How It Works: Taser's Electrified Shotgun Slug

From Popular Science:

It’s midnight. You’re a cop patrolling the wrong side of town when you spot a mugging. The assailant is about 40 feet away, out of range of your stun gun. You shout, but he darts down an alley. It’s a dead end. The crook picks up a bottle, hurls it at your head, and makes a break for the street. You draw your gun.

Read more ....

Assault Breacher Vehicles Beat Bombs In Afghanistan

From Popular Mechanics:

Marine corps engineers in Afghanistan have a new beast of a vehicle to help them defeat explosive booby traps.

The civilian mechanics at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama usually only fix vehicles for the Army, not design them for the Marine Corps. But as Marines push into contested areas of Afghanistan, their engineers face a persistent threat from roadside bombs. The mechanics at Anniston saw they could build a safe ride for these military engineers by adding off-the-shelf equipment to an M1A1 Abrams battle tank. The result, called the Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV), maximizes the depot staff’s experience at fixing the M1A1 and their ability to mount heavy engineering equipment, including a 12-foot plough, onto its hull. The Army donated excess tank parts from its inventory to create the ABV.

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My Comment: This is a monster.

New iPhone Could End AT&T's U.S. Monopoly

From The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. plans to begin producing this year a new iPhone that could allow U.S. phone carriers other than AT&T Inc. to sell the iconic gadget, said people briefed by the company.

The new iPhone would work on a type of wireless network called CDMA, these people said. CDMA is used by Verizon Wireless, AT&T's main competitor, as well as Sprint Nextel Corp. and a handful of cellular operators in countries including South Korea and Japan. The vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T, use another technology called GSM.

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Oceanology: Robot 'Gliders' Swim The Undersea World

Engage the wave drive (Image: Liquid Robotics)

From New Scientist:

THE way we study oceans could be transformed by a high-tech "surfboard" that generates its own power from sunlight and water waves. The device is capable of navigating at sea for months at a time and recently completed a 4000-kilometre trip from Hawaii to San Diego, California.

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Cern's Giant Collider Is Back – And The Hunt For Fundamental New Insights Is On

The Large Hadron Collider is set for record-breaking high-energy particle experiments after an 18-month delay for repairs. Photograph: Reuters

From The Guardian:

• Two beams of protons will be collided at record energy levels
• Large Hadron Collider may find Higgs boson, or 'God particle'

The largest, most complex scientific instrument in the world will begin its long-delayed hunt for new particles, forces and extra dimensions on Tuesday at Cern, the European Nuclear Research Organisation, on the outskirts of Geneva.

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Picking Our Brains: What Are Memories Made Of?

Want to forget a fright? (Image: WIN-Initiative/Getty)

From New Scientist:

MEMORIES are the basic stuff of thought. We access our stores of knowledge every time we perform a task, communicate through speech or formulate the simplest concepts. Yet the physical form of memory has long been mysterious. What changes occur in the brain when a new memory is encoded?

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Atom Smasher Will Help Reveal 'The Beginning'

Physicists gather at CERN to witness results of the LHC's first half-power particle collisions. Photograph courtesy Maximilien Brice, CERN

From The Washington Post:

GENEVA -- The world's largest atom smasher threw together minuscule particles racing at unheard of speeds in conditions simulating those just after the Big Bang - a success that kick-started a megabillion-dollar experiment that could one day explain how the universe began.

Scientists cheered Tuesday's historic crash of two proton beams, which produced three times more energy than researchers had created before and marked a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider.

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US Marines Embrace Web 2.0

[Photo: USMC; Linker: MY]

In About-Face, Marines Embrace Web 2.0 -- The Danger Room

Last summer, the U.S. Marine Corps took a draconian approach to Web 2.0, issuing a sweeping ban on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks.

In an order issued yesterday, the service changed course, issuing guidelines to encourage “responsible and effective use” of social networking technology. “The Marine Corps embraces and strives to leverage the advances of internet-based capabilities,” the directive states. “Effective immediately, internet-based capabilities will be made available to all MCEN [Marine Corps Enterprise Network] users.”

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My Comment: I call this a positive direction. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. they all add to the morale and well being of our soldiers.

$500 Million Launcher Lacks One Thing: Rocket

The Constellation Program's Ares I-X test rocket roars off Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 28. At right is space shuttle Atlantis. Photo courtesy of Scott Andrews

From MSNBC:

Space industry tense over pending demise of Constellation program.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket — and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

Read more ....

