper came that close to Earth was in 1976, and experts say it won't happen again until 2028.

Scientists at NASA's Deep Space Network in the California desert have tracked the quarter-mile-wide asteroid since last week as it approached from the direction of the sun at 29,000 mph.

Astronomers and amateur skygazers around the world kept watch, too.

The Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Mass., planned an all-night viewing party so children and parents could peer through research-grade telescopes and listen to lectures. The asteroid can't be detected with the naked eye.

For those without a telescope, the observatory streamed video of the flyby live on Ustream, attracting several thousand viewers. The asteroid appeared as a white dot against a backdrop of stars.

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Large asteroid zipping close to Earth on Tuesday

Monday, November 7th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

But scientists say not to worry. It won't hit.

"We're extremely confident, 100 percent confident, that this is not a threat," said the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program, Don Yeomans. "But it is an opportunity."

The asteroid named 2005 YU55 is being watched by ground antennas as it approaches from the direction of the sun. The last time it came within so-called shouting distance was 200 years ago.

Closest approach will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST Tuesday when the asteroid passes within 202,000 miles of Earth. That's closer than the roughly 240,000 miles between the Earth and the moon.

The moon will be just under 150,000 miles from the asteroid at the time of closest approach.

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Qualcomm: Windows 8 will take us beyond smartphones (Larry Dignan/ZDNet)

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Qualcomm’s stellar fiscal fourth quarter yielded a bevy of goodies beyond the core financials: Executives said there are 350 devices in development based on the company’s Snapdragon chip and Windows 8 means a business model beyond smartphones.

The company’s quarter and outlook for fiscal 2012 was strong. Qualcomm is riding a 3G wave in emerging markets and prepping a dual-mode Long Term Evolution chipset that will fuel sales in developing markets. Add it up and momentum abounds for Qualcomm.

But the more interesting comments from Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs and Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president, revolved around Windows 8. Microsoft’s next-gen operating system won’t yield big returns for Qualcomm in the near future, but ultimately will carry the chipmaker into a wider range of computing devices.

Mollenkopf said on Qualcomm’s earnings conference call:

We continue to invest in the Windows computing platform and associated ecosystem to address new device categories beyond traditional cellular. Microsoft recently demonstrated Windows 8 running on Snapdragon at their Build conference and highlighted how our mobile architecture enables a feature called connected standby.

This feature enables a Windows 8 PC to run on low power mode and remain connected to the network in an always up-to-the-date much like smartphones do today. This underscores the advantages of our mobile architecture. We expect Windows 8 to be a significant opportunity for us beyond this fiscal year.

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Racism: The Game – Advice from friends and mentors has been clear: just stop talking. (Michael Arrington/Uncrunched)

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Advice from friends and mentors has been clear: just stop talking. And yet the tweets, emails and other messages just keep rolling in, featuring some of the most hateful stuff I’ve ever read. They range from the fascinating “I don’t think you’re a racist!” to “I don’t think you’re a racist, you’re just stupid,” to “yeah, you’re a racist, so shut up.” Plus, the CNN documentary that is the source of all this mess hasn’t been aired yet, and I haven’t seen it, and all of this is going to pop up again then.

And it’s not just CNN being CNN any more. I wrote about how CNN interviewed me in July, supposedly about startup accelerators, but really about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley. And by minorities CNN meant blacks and hispanics, because Asians, who have disproportionate success in Silicon Valley, don’t count.

I wrote about it all here.

The problems with the interview:

- I was told by CNN it was about startup accelerators, not minorites.
- CNN then created a clip that highlighted me saying I didn’t know any black entrepreneurs, even though later in the conversation I corrected myself.
- CNN then wrote two articles, one of which was the top story on CNN last week, focusing on my race problems.
- Only a very few people have seen it. I haven’t, and I’m in the absurd position of not having seen it myself (to know how they edited the long version) and defending myself from people who also haven’t seen my interview.

Soledad O’Brien responded to my post, stating that her team had in fact notified someone at AOL a few days prior to the interview that minorities might be discussed. She presents an email which is almost identical to the first one, but which has an inserted fourth paragraph:

From: “Babbit-Arp, Kimberly”
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:41:10 -0400
To: Kelly Mayes
Subject: CNN Interview on Friday, July 29, 2011
Hey Kelly,

Thank you again for setting up this interview with Michael for Friday July 29th. Soledad has set up her schedule to fly from the east coast to meet and chat with Michael – so we are very much looking forward to this opportunity.

As we indicated in our earlier email for the past several months our team at CNN been working on what we think is the first major broadcast news documentary to focus on the ‘accelerator phenomenon’ and the booming start-up culture in Silicon Valley. In this culture, Michael Arrington is God and TechCrunch is the bible.

