Pictured: Amazing Images Of Polar Bear Called 'Coldilocks' Taking A Dip

How do you do? Coldilocks waves at the camera during a rare swim
at her enclosure at the Philadelphia Zoo

From The Daily Mail:

Waving at the camera and kicking off a poolside in Olympic swimmer fashion - these captivating pictures give a revealing insight into the playful nature of majestic polar bears.

The award-winning images were taken by photographer Michael S. Confer after months of trying to get the perfect shot of Coldilocks the bear.

Intent on getting photographs of the 29-year-old beast underwater, patient Michael regularly visited the Philadelphia Zoo near his Armore home. But he returned home disappointed every time after months of visits.

Read more ....

Big Freeze Plunged Europe Into Ice Age in Months

New research shows that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini 'ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years. (Credit: iStockphoto/Trevor Hunt)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 30, 2009) — In the film The Day After Tomorrow, the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.

Read more ....

The Real Science And History Of Vampires

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart star in "New Moon," the latest production to take advantage of the eternal fascination with vampires. Credit: Summit Entertainment

From Live Science:

Vampires are everywhere these days. Last weekend, the new vampire film "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" broke box office records, taking in over $70 million and may end up being one of the largest openings in history. The film is based on the best-selling "Twilight" series, which of course joins a long list of other vampire-themed best-sellers dating back decades.

The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood.

Read more ....

Tiny Magnetic Discs Could Kill Cancer Cells

Tiny discs attach to the membranes of cancer cells and are then spun with an alternating magnetic field to disrupt the membrane. Credit: Nature

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: Tiny magnetic discs just a millionth of a metre in diameter could be used to used to kill cancer cells, according to a study published on Sunday.

The method uses a magnetic field a tenth as strong as used in previous efforts, and should have few side effects, the authors said.

Laboratory tests found the so-called ‘nanodiscs’, around 60 billionths of a metre thick, could be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct.

Read more ....

Do Hot, Dry Conditions Cause More African Civil Wars?

From Discover Magazine:

We’ve covered industries and species that climate change will affect, but is more war the next side effect of a warming world? A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ties warmer temperatures to higher incidence of civil wars in Africa. The scientists warn that the continent could see 54 percent more armed conflict—and almost 400,000 more war deaths—by 2030 if climate projections prove true.

Read more ....

The U.S. Air Force's Space Shuttle

The Air Force hopes its unmanned X-37 (in taxi tests in 2007)
will take on some of the functions of the shuttle. (USAF)

Space Shuttle Jr. -- The Air & Space Smithsonian

After 2010, the only spaceplane in the U.S. inventory will be the Air Force's mysterious X-37.

It's been a long wait—in some ways, more than 50 years—but in April 2010, the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit. The X-37 embodies the Air Force's desire for an operational spaceplane, a wish that dates to the 1950s, the era of the rocket-powered X-15 and X-20. In other ways, though, the X-37 will be picking up where another U.S. spaceplane, NASA's space shuttle, leaves off.

Read more ....

Danish Island Becomes One Of The First Energy-Self-Sufficient Places On Earth

A Self-Sufficient Energy Mix Wind turbines deployed in conjunction with solar energy and a series of furnaces burning straw and wood chips manage to heat and power the entire island of Samso with energy to spare. Harvey McDaniel

From Popular Science:

For centuries now, civilization has been working toward an unsustainable future, burning fossil fuels for heat and electricity and creating a way of life that is a model of inefficiency. The tiny Danish island of Samso is leading the way back to sustainability, becoming the one of the first industrialized places in the world to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.

Read more ....

