EU Tells Google To Warn Cities Before Sending In Street View Cameras

From The Daily Mail:

Google has been told to warn people before it sends cameras out to take pictures for its controversial Street View maps.

The EU privacy regulators say refusal to give adequate notice could lead to legal action.

And the internet giant must shorten the time it keeps the original photographs from one year to six months.

The regulators also said it should avoid taking pictures ‘of a sensitive nature and those containing intimate details not normally observable by a passer-by’.

Read more ....

Quantum Physics Breakthrough: Scientists Find an Equation for Materials Innovation

Professor Emily Carter and graduate student Chen Huang developed a new way of predicting important properties of substances. The advance could speed the development of new materials and technologies. (Credit: Frank Wojciechowski)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 26, 2010) — Princeton engineers have made a breakthrough in an 80-year-old quandary in quantum physics, paving the way for the development of new materials that could make electronic devices smaller and cars more energy efficient.

By reworking a theory first proposed by physicists in the 1920s, the researchers discovered a new way to predict important characteristics of a new material before it's been created. The new formula allows computers to model the properties of a material up to 100,000 times faster than previously possible and vastly expands the range of properties scientists can study.

Read more ....

Human Teeth Reveal History of Catastrophes

From Live Science:

Teeth are a window into our past, storing a record of the environmental pollutants and radiation they've encountered. Now scientists are developing tools to use teeth enamel to test how much radiation a person has been exposed to in the case of a major emergency, like a dirty bomb explosion.

"Dental enamel is quite a remarkable material," said Barry Pass, a professor in the College of Dentistry at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "There's a world of information in the tooth."

Read more ....

US Government Rescinds 'Leave Internet Alone' Policy

From The Register:

The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce.

Instead, an “Internet Policy 3.0” approach will see policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments, and key Internet constituencies, according to Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, with those discussions covering issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection, and Internet governance.

Read more ....

When It Comes To Salt, No Rights Or Wrongs. Yet.

From The New York Times:

Suppose, as some experts advise, that the new national dietary guidelines due this spring will lower the recommended level of salt. Suppose further that public health officials in New York and Washington succeed in forcing food companies to use less salt. What would be the effect?

Read more ....

Tiny Ear Listens To Hidden Worlds

From The BBC:

A micro-ear could soon help scientists eavesdrop on tiny events just like microscopes make them visible.

Initially, researchers will use it to snoop on cells as they go about their daily business.

It may allow researchers to listen to how a drug disrupts micro-organisms, in the same way as a mechanic might listen to a car's engine to find a fault.

Read more ....

Apple's iTunes Store Serves up 10 Billionth Song

From ABC News/PC World:

'Guess Things Happen That Way' by Johnny Cash Reportedly 10 Billionth Song.

Apple's iTunes Store hit a landmark on Wednesday with the download of its 10 billionth song.

A counter on the company's home page hit the 10 billion mark at 9:43 p.m. GMT -- approximately 6 years and 10 months since the store first opened in the U.S.

Back then it was known as the iTunes Music Store and served just music but it has since expanded to include video, TV shows and podcasts.

Read more ....

Video: In Attempt at True VTOL, F-35 Makes Shortest, Slowest Landing Yet

From Popular Science:

To perfect the vertical and short takeoff and landing ability of the F-35 Lightning II, test pilots have been taking off and landing at progressively shorter distances and slower speeds, building up to the final, true vertical boost. And today, engine manufacturers Pratt and Whitney released video of the slowest, shortest takeoff and landing yet, in which the jet cruises to a stop at 130 knots.

Read more ....

Twitter Attack Affects Thousands Of Users

Twitter has been hit by two phishing scams in a week, and is warning users not to click on suspicious links in direct messages

From The Telegraph:

The microblogging site has been hit by a second phishing attack in a week.

Twitter users have been warned not to click links in some tweets, after the microblogging service fell victim to its second phishing attack in a week.

Cyber criminals are using the service to trick people in to giving away their username and password for the site. Users have been receiving direct messages from friends on the site which contain a shortened link. When users click on that link, they are directed to a malicious website, which looks just like the Twitter home page, where they are prompted to enter their login details.

Read more ....

Lasers Lift Dirt Of Ages From Artworks

The angel on the right of the wall painting has been partially cleaned with a laser

From The BBC:

Physicists have applied the same laser techniques commonly used for tattoo removal to clean several famous works of art, including wall paintings.

