Flying Car Could Transform Warfare

From Live Science:

The Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) has cleared the Transformer (TX) program for takeoff. If it flies, by 2015 U.S. soldiers will be able to ride into battle aboard a four-person flying car that can cruise in the air like an airplane, drive on the ground like an SUV, rove 250 miles on one tank of fuel and not require a runway to get airborne.

DARPA, the Department of Defense office that is tasked with exploring futuristic technologies that may have military applications, held an industry day workshop for companies earlier this year to solicit proposals for developing a prototype vehicle. Proposals are due May 27.

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Climate Scientist Sues Newspaper For 'Poisoning' Global Warming Debate

Andrew Weaver with the IPCC's 2007 report on which he was a lead author.
Photograph: Ray Smith.

From The Guardian:

Climate modeller Andrew Weaver launches libel action in Canada for publishing 'grossly irresponsible falsehoods'.

One of the world's leading climate scientists has launched a libel lawsuit against a Canadian newspaper for publishing articles that he says "poison" the debate on global warming.

In a case with potentially huge consequences for online publishers, lawyers acting for Andrew Weaver, a climate modeller at the University of Victoria, Canada, have demanded the National Post removes the articles not only from its own websites, but also from the numerous blogs and sites where they were reposted.

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IPad’s Rivals Are On The March

From Times Online:

As Apple prepares to unleash the iPad in Britain, its rivals are preparing their fightback, rushing to create and release their own tablet computers, devices already dubbed the “iPad killers”.

Moreover, the attack on the iPad is coming on several fronts. The mobile phone maker Nokia is believed to be planning a similar machine designed mainly to read electronic books. Microsoft is flirting with the idea of creating a tablet. Even Google could enter the fray with a slate of its own.

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Obama’s NASA Blueprint Is Challenged In Congress

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama may have hoped that a speech a week ago at the Kennedy Space Center would sway skeptics to his proposed space policy, but a Congressional hearing on Thursday gave little signs that the lines of contention have shifted yet.

Opponents like Richard C. Shelby, the Republican senator from Alabama where NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has been leading the design of the Ares I rocket that the Obama administration would like to cancel, continued to denounce Mr. Obama’s plans. Those plans call for ending NASA’s current Constellation program that was to send astronauts back to the moon and turning to private companies for transportation into orbit.

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Maxed Out: How Long Can You Go Without Sleep?

Randy Gardner went without sleep for 11 days (Image: Don Cravens/Getty)

From New Scientist:

On 28 December 1963, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old schoolboy in San Diego, California, got up at 6 am feeling wide awake and raring to go. He didn't go back to sleep again until the morning of 8 January 1964. That's 11 days without sleep.

Gardner's 264 hours remains the longest scientifically verified period without sleep, breaking the previous record of 260 hours. It was described in a 1965 paper by sleep researcher William Dement of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who stayed awake with Gardner for the final three days.

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SETI Releases Its Collected Data To The Public, Wants Open-Source Search For Whatever's Out There

The Allen Telescope Array Radio? What is this, the 1930s? Aliens, hit us back on Twitter. We're @Earth284. SETI, via MSNBC

From Popular Science:

Your chance to spot 50 years' worth of sneakily concealed aliens.

Over the past decade, those who wished to contribute to SETI's mission of locating life elsewhere in the universe could leave their computers on running a special screensaver and donate their unused computing power to the cause. Now, SETI director Jill Tarter is asking people around the globe to get more involved in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by opening up SETI's servers to the public calling for a worldwide, open source contribution to the search.

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Mobile Phones, Cancer And Alzheimer's Disease: The Ultimate Study Is Launched

From The Telegraph:

The world's biggest study into whether mobile phones cause cancer and other diseases has been launched by British scientists.

More than 250,000 people in five different countries will take part in the research which is expected to last more than 30 years and cost millions of pounds.

Experts hope the investigation will help settle once and for all the ongoing debate about the safety of mobile phones.

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In Deep Sea, Waves With a Familiar Curl

From The New York Times:

Scientists exploring the deep sea have discovered a distinctive kind of breaking wave. The finding reveals the presence of a subtle new force that can stir the dark seabed, and it helps to explain some of the nuances of planetary recycling and the provision of food to abyssal life.

The discovery also illustrates the radical nature of the insights that lay behind the start of the scientific revolution some four centuries ago.

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Wow! Celebrate Hubble’s 20th With Best Space Image Ever

From Wired Science:

We were already dreading the day Hubble dies, but this mind-blowing new image released to celebrate the space telescope’s 20th anniversary makes us wish for eternal life for the famous satellite even more.

This new gem rivals what may be Hubble’s most famous image, a shot of the Pillars of Creation taken in 1995. The shot above is of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula. The enormous pillar of gas and dust is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart.

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Dream A Little Dream Of Recall

From Science News:

Nap-time reveries may show that sleeping brain is making memories.