The World's Fastest Computers

5: Tianhe-1. 563 teraflops
A new entrant into the Top500 list, China's fastest computer proved capable of more than 500 trillion operations per second. Put another way, a simple calculator's power is typically about 10 flops. Tianhe, which means "river in the sky", is housed at the National Super Computer Center, Tianjin, and is more than four times faster than the previous top computer in the country. The computer combines 6144 Intel processors with 5120 graphics processing units made by AMD, normally found in computer graphics cards. (Image: Xinhua News Agency/eyevine)

From New Scientist:

Twice a year the operators of the world's fastest computers eagerly await their latest ranking compiled by the Top500 project. The chart is based on the maximum rate at which a computer can crunch numbers using what are called floating point operations. November's list has just been released: enjoy our gallery of the five fastest calculators on the planet.

Read more ....

Large Hadron Collider Sets World Energy Record

From BBC News:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment on the French-Swiss border has set a new world record for energy.

The LHC pushed the energy of its particle beams beyond one trillion electron volts, making it the world's highest-energy particle accelerator.

The previous record was held by the Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago.

Officials say it is another milestone in the LHC's drive towards its main scientific tests set for 2010.

Read more ....

Leaked Emails Won't Harm UN Climate Body, Says Chairman

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Photograph: Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Rajendra Pachauri says there is 'virtually no possibility' of a few scientists biasing IPCC's advice, after UAE hacking breach.

There is "virtually no possibility" of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN's top global warming body, its chair said today.

Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.

Read more ....

My Comment: Putting one's head into the sand .... and humming loud enough to not hear the word "Climategate".

How A Prehistoric 'Super River' Turned Britain Into An Island Nation

From The Daily Mail:

A prehistoric 'super-river' is the reason why Britain became an island and was cut off from Europe.

An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea.

Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France.

Read more ....

Climate Change Data Dumped

From Times Online:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Read more ....

My Comment: And these people call themselves scientists ?!?!?!

Peat Fires Drive Temperatures Up: Burning Rainforests Release Huge Amounts of Greenhouse Gases

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2009) — Peatlands, especially those in tropical regions, sequester gigantic amounts of organic carbon. Human activities are now having a considerable impact on these wetlands. For example, drainage projects, in combination with the effects of periodic droughts, can lead to large-scale fires, which release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and thus contribute to global warming. Using laser-based measurements, Professor Florian Siegert and his research group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have now estimated the volume of peat burned in such fires with unprecedented accuracy.

Read more ....

Islands Make Waves ... In The Sky

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color (photo-like) image on November 23, 2009. Saunders, Montagu, and Bristol Islands, part of the South Sandwich chain, all trigger V-shaped waves. Credit: NASA, Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

From Live Science:

Islands don't move much, but they can still make waves. In fact they sometimes make dramatic waves ... in the clouds.

In a new satellite image, the South Sandwich island chain triggers a series of airborne waves. The V-shaped waves fan out to the east, visible as white clouds over the dark ocean water.

The islands disturb the smooth flow of air, creating waves that ripple through the atmosphere downwind of the obstacles, NASA explained in a statement.

Read more ....

Is This Your Brain On God?

From NPR:

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

Read more ....

What's The Environmental Impact Of Going Into Space?

Dirty Rockets -- Slate

We hear so much about the environmental impacts of transportation. What about space travel? How do rockets affect the atmosphere?

There's a simple reason why we hear a lot more about cars, ships, and planes than we do about rocket ships: There are lot more of them. Each flight into space does have a small impact on the planet it leaves behind, but—for the moment, at least—these launchings are very rare. Only a couple of rockets blast off every week around the world. As a result, space travel doesn't register on most environmentalists' radars.

Read more ....

International Space Station Under Threat of Space Junk Collision

The International Space Station is visible against the Earth's horizon and the blackness of space in this image photographed by an STS-129 crew member on Atlantis Nov. 25, 2009, in this photo released by NASA. Flight controllers in mission control at the Johnson Space Center are crunching numbers, calculating the odds of the International Space Station getting hit by a piece of space junk. (NASA/Reuters)

From ABC News:

Scientists Scramble to Defend International Space Station From Space Junk.

