A Science News Aggregator That Covers Stories in the World Of Science And Technology.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Species' Extinction Threat Grows
More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned.
Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.
These included 21% of all known mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates.
Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss.
Read more ....
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Angry Faces: Facial Structure Linked To Aggressive Tendencies, Study Suggests
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Angry words and gestures are not the only way to get a sense of how temperamental a person is. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a quick glance at someone's facial structure may be enough for us to predict their tendency towards aggression.
Facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) is determined by measuring the distance between the right and left cheeks and the distance from the upper lip to the mid-brow. During childhood, boys and girls have similar facial structures, but during puberty, males develop a greater WHR than females.
Read more ....
How The World's Largest Cruise Ship Floats
From Live Science:
The world's largest cruise ship is making its first transatlantic crossing from Finland to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where it will make its U.S. debut. Though colossal, the ship relies on the same physical principles as its smaller brethren to stay afloat.
The massive ship, called the Oasis of the Seas and built by STX Finland for Royal Caribbean International, stands 20 stories high, is as long as four football fields, and can accommodate 5,400 guests at double occupancy.
Read more ....
50 Years Of Space Exploration In One Handy Graphic
From Oh Gizmo!:
Created by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic, this beautifully illustrated map includes the almost 200 missions to space from the past 50 years, showing which of our celestial neighbors we like to visit the most. The National Geographic website has an interactive version you can pan and zoom around on, but if you’d like to make yourself a nice little wallpaper you can find a full-sized version of it on Flickr.
Read more ....
Study Gives Clearer Picture Of How Land-Use Changes Affect U.S. Climate
From Watts Up With That?
Researchers say regional surface temperatures can be affected by land use, suggesting that local and regional strategies, such as creating green spaces and buffer zones in and around urban areas, could be a tool in addressing climate change.
A study by researchers from Purdue University and the universities of Colorado and Maryland concluded that greener land cover contributes to cooler temperatures, and almost any other change leads to warmer temperatures.
Read more ....
Drink Responsibly: Which Is Better For The Planet, Beer Or Wine?
I'm hosting a dinner party next week, and I'll be serving both beer and wine alongside the meal. But it got me wondering: Which has the lower carbon footprint? Beer has to be kept refrigerated, which requires energy, but shipping wine in those heavy bottles can't be good for the planet, either.
It's hard to come up with a simple answer for this one, because so many factors affect the calculation: Where was your beverage made? What's it packaged in, and how did that package get to you? How was it stored at the point of sale? Accounting for all these variables can make your head spin, but the best available research suggests that parsing out the difference might not be worth the headache.
Critique Of The Path To Sustainable Energy 2030
Brave New Climate reviews the work of Mark Z. Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis) entitled “A path to sustainable energy by 2030” (p 58 – 65 Scientific American Nov 2009; they call it WWS: wind, water or sunlight).
Jacobson and Delucchi argue that, by the year 2030:
Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy, eliminating all fossil fuels.
Carbon Emissions from Expected Wars Based on Militarization of Technology Similar to Energy Sources
They also state:
Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.Read more ....
80 Min Exercise Per Week Prevents Visceral Weight Gain
Fat around your internal organs is thought to be a much bigger risk factor for heart disease than fat near the surface of the skin. Well, if you go on a diet, exercise, get your weight down, and then eventually go off the diet continued exercise will prevent the resulting weight gain from happening where the risk factor is greatest.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A study conducted by exercise physiologists in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Human Studies finds that as little as 80 minutes a week of aerobic or resistance training helps not only to prevent weight gain, but also to inhibit a regain of harmful visceral fat one year after weight loss.
The study was published online Oct. 8 and will appear in a future print edition of the journal Obesity.
The Fourth Part Of The World: The Epic Story Of History’s Greatest Map By Toby Lester
In 2003, the US Library of Congress spent $10m on a beautiful world map, created in 1507. The price was justified by a single, magical name, inscribed in capitals on a strange tract of blank space in the far west: “AMERICA”. As Toby Lester tells in this boundlessly engaging book, this map was not just the first to give America a name, it was the very first to show it as a continent, separated from Asia by a new ocean.
Advertising its purchase, Congress called the map “America’s birth certificate”; Lester rates its importance much less narrowly. It charts an astonishing shift in world-view, he argues, from the Europe-centred, God-driven world of the Middle Ages to the brave new imperial vision of the early modern age.
Read more ....
Robots That Care
From The New Yorker:
Advances in technological therapy.
Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art. After she and her mother moved to the United States, in 1981, her uncle, who had immigrated some years earlier, pressed her to concentrate on computers. As a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Matarić wrote software that helped robots to independently navigate around obstacles placed randomly in a room. For her doctoral dissertation, she developed a robotic shepherd capable of corralling a herd of twenty robots.
