Microsoft's Ballmer Talks Bing, Twitter

Photo: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (right) and Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan listen to an audience question at SMX West. (Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)

From CNET:

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer maintains a secret Twitter account for providing running commentary on high-school basketball matches: but that doesn't mean he wants to buy the company.

Ballmer's booming voice filled the Santa Clara Convention Center on Tuesday morning at SMX West, where he was interviewed on stage by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan on a wide range of topics related to Microsoft, Bing, and the company's struggling yet strategically important Internet business. Having wrapped up its search deal with Yahoo and restructured a separate search and advertising deal with Facebook, it wouldn't be surprising if Ballmer was looking for something new to do with that division.

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Google’s China Exit Strategy: Watch This Space

From Wired:

A top Google lawyer told Congress Tuesday that the company still has no idea when or if it will make good on its public ultimatum in January to pull out of China unless it is allowed to stop censoring search results.

“We are still weighing our options,” Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told the Senate Judiciary committee in a hearing on internet freedom.

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'Biological Clock' Could Be a Key to Better Health, Longer Life

This fruit fly is used by researchers at Oregon State University for studies of the genes that control the "biological clock" in this and many other animal species, including humans. (Credit: Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 2, 2010) — If you aren't getting a good, consistent and regular night's sleep, a new study suggests it could reduce your ability to handle oxidative stress, cause impacts to your health, increase motor and neurological deterioration, speed aging and ultimately cut short your life.

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Where The Quakes In Chile Struck

This map of topography and water depth along the Chilean coast shows quake locations and magnitudes (black circles), with lighter colors indicating higher elevation on land and shallower depth in the water. The boundary where the two tectonic plates converge is marked by a red line. Also there is a trench where the Nazca Plate begins to dive beneath the South America Plate. When these plates get locked together for any time the pressure will eventually break, resulting in an earthquake like the 8.8 magnitude temblor on Feb. 27. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

From Live Science:

The 8.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated parts of Chile was the result of a collision between two giant slabs of Earth.

The jolt occurred along a so-called subduction zone, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another. In this case, the Nazca Plate is plowing under the South America Plate at an average rate of 3 inches (80 millimeters) a year. In addition to the Feb. 27 earthquake and others, the plate collision gives rise to the spectacular Andes Mountains.

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Wiseguys Indicted In $25 Million Online Ticket Ring

From Wired News:

A ring of ticket brokers has been indicted in connection to an elaborate hacking scheme that used bots and other fraudulent means to purchase more than 1 million tickets for concerts, sporting events and other events.

The defendants made more than $25 million in profits from the resale of the tickets between 2002 and 2009.

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More News On This Ticket Scam

Four Men Indicted In Online Ticket Scam -- PC World
Four men charged in computerized online ticket scam -- CNET
Four Indicted in CAPTCHA Hacks of Ticket Sites -- PC Magazine
4 Californians indicted in alleged ticket reselling scam -- L.A. Times
Couldn’t Get Those Coveted Gaga Tickets? Here’s Why -- Wall Street Journal
Wiseguys net $25m in ticket scalping racket -- Register

The Great Tradition Of Bungling Boffins

Galileo wasn't immune to the odd bad idea himself. Simon Callow in the television production of Galileo's Daughter Photo: CHANNEL 4

From The Telegraph:

As recent events have shown, all scientists can make mistakes. Michael Brooks recounts their most heroic failures across the ages.

It is hardly surprising that public confidence in science has taken a dip lately, what with all the turmoil surrounding climate change research, the failure of the peer review process to block Andrew Wakefield's paper on MMR, and the near-comical troubles at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

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Year Of The Laser

From Technology Review:

The laser, a device used in everything from astrophysics to biology, was invented 50 years ago.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the laser, a device used in applications from performing precise surgical procedures to measuring gravitational waves. In 1917, Albert Einstein proposed that a photon hitting an atom in a high energy state would cause the atom to release a second photon identical in frequency and direction to the first. In the 1950s, scientists searched for a way to achieve this stimulated emission and amplify it so that a group of excited atoms would release photons in a chain reaction. In 1959, American physicist Gordon Gould publicly used the term “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” for the first time. A year later, scientists demonstrated the first working optical laser.

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Big Bang Collider Restarts At Cern In Bid To Discover Origins Of The Universe

Technicians install electric cables at the heart of the ATLAS detector, part of the Large Hadron Collider, which was restarted last night

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have restarted the world largest atom smasher over-night, in a fresh bid to uncover the secrets of the universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, sent low energy beams of protons in both directions around the 17-mile particle accelerator under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

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Why The Chile quake Tsunami Was Smaller Than Feared

Focused spread (Image: NOAA)

From New Scientist:

The earthquake in Chile on Saturday was one of the biggest the world has felt in the past century – so why was the tsunami that spread across the Pacific smaller than originally feared?