While many Americans are figuring out how much they can spend on Black Friday, flight controllers in mission control at the Johnson Space Center are crunching numbers of their own, calculating the odds of the International Space Station's getting hit by a piece of space junk.

Read more ....

Human Brains Emulated In The Computer World

From Alpha Galileo:

Researchers at Luleå University of Technology have created a computer-based architecture that mimics a pair of human brain functions. System that detects and compensates for their own shortcomings is a possible application, another is to reduce the impact of noise. The research takes a significant step forward because the research group has recently doubled.

We have developed a model of how the various sources of information that complement each other, can get a better idea of what is happening. Better to the extent that we may see more than what the different parts look, "says Tamas Jantvik researcher at Luleå University of Technology.

Read more ....

NASA Clamors For Safer Launches

From Florida Today:

Reliability must grow tenfold in new rockets.

CAPE CANAVERAL — President Barack Obama faces decisions that will set safety levels for American astronauts launching on space expeditions for decades to come.

Congress will hear this week from NASA officials, proponents of commercial crew transportation and independent safety experts. No current NASA astronauts are scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics.

But documents obtained by FLORIDA TODAY through the Freedom of Information Act show exactly where the actual risk-takers stand.

Read more ....

Legends Of Vietnam: Super Tweet

In 1967, four months after delivery, the new A-37A entered combat in South Vietnam.
(Roger Moseley)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

Yeah. The A-37 was small. So was Napoleon.

Looking for Mach-busting splendor in million-dollar wonders from the heavies of the U.S. military-industrial complex? This ain't it. The A-37 Dragonfly was a waist-high, subsonic light attack aircraft that could lift its own weight in fuel and armaments, built by a manufacturer known for civilian pleasure craft. You could get a half-dozen for the price of a single F-4. The A-37 brought jet-propelled combat in Vietnam down from rarefied heights to the low-and-slow—where the acrid haze of rice-burning season permeated the unpressurized cockpit and you plucked bullets from Viet Cong small arms out of the armor plate under your seat after a mission. Its claim to fame?

Read more ....

Brain Has An Innate Sense Of Geometry

From U.S. News And World Report:

Despite minimal exposure to the regular geometric objects found in developed countries, African tribal people perceive shapes as well as westerners, according to a new study.
Click here to find out more!

The findings, published online in an “Early View” edition of Psychological Science, suggested that the brain’s ability to understand shapes develops without the influence of immersion in simple, manufactured objects.

Read more ....

What The World's First 'Space Station Of The Sea' Will Look Like

Out of this world: This is what the SeaOrbiter will look like -
its inventor wants it to be a space station of the sea

From The Daily Mail:

It looks more like the Starship Enterprise sinking in the sea - but this huge vertical vessel could be the future of ocean exploration.

Called the SeaOrbiter, the huge 51m (167ft) structure is set to be the world's first vertical ship allowing man a revolutionary view of life below the surface.

Although currently only a prototype its inventor Jacques Rougerie thinks his international oceanographic station will soon be setting sail.

Read more ....

Clue To Mystery Of How Biological Clock Operates on 24-Hour Cycle

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 29, 2009) — How does our biological system know that it is supposed to operate on a 24-hour cycle? Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that a tiny molecule holds the clue to the mystery.

Human as well as most living organisms on earth possess circadian a (24-hour) life rhythm. This rhythm is generated from an internal clock that is located in the brain and regulates many bodily functions, including the sleep-wake cycle and eating.

Read more ....

Surprise! Your Skin Can Hear

From Live Science:

We not only hear with our ears, but also through our skin, according to a new study.

The finding, based on experiments in which participants listened to certain syllables while puffs of air hit their skin, suggests our brains take in and integrate information from various senses to build a picture of our surroundings.

Along with other recent work, the research flips the traditional view of how we perceive the world on its head.

Read more ....

Russia: No Space for Space Tourists

Soyuz Spacecraft

From CBS News/AP:

International Space Station Full with Crew for Near Future.