For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken A Law of Nature

This image of a full-energy collision between gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles produced during the impact. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

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Mysterious Lead Coffin Found Near Rome

The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop. Credit: University of Michigan.

From Live Science:

Archaeologists found a 1,000-pound lead coffin while digging in the ruins of an ancient city near Rome last summer. The mission now is to determine who or what is buried inside.

The project – which is headed by Nicola Terrenato, a professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan – is the largest American-led dig in Italy in the past 50 years.

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'Uranium-Eating' Bacteria To Clean-Up Radioactive Sites

Ranger Mine - a uranium mine in Kakadu National Park, Australia.

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Some bacteria have the capacity to stabilise uranium contaminated sites, and if they are used they could reducing the chances of these sites contaminating major waterways and ecosystems, U.S. scientists have said.

Of the millions of tonnes of bacteria living within the Earth's subsurface, some are able to transform the oxidative state of uranium, which defines how the element with interact with oxygen to form various molecules. They change it from the radioactive, toxic and water soluble uranium (VI) to the less soluble, stationary and therefore less harmful uranium (IV) as part of their normal growth.

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With Processor Speeds Stagnating, Researchers Look Beyond Silicon Toward Computing's Future

Flexible Silicon More flexible circuits can help silicon stay relevant in the future of computing Science/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

From Popular Mechanics:

After a breathless race through the '80s and '90s, desktop computer clock speeds have spent the last decade languishing around the 3 gigahertz mark. That stagnation in processing speeds has prompted scientists to debate whether it's time to move beyond semiconductors -- and what better place to debate than in the journal Science? Ars Technica gives a top-down overview of several future paths laid out in the journal's latest issue by researchers such as Thomas Theis and Paul Solomon of IBM.

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James Lovelock: Humans Are Too Stupid To Prevent Climate Change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, according to the British scientist James Lovelock. Illustration: Murdo Macleod

From The Guardian:

In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action.

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

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Sex Infection Gonorrhea Risks Becoming "Superbug"

From Reuters:

The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea risks becoming a drug-resistant "superbug" if doctors do not devise new ways of treating it, a leading sexual health expert said.

Catherine Ison, a specialist on gonorrhea from Britain's Health Protection Agency said a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Manila next week would be vital to efforts to try to stop the bug repeatedly adapting to and overcoming drugs.

"This is a very clever bacteria. If this problem isn't addressed, there is a real possibility that gonorrhea will become a very difficult infection to treat," she said in a telephone interview.

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YouTube's 50 Best Videos

From Time Magazine:

YouTube — breeding ground for the Web's wackiest and wildest viral videos — turns 5 in 2010. In recognition, TIME takes a look back at the site's 50 greatest hits

YouTube's most viewed video of all time is an unlikely champion. Seen more than 170 million times since its posting in May 2007, "Charlie Bit My Finger" was never meant to be anything more than a family flick. But the Internet's hive mind saw something it liked and catapulted the clip, which depicts a laughing British baby gnawing on the finger of his crying brother, past "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's views champ by the fall of 2009.

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How The Human Brain Got Bigger By Accident And Not Through Evolution

Colin Blakemore believes the human brain became bigger through genetic accident and not evolution. Photograph: David Hartley / Rex Features

From The Guardian:

Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore tells Robin McKie why he thinks a mutation in the human brain 200,000 years ago suddenly made us a super-intelligent species.

According to Woody Allen, it is his second favourite organ and it absorbs more than 25% of the energy that our bodies generate. But why? For what purposes did the human brain evolve and why does it take so much of our physiological resources?

Read more ....

3DTVs Too Expensive For Mass Market

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in Avatar, or Dances with Wolves in Space 3D, to give it its working title Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

A survey suggests that 53 per cent of consumers won’t pay more than £499 for 3DTVs, which currently retail at around £2,000.

Three dimensional television might be the latest product to be receiving all the hype, but a new survey suggests that just 1.4 per cent of consumers are willing to pay the £2,000 price tags that new sets typically carry.

In a survey for discount site VoucherCodes.co.uk, 28.6 per cent of those asked said they would like to buy a 3DTV but that current prices were far too high. More than half – 53 per cent – said that they would only be willing to pay up to £499.

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The Father Of Civilisation: Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great: The Greek leader made Alexandria a place of knowledge, discovery and sexual intrigues

From The Daily Mail:

There is not, and has never been, another city to match it. It was a glittering metropolis, home to the most sexually charismatic queen of all time, founded by a man whose megalomaniac ambitions knew no bounds.