Laser cleaning is well established for stone and metal artefacts already.

It has now been successfully applied to the wall paintings of the Sagrestia Vecchia and the Cappella del Manto in Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, Italy.

Read more ....

Optical System Promises To Revolutionize Undersea Communications

An artist's conception of how the optical modem could function at a deep ocean cabled observatory. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) collect sonar images (downward bands of light) and other data at a hydrothermal vent site and transmit the data through an optical modem to receivers stationed on moorings in the ocean. The moorings are connected to a cabled observatory, and the data are sent back to scientists on shore. Scientists, in turn, can send new instructions to the AUVs via the optical modem as well. (Credit: E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — In a technological advance that its developers are likening to the cell phone and wireless Internet access, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that -- complemented by acoustics -- enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission.

Read more ....

Much Of U.S. Water Safe, But Problems Remain

A recent study suggests that fixtures could leach lead into drinking water, even if the devices received passing grades from standard testing protocols. Credit: Josh Chamot, National Science Foundation.

From Live Science:

The United States has benefitted from centuries of improvements in drinking water safety, and most Americans can trust that clean water comes from their tap. Yet, closer inspection is showing that on a house-by-house basis, water quality is not guaranteed — even in communities with high marks for water safety.

Marc Edwards, of Virginia Tech University, has been part of a growing contingent of engineers and scientists looking more carefully at the water we drink, and finding that in some cases harmful sources are overlooked.

Read more ....

Perfect Insulator Could Eliminate Heating Bills

Besides eliminating your heating bill, perfect insulators could make computers cooler and speed up cell phone downloads. Stockbyte

From Discovery News:

With this insulator, the body heat produced by one person would be enough to warm an entire home.

THE GIST:

* A new material developed by MIT scientists perfectly reflects heat and absorbs none of it.
* This perfect insulator could eliminate heating bills and solve cell phone network overload issues.
* Currently, the material only works under freezing conditions, but a perfect insulator that functions at room temperature is soon expected.

A perfect insulator, or a material that reflects heat while absorbing none of it, has been created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sandia National Laboratories.

Read more ....

Microsoft Battles Cyber Criminals

From The Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Corp. launched a novel legal assault to take down a global network of PCs suspected of spreading spam and harmful computer code, adding what the company believes could become a potent weapon in the battle against cyber criminals.

But security experts say it isn't yet clear how effective Microsoft's approach will be, while online rights groups warn that the activities of innocent computer users could be inadvertently disrupted.

Read more ....

Giant Iceberg Could Change Weather Patterns

From The Australian/AFP:

AN iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said.

While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said.

The 2550 sq km block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160km spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne, researchers said.

Some 400m thick, the iceberg could fill Sydney Harbour more than 100 times over.

Read more ....

The Crazies' Franken-Virus Toxins: How Scared Should We Be?

From Popular Mechanics:

In director Breck Eisner's remake of George Romero's 1973 gem, The Crazies, in theaters today, a genetically engineered toxin created by the military escapes into the water supply of idyllic Ogden Marsh, Iowa, transforming the town's residents into a bloody, infected horde with severe attitude problems. But how much is the portrayal of the disease—and the military response—Hollywood hyperbole? Popular Mechanics spoke to experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find out.

Read more ....

World's Most Sensitive Neutrino Experiment Launches, To Seek Answers About Matter's Origins

Super-Kamiokande Built in an abandoned mine, the "Super-K" neutrino detector surrounds 50,000 gallons of super pure water with 11,200 photomultiplier tubes. To give an idea of the scale, that object in the distance is two men in a rubber raft. courtesy of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK

From Popular Science:

The questions that plague particle physicists and cosmology buffs seem fundamental, but it's startling how little we really know about some of them; for instance, why does matter exist? Researchers in Japan are undertaking the most sensitive subatomic particle experiment ever ventured in attempt to get to the bottom of that question, shooting neutrinos nearly 300 miles under the mountains, straight through the bedrock under Japan to a detector on the opposite coast, in an attempt to hash out exactly why neutrinos appear to spontaneously change from one kind to another.

Read more ....

'Explicit' Category Rumoured To Be Coming To App Store

Screengrabs show a new 'explicit' category for App Store apps. The listing has since disappeared. Image courtesy of Recombu Photo: Recombu

From The Telegraph:

Apple is thought to be considering introducing a new category to its App Store, as the row over 'overtly sexual' apps rumbles on

Several developers have reported seeing a new category appearing in the drop-down menus of iTunes Connect, the platform they use to distribute apps through the App Store. Alongside standard categories, such as "entertainment", "games" and "productivity", is a new tag: "explicit".