The main thread of our story, reported by Soledad O’Brien, will be the experience of a group of digital entrepreneurs who are spending the summer in Silicon Valley chasing their startup dreams.

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Bill Gates – I helped Steve Jobs create the Mac (Preston Gralla/Computerworld)

Monday, October 31st, 2011

By Preston Gralla

Steve Jobs had some very harsh things to say about Bill Gates in the just-published biography of him. In an interview yesterday, Gates responded quite kindly to that criticism, but also took credit for helping Steve Jobs invent the Mac.

In the biography, Jobs called Gates "unimaginative," "fundamentally odd" and "weirdly flawed as a human being." He also said, "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."

Yesterday, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," Christiane Amanpour asked Gates about that criticism. Gates didn't rise to the bait, saying complimentary things about Jobs and saying that because Apple was in financial trouble in various times, it was no surprise that Jobs would lash out at him.

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Russian cargo ship launched to space station

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian cargo ship was launched successfully to the International Space Station on Sunday, clearing the way for the next manned mission and easing concerns about the station's future after a previous failed launch.

The unmanned Progress M-13M blasted off as scheduled at 2:11 p.m. Moscow time (1011 GMT; 6:11 a.m. EDT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said.

"It was a perfect launch," Lyndin told The Associated Press, adding the ship successfully reached a designated orbit and will dock at the station Wednesday. A new crew will be launched to the space outpost on Nov. 14, he said.

A Progress launch failure in August, which was blamed on an "accidental" manufacturing flaw, cast doubts about future missions to the station, because the upper stage of the Soyuz booster rocket carrying the cargo ship to orbit is similar to that used to launch astronauts.

The next Soyuz launches were delayed pending the outcome of the probe. NASA said the space station - continuously manned for nearly 11 years - will need to be abandoned temporarily if a new crew cannot be launched by mid-November.

NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier congratulated Russia on the successful Progress launch.

"Pending the outcome of a series of flight readiness meetings in the coming weeks, this successful flight sets the stage for the next Soyuz launch, planned for mid-November," Gerstenmaier said in a statement. The station's crew, which has been reduced to three astronauts after the failed launch in August, will be restored to six in December when another trio of astronauts will be sent, he added.

The Russian spacecraft serve as the only link to the station after NASA retired the space shuttle in July.

Sundays' Progress mission was the second successful launch of a Soyuz booster rocket after the August mishap. Earlier this month, another Soyuz rocket launched the first two satellites of the European Union's Galileo navigation system from the Kourou launchpad in French Guiana. The launches followed inspections, which required the rocket engines to be sent back to manufacturers for close examination.

The August crash was the latest in a string of spectacular launch failures that have raised concerns about the condition of the nation's space industries. The Russian space agency said it will establish its own quality inspection teams at rocket factories to tighten oversight over production quality.

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No anthrax vaccine testing on children _ for now

Friday, October 28th, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Should the anthrax vaccine be tested in children? It will be a while longer before the government decides.

An advisory board said Friday that ethical issues need to be resolved - but if that can be accomplished the vaccine can be tested in children to be sure it's safe and to learn the proper dose in case it's needed in a terrorist attack.

Because of concerns that terrorists might use the potentially deadly bacteria, the government has stockpiled the vaccine. It has been widely tested on adults but never on children.

The question is whether to do tests so doctors will know if children's immune systems respond to the shots well enough to signal protection. The children would not be exposed to anthrax.

The National Biodefense Science Board said Friday a separate review board should look into the ethical issues of doing such tests in children. If that is completed successfully, the panel, said, the Department of Health and Human Services should develop a plan for a study of the vaccine in children.

How to protect young people after an anthrax attack is a challenging issue, said Dr. Nicole Lurie, a member of the board and assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Public Health Service. "Protecting children still stands, for me, among the most important responsibilities that we have as a nation."

The board gives advice to the Department of Health and Human Services on preparations for chemical, biological and nuclear events. Its vote was 12-1.

There is no deadline for the government to decide whether to go along. And if it does agree, it's not clear how much time it would take to find money for such research and get clearance from review boards at medical centers that would conduct studies.

Another big question is whether parents would sign up their children to test a vaccine when there is no immediate threat. It's not possible to get anthrax from the vaccine, but there are side effects. In adults, shot-site soreness, muscle aches, fatigue and headache are the main ones, and rare but serious allergic reactions have been reported.