It was a buzzing hub that boasted one of the seven wonders of the world, where intellectual geniuses from both East and West met to tussle and debate in a library containing all the knowledge on the planet.

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Physicists Detect Rare Geo-Neutrino Particles, Peek Into Earth's Core

Inside the scintillator at Borexino. (Credit: Borexino Collaboration)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 29, 2010) — Using a delicate instrument located under a mountain in central Italy, two University of Massachusetts Amherst physicists are measuring some of the faintest and rarest particles ever detected, geo-neutrinos, with the greatest precision yet achieved. The data reveal, for the first time, a well defined signal, above background noise, of the extremely rare geo-neutrino particle from deep within Earth.

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Toyota Recall Might Be Caused by Cosmic Rays

From Live Science:

It may not lessen Toyota's woes to hear that the problems the company has been having with faulty gas pedals could be blamed on cosmic rays from space. Sound unbelievable? The concept is actually a lot more plausible than you might think.

Toyota's sticky gas pedals caused sudden and unintended acceleration in several of the automaker's top-selling Toyota and Lexus-brand cars, which led to a massive recall of more than 9 million vehicles worldwide, beginning in November.

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'Infections Found': Inside The Great Scareware Scam

Fake virus scans often look just like the real thing.

From New Scientist:

ONE day in March 2008, Kent Woerner got a disturbing phone call from a teacher at an elementary school in Beloit, Kansas. An 11-year-old student had triggered a security scan on a computer she was using, revealing that the machine contained pornographic images. Worse still, the images had appeared on-screen as the scan took place.

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Earth's Biggest Tree Rings Tell Fiery Tales

The tree rings of 52 fallen giant sequoias, Earth's biggest trees, have revealed a 3,000-year-old history of droughts and fires. Hemera/ThinkStock

From Discovery News:

Fifty-two giant fallen giant sequoias reveal a 3,000-year-old history of fire and drought after giant chainsaws expose their rings.

Using huge chainsaws and strong backs, the largest trees in the world are finally giving up their 3,000-year record of fires and droughts. No trees, however, were harmed in the making of this fire history.

"We only used dead trees," emphasized tree ring researcher Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona. Swetnam led the study that was reported in a recent issue of the journal Fire Ecology. "We spent multiple years collecting the wood and hauling it back to Tucson."

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A Conversation With Microsoft's Marketing Strategist

Photo: David Webster isn't the typical 'Softie. Not only is he far from Redmond (he lives in Connecticut), but he's got more experience picking brand names than writing code. (Credit: Microsoft)

From CNET:

SAN FRANCISCO--David Webster had a pretty busy year in 2009, trying to convince the world that Windows 7 was their idea and adding the word Bing to their collective vocabulary.

That said, Microsoft's chief marketing strategist doesn't foresee much time to rest. This year, all Webster has to do is persuade consumers that Office is cool, that Mom and Dad need their own Xbox, and that a Windows Phone can be a credible alternative to the iPhone. Luckily, Microsoft is willing to spend a few bucks to do all that.

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Line2 Adds a Second Line to Your iPhone

The Line2 mobile application from Toktumi adds a second phone line to your iPhone.
(http://www.line2.com/)

From ABC News:

iPhone App Lets You Place Calls Without Using AT&T Minutes.

Line2 is a mobile app from Toktumi that's a refreshing option for iPhone users who need to maintain a separate personal and a business phone number.

It's also useful — and potentially revolutionary — for iPhone owners who want to cut down on their monthly voice minutes by allowing them to place calls over Wi-Fi as well as over 3G Voice Over IP (VOIP).

Read more ....

UK Beaches Swamped By Plastic Litter, Say Campaigners

From The BBC:

UK beaches are being ruined by an ever-accumulating tide of plastic litter, the Marine Conservation Society says.

Volunteers at 400 beaches collected 1,849 items of litter per kilometre in the weekend of the MCS's 2009 survey and 63% of it was plastic, it said.

It said the amount of rubbish was 77% higher than in 1994 - its first annual survey - and the proportion of plastic volunteers found had never been higher.

Read more ....

Secret Copyright Talks Document Leaks

Acta, the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, is designed to cover theft of copyright, from designer handbags to music online Photo: Romina Shama

From The Telegraph:

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is being negotiated in secret, but the full text has now been leaked.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the controversial global treaty that covers intellectual property from digital media to designer handbags, has been leaked in full for the first time. Secret negotiations are still going on regarding the document that, some groups hope, will make those who share copyrighted material online subject to far harsher penalties.