Read more ....

Disaster Awaits Cities In Earthquake Zones

Istanbul has a program to secure its schools against earthquakes. Above, construction at the Atakoy Lisesi school. Johan Spanner for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

ISTANBUL — As he surveys the streets of this sprawling mega-city, Mustafa Erdik, the director of an earthquake engineering institute here, says he sometimes feels like a doctor scanning a crowded hospital ward.

It is not so much the city’s modern core, where two sleek Trump Towers and a huge airport terminal were built to withstand a major earthquake that is considered all but inevitable in the next few decades. Nor does Dr. Erdik agonize over Istanbul’s ancient monuments, whose yards-thick walls have largely withstood more than a dozen potent seismic blows over the past two millenniums.

Read more ....

Ocean Robot 'Plans Experiments'

From The BBC:

Scientists in the US are using an underwater vehicle that can "plan its own experiments" on the seafloor.

The "Gulper AUV" is programmed to look for the information that scientists want and plan its own route, avoiding hazardous currents and obstacles.

The research team described this advance at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland.

The group explained how it could "train" the robot to bring the best science back to the surface.

Read more ....

U.N. To Create Science Panel To Review IPCC

From ABC News:

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - An independent board of scientists is to review the work of a U.N. climate panel, whose credibility came under attack after it published errors, a U.N. environment spokesman said on Friday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) accepted last month that its 2007 report had exaggerated the pace of melt of Himalayan glaciers, and this month admitted the report had also overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level.

Read more ....

Torn Apart By Its Own Tides, Massive Planet Is On A 'Death March'

Illustration of WASP-12b in orbit about its host star. (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — An international group of astrophysicists has determined that a massive planet outside our Solar System is being distorted and destroyed by its host star -- a finding that helps explain the unexpectedly large size of the planet, WASP-12b.

Read more ....

Killer Whales Don't Usually Kill People

From Live Science:

News of a trainer being killed by a killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando today doesn't change the fact that these giants, while deadly predators, do not kill humans at sea.

"They have never killed a human in the wild," said Nancy Black, a marine biologist with Monterey Bay Whale Watch. That's mostly because, unlike sharks, killer whales don't frequent near-shore areas where people swim. (Even shark attacks on humans are generally accidental, experts say, with sharks mistaking humans for seals or other typical food.)

Read more ....

Interval Training Can Cut Exercise Hours Sharply

By training intensely, people can cut their training hours
dramatically, research finds. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

By working out in intense intervals, people can squeeze a week's worth of exercise into less than an hour.

THE GIST:

* Intense exercise sessions can help squeeze a whole week's workout into less than an hour.
* Experts say interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise.
* Researchers are trying to learn now if older and less fit people can handle this type of exercise.

People who complain they have no time to exercise may soon need another excuse.

Read more ....

Under Fire, Administrator Defends NASA’s New Direction

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, faced skeptical, sometimes hostile questioning on Thursday from members of a key House committee who said they opposed the Obama administration’s plans to revamp the nation’s human spaceflight program.

General Bolden told the Committee on Science and Technology that the president’s $19 billion budget proposal for NASA — which would cancel the agency’s program to send astronauts back to the Moon, invest in new space technologies and turn to commercial companies for transportation beyond low-Earth orbit — would provide a “more affordable and more sustainable” approach to space exploration.

Read more ....

Space Pioneer Burt Rutan Blasts NASA Plan

From The Wall Street Journal:

Commercial space pioneer Burt Rutan has sharply criticized Obama administration proposals to outsource key portions of NASA's manned space program to private firms.

The White House wants NASA to use outside firms to develop and operate new rockets and spacecraft that would transport astronauts into orbit and beyond, functions that had previously been considered a core function of the agency. Mr. Rutan, a veteran aerospace designer and entrepreneur, in a letter addressed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, says he is "fearful that the commercial guys will fail" to deliver on the promises to get beyond low earth orbit, and that the policy risks setting back the nation's space program.

Read more ....

Italian Court Convicts Google Execs Over Video

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

In a case that could have broad implications for Internet use around the world, an Italian court convicted three Google Inc. executives Wednesday of criminal charges for failing to quickly remove an uploaded video.

