The End Of An Era In British Military Aviation

Last flight? The Cold War Vulcan bomber may not take to the skies again, unless its owners can raise £400,000 by the end of October

Last Vulcan Flies Into The Unknown: Iconic Cold War Plane Will Be Grounded Unless Owners Can Raise £400,000 -- The Daily Mail

Soaring into the sky with its engines booming, this may be the mighty Cold War Vulcan bomber making its last flight.

The former RAF bomber, the last airworthy plane of its type, is shown at an airshow at Coventry Airport in aid of the Help for Heroes military charity at the weekend.

But the plane - which was in active service from 1960 to 1984 and is one of the greatest achievements of British aerospace-engineering - will not be able to fly again unless its owners raise £400,000 by the end of October for costly maintenance to ensure it passes safety tests.

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Google's Boss Envisions a Utopian Future

Credit: Dave Getzschman/TechCrunch

From Technology Review:

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt played make believe and sketched out his vision of the future on stage at TechCrunch's Disrupt event in San Francisco today.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything...In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time...Your car will drive itself, it's a bug that cars were invented before computers...you're never lonely...you're never bored...you're never out of ideas."

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Why Are There No Hyenas In Europe?

Profile of an alert spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — A team from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) has analysed the impact of climate change on spotted hyena survival in Europe over 10,000 years ago. These changes played an important role, but the scientists say studies are still needed to look at the influence of human expansion and changes in herbivorous fauna on the definitive extinction of this species across the continent.

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Diet and Exercise Trump Diabetes Drugs

From Live Science:

A news search on the word "Avandia," the diabetes drug, will pull up thousands of results, nearly all pertaining to the Food and Drug Administration's decision last week to keep this dangerous drug on the market, albeit with restrictions.

Another search on "Avandia + diet," will produce only a few results. And herein lies the problem. Too many doctors rely solely on prescription drugs to treat their patients' diabetes; and too many FDA regulators leave the concept of diet completely out of the diabetes equation.

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Depressing Lottery Simulator Lets You Play 1000 Times a Second, Shows All The Millions You Didn't Win

Big Pile O' Cash, But Not For Me aresauburn on Flickr

From Popular Science:

Thanks to one man, I don’t need to play the lottery. I already know that if I play twice a week every week for the next 10 years, I will win a staggering total of $93 by 2020. Or, put differently, I will make back eight percent of the $1,040 I'll spend on the tickets.

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The Effects Of World War I And II Are Still With Us

Bomb Hotspots Of Northern Europe -- New Scientist

If you want to avoid being blown up by a bombs lost during World Wars I and II, be careful trawling the seabed for fish - particularly near the coast of the Netherlands and Belgium. That's the message from the most comprehensive survey yet of sunken wartime munitions in waters of the North-East Atlantic.

The survey highlights the southern North Sea as a hotspot for accidental finds of bombs (PDF). Of 1879 encounters reported throughout the North-East Atlantic since 2004, almost three quarters, 1320, were in that area.

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Revealed: Europe's Hybrid 'Helicraft' That Makers Hope Will Smash The Speed Barrier... And Steal U.S. Rival's Business

High-speed: The X3 is equipped with two turboshaft engines that power a five-blade main rotor system and two propellers installed on short-span fixed wings, creating an advanced transportation system offering the speed of a turboprop-powered aircraft and the full hover flight capabilities of a helicopter

From The Daily Mail:

A revolutionary winged helicopter that hopes to break the speed record has finally been unveiled after months of secrecy.

European group Eurocopter showed off the high-speed aircraft in a bid to counter U.S. rival Sikorsky's efforts to break the speed barrier by rewriting rotorcraft design rules.

The X3 hybrid helicraft - which combines forward-facing propellers astride two short aircraft wings with the familiar overhead rotor blades seen on any normal helicopter - is half-plane, half-helicopter in design.

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Why Tequila Is A Girl's Best Friend

Miss Sweetie Poo with Javier Morales (right) and Miguel Apatiga at the 2009 Ig Nobel prize ceremony. Photograph: Eric Workman

From The Guardian:

The discovery that he could make diamonds from Mexico's favourite tipple changed this physicist's life.

Ever since our research was first published, people who hear about it for the first time just can't help laughing. Well, the fact is that most sane people would not dream of trying to turn cheap tequila into diamonds. In fact, at most of the scientific conferences I have attended, the first response to the reading of any paper on the topic is laughter, and a lot of it. But then the audience quietens down. There is no doubt that this research makes people laugh … and then think.

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Mapping The Brain On A Massive Scale

Image: Charting the brain: Scientists will use both structural and functional brain imaging to create detailed maps of 1,200 human brains. In the top image, areas in yellow and red are structurally connected to the area indicated by the blue spot. In the bottom image, areas in yellow and red are those that are functionally connected to the blue spot. Credit: David Van Essen, Washington University

From Technology Review:

Scanning 1,200 brains could help researchers chart the organ's fine structure and better understand neurological disorders.

A massive new project to scan the brains of 1,200 volunteers could finally give scientists a picture of the neural architecture of the human brain and help them understand the causes of certain neurological and psychological diseases.

The National Institutes of Health announced $40 million in funding this month for the five-year effort, dubbed the Human Connectome Project. Scientists will use new imaging technologies, some still under development, to create both structural and functional maps of the human brain.

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UN Denies Naming 'Ambassador' To Aliens

Photo: Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman.

From Space Daily:

The United Nations Office
for Outer Space Affairs on Tuesday dismissed as "nonsense" a newspaper report which said it had appointed a new ambassador as a point of contact for extra-terrestrials.