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Biblical Plagues Really Happened Say Scientists

From The Telegraph:

The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed.

Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based.

But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away.

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Scientists Discover Moral Compass In The Brain Which Can Be Controlled By Magnets

Image: The moral compass, technically named the right temporo-parietal junction, lies just behind the right ear in the brain

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have discovered a real-life 'moral compass' in the brain that controls how we judge other people's behaviour.

The region, which lies just behind the right ear, becomes more active when we think about other people's misdemeanours or good works.

In an extraordinary experiment, researchers were able to use powerful magnets to disrupt this area of the brain and make people temporarily less moral.

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1 In 10 Chinese Adults Is Diabetic, Study Finds

From StlToday.com/AP:

After working overtime to catch up to life in the West, China now faces a whole new problem: the world's biggest diabetes epidemic.

One in 10 Chinese adults already have the disease and another 16 percent are on the verge of developing it, according to a new study. The finding nearly equals the U.S. rate of 11 percent and surpasses other Western nations, including Germany and Canada.

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Prolonged Climatic Stress Main Reason for Mass Extinction 65 Million Years Ago, Paleontologist Says

According to new research from a German paleontologist, long-term climate fluctuations -- not a giant meteorite impact -- were likely the main reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. (Credit: iStockphoto/Adrian Chesterman)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 27, 2010) — Long-term climate fluctuations were probably the main reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. This conclusion was reached by PD Dr. Michael Prauss, paleontologist at Freie Universitaet Berlin, based on his latest research results.

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Mysterious Whale Die-Off Is Largest On Record

From Live Science:

Mass death among baby right whales has experts scrambling to figure out the puzzle behind the largest great whale die-off on record.

Observers have found 308 dead whales in the waters around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast since 2005. Almost 90 percent of those deaths represent whale calves less than 3 months old, and the calf deaths make up almost a third of all right whale calf sightings in the last five years.

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Overeating Junk Food Similar To Drug Addiction

Over indulging your sweet tooth could decrease the reward response in your brain.
Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

PARIS: Whether their addictions are a drug such as cocaine or junk food such as cupcakes, all junkies are overstimulating the same receptor in the brain, scientists said.

The research, based on lab animals, bolsters long-standing suspicions that addiction to pleasure stems from overstimulus of a key reward mechanism in the brain, its authors say.

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Nuclear Disarmament Hinges On Missile Defence Dispute

Image from vrroom.naa.gov.au.

From New Scientist:

After almost a year of negotiation, the US and Russia have finally settled on a plan to further reduce their vast nuclear arsenals. If the new agreement is approved, the number of deployed warheads by will be cut by 30 per cent over previous targets. But an ongoing dispute over a European missile defence shield has the potential to scupper the plans.

The US and Russia hold some 95 per cent of the world's nuclear arms, including an estimated 4700 deployed nuclear warheads. The new agreement – a follow-up to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) – would cut the number to 1550 warheads per country over the course of seven years.

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Pyramid Of Mystery Pharaoh Possibly Located

A photograph taken from the area immediately south of the Unas pyramid,
visible in the foreground. Giulio Magli

From Discovery News:

The long-lost tomb of the 4,300-year-old Egyptian pharaoh Userkare may have been located.

The missing pyramid of an obscure pharaoh that ruled Egypt some 4,300 years ago could lie at the intersection of a series of invisible lines in South Saqqara, according to new astronomical and topographical research.

Connecting the funerary complexes raised by the kings of the 6th Dynasty between 2,322 B.C. and 2,151 B.C., these lines would have governed the sacred space of the Saqqara area, in accordance with a number of criteria such as dynastic lineage, religion and astronomical alignment.

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Rumor: 'iAd' Mobile Ad Platform Is Apple's Next Big Thing

(Credit: Gizmodo)

From CNET:

MediaPost reports that Apple's next next big thing, after iPads invade the world next weekend, will be iAd, a mobile advertising platform to be debuted April 7. Coffee dates and patent suits aside, this could be the true Apple-Google battleground.

Of course, if you've been reading the tea leaves, Apple's move into mobile advertising is anything but surprising. In January, they bought mobile advertising company Quattro for a reported $275 million, after Google snatched AdMob out from under them months before.

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Door to Afterlife From Ancient Egyptian Tomb Found

Photo from Supreme Council of Antiquities

From ABC News:

Archaeologists unearth door to the afterlife from ancient Egyptian minister's tomb.

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a high-ranking Egyptian official near Karnak temple in Luxor, the Egyptian antiquities authority said Monday.