Anthrax is among several potential bioterror weapons and is of special interest because it was used in letters sent to the media and others in 2001, claiming five lives and sickening 17. That prompted extensive screening of mail and better ventilation and testing at postal facilities and government agencies.

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Study: Japan nuke radiation higher than estimated

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Fukushima nuclear disaster released twice as much of a radioactive substance into the atmosphere as Japanese authorities estimated, reaching 40 percent of the total from Chernobyl, a preliminary report says.

The estimate of much higher levels of radioactive cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Study author Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research says the Japanese government estimate came only from data in Japan, and that would have missed emissions blown out to sea.

The study did not consider health implications of the radiation. Cesium-137 is dangerous because it can last for decades in the environment, releasing cancer-causing radiation.

The long-term effects of the nuclear accident are unclear because of the difficulty of measuring radiation amounts people received.

In a telephone interview, Stohl said emission estimates are so imprecise that finding twice the amount of cesium isn't considered a major difference. He said some previous estimates had been higher than his.

The journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics posted the report online for comment, but the study has not yet completed a formal review by experts in the field or been accepted for publication.

Last summer, the Japanese government estimated that the March 11 Fukushima accident released 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium. Terabecquerels are a radiation measurement. The new report from Stohl and co-authors estimates about 36,000 terabecquerels through April 20. That's about 42 percent of the estimated release from Chernobyl, the report says.

An official at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the Japanese government branch overseeing such findings, said the agency could not offer any comment on the study because it had not reviewed its contents.

It also says about a fifth of the cesium fell on land in Japan, while most of the rest fell into the Pacific Ocean. Only about 2 percent of the fallout came down on land outside Japan, the report concluded.

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The truth about Steve Jobs’ number plate

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

By David Heath
Wednesday, 26 October 2011 12:09

IT People - Enterprise

The stories about the complete lack of a number plate on Steve Job's car are many and varied.  But we can finally reveal the truth.

iTWire had the good fortune this morning to spend an hour with Jon Callas, CTO of Entrust, who in the past worked two stints at Apple in various senior security roles.

Amongst other tales around his time at Apple, we couldn't resist asking if Callas knew anything about the number plate saga.  Of course he did - and here it is.

It turns out that Steve quite liked the idea of being different (recall the "think different" slogan so regularly used by Apple) and discovered a perfectly legal way to permanently drive without a number plate. 

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US, Swedish researchers crack 250-year-old cipher

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Scientists in California and Sweden said they have used computer translation techniques to solve a 250-year-old mystery by deciphering a coded manuscript written for a secret society.

The University of Southern California announced Tuesday that researchers had broken the Copiale Cipher, a 105-page, 18th century document from Germany.

The handwritten, beautifully bound book didn't contain any sort of Da Vinci Code but rather a snapshot of the arcane rituals practiced by one of the many secret societies that flourished in the 1700s.

It also recorded rites for some apparent sects of Freemasonry that showed political leanings.

"This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies," USC computer scientist Kevin Knight, who was on the deciphering team, said in a statement. "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered."

The handwritten Copiale Cipher was discovered in East Berlin after the Cold War and is now in a private collection. Most of the book was written in a cipher of 90 characters that included abstract symbols and Roman and Greek letters.

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Teeth study shows big dinosaurs trekked for food

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/HOPD

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- What did giant plant-munching dinosaurs do when they couldn't find enough to eat in the parched American West? They hit the road. An analysis of fossilized teeth adds further evidence that the long-necked dinosaurs called sauropods - the largest land creatures - went on road trips to fill their gargantuan appetites.

Scientists have long theorized that sauropods foraged for precious resources during droughts because of their preserved tracks and long limbs that were "ideal moving machines" and allowed them to cover long distances, said paleobiologist Matthew Bonnan of Western Illinois University.

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The X Prize Foundation: Now count to a hundred

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

A new prize for the genomics of the elderly is now on offer

Oct 29th 2011 | from the print edition

We are delighted that you have such good genes

IN BRITAIN, those who live to be 100 years old receive a birthday card from the queen. In the future, centenarians everywhere may also receive a call from a geneticist. If they do, he or she will be seeking a sample of DNA that might, eventually, help to reveal the genetic components of extreme longevity. The more immediate use, however, will be in a competition. For on October 26th the X Prize Foundation, based in Playa Vista, California, unveiled its latest carrot to the world’s scientists.

The foundation has already put up prizes in areas as diverse as cleaning up oil spills and landing a robot on the moon. The idea of a genomics X prize is not new. It has been around since 2006. But the latest announcement, in the pages of Nature Genetics, has a particular goal in mind.