(AP) There is no space for tourists wishing to fly to the International Space Station, a top Russian space official said Thursday.

Since the space station's crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a Russian spacecraft from Earth, said Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center.

Read more ....

2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked

A city slides into the sea in a scene from the movie 2012, to be released November 13, 2009. The movie's end-of-the-world plot is based on largely discredited prophecies dubiously attributed to the ancient Maya, experts say. Image courtesy Columbia Tristar Marketing Group

From National Geographic:

The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the soon-to-be-released 2012 movie.

But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

Read more ....

The Great Climate Change Science Scandal

From Times Online:

Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warming.

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.

“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

Read more ....

First Programmable Quantum Computer Created

From Science News:

Ultracold beryllium ions tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.

Using a few ultracold ions, intense lasers and some electrodes, researchers have built the first programmable quantum computer. The new system, described in a paper to be published in Nature Physics, flexed its versatility by performing 160 randomly chosen processing routines.

Read more ....

Devils’ Advocates

Dust devils like this one form frequently at Eldorado Valley.
(Planetary Science Institute)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

Some people go to Las Vegas to gamble, others to learn about Mars.

“Three, two, one, now!” Just seconds ago Asmin “Oz” Pathare was sitting under a beach umbrella in the baking heat, gazing off into the distance—now he has jumped to his feet behind his camera tripod and is on his walkie-talkie with fellow scientist Steve Metzger, who’s a couple hundred yards away. At the count of zero, they both trigger their shutters to get a stereo picture of the devil headed our way.

Read more ....

NASA Predator Scans California Burn Areas

From U.S. News And World Report/AP:

LOS ANGELES—An unmanned NASA Predator aircraft equipped with an infrared imaging sensor has flown over large areas burned by two California wildfires to help the Forest Service assess damage, the administration said Tuesday.

Operating from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, the Predator flew over the 250 square miles burned by this summer's Station Fire in Angeles National Forest and the 57-square-mile area scorched by the 2008 Piute Fire in Sequoia National Forest and other federal land in Kern County.

Read more ....

A History Of Music Sales (Graphical Repreentation)

Just 100 Years Apart, The Stark Images Which Point To A Vanishing World

The awe-inspiring McCarty Glacier in Alaska and now (below)
trees grow in an area that was once covered in ice.

Whether the causes of the warming are due to natural rhythms or down to man continues to provide fierce debate. But scientists say they give a face to global warming.

From The Daily Mail:

These revealing photographs show giant glaciers are melting away as the world slowly warms up.

Pictured over the last 106 years, the huge lumps of ice have been slowly melting and creeping back into the mountains.

Where there was ice many metres thick, there is now debris, sediment and stagnation.

In some cases the glaciers have disappeared altogether and the land they once covered has become pasture, lake or woodland.

Read more ....

15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee

CSN Editor: The following site has a great graphic that describes and explains all that there is to know about coffee. The link is HERE.

With First Neutrino Events, Physicists Closer to Answering Why Only Matter in Universe

Arc-part tunnel for Neutrino Experimental Facility at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan. (Credit: Courtesy of J-PARC.)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 27, 2009) — Physicists from the Japanese-led multi-national T2K neutrino collaboration have just announced that over the weekend they detected the first neutrino events generated by their newly built neutrino beam at the J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex) accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan.

Read more ....

Science Untarnished By 'Climategate,' U.N. Says

From CNET News:

LONDON--The head of the U.N.'s panel of climate experts rejected accusations of bias on Thursday, saying a "Climategate" row in no way undermined evidence that humans are to blame for global warming.

Climate change skeptics have seized on a series of e-mails written by specialists in the field, accusing them of colluding to suppress data which might have undermined their arguments.

The e-mails, some written as long as 13 years ago, were stolen from a British university by unknown hackers and spread rapidly across the Internet.

Read more ....

Is Cataract Surgery Scary?

