Astronomers Clash With US Air Force Over Laser Rules

The Gemini North observatory in Hawaii fires a laser into the sky as part of its adaptive optics system (Image: Gemini Observatory)

From New Scientist:

Could astronomers accidentally blind Earth-observing satellites? That seems to be the worry of the US air force, which restricts the use of lasers pointed at the sky to help focus telescopes. But some astronomers warn they will miss key observations under the rules, which have tightened in recent years.

Many of the world's largest observatories, including Lick, Gemini North, Palomar and Keck in the US, shine lasers into the sky to measure atmospheric turbulence, which distorts images.

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My Comment:This is probably a bigger problem than what the U.S. Air Force is willing to admit.

Extra-Powerful Military Sonar 'Is Killing Britain's Last Wild Dolphins'

Naval exercises will threaten bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth (pictured), according to wildlife campaigners who say the animals will deafened by the sonar

From The Daily Mail:

Conservationists fear a major naval exercise due to start today will put Britain’s wild dolphins in danger.

They say the latest generation of military sonar being used in the Nato exercise threatens the North Sea’s last remaining bottlenose dolphins.

The warning from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society comes after an unusually high number of deep sea whales have been stranded or spotted in shallow waters around the coast.

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Australian Plate: Cause Of Indonesian And Pacific Earthquakes?

This graphic provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows tsunami travel times following an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 rocked the island nation of Samoa, causing a tsunami. Credit: NOAA/AFP

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Following seismic activity in Vanuatu, researchers have suggested that the motion of the Australian tectonic plate may be responsible for recent earthquakes in both Indonesia and and the South Pacific.

They argue that the earthquake and tsunami, that took place in Samoa just over a week ago, may have a common cause to a quake in Sumatra and the three quakes near Vanuatu.

This is despite the fact that Samoa and Sumatra are more than 6,000 km apart.

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Microsoft Security Holes Hit Record High

From CBS:

Software Maker Patches 34 Holes, Designating Most as "Critical".

(AP) Microsoft Corp. issued a record number of security patches for its software Tuesday as part of its regular monthly update.

The software maker plugged 34 holes and designated most of them "critical," Microsoft's most severe rating. Among them are fixes for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000 and even Windows 7, which doesn't go on sale to consumers until Oct. 22 but has been in use by early testers and software developers.

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Australia Fails To Plug Oil Leak

From BBC:

A second attempt to stop oil pouring into Australian waters after a rig accident in the Timor Sea has failed.

It is almost two months since oil began flowing from the West Atlas drilling platform that lies about 200km (125 miles) off the West Australian coast.

The rig's operators have said that plugging the leak is an "extraordinarily complex" task.

Environmental groups have warned that the slick is threatening wildlife, including endangered turtles.

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Fundamental Quantum Limit on Computing Speed of Any Information Processing System

The Next Big Future:

Physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University in Massachusetts, have calculated a quantum speed limit on computing.

In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Levitin and Toffoli present an equation for the minimum sliver of time it takes for an elementary quantum operation to occur. This establishes the speed limit for all possible computers. Using their equation, Levitin and Toffoli calculated that, for every unit of energy, a perfect quantum computer spits out ten quadrillion more operations each second than today's fastest processors.

(A quadrillion is 10^15 or 1000 trillions)

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People Are Still The Weakest Link In Computer And Internet Security, Study Finds

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 14, 2009) — Two decades ago, studies showed that computer users were violating best practices for setting up hack-proof passwords, and not much has changed since then. What's clear, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and IT University in Copenhagen, is that until human factors/ergonomics methods are applied to the problem, it isn't likely to go away.

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Powerful Ideas: Navy Plans Robotic Barnacle Buster

The US Office of Naval Research recently conducted tests with a developmental ship hull grooming robot, called the Robotic Hull Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming (HULL BUG) tool. The HULL BUG is similar in concept to a autonomous robotic home vacuum cleaner or lawn mower and incorporates the use of a biofilm detector that utilizes modified fluorometer technology to enable the robot to detect the difference between the clean and unclean surfaces on the hull of a ship. Credit: U.S. Navy

From Live Science:

To help save energy on warships, the navy might one day deploy underwater robots that help vessels conserve fuel by scrubbing their hulls clean to make them cut through the water better.

As harmless as barnacles on hulls might seem to landlubbers, these crustaceans generate "increased drag as these ships move from port to port across the world's oceans," explained Office of Naval Research program officer Steve McElvany.

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Astronomers Seek To Explore The Cosmic Dark Ages

This illustration shows how astronomers believe the universe developed from the "Big Bang" 13.7 billion years ago to today. NASA/WMAP Science Team/MCT

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON -- No place seems safe from the prying eyes of inquisitive astronomers.

They've traced the evolution of the universe back to the "Big Bang," the theoretical birth of the cosmos 13.7 billion years ago, but there's still a long stretch of time -- about 800 million years -- that's been hidden from view.

Astronomers call it the Dark Ages, and now they're building huge new radio telescopes with thousands of detectors that they hope will let them peer back into the period, when the first stars and galaxies began turning on their lights.

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Growth Of Facebook Leaves MySpace In Dust

From CNET:

Social networking is definitely seeing a reshuffling of its top players.

Facebook and Twitter are in, MySpace is out, according to Experian Hitwise.