Officials at the Mountain View company pledged to appeal, saying if the verdict is allowed to stand, "the Web as we know it will cease to exist."

Legal experts agreed the case raises troubling questions for all U.S. Internet companies that do business globally.

Read more ....

Band of Bots: Two Military Robots Team Up To Cover Land and Air

From Popular Mechanics:

In war, teamwork is everything, even if you're a robot. Just as human soldiers and airmen support each other, teams of robots will likely roam future battlefields, helping each other on missions.

Read more ....

Chinese Scientists Would Feel "Blind" If Google Pulled Out

From Popular Science:

Scientists don't want to see Google go bai bai.

Most Chinese citizens may still rely on homegrown Baidu for their Internet search needs, but Google's threatened pullout apparently worries the vast majority of Chinese scientists surveyed by the journal Nature. "If I lose Google, it will [be] just like a man without his eyes," one respondent said.

Read more ....

Google Hit With Antitrust Complaints In Europe

Photo: The European Union Commission is located in Brussels, Belgium. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

From Epicenter:

The European Commission has acknowledged receipt of three antitrust complaints against Google. It did not identify the companies and said it had not started a formal investigation.

“The Commission can confirm that it has received three complaints against Google which it is examining. The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being,” an unidentified E.U. executive said in a statement on Wednesday.

Read more ....

New All-In-One Space Weather Tool From NASA

From Watts Up With That?:

The press release doesn’t contain any pictures, and really doesn’t do this new web tool justice, so I’ve added some screencaps. In a nutshell, the new iSWA site lets you arrange graphical packages of solar images and plots oncsreen for simultaneous evaluation. Stuff that had been scattered over several solar related websites is now in one interface. Pretty cool. – Anthony

Read more ....

Physicists Discover Odd Fluctuating Magnetic Waves

Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The find may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity. (Credit: Lauren Brennan/Brown University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 24, 2010) — At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. But there's a limit: Apply too much magnetic force, and the superconductor's capability is destroyed.

Read more ....

Heaviest Element Officially Named Copernicium

From Live Science:

The heaviest element yet known is now officially named "Copernicium," after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

Copernicum has the atomic number 112 — this number denotes the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. It is 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element officially recognized by international union for chemistry IUPAC.

Read more ....

Wireless Speed Freaks Set To Leave Wi-Fi Standing

Wi-Fi is so pedestrian. Gi-Fi anyone? (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

WI-FI as we know it is reaching the limits of its usefulness. It just can't keep up with our appetite for services, such as new video formats, that gobble up bandwidth. So what's next in the world of blisteringly fast home-based wireless technologies?

For clues to where Wi-Fi is going, it helps to delve into the soup of standards that will shape the future of wireless communications.

Read more ....

Larger Threat Is Seen In Google Case

Bill Echikson, a spokesman for Google, called a judge's ruling against executives “astonishing.” Paolo Bona/Reuters

From The New York Times:

ROME — Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first case to hold the company’s executives criminally responsible for the content posted on its system.

The verdict, though subject to appeal, could have sweeping implications worldwide for Internet freedom: It suggests that Google is not simply a tool for its users, as it contends, but is effectively no different from any other media company, like newspapers or television, that provides content and could be regulated.

Read more ....

One In 10 Teenagers Fall Victim To Cyberbullies, Research Finds

One in 10 children has fallen victim to cyberbullies, research shows Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

One in 10 teenagers has been a victim of cyberbullies, according to university research.

The internet means that they can be targeted round-the-clock, researchers warned.

Experts claim that cyberbullying can be more damaging than conventional teasing because perpetrators can remain anonymous and therefore make more hurtful claims.

Read more ....

Why Millions Of Consumers Are Breaking The Law When They Use Their iPod

Photo: Law breaker? Millions of consumers transfer albums to MP3 players

From The Daily Mail:

Copying your favourite CD on to your iPod has become a routine part of modern life for music lovers.

But millions of consumers are unaware they are breaking the law every time they transfer an album or a DVD to their MP3 player or home computer – despite having purchased both legitimately.

Now, the threat of prosecution could be lifted after a customer body called for copyright laws to be updated for the technological age.

Read more ....