The foundation is offering $10m to the first team to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians. The winners will have to do it accurately, making no more than one mistake per million base pairs (the chemical letters in which genomic information is encoded). They will have to do it cheaply, spending less than $1,000 per genome. And they will have to do it quickly, within 30 days of starting.

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China spacecraft to launch soon to test docking

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

BEIJING (AP) -- China will launch an unmanned spacecraft early next month that will attempt to dock with an experimental module, the latest step in what will be a decade-long effort to place a manned permanent space station in orbit.

In space, the Shenzhou 8 will carry out maneuvers to couple with the Tiangong 1 module now in orbit.

The ship and the modified Long March-2F rocket that will sling it into space were transferred early Wednesday to the launch pad at the Jiuquan space base on the edge of the Gobi desert in northern China, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Its exclusive report did not specify a date for the launch. Chinese space officials rarely speak to foreign media.

The 8.5-ton, box car-sized Tiangong 1 launched last month has moved into orbit 217 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth and is surveying Chinese farmland using special cameras, Xinhua said.

It is also conducting experiments involving growing crystals in zero gravity, the report said, citing the launch center's chief engineer, Lu Jinrong.

Following Shenzhou 8, two more missions, at least one of them manned, are to meet up with the module next year for further practice, with astronauts staying for up to one month.

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Data points to China as source of March RSA breach

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

When RSA executive chairman Art Coviello told attendees of the company’s conference in London two weeks ago that the March cyberattack on his company “could only have been perpetrated by a nation-state,” he refused to elaborate on which country that might be. Data shared with Congress by security experts, however, suggests strongly that the nation-state in question was China and that the infrastructure used in the attacks had been active long before RSA was breached.

Hackers used a zero-day Flash exploit, embedded in a spreadsheet sent through a “spear-phishing” attack, to gain access to RSA’s network and compromise information on RSA’s SecurID authentication tokens. But as security blogger Brian Krebs reports, over 700 organizations’ networks were found to be transmitting data back to the command-and-control networks used to coordinate the attack—including a number of ISPs, financial and technology firms, and government agencies. Reasearch In Motion, Cisco, Google, Northrop-Grumman, Charles Schwab, the General Services Adminstration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the State of Michigan were among the notable names on the list.

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NASA to launch new Earth-observing satellite

Monday, October 24th, 2011

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- After a five-year delay, an Earth-observing satellite will be launched to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change.

The $1.5 billion NASA mission comes in a year of weather extremes from the Midwest tornado outbreak to the Southwest wildfires to hurricane-caused flooding in New England.

"We've already had 10 separate weather events, each inflicting at least $1 billion in damages," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The satellite will lift off before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., aboard a Delta 2 rocket that will boost it into an orbit some 500 miles high.

The space agency already has a fleet of satellites circling the Earth, taking measurements of the atmosphere, clouds and oceans. But many are aging and need replacement.

The latest - about the size of a small school bus - is more sophisticated. It carries five different types of instruments to collect environmental data, including four that never before have flown into space.

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AP Exclusive: NASA sting terrifies woman, 74

Monday, October 24th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The elaborate mission to recover a moon rock led NASA agents to one of the most down-to-earth places: a Denny's restaurant in Riverside County.

But at the end of the sting operation, agents were left holding a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice and a 74-year-old suspect who was terrified by armed officials.

Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn't talking and the case appears stalled.

The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

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Satellite pieces may hit Earth on weekend

Thursday, October 20th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/EADS Astrium

BERLIN (AP) -- Pieces of a retired German satellite hurtling toward the atmosphere may crash to earth this weekend, the German Aerospace Center said Thursday.

Scientists have now honed their initial estimate of when the satellite would hit from a span of four days to either Saturday or Sunday. As it nears, they will eventually be able to estimate impact within a window of about 10 hours.

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Hawaii astronomer captures image of forming planet

Thursday, October 20th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Karen L. Teramura

HONOLULU (AP) -- Astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet being born.

Adam Kraus, of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, said the planet is being formed out of dust and gas circling a 2-milion-year-old star about 450 light years from Earth.

The planet itself, based on scientific models of how planets form, is estimated to have started taking shape about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

Called LkCa 15 b, it's the youngest planet ever observed. The previous record holder was about five times older.

Kraus and his colleague, Michael Ireland from Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, used Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to find the planet.

"We're catching this object at the perfect time. We see this young star, it has a disc around it that planets are probably forming out of and we see something right in the middle of a gap in the disc," Kraus said in a telephone interview.

Kraus presented the discovery Wednesday at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Kraus and Ireland's research paper on the discovery is due to appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

Observing planets while they're forming can help scientists answer questions like whether planets form early in the life of a star or later, and whether they form relatively close to stars or farther away.