From Live Science:

This Week’s Question: I have to have cataract surgery and I’m a little frightened. Should I be?

I don’t know anyone who isn’t a little frightened by surgery of any kind, but cataract removal is one of the safest and most effective types of surgery. It’s also one of the most common operations performed in the United States. About 9 out of 10 people who have the surgery have improved vision.

A cataract is a clouding of the lens, the clear part of the eye that helps focus images like the lens in a camera. Cataracts can blur images and discolor them.

Read more ....

Climate Change: This Is The Worst Scientific Scandal Of Our Generation

CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December Photo: Getty

From The Telegraph:

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

Read more ....

FUTURE HUMANS: Four Ways We May, Or May Not, Evolve

Looking backward, evolutionary theory—popularized by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published in 1859—has traced humanity's roots to fossil apes. Now, 150 years later, scientists are looking forward and seeing a range of evolutionary futures for humans. Will our descendants be muscle-bound cyborgs? Electronic immortals? Or is human evolution dead? Photograph by Rebecca Hale, NGS

From National Geographic:

But where is evolution taking us? Will our descendants hurtle through space as relatively unchanged as the humans on the starship Enterprise? Will they be muscle-bound cyborgs? Or will they chose to digitize their consciousnesses—becoming electronic immortals?

And as odd as the possibilities may seem, it's worth remembering that, 150 years ago, the ape-to-human scenario in On the Origin of Species struck many as nothing so much as monkey business.

Read more ....

Shrink-To-Fit Spacesuit Eases Astronauts' Workload

Made to fit
(Image: Space Systems Laboratory/Department of Aerospace Engineering/University of Maryland)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the complex choreography involved in putting on a spacesuit: astronauts will one day be able to get suited and booted in seconds by stepping through the neck of an overlarge, part-robotic spacesuit.

So say engineers David Akin and Shane Jacobs at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Once you're inside the baggy suit, its upper torso contracts using pneumatic artificial muscles to ensure a perfect fit.

Read more ....

Cassini Spacecraft Snaps Highest-Res Images of Saturn's Enceladus Moon

'Tiger Stripe' Terrain Cassini/CICLOPS

From Popular Science:

On Saturday, the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon's southern polar region and to thermally map the "tiger stripe" terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon's surface during previous flybys.

Read more ....

Solar Power Costs 50% Lower Than Last Year

From Scientific American:

New research by leading alternative energy research firm New Energy Finance finds that solar power will cost less by about 50% at the end of 2009 compared to the end of 2008.

The costs are pre-subsidy, so they could be much lower if you take better government subsidies into account.

But it isn’t only solar that’s down in cost. It’s other renewable energy sources, too.
The research company found that equipment costs (in solar, wind, and other sectors) decreased throughout the year but these were offset by increasing financing costs. However, equipment prices are expected to continue falling whereas the financing market is expected to get better.

Read more ....

Virtopsy: Autopsy Without The Scalpel

A dummy goes into the magnetic resonance scanner Photo: Reuters

From the Telegraph:

A Swiss lab has developed a way of establishing how someone died without damaging the evidence.

A team of Swiss doctors is conducting about 100 autopsies a year without cutting open bodies, instead using devices including an optical 3D scanner that can detect up to 80 per cent of the causes of death.

Michael Thali, a professor at the University of Berne, and his colleagues have developed a system called "virtopsy", which since 2006 has been used to examine all sudden deaths or those of unnatural causes in the Swiss capital.

Read more ....

Volunteers Wanted for Simulated 520-Day Mars Mission

A special isolation facility hosts the Mars500 study. (Credit: ESA - S. Corvaja)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 28, 2009) — Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.

Read more ....

Air America

From Discovery News:

This is pretty stunning, and quite beautiful in its own way.

Aaron Koblin, a graphic artist and game designer has produced a remarkable animation, built using real data, of a 24-hour stretch of commercial air travel into, out of, and within the United States. Watch how the lights, and flights, build with the advance of dawn from east to west.

