Household Robots Do Not Protect Users' Security And Privacy, Researchers Say

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 9, 2009) — People are increasingly using household robots for chores, communication, entertainment and companionship. But safety and privacy risks of information-gathering objects that move around our homes are not yet adequately addressed, according to a new University of Washington study.

It's not a question of evil robots, but of robots that can be misused.

"A lot of attention has been paid to robots becoming more intelligent and turning evil," said co-author Tadayoshi Kohno, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering. "But there is a much greater and more near-term risk, and that's bad people who can use robots to do bad things."

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Even Modest Exercise Boosts Self-Image

From Live Science:

Want to feel good about your self? Just get off the couch and do a little exercise. You don't even have to get real serious, a new study finds.

Heather Hausenblas of the University of Florida reviewed 57 intervention studies on the topic of exercise and how it makes people feel, and she concludes that "the simple act of exercise and not fitness itself can convince you that you look better," according to a statement released today by the university.

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Cambridge Laboratory of Molecular Biology: The Nobel Prize factory

Cambridge's Laboratory of Molecular Biology

From The Independent:

For the 14th time, the judges have honoured a member of the same lab.

Yesterday at tea time at Cambridge's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, something a little stronger than the usual brew was being glugged by the scientists gathered on the top floor overlooking Addenbrooke's Hospital.

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Barnes & Noble To Launch Android-Based Kindle Killer?

From Channel News:

Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN)'s Kindle might have a new e-reader enemy from a familiar source: Barnes & Noble.

Barnes & Noble is reportedly preparing to unveil an e-reader device to compete with Amazon's Kindle and the rapidly expanding field of e-readers. The book retailer is already a force in e-books thanks to its three-month-old eBookstore, but according to reports is prepping an e-reader of its own that will run on Google's Android operating system.

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Universe To End Sooner Than Previously Thought

Find The Entropy In This Super Massive Black Hole via Jevin Studios

From Popular Science:

While Robert Frost famously said that he prefers the world to end in fire, physicists have long predicted the universe will end with an icy sputter known as "heat death." Heat death occurs when the universe finally uses up all its energy, with all motion stopping and all the atoms in creation grinding to a halt. And, based on new calculations from a team of Australian physicists, it looks like heat death is far closer than previously thought.

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Look Into My Eyes: The Power Of Hypnosis

From New Scientist:

I AM about to have my left leg paralysed, my arm taken over by an alien force and, quite possibly, be made blind. I confess I'm a bit nervous. But also, strangely, I hope it all works.

These insults to my body will not be inflicted with a scalpel, but instead induced using hypnosis. The effects, if they occur, will only be temporary, my hypnotist, David Oakley, reassures me.

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Nasa Team Scours Moon Crash Data

The "shepherding spacecraft" will analyse the impact debris

From The BBC:

Nasa scientists have been outlining their preliminary results after crashing two unmanned spacecraft into the Moon in a bid to detect water-ice.

A rocket stage slammed into the Moon's south pole at 1231 BST (0731 EDT).

Another craft followed just behind, looking for signs of water in debris kicked up by the first collision.

Instruments on the second spacecraft identified a flash from the initial impact as well as a crater, but the expected debris cloud was not evident.

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Nobel Prize: Ten Most Important Winners

Professor Marie Curie working in her laboratory at the University of Paris in 1925
Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

As the 2009 Nobel Prize winners are announced, we look at ten of the most influential laureates in the history of the awards.

1. Marie Curie

The leading light in a family that between them amassed a remarkable five Nobel Prizes in the fields of Chemistry and Physics. She became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1903 when she was recognised, along with her husband Pierre and Antoine Henri Becquerel, with the Physics award for their research into radiation.

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Is China Beating The U.S. In Clean Tech?

Credit: Technology Review

From The Technology Review:

The president of NRDC points to a growing investment by China in energy technologies.

China could beat the United States in a race to deploy clean energy technology that can reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, said Frances Beinecke, leader of a leading environmental group, speaking this week at MIT.

"I just got back from China, where there is tremendous investment in the clean tech sector," said Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "They have a national renewable energy standard, a national efficiency standard, and China will build more of everything--more coal, more nuclear, more renewables--and they'll invest in more efficiency than any other single country in the world."

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Scaling New Heights: Piano Stairway Encourages Commuters To Ditch The Escalators

Music to your ears: The new stairway has proved a hit with commuters in Stockholm

From The Daily Mail:

Apart from the fighting fit, most of us struggle taking the stairs during the morning commute to work... especially if there is an escalator right next to them.

Now Volkswagen has come up with a nifty way of encouraging people to exercise more... by making climbing the stairs a note-worthy experience.

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Burning Buried Coal Has 'Potential'

Photo: In the future power stations could use gas extracted from seams of coals deep underground to generate electricity, say experts (Source: ABC)

From ABC News (Australia):

Burning coal underground could be one of the next breakthroughs to increase the world's energy supply, say some experts.

They say the technology could provide access to additional coal reserves that are either too deep or remote to mine.

But the approach is so far untested on a commercial scale, making the initial expense a concern for governments and investors.

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Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

Photo: Aradhna Tripati. (Credit: Image courtesy of UCLA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2009) — You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," said the paper's lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

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Real Tsunami May Have Inspired Legend of Atlantis

From Live Science:

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.