Planets can change orbits after forming, so it's difficult to answer such questions by studying older planets.

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California desert spaceship factory completed

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) -- Space tourism is closer to reality.

The $8 million Mojave Desert production plant where the world's first fleet of passenger-ready spaceships will be built has been completed and production is expected to begin at the end of the month.

The Spaceship Co. facility is a joint venture of Mojave-based Scaled Composites and British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

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US scientists testing earthquake early warning

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Reed Saxon

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Elizabeth Cochran was sitting in her office when her computer suddenly sounded an alarm.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A map of California on her screen lit up with a red dot, signaling an earthquake had struck. A clock next to the map counted down the seconds until shock waves fanning out from the epicenter north of Los Angeles reached her location in Pasadena: 5-4-3-2-1.

Right on cue, Cochran felt her chair quiver ever so slightly from a magnitude-4.2 that rumbled through Southern California on Sept. 1.

"If I hadn't known it was an earthquake, I would have thought it was a truck going by," she said.

After years of lagging behind Japan, Mexico and other quake-prone countries, the U.S. government has been quietly testing an earthquake early warning system in California since February. Cochran belongs to an exclusive club of scientists who receive a heads up every time the state shakes.

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NASA: Satellite pieces to hit Earth in a week

Friday, September 16th, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. space officials say they expect a dead satellite to fall to Earth in about a week.

NASA has been watching the 6-ton satellite closely. On Friday officials moved up their prediction for its arrival to Sept. 23, give or take a day.

NASA scientists have calculated the satellite will break into 26 pieces as it gets closer to Earth. The odds of it hitting someone anywhere on the planet are 1 in 3,200. The heaviest piece to hit the ground will be about 350 pounds, but no one has ever been hit by falling space junk in the past.

NASA expects to give the public more detailed information early next week. For now, all continents except Antarctica could be hit by satellite debris.

---

UARS satellite: http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/uars/uars-concept.html

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Future NASA rocket to be most powerful ever built

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

WASHINGTON (AP) -- To soar far away from Earth and even on to Mars, NASA has dreamed up the world's most powerful rocket, a behemoth that borrows from the workhorse liquid-fuel rockets that sent Apollo missions into space four decades ago.

But with a price tag that some estimate at $35 billion, it may not fly with Congress.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and several members of Congress on Wednesday unveiled the Obama administration's much-delayed general plans for its rocket design, called the Space Launch System. The multibillion-dollar program would carry astronauts in a capsule on top, and the first mission would be 10 years off if all goes as planned. Unmanned test launches are expected from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in six years.

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Scientists shocked by behavior of rare gray whale

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Scientists tracking a rare western Pacific gray whale were shocked last winter when the endangered animal left the Asian coast, crossed the Bering Sea and swam south along Alaska, British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest coasts.

Researchers are back in Russia to see whether the feat will be repeated by other Pacific gray whales.

A science team coordinated by the International Whaling Commission has attached satellite tags to five more of the highly endangered whales, according to an announcement by Oregon State University, which is taking part in the study. Researchers hope to tag 10 more whales before field work concludes.

Only about 130 western Pacific gray whales remain and little is known of their winter habits. They spend summers near Russia's Sahkalin Island. They face threats from offshore petroleum development, according to environmental groups.

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Scientists: Bacteria spreading in warming oceans

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Warning: The warming of the world's oceans can cause serious illness and may cost millions of euros (dollars) in health care.

That is the alarm sounded in a paper released online Tuesday on the eve of a two-day conference in Brussels.

The 200-page paper is a synthesis of the findings of more than 100 projects funded by the European Union since 1998. It was produced by Project CLAMER, a collaboration of 17 European marine institutes.

The paper says the rising temperature of ocean water is causing a proliferation of the Vibrio genus of bacteria, which can cause food poisoning, serious gastroenteritis, septicemia and cholera.

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Twin NASA craft launched to study insides of moon

Saturday, September 10th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Terry Renna

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A pair of spacecraft rocketed toward the moon Saturday on the first mission dedicated to measuring lunar gravity and determining what's inside Earth's orbiting companion - all the way down to the core.

"I could hardly be happier," said the lead scientist, Maria Zuber. After two days of delays and almost another, "I was trying to be as calm as I could be."

NASA launched the near identical probes - named Grail-A and Grail-B - aboard a relatively small Delta II rocket to save money. It will take close to four months for the spacecraft to reach the moon, a long, roundabout journey compared with the zippy three-day trip of the Apollo astronauts four decades ago.