People who have nap-time dreams about a task that they’ve just practiced get a big memory boost on the task upon awakening, Harvard researchers report.

Those who dream about anything else have no such enhanced recall, the team reports in a paper published online April 22 in Current Biology. Neither do those who stay awake, even if they think about the task.

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Several Different Species Of Killer Whales Likely

Killer whale. Scientists report finding strong genetic evidence supporting the theory there are several species of killer whales (Orcinus orca, also known as orcas) throughout the world's oceans. (Credit: iStockphoto/Evgeniya Lazareva)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2010) — In a report published April 22 in the journal Genome Research, scientists report finding strong genetic evidence supporting the theory there are several species of killer whales (Orcinus orca, also known as orcas) throughout the world's oceans.

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Toilet Paper Problem: Good Raw Material Being Wiped Out

From Live Science:

A shortage of high-quality paper for recycling could mean scratchy toilet tissue. To keep consumers happy and avoid any chafed rear ends, companies are now on a quest to find new paper supplies, according to an article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN).

The problem: Consumers once could fill up large bins with their recycled newspapers, magazines and print paper. But as electronic communication surges, these sources of recycled paper are becoming scarce.

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Epicenter Mind Our Tech Business Beyond the iPad: Massive MultiTouch Displays Have Big Social Potential

Photo courtesy MultiTouch

From Epicenter:

Apple appears to have been right in betting that people would embrace a big version of the iPod Touch; the increased sense of intimacy with no keyboard or mouse chaperons is palpable. But even larger touchscreens, like the one the Finnish company MultiTouch let us play around with last week, can track each fingertip of a large group of people — a key distinction that enables a more social set of behaviors, because multiple people can use them at the same time.

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Modified Viruses 'Can Destroy Cancer Cells'

Cancer Research UK funded the study into gene therapy. Photograph: Graham Turner

From The Guardian:

Development could lead to treatments tailored to different diseases, say research groups.

Viruses can be modified to seek out and destroy cancer cells, scientists said today. Laboratory tests at Leeds University have shown how proteins can be added to a virus to enable it to recognise unique markers on the surface of tumours.

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Facebook Sets Up Google-War With Vast Expansion Through Open Graph

From Times Online:

Facebook has announced plans to spread its influence more widely across the internet by weaving its service into all websites.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the social networking site which has 400 million regular users worldwide, has set his sights on beating Google.

Mr Zuckerberg described how users would be guided around the web by their connections and interests rather than a search engine.

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Accidents Don’t Slow Gulf Of Mexico Drilling

From New York Times:

As the Coast Guard was trying to assess the potential environmental effect of the oil rig explosion near Louisiana, industry officials said Thursday that they did not expect drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep waters to be curtailed.

“It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day we are not going to stop doing things that need to be done,” said Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. Eleven workers remained missing Thursday, and several others were injured seriously.

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Bright Future Projected For Hand-Held Games

Flex your skills (Image: Human Media Lab/Queens University)

From New Scientist:

Zi Ye and Hammad Khalid of the Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, have devised a way of using a shoulder-mounted projector system to display - and play - a game on a bendy A4-sized sliver of plastic. Sensors in the screen allow gameplay to be controlled by bending, shaking or tapping it.

A prototype of the system, called Cobra, was shown last week at the Computer-Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. It runs games on a computer housed in a shoulder pouch, while the pouch's straps hold a small projector that shines images onto the flexible screen, held by the gamer.

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Fix Farsightedness By Sleeping In Your Contacts

Reshaping the Cornea with Contact Lenses Image courtesy of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

From Popular Science:

What if you could go to sleep with a vision problem and wake up with a crystal-clear view of the world? A Spanish optometrist not only says this is possible, but he actually wants you to sleep in your contacts. His patented contact lenses, designed to achieve the same effect of corneal reshaping surgery, can correct vision defects like myopia (nearsightedness) and stigmatism – and now hyperopia (farsightedness) – without taking sharp instruments or lasers to your eyes.

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Red Wine Bolsters Brain Against Strokes

From The Telegraph:

Red wine protects the brain from damage after a stroke, new research suggests.

Researchers discovered that a compound found in red grape skins and seeds lessens the effect of a blood clot on the brain and aids recovery.

It could be so effective that the substance, known as resveratrol, reduces the long-term brain damage by as much as 40 per cent.

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Millions Of Computers Shut Down As Faulty Anti-Virus Program Causes Havoc Around The Globe

Big freeze: A faulty software update from McAfee led to thousands of PCs repeatedly rebooting in offices, hospitals and schools around the world

From The Daily Mail:

Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world slowed down or froze after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a threat.

While the problem has now been identified, IT technicians are today having to deal with extra workloads to ensure their systems are protected.

Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that yesterday a software update had caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to target a harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot themselves.

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