Autonomous Submarine 'Bot Plans Experiments, Navigates Without Human Help

One of MBARIs Automatic Underwater Vehicles Gulper is a high-tech update to this earlier-generation sister research vessel, which was used for seafloor mapping. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

From Popular Science:

Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are done spending valuable time heading out to sea on routine monitoring missions, and they have the autonomous underwater robot to prove it. A team of marine researchers there has developed what they are calling the Gulper automatic underwater vehicle (AUV) that operates autonomously far out to sea, planning its own experiments and negotiating ocean depths without human input.

Read more ....

Is The Bloom Energy Server Cost, Scale Prohibitive?

From Channel Web:

The unveiling of the Bloom Energy Server, a power generating device that lets home and business users meet their own electricity needs with clean energy while taking them off of the power grid, was met with great fanfare this week.

But solution providers say the $700,000 to $800,000 price tag along with its ability to generate 100 kilowatts of electricity could make it a difficult sell.

"The price point I believe is going to be the difficult thing," said Darryl Parker, CEO of Parker Web Services, a North Carolina solution provider.

Read more ....

America’s Wind Energy Potential Triples In New Estimate

From Wired Science:

The amount of wind power that theoretically could be generated in the United States tripled in the newest assessment of the nation’s wind resources.

Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.

Read more ....

The Great Filament

From Watts Up With That?

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is tracking an enormous magnetic filament on the sun. It stretches more than one million kilometers from end to end, which makes it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. For the seventh day in a row, an enormous magnetic filament is hanging suspended above the surface of the sun’s southern hemisphere. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has a great view. How long can it last? Solar filaments are unpredictable. If this one collapses and hits the stellar surface, the impact could produce a powerful Hyder flare.

Read more ....

Amazing Facts And Figures About The Evolution Of Hard Disk Drives

Above: Three decades of shrinkage.

From Pingdom:

It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the size of 1 TB (terabyte, i.e. 1,000 GB). This happened in 2007. In 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to reach the second.

This article looks back at how hard disk drives have evolved since they first burst onto the scene in 1956. We’ll examine the radical changes over time for three different aspects of HDDs: Size, storage space, and price.

Read more ....

Genetic Link Between Misery and Death Discovered; Novel Strategy Probes 'Genetic Haystack'

Interaction between nerves (red) and tumor cells (blue) in an ovary provides one way by which stress biochemistry signals can be distributed to sites of disease in the body. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Los Angeles)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — In ongoing work to identify how genes interact with social environments to impact human health, UCLA researchers have discovered what they describe as a biochemical link between misery and death. In addition, they found a specific genetic variation in some individuals that seems to disconnect that link, rendering them more biologically resilient in the face of adversity.

Read more ....

Brain's 'Fairness' Spot Found

Humans tend not to like unequal situations, and now scientists have found the first evidence that this behavior is reflected in the human brain. Here, an fMRI scan of a human brain showing activity in the striatum and prefrontal cortex, regions of the brain thought to be involved in how people evaluate rewards. Credit: Elizabeth Tricomi, Rutgers University.

From Live Science:

At some point in our lives, we've all cried "It's not fair!" In fact, it's human nature for us to dislike unequal situations, and we often try to avoid or remedy them. Now, scientists have identified the first evidence of this behavior's neurological underpinnings in the human brain.

The results show that the brain's reward center responds to unequal situations involving money in a way that indicates people prefer a level playing field, and may suggest why we care about the circumstances of others in the first place.

Read more ....

Hearts Actually Can Break

From New York Times:

Dorothy Lee and her husband of 40 years were driving home from a Bible study group one wintry night when their car suddenly hit the curb. Mrs. Lee looked at her husband, who was driving, and saw his head bob a couple of times and fall on his chest.

In the ensuing minutes, Mrs. Lee recalls, she managed to avoid a crash while stopping the car, called 911 on her cellphone and tried to revive her husband before an ambulance arrived. But at the hospital, soon after learning her husband had died of a heart attack, Mrs. Lee's heart appeared to give out as well. She experienced sudden sharp pains in her chest, felt faint and went unconscious.

Read more ....

From Ocean To Ozone: Earth's Nine Life-Support Systems

(Click Image To Enlarge)
We have already overstepped three of nine planetary boundaries and are at grave risk of transgressing several others.

From New Scientist:

UP TO now, the Earth has been very kind to us. Most of our achievements in the past 10,000 years - farming, culture, cities, industrialisation and the raising of our numbers from a million or so to almost 7 billion - happened during an unusually benign period when Earth's natural regulatory systems kept everything from the climate to the supply of fresh water inside narrow, comfortable boundaries.