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Too wacky? Moving water from flood to drought

Friday, September 9th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As the soggy East tries to dry out from flooding and Texas prays for rain that doesn't come, you might ask: Isn't there some way to ship all that water from here to there?

It's an idea that has tempted some, but reality gets in the way.

A Texas oilman once envisioned long pipelines carrying water to drought-stricken Texas cities, just one of several untested fantasies of moving water vast distances. Parched Las Vegas still wants to indirectly siphon off excess water from the overflowing Mississippi River. French engineers have simulated hauling an iceberg to barren Africa. There are even mega-trash bags to move heavy loads of water.

There's certainly plenty of rainwater available. Tropical Storm Lee dumped enough on the already saturated Mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Gulf Coast to bring 9.6 inches of rain across the entire state of Texas, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and The Associated Press.

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Dead NASA satellite will soon plummet to Earth

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A dead NASA satellite will soon fall to Earth, but the space agency says there is very little chance that a piece of it will hit someone.

NASA says the 20-year-old satellite will probably fall sometime between late September and October. Pieces of it could land anywhere in the six inhabited continents in a worldwide swath from south of Juneau, Alaska, to just north of the tip of South America. NASA scientists estimate a 1-in-3,200 chance a satellite part could hit someone. Most of it will burn up after entering Earth's atmosphere.

The 6-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) ran out of fuel in 2005 and will fall uncontrolled out of orbit. Only about 1,200 pounds of metal should survive, NASA said.

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Amazon’s Future Is So Much Bigger Than a Tablet

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

A few years ago, people laughed at Amazon’s Kindle, especially its clunky hardware design and CEO Jeff Bezos’s breathless rhetoric about how it would change how customers bought and experienced media. Now that we’re getting closer to the unveiling of Amazon’s long-rumored, slickly designed multimedia tablet, nobody’s laughing any more.

Amazon has swiftly become the most disruptive company in the media and technology industries. Its potential in this space is simply off the charts: bigger than Apple’s, bigger than Google’s or Microsoft’s. It’s becoming a purer version of all three.

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.xxx rated: internet’s red-light district has arrived

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Stuart Lawley is expecting a gold rush – and xxx marks the spot. Following a decade-long battle, his company has been given the go-ahead to set up a new sponsored top-level domain targeting the adult entertainment industry. Despite the approval of .xxx the controversy, predictably, has raged on.

ICM Registry, which is based in Florida's Palm Beach and run by Mr Lawley, is overseeing the .xxx domain registration and today is a significant step towards the emergence of thousands of sites with the evocative three letter suffix. From this morning companies and brand owners will have a 50-day "sunrise" period to bid for their own piece of real estate in what has been dubbed the "internet's red-light district". Both adult entertainment companies and those worried about their reputation can apply to pick up their own brands.

Mr Lawley said that while several .xxx sites had gone live as part of the founders programme, today marked the "proper opening of the doors of the registry". In the not-too-distant future, he expects there to be close to half a million .xxx sites.

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Photos: A look at Amazon’s new delivery locker at 7-Eleven (John Cook/GeekWire)

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Amazon's new locker system at 7-Eleven store in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood

Yesterday, my two-year-old son and I did a little investigative reporting. Our goal? Find the Seattle area 7-Eleven housing Amazon.com’s new delivery locker system.

We started our quest near Magnusson Park — where the 7-Eleven clerk had no idea what we were talking about — and ended up in Capitol Hill where we discovered the new lockers at the store at 1522 East Madison Street.

The Amazon lockers take up a sizable chunk of space at 7-Eleven

What are these lockers — which stand about 7-feet tall and take up a sizable chunk of the north wall — all about? One of the clerks explained that they would allow Amazon customers to pick up packages at the 7-Eleven.

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Wikileaks: Microsoft aided former Tunisian regime

Monday, September 5th, 2011

Microsoft provided IT training to law enforcement officials in Tunisia while the country was governed by a repressive regime, embassy cables published by Wikileaks show.

Cables leaked by Wikileaks show that Microsoft provided IT training to law enforcement officials in Tunisia, before the country threw off its repressive regime in 2011.

According to a cable sent by the US embassy in Tunis on 22 September, 2006, Microsoft was so keen to get the Tunisian government to drop its policy favouring open-source software that it agreed to set up a "program on cyber criminality" to cover training. The deal also entailed the company giving the Tunisian regime, headed by President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, the original source code for Microsoft software.

The cable was made public last week by Wikileaks as part of a massive and largely accidental publication of unredacted US embassy messages. In it, embassy officials told Washington there was a risk the training could be used to further oppress the Tunisian people.