Read more ....
America's Natural Gas Revolution -- A Commentary
From Wall Street Journal:
A 'shale gale' of unconventional and abundant U.S. gas is transforming the energy market.
The biggest energy innovation of the decade is natural gas—more specifically what is called "unconventional" natural gas. Some call it a revolution.
Yet the natural gas revolution has unfolded with no great fanfare, no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up. In 1990, unconventional gas—from shales, coal-bed methane and so-called "tight" formations—was about 10% of total U.S. production. Today it is around 40%, and growing fast, with shale gas by far the biggest part.
Read more ....
Sahara Sun 'To Help Power Europe'
A sustainable energy initiative that will start with a huge solar project in the Sahara desert has been announced by a consortium of 12 European businesses.
The Desertec Industrial Initiative aims to supply Europe with 15% of its energy needs by 2050.
Companies who signed up to the $400bn (£240bn) venture include Deutsche Bank, Siemens and the energy provider E.On.
The consortium, which will be based in Munich, hopes to start supplying Europe with electricity by 2015.
Read more .....
10 Neat Facts About Google
From Neatorama:
Sure, everybody knows that Google was created by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin who became gazillionaires. But did you know that Google's first storage device was cobbled together with LEGO? Or that Google's first investor wrote a $100,000 check even before the company officially existed? Or that it has its own "official" Google dog?
Read more ....
African Desert Rift Confirmed As New Ocean In The Making
From Live Science:
Science Daily (Nov. 3, 2009) — In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.
Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.
Read more ....
Caffeine Cuts Into Sleep, Even Hours Later
From Live Science:
Add one more insult to the injury of working the night shift: Drinking coffee during work hours may just keep you awake during the day.
"Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant to counteract sleepiness, yet it has detrimental effects on the sleep of night-shift workers who must slumber during the day, just as their biological clock sends a strong wake-up signal," said Julie Carrier, a University of Montreal psychology professor. "The older you get, the more affected your sleep will be by coffee."
Read more ....
The Story Behind Our Photo of Grieving Chimps
From National Geographic:
The November issue of National Geographic magazine features a moving photograph of chimpanzees watching as one of their own is wheeled to her burial. Since it was published, the picture and story have gone viral, turning up on websites and TV shows and in newspapers around the world. For readers who’d like to know more, here’s what I learned when I interviewed the photographer, Monica Szczupider.
Read more ....
Oh No, Not This Kilimanjaro Rubbish Again!
From Watts Up With That?
Gore started this. Note to journalists everywhere: IT’S THE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STUPID!
See this article to understand why linking snow on Kilimanjaro to small changes in global temperature is just flat wrong. The plains around Kilimanjaro have gone through years of deforestation. Less trees > less evapotranspiration > less snow.
Don’t believe me? Here’s news of a recent study from Portsmouth University Of Mt. Kilimanjaro ice waving us good-bye due to deforestation. Here’s another peer reviewed study from UAH saying the same thing.
Sniffing Out Swine Flu
From Slate:
Researchers hope to create a better way to diagnose swine flu and other ailments.
Crude methods of detecting swine flu have so far provoked hand-wringing and no small amount of ridicule. Planeloads of travelers to China have had laser beams aimed at their foreheads, landing some under quarantine (and spurring a YouTube minifest of airport videos). This summer, Slate reported on a camp that tried to prescreen kids for flu by checking campers for fevers—and failed to detect a sick child whose physician parent brought his temperature down with Tylenol, fueling an outbreak. Meanwhile, people infected with the virus can pass it on before they develop symptoms; others never develop fever at all.
Read more ....
San Francisco Bay Bridge Re-Opened
The San Francisco Bay Bridge was re-opened at 9AM Monday, Nov 2, 2009
An anti-vibration system has been put in place to limit stresses and additional supports installed to prevent any rods – in case they snap off again – from falling on traffic.
Initial daily inspections will be conducted of the repair system. The eyebars will also be inspected every three months. Other future inspections may require full bridge closures.
Read more ....
Clever Fools: Why A High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart
From New Scientist:
IS GEORGE W. BUSH stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story. Even those sympathetic to the former president have acknowledged that as a thinker and decision-maker he is not all there. Even his loyal speechwriter David Frum called him glib, incurious and "as a result ill-informed". The political pundit and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough accused him of lacking intellectual depth, claiming that compared with other US presidents whose intellect had been questioned, Bush junior was "in a league by himself". Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical".
Read more ....