These recessed niches found in nearly all ancient Egyptian tombs were meant to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld. The nearly six-foot- tall (1.75 meters) slab of pink granite was covered with religious texts.

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Gulf Stream 'Is Not Slowing Down'

From The BBC:

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.

Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.

A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change.

Read more ....

Autonomous Submarinebot Heads Down on Deepest-Ever Undersea Search For Undiscovered Life

Autosub6000 via The Register

From The Popular Science:

While some scientists resort to undersea drilling to find undiscovered forms of life, a new group of researchers has decided that piloting a robotic submarine into a submerged volcano was the way to go. By exploring the deepest, hottest, undersea volcano ever probed, the researchers hope to find clues to both the beginnings of life on Earth, and the possible forms of life on other planets.

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Pollution From Asia Circles Globe At Stratospheric Heights

Factories line the shores of the lower Yangtze River in China. Heavy pollution tied to China's rapid industrial growth has produced poor visibility and health effects. (Credit: Copyright UCAR, Photo by William Bradford)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 26, 2010) — The economic growth across much of Asia comes with a troubling side effect: pollutants from the region are being wafted up to the stratosphere during monsoon season. The new finding, in a study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, provides additional evidence of the global nature of air pollution and its effects far above Earth's surface.

Read more ....

Exorbitant Fees Offered to Human Egg Donors, Study Finds

Sperm is implanted into an egg in the process of artificial insemination. Credit: Dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Fertility companies are paying egg donors high fees that often exceed guidelines, especially for donors from top colleges and with certain appearances and ethnicities, a new study finds.

The upshot: Parents with infertility problems are willing to pay up to $50,000 for a human egg they hope will produce a smart, attractive child.

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How Much Big Tech Companies Have In The Bank

From Royal Pingdom:

Have you ever wondered how much money Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Yahoo, Amazon and other tech giants have in the bank? What kind of assets do they have, how much spending money do they have? The vague answer is, “a lot.” But if you want to find out exactly how much, read on.

To answer these questions, we picked out 15 well-known tech companies and looked at two things:

* Total assets: The value of all assets of a company, including equipment, properties, offices, cash, etc. In short: “everything they own.”
* War chest: The part of a company’s assets that consists of either cash and equivalents, or short term investments that can be quickly converted to cash. In short: “spending money.”

Read more ....

Orbital Upkeep: International Space Station Home Improvement

From The Popular Mechanics:

During a recent NASA and Russian Flight Readiness Review (FRR), engineers described some problems afflicting the International Space Station that may, at first, seem familiar to homeowners on Earth.

Read more ....

A New Picture Of The X-47B

X-47B Northrop Grumman

Boot Process Complete, Awaiting Command -- Popular Science

Northrop Grumman has released a new photo of their carrier-based attack drone, the X-47B. It's due to make its first flight later this year as part of the Navy's J-UCAS program seeking a multi-purpose sea-based drone.

Read more ....

Hubble Confirms Cosmic Acceleration With Weak Lensing

This image shows a smoothed reconstruction of the total (mostly dark) matter distribution in the COSMOS field, created from data taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. It was inferred from the weak gravitational lensing distortions that are imprinted onto the shapes of background galaxies. The color coding indicates the distance of the foreground mass concentrations as gathered from the weak lensing effect. Structures shown in white, cyan and green are typically closer to us than those indicated in orange and red. To improve the resolution of the map, data from galaxies both with and without redshift information were used. The new study presents the most comprehensive analysis of data from the COSMOS survey. The researchers have, for the first time ever, used Hubble and the natural "weak lenses" in space to characterise the accelerated expansion of the universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Simon (University of Bonn) and T. Schrabback (Leiden Observatory)

From Reuters:

A group of astronomers [1], led by Tim Schrabback of the Leiden Observatory, conducted an intensive study of over 446 000 galaxies within the COSMOS field, the result of the largest survey ever conducted with Hubble. In making the COSMOS survey, Hubble photographed 575 slightly overlapping views of the same part of the Universe using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard Hubble. It took nearly 1000 hours of observations.

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Dawn Of The Anthropocene Epoch? Earth Has Entered New Age of Geological Time, Experts Say

Scientists contend that recent human activity, including stunning population growth, sprawling megacities and increased use of fossil fuels, have changed the planet to such an extent that we are entering what they call the Anthropocene (New Man) Epoch. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2010) — Geologists from the University of Leicester are among four scientists- including a Nobel prize-winner -- who suggest that Earth has entered a new age of geological time.