"Through a program on cyber criminality, Microsoft will train government officials in the Ministries of Justice and Interior on how to use computers and the internet to fight crime. As part of this program, Microsoft will provide the GOT [Government of Tunisia] with original source codes for its program," the cable read.

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Earthquake prediction still stymies scientists

Sunday, September 4th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The East Coast earthquake left more than just residents unaccustomed to feeling the ground shake and sway in a daze. It also surprised some scientists who spend their careers trying to untangle the mysteries of sudden ground shifts.

Despite decades of research, earthquake prediction remains elusive. As much as society would like scientists to tell us when a jolt is coming, mainstream seismologists are generally pessimistic about ever having that ability.

They lived through the checkered history of earthquake prediction, filled with passioned debates, failed oracles and the enduring search for warning signs that may portend a powerful quake. The Earth so far has refused to give up its secrets.

In recent years, however, a more hopeful camp has emerged, pushed by researchers using satellites who say it may be possible to someday predict earthquakes from space and others who think they can tease out signals in rocks. The two schools of thought swapped notes during a two-day meeting in Los Angeles weeks before a relatively mild magnitude-5.8 rattled the Eastern Seaboard.

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Jeff Bezos’ spaceship fails during test flight

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

VAN HORN, Texas (AP) -- An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos failed during a recent test flight.

The vehicle became unstable at 45,000 feet and ground controllers had to terminate it as a precaution. Additional details about what went wrong were not released.

"Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard," Bezos wrote in a blog post Friday.

Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a vertical takeoff and landing rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It recently won money from NASA to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired.

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Mars rover Opportunity studying new surroundings

Thursday, September 1st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Mars rover Opportunity is snapping pictures like a tourist since arriving at its latest crater destination, much to the delight of scientists many millions of miles away.

The solar-powered workhorse beamed back images of the horizon, soil and nearby rocks that are unlike any it has seen during its seven years roaming the Martian plains.

Opportunity is doing more than just sightseeing. It recently spent a chunk of time using its robotic arm to investigate a flat-topped boulder that likely formed in a hydrothermal environment.

Scientists were giddy with excitement Thursday - a tone reminiscent of the mission's early days.

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Anonymous Roars Back With 3GB Leak of Texas Police Chief Emails: "That stupid bitch got what she deserved" (Sam Biddle/Gizmodo)

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Anonymous Roars Back With 3GB Leak of Texas Police Chief Emails: "That stupid bitch got what she deserved" Anonymous, after a relatively large period of doing nothing, are back with a vengeance. Even without their (arrested) de facto leader Topiary, they've punched Texan law enforcement squarely in their gut: a giant email leak, internal documents, addresses. Anon's back.

Anon explains the motives for the attack thusly:

We are doing this in solidarity with the "Anonymous 16" PayPal LOIC defendants, accused LulzSec member Jake Davis "Topiary", protesters arrested during #OpBart actions, Bradley Manning, Stephen Watt, and other hackers and leakers worldwide.

But really, it's Topiary's arrest more than anything. That cut of the hydra counted for more than one head, and they've been hurting (and quiet) ever since. Or at least that's how it's seemed. Now, Anon says they've been spending the time dormant in Texan police servers, preparing for this moment—a huge data dump and a site defacement.

Unsurprisingly, there's some damaging stuff in there—beyond the fact that this was all supposed to be private law enforcement dialogue.

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Space junk littering orbit; might need cleaning up

Thursday, September 1st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Space junk has made such a mess of Earth's orbit that experts say we may need to finally think about cleaning it up.

That may mean vacuuming up debris with weird space technology - cosmic versions of nets, magnets and giant umbrellas, according to the chairman of an expert panel that issued a new report on the problem Thursday.

There are 22,000 objects in orbit that are big enough for officials on the ground to track and countless more smaller ones that could do damage to human-carrying spaceships and valuable satellites. The International Space Station has to move out of the way of debris from time to time.

"We've lost control of the environment," said retired NASA senior scientist Donald Kessler, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.

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Earth lost fight to keep orbit clean of space junk

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Experts say there's so much junk in space that we may need to finally think about cleaning it up.

That may mean vacuuming up space debris with cosmic versions of nets, magnets and giant umbrellas. A new report says the situation got worse because of two recent events - a Chinese weapon test and the crash of two satellites.

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Mars rover Opportunity examining rocks at new site

Thursday, September 1st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Mars rover Opportunity is snapping pictures like a tourist since arriving at its latest crater destination much to the delight of scientists many millions of miles away.

The solar-powered workhorse beamed back images of the horizon, soil and nearby rocks that are unlike any it has seen during its seven years roaming the Martian plains.