The Internet monitoring company reported last week that Facebook, the No. 1 social network in the U.S., grew its share of all the visits to social-networking sites from 19 percent in September 2008 year to 58.6 a year later. That's a more than 190 percent increase.

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In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin

A nurse took a patient's pulse in the influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital in 1918. Corbis

From The New York Times:

The 1918 flu epidemic was probably the deadliest plague in human history, killing more than 50 million people worldwide. Now it appears that a small number of the deaths may have been caused not by the virus, but by a drug used to treat it: aspirin.

Dr. Karen M. Starko, author of one of the earliest papers connecting aspirin use with Reye’s syndrome, has published an article suggesting that overdoses of the relatively new “wonder drug” could have been deadly.

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Dyson’s Blade-Free Wonder Fan

From Gadget Lab:

James Dyson has a fetish for making unusual products: everything from vacuums that suck (in a good way) to hand dryers that blow (also in a good way), each use a clever combo of eye-catching design along with innovative methods of compressing and dispensing air. But even we in the Lab weren’t prepared for the WTF moment when we pulled Dyson’s blade-less Air Multiplier fan from its packaging.

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The US Lets Go Of The Internet – Will Anyone Notice?

ICANN relax control over the internet (Image: Stone/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

POLITICAL power is rarely ceded without good reason. So eyebrows were raised last week when the US Department of Commerce decided to relax its grip on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the naming system that ensures that when you type a web address, your browser knows where to go.

In future, governments and other international organisations will be able to nominate staff to sit on one of ICANN's three newly created steering committees, something the DoC had resisted for years. "What it really means," says ICANN's chief executive Rod Beckstrom, "is that we're going global."

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Side Effects Of 1918 Flu Seen Decades Later

Parker / Fox Photos / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Runny nose, persistent chill, fever, fatigue — these symptoms are all familiar evidence of influenza. But what about a heart attack, suffered 60 years later?

Researchers suggest that such distant health problems may be linked to early exposure to the flu — as early as in the womb — according to a new study that analyzed federal survey data collected from 1982 to 1996. Researchers found, for instance, that people who were born in the U.S. just after the 1918 flu pandemic (that is, people who were still in utero when the disease was at its peak) had a higher risk of a heart attack in their adulthood than those born before or long after the pandemic.

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FBI Facial Recognition Software To Automatically Check Driver's License Applicants Against Criminal Database

Have You Seen This Man? via Imperial College London

From Popular Science:

Bringing the "wanted poster in the post office" concept into the 21st century, the FBI has begun using facial recognition software to identify fugitives on North Carolina highways. The software measures the biometric features of thousands of motorists' DMV photos, matching them against mugshots. When the face matches that of a known criminal, the authorities jump into action.

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Biofuel From Sewage

Image: On Q: The Q microbe (pictured), a lollipop-shaped organism that naturally breaks down and converts plant matter into ethanol, is now being used to make biofuel from sewage. Credit: Qteros

From Technology Review:

Qteros forms a partnership to use sewage as a feedstock for making ethanol.

These days, more and more companies are finding that sewage is a veritable "black gold." In recent years, sewage sludge has been mined for electricity, fertilizer, fish food, and gasoline. Now two companies have partnered up to turn sewage into ethanol. While others have worked to produce ethanol from municipal solid waste, sewage from wastewater has been a relatively unmined ethanol source.

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Researchers Probe Computer 'Commonsense Knowledge'

Few can challenge a simple pocket calculator at arithmetic. But even the most sophisticated computer cannot match the reasoning of a youngster. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 11, 2009) — Challenge a simple pocket calculator at arithmetic and you may be left in the dust. But even the most sophisticated computer cannot match the reasoning of a youngster who looks outside, sees a fresh snowfall, and knows how to bundle up for the frosty outdoors.

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Surprising Ship 'Contrails' Seen From Space

A NASA satellite has captured an image of ship "tracks" forming off North America’s west coast. Credit: NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.

From Live Science:

Although ships sail on the ocean, they can leave tracks in the sky. On Oct. 5, a NASA satellite snapped a shot of this phenomenon forming in a bank of clouds off North America’s west coast.

The white trails look vaguely like the condensation trails, or contrails, left behind by airplanes, but they actually result from ship exhaust.

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The Coming E-Reader Wars

Investing In The e-Reader Battle? Bet On Barnes & Noble -- Wall Street Journal

Crazy? That's what Wall Street thinks—analysts love Amazon, but have little to say about its competitor. But that's why buying Barnes & Noble may be a smart move. Some of the best profits come from going against the crowd.

Everybody loves Amazon's booming stock, which has doubled so far this year. But that run-up in value has made it dangerously expensive. By contrast, few adore Barnes & Noble shares, so they've been left for dead. When you run the numbers, the stock looks remarkably cheap.

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Building A Bridge Of (And To) The Future

HOLDING UP The Neal Bridge is taking the daily onslaught of traffic in Maine.
Craig Dilger for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

PITTSFIELD, Me. — The Neal Bridge is barely a bump in the road for motorists roaring down Route 100 south of this central Maine town. It’s a modest bit of the nation’s infrastructure — two lanes wide and 34 feet long, enough to span a small stream.

The bridge is newer than most, as suggested by the still-black asphalt and the fresh galvanized gleam of the guardrails. But it’s what is underneath that really makes the bridge stand out.

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