T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other
Illustration by Erica Lyn Schmidt
From Discovery:
Tyrannosaurus rex's reputation as a fierce, battle-hungry carnivore can now also apply to teenagers of this Late Cretaceous dinosaur, according to a new study.
The evidence comes from "Jane," who died when she was just a T. rex teen. Her fossils, found at Montana's Hell Creek Formation in 2001, reveal that another T. rex teenager severely bit her in the head, breaking her snout to the point of disfigurement.
Read more ....
Glaciers Disappearing From Kilimanjaro
may be gone within two decades.
From CNN:
(CNN) -- The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.
If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa's highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.
"In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read more ....
Secure Computers Aren’t So Secure
From MIT News:
Even well-defended computers can leak shocking amounts of private data. MIT researchers seek out exotic attacks in order to shut them down.
You may update your antivirus software religiously, immediately download all new Windows security patches, and refuse to click any e-mail links ostensibly sent by your bank, but even if your computer is running exactly the way it’s supposed to, a motivated attacker can still glean a shocking amount of private information from it. The time it takes to store data in memory, fluctuations in power consumption, even the sounds your computer makes can betray its secrets. MIT researchers centered at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s Cryptography and Information Security Group (CIS) study such subtle security holes and how to close them.
Read more ....
Monday, November 2, 2009
Security Measures Lead To False Sense Of Security: Scientists Dispute Use Of National Security Tools
Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Many of the security tools used by national governments lack scientific underpinning. This was posited by a team of thirteen international behavioural scientists, including Bruno Verschuere and Geert Crombez (Ghent University), in a recent publication in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology.
The team denounces the current situation regarding the use of tools and methods to protect national security.
Read more ....
My Comment: This is a small study, but its conclusions are disturbing and disheartening when one realizes the amount of monies and energies that have gone into making these procedures work in the first place.
Human Evolution: Where We Came From
From Live Science:
The dawn of humanity remains a fascinating mystery. What started our distant ancestors on the evolutionary path that led to us?
Spectacular fossils and a host of other data uncovered in the last decade are revealing key details to solving this riddle. As often than not, however, these clues raise as many questions as they answer.
Read more ....
How The Ancient Nazca Civilisation Sealed Its Own Fate By Cutting Down Forests C
From The Daily Mail:
The mysterious people who etched the strange network of 'Nazca Lines' across deserts in Peru hastened their own demise by clearing forests 1,500 years ago, according to British scientists.
The Nazca people, famed for giant animal drawings most clearly visible from the air, became unable to grow enough food in nearby valleys because the lack of trees made the climate too dry.
Archaeologists examining the remains of the Nazca, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, discovered a sequence of human-induced events which led to their 'catastrophic' collapse around 500 AD.
Read more ....
Petroleum's Long Good-bye
From Technology Review:
For the next few decades at least, liquid hydrocarbons--gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel--will continue to be the mainstays of transportation. They're cheap; refueling is fast; and their energy density, crucial to long-distance travel, is hard to beat.
"Advanced technology is going to happen slowly," says Daniel Sperling, the director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis and a member of the California Air Resources Board. "The focus needs to be on making conventional technology more efficient."
Read more ....
Psychic 'Mind-Reading' Computer Will Show Your Thoughts On Screen
From The Daily Mail:
A mind-reading machine that can produce pictures of what a person is seeing or remembering has been developed by scientists.
The device studies patterns of brainwave activity and turns them into a moving image on a computer screen.
While the idea of a telepathy machine might sound like something from science fiction, the scientists say it could one day be used to solve crimes.
Read more ....
European Water Mission Lifts Off
A European satellite is set to provide major new insights into how water is cycled around the Earth.
The Smos spacecraft will make the first global maps of the amount of moisture held in soils and of the quantity of salts dissolved in the oceans.
The data will have wide uses but should improve weather forecasts and warnings of extreme events, such as floods.
A Russian Rokot launcher carrying Smos lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0450 (0150 GMT) on Monday.
Read more ....
Long-Range Taser Raises Fears Of Shock And Injury
From New Scientist:
INCREASING the distance between yourself and a potentially dangerous assailant is always a good idea - even if your ultimate aim is to render them insensible. That appears to be the thinking behind a Pentagon project, now in its final stages, to perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.
Read more ....
My Comment: A useful weapon if your goal is to incapacitate and capture a certain target.
Lions Had A Taste For Human Flesh
From Discovery News:
The nightly attacks by two man-eating lions terrified railway workers and brought construction to a halt in one of east Africa's most notorious onslaughts more than a hundred years ago. But the death toll, scientists now say, wasn't as high as previously thought.
Over nine months the two voracious hunters claimed 35 lives -- no small figure, but much less than some accounts of as many as 135 victims.