The Age of Aquarius? Not quite -- It's the Anthropocene Epoch, say the scientists writing in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

And they add that the dawning of this new epoch may include the sixth largest mass extinction in Earth's history.

Read more ....

Saturday: Lights Off Worldwide for Earth Hour

The Golden Gate Bridge after lights out, during Earth Hour 2008 in San Fransisco, Calif. Credit: © John Storey / WWF-US

From Live Science:

Cities in 92 countries around the world prepare to shut off their lights for one hour tomorrow in observance of Earth Hour, an annual event geared at showing support for taking action on climate change issues.

During Earth Hour, people around the world are asked to turn off their lights for an hour at 8:30 p.m. local time on March 27. This year the event has topped its participation figure from last year, which was 88 countries.

Read more ....

The Secrets Of Firefly's Shepherd Book Will Finally Be Revealed

From The Escapist:

Shepherd Book, possibly the most mysterious character on Joss Whedon's ill-fated space-western Firefly is to star in in a comic book that will finally let us in on his past.

A character with a mysterious past is hardly a new idea for Joss Whedon, by Firefly's Shepherd Book was a particularly good one. Played by Ron Glass, the Shepherd - the term used for men of the cloth on the show - clearly had not been a God's servant all his life, and some pretty high-level connections with the Alliance. What made the mystery extra-potent however was that the show got cancelled, and we never got to find out what his mysterious past actually was.

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Art Of The Steal: On The Trail Of World’s Most Ingenious Thief

Gerald Blanchard could hack any bank, swipe any jewel. There was no security system he couldn't steal. Illustration: Justin Wood

From Wired:

The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile aboveground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness. He plummeted for a second, then pulled his cord, slowing to a nice descent toward the tiled roof. It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. If it kept cooperating, Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that held the Koechert Diamond Pearl. He steered his parachute toward his target.

Read more ....

We're Staying In China, Says Microsoft, As Free Speech Row With Google Grows

Microsoft has rejected criticism of its compliance with China’s strict internet laws. Photograph: Claro Cortes/Reuters

From the Guardian:

Most big internet corporations, including household names such as Yahoo and MySpace, follow Microsoft's lead.

Hopes that Google's forthright stand on censorship in China would inspire other companies to follow suit appeared unfounded today, with the move instead threatening to widen the rift between some of the world's most powerful internet companies.

Read more ....

Women Should Exercise An Hour A Day To Maintain Weight, Study Says

Moderate-intensity activity was defined in the study as walking or hiking, jogging, running, bicycling, aerobic exercise or dance, use of exercise machines, yoga, tennis, squash, racquetball and swimming. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

From L.A. Times:

The recommendation is aimed at women who don't want to diet but do want to avoid gaining weight. Some experts say to take it with a grain of salt.

Gloria Hale rose at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, as usual, to swim laps before work. Active though she is, however, the 55-year-old Orange County woman was a bit stunned to learn the latest advice from researchers regarding exercise -- that women should work out 60 minutes a day, seven days a week, to maintain a normal weight over their lifetime.

"Most people are going to say, 'No way. I don't have time for that,' " said Hale, a trim 5-foot-5 and 138 pounds.

Read more ....

Biologist Wins Templeton Prize

Photo: Francisco J. Ayala

From The New York Times:

Francisco J. Ayala, a biologist and former Roman Catholic priest whose books and speeches offer reassurance that there is no essential contradiction between religious faith and belief in science, particularly the theory of evolution, has won the 2010 Templeton Prize.

The John Templeton Foundation awards the annual prize, worth about $1.5 million, to “a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.”

Read more ....

Gorillas Extinct in Ten Years in Central Africa?

Rangers observe a mountain gorilla in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Virunga National Park. Photograph by Brent Stirton, National Geographic Stock

From National Geographic:

Rise in Chinese timber demand, ape-meat eating, and mining blamed.

Gorillas may soon go extinct across much of central Africa, a new United Nations report says. Among the threats are surges in human populations, the ape-meat trade, and logging and mining as well as the spread of the Ebola virus and other diseases, the report says.

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Eye-Tracking Tablet And The Promise Of Text 2.0

From Epicenter:

The best thing about reading a book on a tablet (so far) is how closely it approximates reading a “real” book — which is why the Kindle’s screen is matte like paper rather than luminescent like a laptop. Some (not all) fear for the demise of real reading and writing, but it’s more likely we’re really at the leading edge of an innovation curve that could breathe new life into the written word.

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