Opportunity is doing more than just sightseeing. It recently spent a chunk of time using its robotic arm to investigate a flat-topped boulder to find out what it's made of.

After a three-year drive, the six-wheel rover finally rolled up to the western rim of Endeavour Crater earlier this month to begin a new chapter of exploration.

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Ancient humans used hand axes earlier than thought

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Pierre-Jean Texier

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Ancient humans fashioned hand axes, cleavers and picks much earlier than believed, but didn't take the stone tools along when they left Africa, new research suggests.

A team from the United States and France made the findings after traveling to an archaeological site along the northwest shoreline of Kenya's Lake Turkana. Two-faced blades and other large cutting tools had been previously excavated there along with primitive stone flakes.

Using a sophisticated technique to date the dirt, researchers calculated the age of the more advanced tools to be 1.76 million years old. That's older than similar stone-age artifacts in Ethiopia and Tanzania estimated to be between 1.4 and 1.6 million years old.

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Fusion power: Next ITERation?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

AS THE old joke has it, fusion is the power of the future—and always will be. The sales pitch is irresistible: the principal fuel, a heavy isotope of hydrogen called deuterium, can be extracted from water. In effect, therefore, it is in limitless supply. Nor, unlike fusion’s cousin, nuclear fission, does the process produce much in the way of radioactive waste. It does not release carbon dioxide, either. Which all sounds too good to be true. And it is. For there is the little matter of building a reactor that can run for long enough to turn out a meaningful amount of electricity. Since the first attempt to do so, a machine called Zeta that was constructed in Britain in the 1950s, no one has even come close.

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Air travel: Please be seated

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

THE job of the professional astrophysicist is to contemplate the music of the spheres. Given the global nature of modern science, however, today’s astrophysicists often spend just as much time confronting the cacophony of the airport. Now, one of them has devised a way to make that experience a little less tedious. Jason Steffen, from Fermilab, near Chicago, has designed and experimentally tested a faster method of boarding aeroplanes. By his calculation, it could save airlines hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Dr Steffen spends his time thinking about such things as extrasolar planets, dark matter and cosmology. After waiting in a particularly long queue to board a flight, though, he began to harbour an interest in the mechanics of getting people on to planes. In 2008 he wrote a computer simulation to test different methods. Using a numerical technique familiar to him from his day job, he was able to find what looked like the best. He has put his answer to the test, and the results have just been submitted for publication to the Journal of Air Transport Management.

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Forensic psychology: Backwards and forwards

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

PEOPLE love to tell tales. Indeed, even when someone’s memory is patchy, he will still do his best to spin the information he has into a credible yarn. This is not a matter of deceit. Rather, it is an established psychological phenomenon in which the brain tries to make sense of fragmentary information. Although such behaviour is natural and normal, it is a nuisance for the forces of law and order when they are trying to find out what happened during an incident by taking statements from witnesses. For this reason, psychologists working with the police often advocate asking witnesses of crimes to say what they saw in reverse order, to stop them making things up to help the story run smoothly. It sounds like sensible advice, and police forces in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Norway, Spain and Sweden have all adopted it. But a new study suggests that far from improving recall, it makes things worse.

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Worry more about Irene’s water than storm’s wind

Friday, August 26th, 2011
AP Photo
AP Photo/Bruce Smith

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Forget the wind and fury. Hurricane Irene's most worrisome weapon is water.

There's just way too much of it: storm surge pushing seawater ashore and heavy rainfall causing flooding. That's not unusual with hurricanes, but with Irene there are a couple of added factors that are making meteorologists nervous.

This massive, slow-moving hurricane is forecast to soak an already drenched Northeast and may come ashore at a time when tides are unusually high, making storm surge even worse - 4 to 11 feet with waves on top, forecasters say.

"Water is the No. 1 killer," retired National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield said Friday afternoon. "That's going to cause the greatest loss of life."

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Agency releases video of hypersonic glider flight

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- An unmanned glider streaks over the Pacific Ocean at 20 times the speed of sound in a video released Thursday by a U.S. defense research agency experimenting with technology that could give the military the ability to strike any part of the globe within an hour.

The Aug. 11 test ended early when a problem caused the craft's safety system to force it down into the ocean but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said valuable data was collected in the nearly three minutes of free flight at the hypersonic speed of Mach 20 - about 13,000 mph.

The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle-2 was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a Minotaur 4 rocket that carried it to the edge of space, performed what DARPA described as a series of aggressive banks and turns, and then released the glider.

The video taken by a crewmember on a tracking ship shows the rocket and vehicle together as a fast-moving contrail and then the HTV-2 as a faint dot zipping away on its own.

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