Read more ....

EU Launches Antitrust Inquiry Into Google 'Dominance'

The internet search engine has dismissed the complaints. (Reuters/Robert Galbraith)

From Times Online:

The European Commission has launched a preliminary antitrust inquiry into Google after three companies complained that the US giant's dominant search engine penalises potential competitors and keeps advertising prices artificially high.

The European Commission has written to Google to find out how its search functions work, following allegations from the UK price comparison site Foundem, an online French guide to legal services, ejustice.fr and the Germany-based shopping portal Ciao, owned by Microsoft.

Read more ....

Enceladus: Nasa Spacecraft Records Dramatic Pictures Of Saturn's Moon 'Spitting'

This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera. Photo: NASA/JPL/SSI

From The Telegraph:

Dramatic pictures captured by a Nasa spacecraft of Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, “spitting” out water have left scientists astounded.

The space agency’s Cassini spacecraft fly-by has captured new evidence that Saturn's sixth-largest moon is “bursting at the seams”.

The pictures, taken about 1,000 miles from the moon's surface, a forest of more than 30 individual icy plumes of water – including 20 that have never been recorded – can be seen erupting, or “spitting”, from fractures around its southern pole surface.

Read more ....

Met Office To Re-Examine 150 Years Of Temperature Data In The Wake Of The Climategate Scandal

Division: An iceberg breaks off in the Antarctic. Some experts say sights like this prove the world is heating up but others believe it was hotter in medieval times

From The Daily Mail:

Temperature records dating back more than 150 years are to be re-examined by the Met Office because public belief in global warming has plummeted.

The re-analysis, which was approved at a conference in Turkey this week, comes after the climate change email scandal which dealt a severe blow to the credibility of environmental science.

The Met Office says that the review is 'timely' and insists it does not expect to come to a different conclusion about the progress of climate change.

Read more ....

Six Tricks That Alien Trackers Could Use

Earth's cities are visible at night from space because of their artificial lights, so populated exoplanets might give off light pollution of their own. But finding it might not be easy. Even if all the world's electricity were used to produce light, it would still be thousands of times fainter than a glint of sunlight reflected off the Earth's surface. (Image: NASA/GSFC)

From New Scientist:

So far, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has focused on listening for radio signals deliberately sent our way. But even if alien civilisations are not trying to get our attention, their activities could produce detectable signs. Here are a few things we might detect, most of which are discussed in a recent paper by Richard Carrigan of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

Read more ....

NSF Puts Up $25 Million To Research Biological Machines

The Crossroads of Biology and Engineering MIT

From Popular Science:

What would you do with $25 million? If you answered "create a center to research the development of programmable, highly sophisticated biological machines," we regret to inform you the National Science Foundation and MIT have beaten you to the punch. The Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems Center (EBICS), will not only advance research in the emerging experimental discipline of engineered biological systems, but will lay an extensive educational groundwork for research in the field going forward.

Read more ....

Brain 'Hears' Sound Of Silence

Although more research needs to be done, the work carried out by Wehr and his team could lead to new treatments for impaired hearing. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

While we think of silence as the absence of sound, the brain detects it nonetheless.

THE GIST:

* The brain responds not only to sound but also to silence, according to a new study.
* Different pathways in the brain respond to the onset and the offset of sounds.
* Better knowing how the brain organizes and groups sounds could lead to more effective hearing therapies and devices.

While we characterize silence as the absence of sound, the brain hears it as loud and clear as any other noise.

In fact, according to a recent study from the University of Oregon, some areas of the brain respond solely to sound termination. Rather than sound stimuli traveling through the same brain pathways from start to finish as previously thought, neuron activity in rats has shown that onset and offset of sounds take separate routes.

Read more ....

Grizzly Bears Move Into Polar Bear Habitat In Manitoba, Canada

This is a grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos), photographed in Wapusk National Park, Manitoba, Canada, on August 9, 2008. (Credit: Linda Gormezano)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 23, 2010) — Biologists affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History and City College of the City University of New York have found that grizzly bears are roaming into what was traditionally thought of as polar bear habitat -- and into the Canadian province of Manitoba, where they are officially listed as extirpated. The preliminary data was recently published in Canadian Field Naturalist and shows that sightings of Ursus arctos horribilis in Canada's Wapusk National Park are recent and appear to be increasing in frequency.

Read more ....