The magnitude-8.8 earthquake was devastating, claiming at least 700 lives. Large tsunami waves were reported along parts of Chile's coastline: reports suggest the town of Constitución was worst affected by the wave.

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Nose Scanning Techniques Could Sniff Out Criminals

Faces were analysed and mapped with a computer program

From The BBC:

We already have iris and fingerprint scanning but noses could be an even better method of identification, says a study from the University of Bath, UK.

The researchers scanned noses in 3D and characterised them by tip, ridge profile and the nasion, or area between the eyes.

They found 6 main nose types: Roman, Greek, Nubian, hawk, snub and turn-up.

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Chile Quake Among Most Powerful Ever

From Discovery News:

The so-called megathrust quake that rocked the western coast of South America is the most powerful of its kind.

THE GIST:

* The 8.8-magnitude earthquake is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered devastating tsunamis.
* Called megathrusts, these quakes occur when one tectonic plate dives beneath another.
* The Chile tremor unleashed about 50 gigatons of energy.

The huge earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile belongs to an "elite class" of mega earthquakes, experts said, and is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered deadly tsunami waves.

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A Bird's Eye View Of The Chile Earthquake's Energy Distribution

NOAA's Distributed Energy Map of the Chile Earthquake NOAA

From Popular Science:

It’s easy to think of tsunamis as phenomenon that mimic the behavior of ripples on the surface of water; you toss a stone into a pond and the resulting energy from the splash moves out away from the epicenter in a series of even, concentric circles. But this NOAA energy distribution map from the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile over the weekend tells a different story.

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New 'Alien Invader' Star Clusters Found in Milky Way

As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2010) — As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. The report also suggests there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way rather than the two that were previously confirmed.

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Top 10 Spooky Sleep Disorders

From Live Science:

Sleep is supposed to be a time of peace and relaxation. Most of us drift from our waking lives into predictable cycles of deep, non-REM sleep, followed by dream-filled rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. But when the boundaries of these three phases of arousal get fuzzy, sleep can be downright scary. In fact, some sleep disorders seem more at home in horror films than in your bedroom.

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British Library To Offer Free Ebook Downloads

Jane Austen: Originals cost £250

From Times Online:

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

The library’s ebook publishing project, funded by Microsoft, the computer giant, is the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books.

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Microsoft Urges Antitrust Complaints About Google

Image from Onecomics

From Times Online:

Microsoft has encouraged other companies to complain about Google to antitrust regulators in its most outspoken attack on its rival.

The software group, which for years has been the prime target of competition regulators in the US and Europe over the way it handled its near-monopoly of computer operating systems, wants to turn the spotlight on to Google's position as the world's biggest internet search and advertising company.

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Colossal Head Statue Of King Tut's Grandfather Dug Out In Luxor

The colossal head, after its excavation.
Courtesy: Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)

From Discovery News:

A colossal head statue of King Tut's grandfather has been dug out in Luxor, Farouk Hosni, Egypt's Culture Minister, said Sunday.

Smoothly polished and perfectly preserved, the 2.5-meter (8-foot) head belonged to Amenhotep III, the pharaoh who was King Tutankhamun's grandfather, according to DNA tests revealed last week.

The ninth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhotep III (1390-1352 B.C.), reigned for 38 year during a time when Egypt was at the height of prosperity and cultural development.

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Suborbital Safety: Will Commercial Spaceflight Ramp Up the Risk?

From Popular Mechanics:

At the first-ever Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, high-level officials from NASA and the FAA addressed the risks that new private and commercial suborbital vehicles will carry when transporting NASA-sponsored payloads and personnel.

Ever since the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, almost a quarter of a century ago, the watchword above all others at NASA has been "safety." Unfortunately, watchwords don't necessarily create actual safety, as we learned a little over seven years ago, with the loss of her sister ship Columbia.

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Video: A Silent Rotor Blade Paves The Way For Super-Stealth Choppers

From Popular Science:

For all the government conspiracy militia nuts out there, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is no such thing as silent, stealth black helicopters. The bad news is that, thanks to Eurocopter's noise-canceling Blue Edge rotor blades, there soon will be.

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Stonehenge "Hedge" Found, Shielded Secret Rituals?

Stonehenge (seen in an aerial view taken in the late 1990s) may have been protected by a green barrier, archaeologists say. Photograph by Jason Hawkes, Corbis

From The National Geographic:

Stonehenge may have been surrounded by a "Stonehedge" that blocked onlookers from seeing secret rituals, according to a new study.

Evidence for two encircling hedges—possibly thorn bushes—planted some 3,600 years ago was uncovered during a survey of the site by English Heritage, the government agency responsible for maintaining the monument in southern England.

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