It was 1898, when laborers from India and local natives building the Uganda Railroad across Kenya became the prey for the pair, a case that has been the subject of numerous accounts and at least three movies.
Read more ....
Inside One Of The World's Largest Data Centers
From CNET:
CHICAGO--On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.
Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.
It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.
Web Could Run Out Of Addresses Next Year, Warn Web Experts
From The Telegraph:
Businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the internet's addressing protocol that will hugely increase the number of available addresses.
A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.
Read more ....
Electric Dreams
From Boston.com:
One Cambridge company has built its success on Kindle. But can it stave off competitors and make good on its vision of revolutionizing everything from credit cards to clothing?
The hottest technology company in the Boston area sits in a low-slung 100-year-old converted factory in the West Cambridge Industrial Park, not far from the Concord Avenue rotary. Inside its modest lobby hangs a 2-by-4-foot display. Messages scroll across it: “Welcome to E-Ink . . . the time is now 2:58 p.m. ’’ It’s 30 minutes slow.
Read more ....
Blue Energy Seems Feasible And Offers Considerable Benefits
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Nov. 2, 2009) — Generating energy on a large scale by mixing salt and fresh water is both technically possible and practical. The worldwide potential for this clean form of energy -- 'blue energy' or 'blue electricity' -- is enormous. However, it will be necessary to work actively on several essential technological developments and to invest heavily in large-scale trials.
Read more ....
CSN Editor: For more info on Blue Energy, go here.
'Breaking' Curveballs Are Just an Illusion
From Live Science:
The answer to the question of whose curveball breaks harder — that of the Yankees' A.J. Burnett or the Phillies' Cole Hamels — may be neither. Zhong-Lin Lu, professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, along with colleagues from USC and American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye. Their demo won the Best Visual Illusion of the Year prize at the Vision Sciences meeting earlier this year. Try it here. A related press release is here. The curveball's effect is due to batters being forced to switch between peripheral vision and central vision during a swing. For more on the research, see Lu's Web page. For more on Lu, read his responses to the ScienceLives 10 Questions below.
Read more ....
'Fear Detector' Being Developed That Will Be Able To Sniff Out Terrorists
From The Daily Mail:
A device that smells human fear is being developed by British scientists and could soon be sniffing out anxious terrorists.
The technology relies on recognising a pheromone - or scent signal - produced in sweat when a person is scared.
Researchers hope the 'fear detector' will make it possible to identify individuals at check points who are up to no good.
Terrorists with murder in mind, drug smugglers, or criminals on the run are likely to be very fearful of being discovered.
Read more ....
Getting Beyond Petroleum Won't Be Easy
From Technology Review:
Transportation defines our civilization. Where we live and work, the structure of our cities, the flow of global commerce--all have been shaped by transportation technologies. But modern transportation's reliance on fossil fuels cannot be sustained. Passenger planes, trains, and automobiles were responsible for nearly four billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2005--about 14 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted globally that year. If we continue to rely almost exclusively on petroleum to power these vehicles, they will be responsible for 11 billion to 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2050. That's because developing nations--which are home to 82 percent of the world's population and will be responsible for 98 percent of population growth in coming years--are on the verge of mass motorization. Auto ownership in the developing world is growing at a rate of 30 percent per year (see "Cleaner Vehicles by the Million").
Read more ....
Stealth-Mode Wind Turbines
From Technology Review:
Coatings and composites ease the air-traffic worries dogging wind power.
Last month Danish wind turbine company Vestas and U.K. defense contractor QinetiQ demonstrated the first "stealth" wind-turbine blade--their solution to the aviation radar interference problem holding up the installation of gigawatts-worth of proposed wind farms worldwide. Vestas composites specialist Steve Appleton says the firm is eager to test a complete stealth turbine and begin limited production by the end of 2010. "Clearly this technology, if proven fully and then adopted by Vestas, would give us a competitive advantage," says Appleton.
Read more ....
File-Sharers Are Big Spenders Too
People who download music illegally also spend an average of £77 a year buying it legitimately, a survey has found.
Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44.
Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally.
However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s.
Read more ....
Equatorial Volcano Shows Signs Of Imminent Eruption
From Watts Up With That?
Colombia volcano rumbles back to life. The volcano is about 1.2 degrees north of the Equator.
BOGOTA, Colombia — Officials in southern Colombia have issued a code orange alert for the newly-active Galeras volcano which they said could erupt in a matter of days or weeks, according to the state-run Geological and Mining Institute.
Authorities said they are continuing to monitor the nearby Huila volcano, also on orange alert, where sizeable volcanic activity also has been detected in recent weeks.