The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.

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Has Science Found The Cause Of ME?

From The Independent:

Breakthrough offers hope to millions of sufferers around the world.

Scientists say they have made a dramatic breakthrough in understanding the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome – a debilitating condition affecting 250,000 people in Britain which for decades has defied a rational medical explanation.

The researchers have discovered a strong link between chronic fatigue syndrome, which is sometimes known as ME or myalgic encephalomyelitis, and an obscure retrovirus related to a group of viruses found to infect mice.

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Canada Invests In Carbon Capture For Oil Sands

The Syncrude extraction facility in the northern Alberta oil sand fields is reflected in the pool of water being recycled for re-use in the extraction process in Fort McMurray, Canada in 2007. Canada will invest 865 million Canadian dollars (821 million US) to capture carbon emissions from its vast oil sands, reviled by environmentalists as hugely polluting, officials said Thursday.
(AFP/File/David Boily)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

OTTAWA (AFP) – Canada will invest 865 million Canadian dollars (821 million US) to capture carbon emissions from its vast oil sands, reviled by environmentalists as hugely polluting, officials said Thursday.

"The most viable emission-reducing technology for fossil fuels is carbon capture and storage," said Canadian Energy Minister Lisa Raitt.

"The government of Canada is backing up our support for carbon capture and storage with substantial investments... (to) reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating high-quality jobs for Canadians."

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NASA Craft Hits Moon South Pole Looking For Water

This artist's rendering released by NASA on Friday shows the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite as it crashes into the moon to test for the presence of water. NASA, via Reuters

In Test of Water on Moon, Craft Hits Bull’s-Eye -- New York Times

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — More than 230,000 miles from Earth, a NASA spacecraft hit a bull’s-eye on the Moon on Friday morning. Actually, two bull’s-eyes.

At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — LCROSS, for short — slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.

Trailing four minutes behind, instruments aboard the second piece analyzed the rising plume and sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater.

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More News On NASA

NASA makes as-yet unseen hit on moon with probes -- AP
NASA craft smacks the moon in quest for water -- L.A. Times
Searching for lunar water -- USA Today
NASA probes give moon a double smack -- AP
Nasa Moon bombing: analysis -- The Telegraph

South Pole Telescope Emerges From Dark Winter With Visions Of Unseen Galaxies

The South Pole Telescope with The Milky Way and Aurora Australis. (UPPA/Photoshot)

From Times Online:

The South Pole Telescope emerges from a six-month winter of perpetual darkness having discovered clusters of previously unseen galaxies.

The pole has been called “the most benign environment on Earth” for astronomy because of its altitude — 2,800m above sea level — dryness of air and virtual absence of light pollution.

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Animals Survived Apocalypse By Burrowing

Ninety percent of all life was killed during the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago. But the pig-sized animal Lystrosaurus curvatus and other species apparently survived by burrowing underground. Lunar and Planetary Institute

From Discovery:

When the going gets tough, putting your head in the sand isn't always a bad idea. According to a new study, that's exactly how a group of animals living 250 million years ago survived the worst mass extinction of all time.

In a series of new fossil discoveries in South Africa, researchers have uncovered a slew of petrified burrows, many of them a foot wide and a meter (3.3 feet) or more deep.

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The Legacy Of America’s Largest Forest Fire

The forest fire of 1910 ripped through the town of Wallace, Idaho leaving it in complete shambles. Library of Congress

From The Smithsonian:

A 1910 wildfire that raged across three Western states helped advance the nation’s conservation efforts

Here now came the fire down from the Bitterroot Mountains and showered embers and forest shrapnel onto the town that was supposed to be protected by all those men with faraway accents and empty stomachs. For days, people had watched it from their gabled houses, from front porches and ash-covered streets, and there was some safety in the distance, some fascination even—See there, way up on the ridgeline, just candles flickering in the trees. But now it was on them, an element transformed from Out There to Here, and just as suddenly in their hair, on front lawns, snuffing out the life of a drunk on a hotel mattress, torching a veranda. The sky had been dark for some time on this Saturday in August of 1910, the town covered in a warm fog so opaque that the lights were turned on at three o’clock in the afternoon. People took stock of what to take, what to leave behind. A woman buried her sewing machine out back in a shallow grave. A pressman dug a hole for his trunk of family possessions, but before he could finish the fire caught him on the face, the arms, the neck.

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War Injury Leads To Advances At Home

British soldiers on patrol in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Photograph: John D McHugh/AFP/Getty images

From The L.A. Times:

The military takes the lead in brain trauma research, giving hope to wounded civilians of a 'silent epidemic.'

A world away from the roadside bombs and combat injuries of Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are suffering the same type of brain injury seen in troops coming home from those war-torn countries. On American roads, at workplaces and on playing fields, more than 11 million have been hurt since the fighting overseas started.

Almost 1 in 5 of these civilians will struggle with lingering, often subtle symptoms -- headaches, dizziness, concentration difficulties and personality changes -- for a year, and often longer. As their memories falter, their work suffers and their relationships fray, many victims of brain trauma don't realize that their cognitive struggles are related to a blow to the head.

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My Comment: Explosions, bombings, the noise and concussion of war has consequences that we are only now starting to understand. This research is valuable .... and should be pushed further.