Read more ....

Pictured: The Moment A Whale Delivers A Deadly 'Karate Chop' Blow To A Killer Shark

Moments before the deadly blow. The raised fin is about to come crashing down like a karate chop on a shark (circled). It has been driven to the surface by the orca before this coup de grace.

From The Daily Mail:

These incredible pictures demonstrate how orca whales use a 'karate chop' to stun and then finish off killer sharks.

In a rare battle of beasts these images show how several populations of skilled killer whales around the world have learned how to overcome huge sharks, that most animals give a wide berth.

Using a combination of superior brain power and brute force, the highly-intelligent orcas are able to catch and eat what many think of as the ocean's top predators.

Read more ....

Hacker Gary McKinnon To Appeal After Extradition Blow

Photo: Supporters make the point that Gary McKinnon has Asperger's syndrome

From the BBC:

The "devastated" lawyers for computer hacker Gary McKinnon are to challenge the home secretary's decision not to block his extradition to the US.

They said they would make a last-ditch attempt after Alan Johnson said medical grounds could not prevent it.

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 43, who has Asperger's syndrome, is accused of breaking into US military computers. He says he was seeking UFO evidence.

Now of Wood Green, London, he faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted.

Read more ....

Google Tests Redesigned Search Page

Google’s new look? The search giant is testing a revamped results page.
Click the image for a larger view.

From Web Monkey:

Google appears to be testing a possible redesign of its iconic search page. Whether or not the new prototype will ever become official remains unknown, but thanks to some clever JavaScript you can check out the new look today.

The Google watchers over at Google Blogoscoped have found a snippet of JavaScript you can paste into your browser’s URL field which will activate the new look. Because the JavaScript code sets a new cookie, you’ll most likely need to log out of your Google account before it works.

Read more ....

Pacific Northwest Earthquakes Could Strike Closer To Home

From Wired Science:

Major earthquakes occurring along the Cascadia subduction zone off the coast of Washington state could strike closer to the state’s urban areas than some models have suggested, a new study notes.

GPS data gathered at dozens of sites throughout western Washington hint that slippage along the interface between the North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates could occur as deep as 25 kilometers below the Earth’s surface, says Timothy I. Melbourne, a geodesist at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. That depth, in turn, would place the epicenters of quakes triggered along that portion of the subduction zone — some of which could exceed magnitude 9 —more than 60 kilometers inland, he and CWU colleague James Chapman report online and in the November 28 Geophysical Research Letters.

Read more ....

A.I. Anchors Replace Human Reporters In Newsroom Of The Future

A.I. Anchors Engineers at Northwestern have created an entire newsroom operation using artificial intelligence, even using avatars to anchor the evening news.

From Popular Science:

In the great media reshuffling ushered in by the Internet Age, print journalists have suffered the most from online journalism’s ascent. Broadcast journalists, however, may be the next group to feel technology’s cruel sting. Engineers at Northwestern University have created virtual newscasts that use artificial intelligence to collect stories, produce graphics and even anchor broadcasts via avatars.

Read more ....

Researchers Turn To Artificial Intelligence And Real Data to Improve War Games

Image: VIRTUAL WAR IS HELL University of Maryland researchers are developing a virtual world designed to help intelligence analysts simulate the consequences of their antiterrorism policies. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

From Scientific American:

University of Maryland researchers have created a virtual world they hope intelligence analysts will use to develop antiterrorism policies.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft allow players to adopt virtual personas or engage in combat on digital battlefields, but what if similar technology could let government intelligence analysts play out antiterrorism scenarios that would help with better understandings of the consequences of Middle East policy recommendations? A team of researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., believe they have created just such a virtual world using computational models that mimic terrorist behavior based a variety of factors, including social, political and religious beliefs.

Read more ....

My Comment: I guess this will be the closest that we will ever come to mimicking real war/conflict/terrorism scenarios.