Read more ....
ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros And Cons
ICANN's approval of non-Latin character domains undoubtedly is a game-changing decision in the history of the World Wide Web. With scheduled to start popping up in the middle of next year, many people are debating if this digital support for more distinctly international sites balances with potential security threats and fragmentation of the Internet.
Here are a few pros and cons to consider as we move away from the traditional ASCII based-Web.
Read more ....
Where Do Ghosts Come From?
From New Scientist:
AS MEDIEVAL CASTLE bedrooms go, this one looks the part. Disturbing Flemish tapestries share the walls with stern portraits. On close inspection, the ornate fireplace's iron firedogs turn out to have devils' heads. This place is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Tom Skelton, a 16th-century jester said to have committed murder. The malevolent face of "Tom Fool" stares from a dimly lit oil painting just outside the bedroom.
Read more .....
Air Force Uses Airborne Lasers to Create High-Speed Data Links
From Popular Science:
Researchers have tested the laser links at distances of almost 22 miles during flight.
Manned Air Force jets and drones could soon send high quality video and audio by using ultra-high bandwidth lasers, transmitting critical battlefield data faster than ever. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has conducted experiments that transmit data without interference across almost 22 miles, both in the air and on the ground.
Read more ....
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Nanoparticle Coating Prevents Freezing Rain Buildup
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Oct. 30, 2009) — Preventing the havoc wrought when freezing rain collects on roads, power lines, and aircrafts could be only a few nanometers away. A University of Pittsburgh-led team demonstrates in the Nov. 3 edition of "Langmuir" a nanoparticle-based coating developed in the lab of Di Gao, a chemical and petroleum engineering professor in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, that thwarts the buildup of ice on solid surfaces and can be easily applied.
Read more ....
Recipe for Mass Extinction: Add Algae and Stir Controversy
From Live Science:
Mass extinctions that wiped entire species off the face of the Earth in a relative blink of the eye are often blamed on catastrophic occurrences, such as an asteroid crash or large volcanic eruption. But a new hypothesis points to a different culprit: lowly algae.
In the past 540 million years, five massive extinctions are thought to have killed off, in each case, some 50 percent to 90 percent of animal species. A new study suggests that toxins from algae played a major role in all five extinctions, including the most recent and most well-known – the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The idea was presented at the annual Geological Society of America meeting Oct. 19.
Read more ....
How Laptops Took Over The World
From The Guardian:
The rise of portable computing has forced companies to rethink how they let staff work – and is shifting the balance of power in the IT industry.
In January 2003, Steve Jobs announced to a slightly surprised Macworld audience that "this is going to be the year of the notebook for Apple". There was a clear ambition to push up the sales of portables – on which margins tend to be better than on desktops.
Read more ....
Profile Of A 'Spam King'
From the Telegraph:
Facebook has been awarded $711 million in damages after successfully suing Sanford Wallace for sending mail and making posts without the permission of the site or its users. But just who is the so-called 'Spam King'?
Sanford Wallace is better known as "Spamford" on the web. The Las Vegas-based "Spam King" accessed Facebook members' accounts without their permission, and sent out fake Wall posts and spam messages from the compromised accounts.
Read more ....
The Unromantic Truth About Why We Kiss - To SpreadGgerms
From The Daily Mail:
It is an international symbol of love and romance. But the kiss may have evolved for reasons that are far more practical - and less alluring.
British scientists believe it developed to spread germs.
They say that the uniquely human habit allows a bug that is dangerous in pregnancy to be passed from man to woman to give her time to build up immunity.
Read more ....
Is Hydrogen The Future? This Car Goes 0 To 60 In 12 Seconds.
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that hydrogen-fueled cars will not be pratical for a decade. But researchers at Hyundai-Kia Motors in South Korea say they're on course to make them in six years.
Yongin, South Korea - When the US government cut funding for hydrogen-fueled cars last May, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said such vehicles will not be practical for another decade or two.
Lim Tae-won thinks he can prove Secretary Chu wrong.
Dr. Lim runs the team at Hyundai-Kia Motors that is developing hydrogen fuel cell technology. And they are on course, he says, to mass produce hydrogen cars in six years.
Read more ....
Sleep Deprivation Cut Mental Function
From Future Pundit:
The brain downshifts to simpler ways of processing information when lacking sleep.
Read more ....Westchester, Ill. —A study in the Nov.1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that sleep deprivation causes some people to shift from a more automatic, implicit process of information categorization (information-integration) to a more controlled, explicit process (rule-based). This use of rule-based strategies in a task in which information-integration strategies are optimal can lead to potentially devastating errors when quick and accurate categorization is fundamental to survival.