"The article in the Sunday Times is nonsense," UNOOSA said in a statement, referring to a report this weekend which said the UN was to appoint Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman, to be the first contact for any aliens.

Othman heads UNOOSA, a little-known department of the UN based in Vienna with a staff of 27.

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First Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Discovered by Pan-STARRS Telescope

Photo: Two images of 2010 ST3 (circled in green) taken by PS1 about 15 minutes apart on the night of September 16 show the asteroid moving against the background field of stars and galaxies. Each image is about 100 arc seconds across. (Credit: PS1SC)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope has discovered an asteroid that will come within 4 million miles of Earth in mid-October. The object is about 150 feet in diameter and was discovered in images acquired on September 16, when it was about 20 million miles away.

It is the first "potentially hazardous object" (PHO) to be discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey and has been given the designation "2010 ST3."

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Veterans With PTSD Suffer More Medical Illnesses

U.S. Army Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division cross a bridge to Al Zunbria, Iraq, Dec. 29, 2007, during operations to secure the area south of their area of operation. Credit: Spc. Angelica Golindano

From Live Science:

Military veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with troubled mental health may also suffer the burden of more medical illnesses, according to a sweeping study.

Female veterans in particular seem hard hit by the one-two combination of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and additional medical conditions, such as headaches and lower-back disorders.

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Robot Teaches Itself To Fire A Bow And Arrow

From Gadget Lab:

In the latest episode of “stop teaching them so much,” scientists have created a humanoid robot that teaches itself how to accurately hit a target with a bow and arrow.

The cute, childlike robot, named iCub, was designed by researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology. Armed with a bow, an arrow, a cute (if politically incorrect) Native American headdress and a complicated computer algorithm, the robot learns from his missed shots iteratively, until he makes the bull’s-eye.

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Real-Life Iron Man Exoskeleton Gets a Slimmer, More Powerful Sequel

XOS-2 Raytheon-Sarcos

From Popular Science:

The XOS Exoskeleton, which was first shown off about two and a half years ago, was the first full-body suit that really evoked the sci-fi and comic fan's dream of donning a suit that grants superhuman strength. Late last week, Raytheon-Sarcos demonstrated the newest XOS suit--the sequel, you might say.

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Cairn Energy Strikes Oil In Greenland

Cairn Energy's Stena Forth Drillship. Cairn Energy

From Popular Mechanics:

Massive deposits could one day make Inuits the Saudis of the north.

They've found oil in Greenland. The success of a massive deep-water drilling rig operated by Cairn Energy, a Scottish company, could mean that the world's newest oil-and-gas rush is underway, this time in one of the globe's most remote, rugged and pristine locations. For Americans used to hearing about huge fossil fuel deposits in Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other locations that are politically unstable or intermittently antagonistic toward the West, this could come as welcome news. Greenland is a lightly inhabited arctic wilderness administered for now by the unthreatening Scandinavian country of Denmark. The territory is counting on oil and mineral development to fund a gradual move toward independence, and the discovery is being cheered in Nuuk, Greenland's capital.

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UN 'To Appoint Space Ambassador To Greet Alien Visitors'

From The Telegraph:

A space ambassador could be appointed by the United Nations to act as the first point of contact for aliens trying to communicate with Earth.

Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, is set to be tasked with co-ordinating humanity’s response if and when extraterrestrials make contact.

Aliens who landed on earth and asked: “Take me to your leader” would be directed to Mrs Othman.

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Spectacular View Of Thousands Of Devil Rays As They Mass Off The Californian Coast Scoops Top Photography Prize

Winner of the Underwater group and overall winner of the competition: 'Flight of the Rays' by Florian Schulz from Germany, which shows an unprecedented congregation of Munkiana Devil Rays in Baja California Sur, Mexico

From The Daily Mail:

Packed fin to gill as they swim in tight formation, this incredible picture of rays swimming through the ocean in a colossal school has scooped a top photography prize,

The thousands-strong group of Munkiana Devil Rays were spotted in Baja California Sur, Mexico, by German conservation photographer Florian Schulz.

The remarkable photo won the Environmental Photographer of the Year 2010 awards.

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Why The Stuxnet Worm Is Like Nothing Seen Before

Sneaking past security (Image: 2010 IIPA/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Stuxnet is the first worm of its type capable of attacking critical infrastructure like power stations and electricity grids: those in the know have been expecting it for years.

On 26 September, Iran's state news agency reported that computers at its Bushehr nuclear power plant had been infected by Stuxnet.

New Scientist explains the significance of the worm.

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Unmanned Airplanes Coming To A Terminal Near You

Unmanned airplanes could carry cargo loads across unpopulated areas or the ocean. iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

Would you be willing to take off in a plane without a pilot?

Unmanned airplanes have almost become another branch of the military, dropping bombs, spying on terrorist camps and even threatening enemy aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now government and aviation experts are planning to make room for more robot aircraft over domestic skies: working as airborne traffic cops, patrolling the border and maybe even shuttling cargo between cities.

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A Herculean Effort To Deliver Broadband By Satellite

Image: The payload for Hylas was developed through Esa's Artes telecoms research programme

From The BBC:

The date was September 1999 and banker David Williams was sitting on a beach in Santa Monica:

"I'd just spent a soul-destroying day at a satellite manufacturer, trying to push forward a project and getting bogged down in just the most ridiculous bureaucracy. And I was thinking there had to be an easier way of doing the satellite business. It's not that complicated - you get some money, you pay someone to build a satellite, you launch it, you flog the capacity. How hard can that be? I was venting my frustration to my wife and she said: 'if you think you're so bloody clever, go and do it yourself!'"

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